“Who goes there?”

 

Her voice flowed over him like cool water. He was drowning, breathless with his first look at her face. Her eyes were bluer than morning’s brightest sky and tinted with a touch of heather. Her brows were high and dark and her impossibly thick lashes were black as pitch, casting shadows on fair skin, patrician cheekbones. Her nose was small, her jaw finely boned.

 

Some lord’s by blow, he warranted.

 

He couldn’t drag his eyes from the naturally red hue of her lips. She looked as though she’d been eating cherries and the juice had stained her mouth. Her cheeks were only slightly less vivid. All of this observation struck him in an instant, the very instant she was on the threshold of flight. As soon as she came for her clothing, she would see him. He should speak.

 

“Hello, lass.”

 

She whirled at the sound of his deep baritone. The terror that shot through her veins was obvious. He knew why. In the Scottish Highlands, no beast was more dangerous, more to be feared than man.

 

“You should not be here.” She was nervous, clenching her hands. “This is a sacred place.”

 

“I see the stone-writing.”

 

She was clearly upset that he had seen the runes and was not frightened away.

 

He gestured toward the runes carved in the rock, and mocked, “Do you fear the people who carved them there?” She did not answer, just gazed at him like some cornered fawn. “Why should I fear, when you do not? Even their memories are dust.” He had lowered his voice, striving to be alluring, but the hunted look stayed in her eyes. He felt big, unwieldy, unwelcome, as unwelcome as his rough soldier’s ways had been in Jamie’s richly mannered court. He must be a novelty to her. He was no crofter.

 

“I'm no swick–no cheat,” he offered reassuringly, his eyes flicking over her body. “Have you finished your bathing?”

 

At his words, she glanced down.

 

He smiled his appreciation of her pale flesh erotically outlined in damp, threadbare linen, and nearly groaned with disappointment when she ducked down in the water.

 

“I’d thought I was done. If you will just go, I can dress. Go on with you. Shoo.”

 

He was enchanted. She flapped her palms at him as if she were scattering chickens. Maybe he could teach that gesture to one of his captains.

 

When he didn’t move, she tried another tack.

 

“Will you . . . will you give me my clothes?”

 

He laughed at her modesty. He knew how false was the modesty of women. He’d been pursued all his life by wenches who looked from falsely innocent eyes. With a shape like that, he’d swear she was no innocent. She was teasing him. He could tease too.

 

“You would not turn about for me.” He stretched his impressive torso one way and the other, hoping she would respond to him. Women liked his body. He frowned when she didn’t seem to notice.

 

“I waited. I wanted you to turn about,” he said petulantly.

 

“It is unkind of you to lie in wait for me.”

 

She was breathless. She seemed frightened. She played the game well, he thought. Was she truly reluctant? He would give her a gift. Presents always convinced the greedy female heart. But he had nothing with him, no scent, no pretty clothes, no riches he could part with that wouldn’t endanger his charade. He reached for his pack, searching, and found something that might impress the silly pretty.

 

“I’ve soap. You ken soap?”

 

She nodded.

 

“Soap. For your bath.”

 

“I’m no slummock.”

 

He wondered why accepting a gift of soap would make her a slattern. He shrugged.

 

“I’ll do it.”

 

Do what? he almost asked–but, curious, waited for her to explain.

 

“I’ll bathe for you as you wish. Just you dinna touch me while I’m bathing,” she whispered, her eyes pleading.

 

He was gentleman enough that he almost stopped her. It was a misunderstanding. He hadn’t been asking for this–yet, perversely, he nodded. He held his tongue because she had ferreted out exactly what he wanted yet would never have asked. He was, after all, a man. After an offer like that, he could do no less than look.

 

She was beautiful. The water lapped against her body. Her nipples prickled through the cloth, and he licked his lips, thinking of how they would taste, how they would feel against his tongue. Goose bumps rose on her arms as she crossed them trying to cover herself. Slender arms.

