And another oversized chunk of green cheese.
She wouldn’t let him spoil her appetite, nor allow his overbearing self to wreak havoc upon her emotions. She need only give him her body. Isolde ate the cheese and reached for more. Her heart would remain pure . . . untouched.
Unsullied.
Hers.
Feeling somewhat better, she washed down the cheese with a hearty gulp of the sweet-tasting mead.
“You fair astound me, milady,” came her captive’s deep voice, honeyed and smooth, yet still laced with unmistakable mockery . . . and totally spoiling the taste of the thick mead flowing innocently down her throat.
Isolde set down the tankard at once. “How so, milord?” she challenged him, placing the same irreverent emphasis on “milord” as he’d used when addressing her as “his lady.”
His mouth curved in a slow smile that would’ve been devastating in its sheer potency had its warmth reached his eyes. Instead, his dark gaze flicked coolly over the generous helping of roasted seabird she’d piled high on the thick-slabbed trencher of brown bread set before her.
Embarrassment flooded her. She hadn’t realized she’d taken such a large portion.
“For a maid, you are possessed of a most hearty appetite,” Donall the Bold commented. “I am wondering if all your appetites are so . . . healthy?”
Her breath caught at the hidden meaning behind his dry observation. She might yet be virtuous, but she was by no means ignorant. And what she hadn’t known about the things men and women do together, the joy woman, Evelina, had told her.
In great and shocking detail.
Determined to ignore her rising agitation, and especially the way his false smiles made her blood quicken, she lifted her spoon, intent on finishing her soup.
“I haven’t eaten since yestermorn,” she said, and her stomach growled as if to prove her hunger. “You’ll surely agree I need all my strength, and my wits, to properly deal with t-this situation that’s been thrust upon me.”
“Thrust upon you?” For once both of his brows shot upward.
“Aye.” She gave him a sharp look, daring him to claim otherwise.
But despite her best efforts to occupy herself with finishing her meal, ill ease pursued her with unflagging persistence. A pulsing heat inched its way up her throat, and became more bothersome with each moment she was forced to endure his disturbing perusal.
“Must you stare?” She set down her spoon, her raging hunger insignificant next to the turmoil his brazen scrutiny unleashed inside her.
“You are disturbed by my looking at you?” His brow furrowed but a hint of pure devilry gleamed in his dark brown eyes. “Do correct me if I misunderstood, but that which you would have me do for you, namely take you to wife, if I was wont to oblige you, would involve much more than merely gazing across a table at you.”
Isolde’s patience thinned. “I told you, I seek an alliance, not marriage.”
“A pact that must be negotiated behind a barred bedchamber door? With me attached to your bedpost?”
“Are you not hungry?” she quipped.
Another of his lazy smiles slid across his face. “Ne’er have I been more ravenous.”
“Then eat your fill, there is naught stopping you.”
For a moment, he looked close to laughter again, but then the smile that had been playing across his sensuous lips faded, and a dark, somber look settled over his features. “You err, Isolde of Dunmuir,” he said, the rich timbre of his deep voice oddly stirring. “There is much that prevents me from staving the hunger consuming me this moment.”
Undaunted, she shoved the platter of roasted seabird toward him. “The gannet is plump and tender . . . delicious.”
“Plump?” He eyed the platter skeptically, his gaze skimming first over the gannet’s crisp-roasted, golden breast, then boldly lighting upon her own. “I would not say plump.” He narrowed his eyes then, and she could almost feel the heat of his gaze upon her flesh.
With deliberate slowness, he lifted the tankard in sardonic toast. “But of a certainty, well formed, tender, and succulent.”
Pretending not to have understood the ribald undertones in his silkily spoken words, nor to have noticed his brazen stare, Isolde lowered her own gaze to the spread of victuals Cook had undoubtedly taken great care to prepare.
Rather than scoff at her voracious appetite, Donall the Bold ought be grateful. If those in Dunmuir’s kitchen weren’t aware of her appreciation of fine and plentiful viands, there would be less food to share with him.
