Ann Lethbridge

by Her Highland Protector

  With Jenna snuggled up against him, he wasn’t sure how long he could stand the torture.

  Short of leaving the protection of the canvas and sitting up in front with Sean, which would wake her, he didn’t see any way to end it. Carefully, he tucked a pillow under her cheek and eased his shoulder and his leg out from beneath her. Breath held, he shifted until his body was at the very edge of the mattress. Moments later, she was once more pressed up hard against him, one leg draped over his knee, her hand very close to...

  Hellfire. He gently lifted her arm away.

  ‘What?’ she mumbled.

  ‘You are crowding me,’ he said. ‘Roll over.’ Back to back, he just might be able to survive.

  In agony, he waited for her to break the contact ‘I’m cold,’ she murmured.

  He was burning up.

  He sat up and found the quilt at the bottom of the bed where one of them must have kicked it off and pulled it over her. ‘Better?’

  ‘I dreamed we were back on the other cart,’ she said in a small voice. ‘When I thought I was all alone with those men. I was terrified.’

  ‘You are safe now.’ At least he hoped so. He felt under the pillow for his pistol. He breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Go back to sleep.’

  She was silent for a good few heartbeats and he started to relax, to think he had come off pretty well. ‘I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see them.’

  Damn. Damn the men. And damn him for his surge of lust at the sound of her voice.

  ‘Will you hold me? Just until I fall asleep?’

  Inwardly he cursed long and hard as he put an arm beneath her and drew her close. He felt a shudder ripple through her body. She had been so strong, so courageous—he hadn’t realised she was also afraid. He was such a dolt.

  ‘Will you kiss me?’ she whispered.

  His blood roared to life, blistering hot, racing south. It was all he could do not to groan at the pleasurable pain of it. ‘Jenna, I don’t think that is wise.’

  ‘When you kiss me, every bad thought goes out of my head,’ she said.

  And every thought out of his. A very dangerous thing, because he tended to forget he was supposed to be a gentleman, not a schoolboy with a bad case of lust. Only it went far deeper than lust, because he wanted to possess her, not just physically. He wanted more, so much more. He could not believe he was so utterly full of desire for this woman who reminded him of a faery.

  Had been since the first time they kissed. All right, now he’d admitted it. But it didn’t mean he could do anything about it.

  ‘Jenna,’ he groaned, ‘we can’t. You are perfectly safe.’

  ‘Hmmph,’ she said and turned her back to him. He let go a sigh of relief and lay staring up into the dark, listening to the sound of her breathing, until he was sure she had fallen back to sleep. He just wasn’t sure he would be able to resist the temptation to pull her into the cradle of his body to keep her warm.

  * * *

  Jenna’s stomach felt hollow. Hungry. As a hunter. And then another more urgent need required attention. It was still dark. She sat up, realising the wagon had stopped. Oh, had they arrived? Beside her she felt Niall move.

  ‘Are we here?’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘We must be.’

  ‘Sean?’ Niall said.

  The now-familiar sound of things moving at the back of the cart. ‘Out you come,’ Sean said.

  Jenna squeezed through the opening he had made and he held her hand as she jumped down. She looked around her expecting to see the castle, nearby or in the distance. Nothing but heather in the light of the rising sun. Right now she didn’t care. She made straight for the nearest gorse bush. Taking care of business was the only thing on her mind.

  As she crouched behind her bush, she could hear the low rumble of male voices and then silence.

  When she returned to the wagon, Sean waved to a clump of gorse on the other side of the wagon. ‘He’ll be back in a moment.’ He busied himself making a fire.

  Jenna frowned. It seemed to be getting darker, not lighter. She looked at the horizon. There weren’t any clouds and the sun was definitely sinking. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Sunset.’

  Sunset was about nine. In the evening. ‘It can’t be,’ she said. ‘That means—’

  ‘It means we slept for half of a night and all of a day,’ Niall said, striding towards them, sounding hugely irritated.

  ‘Then why aren’t we at Carrick?’

  ‘If we were ever heading towards Carrick,’ Niall said, his grim expression caught in the dying rays of the sun as he stared hard at Sean, who had got his fire started and was hanging a pot on a tripod.

