Only For A Knight (22 page)

of him.

 

Recalling his touch and kiss . . . his scorching gaze on her quivering, naked flesh.

 

The rigid press of
that part of him
rubbing so sinuously against the softness of her belly as he’d held her in tight embrace.

 

Hot little flames of want licking at her, she turned from the window, appalled but not surprised that the cold draughts and gusty spatters of rain hadn’t cooled the heat inside her.

 

“Nay,” she said, willing the tingles to cease, gulping back another wave of fast-rising . . . need. “I-will-be-no-man’s-concubine,” she ground out the words between her teeth as she strode about the herbarium, wee Mungo chasing at her skirts, clearly thinking her quickened steps a game.

 

After enough agitated sails around the worktable to wear a track in the dirt floor and still no cessation to the maddening tingles, the cravings and
chaos
he’d awakened in her, she finally paused at one end of the heavy oaken table. Pulses pounding, she gripped its edge for support, her breasts rising and falling with the exertion.

 

Exertion brought on by a foolhardy and useless endeavor, for the tingles still raged . . . coming now in waves of apparent endless succession.

 

She bit her lower lip, glanced at the cailleach’s little jar of cure-all ointment and then away.

 

Devorgilla was a known meddler to be sure—but in a good way. She’d ne’er stoop to darker sorceries or devilish tricks to make an innocent lass . . .
uncomfortable.

 

Nay . . . such a notion Juliana dismissed at once.

 

She looked at the tidy shelves lining the thick walls, seeking something to do . . . if only straightening or dusting.

 

Each shelf held flagons, jars, and earthenware pots, and the large worktable was covered with Devorgilla’s offerings. A second table, a smaller one in a corner, boasted a fine collection of pestles, mortars, and wooden bowls.

 

Everything a goodwife or a self-respecting leech might desire.

 

Wondrous luxuries that made any and all tasks fall light from hand.

 

And that truth, in a sad, faintly mocking way, reminded her of her mother’s hands.

 

Hands far more marked by a hard life than Juliana’s own, and oh-so-deserving of the easements so evident throughout the well-stocked herbarium. Hands that, Juliana now knew, had ne’er enjoyed even the simplest comfort.

 

In great part, because she’d succumbed to the lure of illicit love, believing it to be true-hearted. She’d closed her ears to the spiteful natterings of glen gossipmongers and had given her all, trusting a man who only used her.

 

Juliana stiffened, the heat of anger creeping up her throat and onto her face. Dark memories assailed her, rising up like fog lifting in sunlight.

 

The most damning, wrenching flashes of her mother’s eyes, always so calm and loving, yet e’er tinged with a trace of sorrow, did what all Juliana’s furious pacing had failed to do.

 

The tingles were gone.

 

Banished and replaced by the dull-edged resentment she now knew had e’er fermented in her soul. Names were all she needed . . . her own full one and the name of the man who’d ruined her mother’s life.

 

Only then could she avenge its loss—face her own deep sorrows.

 

As if wishing to cheer her, wee Mungo gamboled around her, jumping at her skirts until she reached down to rub his warm, floppy ears. He responded at once, rolling onto his back for tummy rubs. She took comfort in his adoring gaze, the enthusiastic swipes of his little puppy tongue across the back of her hand.

 

Straightening, she went to a corner aumbry, a masoned storage cupboard set into the wall and containing a precious set of metal measuring scales, carefully-rolled lengths of bandaging linen, and a handful of snake stones.

 

Special curing stones they were, precious and rare.

 

To the untrained eye, just a small round stone with a hole through it, but to those who knew, such a marvel possessed great powers because snakes were believed to slither through the hole to slough off their old skins.

 

Juliana’s pulse began to race as she took one of the stones in her hand, rolled it around on her palm. Some even claimed that, just as such stones could help an adder shed its unwanted skin, so, too, could a snake stone rid a person of whate’er troublesome burdens a soul carried.

 

One had only to drink of heated water containing such a stone. Then, it was said, a purging would quickly follow.

 

If one’s heart was pure.

