Rowan's Lady (12 page)

“Och! Dozens and dozens,” he told her. “And I’ve
only fallen off twice.”

In hindsight it was mayhap
not
the best
time or place to jest. Arline bolted upright and sucked in a huge breath of
air. Her eyes were wide with fear when she looked into his. “Let me down,” she
demanded. She would rather walk on foot the rest of the way.

Whether it was the look of shock on her face or
the death like grip she held on his tunic, he was uncertain, but either way, he
could not resist the urge to laugh.

Anger flashed through those brilliant green eyes
of hers. “Ye are an ass!” she told him.

He laughed again.

“A big, ignorant ass!”

His shoulders began to shake as he tried to hold
back his laughter.

“A big, ugly, stupid, ignorant ass!”

Arline could hear Frederick and Daniel laughing
along with Rowan. “All of ye are big ugly asses!”

The roar of laughter broke through the quiet
morning and bounced off the mountainside. It echoed and bounced back, hitting
Arline’s ears. It sounded like dozens of men laughing and all of them at her.

She hadn’t been this angry, well, since last
night, first when Garrick had assaulted her and then when Gunther had tried.
Were
all
men this unkind? This terribly stupid? This heartless?

She could take no more. A growl started low in her
belly as she wound her fist into a tight ball. Before she realized it, she was
slamming that fist into Rowan’s shoulder. It did nothing but make him laugh
even more.

“I hate ye, Rowan Graham!” she seethed.

Rowan could not remember the last time he laughed
so heartily. In truth, he hadn’t meant to upset her so, but he could not help
himself. He found her anger, her bluntness, quite adorable.

“Ye do?” he teased.

“Aye, I do! To laugh at a woman’s distress and
discomfort,” she scolded, “’tis an evil, mean thing to do!”

“I be terribly sorry, me lady,” Rowan chuckled.
“Ye be quite attractive when yer angry.” He surprised himself by saying aloud
what he had been thinking.

She had fully intended to berate him further, to
tell him what she truly thought. But, his words nearly made her tumble from the
horse.
Attractive? What on earth could he mean by that?
She sat
dumbfounded, staring up into those beautiful, dark brown eyes of his, at a loss
for words.

He was smiling at her. But there was no ire, no
disdain in his smile. Mischievous? Most definitely. Genuine? To be certain.
But…there was something else…something she could not quite describe.

She chucked it up to being sore, exhausted, and
terrified. It made her mind a muddled mess. That, combined with looking at the
most handsome, nay
beautiful
face that she’d ever seen, well, it all led
to this feeling of uncertainty and discomfit. It was all
his
fault.

It took several long moments before Rowan realized
he had said what he had said. He felt his face grow warm and that old familiar
feeling of guilt draped itself over his heart.

He hadn’t found a woman
attractive
in a
very long time. Not since Kate.

His stomach twisted into a large knot. He was
looking down at a very angry woman with brilliant green eyes, long auburn locks
that looked as though they hadn’t been combed in a month. Her face was
splattered with mud, her dress torn, tattered and caked with more mud. Her
bottom lip was cut and swollen, and a large bruise was forming on her cheek.

The bruises angered him. Were his daughter not
waiting for him this very moment, Rowan would have been more than tempted to
ride back to Blackthorn keep and kill the man who had left his mark on the
beautiful face of this intriguing woman.

And yet, he could not deny the fact that he did
find her quite attractive. Quite possibly -- if he were so inclined to allow
himself to feel such things -- beautiful. Bruises or no, her face was exquisite.

He felt an odd, tingling sensation begin to creep
in. He did not like it, not one bit. He shrugged the feelings off as being
nothing more than a physical attraction combined with the fact that he hadn’t
been with a woman in nearly five years. Mayhap all he needed was a tumble
between the sheets. Not with Lady Arline, of course, because she was, after
all, a lady.

He pushed those thoughts aside and looked away
from the angry, yet quite beautiful, face staring back at him. “Do ye think
ye’ll still hate me once we’re off the cliff?” he asked.

