Knight In My Bed (20 page)

Her excitement mounting, the crone used the ladle to fill a dented pewter cup to the brim. She drained it in one gurgling gulp.

"Incense and holy water are not as potent," she informed Mab, the tricolored feline curled fast asleep on the stone-slabbed floor.

The cat opened its eyes and stared at her. A supercilious look, a reprimand for daring to disrupt her sleep. But Mab's haughty glare only increased Devorgilla's glee.

'Twas the first time she'd noticed Mab's eyes were of two colors.

Chortling with mirth, her gait sprightlier than usual, the crone crossed the cottage's main room to the long wooden shelf that held her assortment of healing and spell-casting ingredients and preparations.

"Nigh good enough to make oxen fly," she complimented herself as she studied the jumbled collection of herbs, powders and oils, and other charmed objects.

Her lips pursed, she rubbed her chin and let her cloudy-eyed gaze dart from one earthen container or leather-wrapped flagon to the next. After a moment, she took a small wooden bowl and began filling it with a wee pinch of this and a more generous dash of that, mixed them together, then carried the bowl outside, where she lifted it up to catch the pale light of the moon.

"In the name of the old gods," she chanted, "by the moon and the stars, I conjure you . . ." A fine and rare wind, blue white and shimmering, swept into the glade to snatch the blessing from her tongue and speed it heavenward.

Well content, Devorgilla lowered the bowl and gave the moon a humble nod of thanks. When she stepped back into the cottage, she went straight to the cauldron and tipped the bowl's contents into its bubbling brew and stirred.

Stirred and planned.

All manner of mischief.

All manner of good.

Even if some would not yet thank her.

CHAPTER NINE

“
Get You with child
?" Donall the Bold's jaw dropped in a most unflattering expression of incredulity.

Isolde flushed with acute self-consciousness at the look of total astonishment on his handsome face. “ `Tis the natural course of t-things when a man and woman have ... l-Ian together," she stammered, hating the way his gaping made her stumble over her tongue.

He threw back his dark head and stared at the raftered ceiling. A sound that could have been a growl of bottomless outrage, or a snort of utter derision, carne from deep in his throat.

When he finally looked at her again, his brown eyes had darkened to a dangerous degree. "And to think I am called bold."

Her cheeks burning, Isolde said, "Were I truly thus, I would surely not find this situation so distasteful."

"
Distasteful
?" His vexation almost scorched her. "If you, the accomplished seductress, find being bedded by me offensive, then release me and spare yourself the agony."

Mortification rose in Isolde's throat, hot, thick, and stealing her breath. "I cannot," she choked out, pushing the two words off her tongue.

I cannot because a child who shares our blood is the only salvation I see for this isle, for my dwindling clan, and to spare me a marriage to Balloch MacArthur, thus freeing me to wed my true soul mate.

A man I pray to God isn't you
!

"Nay, lady, you cannot," Game his cold reply, scattering her cares as swiftly as if a chill, black wind had swept through the chamber. "You cannot force me to wed you by swelling with my get. Think you –“

It is the babe I want, not marriage. Ne'er di -"

"Think you," he overrode her protestations, "think you I would see my child, my
firstborn,
spring from
you
? A MacInnes? The MacInnes? An inveterate liar? A wench so cold-hearted she has me tortured by day yet would spread her bonnie legs for me come nightfall?"

Isolde flinched beneath his blazing wrath. "Nay, you are wrong. You misunder –“

"Nay, woman, 'tis you who are wrong." he seethed, his face dark with fury. "And sorely unenlightened." He tossed back his mane of thick, black hair. "Or were you truly not aware a man can pleasure a woman, even take his own ease, and leave nary a drop of his seed behind?"

Isolde opened her mouth, only to promptly dose it. She'd almost blurted that, aye, she did know of such impediments to her plan.

Her pulse jumping, her discomfiture high, the tops of her tars burned at the memory of Evelina's warning, her calm assurances a skilled seductress could persuade a man to spill his lust whether he cared to or not.

"Shall I prove it to you?" the MacLean drawled, his deep voice low, smooth, and frightfully ...
compelling
.

Another of his slow smiles began to spread across his bonnie face, tugging at the corners of his sinfully appealing mouth. Isolde's heart flip-flopped at the sight of it.

At the sight of him, saints preserve her.

Darkly handsome, so like her dream man, his bold glare and crackling anger made him seem larger than life, more brazenly masculine than e'er before. His daunting presence filled her bedchamber, claiming mastery of all within its tapestried walls with such case she could do naught but stand and stare at him.

Wholly captivated.

Wholly his.

"Aye, I believe I shall," he said, pure wickedness glinting in his eyes.

"Shall what?" Isolde blurted, her voice little more than a squeak.

"Enlighten you," he said, and had the audacity to wink at her.

Then his expression went cold and heated at the same time and he advanced on her. His confident air of pure, unbridled maleness filled her with an odd rush of exhilaration even as whirling panic careened through her.

"You are a knight," she squeaked again, holding up his ennobled status as a shield. "A champion renowned for-"

"I am many things and renowned for much," he said, stopping at the table's edge, halted by his chain. Something dark and far too stirring flashed in his eyes, but then they warmed, turning a rich, liquid brown. As he looked at her, the hard line of his jaw relaxed, and his lips curved in a disarming smile.

The first of its kind he'd turned on her. A smile so devastating in its power, its impact surged through her. An unrestrained cascade of sensation spilling from the crown of her head clear to the soles of her feet, and warming every place between.

Half-afraid to breathe, she began inching her hand toward Devorgilla's little flask of anti-attraction elixir. The flagon still rested near the table's edge, and she needed it.

Badly.