  ‘Sean?’ Jenna said. ‘Where are we?’

  The gypsy looked up. ‘We are farther from Carrick than we are from Braemuir.’

  She wanted to shake him. To put her hands around his neck and choke him. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Niall put his hands on his hips. ‘What the blue blazes is going on here, Sean? You were supposed to return us to Carrick, not drag us halfway across Scotland.’

  The gypsy spat into the fire and muttered something under his breath. ‘Please do not dishonour my hearth with your curses.’

  Niall glared at him. ‘Answer me, man.’

  Sean shrugged and looked at Jenna, his dark eyes glinting. ‘She is needed at Braemuir.’

  ‘I was on my way. Soon. With a husband. I said so in my letter.’

  ‘Ah, the husband.’ His gaze slid to Niall and back to her. ‘I heard about the test. Did you choose wisely?’

  She gasped. ‘How could you have heard?’

  ‘Servants’ gossip spreads like ripples in a pond.’

  ‘If you heard about it, why have us abducted?’ Niall threw at him.

  ‘I had no hand in your abduction.’

  ‘What do you call this?’ Niall looked ready to throttle the man who sat so calmly beside the fire as if all was well with the world.

  ‘I call it helping a friend.’ He raised a brow. ‘There is a burn yonder,’ he went on as if the air wasn’t crackling with outrage. ‘You will wash before dinner, chavvis, yes?’

  ‘You are a scoundrel,’ Jenna said. She looked at Niall. ‘But I don’t think he is with them. I really don’t.’

  Niall shook his head and took a deep breath. ‘All right. So we will take your word for it. But that doesn’t mean to say I trust you.’

  The gypsy flashed them a smile and held out two chips of soap and what looked like a bundle of washing. ‘Clean clothes,’ he said at Jenna’s look of enquiry. ‘Drying rags. You will need to wash what you have on. It stinks of fish. Chummer,’ he said, insistently pointing to a rise beyond which she assumed there must be a stream. ‘Or not eat.’

  ‘I’m starving,’ Niall said, ‘and filthy. I see no reason not to do as he asks.’ He took Jenna’s hand and led her through the heather.

  When they were out of earshot of the camp, he turned to her. ‘We could make a run for it, right now.’

  So that was why he had given in so easily. ‘I know it sounds strange, but I don’t think he means us any harm. Mr Hughes would never have sent him had it been otherwise. We should give him the benefit of the doubt.’

  He looked grim. ‘I tend to agree, but I would hate to be wrong. Under the circumstances, I plan to watch him very carefully from now on, I can assure you.’

  They continued on to what turned out to be a shallow, fast-flowing burn. Niall emptied the bundle onto the ground. As Sean had said, there were rags for drying and clothes for both of them. A blouse and kirtle with petticoats for her, and shirt and trousers for him. She stared at the stream. ‘It looks cold.’

  ‘Something I’m used to,’ Niall said and removed his shirt. A beautiful chest and shoulders of carved muscle and bone and sinew. Jenna could not stop from watching the slow unveiling. When he began to unbutton his breeches she gasped.

  ‘Turn your back,’ he said tersely. ‘If I’m going to feel clean, I m
ust needs wash all of me.’

  Reluctantly she did as he asked, but risked a peek as he pulled off his boots and peeled the buckskin fabric down his legs. The flanks and rear end bared to her view were hard and firm. So unlike her own soft curves. Her body gave a little pulse of pleasure. She turned her gaze away, shocked at the delicious needy sensation.

  She heard him splash into the water and gasp. ‘Hell, that is cold,’ he said.

  She risked another peek over her shoulder. The dying sun made his beautiful torso glow with warm light. Her fingers tingled with longing to touch those beautiful shoulders, smooth her hands over the expanse of his back.

  And when he climbed up the bank, her body clenched at the beautiful sight. The mat of hair on his chest glistening with drops of water, the wide expanse of delineated ribs, the ridges of muscled stomach, the slender hips and his male part, nested deep in black curls. So much smaller than she recalled it from her exploring fingers in the dark of that horrid cart.

