Only For A Knight (31 page)

 

“God aiding me, I could wish it otherwise,” she added, “but I require two chalices because I must guard my health, Sir Robert.” She fixed him with a tight-lidded stare. “Wine becomes me better if imbibed from a fresh goblet.”

 

“To be sure, and I stand rebuked, my lady,” Robbie said, summoning a look of due contrition and praying his lips wouldn’t twitch at the lie.

 

Pure deceit rolled off her in waves—her heckling indignation icy, but unconvincing.

 

She gave him a frosty little smile, flicked a speck of dust from the table’s well-scrubbed surface. “I will not be bargained off to a Douglas—and if they do consider themselves one of the proudest houses of Scotland.”

 

“They
are
a great and noble house,” Robbie amended.

 

She said nothing more, but did not have to, for the arch-browed look she aimed at him was defiance personified.

 

Brandishing a sword or even shaking her fists at him would not have been a more effective measure of her refusal to listen to reason.

 

Robbie heaved a great sigh and folded his arms over his chest.

 

Alas for his hopes.

 

She was leaving him little alternative but to prove how little of the faint-heart dwelt in a MacKenzie.

 

So he crossed the room and stood before her, doing his best to imitate the look his father and uncle e’er bestowed on unruly squires caught slacking off at their swordery training.

 

“For truth, my lady,” he said, rubbing his chin, “Douglas men are the stuff of heroes—valiants every one of them. And since you have not deigned to even once come down to the hall to greet me since my return, I would have thought the prospect of a potential husband of such stature and worth would have you going to sleep well content and rising happy?”

 

“I sleep well enough here,” she said, reaching round him to close the window shutters against the night’s chill and windy drizzle.

 

Straightening, she wiped her hands on her skirts and fixed him with her dark-eyed stare.

 

“I did not leave my quarters this long time because I have not been well—no other reason. I am pleased with our alliance and have no interest in marriage to a Douglas or any other man in the south—great lord or otherwise,” she informed him, smug satisfaction glowing all over her.

 

Stepping closer to the table, she trailed her small fingers over a platter of half-eaten honeyed cakes. “I have heard the folk of the south are horned and tailed.”

 

Robbie stifled a snort of laughter.

 

“There are enough who say the same of my father as you will ken,” he said instead, eyeing her with a gaze as direct as her own . . . and praying the saints to wipe the image of her nakedness from his mind.

 

A memory that made his throat burn to guzzle an entire flagon of good Highland
uisge-beatha.

 

Mayhap even two flagons.

 

Enough of the fine and fiery
water-of-life
to banish the image as easily as waking ended a fearing dream.

 

Crossing his arms again, he waited until she’d finished a honey cake before he spoke.

 

“The deepest pits of hell and the sweetest of heavens can be found anywhere, my lady,” he said, assuming a tone he hoped was eloquent but laced with well-meaning authority.

 

“Just as my father is no true devil,” he went on, “neither do the men of south walk on cloven feet. Indeed, you might find the south much to your favor . . . the gentler air ought prove kindly to your health.”

 

Ignoring him, she lit the night candle on its iron pricket beside the bed, then came back to the table to open a little wooden casket. Her face set, she scooped up a handful of aromatic herbs and tossed them onto the hearth fire.

 

“The herbs help my cough,” she explained, dusting her hands. “They suffice. I have no need to venture—”

 

“Your cough, my lady, is all the more reason to at least consider the south—the possibilities I am offering you.”

 

Her eyes flashed. “So you might be free to indulge in more than a dalliance with . . . with your flaunting, flame-haired peasant?”

 

Robbie frowned, raised a silencing hand.

 

“You misjudge,” he said, his voice allowing no rebuttal. “The maid Juliana might not be of high blood, but she has a more pure heart and mind than many who are, and I will not hear any ill spoken of her.”

 

He set down the ewer shard, held her gaze.

 

“’Twas I who brought her here . . . not her own contrive. She neither desired nor asked to come with me,” he added, remembering. “And I would meet any man to his beard who treats her without courtesy. You would be well counseled to greet her fairly as well.”

