Unwanted (2 page)

The only ray of hope in her frigid world was the request from Castle Lachlan.
 
Lady Evelyn MacLauchlan was in the middle of a difficult pregnancy and she wanted to meet with
Rhona
on the morrow and maybe appoint her services.
 
The prospect thrilled her, but she’d have to figure out how to survive in the months between now and the birth of the Laird’s niece or nephew.
 

Shivering into her best stockings and shift, she regretted the bath to her very bones, but she couldn’t think of presenting herself at the castle smelling like she slept next to the goats and the chickens.

The flame from her lone candle flickered in drafts from the howling wind that leaked through too many cracks in her walls.
 
In the unsteady light, she searched her one-room dwelling for her kirtle and skirt.
 
She could have sworn she’d stretched it out next to the hip bath to smooth the wrinkles.
 
It wasn’t beneath the furs on the small, under-stuffed mattress, nor draped on the lone oak chair next to the fireplace.
 
She rummaged through her ancient trunk and found only her other soiled shift, a lone pair of shoes and patched wool cloak.
 
Those were the whole of her belongings if she didn’t count the cupboard where she kept extra supplies for any babe that might be left with her.

She could have sworn she hung it up by the…
 
Oh Lord.
 
She braced herself and turned around.
 

The garment lay crumpled inside the fireplace, its dingy grey melding with the ashes.
 
Blast it!
 
She must have disturbed it while dragging the hip bath into the corner by the annex opening to the stables.
 
Of all the fool things to do.
 
Maybe she should have lit a fire on the eve of such an important meeting, if only to make sure she could see her surroundings properly and avoid such a disaster.
 

Retrieving the garment, she sat on the edge of the bed to inspect the damage.
 
Ash and soot smudged one entire side of the bodice and sleeve, though the skirt was relatively unscathed.
 
How could she show herself at Castle Lachlan dressed in this?
 
Surely such fine ladies would turn her away.
 
It was too late, and too cold to wash the garment.
 
It would never dry in time.

 
Sinking to the bed on trembling legs,
Rhona
considered giving in to the exhausted, frustrated sobs trembling in her throat.
 
She couldn’t just yet.
 
She still had to express her milk before going to bed or she’d hate herself in the morning.

Even more than she already did.

A pummeling knock almost shattered her door.
 
She shrieked with surprise and leapt to her feet.
 
Her heart threw itself against her ribs.
 
The pounding repeated, this time shaking the rafters of the stable.
 

“Who’s there?” she called, hating the terrified catch in her voice.
 
Rhona
was answered by a sound she was all too familiar with.
 

The wail of a hungry child.
 

“I’m coming.”
 
Discarding the kirtle to the trunk, she grabbed one of the furs from the bed and threw it around her shoulders before lunging for the latch.
 

She only opened the door enough to block the wind with her body, afraid it would blow out her candle.

But she needn’t have bothered.
 

The man at her door was the size of one of the boulders that were scattered about the Highlands like ancient, hulking guardians.
 
His enormous body buffered her doorway against the wind and snow.

Rhona
gasped and craned her neck to look up into the shadow of his hood where his face was hidden.
 
She could only make out a strong chin and hard mouth drawn into a tight frown.
 
A thrill of fear raced up her spine.
 
In this storm, no one was about to hear her scream.
 

“It won’t stop.”
 

Rhona
jumped as heavy arms thrust a wailing, wriggling bundle at her.
 

“Are you the nurse?”
 
The voice was deep, cavernous, with a guttural accent
Rhona
had never before encountered.
 

Still unable to completely recover her wits, she nodded and opened the door to grant him entrance.
 
It may not be the most intelligent thing she’d ever done, letting this unknown giant into her home, but he might have coin.
 
Also, she couldn’t bring herself to turn away a hungry infant in distress.
 

He had to bend at the waist to enter.
 
After
Rhona
secured the latch, she turned and jumped to see him holding the baby out to her like an offering.
 
Though the infant had to be at least a month or two old, he could cradle it in his gigantic hands.

Rhona
just blinked at him dumbly.
 

He dressed like a barbarian.
 
A cloak of speckled white and silver fur hung to his knees from shoulders as wide as an aged oak.
 
Warm, fur-lined boots, the likes of which she’d never seen, wrapped about his calves.
 

He didn’t just take space, he claimed it.
 
His form dominated her tiny dwelling, filling every free corner with his essence, if not his own heavy limbs.

“It won’t stop,” he repeated in his smooth baritone, breaking her trance.
 

“O-of course.”
 
She snatched the baby from his hands, careful not to touch him.
 
If the barbarian noticed, he didn’t comment.
 

Rhona
carried the sodden bundle to her cupboard, where she extracted clean linen for changing and another for swaddling.
 
