Sue-Ellen Welfonder

by Master of the Highlands

  He stood before the table, fussing with his bowl of sphagnum tincture. “Do you trust me, lass?” he asked suddenly, turning to face her, a deeper question than his words implied mirrored in his dark eyes.

  Madeline blinked, confused. “I would not lie here thus, nigh fully unclothed, if I did not.”

  Stepping close, he skimmed the backs of his fingers across the bared skin of her shoulders, the light caress sending a rush of delicate shivers cascading down her back. “And that, your own near naked state, has much to do with what I would ask you, lady dear,” he said, a new huskiness to his voice.

  A deep, mellifluous note so rich and smooth it did strange things to her belly. Delicious things that made her keenly aware of the transparency and thinness of her gauzy undershift.

  “Aye, ’tis of nakedness I must speak,” he said, and for one heart-in-her-throat moment, Madeline wondered if he were blessed with a similar gift as her own.

  Before she could reply, he pulled back the folds of his plaid to reveal his padded leather hauberk and the two belts slung low about his hips, his waist and sword belts. His money purse dangled heavily from the first, his sheathed brand from the second.

  “Even Masters of the Highlands do not sleep fully clothed, sweetness.” He gave her one of his tilted, heart-clutching half-smiles. “What I am asking, is if you trust me enough to allow me to sleep as I am usually wont to do?”

  Madeline blinked. She knew exactly what he meant.

  He wanted her permission to sleep naked.

  She moistened her lips, hoped her answer would not come out as a croak. She’d love for him to sleep bare-backed!

  Truth be told, she’d already seen him thus many times over in her dreams. Seeing him unclothed here before her, in flesh and blood and not cloaked by the shadowy wisps of a dream, would be a treat beyond measure.

  “Through my duties as laird’s daughter at Abercairn, I have seen the bed-nakedness of many men, and shall not mind yours,” she said, well aware his nude body would prove vastly different than any other man’s she’d seen.

  Young lads and squires mostly, cavorting in the lochans near Abercairn in the summer’s heat. And older knightly guests, come to visit her father. Men she’d been expected to spend the courtesy of assisting in their nightly ablutions.

  But ne’er a man even halfway comparable to Iain MacLean.

  “So, nay, sir, I do not mind nakedness.”

  Especially not yours.

  He nodded, his eyes seeming to darken a shade as he reached for the clasp of his sword belt, unlatched it.

  His gaze slid to the bowl of steaming sphagnum tincture. “And if I tend your aches thus?”

  “I will welcome your touch be you fully garbed or otherwise,” Madeline said, the trickling heat beginning to pool low by her thighs chasing any other response from her tongue.

  Thoughts of his nude body stirred her in most unlady-like ways.

  Decidedly delicious ways.

  “Then so be it,” he said, and jerked free his second belt, the intense way he watched her as he did so almost making her forget to breathe.

  He discarded his plaid with equal speed, his dark gaze never leaving hers as he then unlaced his hauberk and drew the heavy leather garment over his head. Tossing it aside, he made short shrift of his shirt and boots.

  His trews followed as quickly, leaving him naked but for his loose-fitting, linen braies. Only then did he hesitate, his hands hovering at their waistband.

  He lifted a questioning brow. “You have my word I shall not attempt to touch you unseemly,” he assured her. “’Tis only that I have slept bare-bottomed since I was a wee laddie, and I doubt I’d find a decent night’s rest clad otherwise.”

  “I—I understand,” Madeline answered, hoping he wouldn’t notice the hitch in her voice… or the excitement coursing through her. “Most men at Abercairn sleep thus. I have seen them about at times.”

  He lifted a questioning brow, the slight narrowing of his eyes telling her he’d caught the hitch.

  Hopefully, he’d missed the excitement part.

  “I would not offend you, lady.” He turned narrowed eyes on her, studied her face. “You are certain?”

  Madeline nodded… her mouth too dry for words.

  For truth, it mattered not a whit if he removed his flimsy-clothed underhose or nay. She could already see the whole of him in quite bold detail. The thinness of the fine linen of his braies left nary a secret.

