Only For A Knight (24 page)

 

“I ken such milk,” her knight said, warmth flooding his eyes. “When I was small, we had a cowherd from the far north, and he had a tender hand with the beasts. He claimed there were fairy cows mixed in with our herd and that was the reason for the richness of the milk, and though I believed him at the time, I now suspect it was the way he gentled them.”

 

The warmth in his expression began . . . disturbing her. Like fine wisps of peat smoke or soft, Highland mist, his appeal seemed to slip inside her, making her breath catch and curling itself ever more insistently round her heart.

 

“So-o-o,” he said suddenly, the new brisk note in his tone breaking the spell, “your mother was appreciative—wished you to deliver repayment to her . . . benefactor?”

 

“I believe that to be the way of, aye,” Juliana agreed, the truth seeming clearer by the moment. “See you, without this person’s largesse, whate’er coin she may have had when my father set her aside would’ve swiftly diminished, especially with two hungry bairns clambering at her skirts.”

 

“And so you set off on this journey after she died?”

 

“Nay—before,” she remembered, her throat almost closing on the admission. “She swore she could only pass in peace if she saw me away to see her wishes done. And so . . . I left, surrendering her to the care of the glen goodwife and whate’er mercy the saints cared to bestow on her.”

 

The pain of her acquiescence weighing on her, Juliana fixed him with her most level-eyed stare. “And that is where the coin hailed from—I told you on the day that I had not used ill means to come by such wealth.”

 

His brow darkening, Robbie closed the small distance between them in two long strides, drew her tight against the warmth of his hard-muscled chest.

 

“I ne’er believed you to be a thief, sweetness,” he reassured her, kissing her brow. “I only wondered how—”

 

“—how a humble-born maid could have so much coin?”

 

“I puzzled, aye,” he told her true, setting her from him just enough to see into her eyes. “But it concerned me more that you might be running from a husband or—”

 

“Or a paramour?”

 

He nodded, shamed for the thoughts, but he’d harbored them for other reasons than she believed.

 

“Such thoughts were more noble than had I mistook you for a sticky-fingered tavern wench on the loose with ill-gotten goods.”

 

She pressed her lips together, a hint of her usual fire creeping back into her—its heat warming and delighting him.

 

“Mayhap, to me, a life as a common thief might be the lesser evil than falling prey to a man who would only use my body and then discard me when his gaze fell upon a sweeter harvest?”

 

Robbie arched a brow at that. “Know this,” he said, smoothing his knuckles down her cheek, “it did not and would not have mattered to me what problems or mischances of the past burdened you.” He leaned forward, kissed the tip of her nose. “I was only enchanted by you and dreaded the possibility some other man may already have had his claim on you. I—”

 

“You wanted me for your own . . . pleasures.”

 

“Aye!” The word burst from him, his patience flown. “And I
burn
for those pleasures, aye, I do. Ne’er doubt that I wanted you, then and there,” he said, his eyes blazing. “And I want you still—but not as my leman . . . as my wife!”

 

“Your wife?”

 

“So I just said.”

 

Juliana could not speak. She lifted a hand to her throat, stared at him. “But you—”

 

“By all the saints, but you chatter like birds in a wood.” He snatched her hand, upturning it to place a smacking kiss on her palm. “Quiet you, and hear me well—already I have faced down the devil for you, told my father I shall not wed the lady Euphemia. God’s bones, the maid hides herself from me . . . and unlike you, false thinking on your part or nay, she has nary a reason to secret herself from my view.”

 

At his words, the dark uncertainties about her future began to slide away, but his father’s black-scowling visage loomed up in her mind as quickly—his displeasure in her, calling them back again.

 

“Your father will ne’er condone a union with me,” she said, looking him full in the face. “And I, good knight, am no starry-eyed maid to believe you can convince him otherwise.”

 

He hesitated but a sliver of a heartbeat. “Then he shall lose not only a fine and meet good-daughter, but the only son and heir he has,” he said, the commitment behind his words streaming off him in hot palpable waves.