  He picked up a towel, rubbing at his body, his legs, his back, his behind and finally that part of him that she found so fascinating.

  He glanced around, caught her looking and shook his head at her. ‘Jenna,’ he said reprovingly, turning away, but not before she saw that part begin to swell, jutting away from his body, as if it had a life all of its own.

  She flushed hot all the way to the roots of her hair, shocked by her fascination, her wantonness, and averted her gaze.

  ‘It is your turn to bathe, you know,’ Niall said. ‘Come on, out of that gown and into the water.’

  The thought made her shiver. The thought of being free of the smell of fish... She undid the fastenings of her habit and shirt and let them fall to the ground. ‘You will have to untie the laces of my stays, I seem to have a knot.’

  ‘As always, I am at your service.’ His words, while spoken matter-of-factly, strummed a chord low in her belly. A deep visceral reaction.

  A startling response. A moment later he was tugging at the laces, slowly exposing her back to the cool evening breeze. Every time his warm fingers touched her chilly skin, shivers danced across her shoulders and her breasts. Little thrills that tightened her insides. Unnatural heat flashed through her body. A head-to-toe blush.

  Most unnerving. Cold water suddenly seemed like a very good idea.

  ‘All done,’ he said, moving away and picking up a towel to dry his hair. ‘In you go.’

  She let the stays fall to the ground and then untied her petticoat and dropped it, too.

  She sat down on the bank to remove her shoes and stockings, then with the bar of soap in hand, she dipped a toe in the water.

  ‘Ugh. It’s freezing.’

  ‘The longer you dither, the harder it gets.’ His back was firmly turned away. No peeking for him. Clearly a woman’s nakedness held no novelty.

  ‘You speak from experience,’ she said, staring at the swiftly rushing water, bracing herself to brave the cold.

  ‘I can tell you that my older brothers never let me linger.’ On those words, he came up behind her and picked her up with his hands at her waist and stepped down into the water as if she weighed no more than a feather.

  ‘Hurry up,’ he said, ‘or we’ll have Sean coming to find out what is taking so long.’

  His words had her scrubbing at her arms and legs, working the lather up through the fabric of her chemise, using his shoulder to balance on one foot as needed, while he kept his gaze averted. ‘I wish I could wash my hair.’

  ‘Do it. I’ll hold you.’

  She glanced at the rushing water. She’d trusted him with her life—this was nothing by comparison. He took her under the arms and lowered her into the water. It wasn’t quite as cold as she’d first thought. Working quickly, she lathered until her scalp felt clean. He helped her rinse out the soap, one large hand supporting her back, while the other rubbed and squeezed until her hair squeaked.

  ‘Enough,’ she said.

  He lifted her up and set her on the bank. She wasn’t a big woman, even so, he lifted her as if she weighed no more than a child. Yet he treated her so gently. He did not make her feel weak, or helpless. Just... Just cared for.

  She swallowed the lump in her throat and forced herself to concentrate on drying herself.

  ‘You must take this off,’ he said, plucking at the chemise.

  He was right. It was clinging, wet and cold, to her skin. She could not put clothes over it.

  ‘Here, let me.’ He took it by the hem and she lifted her arms above her head, and he swept it away. She covered herself with her hands, but he wasn’t looking—he was using one of the rags to pat her back dry while she rubbed at her front. In less than a moment or two she was glowing all over.

  ‘Here,’ he said, passing the blouse and skirt. ‘Put these on. We will dry your hair at the fire.’

  While he dressed, she slipped into the full skirts and laced bodice fashionable a century ago. Clothing she’d seen on poor village women all her life, although these seemed more brightly coloured. She dried her hair as best she could with one of the rags. When she was done, she saw that he had gathered their clothes and was washing them in the stream. She joined him.

  ‘They can dry by the fire,’ he said, looking up.

  She knelt to help, scrubbing at her gown and petticoats with the soap and rinsing them clean. Side by side on the bank of the stream, she felt like a peasant woman with her man. It felt strange, yet oddly familiar. As if this was where she belonged. She wrung out her clothes and laid them on the bank, then sat back on her heels and looked up at the sky, purple on the horizon, black velvet overhead and sprinkled with stars. Never had she seen a more beautiful night.