 

She ducked, and came up. The shapeless old rail clung exactly to her body, revealing even her goose bumps as she shivered. He wanted to warm her. He was certainly hot enough. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He swallowed hard and felt his smile fade. He tossed the soap container in her direction, holding his breath as her breasts raised and quivered with the motion of her arm. She caught it deftly, looking between him and the ceramic bottle.

 

She worked out the cork, threw it on the bank and dipped her fingertips into a slimy froth. Her fine nostrils quivered as she sniffed at it; he remembered belatedly that the soap smelled like wild flowers. A gift for his mother. The wench would never have had anything so fine. She would be very grateful to him.

 

She dipped out a bit more soap and lathered her hair. She threw the container back to him. His gaze touched her breasts as they swayed seductively with her motion. She kept one arm up to hide her puckered nipples but wasn’t very successful. Her arm pressed the mounds higher, threatening to burst free of her fragile covering. The material bunched around her arm, and lower it clung to the mysterious patch at the juncture of her thighs. He admired her skill, her seeming innocence. She would warm his bed nicely. She would burn his sheets clean through.

 

“Aye.” He breathed, nodding his head. “Aye. You’ll do, wee-an.” He had not moved from his place but he was ready for her now!

 

“Do? That I’ll not.”

 

He scowled.

 

“I canna go on,” she whispered, “Dinna make me.”

 

He didn’t answer her for a long time but his gaze held her still.

 

“You dinna have to. Rinse and get out.” He spoke so harshly that he hardly recognized his own voice. She turned her back on him.

 

“See here. None of that false modesty with me. I’ve seen you now. Turn and face me.”

 

She ducked again until no soap remained. Through the clear spring, he watched her pull her long hair over her breasts. No doubt she hoped that he would think it happened naturally and he laughed at her cunning. He would not chide her for such “modesty.” These reluctant flashes of her enticing flesh aroused him until he hurt.

 

What would the sight of her stripped fully bare for his pleasure do to him?

 

“You are a fine tease,” he remarked, watching her face color. She blushed easily, like a virgin. She was too old to be a virgin. Why, she looked to be all of eighteen. He wondered if she had birthed many bairns, if she had a husband.

 

“Give over,” she said.

 

He quirked a brow.

 

“My clothes.”

 

Her brilliant blue eyes were so suspicious that he wanted to laugh. He’d never been lured so cleverly. He wondered what other tricks she knew.

 

“I’ll not stop you.”

 

She stepped out of the creek, wasting no time in grabbing her things and retreating out of his reach. She pulled on the tunic and hood. He sighed, disappointed that she’d barely allowed him an instant to savor her. The hose were another matter, difficult to pull on while she was damp. He wanted to stroke his hand along her leg into the shadowed darkness now well concealed by the tunic.

 

He could not tear his eyes from her.

 

 

 

He was too close, close enough for that huge paw of his to grab her ankle. The thought slid into her mind unwanted; she knew he would.

 

Big and hot and weighted down with muscle, his hand closed over her ankle. Their eyes met at the contact, startling them both. Passive under his hand, she trembled like a winter leaf and twice as fragile. His dark fingers looked large and threatening, yet his touch was lighter than moth wings. Then he was not gripping but stroking her ankle with his palm. It was the oddest thing; she felt the sensation but not in her foot. She tried to pull away. He hauled her down by her leg as if she had no more substance than a bunch of herbs.

 

“No!” His mouth swallowed her cry. His eyes terrified her, hot with desire, looking on her in a way no man had dared before this moment. No sooner did she realize that her ankle was free than she felt his hand–huge and undeniable–behind her head, holding her in place. She could not twist from his ravaging lips, could not escape his plundering tongue. She pounded against his chest.

 

“I waited lassie, as you wanted. Your bath is done.”

 

She snapped at him with strong white teeth but her timing was off. Worse, his eyes glinted with mirth as if her puny defenses amused him.