 

Each one crashing over her with the sweetest allure, the portent of his avowal searing her to the bone, sweeping away the last knots of her resistance, and drawing her closer to him until she was . . . lost.

 

Lost, drowning, and so wanting to believe him . . .

 

 

 

 

Chapter Ten

 

 

 

SHE WAS GOING TO DROWN.

 

Nothing was surer.

 

Juliana-of-the-glen, rescuer of floundering sheep and known to have the keenest wits of any lass this side of Loch Ness, had lost all her confident possession, abandoning her well-peppered steel for the deliciously languorous heat ignited by the devil’s own spawn.

 

He sensed her quickening, too, recognized with a man’s deepest instincts the surrender sweeping through her.

 

She shivered, her breath catching as his expression changed and a new, more dangerous potency spun out from him to enfold her, the simmering intensity of him making her both wary and . . . exhilarated.

 

And though she was loath to admit it . . . making her tingle again.

 

Even so, some bastion of grit deep inside her sturdy, glen-raised soul made her lift a staying hand in a halfhearted attempt to sway the inevitable.

 

But he merely seized her protesting fingers, bringing them to his lips to gentle the sweetest, most searing kiss from their tips to the flickering pulse at her wrist.

 

His
pulse fluttered, too. Its rapid beat throbbed at the base of his neck, the undeniable testament of his desire sending jolts of pure female triumph shooting through her.

 

My precious,
Juliana thought she heard him say, the words, true-spoken or nay, spiraling round her heart and . . . allowing her to hope.

 

Believe that one such as he might cherish her—even if only for a night.

 

“My very own.”

 

That, she heard, the three huskily murmured words setting her senses spinning and reminding her that she could ne’er be . . . his own.

 

Not when, in the estimation of his world, her best recommendation was not a stout-walled strength to rival his own but a birthplace so humble it was little more than a patch of green turf amongst the heather.

 

Even if
she
would wager the riches of one gilded moment passed in Glenelg against a thousand nights of glory spent in a castle’s thronging, arras-hung hall.

 

“You should not . . . we ought not do this,” she said, hoping only she’d heard the hitch in her voice. “’Tis folly and—”

 

“—and the sweetest of heavens,” he disagreed, dragging her to him, slanting his mouth over hers in a hot, claiming kiss.

 

A deliciousness she neither returned nor resisted, her stubbornness not allowing her to acknowledge the pulsing heat building inside her, the thrilling pleasure of every swirling slide of his tongue against hers.

 

“Come you . . . give,” he murmured, pulling back just enough to breathe the plea against her cheek, “have done withholding yourself.”

 

She shook her head, but a persistent little sigh slipped past her resistance, telling enough for his lips to curve in a knowing smile—just before he trailed a flurry of soft, wet kisses across her face, down her throat, and pushing aside her
arisaid
, along the sloping curve of her shoulders.

 

Anywhere her flushed skin was exposed to him.

 

“’Tis
you
I want, my Juliana,” he breathed, his voice husky with desire. “You, and only you—since the first moment I saw you.”

 

He looked at her, his gaze capturing hers, breaking her resistance. “Ne’er have I seen a lass who pleased me more—you must know it!” he vowed, thick-voiced. “Speak true—you canna deny it.”

 

And she couldn’t.

 

She’d seen the thrall in his eyes at the lochan. So she looked aside—and said nothing.

 

Clearly scenting victory, he took hold of her shoulders again, pressed his fingers into her flesh just enough to make her flash an irritated look at him—as well he’d known she would.

 

He read her that surely.

 

Or else she’d grown pitifully transparent.

 

Her lifelong resilience ripped to shreds by a bold-eyed knight’s dimpled smile and heated glances.

 

“See you, lass, it matters not if you do not tell me,” he said, letting go of her. “You do not need words for your eyes speak more than plain—as does your body.”

 

Juliana squirmed. Her heart thundering, she cleared her throat. “You believe yourself well skilled at reading women, Sir Knight,” she said, some hot-pulsing thrill in the lowest part of her belly making her taunt him.

 

He lifted a brow, the darkening glint in his eyes wickedly seductive. “And am I?”

