Only For A Knight (16 page)

 

Decidedly vulnerable to the caresses of her knight’s stroking fingers, the whisper of his kisses across appreciative skin.

 

And, for this blessed moment, ever so grateful for the sweet, mind-numbing solace trailing in the wake of his every touch. Each smooth glide of his hands along her naked flesh—the pleasure he spent her—proved too seductive to resist.

 

Clinging to his wide-set shoulders, with him raining soft kisses on her, such bliss seemed a wonder she could almost believe in. Even his simplest caress gilded her as if the angriest heavens had parted to let beautiful, golden light spill down all around her. Blessed warmth that flowed into her, enchanting her from within.

 

Illuminating her and chasing away all darkness.

 

“You tremble, sweet Juliana,” he murmured, his hands still moving over her, stroking down the slope of her back to her hips and lower where he cupped and kneaded the curving fullness of her buttocks.

 

Splaying his fingers across her cool, smooth skin, he drew her closer, molding her against him until she no longer just imagined she’d felt the hard thickness of his desire. Nay, without doubt, every blatant inch of him pressed hotly against her belly!

 

But then he released her, stepping back as if she’d transformed herself into the most grizzled of crones.

 

“I am sorry, lass,” he said, his eyes almost black with stormy emotion. “I only wished to hold and caress you,
soothe
you. It was ne’er my intent to seek my ease with you. On my heart, I would not see you dishonored.”

 

. . . would ne’er see you dishonored . . . ill-used . . .

 

The words came from nowhere, yet everywhere, startling her and ripping through the desire and confusion to prick at her conscience with insidious persistence.

 

Nay,
well-meant
persistence.

 

Caring words e’er drilled into her by another husky-deep Highland voice, gently melodious and eerily similar to Robbie MacKenzie’s but way too faint and far away to have passed that one’s bonnie, unsmiling lips.

 

Her brow furrowing, Juliana stared at her knight. He looked even more uncomfortable than she felt, but oh-so-darkly handsome standing half naked in the flickering shadows, his braw presence dominating the whole chamber, making it—and her—his own.

 

“How do you mean . . . dishonored?” She laced the words with challenge for what he’d meant was painfully obvious—it still loomed hard and throbbing against the finely-knit linen of his loose-fitting braies.

 

“I will not dishonor either of us by expressing what I meant in words,” he said, retrieving his discarded tunic and donning it with a careful grace.

 

Juliana bit her lip, not wanting to admit how much she admired his self-possession—considering she stood full naked before the bed, watching him.

 

He adjusted the fall of his shirt with equal care, his gaze fastened on hers as he made certain the shirt’s folds covered the evidence of his arousal.

 

Satisfied at last, his expression turned assessing. “I would think you know full well the kind of shame I wished to spare you?”

 

“And if I do?”

 

Juliana fixed him with her best bold-eyed stare.

 

Some demon inside her refused to let her snatch up the bed coverlet or even the remnants of her borrowed nightshirt, to cover herself as he’d so pointedly done.

 

For good measure, she flickered a quick glance at the still-apparent rise beneath his shirt. Anything but cry out in frustration because, dear sweet saints, for the nonce, at least, she’d
wanted
to be dishonored as he called it.

 

Aye, he’d ripped open a fissure inside her she’d ne’er known existed, and to her dismay, she found herself reveling in this hot-spinning tide he’d so surprisingly unleashed inside her.

 

Some wild wanton part of her burned for fulfillment . . . a blessed release of the dizzying whirl of tingles that had built to such a wild crescendo so low in her belly.

 

Deliciously sweet tingles that weighted the soft place between her thighs . . . the place where she now blazed the hottest.

 

“Well?” she pushed when he continued to gawp. “If I do ken what you meant?”

 

“Then, my lady,” he said, stepping closer, “it falls my duty to say you that, in future, you’d best be more careful where you bed down alone and naked . . . lest you wish to give over your body, heart, and soul and be glad in the surrendering.”

 

From some dark place hidden deep inside her, there was an inner knowing of the wrong she was about to do but also a strange acceptance of how alluring such irresistible impulses can be. Acknowledging them, she closed the few inches between them and snaked her arms around his neck, arching herself unashamedly against him.

