Chapter 18 #2
For a minute she missed his intent as she stared out over his head, but finally she glanced at him, scowled and accepted his assistance.
They walked to the inn together. Lachlan opened the door then gave her a mock bow, letting her precede him. She did so, her chin raised, and her fingers gloved in white kid leather.
Nearby, a stooped man with tremendous ears ceased his labor to stare at her.
“M’lady,” he said, finally coming to his senses with a start. Lifting his rag from the table he’d been scrubbing, he bowed as though he’d just met the queen in disguise. “How may I serve you?”
“I’ll have a room, and be quick about it,” she ordered.
For a moment the innkeeper seemed taken aback. “Yer pardon?”
Lachlan chuckled, though he felt far from jovial. He could immediately feel her anger, but her voice softened nevertheless.
“My apologies,” she said. Splaying a hand across her lovely bosom, she smiled shyly through her lashes.
“I fear my throat is rough after such a long ride.” The man’s gaze followed her hand and held there for a moment after she’d removed it.
Her voice was as sweet as elderberry wine.
“I will require a private room for the night.”
“For yourself and . . . your husband, me lady?”
“Husband?” She laughed. It was not the bewitching, silvery tone he’d heard only a few times before, but it was a fetching facsimile. “Nay, my good man. This fellow is naught but me servant.”
The innkeeper wiped his hands on his apron and smiled happily. Lachlan momentarily considered beating him senseless. “A room for yourself then, me lady. Very well. And for your man we have a fine room with but a pair of others letting it.”
Lachlan considered telling him what he could do with his room and his letters, but before he opened his mouth, Rhona spoke again.
“I am certain those arrangements will be perfectly acceptable. But for now I need a meal and someone to fetch my trunks. I fear I am not very strong.”
“Certainly, my lady,” he said again, and scurried into the kitchen to dispense orders.
They were seated in a moment, alone shortly after.
Rhona carefully removed her white kid gloves finger by delicate finger.
Lachlan watched in silence as her digits were revealed, pale and talented and tapered.
He was angry. Indeed, he was incensed, and yet he found that, against all good judgment, he longed to kiss those fingers, to take each one into his mouth and suckle it until she was wet and wanting.
“’Tis a fine inn,” she said, using that girlish tone she had adopted only minutes before. “Don’t you agree, champion?”
Resentment ground crankily in his gut. “You’ll not manage it, laddie.”
She turned her attention back to him, raising her brows as she did so. Surprise shone like sunrise on her bold features. “What’s that, my good man?”
“Oh aye,” he said. Doing his best to appear casual, he leaned a shoulder against the wall and watched her. “You can simper prettily and act the helpless maid now, but what happens when the fat marquis refuses to behave?”
“Refuses to behave?” Her tone was still perky. She giggled, and he found he missed her usual earthy tone with rare desperation. “Whatever do you mean?”
“I mean after you stab him with your dinner knife, he is unlikely to believe you are naught but a delicate maid bent on serving him.”
“Stab him!” She looked aghast. Her eyes were ungodly wide, and she blinked several times before touching her fingers to her lips as if she’d heard something too hideous to believe.
It made his hair stand on end. It was eerie how she could sound as if she had not a vile thought in her head.
As if she were the most harmless of god’s witless creatures.
“Whyever would I do such a horrid thing?”
Lachlan carefully refrained from grinding his teeth. “Because it is your nature. Or do I have to show you me own wounds to prove it?”
She smiled. Her lips were perfectly bowed, and her thick lashes fluttered over the creamy skin of her cheeks.
“I know you are manly, champion,” she said, and reaching out, placed her hand delicately atop his.
Though it appeared refined and ultimately gentle, it was not a fragile hand.
Nay, it was strong and talented, and when he thought about what she could do with those hands, a familiar ache settled into his groin.
“But I do not think it would be quite proper to reveal your scars here at the inn.”
“There is a hell of a list of things that are not quite proper,” he growled and pulled his hand out from beneath hers.
She laughed again. At the table near theirs, two men stared at her with unconcealed admiration.
He glared at them until they turned away.
“Champion,” she said and made a tsking noise as she glanced at him from beneath her lashes. “You are so peevish this day. Whatever has set you off?”
The men at the nearby table had doggedly resumed eating, so Lachlan pulled his attention from them and turned his scowl on her. “Turpin may be a fool, but even he will not believe you’re nothing more than a comely maid,” he warned.
“You think not?” she murmured and arching her back, let her eyes go dramatically wide as she spread her fingers in dismay across her startling bosom.
“Nay, I do not,” he growled, but in his heart he knew the truth; it didn’t matter if she fought like a foot soldier and swore like a whore, any man with a pecker and half a brain would want her.
And damn him—he had both.