by Hope Tarr
The Scotsman drew his hand away and Claudia felt the absence of its warmth like the loss of a cherished friend. “Are ye hurt, lass?”
He was tall, so tall she had to tilt her head against the stones to meet his concerned, brown-eyed gaze. She shook her head, as much to answer him as to confirm to herself that it still rested on her shoulders. “I do not think so.”
His lean face registered relief. A tiny trickle of perspiration wended its way down the side of his face, from temple to the high, flat plane of his Viking cheekbone to his square jaw. Trailing its progress, she had the absurd thought that, under more promising circumstances, she might like to catch the bead of moisture on the tip of her tongue.
He dropped his regard. “In that case, ye’ll no be needin’ that wee dagger.”
She followed his downward gaze to the knife she held in a tight-fisted grip at her side. Seeing the dull sheen of crimson tipping the blade, she choked on a gasp. “Mon Dieu, I have killed him!” Her fingers went as weak as her knees and it was only the Scotsman’s quick action in extricating the knife from her limp grasp that saved it from clattering to the floor.
“Dinna fash.” He tucked the weapon inside the leather belt cinched about his tapered waist. Broad of shoulder yet lean about the middle and hips, he put Claudia in mind of the statue of Atlas she once had glimpsed in the gardens of Versailles. “He’ll be havin’ the devil of a headache on the morrow and the wee cut on his shoulder willna feel verra pleasant either but otherwise he’ll no be the worse for wear, which is more than I can say for you.” A small smile tugged one corner of his mouth higher than the other, revealing a fleeting glimpse of teeth that looked to be both strong and white.
Something about that smile seemed to drain the last of the resistance from Claudia’s body. Boneless as an eel, she sagged forward, reaching for him to ground herself as she had the coach door earlier. Cheek pressed against the rock-hard casing of breastbone and ribs, she felt the wave of shock ripple through him, the muscles of torso and arms tautening with tension.
For a moment she thought he would cast her aside, then his big arms enfolded her, closing off her view of the curiosity seekers gathering about them like hungry crows. “Och lass, you’re all but dead on your feet. We’ve to get you to bed and soon.”
The words dragged her from the fog into the present. As much as she would like to go to bed, either alone or with him, she could not.
Linlithgow. Father. She lifted her head from his chest and looked up. “I cannot. I must…” She started, a dog’s sudden growl alerting her to the flicker of movement from behind.
Peering around the broad slope of the Scotsman’s shoulder, she saw her attacker rise to a half-crouch, one hand clutching the scarlet blossom on the shoulder of his shirtsleeve.
And the other fisted about the hilt of a small but lethal-looking knife.
She opened her mouth, and a woman’s voice, her voice, rang out, “Attention! Look out!”
The room seesawed and Claudia with it. Black, spidery shapes crawled about the edges of her vision, reducing her savior’s stunned face to a jumble of colors and shapes. Like a snuffed candle, a single poof extinguished the last of the light, leaving fathomless blackness.
Claudia fainted.
Chapter Two
Fortunately for Jack, the prickly stiffening of the soft hairs at the back of his neck never ever lied. His guardian angel blowing its breath upon him to get his attention, or so his mother had been wont to say. For certain there had been but two times in his nearly thirty years of earthly existence when he’d failed to heed the warning, both in his ninth year. The first had been the day his little brother, Callum, had asked, all innocence, might he not hold Jack’s tabby kitten, Clare, for just the moment. Jack had hesitated, stomach knotted, considering. Just a moment’s wavering, a second’s slackening of his hold on the precious bundle nestled against his chest, but it was enough. If he lived to be as old as Peadair and Pol, Jack would never forget the ugly triumph twisting Callum’s cherub face just before he snatched the cat and dashed off, a shrieking Clare pinioned under one pudgy arm. Nor how his own heart had leapt to lodge in his throat when he’d realized they were heading for the well. Breathing hard, Callum had stood at the side, taunting Jack to “coom and get ’er,” even as he hoisted the howling cat high and then let go. There was that horrible moment, suspended in time, when wee Clare had seemed to hover in midair, white paws splayed and clawing at the emptiness, and then she’d dropped like a stone. A faint plop, plop and then a final, fatal gurgling had confirmed that he was too late.