 

He laughed aloud.

 

At least he stopped trying to kiss her. It was small relief. She could not even catch her breath to scream. And yet, there was something in her that did not want to scream. Something in her that recognized that she was a woman, and that he was very much a man. He pulled her partly beneath him. Bearing the brunt of his weight, she could not wriggle away. She nursed a forlorn hope that she could dislodge him, but all of her squirming came to naught. She knew she was exhausting herself yet she couldn't stop resisting. Giving up was not in her nature.

 

He was enormous. His size was incredible, muscles weighting him like iron, like armor. His sheer mass surrounded her. Her senses alerted her to the certainty of defeat. She was utterly defenseless against such raw force. He was everywhere. Everywhere, the touch of his skin on hers, one hand fondling intimately as it rode the curves of her body to her breast.

 

Her terror increased as his hand found her nipple. She watched his face, his expression unreadable. His eyes slid half closed in pleasure, regarding her as he teased that button of flesh into a hard, pointed nub. Even more than his body, she felt imprisoned by the emerald gaze that seemed to reach behind her eyes. He lowered his head and slid down her body, and she felt his open mouth caress her through her clothes. The sensation of his heated wetness transcended and stretched the bounds of her experience. She was shocked beyond imagining to realize that he was suckling her, like a bairn.

 

But he didn't feel like a bairn. There was no doubt in her mind that he was a man. Every sense told her so. As he pulled her crotch to a level with his, a hardened shape thrust against her belly and then her thigh. He insinuated his knee in between her legs and held that pressure there, stroking relentlessly. She was trapped between the tugging of his mouth and the battering rhythm of his invading leg. His hands curled around her buttocks. She felt herself aching from his prodding, becoming wet between her legs. The feeling was foreign to her, beyond understanding, but it filled her with a violent emotion. His grasp allowed no escape. She definitely did not feel like screaming any longer, but this new sensation was even more alarming.

 

She could no longer reach his chest to rain blows upon it; so she twisted her fingers in his thick mop of hair and pulled. It would have been easier to move McDermitt mountain than to dissuade this man. She could not catch her breath, tears of shame and frustration drying on her cheeks. Dark curling hair brushed her chin as he moved against her; but his mouth did not leave her breast, nor did he cease massaging his knee into her woman's mound--not until his hands found her legs and pulled them wider. She was horrified as he held her open, moved even lower and buried his face between her legs. Choked with confusion, she felt the sigh of his breath as he inhaled deeply of her female scent.

 

A whimper escaped her clenched teeth.

 

She tried to close her ears against the sound he was making: inarticulate but thick with meaning beyond words, he was growling against her belly. She knew then a measure of abject despair. She was not dealing with a man but with an animal.

 

“Beast!” she hissed, fighting him.

 

“Aye, a beast,” he said, his voice resonant and beautiful as he surged upward to her mouth. “Tame your beastie.”

 

His words stirred something wild inside her; she trembled with the force of an inexplicable reaction. She nearly wrapped her arms around his neck.

 

She knew his destination by the way his attention seemed riveted on her lips; and then their gazes met. Through her tears she saw his eyes. Glowing. Luminous. Hungry. Even through his fierce black beard, she saw he had a look of satisfaction, as if he had found the answer to a question and he was pleased with it.

 

“You’ve a precious sweet fire in you, lassie.”

 

His hands, one on either side of her face, took hold. He lay still but moved her bodily against his mouth. His tongue mated with hers and she found herself meeting him eagerly. Yet she was caught between fear of him and fear of her own passions.

 

Taking her with him, he rolled over onto a tree limb. He jerked the stick out from under him, grimacing.

 

“Dinna beat me, laird. Dinna beat me.” She begged him shamelessly, fearing the familiar pain.

