“Is that why you tried to escape with us earlier into Scotland rather than back to England?” he said, some of his suspicion dissipating.
She nodded then met his eyes again, but this time her brow was furrowed. “How do you know my brother?”
He ran a hand through his dripping hair. Explaining this to her was necessary, but also dangerous. If Warren ever did manage to get his hands on his sister again, he would pump her for information on her “kidnappers,” and she would have to tell him that the members of the Sinclair clan, at the order of Robert the Bruce, were spying on him and readying themselves for a war.
“Have you heard of the battle at Roslin?”
Her furrow deepened, and she shook her head slowly. “It sounds vaguely familiar, but I’m not sure.”
“It happened four years ago in Scotland—on Sinclair land. Your brother instigated the attack, but we were victorious.” He watched her closely for her reaction. She was letting her eyes wander, and he guessed that she was scanning her mind for information.
Finally, she spoke. “I remember my brother returning from a battle about four years ago. He never let me be privy to information on the war, but that wasn’t long after our parents died and we moved to Dunbraes. He was…strange after that.”
“What do you mean, strange?”
She struggled for words for a moment, biting her lower lip. Despite telling himself to stay alert and keep his mind on task, his eyes kept tugging to her mouth, where that plump lower lip was caught between her teeth. Thankfully, she spoke.
“He didn’t take our parents’ death well. He blamed the healer who had tried to help them, and when she couldn’t save them, he became obsessed with being in control and maintaining order. I think…” She hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “I think he began to see Scotland as some sort of disease that England had to defeat, and that the Scots’ way of life was dangerously wild and needed to be controlled and stamped out before it could spread.”
Her words struck him. He had always thought Warren was an evil warmonger, but his hatred of Scotland and the fact that he was leading the English charge against them took on a new twist in light of Jossalyn’s insights. Then something else clicked into place.
“And he hates you just as he hates all Scots and Scotland, because you are a healer. You deal with disease and injury, but even you cannot overcome nature. You cannot save everyone, and you can’t control nature’s course, so he loathes you, as he loathes himself.”
Her eyes widened, but she nodded slowly, and Garrick felt a pinch of something in his chest. He understood her, or at least understood some of her suffering.
A tiny part of him selfishly wished she could understand and know him too. But he pushed the thought away harshly. He had no right to ask her to see his true nature and accept him. He was beyond this innocent lass’s redemption.
He forced his mind back to the issue at hand. “Your brother has caused much pain and suffering in Scotland, and for the Sinclairs in particular. I was sent to gather information on the English army’s movements. Your brother is at the forefront of the conflict, not only in terms of being the northernmost English holding in the Borderlands, but also in terms of his…fervor for battle. So we infiltrated Dunbraes village to investigate.”
He was expecting her to recoil despite his careful wording—he hadn’t quite said it, but he was telling her that he was a spy, and had lied and deceived freely. He had even used her for information. But her next question surprised him.
“What did you learn?”
His suspicion crept up again, but he paused to consider her question before his distrust shuttered him to further conversation. This lass was more than an English noblewoman. She had endured a harder life than some pampered lady at court. She had been living in the Borderlands among a combination of her war-hungry and abusive brother, Borderlanders who feared war and had to keep their alliances fluid, and likely, some Scots with thinly-veiled hatred for their new overlord—and his English sister.
Despite all that, she had managed to ingratiate herself to the entire Dunbraes village from what he had seen, likely because she offered her healing skills freely and earnestly, helping anyone who needed it. And she had suffered her brother’s control and abuse, all the while longing for her own freedom.
He hesitated for a long time as he chewed on all of this, eying her warily. When he continued not to answer her, her face finally contorted into the expression he had been expecting this whole time—frustration, hurt, and withdrawal.
“You don’t trust me, do you?”
“Do you trust me?” He took a predatory step toward her. “Because you shouldn’t, lass.”
Finally the inevitable was happening. She took a step back warily, but he took another forward. She would see who he really was, even without him having to tell her all of it, and she would flee him, or at least turn away from him.
He couldn’t have her stay with him—for too many reasons. The most obvious was that he had a mission. He had to tell the Bruce about Longshanks’ death and give him time to plan their next step. Then his work in the Bruce’s army would continue. There were always more marks. He couldn’t simply walk away from his work and into the arms of a waiting Jossalyn. The thought was like a punch to the stomach, both the achingly honeyed idea of being with her and the bitter truth that he never could, not long-term anyway.
But another reason besides his duty to the Bruce and his mission whispered in the back of his mind. She would never be able to care for him, to understand what he had done over the long years of warfare and battles. It was better that she know the truth now before either one of them let their attraction go any farther. He wasn’t the hero. He did what had to be done, including pushing her away—or rather, giving her a glimpse of his life and letting her turn away from him in revulsion.
“I’m not the man you met back in Dunbraes. I am a warrior, a killer, not some innocent blacksmith. You shouldn’t be out here alone with me.”
