Chapter 6
Ruark carefully finished binding the wound on Rose’s thigh as she slept.
She laid on her back perfectly still, her hair spread around her head like a sunset halo and, despite himself, he lifted a strand and rubbed it between his callused fingers.
She wore only her white shirt and the cloak beneath her that he had unwrapped from around her unclad form to tend her injury. She may as well have been naked.
Aye, she was temptation itself.
Full breasts crested with dark nipples pressed against the thin fabric of her shirt, the kind of breasts that fit perfectly into a man’s hands with nothing left over to waste, flat stomach, the beckoning flair of her hips and narrow tuft of pale hair between impossibly long legs.
The whole of her nothing but softness and curves.
He’d already spent half the morning watching her as she slept, and reluctantly, he edged the cloak over her.
He hadn’t liked where his mind was heading and didn’t know what to do about it.
He had sworn no oath of protection to her, owed no one but his people his allegiance.
But it was not just her beauty that had kept him by her side contemplating the daughter of his Sassenach foe. Not for the first time did he wonder how Friar Tucker had kept her hidden all these years. Or why Lord Hereford had ever stopped looking for her. Tucker had not told him everything.
Perhaps had she shown less courage, he would be less invested in her and more inclined to ignore the extent of his desire.
He wanted her. And he did not think he would.
For desire it was, like watching Venus in the nighttime sky so close he’d oft stood on the deck of his ship and wondered what it would be like to touch that light. But he’d always had the power to temper his wants with restraint.
A whisper of movement alerted him that Rose was awake, and it was as if something warmed inside him as she stirred.
Her lashes fluttered open and he was caught in her verdant gaze.
Still half asleep, she stared up at him, before she blinked as if in confusion.
She peered around her at the mist-soaked glade, slowly becoming aware of a crackling fire and a shelter of pine covering her.
Her hand went to her hip to find her dirk gone. Noting her lack of apparel, she pulled the cloak around her and sat up, spilling her hair around her shoulders. The amused light in his eyes caused her to frown. She should feel grateful he’d allowed her to keep the shirt she still wore.
“Where are my clothes?” she demanded.
“You will get them back when we are ready to leave. After your defiance yesterday, I can see removing your boots was not enough. I will take no chances. Not with that injury you have on your leg.”
She looked around the glade. “How long have I been asleep?”
Strangely, her ire only served to confirm his admiration of her. “Long enough to decide it is far more perilous for me at this moment than you.”
Alarmed, she peered past him. “Have you seen dragoons?”
“Oh, aye.” He laughed, in good humor. “Dragoons are everywhere.” She observed his warm scrutiny with a frown. “You have been asleep for five hours,” he said on a more sobering note. “We traveled through the night. I stopped because the horse needs rest, as do you. How is your leg?”
“ ’Tis attached,” she murmured.
He crouched beside the fire with his elbow against one knee. She stole a closer look at him only to discover him staring at her.
“That wound needs to be sutured,” he said.
She looked as if she wanted to tuck her leg somewhere safe from his scrutiny, but knew he was correct. “How will you do that?”
“I took an officer’s field kit along with that horse. There will be a needle and thread inside. Or I could cauterize it.”
He considered the pain either procedure would inflict, and looked away to tend to the meal. McBain had sutured more than one injury on his body. He had more scars than years . . .
“Have you ever mended flesh?” she asked.
“I lived on a ship for nearly thirteen years. I can mend anything.” His gaze suddenly softened. “ ’Tisn’t that difficult, love.”
She sighed. “Then I have not dreamed this nightmare about ogres, magic spells, and fire-breathing dragons,” she said. “You are real.”
“Aye, I am real, Sassenach.”
“Sassenach . . .” His tone as much as the single word caught her attention. “Do you despise the English or just Lord Hereford? Did you not yourself hire out to the Crown? Were you not allied to his Royal Navy?”
“Only in so far as it proved profitable.” And until his father died.
“The authorities would hang you if they knew you were a smuggler.”
“Aye, they might, if such crimes could be proven.” He spoke with no small amount of amusement, considering that Friar Tucker could be hanged for the very same transgressions, along with half the borderland lords with him.