 

“Beat you?” He sounded puzzled, out of breath, his intensely sexual gaze looking with bewilderment from her to the branch he still held. Comprehension dawned and he looked at the wood as if it were a vile thing. Violently, he slung it away. As if he would hit a woman! One finger moved to her face and touched the wetness there, with a delicacy that surprised her.

 

“Tears?” He frowned.

 

She felt the tension in him. He halted his caresses so abruptly that she wondered if her death were imminent. But his eyes were fixed on hers, cold as gems now, enigmatic, his face a mystery beneath his beard. She felt his tongue against her cheek, tasting her, licking her tears. And his voice filled her senses–deep, rich, heady, startling in its intensity.

 

“Flogging you is not what I had in mind.” He paused, controlling his breath, his hand dropping from her breast. “Will you give me your name?”

 

She felt that he was asking for more, much more, but she would say anything if only he would let her go back to her solitary croft and leave her be. She nodded.

 

“What is it then?”

 

“Branwyn.”

 

He released her. She made a move as if to flee.

 

“Dinna go,” he warned her.

 

She hopped away like a woods creature. She could still feel the man against her, a strange physical allure, and more--something in his eyes. She remembered an image from when she was very small: Jacob and Colleen in the fields–Jacob rutting and Colleen screaming. She had learned early that men could not help being cruel; it was their nature. And this stranger was ready to do to her what Jacob did to Colleen–those terrible things that had hurt her so badly. At last she knew why Colleen had succumbed so long ago; the swollen emptiness Branwyn felt nearly persuaded her to seek the stranger's touch. But she knew better. She knew that if she let him do it, let him mate with her, she would scream as Colleen had screamed.

 

She felt sick. She didn’t dare disobey, but she’d had enough of his bullying. She recalled his high-handed treatment of her and felt her anger rising. How dare he maul her! His eyes mocked her rage; she again had the eerie feeling that green gaze saw directly into her mind. His arrogance did not ease her nor did his long slow smile. Her fear renewed full force when she saw the gleam in his eye. She removed herself to a safer distance.

 

He had spied on her as she bathed. He had forced her to bathe before him. He had embarrassed and humiliated her. Her color heightened to scarlet. She felt the heat of it, but she met his eyes boldly, as if in challenge. Other men had been frightened away by less. Again she must have amused him because white teeth flashed, relaxing the hard line of his mouth--what little of it could be seen through the cover of dappled shade and full beard. She sprinted to her jug and grabbed it, holding it like a weapon.

 

“Lassie, I’ve had a sip of sweet water but I’ve a hankering for something more.” His eyes raked her up and down. “Have you plain water in your vessel? Or have you something . . . He licked his lips, like a man with severe thirst. “. . . intoxicating? I could use a drop of ale.”

 

“It’s only milk.”

 

Now that he was not touching her, his innuendo sent odd chills down her back, chills that were not fear. Combined with the mischievous glint in his eye, his grin was not threatening, but endearing. He was a trickster, this one.

 

“It’s a wise little imp who thinks that I will eat her up. A tender little morsel, no more than a bite. Aye and perhaps I will eat you up, every tasty bit.” His voice teased her, dared her to take up his challenge even as his gaze wandered freely over her. She was suddenly ashamed of her scruffy bare feet.

 

“I’m fond of a slim ankle,” he provoked, “a sweetly shaped knee and saucy little buttock. I’ve a taste for a curvy hip and an impudent breast.” His voice dropped so low that she could barely hear him. “I’ve never had such a wanting for any woman.” His mouth curled wolfishly.

 

He was no longer teasing, she sensed. This was a man of whom an inexperienced lass like herself should be wary. She felt like a loch breach, a lake trout, roasted up and served before this hungry man.

 

“I’d welcome your hospitality. Have you a rasher of mutton and a trencher of bannocks?”

 

Branwyn’s heart beat hard and fast. She could feel the stranger’s potent masculinity, could sense the man’s power like waves. The undertow came close to sucking her off her feet. He was truly a dangerous animal.