She began to take another step back, but then halted, lifting her chin. “If you are so dangerous, then why am I still alive?”
“Like I told you before, Burke needs you, and I need Burke to complete my mission. Don’t think it means you’re safe.”
Part of him hated trying to scare her like this, but the other, louder part reminded himself that it was true—he wasn’t a safe person to be around. Danger followed him—nay, he sought it out. He couldn’t just bring her along with him to the Highlands and into Robert the Bruce’s war camp. He still had no idea what he was going to do about all this, but he had to put some distance between them. She couldn’t think of him as some sort of champion, and he couldn’t let himself indulge in the pleasure of her nearness. He had to be bigger than his desire for her.
Just then, her eyes flicked from his face down over his torso, which was still bare. He watched as a flutter of heat seeped into her eyes, and he felt himself snap. He could crush down his own craving for her, but her desire for him was his breaking point.
In one stride, he closed the distance between them, and his body slammed into hers.
Chapter Eighteen
A war raged inside Jossalyn. Garrick’s words of warning registered, for she too had been unsure of whether or not she should fear him. What he said was true—he had lied. He was actually a Highland warrior, and clearly, a very skilled one. But for some reason, his threat about being dangerous to her rang hollow. She couldn’t explain it, but she simply didn’t believe him.
For one thing, the more she thought on it, the more she realized he hadn’t snatched her away with him—he had saved her, first from her brother’s impending strike, and then from the battle that had boiled all around her back at Dunbraes village.
Moreover, she had seen for herself how protective he was of her, both when he had first seen the bruises her brother had left, and again when her brother had been about to hit her. He may have deceived her before, but she didn’t think he could fake the visceral, instincti
ve protectiveness he had shown her.
But all of this was hard to wrestle from her mind, for her eyes kept tugging down to drink in the sight of his incredible physique. He had donned his kilt but still wore nothing on his upper half. Every plane and muscle seemed to work in hypnotic coordination when he moved. She remembered the feel of both his warm skin and hard muscles when they had kissed back in the smithy—vividly. He was so strong and large, and yet he could be so gentle with her.
He was attempting to intimidate her by taking a step forward, trying to prove his claim that he wasn’t a safe person to be around.
It was true, she didn’t feel safe around him, but not because she feared he would hurt her or mistreat her somehow. Instead, she feared her own reaction to him. She had felt the fluttering of girlish affection before, but this completely eclipsed her youthful attachments. She was drawn to him as a woman is drawn to a man, not as a girl daydreams over a lad. He made her feel something she had never felt before—or rather, he awakened something inside her that she had never known had been there all along: desire. Raw, hungry, bodily desire.
She couldn’t resist it anymore. She didn’t want to. She let her gaze slip down from his steel-sharp eyes to the corded muscles of his shoulders and arms, the broad expanse of his chest, and the narrower, chiseled planes of his trim waist.
In a flash, the perfected physique she had just been gazing at was pressed against her, his lips burning into hers. She gasped in surprise at the sudden contact, and he took the opportunity to invade her mouth with his tongue. He stroked and caressed her, but there was an edge of urgency and insistence in his kiss, which she felt rising inside herself as well. She wouldn’t have been able to articulate it before, but this was what she wanted—to feel him against her, to let their mouths meld together, to feed the hunger she had for him.
One of his hands was wrapped around her waist, holding her close to his body. The other drifted lower to settle on her hip, pulling her against him even tighter. Her arms had risen of their own volition and were now wrapped around his neck. Her fingers entwined in his dark hair, which was still dripping from his dunk in the creek. His clean, masculine scent invaded her senses. He smelled of warm skin, leather, and the outdoors.
He started moving forward, which forced her to step back, but he held them together so that they moved as one, never breaking their kiss. A moment later, she felt the bark of a large pine tree pressing into her back. She was pinned between the tree’s unyielding trunk and Garrick’s rock-hard body—and one hard part in particular was pressing into her. Heat shot through her at the sensation, firing her limbs. It gathered especially in her mouth, her breasts, and between her legs.
The hand on her waist began to move upward, and though she had never been touched there before, she suddenly longed for him to let his hands settle on her breasts, which were achy and needy for something, like an itch but…deeper. And more pleasurable.
She arched her back slightly in anticipation of his touch, and he made a noise in the back of his throat that was somewhere between appreciation and pain. He kept his movement slow, though, his hand inching up to brush against the outside curve of her breast. Then he let his thumb move over so that it skimmed against the swell of her breast.
Even through the material of her dress and chemise, the touch sent a jolt of sensation through her, and she gasped again. The urgent achiness hitched higher, both in her breasts and between her legs, where she felt warm and damp. She pressed her hips into his even harder, longing for both relief from the sensation and more of it.
The hand on her hip suddenly clutched the material of her skirts and pulled it up by about a foot. Then abruptly, the cool morning air slammed into her, replacing his warmth. Her eyes fluttered open, and she saw him before her, panting, clenching and unclenching his fists.
