Chapter 2 #2
“I’ve seen death,” she told him. “Not so long ago a battle took place near here between the English and the Scots, a battle later decided on the hallowed grounds of Culloden. The cemetery is a mile from here.”
“Twelve years ago, you would surely have been a child,” he said quietly as if children did not witness death.
She stole a glance at the half-empty bottle of whisky in his hand. “I have been at this abbey since I was three. I have witnessed much in seventeen years. Nor do storms make me nervous. Yet, I would never go outside during one. Do you fear death? Or defy it, my lord?”
He peered at her with amusement. “You tell me.”
Tilting her head to one side, she studied the parts of him not hidden in the shadows.
For a moment, she was back on the street, watching him ride past, a sea of dust rising around her and her heart pounding against her ribs like a tabor.
A suppressed wildness about him made a mockery of his refined manners.
“You are down here because you cannot sleep,” she said quietly.
“Drinking but not drunk. On first glance, one would think you were afraid of lightning storms.”
“And on second glance?”
She measured him for the space of one breath.
Two. Three. His lack of a riposte gave her the answer she sought.
Aye, the Black Dragon had a human side. One that she doubted few people ever saw.
“I would conclude the opposite, but not for reasons you might think. Lightning is the most powerful force on earth. It intrigues, tempts, and taunts you. You cannot master it but it makes you feel something powerful. Only a man who cannot feel life seeks to find ways to destroy his own, if only to define his own existence.”
One corner of his mouth crooked. For a pair of heartbeats he said nothing. Then, “Are you suggesting I am suicidal?”
She shrugged, for it was possible she had not read him correctly, though she doubted it. She possessed a gift for reading people’s hearts and Ruark Kerr’s was dark. This man had killed. Yet, he was troubled by death.
“I am suggesting you are a man unsure of his purpose. Or you are afraid of storms. Either way you are a fool to stand outside in one. This abbey sits on high ground.”
“Aye . . . that it does.” She almost jumped when he touched her cheek as if to brush away tendrils that had fallen from her braid. “You have not told me your name.”
Certain that she was flushed, she lowered the lamp. For if she could see his face, then he could surely see hers. “Rose. My name is Rose.”
His gaze touched the thick rope of her hair lying over her shoulder. “A rose that smells like lilacs. It must be your room I was given earlier this evening. The linens smell like you.”
No one had ever told her she smelled like lilacs and it came as a shock to feel another nervous flutter in her stomach. “Yes, the room is mine.”
Next to Sister Nessa, she had been at Hope Abbey the longest. Sister Nessa had not wanted the room nearest to the hall, but Rose had.
It faced south and was the warmest in winter when the trees were barren of leaves.
In the summer, shade cooled the room. But it was late springtime, the season Rose loved the most for the lilacs bloomed and she spent weeks making her soaps from the flowering vines outside her window.
He offered her whisky. “Would you care to join me, m’lady Rose?”
Common sense told her to go. “I don’t drink.”
“Anything?” His devilish eyes raked her. He was baiting her now. “I had not believed Tucker gave up his taste for spirits but I have seen nothing here.”
Only Friar Tucker’s closest friends knew that he no longer drank spirits. “You have known each other long?”
“Long enough to be aghast he has left his flock to the wolves.”
She scoffed at his sarcasm. “The presence of one male at this abbey would hardly keep wolves at bay, my lord. We live in the borderlands. Friar Tucker has not abandoned us. He will be back the end of the month. His uncle passed away. He has gone to Redesdale.”
Roxburghe’s expression altered minutely. “Redesdale? Near Kirkland Park? Lord Hereford’s lands?”
“If you know Friar Tucker then you know he lived in the area long before Lord Hereford’s return last year. You need not worry that he holds allegiance to Hereford. He does not.”
Roxburghe seemed to study the bottle in his hand. “Did he know Countess Hereford and her daughter then?”
His tone as much as the query gave Rose more than pause. She now understood Roxburghe’s reasons for coming to the abbey.
He was following rumors that Lord Hereford’s wife and child might be alive.
Believing that the daughter might hold some value, he was looking for a way to rescue the half brother Hereford had incarcerated.