And then there’d been the day Mam died.
Both times he’d failed to heed the warning wrenching belly and bowels and both times a loved one had been lost forever. The lesson, bitterly learned, was deeply ingrained.
And so even before the woman’s warning scream, Jack’s sixth sense alerted him to his sibling’s impending attack. The slight scuffling behind him, the movement of limbs cutting through currents of still air, the sudden sharp breath that Callum gathered to gird himself just before he lunged—all cued Jack to prepare himself, to make ready.
But there was the woman to consider. The scream seemed to have siphoned the very last of her strength and nerve. Black pupils bulged, nearly obliterating the violet-blue irises. A half-second later those same eyes rolled back and her faerie form slackened.
Jesus, Joseph and Mary.
Jack threw out his arm, catching her before she hit the floor. Cursing beneath his breath, he pinned her to his left side and whipped about, barely in time to dodge a clumsy if lethal thrust to his right. The blade of the sgian dhu missed him by a hairbreadth, snagging on the loose fabric of his jerkin before the momentum of the thrust sent the slighter man sailing forward.
Callum caught himself, landed in a half-crouch and then spun about. Eyes blazing with bloodlust, the whites shot with pink, he spat, “Ye always was one for hidin’ behind a woman’s skirts. Old habits die hard, aye, Jacko?”
Jack thought of the woman’s knife tucked into his belt and hoped he would not be called upon to draw it. “I dinna care to hurt ye, mo bràthair, but I will if ye’ll no see sense and go home.”
“D’ye dare tell me where I may go, ye bloody Sassenach bastard?” Callum’s red-rimmed gaze fell on the woman filling Jack’s left arm and his mouth twisted in a sneer. “Forbye, it seems ye’ve your hands full.”
He circled, weapon at the ready, and Jack knew then that he had no choice. Slight as the French lass was, dead weight was dead weight, and bone and muscle seemed to gain a good stone as he worked to hold her upright with his left arm while keeping his right free to fend off attack. Keeping one eye trained on his opponent, he whistled for his dog. Elf rushed to his side and, satisfied that the girl would have a steadfast guardian, he hunkered down and laid her limp form on the floor.
The vulnerable posture provided his opponent the opening for which he’d been waiting, but then Jack had anticipated that. With a whoop Callum sprang, knife raised. Jack counted to three and then shot up, arcing his right fist in a powerful undercut, knuckles plowing into the hollow of his brother’s midriff in a blow calculated to drive stomach into lungs.
“Ahhhh!” A raw groan ripped forth from Callum’s slack mouth, sending saliva spewing. Doubled over, he dropped to his knees, his arm wound about his belly like a bandage and the knife falling from his unfurled fingers to the floor. “D-damn ye, J-Jacko. Ye’ll be s-sorry, I t-tell ye.” He stretched his free hand toward the knife, black-rimmed fingernails raking the floorboards in his struggle to reel it in.
Milread, who’d pushed her way to the forefront of the fight, hurried forward and clamped the heel of her clog onto the flat of the blade. “Now, now, my fine laddie. There’s been blood enough spilled on my clean boards this day wi’out adding the more. I’ll just borrow this wee dagger and see it safe.” She snatched up the sgian dhu and tucked it inside the bone lining of her bodice.
The excitement over, the crowd began to disperse. The few stragglers
went back to nursing their pints and Alistair to keeping the bar. Callum’s mates, sobered by the sight of their ringleader brought to his knees, closed in to help him to his feet.
Watching them bear him toward the door, Jack could only shake his head. His half-brother’s hatred of him ran deep and though Jack had never kent the cause, he’d long ago learned not to fash over what wasn’t in his power to change. But then there were those things he could do something about.
The French lass lay on the sticky floor where he’d been forced to deposit her, Elf dutifully flanking her side. “Good, lass,” he said to the dog and went down on his knees beside the woman’s prone form. He slipped an arm beneath the sharp shoulder blades and gently lifted her against him. “Mistress?” He cupped her cheek, registering its satin smoothness even as he gave it a gentle pat. “Mistress, can ye hear me?”
That was when it struck him that he didn’t even ken her name. Nor she his. Their acquaintance such as it was had been brief, to be sure, but definitely memorable. Odd that it should end with them as strangers. Odder still that the prospect should prompt him to feel such a sharp stab of mingled disappointment and regret.