 

“If you are so
gifted,
mayhap you ought tell me?” she challenged. “What do you think my eyes and my body are saying?”

 

He rubbed his chin, appeared to consider.

 

“H’mmm . . .” he said, clearly enjoying a reason to let his gaze travel up and down the length of her. “I would say they tell me that you know we were meant to meet—that we were made for each other. And that we will find much joy and deep contentment together.”

 

Juliana made a noncommittal sound and looked down to fluff her skirts, not wanting him to see how much the sweetness of his proclamation affected her.

 

Nor guess how many girlhood nights she’d spent assailing the mercy of all the saints that she’d someday find a braw and dashing man who’d love, want, and cherish her—a
good-hearted
man, loyal and true, who’d face down dragons for her, battle the wind, and, aye, fill her with breathless anticipation, longing, and . . . hope.

 

The very kind of bright-shimmering strands of hope winding all through her now, this very moment.

 

“Come you,” he said, devouring her with his eyes, “deny what blazes between us and I shall leave this herbarium and ne’er come seeking you again—but deny it not, and know that you are mine . . . wholly and irrevocably.”

 

Juliana bit her lip, her heart pounding desperately.

 

His gaze narrowed ever so slightly. “Is your silence a denial, lady?”

 

“I am not a lady,” she blurted, evading his question. “You know that truth better now than before.”

 

“I know you are
my
lady . . . naught else matters.”

 

“Everything matt—”

 

“
We
matter,” he corrected, watching her with eyes that looked into her soul. “Now, come . . . please me. Admit there is a we.”

 

Juliana ground her teeth together.

 

She burned to please him, was ever so warmed to think he wanted her . . . and enough to defy the constraints and strictures of his own world to have her.

 

She even swooned with pleasure that he called her his
lady.

 

Indeed, heat suffused her cheeks upon his words—but ne’er would she allow how much his insistence about the silly title meant to her.

 

Not because she yearned for such frivol, but because he used the word to please her.

 

But admitting such was to walk a perilous precipice, one that still boded caution.

 

“Well?” He reached to smooth a few strands of hair from her face. “I am waiting.”

 

“I cannot say the words . . . but neither will I deny them—aye, there is something.”

 

Not a true avowal, but the best she could do.

 

The words out, she jutted her chin, let her lips curve into the smile she’d been fighting.

 

“Are you now satisfied, my lord?”

 

“I am well enough content, aye,” he said. “But I shall be more pleased after I’ve convinced you that I ne’er once considered taking you as my leman—that my intentions were noble from the start, even at my very first glimpse of you.”

 

“Oh, I believe you,” Juliana said, the prickling at her nape warning that more hid behind his words than was on the surface.

 

He looked to the side, a distant look clouding his eyes. “See you, ne’er would I condone suchlike—not for myself, nor would I visit the fate on any woman.”

 

“Then you . . . like my brother, are a man apart.” Juliana took one of the snake stones from the aumbry, closed her fingers over its cold roundness. “Kenneth, too, vows he would sooner cut his flesh than suffer a woman to our mother’s fate—faith, he is so embittered by the tragedy of her life, he does not believe in love at all. Illicit or otherwise.”

 

Pacing now, her knight shot a glance at her, his gaze sharp. “Faugh, I say to that folly,” he said, incredulity in his voice. “Now I know I must meet your brother—he
does
need his head turned around. I have e’er believed in love and e’er desired it, though I ken only too well how precious and rare its blessing can be.”

 

He spoke the last words with a rich smoothness that slid through her like molten honey, turning her knees to water, and doing unspeakable things to . . . other parts of her.

 

Her breath catching, she began rolling the snake stone around in her hand, excitement whirling through her as the round little stone passed over the very parts of her palm he’d kissed, the places he’d licked with the tip of his tongue.

 

Juliana frowned, stopped playing with the stone at once.

 

Aye, the man brought out the worst in her.

 

But he also filled her with a great desire to . . . delight him. Win his regard and affection. Mayhap even his love. She followed his progress about the herbarium, a delicious warmth spooling through her just watching him.