Arline cringed. She really wished he would quit
using that term
off the cliff.
For every time he said it, she had
visions of them falling to their deaths. Frustrated and angry she answered him.
“Aye, I will.” She
wanted
to hate him, hate him for laughing at her
distress, hate him for making her legs quiver. Most of all, she wanted to hate
him for calling her attractive for she did not like how that made her feel. All
excited and giddy and foolish. It also made her stomach feel as though there
were dozens of tiny fish in it all flipping happily about and singing his
praises.

“Och!” Rowan said. “I was hopin’ ye’d change yer
mind, but women, especially attractive women such as ye, rarely change their
minds.”

There he went again! She could envision the fish in
her belly now, swimming about and singing,
Rowan called her attractive!
Rowan called her attractive!

“Do no’ do that!” she admonished him.

“Do what?”

As if he had no earthly idea what she meant! “Do
no’ call me that.”

He raised one of those perfect eyebrows of his and
looked down at her. “Call ye what?”

“Attractive. Do no’ call me that.” She tried to
look away, but those beautiful brown eyes of his were simply too beautiful to
turn away from. They begged to be stared at.

“Attractive? Ye find that insulting?”

Arline cleared her throat before answering. “Nay,
no’ insulting.”
It makes me think of things that canna be.

“Pray tell then, why canna I call ye attractive?”

She’d die before she answered that question
truthfully. The longer he stared at her and the more he used that word, the
more inclined she was to leap from the horse and hurtle herself down the side
of the cliff. The idea was growing more and more appealing the longer he looked
at her.

“Fine,” Rowan said. “I shall no’ call ye that
again.”

Why did she suddenly feel so sad and deflated? Why
did she not feel relieved?

“I shall call ye beautiful instead.”

All the fish in her belly suddenly stopped
swimming. They swooned. One collective sigh of bliss and then they swooned.
Blasted man! Was he trying to kill her?

“Nay!” she exclaimed. Finally she mustered the
courage to turn away from him. If she looked at him again, it would most
certainly be the death of her.

Rowan chuckled. For reasons he could not
understand, he found himself enjoying the way her face turned red with
embarrassment. He enjoyed unsettling her. But more than anything, he was
beginning to enjoy the lascivious thoughts that were beginning to bounce around
in his head.

He did not want to enjoy them, but enjoy them he
did. What, pray tell, would she look like without the mud in her hair or on her
face? A vision of the beautiful Lady Arline, naked as the day she was born,
flashed into his mind. She was bathing, in the loch, and rivulets of water were
cascading down her perfect breasts, her curvaceous hips.

Lord all mighty, if he did not get her off his
horse and onto someone else’s, she would soon know without a shadow of a doubt
the effect she was having on his person.

 He mulled it over in his mind, mayhap a bit
longer than he should have. Would such a thing be so bad? What would it hurt if
she did know?

“Be there a reason why I canna call ye beautiful?”

She wished she had the pluck to tell him to go
jump off a cliff. Reasoning that he might do just that, just for spite, taking
her along with him, she swallowed back that quick retort.

He spoke aloud his conjecture. “Has no man ever
told ye that before?”

“Told me what?” For the life of her she could not
think clearly or in any manner that made a bit of sense.

“That ye are quite bonny. Attractive. And verra
beautiful.”

The fish woke long enough to have one collective
heart seizure and die. Now she was sitting very close to the most beautiful man
she’d ever laid eyes on, close enough that she was certain he could hear her
heart as it pounded against her breast. And she had a belly full of dead fish.

“I’ve been told that, before,” she answered,
trying to sound as if she were told those very things by one hundred different
men at least one hundred times a day.

The truth however, was quite different. The last
man to tell her she was beautiful was Carlich. Seeing how Carlich had thought
of her more as a granddaughter than a wife, she doubted he meant those words
with any amount of romantic or lustful inclinations.

Rowan didn’t believe her. She was far too agitated
and embarrassed. For a woman who had been married before, he found she had an
underlying innocence in her countenance and he thought that both strange and
endearing.

