“Burunild is assisting the midwife,” Isabel informed her. “Abygail has gone to visit her sister. Hilda is caring for her new babe. Gillian is ill with a fever. And the rest have gone to bed.”
“Gone to bed?”
Isabel shrugged. “You kept them quite busy today.”
That was true. Hallie believed that idle hands caused misbehavior, especially when it came to Isabel’s companions. She sighed, then grumbled, “Bloody hell, he’s a grown man. I’m sure he can scrub his own back.”
Isabel’s jaw dropped. “’Tis a matter of common courtesy, Hallie. You know that. Rivenloch has a reputation to uphold. If word got out that we’d left a guest unattended at his bath…” She shuddered.
“Rivenloch’s reputation isn’t built on our bathing services.”
“But such rudeness is a… What’s the word you taught me? A travesty.” Isabel shrugged. “Besides, I don’t mind doing the task.”
“That’s my point, Isabel.”
“What?”
“I’m sure you don’t mind at all,” Hallie said, inexplicably irritated. “Your friends are doubtless awaiting your salacious gossip.”
“Salacious?” She blinked. “What does that mean?”
Hallie cooed in imitation of Isabel’s friends, “Oh, Isabel, tell us all about the Highlander. How tall is he? Are those muscles real? Just how broad is his back?” There was more, but she wouldn’t go down that path with her little sister.
“What if I promise to keep my eyes closed?” Isabel offered.
Hallie let out an all-suffering sigh. This was ridiculous. There was no way she was going to allow her virtuous little sister to bathe a naked, healthy, warm-blooded Highlander.
“Give me that,” she muttered, grabbing for the basket.
Isabel pulled it out of her reach. “But Hallie—”
“I’ll be damned if I’m going to leave you alone with a hostile hostage.”
She made another grab for the basket, catching one side of the handle.
But Isabel wouldn’t let go of it. “Didn’t you say you agreed to a pact of peace? So he’s not hostile.”
“Give me that basket,” Hallie warned, tugging harder.
“Be reasonable, Hallie,” Isabel argued, tugging back. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Nay.” She refused to put her little sister in harm’s way. It was too risky.
“But Hallie…”
“Nay. And that’s final.”
Isabel stamped her foot, but she still clung to the basket. “No one else is available for the task. And his bath is growin’ cold.”
Surely someone was available. Hallie racked her brains.
At waging war, she was an expert. At managing the household, she was highly efficient. But mastering the fine details of hospitality had always seemed a pointless pursuit.
Nonetheless, as laird, it was up to her to solve the problem. And in the end, she resorted to what always happened when she was unable to get cooperation from others. She took matters into her own hands.
Seeing no other course of action and cursing herself for a fool, Hallie muttered, “I’ll do it.”
“What?”
“I’ll do it.”
Isabel stifled a laugh. “You?”
Her scorn seared Hallie like the kiss of a hot coal. She pinned Isabel with an icy glare. “Aye. Why not?”
“Oh Hallie,” Isabel argued, her patronizing voice full of pity, “you don’t have a woman’s touch. You might as well send Sir Rauve to do the task.”
That did it. That settled Hallie’s resolve. She would take no more ridicule from her meddling sister. She snatched the basket out of Isabel’s grip and nodded toward the door. “Go.”
Isabel pressed her lips into a pout. “You’re making a mistake.”
Hallie couldn’t agree more. But it would be a bigger mistake to cede to Isabel’s whims. “Out.”
“’Twill jeopardize the peace if you hurt him, you know.”
“I’m not going to hurt him.”
“Maybe not on purpose, but…”
“Go, Isabel.”
Isabel picked up her skirts and stomped out the door, angry that all her best laid plans had gone awry.
But now that Hallie was left holding the basket, she began to wonder if perhaps Isabel’s plans hadn’t gone awry after all.
She got the sinking feeling that this was exactly what her conniving little sister had intended.
