Chapter 10 #2
“Ye cannae outrun me anymore, lass,” he said as he drew nearer.
While Isobel was huffing and puffing, doing her best to keep running, the Laird had slowed his pace so that it looked like he was doing little more than loafing.
A lazy smile covered his fine features and simply because she wanted to see if she could astonishment, Isobel hiked her skirts higher, ducked her head, then put on a burst of speed.
“Ha-ha!” She laughed loudly as she darted away from Laird MacRaeh and raced toward a Caledonian Forest. The thick scent of pine made her nostrils flare and Isobel breathed deeply, sucking in one grateful gulp of air after another.
“Ye’ll get lost if ye go into that forest!” The Laird’s warning rang in Isobel’s ears, but she did not change her course.
“You’ll get lost if you try to…oh!”
Isobel regretted her blustering the second her ankle twisted and she went toppling to the earth. The pain was immediate and intense, but it was doubled when she let go of her skirts in time to press her palms into the earth and absorb the impact of the fall.
“Argh.” Isobel emitted a very unladylike groan. Her hands shook, unable to support her full weight. She quickly flopped onto her backside and allowed the searing pain in her ankle to throb.
“Miss Graham!” Laird MacRaeh called.
“Over here,” she managed to return weakly.
He appeared a half-second later. His hands parted the tall grasses and then, when he reached her side, the Laird dropped to his knees. “Where does it hurt?” His face was etched with concern. His eyebrows were drawn low and his lips were squeezed into a tense pucker.
“Everywhere,” Isobel moaned dramatically as her eyes fluttered closed, and she sucked in a deep inhalation.
“Everywhere?” he echoed.
She opened her eyes slowly and peered at him. The look of worry was still there but his grey eyes were filled with a stronger sensation too, something closer to distress.
“Not everywhere,” she amended as she shifted her weight on her bottom so that she might work her limbs and see what truly stung. “My arms hurt a little,” she clarified as she lifted her hands and rolled her wrists.
“Is that all?”
She shook her head, then winced as she tried to perform the same movements with her legs. “My ankle. The left one. It…it hurts terribly.”
He offered, “Should I fetch ye a physician?”
Isobel stared at him. When she first met this Highlander, he’d had his nose busted and been nursing a wound on his arm.
He had balked at allowing her to step in and clean the blood away on his behalf.
But now, his eyes were wide and his panic was apparent as he suggested they find a healer to treat her injury.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him. “Just…just help me stand.”
This feat was one the Laird could manage with little difficulty.
He placed both hands under her armpits and swiftly hauled her into a standing position.
She might’ve enjoyed the proximity to his firm, lean torso and even appreciated the strength in his forearms had her ankle not smarted immediately, causing her to pull the foot off the ground and hold it in midair.
“I do not think I will be able to walk back to the house.”
“I can carry ye.”
Isobel looked at the Laird, expecting to see a hint of mockery or even a flicker of a smile on his face, but his expression was earnest. He would carry her all the way back to the castle if she consented.
“No.” She let go of his hands, then slumped back into the tall grass. “Perhaps if I just rest here for a moment, I might regain my composure and feel stronger soon.”
As she reclined in the grass, hearing the dry bits crinkle and crunch beneath her weight, the Laird fell back onto his knees once more.
Isobel could not be quite sure of how he did it, but when she looked up at him, she realized that her legs were parted and that he was sitting in between them.
Her skirts fully covered her, but still, she felt slightly exposed.
A flush of heat crept up the back of her neck and raced toward her cheeks.
“What? What is it?” he asked.
I should’ve known he would not miss it when my embarrassment showed.
“Nothing.” She dismissed his thoughtfulness hurriedly, then tried to roll her ankle again. She winced as a streak of pain lanced through her whole leg.
“Ye must stop doin’ that,” he said quietly as his eyes flicked downward and he looked at her boot.
“I cannot help myself,” Isobel explained. “Moments ago, we were laughing and enjoying ourselves. And now, I have spoiled everything.”
“Nothing is spoiled.” The Laird lifted his hands. It looked as though he wished to place them on her but paused before proceeding. “I’m not a healer, ye ken, but I should like to look at the injury and assess what ought to be done next.”
“Of course.” Isobel gulped. No man had ever lifted her skirts or touched her foot before. Her knees wobbled as he placed his hands on the hem of her skirts and brushed them aside.
“I will need to take off yer boot.” His hands reached for her, but he stilled himself once more, waiting for her permission.
“Yes,” she granted it. “My foot might feel better if the laces were undone.”
He nodded, then set to work removing her footwear.
Laird MacRaeh handled Isobel’s foot as if it were made of blown glass.
He pulled her boot off with painstakingly slow movements and set it in the grass.
He was so gentle with her, that Isobel forgot all about the pain momentarily and simply focused on his hands and fingers as they gingerly touched her ankle.