 

“And if I say you that I did not wish you to stop?” she pushed, the smoldering attraction between them almost palpable. “What then, Sir Knight?”

 

“That would be unwise, lady—now, this night.”

 

“Then why did you bring me here?”

 

“Because I could not leave you there in the glen—alone, injured, and helpless.”

 

“And because you wanted me,” Juliana spoke the truth she saw writ all over his face, even if he would not put it to voice. “You desired me as your leman.”

 

“Nay!” That burst forth without the slightest hesitation. “Ne’er that,” he objected. “Think you I would . . . pull back now, deny myself our passion and need, if I wished—”

 

“Yet you are as good as wed—your soon-to-be wife within these walls. What else—”

 

“I am not a jackal to stoop to such misdeeds,” he jerked, setting her from him. “Even if—God helping me—I’ll admit to burning for you!”

 

When a man burns for a woman, in especial one he can ne’er take to wife, ’tis always the lass whose life ends in sorrow and ash . . .

 

The other man’s voice came again, so clear in her memory he may well have stood before her, even shouted the warning into her face.

 

Words spoken to her in another time and place, and by Kenneth—her brother.

 

That realization recognized now in full wakefulness, poured sweetest relief through her, welling her heart. A reassuring bliss marred only by the other fragmented terrors still leering at her from the shadows.

 

Unpleasing harbingers to remind her of things she’d rather forget—or best not even know. Dark, shameful things rising up unbidden to slay her.

 

Such as where her so unexpected streak of wantonness hailed from . . . the sudden and disturbing surety that hers and Kenneth’s mother had been their sire’s
heart
-mate rather than his true and wedded hearth-mate.

 

A leman.

 

Mortification flamed Juliana’s cheeks.

 

She would be no man’s whore.

 

She would not suffer the years of pain and anguish she instinctively knew her mother must’ve endured.

 

No matter how much a braw, bonnie knight might quicken her blood!

 

Her pulse pounding, she whirled away from him and, heedless of her nakedness, hurried to the windows where she pulled in great, greedy gulps of the chill night air.

 

He was upon her before she could even exhale.

 

“Do not run from me, lass,” he said, seemingly undaunted when she raised arching brows at him. “I’ll tell you true—in all the realm, I have ne’er seen a more comely, fiery maid than you. And, aye, I want you—and
have
wanted you—from the first. But I would not make you my leman, that I swear to you.”

 

“And what else is there?” She pulled back her shoulders, stared at him. “Would you take two wives?”

 

“I would—” He broke off, blew out a sharp breath. “Ach, see you,” he said, ramming a hand through his hair, “I do not know how I shall resolve this—would that I did.”

 

At his honesty, and her own distress, Juliana turned away. She couldn’t bear to look at him.

 

Fire glow gleamed on his shoulder-length hair, making it shine like moonlight on black water until she
ached
to run her fingers through the silky-dark strands, burned to draw his face to hers to receive and give more melding kisses.

 

Knight’s kisses.

 

Tantalizing beyond belief.

 

But guilt curled icy fingers round her heart, squeezing hard until her conscience pressed objections from her lips. “You should ne’er have come into this chamber, ne’er opened my bed curtains. We should not be standing here doing this—discussing such things,” she said. “It is . . . folly without redemption.”

 

“It is what is meant to be.” He reached for her, wrenched her against him, the close space of the window embrasure making it seem as if they were alone, far removed from outside cares. “We were made for each other, my Juliana, and I do not think I need to tell you? Aye, you cannot deny it!”

 

“’Tis madness,” she whispered, tilting back her head,
begging
his kiss.

 

Catching herself as quickly, she jerked away, stared blindly at the window shutters. “You do not know what you say. Our minds are muddled from weariness, the trials of our journey. . . .”

 

Robbie shook his head. “Nay, my sweet, I think not.” He pulled her back against him, straining her to him. “You are sore mistaken,” he added, his heart clutching on the words for he, at least, knew exactly what crackled between them.

 

’Twas passion in its purest form. Blatant need, and it vibrated in the air around them, vivid and alive.

