His arms were just as strong and warm as she had dreamt they would be. His chest, just as hard and massive as she had envisioned. And he was just as beautiful as she had remembered, mayhap even more so.
Suppressing the desire to rest her head against his chest had been futile. Before dawn broke across the horizon, she had succumbed to the exhaustion and pain. It was not a blissful, comfortable sleep she experienced. She dozed off and on, jolted back to her senses every time they leapt across an obstacle.
Why on earth did they have to jump like this? Why could they not simply trot across the land, taking their time to gently glide over the hills or through the streams? The answer was quite simple. Garrick. They could not slow down, no matter how badly she hurt. The risk of Garrick catching up to them was far too great.
Arline’s time with Garrick Blackthorn left no doubt that he would seek retribution for Rowan taking back his daughter and for the men left dead on the forest floor. It wasn’t a matter of honor with Garrick, it was arrogance and his warped sense of justice. He felt the rest of the world should all should bow in his presence and worship the ground upon which he trod.
The desire to live far outweighed the desire to slow their pace. There would be time to sleep later.
The morning sun had just begun to rise when the group made their way to yet another winding twisting road that made its way around a small mountain.
When Rowan abruptly slowed their pace to a slow walk, Arline made the mistake of opening her eyes. They were walking along a cliff with barely enough room for a man to walk, let alone these large horses! It was dizzying androgen nauseating to look down.
Lord almighty, she was terrified of heights! She kept her face buried in Rowan’s chest with her eyes closed tightly. She clutched his tunic with both hands and prayed they would not fall down the cliff. She wasn’t ready to die just yet. Mayhap in forty or fifty years, but not today, and not like this.
Rowan chuckled into her hair. “What be the matter, lass?” he asked.
She shook her head against his chest. She was very close to throwing up. To do so would startle the horse, something she wished to avoid at all costs. The thought of the horse startling and the subsequent plummet to her death did nothing to help settle her stomach.
Rowan chuckled again. Apparently, he took some amusement with her distress. If she were not so terrified at the moment, she could have hit him. Why do men laugh at a woman’s fear? She certainly would not laugh at him were the roles reversed.
He took note of her trembling and felt guilty for laughing. He cleared his throat and did his best to apologize. “Sorry, lass. I did no’ mean to upset ye. We’ll be off the cliff verra soon.”
She didn’t necessarily like his choice of words and worried he may have brought them bad luck by wording it thusly. She clutched his tunic tighter and continued to pray.
“Wheesht, lass,” Rowan whispered. “All will be well. I’ve ridden this road many a time.”
Arline took some measure of encouragement with that fact. “How many times?”
“Och! Dozens and dozens,” he told her. “And I’ve only fallen off twice.”
In hindsight it was mayhap not the best time or place to jest. Arline bolted upright and sucked in a huge breath of air. Her eyes were wide with fear when she looked into his. “Let me down,” she demanded. She would rather walk on foot the rest of the way.
Whether it was the look of shock on her face or the death like grip she held on his tunic, he was uncertain, but either way, he could not resist the urge to laugh.
Anger flashed through those brilliant green eyes of hers. “Ye are an ass!” she told him.
He laughed again.
“A big, ignorant ass!”
His shoulders began to shake as he tried to hold back his laughter.
“A big, ugly, stupid, ignorant ass!”
Arline could hear Frederick and Daniel laughing along with Rowan. “All of ye are big ugly asses!”
The roar of laughter broke through the quiet morning and bounced off the mountainside. It echoed and bounced back, hitting Arline’s ears. It sounded like dozens of men laughing and all of them at her.
She hadn’t been this angry, well, since last night, first when Garrick had assaulted her and then when Gunther had tried. Were all men this unkind? This terribly stupid? This heartless?
She could take no more. A growl started low in her belly as she wound her fist into a tight ball. Before she realized it, she was slamming that fist into Rowan’s shoulder. It did nothing but make him laugh even more.