“Good,” he whispered into her hair. He didn’t even
try to erase his smile when he felt her gasp.

“What is good?” she asked him.

“’Tis good that ye have a man to tell ye such
things. Ye need to be told that every day. Repeatedly.”

“I do?” she asked him breathlessly. She wondered
if he was like this with all women. A man as beautiful as Rowan Graham probably
had women falling at his feet all the day long and willing to warm his bed each
night. Were she not so afraid of burning in hell for all eternity, she might
very well have been inclined to be one of those women.

“Aye,” he smiled. “Ye do.”

Mentally, she waved goodbye to her good senses and
the promise she had made a thousand times to live the rest of her days alone.
But before they were completely out of sight, she grabbed them and wrestled
them back where they belonged. She could not allow lust to get in the way of
her plans to live a blissful, carefree life, one of her own choosing.

Several long moments passed in tense stillness
with each of them lost in thoughts, lustful as they were. ’Twas Rowan who
finally broke the silence.

“Do ye still hate me, lass?” he asked softly.

“Hate ye?” she asked, forgetting the biting words
she had said to him earlier.

“Aye. Do ye still hate me?” he repeated as he gave
a nod of his head to their surroundings. Arline blinked once, then again before
she realized what he meant. She took the chance to look around and her
shoulders sagged with relief. She could have jumped from the horse and kissed
the ground.

At some point along the way, they had left the
terrifying side of the cliff and had spilled into a valley. Autumn was just
beginning to touch her fingers to the beautiful land that lay before her.
Morning mist clung to everything it touched. Vibrant green leaves still clung
to the trees, their ends just beginning to turn, giving tender hints at the golds,
reds, and browns that autumn promised. Grass, having long ago turned to seed,
waved slowly in the breeze. A deep stream wound its way down from the top of
the mountain, through the valley, spilling out to only heaven knew where.

Arline thought it beautiful. It reminded her of
home, of her sisters, of her youth. The memories weighed heavily on her heart.
She wondered if she would ever see Morralyn or Geraldine again. God, how she
missed them!

The air was colder here in the valley, nipping at
Arline’s ears and fingertips. The moist, cold air made her mud-covered clothes
and boots feel even heavier. She craved for nothing more than a warm bath and a
place to lay her head.

They crossed the stream and made their way up and
through an outcrop of large dark boulders. Arline stiffened and held her breath
when she saw the clearing was filled with dozens of men. Her escorts however,
seemed quite at ease.

Sensing her tension and fright, Rowan whispered,
“Wheesht, lass. These be some of the men who helped us retrieve Lily.”

Arline expelled the breath she had been holding
and began to search the group for Lily. Dozens of large, serious looking, plaid
covered, bearded men surrounded a small fire. She had thought none could look
more fierce or imposing than Garrick’s men, but she had been wrong in that
assumption. These men looked positively menacing.

Rowan, Frederick and Daniel made their way through
the rocks and down the small trail that led to the fire. Two bearded men
stepped forward and took the reins of their horses. “Graham,” one of them said,
nodding up at him.

Rowan nodded back and swung down from his saddle.
He reached up and grabbed Arline by her waist and pulled her down and set her
on her feet. He took a moment to make certain she could stand on her own.

“Are ye well, lass?” he asked thoughtfully and
with much concern in his voice.

She really wished people would stop asking that
particular question for she could not answer it simply or plainly. “Aye,” she
told him as she reached out and rested a hand on the saddle. “I am well.”

She nearly keeled over when the man who had taken
the reins decided at that moment to lead the horse away. Rowan caught her
before she could fall completely over.

This time, he did not laugh at her distress.
“Lass, I do no’ think ye be as well as ye say.”

She was fully prepared to argue with him, to
explain that she was a grown woman for heaven’s sake and completely able to
take care of herself and certainly was in no need for him to show her any
amount of concern, but her words were stopped short by Daniel and Frederick.
Each man stood on either side of her.

“She took a hell of a beatin’ from Garrick
Blackthorn,” Daniel offered.