Chapter 8
Cameron unbuckled his sword belt and rolled off his blade with a hearty groan.
By the saints, the wench had done him a serious bit of damage.
He pulled the blade from the sheath, then laid it near his face with the hilt in easy reach.
Even if he couldn’t lift it, he could put his hand on it and give any potential murderers a stern look of warning.
Sunshine could expect no more of him than that.
After all, ’twas her fault he winced every time he breathed.
Obviously, approaching her silently had been a very bad idea indeed.
He propped his head up on his hand and watched her as she wandered through the meadow, bending now and again to pluck up some weed or another.
Those were, he suspected, either things to cure him or poison him with.
He supposed he deserved nothing less. He had made a great hash of things already and he didn’t seem to be improving it any.
The list of things he’d already done that he shouldn’t have was long enough to satisfy any scribe.
He shouldn’t have pulled her out of her house to start with.
He shouldn’t have left her unprotected that first night.
He certainly shouldn’t have cut her clothes off her himself.
And he most definitely shouldn’t have kissed her in front of what had turned out to not be her house.
He should have turned away from that memory immediately, but he couldn’t even muster up a halfhearted effort. He watched her continue to study his meadow with a practiced eye and all the while, he thought about how she felt in his arms and how she’d caught her breath when he’d kissed her.
As if he’d pleased her in some way.
He didn’t suppose she would be amenable to any more of that sort of kissing—and he would be a damned fool to ask her. He was planning on wedding his brother’s wife, and though he might have been many other things, an adulterer he was not.
But, by the saints, he couldn’t look away from her.
He waited until she had come within twenty paces of him before he cleared his throat loudly and patted the grass in front of him.
“Come and sit, lass.”
She only looked for somewhere else to go.
“I’ll just follow you,” he added.
When he saw the expression on her face, he wished he’d kept his mouth shut. He closed his eyes briefly, then looked at her.
“Please, Sunshine.”
She looked at him for several moments in silence before she sighed deeply, then walked toward him.
She emptied her makeshift skirts in front of him, then sat down near his knees and started to sort her weeds.
He watched her periodically taste something she’d picked, then either keep or throw away piles of the same stuff.
He decided, after quite some time, that she would ignore him all day if he didn’t do something about it.
“What sorts of things do you have there?” he asked politely.
“Plantain,” she said, pointing to one pile, “dandelion greens, and pretty flowers. But I imagine you knew that already, didn’t you?”
“I might have,” he agreed. “I know the uses for the first, suspect the second would make a particularly bitter stew, and I’ve no idea what you intend to do with the third.”
She took a handful of the blossoms and began to string them together. She deftly made a modest size circlet of them and reached out to place it on his head.
“They serve to make a crown,” she said solemnly. “For Himself’s fetching head.”
He tried to muster up some sort of gruff reply to cover how her smile had smote him to the heart, but all he could do was look at her, helpless and speechless.
“Well,” she said, with mock surprise, “we’ve reached some sort of historic event here, haven’t we?”
He couldn’t even curse her.
“Don’t you have anything to say, Robert Francis?”
“Bloody hell,” he managed. “And don’t call me Francis.”
She smiled. “What does everyone else call you? What did your last witch call you?”
“My laird,” he said promptly, “but she said it with a fiendish sort of cackle that left the hair on the back of my neck standing up every time. My cousins call me Cameron, but then again so do my enemies. After this, I daresay you might call me anything you liked.”
“I should make you crowns more often then,” she mused. “It makes you quite tractable. Either that, or you had a particularly good night’s sleep.”
“With a tree root under my arse and bark digging into my back?” he grumbled. “Nay, not particularly, though I don’t begrudge you my lack of comfort.”
She was watching him in astonishment. “You slept in the forest?”
“How else was I to watch your door?” He shifted a bit so his knees were pressing against her back. She didn’t lean back against him, but at least he was touching her and she wasn’t bolting. She was still watching him with that same look of absolute surprise. “What is it?” he asked.
“You watched my door?”
“Of course,” he said. “You are in my care. Whilst you are there, I will do all I can to keep you safe.”