“Ah well, a rose by any other name, aye lass?” Steeling himself to ignore the swell of what promised to be a truly bonny bottom, he slid a second arm beneath her and rose to his feet. Of Milread he asked, “Has Alistair a room to let, preferably one where she can be private until the coach leaves on the morrow?”
The barmaid straightened from the table she’d been clearing and twisted about to glance at the girl. “I dinna ken if we’re full up or no but the lass can share mine if the need be.”
Jack shook his head. “I dinna like to ask it of ye. We dinna ken anything about her, no so much as her name.”
Milread rolled her hazel eyes. “Oh aye, and a verra dangerous character she looks tae be, too.”
Jack ventured a downward glance to the dark head trustingly tucked into the curve of his shoulder. Long-lidded eyes closed in sleep and lips sweetly parted, the lass looked more celestial than earthly, the very picture of divine innocence, a dark angel fallen to ground or, more properly, into his very arms.
Mindful of how appearances so often deceived, of how very un-angel-like the lass had behaved before she’d dropped off, Jack tore his gaze away and turned it up to Milread. “All the same, I’ve coin to spend and I suppose Alistair’s pockets will do as well as any other’s.”
The wretch he’d escorted into eternity that morning had had more steel in his spine than most, though not a great deal of trust. Once positioned beneath the beam, he’d pressed the purse he held between his hobbled hands into Jack’s gloved palm and urged, “Take it, man, for pity’s sake. I dinna wish tae be gaggin’ at the end o’ the rope like my da did.”
Twice Jack had refused. On the third plea he’d relented and accepted but only to give the puir bastard peace of mind so he’d hold steady and still. Blood money, he’d thought, and vowed to drop it in the parish poor box before the week’s end. But now it occurred to him that both charity and necessity might be better served if he used it to pay the French lassie’s bed and board.
He carried his burden over to the bar, Elf trailing. Ignoring the gawking men fanned about the rail, he addressed himself to the innkeeper. “Have ye a room to let? A private one?”
From inside the bar Alistair looked up from the oily cloth he’d been using to mop the spillage. “A need to be private, have we now?” Mouth twitching, he slid his gaze over the unconscious female in Jack’s arms. “’Tis glad I am tae see ye finally take an interest, laddie, but ye should ken there’s a livelier time tae be had when they’re awake.”
A burst of laughter fired about the bar, followed by a bevy of bawdy comments that brought the heat sizzling into Jack’s neck and cheeks. Ignoring the poke of an elbow in his side, he held his gaze level and his temper in check as he waited for the rumpus to die down. Eventually it did, and he asked, “Have you a room or no?”
Alistair raked a stubby hand through the nonexistent hair that twenty-odd years ago had grown thick and brown as a chestnut atop his now shiny pate. “Oh aye, I do, but only the one, and it’ll cost ye dear.”
In neither mood nor position to haggle, Jack set his jaw. “How much?”
Alistair hesitated, his mouth working in silent calculation, and then announced, “Three pounds six.”
“Done.”
From halfway across the taproom, Milread slammed her tray of emptied tankards down atop the nearest table. “Why ye clarty son of a gypsy,” she spat, marching up to the bar. “Ye’re nay better than a highwayman t’ask such a sum.” She swung about to Jack, pinched his arm. “Dinna pay him. The lass can share my bed.”
Jack opened his mouth to answer that he could well mind his own affairs, but before he could, Alistair threw up the pass-through, tore off his apron and stomped to the front of the bar. “Oh she can, can she?” Hands fisted on his beefy hips, he added, “It so happens, my fine lassie, that yer bed, as ye care tae call it, lies within my inn, and so long as it does I’ll no thole yer lettin’ it out tae prospective payin’ customers.”
“Oh ye’ll no, will ye,” Milread shot back, eyes blazing, and Jack could see she was working herself up to a fine rant on his behalf. “Well, let me just…”
Jack closed his eyes and called inwardly for patience. Until that day he and Callum had not so much as spoken a word to each other in nigh on ten years, and their recent explosive encounter had left him drained. His eyes burned from going too long without the salve of sleep and the tension knotting the muscles of his neck and shoulders made him long for his bed, lonely and empty though it was. But before he laid his head on his own pillow, he would see the wee woman in his arms safely settled. And if that meant paying an arm and a leg to tuck her up in a private room, removed from Callum’s or anyone else’s reach until her coach left the day next, then so be it.