 

It was anything but madness.

 

It was
rightness
.

 

But he understood her hesitation.

 

“Sweet, so sweet.” He touched gentle fingers to her lips, kept them there until he could feel the resistance begin to slip from her. “You needn’t carry a whit of care.” He leaned down to trail kisses along the curve of her throat. “Betrothals can be broken, new paths laid for the future.”

 

“But you are yet . . . your betrothed. . . .”

 

“I have been given in name since I was a beardless laddie, as is the way with most sons of great houses—only those fated for the church are spared such arrangements,” he said, needing, wanting her to understand. “My heart has ne’er belonged to anyone . . . until now.”

 

Juliana swallowed, looked past him to stare into the shadows. “You do not know what you are saying,” she whispered. “Faith, you know nothing of me. . . .”

 

“I know your name is Juliana and I feel the warmth
here.
” Robbie placed her hand over his heart. “Such is enough.”

 

“And if—”

 

“And you rattle your tongue too much.” He looked down at her, his very heart streaming through flesh and bone, into her palm. “The devil take ifs and buts.”

 

He had no thought but for her, his very own flame-haired beauty.

 

Consumed, he took up a length of plaid from one of the window embrasure’s twin-facing benches and swirled it round her shoulders, once again covering her nakedness.

 

“Since your dreams were troubled, I shall make myself a pallet just outside the chamber door,” he said, brushing her hair back from her face, his fingers combing through the silky-cool strands. “Should you require aught—you need but call out.”

 

She nodded, this time clutching the plaid quite firmly around her.

 

“Sleep well, then, sweet Juliana,” Robbie wished her, and kissed the tip of her nose. “Tomorrow I shall begin slaying dragons for you.”

 

Then, before he could regret the ill-timed return of his knightly honor, he strode from the room, every chivalrous inch of him aware that he was taking her name with him and leaving his heart behind.

 

’Twas a meet bargain.

 

A most fair exchange.

 

And one he wasn’t about to let any living soul undo.

 

Nor any devil.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Seven

 

 

 

A FULL SENNIGHT LATER, Robbie paused inside the entrance arch to the great hall, and surveyed the scene before him. Not long before sunrise, it was a dreary morning of the sort that brought the mist sliding down the braes and kept a drizzly rain falling. Even so, the lightsome mood in the hall gave him fresh heart.

 

And brought the beginnings of a smile to his face.

 

His sundry edicts and blustering had not been entirely for naught.

 

Unlike the hall of gloom he’d encountered in the first few days after his homecoming, an air of comfortable routine presided over Eilean Creag once again and the relaxed faces and jesting laughs of his waking kinsmen reassured him the tedious days of ill ease were past.

 

Or soon would be.

 

If only his dragon-slaying measures had not proved so effective, the very devil-demons he’d most desired to conquer seemed to have retreated so deeply into their respective lairs that they were nowhere to be seen.

 

Nay, not quite true.

 

One presided at the high table, his dark-scowling eminence quite visible indeed.

 

But as on every morning this past sennight, the Black Stag’s stony-faced mien and tight-lipped silence assured no one sought to disturb his brooding.

 

All else appeared as it e’er had and should: smoking torches flickered in every available iron bracket along the arras-and-weapon-hung walls, some even flaring in iron rings suspended from the groin-vaulted ceiling. Well pleased, Robbie inhaled deeply of air pleasantly laced with the darkly-sweet aroma of burning peat, his gaze noting the flagons, drinking cups, and platters of viands littering the long tables.

 

Aye, all was as it should be.

 

And thanks to his insistence, a thick and fine-smelling layer of fresh, new rushes covered the floor—excepting on the raised dais at the far end of the hall.

 

A dip-of-the-head courtesy to the lady Euphemia.

 

The bare-floored dais was a fair enough compromise should the lung-strengthening herbs mixed into the floor rushes prove less effective than Robbie’s stepmother and Elspeth declared.

 

Both women insisted the addition of speedwell, lungwort, and a smattering of yarrow would cure the air in the hall, making its fumes agreeable enough for the cough-plagued young woman.