Chapter 23
Seated on the bed with the leg of his trews bunched above his knee, Colban had the bandage around his ankle halfway unwrapped when there was a knock at the door.
“Come!” he called out.
Bart had come and gone after filling the large wooden tub with buckets of steaming water. Colban expected that was the old maidservant, Burunild, arriving to help him at his bath.
As the door opened, he said, “I think the swellin’s down alrea—”
He looked up.
It wasn’t Burunild.
“Hallie.” He didn’t know whether to be pleased or horrified.
Hallie, carrying a basket brimming with linens, sponges, candles, and bottles, looked as uneasy as he felt.
“What’s all this?” he asked, though it was clear they were items meant for his bath.
“I’ve come to assist you.” By her grim expression, one would think she’d come to torture him.
Perhaps she had come to torture him. Just the thought of Hallie attending him at his bath—peeling his clothes from his body, drizzling warm water over his skin, running her fingers over every inch of him—seemed like delicious torment.
He wasn’t sure any of that was wise. Not in his present state. Though the swelling in his ankle had gone down, he couldn’t say the same about other parts of him, not with an enticing Valkyrie in the room.
“Bart told me that Burunild—”
“Burunild was called away. And no one else was available.” She sounded rather defensive. “I tried to find someone else. Abygail. Gillian. Hilda. They were all occupied or asleep.”
“I see.” He averted his eyes, returning his attention to unwrapping his ankle. If she’d tried to enlist so many others, it was clearly a task she was loath to do. Which was fine. He didn’t want her to do it anyway. Did he? “Well, I’m sure I can manage alone. Just leave the basket beside the tub and—”
“Nay, I can do it. I said I would. And I will.” She seemed resigned, as if she’d been commanded to do something repulsive. Like emptying his chamber pot.
The tone of her voice ruffled his feathers. She didn’t have to sound quite so unhappy.
“Look, ye clearly don’t wish to,” he muttered. “I understand. Ye’re the laird. Ye shouldn’t have to perform the work of a maidservant.”
His words seemed to annoy her. “You doubt I’m capable?”
He furrowed his brows. “I didn’t say that.”
“I won’t hurt you,” she blurted out, “if that’s what you think.”
He blinked in surprise. That wasn’t at all what he thought.
She seemed flustered by her own admission. She lowered the basket onto the floor beside the tub and removed two candles. Gripping them like a pair of daggers, she cast around the chamber, uncertain where to put them.
Colban might have found her awkward determination amusing if he weren’t growing harder by the moment, imagining her candle-gripping fists wrapped around…
He nodded at the candles and managed to mumble, “Just leave them on the table.” Then, deciding it really would be best if she left, he said, “I’ll be fine. Really. I’m sure ye have more pressin’ duties. Like ye said, the enemy ne’er sleeps.”
Again, she seemed irritated by his words. “Just because I’m in command of the knights doesn’t mean I can’t do more…womanly…tasks.”
“O’ course not.”
“I know how to give a man a bath.”
“No doubt.” His voice cracked on the words as he imagined her sliding her palms over his chest,
his stomach, and lower. “I just meant ye needn’t trouble yourself.”
“’Tis no trouble.”
She planted the candles on the table and plucked a bottle from the basket. Removing the stopper, she poured a generous dollop of clove oil into the bath water, swishing it in with her fingers. Her eyes skimmed the surface of the water with cool indifference. But her hand stirred an agitated current beneath, and when she lifted her hand to shake the water from her fingers, it was with an abrupt flick of her wrist.
“Unless you’d prefer someone else,” she said. Her casual shrug was unconvincing. “I suppose I could call Bart back if—”
“Bart?” he squeaked. Bloody hell, did she honestly think he wanted to have his back scoured by a scrawny youth with grimy knuckles? “Nay, thank ye.”
On the other hand, the way the lass was stirring his blood, perhaps a good rough sponging was just what he needed to scrub the lust from his body.
