Chapter Eleven #3
She frowned. “This was all there was in that godforsaken inn.” She turned a shoulder. “There was a mirror. I did see what I look like.”
“And what do you think you look like?”
He had no complaints at all.
“Blowsy.” She tucked the ends of the scarf more closely into the top of the blouse. “Like a tavern wench.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Robert said. “It only draws attention to your breasts.”
“They got in the way when I was fighting.” She looked down in disgust at her cleavage. “I was afraid they would fall out of the blouse.”
“That would most certainly have stopped your cousin’s clansmen in their tracks,” Robert said.
“I’m not accustomed to showing so much.” Suddenly she looked vulnerable. “Debutantes don’t.”
“I’ve seen more of you than that.”
She flashed him another sharp look. “It doesn’t help to know that, thank you.”
The scarf fluttered in the breeze like a ragged flag. It’s gaudy silk reminded Robert of the bindings he had used to tie her.
“How did you escape?” he asked. “I thought I had tied you firmly.”
“I wriggled,” Lucy said succinctly.
That did nothing to calm Robert’s inflamed imagination. He could visualize her, her body restrained by the silk scarves, writhing on the bed. He picked up one of her wrists. Faint red marks showed on her white skin. He felt a complete cad.
He dropped her wrist and she rubbed the place he had held.
“You jumped from the window,” he said, remembering.
“I climbed down from the roof,” Lucy corrected.
“Why did you not simply take the key?”
She gave him a look as though he were mad. “And risk waking you by searching your pockets?”
“Generally I sleep like the dead, even on a wooden chair.”
“Thank you,” Lucy said. “I’ll remember that for future reference.” She looked about them. “I thought you wished to go. Are we instead to stand here waiting for Wilfred to return with an army?”
Shaking off the wayward visions of Lucy in bondage that still plagued him, Robert scooped up his sword belt, stowed the pistols, mounted Falcon and gave Lucy a hand to pull her up to sit in front of him. For once she did not argue.
“What were you doing here?” Robert looked around at the waters of the loch reflecting the cool blue of the sky.
“I wanted a bath,” Lucy said shortly.
“It will be freezing in there,” Robert said.
“I swam in the sea every summer when I was a child,” Lucy said.
So swimming was another of her accomplishments. Robert was not surprised. Nothing Lucy could do, he thought, was likely to surprise him ever again.
As Falcon started to pick up the pace toward the road he felt her soften in his arms, as though she had at last started to relax.
Some of the prickly tension seeped from her.
She sighed, leaning her head back against his chest. He found it very pleasant.
Her body fit into the curve of his. Her hair smelled of fresh air and apple sweetness.
Some strange sensation that was not lust, but equally was not something he recognized, shifted and settled inside him and he drew her a little closer into the shield of his arms.
“What happened to the second pistol?” he asked. His lips were close to her ear. Her hair tickled them. “Did you fire it?”
“I missed.” She sounded disgruntled. “Shooting has never been a skill of mine.”
Robert tried not to laugh at her tone. “Well,” he said, “you might not be able to shoot, but you fight extraordinarily well.”
“So do you,” she said, glancing at him over her shoulder, “though you don’t fight by the rules.”
“Where I have been, there was no such thing as a fair fight.” He drew her back against him, closer still, so that their bodies touched. “I fight to win.”
“I might have guessed.” She smiled. For a second her cheek brushed his. “Was it very lawless, out there is the wilds of Canada?”
“Entirely,” Robert said. Then, surprising himself: “I’ll tell you all about it one day.”
“I’d like that.” She settled against him. “It must have been very hard for you to be sent away from everything you knew.”
It had been intolerable. In the beginning he had not known how he would survive, mourning his brother’s death, cut adrift from everything he knew, everything he loved.
The chill wreathed his heart again. He had been a hotheaded young fool to challenge his grandfather’s plans for him.
The irony was that the old laird had been grieving too, mourning the loss of his grandson and heir.
Robert could see that now. His grandfather had taken out on him all his grief and disappointment, but Robert had been too young and his feelings too raw to be able to deal with it.
He had told his grandfather that he would prove his mettle elsewhere, away from Methven, and then he had boarded the first ship he had found.
He wanted to change the subject back to Lucy. He was not comfortable talking about himself. It was not something he ever did.
“I suppose your father had his daughters trained in swordplay as well as his sons?” he said. He had heard of many Highland lairds doing so, especially if their sons were as stodgy as Angus or as lazy as Lachlan.
He felt her laugh, a soft tremor against his chest. “Of course my father did not teach us how to fight,” she said. “He is a scholar, not a warrior. I learned from books.” She favored him with another smile. “That is why I fight by the book instead of like you, like a...a brigand.”
“No one could learn to fight as well as that from books,” Robert said.
Her eyelashes flickered down. “Well, we did have some practical lessons at the Highland Ladies Bluestocking Society. We hired the best swordsman in Edinburgh to teach us.”
“Of course,” Robert said. “Of course you did. I suppose you had lessons in between the Eastern dancing and the massage.”
“A lady should always be able to defend herself,” Lucy said serenely.
“What else did you learn under the Society’s auspices?” Robert asked. “Just so I am prepared.”
“Archery and falconry,” Lucy said. “Fencing, pistol shooting. But as I said, I am not a good shot.”
“Bad luck,” Robert said. “Actually it is good to know there is something you do not excel at. You enjoyed the sword fight, didn’t you?” he added.
He felt her surprise in the sudden jerk of her body.
“No.” She sounded startled. “Fighting is not something to be enjoyed.” She frowned. “It’s uncivilized.”
“That’s what you would like to believe,” Robert said, “but sword fighting can be primitive and wild and exciting. It calls to something in the blood.”
He could tell that his words had disturbed her from the way that she stiffened. She sat up a little straighter, moving out of the shelter of his arms.
It was curious to Robert that she was so utterly devoid of understanding of herself.
She had all the wildness of a Highlander.
She simply hid it well. Her passion escaped in so many ways, though: in the sensual writings of the love letters, in the undeniable pleasure she took in the physical.
Robert was willing to bet any money that she would be equally passionate making love.
If her kisses were anything to go by, she would burn him down.
He shifted in the saddle. He had to stop thinking like this or the journey, already long and arduous, was going to be very uncomfortable indeed.