Only For A Knight (26 page)

before God and man
with your own soon-to-be bride beneath your roof, even if she is not . . .
underfoot
?”

 

That last made her cheeks flame, but thoughts of the other woman did not put her in good fettle and she’d not been able to bite back the wee jab at the gentleborn lady she now viewed as her rival, fair or no.

 

Besides, she had spoken true.

 

Euphemia MacLeod did hold herself invisible as a castle ghost.

 

Keeping her head high—her best defense against the stabbing resentment seizing her, she asked, “Well?”

 

“To be sure, you have it rightly,” he said, glancing at the chill drizzle blowing past the window square. “The maid is not
underfoot.
But I know in my heart that she will be happier, mayhap even flourish, if given to another.”

 

“Given to another?” Juliana echoed, her heart jumping. “What do you mean—another? Who?”

 

“A Douglas.” He spoke low and gently, the certainty in his voice making her pulse leap. “There are enough of them and I ken a goodly number. There will be one amongst them willing enough to accept a Highland bride—in especial if I send along enough coin to fill a coffer or two for the favor.”

 

“You would do this?” She looked at him, scarce able to breathe, his words going to her head like wine. “For me?”

 

“With surety.” A hint of his dimpled smile curved his lips. “But also for myself—and for the lady Euphemia. See you, I would be seeking to find . . . other arrangements for her whether I’d happened across you trying to save that fool ewe or nay.”

 

Juliana’s heart began to beat hard. “Truth tell?”

 

“You can be sure of it, sweetness,” he said, the hint of his dimpled smile now spreading into one of his slow, lazy ones.

 

The kind that melted her bones and made her forget to pepper her tongue.

 

“And why can I be so sure?” she asked, warmth already spooling through her.

 

“Because having believed myself unloved as a wee laddie, I long ago vowed ne’er to take a woman to wife who did not truly want me.”

 

For a long moment, Juliana could only stare at him, unable to speak past the hot lump burning in her throat, the swell of hope and possibilities tightening her chest.

 

Her knight wished a bride who wanted him.

 

Her
want for him reverberated all through her.

 

“And you do not think the lady Euphemia wants you?” she asked, her voice sounding strange in ears . . . breathy and
expectant.

 

“Wants me?” He shook his dark head, gave a mirthless snort. “The wooden sword I played with as a lad would sooner become a tree again.”

 

“I believe you err,” Juliana said, her stomach knotting on the admission, the tingling up and down her spine making it difficult to trust such a bright promise. “She would be a fool to reject the match.”

 

Nor would her presence, seen or nay, haunt Juliana so thoroughly did the other not greatly desire the marriage.

 

“Aye,” she added, her heart sinking, “she will surely want this union.”

 

“I mean
me,
sweetness,” her knight corrected, his words almost drowned out by the sudden tolling of the bell for Vespers, its pealing carrying across the bailey to echo round the herbarium’s garden walls.

 

He waited until the clanging died away. “I’ve no doubt Euphemia MacLeod relishes the match—from what I hear of her. But of me? Och, to be sure and I promise you, she desires naught.”

 

“Yet you believe she will favor a Douglas?”

 

He nodded. “They are powerful and wealthy—their lands in the south where her health will benefit.”

 

“And if she does not agree?”

 

“Then I shall have to convince her,” he said, catching her to him and kissing her full on the lips, making her burn.

 

“’Tis an endeavor I mean to begin now,” he added, lighting a welter of softer, more gentle kisses across her brow, just below her scar.

 

“
You,
I should like to visit later . . . if you will have me?”

 

The words out, he lifted a brow at her, his meaning unmistakable.

 

“H’mmm, sweetness?” He quirked his brow a notch higher. “Will you leave your door unbarred?”

 

Juliana nodded without hesitation.

 

If the lady Euphemia did not want him, she certainly knew someone who did.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Eleven

 

 

 

“G
OD ROT SIR ROBERT MACKENZIE.”

 

Lady Euphemia consigned her little jar of self-mixed skin-smoothing cream to the table and fixed the naked man on her bed with a penetrating stare.

 

She did not require the dubious ointments and potions of a cailleach many claimed was older than time and, like as not, blind as a mole . . . unable to see what simmered in her brew pot!

