She probably did suffer a fever.
―When will we be to Stonehaven?‖ she asked.
―By nightfall,‖ he said.
―Do you plan to keep me chained in the lower bowels of your castle?‖
―Considering your penchant for enjoying basements and crypts, even if I had a castle, which I do not, I wonder why that would scare you.‖ He touched her hair. ―You are more suited to sunlight than darkness. I would chain you in the tower.‖
―Now you are baiting me,‖ she said.
―Am I?‖
He brushed his fingertips across the wild fluttering pulse at the base of her throat, and lifted her face with his palm. For tense seconds, as she stared into his eyes and, dear Lord, at that mouth—curved down just slightly at the corners as if some perplexing quandary lurked just beyond—a shiver rocked her.
She knew he was going to kiss her again, and it was not fear she felt. Her lips already felt thick and hot as if in anticipation.
And then he did kiss her, but not like a man who was hungry with passion like the mating of mouths that left her hovering between terror and bliss. He did not plunder her mouth as he had last night, yet it left her weak all the same. She managed the slightest protest but because he had kissed her or because his mouth left her lips and trailed down the curve of her neck, she didn‘t know.
―What are you doing?‖ she rasped.
―I could ask you the same thing. What are you doing?‖ His thumbs brushed the bottoms of her breasts. ― ‘Tis one thing to be a virgin and another entirely to have never been kissed before last night. Yet, you played the seductress with skill, love.‖
―Me?‖ She pushed him away and he sat back in the grass. ―Why did you kiss me just now?‖
His chest suddenly moved as if with silent laughter. He leaned on his forearms and looked up at her. ―I kissed you because I could,‖ he said.
He was not braced for the fist that struck him on the chin. A whisper of movement that had alerted him just as he glimpsed a facer coming his way. With lightning-quick reflexes, he caught her other hand, which held a rock. His senses had been so ill tuned that it took him that long to realize how far he‘d let down his guard. It took him another breath to realize what had just happened before he had the foresight to wrestle her to the ground.
Rose couldn‘t believe it as her cloak entangled around his limbs. ―Get off me! Bastard!‖
―My God, Rose.‖ For all his fury at that moment, his was a gentler hold than she deserved. ―Tell me you did not just attempt to bash me in the head with that stone.‖
―I have every right to kill you for what you have done to me! You would do the same. Tell me you would not!‖
Glaring into his eyes, she could only wonder whose heroism was being tested more as he held himself against her. ―Do not tempt me to take more of what you already lament losing, Rose. Be thankful I am such a saint.‖
―You are the devil! Do not think that last night will ever happen again.‖
―Ah, so you got what ye wanted from me, did you, love?‖
She stilled beneath him. ―I have no idea what you are speaking—‖
―Look into your soul and ask yourself why you let me go so far. I am a man, Rose,‖ he said softly, a warning now, for he recognized the danger to her, even if she did not. ―An ungodly one at that. You gave me your virtue and I want to know why.‖
She turned her head. ―Would you have preferred that I let you rape me?‖
His eyes narrowed as he wrestled his hands around her fists. ―Do you think last night was remotely close to rape, love?‖
―You knew I was an innocent.‖
―Aye, I did. But did you? And I am not talking in the physical sense. Is it some sort of vengeance against your father you seek? His virtuous, convent-raised daughter sullied by a Kerr.‖ His eyes cut into her like shards of glass. ―No doubt ‘twill prove a grave dishonor to the noble Lancaster name when people learn the warden‘s daughter was ravished by a barbaric Scotsman. Your father‘s humiliation would be complete. All prospects for marriage of his aristocratic daughter will be gone and he will send you away. An interesting scenario, if Hereford cares a whit what state you are in when delivered.‖
―Get off me!‖
―Do you really believe you are worth so little? Look at me, Rose.‖
Tears sprang to her eyes. ―Nay!‖
He forced her chin around. ―The more I have been considering the problem you present me, the more I have come to realize that if Hereford thought for one moment you were alive, he would never have stopped looking for you.‖
―If you are implying that he and Friar Tucker are in some kind of unholy alliance . you are wrong. Do not dare defame a good man. Do not dare!‖
―You are worth a great deal to your father. Kirkland Park belonged to your mother‘s side of the family. You are your great-grandfather‘s heir, Rose.‖
―Then perhaps Kirkland Park is important enough to my father that I can trade it all to buy my freedom. And perhaps . you are both brigands equally at fault for the events that have transpired. You will probably kill each other and I will be free.‖
Roxburghe sat back, and she pushed away from him, desperate to scramble from his reach. She could feel the stitches tear, but she didn‘t care as she backed away.