  “Pray remove your braies as well… if it pleases you,” she got out, the weighty warmth pulsing deep in her belly almost intoxicatingly sweet.

  He inclined his head. “I am indebted,” he said, and the underhose vanished.

  Seemingly as easy in his nakedness as he was fully clothed, he turned his attention back to the sphagnum preparation. He stood quite unashamedly at the table, the whole of his masculine glory proudly displayed, the sight sending shiver upon shiver tumbling down Madeline’s spine.

  She took advantage of his preoccupation with the tincture and let her gaze travel over him. Candle glow fell softly across his wide-set shoulders and muscled back, highlighting the hard planes and contours of his well-trained body, but revealing, too, the silvery tracks of several long-healed battle scars.

  Badges of honor.

  Madeline’s already-racing heart skittered a few beats. Her shadow man was indeed a bold and brave man. The kind another man would welcome at his side in battle. The kind a woman could rely on to keep her and their children safe, their home well guarded. His scar ridges, valiant reminders of the daring he’d displayed upon rescuing her at St. Thenew’s Well.

  And, oh sweet Mother Mary, but her breath quickened just looking at him.

  In particular, looking at that part of him.

  At the thought, her gaze snapped right there. She tried to wrest her attention back upward, but couldn’t. Looking away from the thicket of springy, black hair at his groin and the magnificent piece of masculinity cradled there proved impossible.

  Thick and long, his maleness hung heavily between his thighs and the large ballocks dangling behind it were equally impressive. Enough so to make her most feminine place explode in a burst of pure, pulsating heat. An intense, shimmering wash of tingles so exquisite they bordered on being painful.

  Over and over again, they raced across her woman’s flesh, growing in intensity until she almost moaned. The languorous weightiness pulsing in the lowest part of her belly became almost agonizing in how good it felt.

  “Oh my,” she breathed.

  “Not quite what you expected?” His voice, so smooth and rich, only increased the tingling.

  “Nay. Not at all,” she owned, speaking the truth.

  She just didn’t add how magnificent she found him. How much he intrigued and stirred her.

  But she suspected he knew because he’d tilted his head to the side and was peering curiously at her. Flickering candlelight glinted off the sleek spill of his hair, and a breathless craving to comb her fingers through the black-gleaming strands seized her with such force the tips of her fingers itched.

  Ne’er had she seen a more beautiful man.

  His dark masculine beauty proved even more heart-catching, more scorchingly alluring than in the sweetest of her dreams of them together.

  “The tincture is ready,” he said then, watching her intently as he dipped a length of folded linen into the steaming bowl. “You shall soon be quit of your aches.”

  Madeline nodded, feeling almost as inept at speech as he was e’er claiming to be. She’d almost blurted that seeing him unclothed had given her a whole slew of new aches.

  Aches of a sort she would ne’er have believed existed. But oh had she hoped they did. And now she knew.

  Faith, but he stole her breath.

  “We shall speak of my plan to help you while I apply the tincture,” he promised, wringing excess moisture out of the linen.

  “You truly have one?”

  “A plan?” He glanced at her. “I have s
aid so.”

  “I do not see how you can hope to help me.” Madeline curled her fingers into the softness of the feather mattress, suddenly needful of something to hold. “I have told you. All is lost at Abercairn.”

  “But is it, fair lady?”

  The words hung in the air, almost a challenge.

  Madeline’s head shot off her pillow, and she looked sharply at him, something indefinable in his tone making her heart thump heavily. “I do not understand.”

  To her surprise a faraway look flitted across his handsome face, and his eyes darkened with a trace of the sadness she’d felt with her gift so often in the weeks before they’d met.

  “Things are not always as they seem, lass.” He covered her hand with his, gently stroked the tops of her fingers. “’Tis a lesson I have learned the hard way. I would spare you such grief if you will but trust me.”

  “I do trust you.”

  “Then put away your doubt and disbelief,” he said, still rubbing her fingers, his warmth flowing into her, comforting her.

  Just as she suspected he meant it to do.