If Roxburghe and Friar Tucker were friends, then his lordship had come here for help.
Rose also knew Friar Tucker would not help him.
She didn’t want the earl of Roxburghe’s problems to be her concern.
Not now. Looking down at the lamp sputtering against the draft, she cast about for a way to change the topic but could find nothing to ease the tension in her heart.
“I am sorry Lord Hereford has your brother. You must know ’twould not be in the warden’s political interest to harm the boy. I cannot believe he would.”
Roxburghe set down the bottle. “You are familiar with Hereford enough to make that manner of observation?”
“I know that he came home a hero, too. He was once a captain in the Royal Navy. He has medals for valor. I know that your brother was caught cattle lifting along with two of his cousins. I know that no one is without blame.” She awaited some hint of Roxburghe’s reaction.
When she saw nothing, she added, “I also know a dead hostage is useless to everyone, and that most people in your position would just surrender to the ransom demands. But then I imagine you are not most people.”
He lifted her thick braid and wrapped it around his fist, ever so gently. “What else do you know about me?”
Rose knew he was dangerous. She’d once heard he’d left Scotland because of a woman when she married another, and that gossip linked him to beautiful women across Britain, France and Italy.
He’d left a trail of broken hearts and shattered marital aspirations that kept most noblemen with unmarried daughters and sisters far away from him.
Divided between wariness and curiosity, she slid her braid from his hand and tilted her chin.
It was a rare man who forced her to tilt her chin.
“I know you are a hunter at heart and you are no longer attempting to disguise your intentions toward me behind casual conversation. But I am not your prey.”
“I am not hunting tonight,” he said in a low voice. “If I were, you would already be mine.”
She held back a gasp, yet she made no effort to escape him. “You . . . you overreach yourself, my lord.”
He made no effort to move either. The ever-present smile on his lips remained, but something had changed between them.
Something as imperceptible as a hawk’s path through a current of air, yet, there all the same between them.
“How so?” he asked. He reached in slow motion to ease the braid from her shoulder, and his featherlike touch suddenly filled her with inexplicable emotion. “Does a virgin stand before me, Rose?”
The man was outrageous. No one had ever asked her anything so utterly private and intimate, or so erotic her entire body reacted.
No proper lady would have stood for such impropriety.
But then no one had ever accused her of being proper, and she was no coward to retreat on the first salvo.
She was, after all, self-reliant, driven as much by curiosity as she was by her passions.
“I am not ignorant of such things. I have read many a conspectus of the medical sciences, my lord. This is farming land with horses and cows and pigs. I know the names of body parts no one speaks of in polite company.”
Amusement shone in his eyes as he pointed out, “That was not my question.”
“You will receive no other answer.” She met his gaze and knew he was gauging her. “You are quite at your leisure to conclude what you will. But I assure you, I am no lady.” She had not meant the statement as it sounded. “What I mean is that ladies are frail creatures . . .”
He laughed a clear baritone sound that startled her with its temerity. He was a rogue, and to the devil with you if you didn’t like it.
She understood now what attracted her to him, something even more compelling than his looks.
She could admire a man who thumbed his nose at conventional mores, who defied authority with the courage of his convictions.
His gaze fastened on her mouth and, from the lazy-lidded heat in his eyes, he must have recognized the same passions deep inside her as lived inside him.
And just that fast in the cold, dark cavernous dining hall with the world asleep around them, they were two people quite different from what the world saw.
“You are not coy or pretentious. A commoner . . . maybe. But not at all common. What family would give someone like you to a convent?”
“My mother died when I was young. I . . . I barely remember my father.”
“I remember mine. I have forgotten what it is like to be so innocent.”
The trod of boots coming from down the corridor suddenly inserted itself into the heated silence.
The mood shattered. Panicked that someone would see her alone in the night with a man—this man—in her sleeping clothes, she stepped around the chair just as Roxburghe moved to intercept her.
She landed against his chest. His hands went to her waist to steady her.
“What are you doing?” she breathed out in a rush. “Someone will see us.”
But someone had already seen them.