―You knew about your inheritance,‖ he said. ―I thought you did not. I thought you should know the truth, Rose.‖
―Did you think your revelation would turn me against the only man I truly love and who has protected me?‖ she said. ―Or is kidnapping and . ‖ she could not say the word rape for the very meaning made a lie of what had happened between them last night. ―Is abducting me not enough for you?‖
He unfurled to his height and braced his feet as if he faced a broadside. For a tense second he stood there, then the expression left his face, as if it were so easy to toss away his emotions like much unwanted fodder. ―Even if you are a ‗Fallen Woman,‘ your fortune is still intact. Papa will welcome you with open arms.‖
Then he walked past her and out of the glade.
And she hated herself for not hating him.
Chapter 7
Ruark finished saddling the horse. He leaned on his elbows across the top of the saddle and watched Rose. Wrapped in the cloak, as remote as sunlight, she sat stiffly on a rock staring across the meadow. She‘d been so still for the past half hour, that a family of gray buntings hopped around her feet pecking in the grass as if she were naught but stone.
He should not have said anything to her, he realized. He should not have cared. He should not care now.
Yet, there had been something in her manner when he had told her about her inheritance, the color that darkened her cheekbones, the wariness in her eyes that did not square with her response. Clearly, she loved Tucker. She would defend him against Ruark no matter what the truth was.
Ruark‘s gaze lingered on her sunset-colored hair. He could not be near her without experiencing an array of unfamiliar emotions.
Last night she had awakened in a dream, put her hand on his heart, and he had been momentarily lost. He didn‘t care about the reasons she had turned to him. She may not have even recognized them at first.
He didn‘t care that she had been a virgin.
Last night nothing else had mattered.
A flash of irritation betrayed itself. Hereford‘s daughter, of all women, he groaned, and he lusted like a Lothario, forceful and possessive. Lost in the fire between them. Aye, he burned, even now as his gaze fixed on her profile, her tumble-down hair a contradiction of veiled innocence that framed her face and a mouth that tasted better than the finest Scots‘ whisky.
Now he found himself wanting to protect her the way one safeguarded a fragile treasure that belonged solely to him.
When had she become his responsibility?
The moment she had risked her life to dive into a river rather than come back with him.
Ruark mounted the black and pulled alongside Rose be
side the pond. His shadow fell over her and she turned sharply to look up at him. Without a word, he held out his hand, and she stood and faced him. Her hands clutched the edges of her cloak, and his heart thudded at an uneven pace as he awaited her to take his hand. He removed his boot from the tread.
―We have been here long enough,‖ he said.
She laid her small hand in his larger one, lifted her bare foot into the stirrup, and he hoisted her sideways onto his lap, surprising her. Perhaps she had expected him to put her at his back. Readjusting his boot in the tread, he reached around her for the reins. He was not polite enough to keep his body from touching hers as he let his arms brush her breasts, gratified that despite her anger, he could still affect her physically. That despite her silence he was not the only one in torment.
Holding the reins loosely in one hand and steadying her with his other arm, he nudged the horse through a stream and down a gradual incline. Even before he urged the horse into a lope, he was aware of the soft warm bounce of her bottom on his thighs and of her breasts snug against his forearm. The only thing he knew for certain, as he beat down an unseemly arousal, was that he was in danger of embarrassing himself.
Ruark kept the horse off the main road. For three long hours, they saw nothing but open meadows broken intermittently by wooded thickets. The once bright afternoon sky dimmed to gold. Neither he nor Rose broke the silence.
Sunlight warmed the scent of pine and moss and had burned away the mist from the woodland floor by the time the black gelding crested a woodsy hill in late afternoon. Ruark reined in the horse and, with his arm around Rose as she slept with her head against his shoulder, he stopped atop the knoll overlooking the last part of his journey. A number of rabbits looked up from the grass and scattered, along with a pair of speckled does. A chill afternoon breeze washed over him. He felt Rose shiver. Even asleep, she resisted him when he pulled her cloak tighter around her body. He adjusted her on his lap and nudged the horse with his heels.
The last hour had put him in an open meadow where the early summer grass was green and brown cattle grazed. Near a crossroads marked with three weathered stone crosses beneath the branches of a Rowan tree, he turned east and took a little-used road overgrown with oak and scrubby pine. He was familiar with the roads, vales, and hills between the border and Stonehaven. He had traveled this area often as a younger man. He passed the crumbling stone walls of what had once been an old Roman fort. It was a world of contrasts, sitting between splendor and ruin. Death and rebirth. Past and present.
A parallel to his existence. And probably hers, he thought as he glanced at the sleeping woman in his arms.
For his entire life, events or people had tried to dictate or shape the way he lived. Only when he‘d been at sea had he truly felt free. He could understand only too well Rose‘s yearning to be free of society‘s restraints, for he recognized himself. He was back now in Scotland in a world he‘d not known since he was seventeen. For thirteen years, he had lived life like a current of wind caught in the vortex of a storm, as if his next breath would be his last, taunting fate, only to run into headwind now. Here, he was as ruled by the consequences of his station as Rose was by hers.