 

Lady Euphemia made an annoyed
cluck-clucking
sound with her tongue, but refrained from comment.

 

“I am pleased you understand,” he said, not missing how her eyes narrowed with resentment.

 

He was not going to let her maneuver him into a discussion about his beauty . . . in especial, Juliana’s virtue.

 

Not when the reek of the lady’s own flagrant indiscretions yet drenched the air, filling his nostrils. The sharp scent of a female stirred, in this instance, repulsing rather than arousing him.

 

“Nor am I the ogre you allude,” he minded her, not quite able to keep the scowl from his brow, but amazed at the calm of his tone.

 

He drew a deep breath—badly needing its steadying brace despite the penetrating odor.

 

“Be assured,” he said, picking his words carefully, “my proposals, including my offer to return your dowry and top it with a prodigious boon, are well meant and presented only with our best interests in heart.”

 

“This time you err, Sir Robert,” Lady Euphemia huffed, throwing back her thin shoulders. “
My
best interests lie here, and have since the windy morning I arrived.”

 

She lifted her chin, turned a withering gaze on him.

 

“I will not be bundled off to wed another and nor shall I return to Castle Uisdean
un
wed—even if you were a man only fit to catch whelks!”

 

“Think hard on what I have offered you, my lady,” Robbie said, in a different voice than he’d yet used on her.

 

He flicked a hand at the walls. “You might be wise to mind that the very stones of this keep watch and whisper. I think you can consider yourself treated none so poorly by either suggestion I’ve made?”

 

It was the closest to a warning he intended to give her.

 

She nodded, wordless, a faint tinge of hostility glimmering in her eyes.

 

A temporary victory . . . but only of a small skirmish.

 

Still frowning, Robbie drew another great breath, then, without so much as glancing at her, strode to the window. Needful of air, he reopened the shuttering.

 

Not enough to further incite the lady’s ire.

 

But enough to allow a rush of chill night wind to cool the heat pulsing up his throat before he forgot his wits and challenged her outright, risked making a crack-pated fool of himself.

 

Much better for them both if he could
reason
her away rather than stoop to the ruination of her name.

 

An alternative with consequences that did not bear dwelling on.

 

So he gritted his teeth and stared out the window, his mind and emotions in a whirl, and let the beloved panorama soothe him. As always, his frustration drained away, receding and lessening the longer he looked down at the night-silvered waters of the loch, the familiar hills rising beyond. Each well-cherished peak, a dark mass against the scudding rain clouds, every rugged contour softened by drifting curtains of mist.

 

A perfect night to his mind and heart.

 

A blessed one marred only by the renewed fulminations of the wee slip of a dark-eyed lass harping at him from somewhere across the room, doing her worst to vex him.

 

“. . . may as well toss me into a quaking bog and suffer me to drown on peat-broth,” she snipped, her agitation plain in the sharp rasp of her voice, the
wheeze
that gave Robbie a distinct jab of guilt . . . despite what he suspected and knew of her.

 

She appeared at his elbow then, leaned against the cold, damp stone of the window’s edge to peer up at him with glittering eyes, one hand pressed hard to her smallish breasts, her displeasure palpable.

 

“I will not accept such shame, Sir Robert, I—”

 

“There is no shame in becoming the wife of any good and worthy man,” Robbie said dryly, his gaze on the dark rippling surface of the loch. “The Douglases are—”

 

“No loftier than my own race.”

 

Turning aside, she pressed her lips together and shot an irritated glance at a nearby wall sconce as its candle hissed and sputtered in a sudden gust of cold wind.

 

“The MacLeods descend from the Norse god Odin,” she informed him, swatting at the drift of smoke billowing out from the guttered candle.

 

As soon as the smoke began to dissipate, she turned back to him, pinned him with another haughty stare. “A good seannachie needs a full five nights to recount our lineage.”

 

“And I, my lady, shall give you longer . . . a full sennight, to consider what I have proposed,” Robbie said, more than conscious of the sharp female scent still clinging to her—even here by the opened window.