 

Her cheeks flaming, Juliana returned the curing stone to the aumbry at once.

 

It was said, too, that great ill would befall any unworthy soul who’d dare attempt undeserved use of a curing stone’s magic.

 

“There are more ways than trusting on snake stones to banish one’s cares, my lady,” said a deep voice at her ear.

 

Juliana’s heart stopped.

 

She whirled around, the curing stones forgotten.

 

And her resolve not to . . . tingle.

 

Saints of mercy, just breathing the same air as her knight set the tingles to resurging with a vengeance.

 

“I am certain there are many . . .
ways,
aye. And I am sure, too, that you would be nothing loath to show them to me,” she said, hardening her heart—if she couldn’t extinguish the heat.

 

“And I have told you as well that I am not a lady,” she added, just to be belligerent. “From what I have seen of most—I praise the heavens I have ne’er aspired to be one.”

 

To her surprise, he looked . . . amused.

 

He even smiled, and his dimples did funny things to her knees.

 

“And if I tell you it matters not a whit to me whether you are a lady or nay?” He watched her closely, definite mirth brimming in his dark blue eyes.

 

Mirth, and something infinitely dangerous.

 

Something that made the floor dip and sway beneath her feet.

 

“If the circumstances of my birth are of no consequence to you, good sir, there can only be one reason,” she said, letting her own snapping-eyed stare challenge him to deny it.

 

And, of course, he did.

 

By shaking his head and smiling some more.

 

Juliana began to melt, the deepening of his dimples disarming her—much as she tried to ignore their effect.

 

Ignore . . .
him.

 

In especial, how his mere presence turned the herbarium’s musty dimness into the brilliant warmth of a thousand bursting suns.

 

Suns that, no matter how bright they shone, could not chase the shadows of foreboding from the faded MacKenzie plaid draped over his arm.

 

Juliana shivered. Just seeing the plaid in his possession turned the molten heat inside her to rivers of ice.

 

“You were in my chamber,” she said, the words rusty-sounding, her voice someone else’s—someone who knew her past and was keeping its secrets from her. “You pillaged my travel bags.”

 

He had the good graces to look chagrined—but not remorseful.

 

“I am trying to help you,” he said, laying the folded plaid on the worktable, then pulling her into his arms, dragging her close before she could scoot away.

 

“See you,” he said, giving her a reassuring squeeze, “it matters naught what I have seen or who or what you are. All that matters is that we . . . are.”

 

“And how can we . . .
be,
when you—” she broke off, her body acquiescing, some brazen part of her rejecting any objections her tongue might form.

 

With a sigh, she melted against him, welcoming the way he lowered his head to nuzzle her neck, her heart flipping when he used the tip of his tongue to gently tease the soft, tender flesh beneath her ear.

 

But even as the tingles rampaged anew, some even more stubborn part of her rebelled.

 

A determined rock-hard kernel of will deep inside her that kept sending her gaze to the tatty-edged plaid.

 

The wretched thing fair glared contempt at her.

 

“Come, sweetness—let me kiss you,” her knight was murmuring, his hands now sweeping down her back, over the curves of her hips and lower as he urged her to him. “One kiss, no more—there can be no harm in sharing what we have already known.”

 

But there was, and every inch of her screamed the danger.

 

As did the damnable plaid.

 

“No,” Juliana said, her voice firm. Unbending. “Not even one kiss.”

 

On the words, he released her, his expression darkening with some unnamed emotion.

 

“As you wish, my lady, but be well warned—I desist only this once,” he said, the true measure of his vexation showing in his tightly clenched hands. “Do not underestimate me and falsely believe I shall let you keep yourself from me forever.”

 

He tucked a wispy curl behind her ear. “Hear me well, sweetness, for I say you again, there can be naught but joy in our kisses—in all else I would see us share.”

 

But Juliana said nothing.

 

Truth be told, she found herself too disconcerted by the regret welling inside her to do more than briskly dust her skirts, for once not able to parry with a sharp retort or even meet his eyes.

 

. . . there can be naught but joy in our kisses . . .

