Knight In My Bed (6 page)

“ ‘Tis dangerous in other ways," Rory broke in. "What if someone comes looking for you? If we are not here-"

"But you will be," she cut him off, "at least close enough to take up your positions should anyone approach." Pausing, she glanced over her shoulder, then lowered her voice. "This is difficult enough without having the two of you within hearing range."

Niels reached to touch her arm, but lowered his hand when she backed way. "'Tis for your own good," he said. "We don't think any harm will befall you, but we cannot risk the chance."

Yet you 'd see me betrothed to a man I revile?

Balloch MacArthur's coarse face rose up in her mind, an image even more unappealing than the thought of facing an unclothed Donall the Bold in her bedchamber.

Turning aside, she stared down the shadow-filled passageway. As gloomy as the ill-lit corridor and the yawning stairwell beyond, so bleak would her life be as Balloch MacArthur's bride.

Isolde shuddered.

If she meant to rid herself of Balloch, she had no choice but to lie with the MacLean. Balloch, a brutish man, dull of wit but exceedingly proud, would surely extricate himself from a betrothal if she told him she carried another man's child.

And she'd have to conceive and give birth to that child if she hoped to forge an irrefutable bond between her dwindling and weakened clan and the powerful MacLeans.

A bond she saw as her clan's sole chance of survival.

Her resolve strengthened, she turned back to face her cousin and Rory. "Rory, you are about the same size as the MacLean. I bid you to fetch him something to wear. I've ordered a meal brought to my chamber, and I will not sup with a naked man sitting across from me."

Rory blinked. "We were told he is to have naught but table scraps, and he was divested of his garb a-purpose. The council gave ord -"

"And so have I," Isolde overrode his objections. She paused to gather her courage. Never had she been so assertive. “Would you seek to make me more uncomfortable with this situation than I already am?"

“Nay, my lady, 'tis only –“ Rory began, but she silenced him with a pointed look.

"You may stand guard at the top of the stairwell. I will not have you lurking outside my door." Her tone dared them to deny her wishes. "And if the MacLean proves he can abstain from insults and is not rough with me, I want him unchained from my bed. That, too, I find unsettling."

Both men stared, twin looks of incredulity on their faces. So much so, Isolde felt a wee twinge of guilt. Even after two years, she was not yet comfortable exerting her authority as chieftain, but the gravity of her present predicament gave her no choice but to do so.

Without further objections, both men nodded and moved away. Isolde winced at the injured looks they'd given her. Niels and Rory were among the few able-armed men left beneath her roof. But an audience of listeners during her
... encounters
... with Donall the Bold would only heighten her ill ease.

The silence returned, a deafening quiet so loud she could hear the rainwater coursing down the castle stonework. Silence loomed on the far side of her closed bedchamber door, too.

A strange silence, for she suddenly realized that in her haste to exit the room, she'd unwittingly shut in poor Bodo.

Her little dog was inside the room with the MacLean.

And Bodo wasn't barking.

Bodo!

All else forgotten, she pushed open the door and rushed inside. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight before her. The MacLean knelt beside her bed, his handsome face relaxed and smiling as he rubbed Bodo's belly.

The wee dog lay sprawled on his back, completely at ease, whilst he trailed the backs of his fingers down Bodo's white-furred tummy.

And the little traitor appeared to enjoy the man's touch.

As if only now becoming aware she'd just burst into the room, fully prepared to rescue him from the MacLean's clutches, Bodo turned his head to stare at her. Jaws open, and tongue lolling out one side of his mouth, he appeared to be laughing at her.

But attuned to her emotions as he always seemed to be, his comical expression quickly changed to one of contrition. He leaped up at once, shook himself, then scrambled across the rush-strewn floor to his bed by the hearth. Looking duly chastised, he circled a few times, then curled up in a ball, his back to the room's two occupants.

Isolde returned her gaze to the MacLean, only to find he, too, stared at the dog, a shadow of a smile still playing across his too-sensuous lips.

As if he knew the instant she glanced his way, he pushed to his feet and turned toward her, the look on his handsome face so compelling she couldn't have moved if her life depended on it.

His gaze flickered briefly to Bodo. "I could see you well content, too, my lady," he drawled.

His smile turned wicked and something akin to amusement gleamed in the depths of his deep brown eyes. But then al] traces of merriment faded and his expression grew cold, hard, and angry. "Aye, I could pleasure you," he said. "
If I was wont to ... which I am not. "

Isolde swallowed hard. Embarrassment dampened her palms, and mortification rode hard on her shoulders, while her heart threatened to gallop out of all restraint and bounds.

“Your being here has naught to do with pleasure," she snapped, amazed the words hadn't stuck to her tongue.

Donall the Bold merely arched a brow.

Heat crept up Isolde's neck. "I would have words with you."

"Words that make you blush?" His lips curved in another cold smile.

A knowing smile
.

He knew what she wanted of him.

He knew and was making sport of her.

"Private words of great import." She met his mocking gaze with another interpretation of her da's laird's look.

"I can scarce wait to hear them." One corner of Donall the Bold's lips quirked with what she hoped wasn't amusement.

"I've ordered a repast brought up," she blurted, hoping to steer the conversation in a different direction.

Anywhere but into the realm of what must happen between them.

What had to happen, and would, if ever she could embolden herself to seduce him.

Not yet ready to be so daring, she wet her lips and hoped the layers of her chemise and skirt concealed her trembling knees. "I've also arranged to have raiment fetched for you."

"You are full kind," he said.

Isolde knew he did not mean a word.