“I hate ye, Rowan Graham!” she seethed.
Rowan could not remember the last time he laughed so heartily. In truth, he hadn’t meant to upset her so, but he could not help himself. He found her anger, her bluntness, quite adorable.
“Ye do?” he teased.
“Aye, I do! To laugh at a woman’s distress and discomfort,” she scolded, “’tis an evil, mean thing to do!”
“I be terribly sorry, me lady,” Rowan chuckled. “Ye be quite attractive when yer angry.” He surprised himself by saying aloud what he had been thinking.
She had fully intended to berate him further, to tell him what she truly thought. But, his words nearly made her tumble from the horse. Attractive? What on earth could he mean by that? She sat dumbfounded, staring up into those beautiful, dark brown eyes of his, at a loss for words.
He was smiling at her. But there was no ire, no disdain in his smile. Mischievous? Most definitely. Genuine? To be certain. But…there was something else…something she could not quite describe.
She chucked it up to being sore, exhausted, and terrified. It made her mind a muddled mess. That, combined with looking at the most handsome, nay beautiful face that she’d ever seen, well, it all led to this feeling of uncertainty and discomfit. It was all his fault.
It took several long moments before Rowan realized he had said what he had said. He felt his face grow warm and that old familiar feeling of guilt draped itself over his heart.
He hadn’t found a woman attractive in a very long time. Not since Kate.
His stomach twisted into a large knot. He was looking down at a very angry woman with brilliant green eyes, long auburn locks that looked as though they hadn’t been combed in a month. Her face was splattered with mud, her dress torn, tattered and caked with more mud. Her bottom lip was cut and swollen, and a large bruise was forming on her cheek.
The bruises angered him. Were his daughter not waiting for him this very moment, Rowan would have been more than tempted to ride back to Blackthorn keep and kill the man who had left his mark on the beautiful face of this intriguing woman.
And yet, he could not deny the fact that he did find her quite attractive. Quite possibly -- if he were so inclined to allow himself to feel such things -- beautiful. Bruises or no, her face was exquisite.
He felt an odd, tingling sensation begin to creep in. He did not like it, not one bit. He shrugged the feelings off as being nothing more than a physical attraction combined with the fact that he hadn’t been with a woman in nearly five years. Mayhap all he needed was a tumble between the sheets. Not with Lady Arline, of course, because she was, after all, a lady.
He pushed those thoughts aside and looked away from the angry, yet quite beautiful, face staring back at him. “Do ye think ye’ll still hate me once we’re off the cliff?” he asked.
Arline cringed. She really wished he would quit using that term off the cliff. For every time he said it, she had visions of them falling to their deaths. Frustrated and angry she answered him. “Aye, I will.” She wanted to hate him, hate him for laughing at her distress, hate him for making her legs quiver. Most of all, she wanted to hate him for calling her attractive for she did not like how that made her feel. All excited and giddy and foolish. It also made her stomach feel as though there were dozens of tiny fish in it all flipping happily about and singing his praises.
“Och!” Rowan said. “I was hopin’ ye’d change yer mind, but women
, especially attractive women such as ye, rarely change their minds.”
There he went again! She could envision the fish in her belly now, swimming about and singing, Rowan called her attractive! Rowan called her attractive!
“Do no’ do that!” she admonished him.
“Do what?”
As if he had no earthly idea what she meant! “Do no’ call me that.”
He raised one of those perfect eyebrows of his and looked down at her. “Call ye what?”
“Attractive. Do no’ call me that.” She tried to look away, but those beautiful brown eyes of his were simply too beautiful to turn away from. They begged to be stared at.
“Attractive? Ye find that insulting?”
Arline cleared her throat before answering. “Nay, no’ insulting.” It makes me think of things that canna be.
“Pray tell then, why canna I call ye attractive?”
She’d die before she answered that question truthfully. The longer he stared at her and the more he used that word, the more inclined she was to leap from the horse and hurtle herself down the side of the cliff. The idea was growing more and more appealing the longer he looked at her.
