“I dinna need your help. Move out of the way, Alex.”
“Jump and let me catch you.”
“I can do it myself!”
“Dinna be stubborn,” he hissed, his arms extended wide. “ ’Tis too great a distance for—”
Mr. Ambleside’s furious voice broke the silence. “Robbers! Thieves! Wake up, you fools! Search the house!”
Kitt took a quick step sideways and leapt. She might have landed safely, if Alex hadn’t lurched to catch her. He lost his balance and fell, and she plummeted down on top of him.
Kitt knew the instant she rolled to a stop that she had hurt herself. She lay frozen, the breath knocked out of her, afraid to move, her left leg bent back at an awkward angle.
“Kitt?”
“ ’Tis Lady Katherine to you,” she wheezed.
“How badly are you hurt?” Alex said, untangling himself and kneeling beside her. “Do I dare move you?”
Kitt moaned. “I dinna know. My leg …”
His hands followed the course of her twisted leg from thigh to ankle. “I dinna feel any broken bones.”
Kitt couldn’t speak. Her heart was clogging her throat. Alex’s touch had been impersonal, but she had felt heat in each spot where his fingertips grazed her thigh, her knee, her calf, her ankle. She wanted to move, to escape his touch, but her leg wouldn’t cooperate. “Help me straighten out my leg,” she said.
She had to clench her teeth to keep from sobbing aloud as he unbent her injured knee. Tears pooled, and when she blinked, one slid from the corner of her eye.
“Why couldn’t you just let me catch you?” he muttered, brushing the tear from her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “Would it be so awful to admit you need a man’s help?”
Kitt felt a queer tightness in her chest. It was tempting to lay her burdens on Alex’s broad shoulders. But self-reliance was so ingrained she did not know how. “You can help me to my feet,” she said at last. Even that was a concession, whether he recognized it or not.
He put his hands under her arms from behind and lifted her as easily as a feather. “Can you stand by yourself?”
She tried putting weight on her left leg, but the pain was excruciating. “I dinna think so.”
He swept her up into his arms. “And dinna tell me not to be carrying you to safety!”
She felt very small and very feminine in his arms. She put her arm around his neck to support her upper body and felt the hair at his nape. So soft, for a man who was so hard everywhere else. “Do you have any idea where we’re going?” she asked.
“ ’Tis only a short way to the postern door, which leads down a path to the cliffs above the sea. From there, we can make our way back to the cottage.”
“You’ve thought of everything,” she said with a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Alex.” She tried to keep from leaning her head against him, but after a while, she gave up and leaned her cheek against his throat.
“Am I hurting you?” he asked, once they were a safe distance from the castle.
Her knee did hurt from all the jostling, and not just a little. But she didn’t want him to slow down. The sooner she was home, the sooner she would be out of his arms. She liked it much more than she should. “I’ll manage,” she said. “Just get me home, Alex.”
“I suppose Moira will know what to do,” he said.
She bit her lip, then said, “I dinna want to wake Moira. I told her we were visiting tenants this evening. I didna want her to know the truth.”
“Why not?”
Kitt chuckled ruefully. “She’d nag. I can already hear her. ‘Be careful, Kitty. ’Tis too dangerous, Kitty. Let someone else do it, Kitty.’ I’d rather keep this business to myself.”
She felt Alex stumble before he began walking even faster, jarring her knee with every step. She gasped and clutched at his neck, pressing her face against his throat to stifle her cry of pain.
“Be strong, little one,” he murmured. “ ’Twill not be long before we’re home.”
Kitt had long since given up being brave by the time Alex laid her on her bed and removed the plaid that had kept her warm in the night air. Once he lit the candle on her bedside table, she had no secrets. Silent tears had dried on her cheeks, and her lower lip was swollen where she had gnawed on it to keep from moaning aloud.
“Let me wake Moira,” he pleaded. “You’re white as the sheets.”