 

The words coiled through her, spiraling upward and down, twisting her innards in knots, slicing her heart.

 

. . . naught but joy . . .

 

Juliana bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood, wished desperately she could have agreed with those words.

 

But she couldn’t.

 

And the sooner she made that clear, the better for the both of them.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Nine

 

 

 

JULIANA PACED THE HERBARIUM’S trampled earth floor, stopping at the worktable just long enough to trail her fingers along its thick edge and compose her wits before she swung back round to face the man she was beginning to think of as both her light and her darkness.

 

Her
light
because ne’er had any man stirred such deep feelings in her, awakened such a keen sense of inner knowing. Faith, his very smile or just one twinkling glance melted her and filled her with such sweet golden warmth she wondered she could contain its brilliance and not glow like a roomful of candle shine.

 

Darkness
because no other man held the power to unleash true calamities on her heart. This one, she knew, could shred her soul if she weren’t cautious. She shivered, did not even want to consider the yawning abysmal void he could plunge her into so easily.

 

She recognized that threat with absolute surety.

 

Ne’er could any affection between them bloom into aught more than a fiery physical conflagration—even if she were willing to step over such bounds as his betrothed whiling beneath this very roof.

 

Or a sire who not only lairded it with an iron fist, but who also appeared ever so wont to smash down that balled might right onto her head!

 

“Yon plaid is a MacKenzie plaid.”

 

The deep voice came so close by her ear, her fingertips stilled on the table edge.

 

“Aye, and well I know it,” she said, her back still to him.

 

She took a deep breath, wished he hadn’t come up so close behind her. Sensual heat, both seductive and annoying, poured off him, warming and unsettling her to such a degree even the tops of her ears began to tingle and burn.

 

His scent beguiled her as well.

 

A heady blend of clean linen, leather, and pure masculine musk laced with a faint trace of peat, the scent swirled around her, thrilling her, and almost making her forget her purpose.

 

But not quite.

 

Bracing herself, she whirled to face him, tried to pretend he wasn’t standing so maddeningly near, arms folded across his chest, and looking at her as if he held some irrefutable and unspoken claim on her soul.

 

Her soul, her heart, her body and mind—her very life, each indrawn breath of it, every exhale.

 

Not about to admit any such dependency, she tilted her head and regarded him as solemnly as she could.

 

Fearing she’d embarked on a losing battle, she began to fidget—a demeaning trait she’d ne’er been bothered with until this very moment. But somehow it proved easier to meet his perusal if her booted toe worried a pebble in the hard-packed dirt floor and if her fingers repeatedly tested the texture of woolen
arisaid
slung round her shoulders.

 

A borrowed
arisaid
, she minded herself.

 

Loaned to her by his lady stepmother—as was everything else she wore . . . including the buttery-soft kid boots on her feet, a luxury so unlike the rough-leathered brogues she was accustomed to wearing.

 

A kindness she sought to repay by making herself useful in the herbarium and where’er else she could find some task in need of doing.

 

But any MacKenzie largesse shown her by the lady of the keep and others at Eilean Creag would not be repaid to the son of the house.

 

And with surety, not on her back.

 

No matter how penetratingly he stared at her.

 

Nor how much he . . . excited her.

 

And, to be sure, he did.

 

Enough so to make her knees jelly and to set waves of giddy excitement washing through her—even at moments like these when she was doing her very best to remain soundly . . .
unaffected.

 

Resolute and aloof.

 

Yet he’d caught her so unawares, looming up behind her as she’d examined the snake stones, then taking her in his arms and . . . nibbling on her neck!

 

Mercy, but she could feel his mouth on her still, the light flicking of his tongue against the oh-so-sensitive spot beneath her ear, the deliciously pleasing hush of his warm breath on her skin.

 

Sensual delights designed to intoxicate her—as well they had.

 

Making her needy—desirous of more.

 

And just remembering sent floodtides of sensation crashing through her. Molten, intoxicating heat that pooled deep in her belly, low by her thighs . . . there, where the tingles whirled across her most sensitive flesh until she had to lock her leg muscles lest she sag against the edge of the worktable.