  ‘That should do it,’ Niall said, rising to his feet, gathering up their clothing into the bundle. ‘Let’s go. I am starving.’ He took her hand and they walked back towards the fire.

  Never in her life had she felt so free. Like a wild creature. Part of the landscape. Free of obligation and duty. High in the sky, Venus winked and twinkled at her as if enjoying the joke.

  A laugh bubbled up. She held up her arms to the sky and twirled, set free by the life pulsing in her blood, caring for nothing but the moment. ‘Let us never go back,’ she cried. ‘We could live with the gypsies. Wander the Highlands, doing just as we pleased.’

  ‘Jenna,’ he whispered. He caught her and held her close, inhaling deeply as if he could breathe her right into his body. ‘You are so beautiful. You have no idea how much I am tempted.’

  The longing in his voice was painful to hear. It tugged at her heart, when she was not supposed to have one. Not if she was going to do her duty.

  She reached up and stroked his cheek, feeling bristles rough and rasping against her palm. An exotic roughness. ‘Oh, why can’t we be two ordinary people, no one depending on us, no responsibilities, just Niall and Jenna?’

  ‘Oh, lass, it would still all be there waiting for us.’

  An insistent clanging made them jump guiltily apart. ‘Sean,’ Niall muttered.

  She laughed. ‘Getting impatient by the sound of it.’

  ‘Aye, and my stomach is nigh to touching my backbone, I’m so hungry. It scarcely remembers we ate bread and cheese last night.’

  He took her hand and they ran through the heather, the scent of it rising up around her, mingling with the clean scent of soap and night.

  Sean looked up at their approach. ‘Dinner is ready.’ He gestured for them to sit and they stared in wonder at the meat roasting on skewers over the fire and the aroma of coffee brewing.

  ‘Where did this come from?’ Niall asked.

  ‘While you slept, I hunted a little,’ Sean said, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Niall said. ‘Sleeping. I want a word with you about that.’

  ‘It smells wonderful,’ Jenna said, preferring to keep the peace until they had eaten.

  ‘Everything smells wonderful to hungry children,’ Sean said,

  ‘I’m no child,’ Niall g
rowled, but not in an angry way.

  ‘Is it not children who play in the stream instead of washing?’

  Niall bristled. ‘You had no business—’

  ‘I heard you laughing.’

  Grunting his displeasure, Niall hung their wet clothes over nearby gorse bushes. ‘You hear too much,’ he said.

  Sean chuckled. ‘Eat. Then we talk.’

  Niall sat beside Jenna. ‘Promise me this, Sean. That if we eat this meal we will not find ourselves sleeping night and day.’

  ‘There is no need,’ the gypsy said, flashing his grin. He handed them each a skewer and a slice of bread sprinkled with salt.

  Jenna stared at him, opened her mouth to speak, then closed it around a morsel of meat. So delicious. Eat first. Talk later.

  Chapter Eleven

  Replete with food but far from content, Niall sat with a tin mug of coffee warming his hands and Jenna leaning against him. He eyed the gypsy across the fire. ‘I thank you for your hospitality, Sean. But I am still wondering how you found us.’

  ‘Gadjo, he is always suspicious. I told you, I had a dream.’ At Niall’s glare, he opened his hands wide, his face somewhat bemused. ‘I can’t explain it. Between waking and sleeping, things come to me. I have learned never to ignore them.’

  ‘That’s rubbish,’ Niall shot back.

  A knife appeared in the gypsy’s hand, flickering red steel twisting and turning in his quick clever fingers. ‘Do you give me the lie, Mr Gilvry?’

  Niall cursed himself for not keeping his pistol with him. No doubt he would find it gone from where he had left it under his pillow.

  Jenna put a calming hand on his arm. ‘Stop it, Niall. Please, Sean, won’t you tell us what you know?’

  The knife disappeared. ‘I overheard them talking in the barn at auld Tam’s tavern. He serves me a dram as long as I stay out of the taproom.’

  That Niall did believe. Dreams were something else entirely. ‘What did you hear?’