“Christ,” he breathed.
She brought a shaky hand up to her lips, trying to feel herself to make sure she was still real and that this wasn’t some heady dream.
He dragged a hand through his hair, which was disheveled from her fingers. “We can’t do this.”
As if she weren’t reeling enough from the intensity of their kiss and the longing coursing through her, his words spun through her head and she struggled to make sense of them.
“Why?” That was the best she could manage. She had a dozen more articulate and important questions about what had just happened, but she couldn’t seem to sort them out.
“Because…” He took a breath and rolled his shoulders, trying to relieve the tense knots of muscles that were visibly clenched. “Because you are Raef Warren’s sister, and I am a Sinclair. Because you are English and I am Scottish. Because you are a healer and I am a killer. Because it’s wrong.”
It hadn’t felt wrong. In fact, it had felt more right than anything she had ever experienced. She had been completely entwined with him, communicating without words, sharing in a free and untamed passion she didn’t know she was capable of. She couldn’t explain it, but she felt drawn to him like a moth to a flame.
“What does my brother have to do with this, or my country of birth, or my healing skills?” She couldn’t quite manage to say the part about being drawn to him like no other, embarrassed at the thought of sounding girlish or naïve. But she wouldn’t just accept his reasoning—not when she longed so badly to be back in his embrace again.
“I don’t think you fully understand the gravity of this situation, lass, or the mess I am already in just by having you here.”
His tone was like a splash of cold water, waking her from the dizzy dream of desire in which she had been floating. “Then why don’t you explain it to me, since you were the one who brought me here.”
Garrick struggled for a moment, longing to soothe the clear frustration and injury he was inflicting on Jossalyn by pushing her away, and yet also wanting to solidify the distance he had just wedged between them.
“I can’t tell you any more. We are all already endangered by how much you know,” he said through clenched teeth.
He had told her that he was a Highlander and part of the rebellion, and that he had been spying on her brother and Dunbraes. That was enough to have them all hanged, but at least she wasn’t completely in the dark anymore. He would be crazy to explain further—about how he was Robert the Bruce’s go-to marksman, that they were heading toward his secret camp near Inverness, that the Bruce was developing a new strategy to attack the English using stealth rather than meeting them on the battlefield, and that Garrick was central to this plan. She would just have to accept staying in the dark while he figured out what to do with her.
“We should discuss where you’ll be headed once Burke is well again,” he said carefully, wanting to change the subject, but finding just as many thorns in this new line of conversation.
She drew her brows together and crossed her arms over her chest, understanding his meaning. He was trying to offload her once her usefulness to his mission was over. He suppressed a wince at the harshness of it, but it was true. He shouldn’t try to soften it or ease the rejection for her. She couldn’t stay with him, no matter how much he wished things were different. And he did.
“I’m sure I can take care of myself,” she said flatly. “Just drop me off in a village, and I’ll be fine.”
“You still plan to stay in Scotland?” For some reason, this surprised him, though it shouldn’t, now that he thought about it. She had already tried to escape to Scotland once, and he doubted there was anything for her to return to in England—least of all her brother’s keep.
“Yes. So you see, just as you are using me to heal Burke, I am using you to gain my freedom and start a new life in Scotland,” she said, lifting her chin slightly.
He wanted to argue with her, to tell her it wasn’t safe and that he couldn’t just leave her in some random village. But then he realized she was only making the best of the situation he had put her in.
He cursed himself yet again for acting so rashly. He should never
have let it go this far. He should have kept his nose out of it and left her to deal with Warren. But his whole being rejected the thought immediately. He could never have sat idly by and watched Warren harm her, or leave her to fend for herself in the middle of a battle that his actions had instigated. Christ, this was a mess.
“Very well, lass, we will use each other. But we should not…touch each other that way again. It will only make things more complicated.”
He didn’t try to explain how or why things would get complicated if they continued to let their attraction rule them, because for every reason he came up with against it—she was a maiden, she was English, she was Warren’s sister—his body came up with a counter—her soft pink lips, those firm, full breasts, her innocent yet heated response to his touch. He had nearly taken her right there and then against the tree. If he hadn’t reined himself in instead of hitching her skirts up higher, he might have done something irreversible.
She didn’t respond, and instead, searched him with her gaze, trying to read him. He dropped a veil of flatness over his demeanor, suddenly afraid that if she looked too closely, she might see that his reasons for keeping his distance were paper-thin and could be torn away with the slightest brushing touch from her.
“I’ll go check on Burke,” he said brusquely. “You should see to your dress. There is still blood on it.”
She looked down and registered the blood—his blood—that had stained the front of her dress the night before. The sight chilled him, reinforcing what he needed to do. If he didn’t follow through with his mission and keep her at a distance, one or both of them would be hurt. He was used to closing himself off, to doing what needed to be done, even if no one else was willing to do it. This was just another mission, he repeated to himself over and over, forcing his feet to turn away from her and walk back toward the shelter.
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