“My conscience has already settled the fact in my mind that I am a criminal at heart.”
He gave her what was left of a stale oatcake from the knapsack he’d stolen along with the horse. “You are not eating?” she asked, hesitantly.
“I ate while you slept.”
If she’d been less starved, he suspected she would have denied him the satisfaction of accepting his hospitality.
But she was so hungry she even ate the crumbs that fell on her lap.
Accepting his generosity should have been the worst of her sins, he realized, as she swallowed the last bite and he met the awareness in her eyes.
So she feels it, too.
He offered her the whisky flask and was surprised when she took it. He watched as she carefully sipped.
Sunlight cast a golden glow over her skin and hair and her impossibly full mouth, over the full mounds of her breast visible beneath the thin cloth of her shirt. He did not understand the connection between them and his lasciviousness began to irritate him.
And she was a virgin, no less.
“Thank you,” she rasped.
Hardly expecting the sentiment, he laughed. “For what exactly am I being thanked?”
Her attention paused on his mouth where she had knocked him with her elbow last night. He could still feel the tenderness. “For saving me in the river last night. I hope you were not too wounded.”
The corner of his mouth turned up at the blatant lie. “What is a bit of blood shared between intimate enemies? Hmm? I still have my tongue.”
“ ’Tis a shame. Tongues can be rather useless in the wrong mouth.”
This time he did laugh aloud. “An empirical statement coming from you, Rose.” She suddenly slid away. But he was ever quick to block her with his arm. “Especially from someone who has probably only used hers for eating and saying all the wrong things.”
“I do not want to be attracted to you,” she said bluntly.
“Duly noted.”
He did not want to be attracted to her either.
And there it was. The reality of it as vexing as a splinter beneath his flesh, as if the thought had plagued him all along but had only taken shape now for what it was. As if her beauty was not enough to admire or endure without also enduring his own honesty and the reason she was with him now.
He needed her.
Without Rose, he did not have enough with which to bargain for his brother’s life.
But even were he not in her life, she would still not be free.
She must have recognized this.
His chest suddenly moved with silent laughter at the utter absurdity of his lust. He crossed his wrists and returned his attention to Rose, his control tenuous at best.
“You may find all of this amusing. I do not.” Her chin lifted.
“I have spent most of my life at the abbey and among the people of Castleton,” she said.
“I may not be a sterling example of female gentility, but I have always tried to treat people fairly and with kindness, believing that one’s actions would lend to a like treatment in return. ”
“Then you expect payment for good behavior?” He purposefully misconstrued her words.
Her gaze widened. “Most certainly not.” She brushed crumbs from the cloak as if casting about for a way to better frame her thoughts. “I have little memory of my father,” she said after a moment.
Some of the verve left her tone as if she sought to remember what she could of the man who was her sire.
“I know people despise him. Even as I know he once served the admiralty as a decorated war hero. Now he is returned to Kirkland Park, the hated king’s warden, for he dares enforce laws in the borderlands to rein in certain lawless elements. ”
“Is that who you think he is?”
She blinked and looked away. “How can I know the character of a man I do not remember? Mayhap I need to believe he is more decent than others say. I only know he has left Hope Abbey alone.”
“Why is that, do you suppose?”
She scraped the moisture from her cheeks with the heel of her hand and glared.
“You ask a lot of questions for someone who should know the answers. Perhaps Friar Tucker paid the proper taxes and has done nothing so outwardly untoward as to attract the warden’s wrath. How should I know Hereford’s mind?”
“Has he ever been to the abbey?”
“Nay. And I wish you never had been either. For you are as autocratic as he must be. As are all men. A fish serves a more useful purpose on this earth than do men. At least I can eat a fish. I am not responsible for what happened to your brother.”
“The boy to whom you so casually refer is James Marcus Kerr,” he said.
“My father’s son by his second wife. She calls him Jamie.
I have never met the boy. I was gone from Scotland ’ere he was born and did not return for thirteen years because my father beat the living hell out of me, claimed me unworthy as his heir, and hoped I would die on the sea.
I did not. Jamie shares my sire’s blood through no fault of his own. He is twelve.”