  And it worked. She was melting… swooning beneath his gentle caress. Her cares drifted away, no match for his tender ministrations.

  Golden warmth began spreading through her. She ached to reach for him, to draw him close so his warmth and strength could pour even deeper inside her, wrap itself clear around her. She looked at his face then, and saw compassion brimming in his eyes.

  Madeline sighed.

  For all his supposed temper and tales of penance, she found her Master of the Highlands to be a great-hearted man of much depth and caring.

  A man capable of untold tenderness and devotion.

  Just as she’d known he’d be.

  He lifted his hand from hers, brushed the backs of his fingers down the side of her face, along the sloping curve of her neck. “A sky black with smoke will hide much of what lies beneath it, but that doesn’t mean the landscape is no longer there,” he told her, and the way he said it made her pulse quicken again.

  He was giving her hope.

  And heaven help her, but she was blossoming under it. Even if she had little reason to believe her world could be salvaged. She’d seen it extirpated. How could it still be there? Waiting for her beneath her pain.

  Her beloved Da yet alive.

  Mayhap even needing her now, this very moment.

  She looked away, her eyes stinging.

  “You did not see your father perish.” Iain touched her cheek, smoothed a hand down her damp hair, clearly trying to gentle the words he knew would distress her.

  “Could it be he yet lives?” he coaxed. “Perhaps held prisoner in his own keep?”

  “Silver Leg is too cruel to have spared my father’s life,” Madeline said, certain of it. “He enjoys inflicting pain, especially on those unable to challenge him. He loves only gold more. Riches and, mayhap, his two greyhounds.”

  “I would ask you to think hard, lass. Search your mind for some reason he may have for keeping your father alive. Think, too, about why he has sent his henchmen to look for you.”

  Madeline blinked. “I cannot imagine what he wants of me, nor can I believe he would relinquish the pleasure he’d take in doing what he did to my father.”

  “Mayhap we ought to find out if it was truly done as you believe?” Iain suggested, seeming to warm to the idea. Sounding serious. “Aye, I think we should. Mayhap it is time Silver Leg meets a worthier opponent than goatherds and older, ailing men?”

  “And how do you think to do that?”

  “With my sword arm and my wits.” He leaned forward to drop a kiss on the tip of her disbelieving nose.

  “You are but one man,” she said, blushing a bit from the kiss, but still doubtful. “With your friend, Gavin Mac-Fie, you are two. Two men alone cannot effect much against a well-garrisoned castle.”

  “It is not good to be so beset with doubt, sweeting,” he said, stroking his fingers in her hair. “That lesson, too, I have learned. Only recently, in fact.”

  But she still watched him with disbelief in her lovely eyes, though he did appear to have sparked her interest. He shifted her mind onto other things… away from the bad ones. And that, for the moment, was enough.

  And it seemed to please him.

  ’Twas a fine start in the right direction.

  “I have two further men with me… great brawny lads,” he told her, delighted that he could. For once glad-hearted that Donall had sent along the two hulking seamen.

  Now Madeline’s eyes did begin to glitter with interest. “Two other men?”

  Iain nodded. “The sort who’d enjoy naught better than having this Logie dastard for breakfast and gnawing on his bones for lunch,” he said. “You will meet them on the morrow when we join Gavin and your friend.”

  “So you are four.”

  “Aye, but I could raise more if my wits don’t fail me… and they ne’er do, as I told you.”

  “D-dare I hope?” Her voice broke on the words, her eyes glistening suspiciously again.

  “Aye, the hope is well-founded, but I cannot promise. Not yet,” he told her true. “Chances are good, though.”

  She smiled at that.

  A tremulous, watery smile that seemed to embarrass her because she lowered her head, blinking furiously the instant the smile had curved her lips.

  “Oh!” she gasped then, and Iain knew immediately where her averted gaze had fallen.

  He’d felt the gaze, too.

  “He is at rest, lady sweet.” He sought to ease her embarrassment. “Do not let him trouble you.”

  But to his great surprise, she peered closer. And the instant she did, he began to fill and lengthen beneath her keen-eyed scrutiny.

