Chapter 15
Ye shouldnae have kissed her.
Hunter seethed as he tried not to stare at Nancy, but his gaze kept wandering regardless of his wishes.
One moment, he was paying close attention to something Jack was saying about the borders; the next, he was watching her, admiring the slight dimples in her cheeks when she smiled, the bright light in her dark blue eyes.
She was wearing another taunting dress, the neckline low, her waist so tightly cinched that he could’ve wrapped both his hands around it.
He grazed his teeth over his lower lip as he marked the curve of her neck and the line of her jaw, burning with a need to kiss that olive skin, to trace every freckle, to finish what he’d forced himself to end in the dungeons.
Even now, he didn’t know how he’d managed to hold back. He could still hear her breathy gasps and feel her fingernails rake over his shoulder blades, sense the urgency that had taken over her as she’d wrapped her leg around him, an invitation that no sane man could refuse.
“Me Laird?” Jack said, arching a curious eyebrow.
Annoyed by his threadbare discipline, Hunter glanced back at his man-at-arms with an anger that wasn’t aimed at him. “What?”
“I was just sayin’ that all seems quiet on the border. I suggest sendin’ out more men tonight,” Jack replied, a barely suppressed note of amusement in his voice.
Hunter nodded. “I’ll ride out with them.”
“Me Laird? Nay, ye daenae have to do—”
Hunter didn’t hear the rest as he marched across the lawn and headed back into the castle, needing to be as far from that temptress as humanly possible.
She might have claimed she wasn’t a witch, but whatever hold she had on him was nothing short of sorcery.
Later that night, relieved of her duties by Isla, Nancy lay on the somewhat lumpy mattress of her peaceful bedchamber and willed sleep to come.
She squeezed her eyes shut, tried counting sheep, did as many breathing exercises as she could remember, tensed all of her muscles, and then relaxed them, utterly desperate for some rest.
It refused, evading her like a word dancing on the tip of her tongue or the details of a dream upon waking.
“Great,” she muttered. “Now, he’s invading my sleep too… because looking after his daughter is so easy on no sleep whatsoever.”
Hunter was in her head and under her skin, and she couldn’t get him out.
He had no business being everywhere that she was.
He had no business gazing at her when he was the one who’d pulled away.
He had no business kissing her and changing everything she knew about kissing.
And he certainly had no business acting all protective, asking her if she wanted him to punish one of his own for being rightfully suspicious of her.
Am I any better?
She couldn’t say she was, when she’d stayed here instead of going to wherever Jane lived to solve the return time-travel situation.
That would have been far easier than waiting for Adeline to come back with all of the information, yet the way Adeline had phrased it had made it seem like the best solution at the time.
If she thinks she’s getting another twenty-first-century girl to stay here, she’s going to be sorely disappointed.
Maybe if she were a great inventor or engineer or…
a renowned chef, it might have made sense for Adeline to want her to stay.
But Nancy was a journalist. What place did a journalist have in the 1700s?
She wasn’t even sure they had newspapers, just those men who rang bells and shouted news in the middle of town squares. Maybe they didn’t even have those.
“This is pointless.” She threw back the covers and grabbed a cloak from the wardrobe, throwing it around herself as she slipped her feet into her beloved sneakers.
No one would be awake to see her, so she didn’t need to worry about anyone judging the sorcery of her footwear.
That done, she headed out, pausing to grab a lantern on the way.
She’d lose her mind if she stayed in bed tossing and turning, her wayward brain wishing Hunter were there to do something about it. What she needed was a cold shower to shock that man out of her system, and since there were no showers here, she knew exactly where to go.
With pleasing proficiency and a lot of rehearsed mnemonics about her lefts and rights, downs and ups, she managed to navigate the maze of corridors, hallways, staircases, and passages down to the gardens.
Moonlight peeked bashfully from behind purplish clouds, tingeing the lawns and wildflowers with silver, while stars glittered intermittently and a chilly wind blew across this corner of the Highlands.
But Nancy hadn’t come down there to be warm. She was there to take a cold dip until no heated thoughts of Hunter crept into her head anymore. The chilly breeze was just the prelude.
Holding the lantern up higher to cast more light on where she was going, she found the gap in the wall and, gripping the makeshift rope railing until her knuckles whitened, descended toward the glint of icy-cold water.
“Don’t mind if I do,” she murmured appreciatively as she reached the flat stone edges of the pool and spotted a recess a short distance away. The perfect spot to strip out of her clothes.
Setting down her lantern a safe distance from the edge of the pool, so no splashes would sputter it out, she gritted her teeth against the cold and peeled away her cloak and nightdress.
With a few ragged puffs of breath, like she was blowing on something hot, she hopped across the space between her clothes and the pool and, with zero hesitation, threw herself in before she could change her mind.
Oh… oh… Heck, that’s cold!
The pool was deeper than she’d thought, and though she kicked her legs as far down as they would go, she couldn’t feel the bottom. In the darkness of night, even with the moonlight shining, she couldn’t even see the bottom.