 

She could smell her own fear.

 

Branwyn saw a sudden feral gleam in his eyes: hunter’s eyes and she the prey. She longed even for the villagers’ meager protection--they who had failed to protect her when she was a defenseless child. He watched her with those bright eyes.

 

“They’ll feed you at the castle, but you must keep your distance from me,” she cautioned, knowing there was no way for her to enforce her will on him. At least, she would be closer to the safety of numbers.

 

His sheepskin garment was travel-stained with odorous filth that didn't bear investigation. Woolen hose strained on massively muscled legs. A mashed-looking pack lay on the moss. Branwyn’s narrowed gaze concentrated on his face.

 

His raucously curly hair was blacker than the dregs of burnt oats she scrubbed off her cooking pot. All features but his eyes were obscured by a beard as dense and black as his hair. But his eyes! They shimmered an intense green, seeming to glow from the midst of all that blackness and tanned skin. The moss dimmed in comparison. Audaciously, he sprawled as if he were part of the landscape, as if this were his creek. Despite his air of clownish languor, he was all leashed physical power.

 

Slowly, as if he were stiff, he arose from his position on the moss. As his long limbs unbent, Branwyn began to understand what an imposing creature he was. Standing two heads taller than she, his height and breadth reminded her of animals she’d seen at bear-baitings. Her precautions were ridiculous against such abundant and obvious masculinity. She saw blacksmith’s arms, long-boned fingers with scarred knuckles. She had to get away from him.

 

“Stop!” His voice was sharp.

 

She heard the masterful assurance natural to one accustomed to authority. She knew authority. She’d felt the bite of the Widow's punishments often enough. She couldn’t dare defiance. She looked into his eyes, felt her spirit sinking into those green depths that were at once strange and familiar. Frightened, she moved back a pace. As much as she feared Lady Marie Gordon, known by the villagers as “the Widow,” she faced an even greater threat now.

 

“Wait a moment. ” He spoke gently. “I have something I must fetch.”

 

He disappeared into the wood.

 

She waited uneasily.

 

He emerged from the bracken mounted on a huge gray war-horse, a wild-eyed, heavily built animal surely capable of dragging a building. The horse’s silky coat bore traces of dried foam and was forelock to fetlock crusted over with mud. Water glistened on his muzzle.

 

“Lead and I shall follow.”

 

She looked toward the yew’s shelter, the sacred yew whose wide trunk and massive limbs rose upward into an ancient mass of green. The tree was her refuge, but its magic had failed her this morning. She obeyed that imperious voice, running through the sharply sloping fields and passing a pair of disembodied tails sticking from the knee high crop--vagrant mutts hunting field mice in the new barley. As she drew closer to the village, the air was heavy with odors of yesterday's dinners. She heard sleepy voices and saw the glow of banked fires through the thatch, heard bairns crying for milk and their mothers grumbling as they stumbled from their pallets to feed them. She passed old Aba, her fey-minded rooster who slept all day and who wandered the hen-houses making trouble all night. She held her nose past Jacob and Colleen’s.

 

She felt safer now, surrounded by a swarm of dirty and curious children. They gazed in awe at the horse and rider. She turned to look at him, herself. The lowlander’s thick hair was tied back in a queue, short locks loose and damp around his face, as if he had just splashed his face in the creek. His brows were strong, arched slightly and very dark. The man inclined his head regally as barefoot children danced in mud stirred by the great war-horse’s hooves. One of the boys swung his arm unwisely and the beast posed to attack. Branwyn moved to shove the child away but she needn’t have bothered. The man averted disaster with the nudge of a leg. The horse danced aside. He rode the diagonal leap with the grace of a court dancer--at least, what she imagined of a court dancer.

 

She felt his eyes on her.

 

From a distance Branwyn was brave but when the man rode right up beside her, her belly turned over. Still, she hid her fear well, she thought. She jumped only a bit when the man vaulted to the ground beside her. He was so very large, he left her breathless.