From the moment she’d entered the bedchamber, Hallie had been determined to foil Isabel’s efforts at fomenting romance. She’d intended to remain aloof yet civil. Thorough yet perfunctory. To perform the task with the same efficiency she used to polish a suit of armor.
But Colban an Curaidh was not a suit of armor. He was a living, breathing man. He had thoughts and feelings, opinions and desires.
He also had eyes that could drown her in their depths. And a body that could make her forget she was a warrior lass.
The way she felt right now—off-kilter and distracted—he could easily bend her to his will. And that would be perilous indeed.
So, like a nervous novice in her first skirmish, she found herself sizing up her foe. Measuring his mettle. Delaying engagement for as long as possible.
“The water’s growin’ cold,” Colban said.
She exhaled her worry on a sharp breath. She could do this.
“Climb in. I’ll lay out the linens.”
She rummaged in the basket, dropping a sponge into the bath. Lifting the linens one by one, she arranged them painstakingly atop the coverlet of the bed. She lit the candles from the flames on the hearth and replaced them with trembling fingers.
Meanwhile, from the corner of her eye, she watched Colban strip off his leine.
She saw men in all states of undress every day. It was inevitable when one spent as much time as she did in the armory. Colban was no different than most of the fit Rivenloch knights with his powerful shoulders. Broad chest. Well-defined arms. Flat stomach.
But the way his shoulders flexed and his muscles rippled took her breath away. And when he removed his trews, baring his firm hindquarters, her heart began thumping like a fulling mill. As he climbed into the water, he looked like some magnificent god returning to the sea.
Her fascinated gaze was drawn again and again to his enticing contours. And the sight of him—so close, so real—muddled her brain and tied her tongue in knots.
But it was too late to withdraw now. She’d committed to giving him a bath. With a shaky sigh of resolve, she knelt beside the tub.
Colban was staring hard at the water between his knees, as if he might boil it with his focused glare. As she neared, he moved his hands casually to his naked lap, cheating her curious eyes.
She told herself Colban an Curaidh was only a man, not a god.
As if further proof of that, when she lifted her wet sponge to his brow, she noticed a faint scar at his hairline. That was good. Perhaps if she could focus on his imperfections, she wouldn’t be distracted by his perfections.
She nodded to the thin white line. “How did you get that?”
His fingers traced the mark. “Glancing blow of a dagger.”
She nodded and rubbed across it with the wet sponge.
He closed his eyes. She continued laving his face, trying to employ what Isabel called “a woman’s touch.”
She dabbed lightly at the mottled flesh beneath his eye. “Your bruise is healing.”
He nodded.
Perhaps this wouldn’t be so hard, after all. If she just imagined the Highlander was one of her own knights or her brother…
She moved the sponge along the square edge of his jaw. His face was swarthy, weathered by the elements and shadowed by dark stubble. She remembered the sensation of his beard-roughened skin against her cheek.
Shivering at the memory, she pressed the sponge carefully against his split lip. His mouth opened at her touch, and she could see the white tips of his teeth. Teeth that gleamed when he laughed. Flashed when he snarled. Teeth that might nibble a path of delight along her neck.
Frowning at that wayward thought, she wet the sponge again and gently tucked his hair behind his left ear. There was a healed nick at the top of his ear.
“What happened here?” she asked, tracing the place with a fingertip.
“Fell and hit a rock, reivin’ a coo,” he said, smiling at the memory. Before she could ask him if he was in the habit of stealing cattle, he added, “I was a wee lad, provin’ my mettle to the clan.”
His other ear was flawless. But as she squeezed the sponge to drizzle water down his neck, she found another scar just above his collar bone. This one was clean, angled, and oddly familiar.
“Sword?” she guessed.
“Aye.”
With a warrior’s camaraderie, she pulled aside her leine to show him a similar scar on the side of her neck. “I was twelve. Fighting Jenefer. Didn’t raise my shield fast enough.”
He lifted his brows, impressed. “Twelve? Well, I was old enough to know better,” he admitted, his eyes dancing with humor beneath languorous lids. “I was showin’ off for the lasses.”