Hoping the meager light from the hearth's low-burning fire and the chamber's two hanging cresset lamps was too poor to reveal her discomfiture, she smoothed the folds of her gown. "Further, if you prove less ... less slanderous of my person than you were earlier, and if I see no cause to be fearful in your presence, I shall see you unchained."

"So you are brave as well as kind." A half smile played at the comers of his mouth, but it was clearly another of his mocking smiles.

Definitely not a sincere one.

"I've no need to be overly courageous. Two of my best warriors guard the door." She declined to mention they now stood a goodly distance away, well out of decent hearing range.

"My guardsmen are well armed," she declared, fighting the unsettling impression he found her words .. amusing. "Harm me and they will be upon you in a heartbeat. Let loose more of your slurs"

"My
slurs
?"

Irritated more by his arching brow than his sarcastic tone, Isolde crossed the room to a row of tall, arch-topped windows. Cut into the thickness of the wall, the windows were the room's best feature and, in fine weather, provided sweeping views of the neigh-boring isles.

But they were shuttered now, not that it mattered. The storm raging beyond them suited her mood. And it was far more prudent to stare at the neutrality of closed shutters than to turn around and face
him.

Him, and the heavily curtained bed looming so dose behind him.

"To what slurs do you refer, lady?" Again, his tone held a trace of amusement.

Plague take the man
!

Isolde whirled around, her patience flown straight through the shutter slats. "`May your manhood wither and fall off,` she quoted, not caring if she sounded like a fishwife. " You'd sooner-“

"`Sooner plunge my staff into a she-goat,"' he finished for her, a slow smile spreading across his handsome face.

A smile so cold it chilled her to the marrow of her bones.

His glance lighted briefly on the iron band around his ankle and the length of chain binding him to her bed. "Pray tell me, fair one, what man with blood in his veins would not protest at such confinement?"

His words sliced away the last threads of her fast-dwindling composure and the knocking of her knees increased to such a degree the clatter could surely be heard by all within ten leagues of her humble castle's walls.

Worse, she found herself unable to answer him, for someone else's words crowded out her own.

As if Devorgilla stood beside her and whispered in her ear, the
cailleach's
thin, reedy voice echoed in Isolde's mind ...
How many men do you suppose would keep a civil tongue under such circumstances?

Something light and cool brushed along the exposed nape of her neck, lifting the fine hairs there, and sending a delicate little ripple down her spine.

Isolde glanced behind her, half expecting the crone to be hiding in the shadows of one of the deep window embrasures, but naught was there.

Nothing stirred save the storm-driven wind racing through the night beyond Dunmuir's snug walls.

Of such a gentle, caressing breeze as had drifted past her there was no trace.

This time when she turned back to the MacLean, his dark countenance had turned to stone. "Know this, Isolde of Dunmuir, ne'er have I done harm to a woman, and ne'er shall I," he said, barely restrained anger tainting the rich timbre of his deep voice. "There is naught under God's heaven that could drive me to do so."

He crossed his arms. "Nor can you tempt me to touch you in other ways." He stared at her so penetratingly, she feared he could see clear into her soul. "Should you foster such ignoble intentions."

A particularly strong gust of wind rattled the closed shutters, a howling gale followed by a sharp clap of thunder, as if the very heavens meant to underscore his disdain.

He took two steps toward her, as far as the chain would allow. A strange glint sparked in his brown eyes. "As for the slurs you find so distressing, were I to voice what I truly think of you, you would abandon your ill-chosen plans for misplaced revenge and run for the safety of your mother's skirts."

Isolde flinched. Would that she could seek the comfort of her mother's understanding. But the light had gone out of her mother's eyes long ago, and with it, her senses.

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell the insolent lout what she thought of him, his stance arrogant, his legs spread beneath one of her bed-sheets, hands braced on his lean hips, and his too-bonnie face darkened with displeasure. But she said naught, for her mouth had gone too dry for her to speak.

The blackguard appeared as much a mind reader as old Devorgilla. And he made her feel as exposed as if she already stood before him wearing naught but her indignation.

Turning away, she rested her hands on the back of a chair. Exhaustion weighed heavily on her, and she was weary from the chaos and turmoil that had swept into her world since Lileas's death.

Damn the MacLean for reminding her she'd lost her mother as well. Isolde blinked back the hot sting of tears. Though, even now, the lady Edina sat below-stairs in Dunmuir's great hall, comforted by warm blankets and the elders' respectful attentions, Isolde's vacant-eyed mother might as well be long in her grave for what little notice she took of the world around her.

A hesitant cough sounded behind her, but she wasn't about to turn around. Some wild-brained notion entered her mind that he sensed he'd pushed her too far, that his next words might be different entirely from the insults he'd spewed at her thus far.

But she did not want his comfort.

Saints forbid.

She had ample solace from the cailleach, and from Bodo, when she needed it. She also had the rough-hewn devotion Niels and Rory afforded her. And she had the crone's anti-attraction potion.

Should she need it.

Not that she'd seen a fig of the MacLean's legendary charm. Still, his looks alone would've stolen her heart were he any other man.

And the fluttery sensations that whirled and eddied through her each time he turned his dark gaze on her were surely caused by irritation and naught else.

Isolde slipped her hand into the folds of her skirt and fingered the leather-wrapped flagon of anti-attraction infusion. The potion would purge her of any possible flarings of interest his alarming resemblance to her dream man might awaken in her.

Before she could think better of downing the bitter-tasting tincture, she unstopped the flagon, and lifted it to her lips. Three rapid gulps were all she could manage before a convulsive shudder swept over her.