 

Behind him, she caught a glimpse of flirty red gown.

 

“Och, no! Not now,” she said under her breath. Dorrie was marching up the path and she looked mad.

 

“Why dinna ye move up to the castle and live with yer Sir Brian and the Widow,” Dorrie said derisively in her country accent, “and ye can be with yer blue-blooded lover every day. Aye, move on then and my Lamb will keep his tongue in his mouth instead of drooling over yer undergrown self.”

 

Branwyn was speechless wondering what Dorrie was about now. Dorrie was always stirring trouble. It was her way. Branwyn fought the accusation’s unjustness.

 

“Brian is not my lover.”

 

“Hah!” Dorrie interjected.

 

“And you know I'm no more lady than you.”

 

Dorrie glared. “Sure then,” she said, “what do ye do to get such fine food from the castle kitchens?”

 

“Nothing at all! And your man Lamb is no more interested in me than . . . than he would be in the Widow. Why do you say such things, Dorrie?”

 

But Dorrie didn’t answer. Her eyes widened as she stared over Branwyn's head at the stranger. For once the gossip was speechless. Dorrie gazed significantly from the stranger to Branwyn. She pulled a leaf from Branwyn’s hair, dropped it, and ground it into the dirt with her leather slippers.

 

“I kenned ye were a slummock.” Dorrie's voice was coolly superior. She deliberately turned her back and sashayed through the stubble to where her particular swarm of children played in the mud.

 

“It’s a kettle calling a pot black!” Branwyn yelled at Dorrie's back. “Who is it who has half a dozen bairns and none like their da? Who is it? Come back, you coward, and tell me!”

 

The stranger was laughing, but his eyes on her felt cold.

 

“Slummock,” he muttered. The way he said it, it was like a promise.

 

Branwyn looked back at him, feeling a chill, wondering if he had taken the words to heart. Was he speaking of Dorrie or herself? Why should she care what he thought?

 

“Who is this widow?” he asked.

 

“The Gordon’s wife.”

 

“Brian Gordon?” His voice had a peculiar intonation.

 

“No, his father, Graham. The Gordon.”

 

“Graham Gordon is not dead. How can he have a widow?”

 

“They say he was killed in the holy wars.”

 

“So they call his wife ‘the Widow.’”

 

“I dinna like to speak of her.”

 

Branwyn fought to maintain an illusion of normalcy. If she pretended he had not mauled her, perhaps he would not be inclined to do it again.

 

A crofter looked up from his garden, yelling, “Are ye looking for a place to settle, stranger? Yer pack be too light for a peddler.”

 

“If this place takes my fancy, I’ll stay a while. I am impressed at what I’ve seen so far.”

 

She knew he meant her, though his hand waved in a sweeping, ambiguous motion indicating the landscape; the gesture was at odds with his leering eyes and darkly boyish grin. She felt her skin heat and doubled her pace. He laughed and followed.

 

“What is this place?”

 

“‘Tis McDermitt Castle on the point and the village is Norkirk.”

 

“And who are you? A glastig?”

 

She felt her face heat. He was an insulting gomeril. A half-wit. She had half a mind to tell him so.

 

“I’m no water fairy, no more than you be an urisk, a brownie. Are you wanting an answer to your question or are you just running your mouth? And I am just me, myself.”

 

She slowed as she walked up to her home.

 

 

 

The stranger saw the lass gaze longingly at a pitiful hovel.

 

“This is where you stay?”

 

She nodded, seeming disconcerted. It seemed she hadn’t planned for him to know where she lived. He judged it a miserable place, unfit for man or beast. But he badly needed rest. Attila needed rest. With a dismissive look at the sagging heap of thatch and the shed beside it, he unsaddled, groomed, and then hobbled the horse for grazing. The lass was gnawing her lip and watching him with her huge, bewitching eyes; he guessed she was leery of being alone with him. He smiled, feeling a rush of heat. She was a canny lass to discern his interest. He did not recall when he had desired a woman so much.