“Does this hurt?” he asked as he pressed lightly near the ball of her foot.
“A little,” she conceded.
He moved his fingers around her ankle deftly, probing with care.
Through her stockings, Isobel could feel the warmth of his hands, and she leaned into his touch, relishing it.
Her knees continued to tremble, and her breathing hitched when he moved closer so that only a few inches separated his face from hers.
Her eyes locked on his mouth, and she wondered what he would say if she dared to touch his lips with as much tenderness as he examined her ankle.
“May I remove this stocking?” he asked softly.
Isobel’s whole body turned to mush. She nodded numbly. “If you think that’ll help.”
“Lay back,” he instructed as one of his hands rose and cupped the back of her head.
Gently, as if he did this sort of thing all the time, Laird MacRaeh helped Isobel recline in the tall grass while holding her foot aloft, supporting the ankle so that it never touched the ground. “Are ye comfortable?”
She swallowed a lump that had risen in her throat. “I’m afraid if I say yes, you might think that I regularly let gentlemen lift my skirts and remove my stockings.”
“I daenae think that of ye, Isobel.”
Her heartbeat accelerated when he uttered her Christian name.
“And even if ye said it was true, ye had lain like this before another man, I wouldnae believe ye.” He smirked at her. “I can feel yer whole body quakin’ beneath me touch.”
“I…oh…” Humiliations galore flitted through Isobel’s insides. She was so embarrassed that she lifted her hands and buried her face in her bruised palms.
“Ahk,” he grunted. “There’s no need for that, Isobel. I havenae even removed yer stockings yet.”
Isobel peeled her hands slowly from her face, then watched as Laird MacRaeh worked one hand up her thigh, slid his finger underneath the clasps of her stockings, and freed the fabric with a flick of his wrist. Her heartbeat grew louder as he exposed one inch of her thigh, then another.
By the time the stocking was pulled to her knee, Isobel was certain that the Laird must be able to hear the sound of her racing heart.
“Just a bit more,” he murmured as he tugged the stocking over her ankle, careful not to aggravate her injury by twisting the appendage.
A second later, the stocking had been removed entirely and the Laird of Dunalasdair held Isobel’s foot in his hands.
She panted as if they were still running a race.
“I…what now?” She could hardly formulate any words at all.
The Laird turned her ankle slowly over in his massive hands. Small worry lines continued to ring the corners of his lips as he bent closer and examined her. “Ye’ve got a lump here,” he said. “It’ll likely bruise.”
“Okay…” Isobel said slowly, waiting for him to add more.
“But…” he continued, “I daenae think ye broke the bone.”
“That is good news, right?” Absentmindedly, Isobel lifted her hand to her mouth and began nervously chewing on her thumbnail.
“Aye.” He nodded once, then lowered his head and brushed a kiss over the injured spot he’d just indicated.
Isobel held very still. All the sensations that had rattled her body moments before when he peeled away her stockings paled in comparison to what she felt now when his mouth touched her bare skin.
“What…what are you doing?” Her voice came out in a tremulous gasp.
He bent forward again and brushed another gentle smooch onto her ankle. “I will kiss away yer pain, me Lady.”
Isobel gulped noisily and gnawed at her thumbnail with renewed efforts.
A slow smile covered his face then as the Laird lowered her foot to the dry grass, then reached up and took her hand away from her face. He twisted her wrist ever so slightly, then pressed his mouth to the ragged, torn thumbnail. “I kiss yer hurts, me Lady, and make them me own.”
“I…we…” Isobel wished she knew what to say but as the Laird’s gaze lingered on her and his mouth gently caressed first her thumb, then her fingertips, she found that no words would coalesce. “We should…”
“Aye,” he murmured as he took her hand and placed it atop her own knee. “We should return to the castle. If we stay here, others might come looking for us and that would be…”
He trailed off and Isobel tried to finish the statement for him. “Fortunate?”
The Laird suddenly emitted a startled bark of a laugh. “Ye want someone to find us out here…sprawled in the grass like this?”
Isobel had to resist the urge to lift her thumbnail to her mouth and chew nervously on it. “I do not wish to walk back to the castle. I am not sure I can manage it and…”
“Dinnae fash,” Laird MacRaeh said as he stood, then offered her his hands. “I willnae let ye walk. I intend to carry ye back.”
She knew that she ought to argue or perhaps put up at least a moment of resistance, but Isobel did not balk at this suggestion as she had before.
She wanted to snuggle into the Laird’s arms and feel his warm touch surrounding her.
She yearned to feel his caress against her ankle as well as the brush of his lips once more.
And so, when the moment arrived and the Laird swept Isobel up and into his arms, she settled in and allowed herself to simply enjoy the moment for she knew not how long it would last.