Again, he pondered how Friar Tucker had kept her hidden all these years, and what he held over Hereford to see it done. It was true Hereford had been away from England for most of Rose‘s life, but a man like Hereford did nothing that did not first benefit him.
At last, the familiar rush of water sounded from a distance and Ruark shifted his thoughts. Another two miles and he was following the Teviot tributary that would eventually take him home.
They had been riding on the southern edge of Kerr land since earlier that afternoon. He hadn‘t been back from sea long enough to feel anything but a vague sense of responsibility that this all now belonged to him. Everything that was before him.
His attention on the horizon, Ruark suddenly reined in the horse.
Rose stirred in his arms, drawing his gaze from the distant copse to her face as she opened her eyes. A pheasant suddenly started in the air from the long grass across the vale that edged the thicket below. ―What is it?‖ she whispered, alarmed.
His every sense alert, he walked the horse three paces and stopped. ―This part of our journey together has come to an end.‖
She turned back to him. A corner of his mouth tipped. ―Close your cloak. We are about to have company.‖
As if on cue, the distant sound of approaching riders carried to them on the late-afternoon breeze, growing more ominous as the first group came into sight over the hill. ―Should we not hide?‖
―Not from this bunch. You are about to meet the rest of the infamous Kerr clan.‖
A moment later, a horde of riders thundered over the incline—he couldn‘t count them all, they were so many—fanning out as they neared. Rose gasped at the fierce sight of them and pressed her back against his chest as if one man could stand against so many. Most were wild-looking, wearing leather trews, or were tartan-clad with their saddles and baldrics dangling with all manner of weaponry and muskets, and looking like the violent revier clans of old. They reined in their mounts and the air filled with the din and dust of their arrival.
Duncan broke rank. His shirt, damp from the mist that clung to the summer air, shaped the weight and height of the man as tall as Ruark himself.
―Did I no‘ tell ye he would come this way?‖ someone in the group called. ―And with our prize in hand, too.‖
A ripple of bawdry laughter ran through the ranks as Duncan guided his gray horse through the long grass and scrub and stopped a few feet in front of Ruark. ―Our spotters saw the pair of ye come across the glen hours ago.‖
Duncan shifted his gaze to Rose, who was pressing against Ruark as if that would shield her from the man‘s perusal. Duncan leaned into the saddle and grinned. ―Lady Roselyn. You‘re a comely lass for a bluidy Lancaster.‖
―I need a second horse, Duncan,‖ Ruark said. He needed Rose off his lap. He needed his hands free.
Duncan motioned to someone behind him. Jason had been with Ruark and his men at the abbey. Jason must have ridden through the night to get here before him.
―You were no‘ at the rendezvous point last night, nephew. Jason and the others returned this afternoon with your red stallion and some concern that ye went missing over yonder falls.‖
―As you can see, I did not.‖
A moment later, Ruark dismounted and put Rose on the back of a bay gelding behind the younger man.
Ruark lowered his voice and asked the lad, ―Where is Colum?‖
―He sent us back with the stallion yesterday.‖ Jason also lowered his voice as his gaze found Duncan some paces away speaking to another. ―Duncan intended to ride across the border tonight. If we had not seen you . ‖ Jason‘s voice trailed but he didn‘t have to tell Ruark anything more.
For a moment, he felt fury, but then boxed the anger as his gaze found Rose. Though her green eyes were bright and her shoulders held high, she looked weary and frightened, surrounded as she was by men who would need little provocation to harm Hereford‘s daughter.
Ruark mounted and reined the horse around until they were thigh to thigh, his fingers fisting around the reins as if that would keep him from touching her, for he recognized only too well the warring faction separating her future from his.
He also recognized that though they might still be adversaries, they had never been enemies.
―We will reach Stonehaven after nightfall,‖ he told her.
His impassive glance took in Jason. Then with a nudge of his heels, he lunged past Rose to take his place at the head of his men, leaving her horse to fall into place in the middle of the group.
Whatever else he may have thought, leaving her with Jason, he took no chance she would escape him again.
Stonehaven appeared in the mist-shrouded horizon as the amber-rippled clouds faded to crimson in the western sky. With two tower houses that flanked a baronial hall of gray ston
e and blue slates, the magnificent house commanded a view of the countryside.
That the place was vast was Rose‘s first astounded impression. From a dozen chimneys, white wood smoke unfurled into the chilled air. Mullioned casements embellished the structure, the sinking sun touching the myriad of windows and turning the panes amber. A circular carriage sweep joined the road near the front hall, a breathtaking parkland and pine forest at the back. The house was grand and as ostentatious as the oldest baronial estates, an unexpected contrast to the borderland chieftain himself.
She found herself looking for Roxburghe. They had not spoken since he left to ride at the head of his men. One of his men had given him a cloak and with the exception of his height, he looked much like the unshaven bedraggled dozens who surrounded him. She had glimpsed him once as he laughed over something his uncle said, but she had looked away when he glanced over to find her watching him.
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