  Her gaze riveted on him and she watched in apparent fascination as his maleness swelled and stretched beneath her perusal. “Oh dear saints,” she gasped, her brows shooting upward.

  He wasn’t even halfway hard.

  Iain smiled.

  A wee one, to be sure, but one of the best he’d managed in a long time, and certainly more of a bold smile than any she’d yet seen on him.

  And ohhh but it felt good to give it to her.

  “Och, aye, dear indeed, lassie, and I do not mean what you are gazing upon,” he said, taking hold of his length, pinching until the swelling receded.

  “Forgive me,” he said, and shrugged his great shoulders. “I suppose he is not as bone-tired as I thought.”

  “I did not mind,” she blurted. “See you, I have ne’er—”

  “Ne’er seen a man full roused?” he finished for her, and she nodded.

  The mere thought, speaking it aloud, had him filling anew. The innocently proffered attest to her virginal state swelled his heart.

  Pleased by her innocent curiosity and lack of timidity, Iain carefully applied one of the moss-steeped linens across the backs of her lower calves. He pressed the warm cloth lightly around the raw skin of her ankles; her sigh of pleasure when he did so lifted his spirits even more.

  He’d forgotten how good it felt to bring someone pleasure.

  Even pleasure of such a simple sort.

  He shifted himself on the edge of the bed, savoring her closeness but concentrating on the abraded flesh at her ankles lest a certain part of him attempt to heed its own mind again.

  “The sphagnum should work quickly to relieve the pain,” he told her, adjusting the steaming linen to cover the whole of her lower legs. “You shouldn’t notice any discomfort at all upon awakening.”

  He began kneading the backs of her calves through the hot cloth, and she sighed again. A soft, contented sigh. Almost a purring sound. Iain’s heart tilted upon hearing it.

  Ne’er had any lass purred for him.

  Not even Lileas.

  And if Madeline Drummond did so simply upon having her calves massaged, the saints knew how sweetly she’d sing upon having other, more sensitive parts of her body lovingly caressed.

  But for now the summa
ry of her losses at Abercairn weighed heavier on his mind than delving into such frivolous pursuits, tempting though they might be. Aye, he craved words with her that had more to do with extirpating the blackhearted dastard who’d seized her home than the sweet nothings he hoped to whisper against her ear someday very soon.

  Pushing to his feet, he fetched more of the hot linens, this time wrapping the steaming cloths about her wrists. Holding them in place with firm but gentle pressure, he silently cursed the heinous deeds that had given her such cause to weep and hoped the plan that was beginning to take shape in his mind would soon turn her tears to smiles.

  A thousand of them for each tear shed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  LONG PAST GLOAMING THE NEXT DAY, Iain reined up before the massive Fortingall yew, an ancient giant of a tree, and purported to be older than time. ’Twas his designated meeting place with Gavin MacFie.

  The yew stood dark and noble against the gathering clouds and a swift wind, ripe with the dampness of coming rain whistled through its gnarled, down-spreading branches.

  To Iain’s relief, Gavin, the great auburn-haired lout, materialized almost immediately, stepping out of the shadows of a semi-ruinous chapel behind the yew. A sizable enough structure, if in decay, its crumbling stone walls were almost completely hidden by the yew’s incredible girth.

  Nella of the Marsh came a pace or two behind him, a curiously anxious look marring her comely brow, but MacFie strode forward and slapped Iain hard on the thigh before he could wonder further about the lady’s apparent distress.

  “I have seen that look on a MacLean before,” Gavin declared, his narrow-eyed scrutiny as piercing as the wind.

  “A fine and good eve to you, too,” Iain tossed back, dismounting. “And, aye, I suppose you have seen such a look often enough living with MacLeans as you do.”

  “Where are the others?” Iain didn’t give the other a chance to spout the words he could almost see dancing on the lout’s waggling tongue.

  “You’ve been stricken with the MacLean Bane,” Gavin loosed the words anyway. “I can spot the symptoms ten leagues away.”

  “And if I have?” Iain eyed him from beneath down-drawn brows, the edge of his temper beginning to unfurl.