“You can do what must be done,” she said.
He stared down at her and said, “I dinna see how I can treat your knee with you in trousers. They’ll have to come off. If I leave the room, can you manage it alone?”
Kitt imagined trying to do the bending and lifting of body parts that would be necessary to undress herself and grimaced. “I dinna think so.” It was mortifying to think of Alex undressing her, and she saw he wasn’t any more comfortable with the idea than she was.
“We could wake Moira and let her—”
“No,” she interrupted. “You must do it.”
“Now she wants my help,” Alex muttered as he unlaced the heavy men’s work boots she was wearing and eased each one off.
To her surprise he rubbed her toes.
“Any blisters?” he asked.
Who would have thought a body could feel so much in her toes? She stared at him and he stared back. “No,” she said. “No blisters.”
“Well, then …”
The trousers had to come off, but she was wearing very little beneath them. Maybe she could manage it on her own. Kitt tried to roll to her side and groaned as her knee protested.
“Dinna trouble yourself, my lady,” Alex said. “I will undress you.” He paused and muttered, “If it kills me.”
She felt panicky at the thought of Alex’s hands on her. Even more so at the thought of his eyes seeing what his hands revealed.
He picked up the quilt folded at the foot of the bed and spread it over her. Kitt gaped. Such a simple solution to protect her modesty. She gave a relieved sigh at his thoughtfulness. “Thank you, Alex.”
The sigh caught in her throat as he reached right under the covering, his fingertips skimming her belly as he searched for the belt that held up her trousers and unbuckled it. Before she could protest, he grabbed hold of the snug material on either side of her waist and began tugging it down.
“ ’Tis a bit like skinning a squirrel,” he said with a grin. “Can you lift a little?” A moment later he held up her trousers with a triumphant smile and said, “Voilà, chérie! C’est fini.”
A look of stunned surprise crossed his face. Perhaps it was the eloquent-sounding French he’d uttered. More likely it was the memory of having done the same thing to some other woman, Kitt thought cynically. At least the worst was over.
“If you sit up, I can pull that shirt off over your head,” he said.
“What?” Kitt crossed her arms protectively over her chest. “Why would I want my shirt off?”
“So I can tend the scratches on your back.”
“Scratches?”
“From the rose thorns,” he reminded her.
“Oh.” There was no way she could doctor herself. And Alex was right. If the scratches weren’t cleansed, she might very well end up with an infection.
“But this bonnet needs to come off first.” He tugged it off and half of her hair spilled onto her shoulders.
She reached up to pull out the rest of the pins, but he was there before her.
“Let me.”
Kitt sat perfectly still as Alex threaded his fingers through her hair searching for pins. She heaved a shuddering sigh when he finally spoke. “There. I think I’ve got them all.”
The sigh came too soon, because his hands sifted through her hair one last time. “ ’Tis incredibly soft,” he murmured.
“Alex—”
“Now, let’s get that shirt off,” he said almost gruffly.
He reached for the hem with both hands, and she lifted her arms as the shirt came off over her head, then clutched at the quilt and pu
lled it up to cover herself. She was wearing a chemise, but it was old and the material had worn thin.
Alex had the misfortune of catching sight of her rosy nipples beneath the thin cloth before they were hidden from view. “Bloody hell,” he muttered. His body was stretched taut with need. It was torture being forced to touch her and yet not touch her. He had promised to keep his distance. But he had never counted on this.
He kept his eyes riveted on her face as he brushed her hair behind her shoulders. Suddenly, he saw another woman’s face, almost as beautiful, but with eyes as cold as ice. As he stared, the woman’s face contorted with rage, and flecks of spittle flew from her mouth, as her blue eyes filled with loathing.
“Alex, are you all right?”
Alex realized he had taken a step back from the bed. Who was the woman he had seen in his vision? What was she to him? He shook his head to clear the image from his mind. He nearly gasped at the hurt that had come with the memory. What had he done to the woman to make her hate him so?