 

Even with the heavy smell of burning tallow lingering in the chill, damp air.

 

“Think on what I have said, lady,” he bid her, repressing a shudder.

 

Then he schooled his features into blandness, gave her a curt nod, and strode from the chamber.

 

Swiftly, before he was tempted to toss her o’er his shoulder and return her to Castle Uisdean . . . now, this very night.

 

Dark-flashing eyes, tight-pursed lips, protestations, and all.

 

Indeed, for less than the scantiest wager, he’d seriously consider the pleasure.

 

But he’d give her the promised sennight.

 

Seven days and nights to see the wisdom of his offer.

 

If not, he’d suffer the consequences to his own good name and haul her back to her drunkard sire in clanking chains, sackcloth, and ashes.

 

Then he’d blacken his reputation further by making his beauty his true lady the very next day.

 

And just as thoroughly and irrevocably as he meant to claim her body this night.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Thirteen

 

 

 

PANIC CLAWED AT JULIANA’S HEART.

 

Hot, deadly talons digging ever deeper and spilling blood. She winced, tried her best not to see her candlelit chamber as a dark, empty place. The cold night, a vacuum of silence and regrets.

 

But the quivers of heated excitement that had been whipping through her for hours now slid as shivers of dread down her back, chilling her, as minute by passing minute, the evening that had held so much promise slipped into a timeless void of reeling uncertainties and doubt.

 

For long after she’d given up on her knight’s arrival, she sat on the padded stone bench of her bedchamber’s window embrasure, cuddling Mungo on her lap, stroking his soft, furry warmth, and trying not to keep peering across the room to the door.

 

Juliana frowned.

 

Nay, the unbarred and unmoving door, she amended.

 

She shifted on the bench, bit down on her lower lip, a rush of heat washing over her as she yielded to temptation and slid yet another quick glance across the room.

 

Nothing had changed.

 

Despite the concentrated penetration of her stare, the door did not swing open to admit her knight.

 

He did not loom up on the threshold, his braw self filling the doorway, dazzling her with his dimpled smile, stealing her breath . . . his very presence vanquishing her cares.

 

She swallowed, struggled to ignore the hot thickness welling in her throat.

 

Faith, but the stillness played on her taut nerves like a tight-drawn bowstring. Her heart pounding, she tore her gaze from the door, drew her legs up onto the cushioned bench, and tucked her borrowed bed-robe more securely round her knees.

 

Naked knees . . . as was the rest of her beneath the voluminous folds of the furred bed-robe.

 

A fool concession she’d allowed her sauciest side to indulge. A brazen act of nonsense that now made her cheeks flame . . . as did the simplest glance about the chamber.

 

Saints of glory, everywhere she looked, her gaze lit on evidence of the hot-burning hope she’d vested in this night.

 

The carefully tended peats glimmering red in the hearth seemed to stare back at her, their usual warmth and cozy comfort now a study in recrimination. Even the well-loved smell, so dark and earthy-sweet, failed to console her.

 

And the branches of fine beeswax candles glowing on the linen-covered trestle table appeared to laugh at her folly—her belief that a dashing knight of gentlest birth could desire a maid of the glen.

 

That one such as he might see past her work-worn hands and good-for-birthing hips, to the shining-eyed lass within who only hoped to please him.

 

Pulsing heat swept up her neck at the thought and she drew another long breath, wished the cold air pouring through the shutter slats would cool her—if not her raging shame and other worries, then at least her flushed skin.

 

Instead, she tortured herself further by letting her gaze continue to wander. Even the simple act of poking her bared toes into the floor rushes cried her foolhardiness.

 

Had she truly sweetened the rushes with fragrant handfuls of dried heather and rose petals taken with permission from the herbarium stores?

 

In the hope of delighting her knight’s senses?

 

To help set the mood if her own charms proved . . . inadequate?

 

Aye, she had.

 

Mortified at how easily she’d capitulated, she dug her fingers into wee Mungo’s fur, tousled the softness of his floppy ears, and reminded herself of the supposed steel in her spine, the fortitude she’d e’er prided herself on.