In addition to the roasted gannet, Cook had sent up a steaming mazer of leek soup and a goodly portion of soft green cheese delicately flavored with herbs. Precious little remained of the cheese, but she hadn’t yet touched the small spiced cakes and the large ewer of honey-sweetened mead was more than ample for two.
Certainly not a noble feast, but the repast, though humble, had been carefully prepared and was the best Dunmuir’s kitchen could presently conjure.
Those who supped belowstairs had contented themselves with the leek soup, of necessity much watered-down, coarse black bread, and simple ale.
Indeed, she’d rather down bitter ale and suffer through watery soup along with everyone else, but Cook enjoyed providing Dunmuir’s chieftain with the best victuals he could. His pride would be sorely dented if she bade him to serve her the meager fare doled out in the great hall.
Swallowing her resentment at the deprivations her people had to bear and at having to endure the MacLean’s taunts and stares, Isolde dipped her spoon into her soup. A delicious aroma rose from the mazer, and much to her dismay, her too-long neglected stomach gave forth another low grumbling noise the instant the fragrant steam reached her nose.
“Do keep eating. I enjoy watching you.” The MacLean’s voice, rife with undercurrents, sliced through the silence. “Indeed, if I were of a humor to—”
“Wedding you ne’er entered my mind,” Isolde declared before he could finish whatever slur he’d meant to bestow upon her.
Far from appearing chagrined, the trace of amusement in his eyes blossomed into a merry twinkle. “As I was about to say, were I of a humor to have you, which I am not, such a robust appetite as you display would undoubtedly make our time together most interesting.”
Isolde’s spoon froze halfway to her mouth. She fixed him with a look she hoped would wither the tartness from his too-loose tongue. “I am not a bawd, Sir Donall.”
“Yet you would play a bawd’s game. A game that sends trepidation into the very fiber of your maidenly heart.” He peered sharply at her hand, his all-knowing gaze taking in the way her fingers clenched her spoon. “Aye, for all your daring, sweeting, you are afraid.”
“I fear naught. Least of all you.”
“Then mayhap you should.” A wholly different light came into his eyes and Isolde’s heart turned over at the transformation. “I am not a man to have his passions trifled with, Lady Isolde.”
To her growing mortification, he reached across the table, pried her fingers from around the spoon, then upturned her hand. His dark gaze not leaving her face, he trailed one finger down the sensitive flesh of her palm.
She jerked in reaction, a startled gasp escaping her lips. His touch, brief though it’d been, had sent heated tingles racing up the length of her arm. And now, afterward, a strange warmth lingered where his hand still cradled hers.
A stealthy heat that seeped straight through her resistance and slowly spread through her entire body.
Even the tops of her ears burned!
“Or did you not have me hauled up here, to your bedchamber, so you could . . . trifle with my passions?”
“Of all the cheek!” She tried to yank free of his grasp, but his fingers encircled her hand like bands of steel.
“Be wary, my lady, of what you purpose to achieve.” He gave her hand a brief squeeze. “Your folly could get you burned.”
His taunt let loose, he released her hand, leaned back against the bedpost,
and crossed his arms.
Her bedpost.
Her bed.
And yet he sat there, a self-satisfied look on his bonnie face, appearing completely relaxed . . . at home.
As if he were laird and master of Dunmuir Castle and not she.
“If not to offer yourself to me in marriage nor, as you deny, to have me initiate you into the joys of carnal pleasures,” he goaded her, “then why all the secrecy? What mysterious revelation do you care to make, or expect to hear from me, that cannot be broached in a dungeon cell?”
“My reasons are my own and shall remain thus for a while at least.” She clung to the image of his hands stained with her sister’s blood rather than acknowledge how indecently attractive he looked lounging so casually upon her bed, one massive shoulder resting against her bedpost.