Patience at an end, he raised his voice a good notch so that he might be heard above the shouting. “Enough! Close your clappers, the both of ye.” He swung about to Alistair, nearly clipping him with the Frenchwoman’s wee feet. “I’ll take it.” Spearing the innkeeper with a hard look, he added, “But mind ye’re no stingy with the peat or the washing water. A full bath with hot water, ye ken, and a proper supper to go with it.”
Poking her flaxen head between the two men, Milread piped up, “Oh, he’ll no hold back, I’ll see tae it. The lass shall have all her due—and more.”
Alistair muttered something about serving wenches getting above themselves but in the end he nodded his assent.
“Verra well,” Jack said, already starting for the set of side stairs that led to the guest chambers above. “Point the way.”
“The French,” Milread announced not five minutes later, with a knowing nod to the unconscious woman in the center of the worn counterpane, “have verra hard heads.”
Standing by the bedside, Elf’s breath fanning the side of his leg, Jack tried to draw comfort from those words. Tried and failed. Hard though the lassie’s head might be, her pale flesh was satin soft, the bones beneath as fragile as those of a wee bird.
Swallowing a sigh, he dipped the cloth into the stoneware washbasin Milread had filled with cool water, wrung it out and then gently laid it over the bright bruise, Callum’s mark, swelling the girl’s sharply boned cheek. He looked across the bed to Milread, bent to settle a coverlet over the girl’s stocking feet, several delicate toes protruding through the holes. “I dinna suppose ye’ve any smelling salts?”
“Oh aye,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “I always keep a barrel or two of the stuff on hand just in case some French lassie takes it into her head tae faint on my floorboards.”
Shoulders tensing, he said, “I wish I had my wee box with me. Helichrysum would help considerable to cut the pain.”
That drew Milread’s chortle. “She doesna seem tae me tae be feelin’ any pain.” He shot her a sharp look and, contrite, she quickly added, “Och, lad, dinna fa
sh yerself. She’ll be on her feet in nay time. Like as no she’s more in need o’ good, nourishing food than your herbs, skilled though ye are. I’ll fetch some broth from the kitchen the verra moment she comes awake, and if she keeps that down there’ll be solid fare tae follow.”
A muffled moan rose from the bed, drawing his gaze downward. The lassie shifted onto her side, kicking free of the coverlet and knocking off the folded cloth. Like a parched man suddenly handed a glass of cool ale, Jack drank in the purity of her profiled features: the feathered arc of jet brow and the long lid of the closed eye beneath. The delicate bones that gave subtle shape to nose and cheek and jaw. The full, softly parted mouth, its top lip a pale pink ribbon, the bottom a deeper hue of rose and so full and generous and ripe that just staring at it prompted a sharp tug in the vicinity of his groin.
So this was lust.
Until now sexual need had been a solitary affair, a basic physical call little different from hunger or thirst and detached from anything or anyone outside the sphere of his own body. But this, this feeling blossoming inside him was a different beast entirely. The girl, stranger and foreigner though she was…he wanted her. That he couldn’t have her, even if she’d been well and willing, suddenly seemed a minor point. He wanted her and in the wanting, the lusting, lay his downfall. No simple lust, this, for lurking beneath its surface was the drive to shelter and defend, to comfort and heal. And it was those soft sentiments, more so than the lusting, that scared the hell out of him.
The sound of a throat being cleared brought him back into the awareness that he was not alone. He turned away from the vision on the bed, straightened his features and said, “I’ll be going then. You’ll send word when she’s gone?”
“Och, ye dinna mean tae stay ’til she wakes?” A wicked grin stretched Milread’s wide mouth wider still and she added, “Ye could feed her like ye do that wee birdie o’ yers.”
“Lady is a hawk and no so wee and like the other beasties will be cross at havin’ to wait so long for her supper.” He cast his gaze to the narrow window where a feeble shaft of late afternoon sunlight gilded the last droplets of clinging rain. “Forbye, the rain’s let up. Best Elf and I set out before it starts again.”