 

He perused her. Dark brown hair--but even dark hair rich with auburn lights was not so very unusual. Peach-tinted skin was not uncommon, nor were flashing blue eyes new to him; nor so finely molded lips, full and ripe as a cut peach. Och, all women had eyes and lips and skin and hair. If her soft breasts and flat belly and curvy buttocks were assembled to his liking, that was an accident of nature, or a trick of his mind.

 

She was only a peasant lass after all.

 

He followed right behind her hypnotizing hips. He watched her body move as she picked up a basket and pitched scraps to her chickens, as she crawled through her garden pulling weeds or greens--he scarcely knew which. He quickly grew impatient of her delaying tactics. When she went inside her hovel, he would take her and be done with it. He wanted her so badly that he would take her here, on the ground. He would . . . if it wouldn’t risk his charade. He needed to relieve himself of the throbbing weight of his desire for the girl; then he could get on with his business.

 

“Have you a drink?” He kept his voice light and couldn’t help grinning. After all that teasing at the spring, she would be as hot as he. It had been a long time since he’d held a clean woman. He glanced dubiously at her hut. He doubted her bed would be as clean as she.

 

She nodded. Eagerly he moved to follow her inside.

 

To his disappointment, she didn’t enter her hovel. A drinking horn hung on a post outside of her door. She poured from the jug that she’d brought from the creek. A white liquid flowed from the jug into the horn and his lip curled.

 

“You first.”

 

She smiled as if he’d made a joke, and drank deeply.

 

“See? It is not poisoned.” She smiled sweetly. “But it is not a bad idea. Poison, that is.”

 

She handed him the drinking horn.

 

“Saucy wench.”

 

A secret grin split his beard. He wanted to discomfit her, to remind her of the quicksilver heat that flared between them. Accepting the drink, his hands closed over hers. He sipped from the place her lips had been, holding her fingers captive beneath his.

 

A surprising shock of heat and desire shot through him. His boldness backfired. His hungry eyes met hers–such crystal-bright eyes he’d never seen before–but they slid closed. Shaken by a reaction he hadn’t had since he was a callow youth, he broke the contact. She looked so startled that his ego was eased; she had felt it too. That must be why her eyes looked so otherworldly.

 

“Whist, lassie. You look like you have seen a bogle. What are you looking at?”

 

Her eyes blinked slowly, and she regarded him as if he were a monstrous sea fairy, a nuckelavee. Her exquisite face was drained of color, her eyes wide and horrified. Her rosy mouth with its tender lips was contorted with fear and shock. Waves of trembling shook her tiny frame.

 

“What is it?” he asked again. Faith, but the lassie’s face wore an unearthly expression.

 

“A bed. A strange bed, hung with velvet and darker than a coffin. I’m lying naked on fine sheets and the scent of a man . . . he’s kissing–no, warring and fighting me–seeking vengeance. His thoughts are dark and cruel. He’s been wronged and thinks she–I–am to blame.” She turned those horrified eyes on him, and shoved him away with surprising strength. “Your tongue in my mouth . . . You are the one!”

 

“I did nothing! I swear it!” Had his kiss by the linn unhinged her mind? Or was this simply a fantasy? The latter seemed more likely.

 

“But I shall remedy that if need be.” He leered. She looked even more horrified, if that was possible. He drained the horn, confused.

 

“No ale?” he said aloud, but his mind was elsewhere. He wondered at the arousal so fierce it pained him. He placed his lips where hers had been and caressed the empty cup, holding her eyes with his own. Although he knew she’d felt an answering heat, he allowed her a few moments respite to recover herself from her imaginative fit. It was a shame she was afflicted with such peculiar fancies.

 

“You will be walking with me to the keep to speak to your Master Brian.”

 

A command. His voice brooked no denial.