 

Nor did Devorgilla of Doon’s apparent good foot with the MacKenzies make her particularly endearing.

 

Sniffing, Euphemia patted the dark, tightly-coiled braids wound above her ears and narrowed her gaze on a much more appealing prospect—the golden magnificence of Big Red MacAlister’s full nakedness.

 

“Hear me well . . . I do not want him,” she said with chilling contempt, her hands balled to tight fists. “I shall wed him, to be sure, but I have ne’er been able to abide even the thought of him . . . and I shall not suffer his presence until I have the surety and means I need to ruin him.”

 

Big Red listened to her from the sparsely-dressed four-poster, his expression doubtful.

 

“You canna keep yourself from him much longer, whether you wish to or nay,” he said, raising his deep voice above the clanging of the Vespers bell.

 

Pushing up on his elbows, he cocked a brow and eyed her closely, his light blue gaze passing over her nakedness with heated interest.

 

“’Tis rumored the man is a lusty sort,” he ventured, a suggestive smile touching his mouth. “You might find him more palatable than you think?”

 

Euphemia pursed her lips, tossed her dark head. “I would sooner diddle the devil—and I do not mean his father!”

 

“Tush, lass! Robbie MacKenzie is a landed knight . . . well-beloved son and heir of Kintail,” her lover pointed out. “He will someday laird it o’er the whole of these hills. You ken I am not one for styles and titles, nor the man’s friend, but he is not the thrice-cursed fiend you make him.”

 

“You speak as his friend—even if you proclaim not to be,” Euphemia huffed, annoyed by the hot tightness clamping round her rib cage . . . her dread shortness of breath.

 

“I am
your
man, as you well ken,” Big Red assured her. “’Tis only that your face is dark as a rain-laden sky and I would but give you solace by sharing what I have observed of him: that, unlike his father, he goes about in high spirits, is e’er a fount of good cheer.”

 

He paused, shook back the thick mane of his bronze-colored hair. “Guidsakes, you ought hear the kitchen lasses babbling about him—it would seem they hold him for a very paladin, a man to ignite a maid’s lust.”

 

Euphemia pressed her fingers to her temples, irritability coursing through her on his pronouncement, his mention of the kitchen wenches only serving to remind her of their well-made, ripe-curved bodies . . . the rake-handle thinness of her own.

 

“The fair kitchen wenches with their milch cow bosoms can have him every morn for breakfast for all I care,” she snapped in an even chillier tone than before. “For the nonce, ’tis
you
who suits my tastes—and my needs.”

 

Her expression tight, she rubbed her arms, the whole of her shuddering at the mere thought of having to endure physical importunities with Sir Robert.

 

The man who’d destroyed her life—a thief who’d stolen her heart’s joy and shredded her soul, and at her tenderest age and vulnerability.

 

“For the nonce?” Big Red was saying, his gaze lowering to the juncture of her thighs, settling there with the concentrated attention that e’er excited her.

 

Made her forget her ailments and . . . lackings.

 

“I am
e’er
at your service, Phemie,” he added, his deep voice dropping to a husky note that made her tender parts grow heavy and moisten—despite her agitation.

 

“Or,” he added, lifting an auburn brow to stare at the sparse brown curls topping her femininity, “have I misread your . . . need of me?”

 

“Nay, you have misread naught,” she conceded, both willing him to keep his hot, deep-lidded gaze pinned to her exposed woman’s parts, yet also fuming that she’d allowed herself to become so dependent of his particular brand of . . . attentions.

 

For truth, no other man had e’er excited her as wildly, satisfied her as deeply . . . or posed a greater threat to the attainment of her
non
lascivious needs as Big Red MacAlister.

 

Already she’d wasted far too many hours lying on her back, spread-legged and letting him
lick
her . . . precious time that would have been better spent assuring her stalwarts back home at Castle Uisdean yet bowed to her wishes.

 

“I would see more of you, Phemie,” her
special
stalwart said then, the smooth deepness of his musical Highland voice pouring through her, melting her, and triumphing yet again over her every other concern.