“Alex, you’re frightening me.”
He wanted to leave, to escape his shadowy past—and Kitt’s tempting presence. But that clearly was not an option. “What is it I’m to do now?” he said, his voice brusque.
“What?”
“You’re the doctor. What should I do?”
She sent him to a cupboard in the kitchen, where she kept her medicinal herbs. When he returned to the bedroom he held a small brown jar in the palm of his left hand and a small red jar in the palm of his right. “Are these the remedies you wanted?”
She nodded. “Hand the brown jar to me. I can do my knee, I think.”
He held it away from her. “Lie down and be still. ’Twill be easier for me to do it.” He set the jars down on the floor, then sat on the edge of the bed and turned the quilt up to expose her bruised and swollen knee. “I’ll try to be gentle,” he said, retrieving the brown jar.
He dipped three fingers into the cool salve and carefully worked it into her flesh, trying not to notice her slender calves and ankles, trying not to think of what lay a few inches above his hand beneath the blanket.
When she moaned, he said, “I’m done. Turn over onto your stomach so I can treat the wounds on your back.”
Gingerly, she shifted her position, giving him an unwanted glimpse of a milk-white breast. Sweat broke out on his forehead. He readjusted the blanket to cover her legs, then turned down the top to reveal an expanse of snow-white skin that had been torn in several places by rose thorns.
“There is blood here that should be washed away. I’ll be back.” He fled the room, but it didn’t take long to retrieve a cloth and a bowl of water. He cleansed her wounds with the cloth, but there was no other way to apply the salve except with his fingers. Her skin was incredibly soft.
The thought of some other man—some man who would never appreciate her pride and her courage—having all of this to himself, made him angry. “I canna think much of your father, to ask what he did of you,” Alex said half to himself.
She angled her head to look at him. “What?”
“To marry where you do not love. To marry an Englishman, whom you claim to hate. It seems a terrible sacrifice.”
He felt her shoulders tense beneath his hands. “I have no choice, Alex. I promised him—”
“Of course you have a choice. You can—”
She pushed herself up on her elbows, once again teasing him with a glimpse of milk-white breast. “Dinna interfere, Alex. You have one job only, and that is to protect me from those who would harm me.”
He felt the flush high on his cheekbones at being put in his place—an inferior place. That damnable pride of his reared its head, provoking him to say, “The one you need the most protection from is yourself!”
“Are you finished?” she said, her eyes stark.
“There are two more wounds I havna touched.”
“Finish,” she said. “And get out.”
He had left the two wounds lowest on her back for last. Actually, they were on the swell of her buttocks. He knew he should not touch her, that he was playing with fire.
“You will have to lie down flat again,” he said.
She glared at him but did as he asked.
He did not resist the urge to caress the curve of her back and had the satisfaction—and torment—of feeling her arch beneath his hand. He was leaning over, almost finished, when his finger accidentally slipped into the crease of her buttocks.
She bolted upright in bed, ramming into his injured nose. “How dare you!”
Alex yelped in pain and grabbed his nose. “What’s wrong with you?”
She gritted her teeth against the pain in her knee and grabbed at the quilt, almost sobbing when her breasts were momentarily exposed. “How dare you take such liberties!”
“Bloody hell, Kitt—”
“Dinna call me that! I’m Lady Katherine to you. Nothing more! Do you hear?”
She looked almost frightened. And very angry. And quite, quite beautiful.
“ ’Twas only a touch,” he said softly.
She visibly shuddered. “ ’Twas a trespass.”
Had his touch been so loathsome? He did not think so. She had responded at first with the slight arch of her back, a quiver, enough to let him know she had enjoyed the feel of his hands caressing her. And now she sought to deny it.
“Touching you—”
“Go away, Alex. Go to bed. Our business is done. I’m tired, and I need to rest.”