She smirked. This was not so bad. They were conversing now. Everything would be fine. As long as she could forget he was her enemy. And a hostage. And the most handsome warrior she’d ever…
Distracted, she dropped the sponge. Her gaze followed its path. It sank betwixt his knees.
Though he quickly intercepted it, retrieving the sponge for her, it wasn’t before she glimpsed what lay beneath the surface of the water, below his hands.
Blood rushed to her cheeks.
Why? She didn’t know. Such a thing shouldn’t disturb her. She’d seen plenty of men with their blades unsheathed. Some of them hung like lifeless eels. Others resembled stiff daggers about to strike. That Colban fell into the second group made her blush with pleasure. At least she knew she wasn’t the only one afflicted by lust.
Clearing her throat, she resumed her task, cupping water over his shoulders and circling the sponge across his chest, trying to be as economical as possible in her movements. He tipped his head back to give her access, and she could feel his gaze burning through the narrow slits of his eyes.
To her consternation, she kept letting her glance slip to his hands, half hoping he’d accidentally reveal himself again. He did not.
Thwarted, she moved behind him. He dutifully leaned forward so she could scrub his back.
“I should warn ye…” he began.
She gasped. A bundle of scars crossed his back diagonally from his right shoulder blade to his left hip. They were long, shallow, and raggedly healed. Only one thing made those kinds of slashes.
He’d been whipped.
Ice flooded her veins as she asked, “Who did this? Morgan?”
“Morgan? Nay!” he was quick to answer. “Indeed, Morgan was the one who saved me.”
“Saved you from whom? His father? A foe?” She clenched the sponge with killing force.
“Neither,” he said with a shrug. “A pair o’ mac Giric men who didn’t want a harlot’s son in the clan. They were hopin’ to whip me to the Devil’s door, I’m certain.” He added, “If it troubles ye to look upon—”
“Nay.” Astonished by her own volatile reaction and how quickly she’d rushed to his defense, she took a calming breath. “Not at all. Our scars are part of who we are, after all.”
Still, she had to wonder what kind of monsters took a whip to a person because of the circumstances of
his birth, circumstances over which he had no control?
As she began to bathe his back with care, she asked, “How old were you when this happened?”
“Ten.”
“Ten?” Her heart sank. “’Tis Ian’s age.”
“I suppose so.”
“And Morgan defended you?”
“As best he could. We were both wee lads. But o’ course, him bein’ the son o’ the laird…”
“They had to do his bidding.”
“Aye.”
For him, the scars might be old and long healed. But to Hallie, the wrongness—and her outrage over it—was fresh.
She didn’t know what they did in the Highlands to lads who perpetrated such diabolical deeds. But if she were his laird…
She squeezed all the water from the sponge in one cold fist. Revenge began to crystallize in her veins as she dreamed up fitting punishments for the kind of brutes who would dare raise a lash to a helpless lad.
Narrowing icy eyes, she asked, “Where are these men now? Did they come with you? Are they staying at Creagor?”
Chapter 24
Amazed at the serious tone of Hallie’s question, Colban craned his neck to look up at her. Retribution rang in her voice. And the cold fire of justice burned in her eyes.
“Who?” he asked. “The ones who did this?”
“Aye.”
“Why do ye ask?” he ventured.
“They should be brought to justice,” she said, scowling. “Stripped of their lands and armor and made to…to herd sheep in the hills.”
He nodded, biting his lip to keep from smiling at a Lowlander’s idea of punishment. The fact that she was up in arms over what had been done to him, that she wished to right that wrong, even after all these years, melted his heart. He was pleased beyond measure that the warrior lass wanted vengeance on his behalf. But he didn’t want her to think the mac Girics let crimes—even those against a harlot’s son—go unanswered.
“They were banished from the clan the next day. Sent away.”
“Sent away where?” she persisted.
“Why do ye want to know?” he said with a lift of his brow. “Do ye intend to chase them to the ends o’ the earth?”
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