He emanated power, carefully restrained anger, and something she couldn’t define. An elusive something she recognized as having to do with the natural urgings Evelina had claimed flared hot between men and women.
Certain men and women.
The joy woman had called such stirrings a rare and precious gift.
A special occurrence Evelina professed to have experienced only once: with the unnamed benefactor for whose love she’d abandoned her lucrative trade.
Isolde helped herself to another bite of cheese. If she concentrated on eating, maybe she could rid herself of the lurid images Evelina’s instructions sent parading through her head.
But the wild and base acts pranced on, marching with shameless abandon all over her maidenly sensitivities. Most alarming of all, the brazen images now bore faces. Hers and the face of the man who’d visited her dreams the night of Beltaine.
Her soul mate according to Devorgilla.
A man who bore a disconcerting resemblance to Donall MacLean.
Isolde shuddered and snatched another piece of cheese.
“How much of a while do I have, then?” The MacLean’s deep voice shattered the spell he’d cast over her with his damnable touch and his striking . . . maleness.
“A sennight, a fortnight?” he demanded. “A day?”
Isolde peered at him, her mind still befuddled, her senses even now reeling with torrid images. “Hmmm?”
Impatience glittering in his eyes, Donall the Bold shot to his feet. He braced his hands on his hips and scattered every last wispy illusion tumbling through her mind with the sheer weight of his stare.
“Lady, I have listened to the rants of your graybearded worthies. The oversized buffoon and his cohort standing guard outwith your door are overeager to visit all manner of unpleasantness upon me.” His contempt leaped between them, palpable and menacing. “Should they make good their threats, I shall be offering my felicitations to my Maker in one month’s time.”
He slammed his fist on the table. “One month,” he thundered. “And you order me bathed and affixed to your bed yet refuse to tell me why or how long you would see me suffer through this perverse form of torture?”
“It is not my will to torture you.”
“Nay? You torment me by your very presence and ’tis well I think you know it.” He towered over her, his face dark with rage. “What is your will?”
Trembling, Isolde pushed to her feet, intending to shove her chair between herself and his wrath, but his arm shot out and he seized hold of her, his fingers digging into the tender flesh of her upper arm.
Before she could voice a protest, Bodo burst between them, his hackles raised, his barks piercing. The MacLean released her at once. Her pulse racing, she snatched up the snarling dog, pulling him close against her chest, as much to soothe him as to ease her own agitation.
“I do not have the frivolous leisure of time, your most fair ladyship,” Donall seethed, his voice restrained though fury still blazed in his eyes. “Why am I here?”
“So I can save you,” Isolde breathed, unable to stop the hastily whispered words from slipping past her lips.
“Save me?”
She nodded. “Aye.”
Incredulity rendered Donall speechless. Stunned, he gaped at her, a plethora of possibilities whirling through his head. And not a one of them made a whit of sense. The wench had a warped view of the world if she thought to fatten him up nightly, keeping him alive for the sole purpose of driving him to madness with her bountiful charms, only to surrender him to the whims of her crazed menfolk come the morn.
Her henchmen had taken much pleasure in assuring him his visits to her bedchamber were to be of short duration, naught but a brief reprieve from the onerous agonies they meant to inflict upon him by the light of day.
Donall swore under his breath and raked a hand through his still-damp hair. “By all that’s holy, woman, I want neither your food, the lunacy of being shackled to your bed, nor your deliverance from whatever ills you mean to save me from.”
He paused, turning away from her to pinch the bridge of his nose. Saints, but the world had careened out of control of late! His household hovered on the verge of disaster, he’d walked blindly into a trap he should have seen coming at him full-tilt, and the lady would claim she wants to save him.
“What I want, Isolde of Dunmuir, is out of here.” He
wheeled around to face her. “Now.”
She shook her head. “That, sir, is an impossibility.”
“Yet you vow to save me?” he roared, balling his hands to tight fists to counter the tension thrumming through him.