A little shudder of unease ran through her, mingling with the tremors of bitter cold that swept through her senses, as she imagined some mythical creature down there wondering if she would make a tasty midnight snack.
Get a grip.
With all the fortitude she could muster, she began to swim, and as she swam, she began to enjoy herself. The cold thawed as she moved her muscles, and the heat of her efforts warmed her, her arms cutting cleanly through the water, her legs kicking fast.
She’d always been a good swimmer, and she wondered why she hadn’t made more use of the heated pools back home.
Something about the water over her ears seemed to calm her, too, as if the liquid itself was creating a blockade that thoughts of Hunter couldn’t breach.
It was just her and the water and the mechanical motion of her limbs propelling her through it, over and over, lap after lap, as meditative as anything else she could think of.
This is bliss. I could get used to this.
She smiled to herself as she tried something she hadn’t done in years, not since her school days: a tumble-turn. Her nose burned as she curved into the water, but as her body twisted and her feet braced to push off, she missed the stone wall completely. In the dark, she must have misjudged it.
Panic swooped in, and it didn’t care that she was a proficient swimmer who’d just done fifty laps already.
Her hands flailed for a surface that didn’t come, her legs kicking wildly.
The moon had hidden behind a cloud, and the world was plunged into deep shadow, making it impossible to tell which way was up or down; her vision was blurred, and fear was robbing her of logic.
All she knew was that she couldn’t breathe, and she had no notion of where the air was.
Just then, the surface rippled and a froth of white danced in her vision, a flurry of bubbles popping against her skin. Strong arms wrapped around her waist, lifting her until her head broke the surface.
She gasped in a shuddering breath, coughing and spluttering as she grasped for whoever had grabbed her.
Her fingertips sank into hard muscle, the arm around her like an iron lifebelt, while a broad, slick shoulder provided the perfect place for her to rest her head as she sucked in breath after lovely breath.
A few moments later, she was heaved out of the water and set on the edge of the pool in one swift, powerful motion.
It was only then that she remembered she wasn’t wearing anything, and hurriedly crossed her legs and hugged her knees to hide her breasts.
Bobbing effortlessly in the pool, just below her, was the one man this swimming session was supposed to make her forget. And now he was wet and glistening, and so breathtaking in the moonlight that she really should have stayed in bed.
Hunter swam to the ledge and pulled himself out, water cascading down his muscular body like molten silver. His thigh covered what she’d felt in the dungeons, and he turned to deny her a peek as he stooped to pick up his belted plaid.
She stared in a daze at his sculpted buttocks, so firm and shapely that she had to stuff her hands into her armpits to stop herself from reaching out to touch them.
A moment later, he was covered, at least from his waist to his knees, and she could breathe again.
“Is it wise where ye come from for a lass to swim alone at night?” he asked coolly as he picked up his shirt and turned to face her.
She looked away. “Unfortunately, no.”
“Here.” He opened his shirt and lowered it over her head, giving her no choice but to stick her arms through the sleeves or be trapped in a very loose, very large straitjacket.
His scent hit her like that first plunge into the icy water, sneaking into her senses.
“I’ve got a perfectly good cloak over there,” she muttered, hating the shirt and the smell that was already unraveling the good that her swim had done. Well, everything that hadn’t already been unraveled by the sight of him naked, or the feel of him holding her in his arms.
He padded over to the recess in the wall and collected her cloak and nightdress. As he returned to her, he sat down on the ledge with her and carefully draped the cloak around her.
She held the edges closed, huddling into the warmth of the fabric, for she knew from firsthand experience that his shirts tended to be see-through.
“Nancy?” he prompted, his voice unnervingly soft.
“What?”
He tilted his head. “Why are ye avoidin’ me, lass?”
“I’m not avoiding you,” she replied crossly. “I’m doing what you asked.”
“And what’s that?”
“I’m staying away from you,” she sniffed. “We both agreed that the kiss was a mistake, so why tempt fate or tempt anything by being near each other? In fact, you should shuffle off down there. You’re already too close.”
A sly smirk lifted his lips as he leaned in and whispered, “Is that so?”
She shunted him in the chest with her shoulder, the reaction instinctive.
“You were the one who left bruises on my thigh; it took that much willpower for you to control yourself.” She pulled aside the edge of her cloak to show him the faint marks.
“So, move off a safe distance. I don’t want you to bruise me again because you get carried away. ”
“I get carried away?” A dark laugh rumbled in his chest as he suddenly unbelted his plaid and dropped back into the pool.
It happened so fast that Nancy wasn’t even sure what had happened until his hand was on her thigh and his other hand was holding onto the ledge, pulling himself up just enough to reach the light bruises he’d accidentally left on her skin.
“I didnae mean to bruise ye, lass,” he murmured. “I would never harm ye.”
She was about to argue that, whether he’d meant to do it or not, he had, when the brush of his mouth against those fading bruises stole her breath. He kissed them slowly, one by one, an apology for each spot where his fingers had gripped her too possessively.
Once again, a man of action, not words.
And Nancy realized that she wanted to find out just how sorry he was.