"You are honor-bound to be chivalrous," she argued, hoping to distract him as she curled her fingers around the flask. "A knight --"

With lightning speed, he lunged to the side and snatched the potion from her fingers with one hand, while seizing her wrist in an iron grip with the other.

"I am a
man
," he said, holding the flagon high above his head. "And I am about to show you how very un-knightly a man can be."

She stared at him, her heart thundering. His raven-black hair, lustrous and wild, just skimmed the wide set of his shoulders. A pagan god, untamed, lusty, and more breathtakingly handsome than any mortal man should be.

As if the devil himself meant to tempt her, an overwhelming urge to run her fingers through his hair's glossed thickness beset her. A strange and disturbing quickening deep inside her. Faith and mercy, but she needed the crone's tincture.

Now.

And more than one wee flask.

She peered at the flagon he still held out of her reach. "Sir Donall, please....”
               

"And I shall, sweeting," he said, his voice dark and husky. "Do not doubt it."

Isolde blinked. "I am not your sweeting."

She wouldn't have believed it, but his smile grew a shade warmer, a touch more ... intimate.

"Not yet," came his drawled reply.

In a bold display of self-confidence, he released her wrist and stepped away from the table's edge. "Nay, Isolde of Dunmuir, you are not yet mine." A new look entered his magnificent dark eyes. A
knowing
one. "Nor are you running."

Isolde expelled a furious breath at his arrogance. Equally aggravating, she couldn't have fled if the table before her turned itself into a fire-spewing sea dragon.

Her fool feet seemed nailed to the floor!

So she stood where she was, gaping at him, her white-knuckled hands clutching the top of her chair, frozen in place as if the old gods had cast her to stone.

Her brow knitted at the MacLean's self-satisfied countenance. Not taking his dark gaze off her, he pulled out the flagon's stopper and sniffed.

His nose wrinkled in a clear display of distaste, and in truth, her own nostrils twitched in reaction to the potion's reek. He gave her an arch look that said more than any words could have, then upturned the flask and poured its contents onto the floor rushes.

"An astounding concoction," he said, dropping the empty flagon and its stopper onto the oaken table. "Vanquishes freckles and purges wee dogs of fleas."

Tensing, Isolde held her breath and waited, afraid of what he'd next say ... or do.

He didn't leave her in suspense long. "What other miracles does your sharp-smelling wonder potion procure?" he asked, his tone a clear warning the worst was yet to come. '`Mayhap save you from being kissed by stealing the sweetness of your breath?"

A gasp escaped her at how close he'd come to guessing the elixir's true purpose. The implication behind his guess made her pulse race and set her heart to hammering.

Surely he didn't mean to kiss her?

Not yet.

She wasn't ready for such intimacies. But the lazy beginnings of another of his languorous smiles, and the devilish gleam in his dark brown eyes, indicated he was.

As if fully aware she would not bolt, he took up his favored stance at the foot of her bed. With one shoulder resting against the intricately carved bedpost, he folded his arms across his well-muscled chest and simply watched her.

Nay, not simply.

Isolde wet her lips and her fingers clutched the chair-back tighter. Far from simply, he watched her with a slow burning fire in his eyes. A smoldering gaze of such intensity it wrested a choked gasp from her. His thick-lashed eyelids lowered in frank appraisal, he slid his gaze possessively up and down the length of her.

His heated perusal warmed her inside and out, searing her flesh with tiny little flames wherever his gaze lighted, breathing to life a fire of her own somewhere deep inside the lowest, most intimate part of her belly.

"Come here," he said, his eyes darkening to a shade dose to peat.

Isolde shook her head.

He raised one black brow. "Afraid, Isolde of Dunmuir?"

She stared at him, scarce hearing his silkily spoken words for the rush of her own pulse pumping loudly in her ears.

"
Come here
. "

That, she heard. It was a command. Irrefutable, assertive, and so compelling her feet began to shift on the rush flooring as if they sought to carry her toward him, acting on their own volition, heedless of her will.

"Well?" he prompted when she didn't budge.

Isolde swallowed thickly. Her mouth had gone unbearably dry, her throat so tight she could scarce breathe, and her heart thudded painfully against her ribs.

Worse, her fingers had somehow relinquished their firm grip on the chair-back, defiantly joining her feet in their brazen betrayal of her determination to stay rooted to the spot. Panicked by the strange witchery he lorded over her, she dug her heels into the rushes and hugged her midriff.

Donall the Bold tilted his dark head to the side, one corner of his mouth lifting in an amused half smile. "I would have but one kiss," he said, his amusement apparent. "A lesson in enlightenment, if you will."

"No," she finally found her voice. "Not now, not this night.”

“Nay?" His gaze flicked briefly to her lips before he lifted a hand to carefully rub the side of his jaw. "Sweeting, am I so pursued by ill luck of late that I have not only lost my freedom but also my wits?"

"Sir?" The instant the word passed her lips, Isolde realized she' d once more taken his cleverly tendered bait. Her heart sinking, she watched the look of feigned confusion settle across his handsome face.

"Aye, my wits seem to have scattered," he said, idly scratching his chin. "Or did you, with your vast knowledge of men, think to have me sire a babe on you by sharing the air in this chamber with you?"

Heat burst onto her cheeks. "I am well aware how bairns are made."

He raised a brow. "Truth tell?"

"Aye." She fixed him with a peppered glare. "I've told you so."

"Then you surely know a mere kiss is innocent?" he drawled, extending a hand toward her. "Come, Isolde of Dunmuir. prove to yourself you are bold."

"You, sirrah, would incite a piece of wood to be bold!" she said hotly, striding forward to slap her hand into his.

"Ah, but you please me," he fair purred, the firm press of his strong, warm fingers closing around hers heating more than just her hand. "And now, my sweet, I shall please you."