She clutched her dog tight and peered at him from amber-colored eyes gone overbright. The entire length of her trembled, yet she lifted her chin and met his glower without flinching. And curse him to the gates of hell and back, but he couldn’t help but marvel at her braw courage in the face of his blustering.
Did you kill her, Iain?
Swear by the Rood your quick temper had naught to do with this foul deed.
Donall’s own words came back to haunt him, a repetitive drone in the darkest corner of his heart, cutting him to the bone and chiding him for the swiftness with which he’d let his own temper get the better of him.
The wench began inching backward, a slow and cautious retreat, leaving naught but her vacated chair and a lingering trace of her wildflower scent, within an arm’s length of where he stood.
That she feared him, felt the need to flee from him, despite her valiant show of bravery, dealt him a more severe blow than the combined lot of her misguided minions could dare hope to achieve.
Including the giant.
Awash with shame at having frightened her, Donall took a step forward but the cold iron clasped around his ankle halted his progress, stopping him as irrevocably as recalling his own words to Iain had capped his rage.
Careful to keep his voice calm and his mien unthreatening, he repeated his question, “Why, and how do you purport to save me?”
To his relief, she stopped her backward retreat, but the way her fingers dug into her little dog’s fur bespoke her continued nervousness. “Exactly how, I am not yet sure,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes. “As for why, ’tis self-preservation. My own and that of every man, woman, and child residing under my roof or within the realm of my responsibility.”
Donall folded his arms. “You fear the wrath of the MacLeans should I be put to death?”
“Aye,” she affirmed, her face still pale. Nigh colorless save the lone freckle gracing the curve of her left cheek.
And, damn his fool hide, but his fingers itched to reach out and touch it.
His brows snapped together in a fierce scowl.
No doubt thinking he meant to lash out at her again, she spun around and hastened to the hearth, her black skirts pooling out behind her, her long braids swaying, their lush tips just brushing her sweetly rounded hips.
The devil take him, but his fingers itched to take hold of those braids, too. Undo them and revel in the silken mass he knew her unbound tresses would be.
What he’d do with her hips didn’t bear thinking about.
It was a blessing she ke
pt her back to him, for his frown raged even more fierce now. His blood ran thick and hot even as his fury coursed cold and uncompromising through every inch of him.
He stared long and hard at her rigid back, her squared shoulders, and the proud tilt of her head. The woman had already proven herself a consummate liar when she’d declared her foul-smelling tonic to be a freckle-banishing remedy.
And she’d lied to him just now, too.
Exactly how she meant to save him, she wasn’t sure, she’d claimed.
Ha!
The lass knew what she was about and then some.
He knew, too.
Without a doubt.
Her intent was glaringly apparent . . . it loomed behind him in all its four-postered glory.
Loomed and waited.
As he, too, would wait.
For the first opportunity to free himself and Gavin and put Dunmuir’s half-crumbling walls behind him.
Pompous graybeards, comely mistress, looming bed, and
all.
Chapter Five
THE WENCH TOYED with him.
With the well-practiced skill of a princeling’s pampered harlot, she circled him, her lithe form swaying to some silent music only she heard. ’Round and ’round him she twirled, boldly enticing him with the smooth warmth of her supple curves one moment, only to pull away the next.
Always circling.
Ever teasing.
Rousing.
And wearing naught but her own creamy skin, the glorious mass of her unbound hair, and the rosy glow of the dying hearth fire.
She held a length of shimmering silk in her hands and used it in ways that would send him to his knees anon if she didn’t soon grant him surcease from her lascivious display.
Her hips gently rocking, her eyes alight with all manner of licentious promise, she twirled the silk into a rope and slipped its taut length between her legs. For one agonizingly long moment, she held it there, pulled tight against the lush tangle of red-gold curls shielding her womanhood.
Slowly, torturously slow, she began drawing the rope back and forth in an intimate caress. Her eyes drifted shut, a soft sigh escaped her, and a look of pure, exquisite ecstasy slipped over her face.
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