“Fine,” Rowan said. “I shall no’ call ye that again.”
Why did she suddenly feel so sad and deflated? Why did she not feel relieved?
“I shall call ye beautiful instead.”
All the fish in her belly suddenly stopped swimming. They swooned. One collective sigh of bliss and then they swooned. Blasted man! Was he trying to kill her?
“Nay!” she exclaimed. Finally she mustered the courage to turn away from him. If she looked at him again, it would most certainly be the death of her.
Rowan chuckled. For reasons he could not understand, he found himself enjoying the way her face turned red with embarrassment. He enjoyed unsettling her. But more than anything, he was beginning to enjoy the lascivious thoughts that were beginning to bounce around in his head.
He did not want to enjoy them, but enjoy them he did. What, pray tell, would she look like without the mud in her hair or on her face? A vision of the beautiful Lady Arline, naked as the day she was born, flashed into his mind. She was bathing, in the loch, and rivulets of water were cascading down her perfect breasts, her curvaceous hips.
Lord all mighty, if he did not get her off his horse and onto someone else’s, she would soon know without a shadow of a doubt the effect she was having on his person.
He mulled it over in his mind, mayhap a bit longer than he should have. Would such a thing be so bad? What would it hurt if she did know?
“Be there a reason why I canna call ye beautiful?”
She wished she had the pluck to tell him to go jump off a cliff. Reasoning that he might do just that, just for spite, taking her along with him, she swallowed back that quick retort.
He spoke aloud his conjecture. “Has no man ever told ye that before?”
“Told me what?” For the life of her she could not think clearly or in any manner that made a bit of sense.
“That ye are quite bonny. Attractive. And verra beautiful.”
The fish woke long enough to have one collective heart seizure and die. Now she was sitting very close to the most beautiful man she’d ever laid eyes on, close enough that she was certain he could hear her heart as it pounded against her breast. And she had a belly full of dead fish.
“I’ve been told that, before,” she answered, trying to sound as if she were told those very things by one hundred different men at least one hundred times a day.
The truth however, was quite different. The last man to tell her she was beautiful was Carlich. Seeing how Carlich had thought of her more as a granddaughter than a wife, she doubted he meant those words with any amount of romantic or lustful inclinations.
Rowan didn’t believe her. She was far too agitated and embarrassed. For a woman who had been married before, he found she had an underlying innocence in her countenance and he thought that both strange and endearing.
“Good,” he whispered into her hair. He didn’t even try to erase his smile when he felt her gasp.
“What is good?” she asked him.
“’Tis good that ye have a man to tell ye such things. Ye need to be told that every day. Repeatedly.”
“I do?” she asked him breathlessly. She wondered if he was like this with all women. A man as beautiful as Rowan Graham probably had women falling at his feet all the day long and willing to warm his bed each night. Were she not so afraid of burning in hell for all eternity, she might very well have been inclined to be one of those women.
“Aye,” he smiled. “Ye do.”
Mentally, she waved goodbye to her good senses and the promise she had made a thousand times to live the rest of her days alone. But before they were completely out of sight, she grabbed them and wrestled them back where they belonged. She could not allow lust to get in the way of her plans to live a blissful, carefree life, one of her own choosing.
Several long moments passed in tense stillness with each of them lost in thoughts, lustful as they were. ’Twas Rowan who finally broke the silence.
“Do ye still hate me, lass?” he asked softly.
“Hate ye?” she asked, forgetting the biting words she had said to him earlier.
“Aye. Do ye still hate me?” he repeated as he gave a nod of his head to their surroundings. Arline blinked once, then again before she realized what he meant. She took the chance to look around and her shoulders sagged with relief. She could have jumped from the horse and kissed the ground.