“Oh,” she murmured. “I see. Thank you.”
He couldn’t imagine that she would have expected anything less; then again, she was a witch and was perhaps not accustomed to being looked after well.
All the more reason to do so himself.
“Any trouble this morning?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I think the warning sign you left in front of my door was actually quite useful, if not a little gruesome.”
“That lad won’t be mourned,” he said dismissively. “He’s given a pair of lassies trouble before, which is why I wasn’t surprised to see him at your door last night. Perhaps my reaction was a little stronger than it might have been otherwise, but I can’t say he didn’t deserve it.”
He felt a shiver go through her, but she said nothing more.
For himself, he was content to lie on the mostly dry grass and watch Sunshine Phillips sort her weeds.
It wasn’t warm—it was spring after all—but it wasn’t unpleasant.
He finally, though, had to get off his side.
He rolled onto his back, wincing as he did so.
“Did I really hurt you?” she asked.
“Do you think I’ll actually admit as much?” He stretched uncomfortably. “You’re dangerous.”
“I didn’t mean to be so violent. I’m a little on edge.”
He understood that. He had been as well that morning after he’d returned from making a quick foray into his kitchen for food, then come back and found her house empty.
When he’d finally realized she was in the meadow, he’d had to simply stand still and rest until his heart had stopped beating so strongly he feared it would beat out of his chest.
He sighed as deeply as he could manage. He had to do something about her—beyond just seeing to her needs and her safety.
Either he had to get her back to where she belonged, or he had to have her for himself.
Unfortunately, he suspected the latter would only worsen his preoccupation with her.
And given that he couldn’t have her, perhaps it was best to think about how to get her home.
But perhaps not quite yet. Perhaps he would spend the day with her and decide once and for all that she was not for him.
He didn’t hold out much hope for that, actually.
He sighed as deeply as he dared, then closed his eyes. “Tell me if anyone comes.”
“Who are you looking for?” she asked. “Gilly?”
He almost smiled. “Woman, you’ve a mouth on you that could stand to be tempered. Did your laird fail to teach you your place? Or when not to talk about women your new laird doesn’t want to discuss?”
“You’re not my new laird, and you’re the one who said you wanted to marry her.”
“I never said I wanted to marry her,” he said, opening one eye and looking at her. “I said I was going to.”
“Then why are you here?”
He closed his eyes and considered that for quite some time in silence.
Why? Well, the list was quite long. Because Sunshine Phillips was lovely, canny, and apparently willing to put herself in danger to do her duty—as she had done when she’d come to tend to Breac.
Because he had spent three days looking at her as she burned with fever, and somehow the vision of her face had haunted him ever since.
Because she spoke to him with a tartness he enjoyed very much, as if he were just a man and not a laird, as if she actually enjoyed being in his company.
Why, indeed.
“Because,” he said, finally, finding there were more reasons still, “I want to pull you down into my arms and kiss you until neither of us can think clearly. But since that seems ill-advised, I’ll forbear. But I still can’t leave you alone.”
She was silent for so long, he finally had to open his eyes and look at her.
She was staring at him with an expression on her face that was such a mixture of apprehension and dreadful hope, it was all he could do not to do just as he’d threatened.
He lay there, watched her, and wondered how it was that a woman who was obviously daft as a duck had managed, in the space of less than a se’nnight, to overwhelm him so fully that his eyes burned at the thought of her smile, his heart burned at the thought of having her near him for the rest of his days, and the rest of him burned with the thought of her in his bed for years to come?
Bloody hell, how was he ever going to do without her?
He sat up with a groan, then reached out and took her hand. “I think you’re a witch in truth, Sunshine Phillips.”
“What does that have to do with either your future or mine?”
“Nothing,” he said, lacing his fingers with hers, “except I will spend every day of my future wishing ours lay together.”
“You can’t be serious,” she said in a low voice.
He looked down at her fingers intertwined with his, then met her eyes. “I find that I am,” he said slowly.
“You don’t know me—”
“I know enough.”
Her eyes welled up with tears. “It’s pointless to think about it, talk about it, even allow the slightest moment to imagine—”