“Our business isna done, my lady,” he murmured as he backed out of the room. “But the battle can wait till you’re well enough to continue the fray.”
Chapter 10
Kitt’s palms were sweaty. And all because of a visit to a stone fortress that looked like Sleeping Beauty’s castle—after the hundred years of neglect. The outside walls of Castle Carlisle were overgrown with thorny vines and the expansive lawn was laden with thistles. The path to the door was nearly invisible under a garden of weeds.
No matter how daunting the visit might seem, Kitt had no choice but to go through with it. It had dawned on her, when she considered her clan’s desperate situation, that she might yet save them through marriage—to the Earl of Carlisle. He did, after all, have a contract with Blackthorne that allowed him to purchase the duke’s holdings in Scotland.
She had mentioned the subject to Alex the morning following their burglary of the duke’s estate, while they were on their way to cut more peat for the fire. She had intended to cut the squares herself, when Alex volunteered to help.
She had taken his hands—his strong, but surprisingly uncallused hands—into her own and said, “I dinna think this kind of work is what you’re used to, Alex.”
He had pulled his hands free and said, “My back is strong enough. Give me the spade.”
It quickly became clear that Alex Wheaton had never cut peat in his life. What had he used to heat his home? Kitt wondered.
“ ’Tis done like this,” she said, when he had tried for the second time, unsuccessfully, to shove the spade into the thick peat. She took the spade from him and used the edge of it to cut a square the size she wanted before easing the spade into the cut below the roots and lifting the peat out of the ground.
It was hard work, and she hadn’t managed even that one square before Alex took the spade back from her. He learned quickly, she would grant him that. And he was not afraid of hard work, though from the grimace of pain each time he lifted the spade, he was raising a few blisters.
He had not been working very long before sweat dripped from his brow. He set down the spade and reached for his shirt where it was tucked into his trousers, hesitated, then asked, “May I?”
For an instant Kitt considered saying no. She didn’t want another look—a closer look—at Alex Wheaton’s body. Not after what had happened between them last night. But it would only have been pointing out her discomfort to forbid him. She nodded.
The shirt came off over his head, revealing the sculp
ted body she had so admired the first day she had met him. The dark blond hair on his chest glistened with sweat. Muscles in his arms and back flexed as he picked up the spade and went back to work.
Alex moved with surprising grace and amazing strength as he lifted the peat from the ground and piled it into the wheelbarrow she had brought along to haul it home. He is not unique, she told herself. It is only muscle and sinew and bone.
And yet, watching him made her stomach knot and her throat ache. She could not take her eyes from him. Finally, of course, he became aware of her scrutiny. He paused and raised his gray eyes to meet her own. Kitt’s heart was pounding no less hard than his, though she had merely been watching him work.
“Kitt,” he said softly.
“ ’Tis Lady Katherine to you.”
“No. I think not, Kitt.”
She heard the longing in his voice. The promise. Oh, the promise in that low, grating sound. Of sensual delight. Of undeniable passion. Of dark, forbidden pleasure. She thought of the way he had touched her last night, of the feel of his hands on her flesh.
He had already taken a step toward her when she said, “Remember your place, Alex. And your promise.”
He stayed where he was, but he said, “I am as good a man as any.”
“That is not the point. You must know my life is not my own. I must think always of what is best for my clan.”
“A strong leader is best for them,” he said.
“A strong back isna enough. Nor even a strong will. Something more is required.”
“What is that?”
“Wealth.”
Alex sneered. “Where do you expect to find such a fortune?”
“You are forgetting the Earl of Carlisle,” she said into the silence.
“What about him?”
“I can marry him and save my clan.”
He scowled, dropped the spade, and took a step toward her. “Surely you jest!”
Kitt took a quick step backward. “ ’Tis no jest. You saw the contract. I can marry Carlisle and accomplish the same thing I would have done by deceiving the duke.”
“You’d marry a man you dinna even know?”
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