At some point along the way, they had left the terrifying side of the cliff and had spilled into a valley. Autumn was just beginning to touch her fingers to the beautiful land that lay before her. Morning mist clung to everything it touched. Vibrant green leaves still clung to the trees, their ends just beginning to turn, giving tender hints at the golds, reds, and browns that autumn promised. Grass, having long ago turned to seed, waved slowly in the breeze. A deep stream wound its way down from the top of the mountain, through the valley, spilling out to only heaven knew where.
Arline thought it beautiful. It reminded her of home, of her sisters, of her youth. The memories weighed heavily on her heart. She wondered if she would ever see Morralyn or Geraldine again. God, how she missed them!
The air was colder here in the valley, nipping at Arline’s ears and fingertips. The moist, cold air made her mud-covered clothes and boots feel even heavier. She craved for nothing more than a warm bath and a place to lay her head.
They crossed the stream and made their way up and through an outcrop of large dark boulders. Arline stiffened and held her breath when she saw the clearing was filled with dozens of men. Her escorts however, seemed quite at ease.
Sensing her tension and fright, Rowan whispered, “Wheesht, lass. These be some of the men who helped us retrieve Lily.”
Arline expelled the breath she had been holding and began to search the group for Lily. Dozens of large, serious looking, plaid covered, bearded men surrounded a small fire. She had thought none could look more fierce or imposing than Garrick’s men, but she had been wrong in that assumption. These men looked positively menacing.
Rowan, Frederick and Daniel made their way through the rocks and down the small trail that led to the fire. Two bearded men stepped forward and took the reins of their horses. “Graham,” one of them said, nodding up at him.
Rowan nodded back and swung down from his saddle. He reached up and grabbed Arline by her waist and pulled her down and set her on her feet. He took a moment to make certain she could stand on her own.
“Are ye well, lass?” he asked thoughtfully and with much concern in his voice.
She really wished people would stop asking that particular question for she could not answer it simply or plainly. “Aye,” she told him as she reached out and rested a hand on the saddle. “I am well.”
She nearly keeled over when the man who had taken the reins decided at that moment to lead the hors
e away. Rowan caught her before she could fall completely over.
This time, he did not laugh at her distress. “Lass, I do no’ think ye be as well as ye say.”
She was fully prepared to argue with him, to explain that she was a grown woman for heaven’s sake and completely able to take care of herself and certainly was in no need for him to show her any amount of concern, but her words were stopped short by Daniel and Frederick. Each man stood on either side of her.
“She took a hell of a beatin’ from Garrick Blackthorn,” Daniel offered.
“Aye,” Frederick added. “’Twere it no’ for Daniel holdin’ me back, I’d have cut the bastard’s throat.”
Both men looked embarrassed as well as angry for not coming to her aid back at Blackthorn keep. Arline rolled her eyes at them. “And where would we be now if ye had?” she asked them. “As dead as dead can be, that’s where. Ye did the right thing by no’ intervening on me behalf. I am alive, and God willin’, I’ll remain that way for the foreseeable future. We’ll speak of it no more.”
“But, me lady,” Frederick began. “We need ye to ken that we would have stepped in and helped had--”
She cut him short with a wave of her hand. “I said, we’ll speak of it no more. What’s done is done, lads. All is well now.”
Daniel was working his jaw back and forth as his red face deepened to a near burgundy tint. “I promise ye this, me lady, that in the future, we’ll no’ hold ourselves back and let ye take a beatin’ again. Next time,”
Arline’s brow knitted. “There will be no next time.”
Rowan placed an arm around her waist and guided her toward the fire. “We’ll let ye rest a spell, warm yerself by the fire.”
Arline shook her head at him. “Thank ye, me laird, but I be more concerned for Lily. Where is she?”
’Twas then that a very large, muscular man stepped forward. He had long brown hair, not quite as dark as Rowan’s. Brown eyes with just a hint of gold glinted in the morning light. A long scar ran along the left side of his forehead, down the side of his face, disappearing under his plaid. He was as massive and imposing a figure as Arline had ever seen. A chill ran like fingertips down her spine.
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