The babe’s blanket was much too thin for such weather.
 
She looked down into his angry
wee
face and murmured to him, not that she expected it to make much of a difference until he was changed, warm, and fed.
 
Cheeks that needed fleshing out were chapped and red with cold.
 
The little body was quickly losing strength, its angry struggles becoming weaker, the cries thinner.

“Hold on for me, dear heart,” she crooned, then glanced toward the man whose back was to her as he inspected her modest home.
 
He’d pushed his hood off his head, exposing long, straight hair that would have been as white as his cloak were it not for threads of gold brought out by the candle’s flame.
 

Rhona
had to avert her eyes lest she be caught staring.
 
“Where’s the mother?” she asked.

“I found it in the snow by the Loch,” he said gruffly over the cries of the babe.
 
“You live in a stable.”

Rhona
frowned while she worked, not appreciating the disapproval in the stranger’s tone.
 
“I do not.
 
I live in a room off of a stable.
 
The stable master’s home is attached to the other side of the building.”
 
Perhaps her room had once been a spacious stall, but it had a fireplace now and she wasn’t about to concede the point to him.
 
Not when he used that tone of voice.
 

“What is through there?”
 
He was examining the rickety, half-sized door through the wall next to the fireplace and adjacent to her front door.
 

“My goat and chickens,” she explained, hating that she sounded so defensive.
 

He grunted.
 

“And you found
him
in the snow,” she corrected for good measure, as she tied the new nappy on and disposed of the soiled one.
 

“What?”

“
Him
.
 
The child is a boy.”

He didn’t answer her and she didn’t know if she cared for him to.
 
She rubbed at the baby’s freezing limbs, hoping to improve the circulation.
 
She stood and tucked him into the fur with her, hoping to warm him with the heat of her body.
 

How could someone abandon such a helpless wee creature?

Rhona
looked up into the face of the enormous stranger and lost her ability to think.
 
 
Nor could she breathe.
 
Their proximity was too close, though he stood across the room.

He leaned against her small fireplace and scrutinized her from eyes so intensely green and beautiful that she could barely fathom it.
 
Something about his stance belied the relaxed posture.
 
A leashed violence vibrated in the air around him sending tendrils of energy reaching for her.
 
He made no move, but
Rhona
still felt the urge to back away.
 
Strong, perfectly formed bones structured a visage that could have only been sculpted by a master.
 
He was the image of an archangel, surely.
 
Only those brutal, wrathful heavenly warriors could dare to possess such golden masculine beauty.
 

“It’s not working.”
 
He thrust his strong chin to the screeching, wriggling body beneath her fur.
 
“I’ll give you this if you can make him stop.”
 
He took a coin from a pouch hidden in his cloak.

Rhona’s
mouth went dry.
 
She couldn’t exactly tell from where she stood, but it looked like gold.
 

She dared not hope.

“Please blow out the candle and sit there,” she murmured, gesturing to the chair.
 

His cruel brows drew together in a scowl.
 
“Why?”

“So I can feed him.”

His eyes dropped to her breasts and he squinted, as if he could see them hidden beneath her fur.
 
He swallowed, frowned, and then gave a curt nod.

Divesting himself of his heavy cloak, he uncovered a tunic the color of the sea in a storm and soft-looking, animal-skin
trews
.
 
Strapped over his mesmerizing hips were weapons so large and frightening that if they hadn’t been hidden at the time,
Rhona
may not have let him past her threshold.
 

Not that she would have been able to stop him.

Her heart threatened to escape her, again, and she clutched the babe closer to her.
 
Lifting his eyes to hers, the barbarian reached out and snuffed the candle flame with his palm, drenching them both in stormy darkness.

Finn tested the strength of the rickety chair before settling the whole of his bulk upon it.
 
 
He couldn’t take his eyes off the woman as she blindly stepped to her trunk and sank across from him, still clutching the noisy child.

She couldn’t know that her request to snuff the candle was meaningless.
 
That he could see her in the darkness.
 
He could study her soft features as intently as he wanted.
 

And he
wanted
.
 

The instant she’d opened her door, with her wild copper curls glowing in the light of a lone candle, his body had responded to her.
 
He’d initially planned on abandoning the babe to her care with some coin and being about his business.
 

Instead, he was furiously trying to figure out how he’d let himself become folded into this ridiculous chair.
 

It had to be her voice.

Soft and husky, with a touch of rasp escaping through a lilting Scots accent, her voice held him in a thrall that was at once mystifying and disturbing.
 
Until now, he’d never met a woman who’d dared argue with him, and this lady had yet to offer him an agreeable word.
 
Even still, her voice thrummed a vibration so deep within him that his Berserker purred with it.