 

The need to keep her laggard servants at Castle Uisdean glutted with enough coin and promises to ensure they not only held their tongues, but continued to ply her father with sleeping draughts.

 

And the equally pressing need to garner enough riches to implement her plans—to use greed to turn the heart of every man, common or lairdly, who e’er thought to call himself a friend to Clan MacKenzie.

 

“Ah-h-h, sweet lass,” Big Red coaxed, clearly seeing the displeasure knitting her brow, “let me gaze on you rightly—if I indeed serve you so well?”

 

Anger at her weakness welling inside her, Euphemia shut her mind to her plans for revenge and drew a quivering breath, the best she could do without risking a coughing seizure.

 

Then, steadily as she could, she placed a delicate foot onto a three-legged stool, the pose opening her to Big Red’s fullest view—and, hopefully, appeasing his voracious appetites enough to make him more . . . biddable.

 

“Aye, you serve me . . .
well,
” she admitted, the urgent pulsing between her legs almost unbearable, so sweet was it to have his hot blue gaze latching on to her,
examining
her.

 

Looking at her, there, where she pulsed and burned, and doing so as if he found her truly desirable—despite her near lack of intimate hair and the slightness of her tiny, curveless body.

 

“I would find even more ways to please you if you use the cream again, my lady.” Big Red’s gaze flickered to the little jar she’d just set aside. “You know how
smooth
it makes you . . . how much I enjoy watching you apply it,” he cajoled, the heat of his gaze damping her. “I would test the smoothness for you, Phemie . . . with my tongue. Tasting and savoring until I am full-sated . . .”

 

Euphemia shivered . . . then damned her ailments for, in her mounting excitement, the cough building in her chest and its itchy, breath-stealing heat rose to constrict her throat before she could even close her fingers round the little earthenware pot of cream.

 

Willing the discomfort to recede, she swept her own hot gaze over Big Red’s sprawled form, nodding in approval when, under her perusal, he opened his muscular legs for her, spreading them without being asked, to the exact width he knew she e’er desired of him.

 

As she stared, admiring the lines of his hard-muscled body, he settled back onto the pillows, and folded his powerful arms behind his head, his considerable
pride
relaxed and resting against the thick nest of springy, cinnamon-colored curls at his groin.

 

“So-o-o, my sweetmeat,” he said, sliding another glance at the little oaken table, “the cream . . . ?”

 

“We must speak first.” Euphemia’s brows snapped together in irritation at the wheeze in her voice. Flustered, she looked down at her nakedness, her almost-but-not-quite-flat stomach. “I—I . . . need more time . . .”

 

When she looked up again, a knowing smile had spread across Big Red’s broad, ruddy face.

 

“More time for our . . . pleasures, or more time to weave Robbie MacKenzie’s doom?”

 

“Sir
Robert’s
destruction, of course,” she hissed, her wrathful glare scalding the hapless little jar of skin-smoothing cream she’d been applying to her small breasts earlier—before the annoying peal of the Vespers bell interrupted their entertainments.

 

No longer frowning quite so vehemently, she considered reaching for the jar. She mixed the cream herself—blending deer milk, honey, and roots of silverweed into a generous portion of goose grease.

 

The resulting ointment not only kept her white skin flawless, but greatly eased the in-and-out glide of Big Red’s sizable tarse whene’er their ofttimes rigorous couplings proved too much for her.

 

Better still, her great stirk of a red-haired Highlander craved the taste of the cream—his unquenchable appetite being the most pressing reason she enjoyed rubbing a goodly portion of the goose grease mixture betwixt her legs, always taking especial care to assure that enough vestiges remained inside the pouty folds of her woman’s flesh.

 

White-hot bolts of excitement streaked through her just thinking of how skillfully he licked her. She shifted her foot on the stool, opening herself just a teensy bit more, the deep-tingling thrill of being even more fully exposed to him, well compensating the fury roiling inside her.

 

“On my soul, lass, I will ne’er completely understand your spleen toward the man,” Big Red said, reaching down to scratch the wiry, red-gold bush of his nether hair.

 

“If he displeases you so, ’tis valid enough reason you now have to walk away . . . return with me to Castle Uisdean and your plans there.”

 

Euphemia scowled, jerking her attention from his