by Eliza Knight
“That is incredible. I would love to see you do some tricks.”
“Och, well, ’haps when the lads say it is safe to go outside, we can.”
“Safe to go outside?” Eva paused in buttering a scone.
“Aye. The scouts have returned with news that they’ve spotted the English. Though they are nae close yet, it will only be a matter of days before they are upon us.”
Eva’s appetite fled. If the English had been spotted and a scout believed it would not be too long until they arrived, she would soon be reunited with her father and her future revealed. It was too soon! She’d not been able to find out anything about her mother at all. To ask now would only bring on suspicion, undoing any progress she’d made in gaining their favor. Eva swallowed back tears. Soon enough these two lovely women would possibly believe her to be an enemy; for they still did not know the truth of how she’d come to be with Strath.
“I see,” was all Eva could manage. For the rest of her meal, she cut her food and moved it around the plate, barely eating anything at all. She laughed when appropriate, smiled, and tried to remain as cordial as she could, but if she had been asked to repeat anything that was said, she would know nothing, for her mind was very far away.
Chapter Eleven
After breakfast, Lorna and Isobel broke away to do their chores, leaving Eva on her own. With all the hustle and bustle going on in the castle and grounds, she thought for certain they’d want to keep an eye on her, to make sure she didn’t sneak away. Then again, they didn’t know she was Strath’s prisoner and were supposed to be keeping their eye on her.
Eva had offered to help them with their duties, practically begged, but both of them declined, with Lorna insisting she take some time to rest, having so recently been on the road.
But Eva was not one to rest. She never had been. When she was a wee thing, her mother had often complained about her not napping. There was too much to see and do, not enough time in the day to do it, and who would want to waste such precious time on sleep?
Besides, even if she were tired, Eva was pretty certain that sleep would not come to her just now. It wasn’t that the bed they’d given her was not comfortable, for it was. Nor was it that the sheets were not soft enough, for they were. It wasn’t that her room was too drafty or loud, it was perfect. When she had fallen asleep the night before, she’d practically passed out. Nay, the problem did not lie with comfort itself. Her uneasiness lay in the impending battle, and with the sadness that filled her heart over Strath. When she closed her eyes, she saw Belfinch’s twisted, ugly face, his weapon raised, prepared to strike at Strath with all his might. In her imagination, Strath didn’t notice, he couldn’t see, and the blade cut deep.
Though she’d never seen Strath fight, as she’d been inside the chapel when he’d taken Northwyck, and Belfinch had injured himself, she knew he had to be capable, else how would he have claimed victory? Besides that, he was built like an ox, made for storming doors and taking down his enemies. She was not fearful he wouldn’t be able to fight back. And she was not fearful he wouldn’t win.
What scared her was Belfinch’s tactics. They would not be fair. How did a man of honor fight against someone without any?
She slipped out of her bedchamber, down to the great hall, and then through the kitchen doors into a well-tended vegetable and herb garden. The garden here rivaled that of her mother’s, which had been extensive and a source of great pride. Eva had tried her hardest to keep up with it, and hoped her mother would look down on her with pride for what she’d been able to accomplish.
Her feet crunched on the gravel, startling a couple of women who were picking herbs and putting them in a basket. Eva waved and smiled. They waved back and then whispered to each other. She didn’t recognize either of them, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t seen them in the kitchen the night before. She didn’t begrudge them their gossip. Eva was a newcomer, and English, and she guessed if she were in their shoes, she’d probably be doing some whispering too.
As she walked, she felt their gazes on her, even though every time she looked back, they appeared to be busy with their herbs.
Beyond the garden was a grove of trees that promised the solitude she craved. Even the guards on the wall wouldn’t be able to see her if she hid herself well enough.
Eva continued on to the orchard, where fruit trees had yet to flower, though their leaves were bright green against the cloudy sky. She touched the silky leaves, feeling the rough edges with the pad of her thumb, upsetting a finch who’d rested on a branch. Watching the bird flutter away, she remembered how she used to climb the apple trees in her mother’s orchard and then peer into the birds’ nests perched so high up she couldn’t see from the ground. How year after year, she watched eggs hatch into tiny birds that then populated their gardens, returning every season.
Peering behind her and seeing no one in the vicinity, she grabbed hold of a branch, propped her foot on the trunk and prepared to hoist herself up when overhead, thunder rumbled, followed by a loud boom. It was deafening enough she might have guessed the castle keep was collapsing. She leapt back from the tree, knowing that climbing and storms did not go hand in hand unless one wanted to be struck by lightning. Which she did not.
Eva looked up into the sky where the dark clouds pushed into each other violently. They’d been without a storm their whole journey; perhaps this was how Mother Nature intended to pay them back for the reprieve.
Without warning, the skies opened up, fat droplets seeming to materialize out of nowhere, splashing on her face. She gasped and searched the orchard for the smallest tree to take shelter under. Then she caught sight of a thatched roof. A shed. She rushed toward the gardening shed that was thankfully adorned with an overhang. However rickety it looked as it leaned slightly to the left, it would do. She covered her head as the rain splashed on top of her and ran under the overhang.
Rain pelted the shed, but mercilessly, the thatch saved her from the majority of the drops. Eva stared up at the gray skies with fast-rolling clouds, hoping it was a quick storm. Thunder rumbled again, but with it, an odd sound. She tilted her head, listening more carefully. The noise was coming from inside the shed.
A frightened yowling. A cat mayhap?
Eva pushed open the wooden door. The iron hinges groaned, and she peered into the musty darkness. She could make out stacked tools, a few wooden buckets, a pile of wood, and shelves with various jars and baskets.
“Kitty, kitty,” she called.
The frightened animal’s call came again, and this time it was answered by a few tiny mewls. A mama kitty and her babies?
Her eyes adjusted to the dark, but still she didn’t see them.
“Come out, I won’t harm you,” Eva cooed. She knelt down and held out her hand, wiggling her fingers to entice them out of hiding.
At Northwyck, they’d had many barn cats, and most were frightened of storms. As a girl, and even as a woman, she’d spent many hours lying in hay with the cats, trying to keep them calm with cups of milk, cuddles, and bits of fish she’d sneaked out of the kitchen.
A gray striped cat slunk from behind a pile of wood and sauntered toward her, tail swishing in agitation, meowing insistently. But not in warning, rather voicing its displeasure over the storm.
“Has it frightened your babies?”
The cat sniffed her fingers and rubbed its face against her palm.
Meow.
Two tiny kittens tumbled out from behind the woodpile, falling on each other, only to begin wrestling. Mama kitty ignored their play, preferring to rub her head on Eva’s palm before sliding her body along Eva’s side, allowing her to stroke her back and tail. Then with another meow of worry, the cat walked to the open door, poked her head outside, and gave another loud yowl.
Thunder cracked, followed by a gash of lightning that lit up the shed as though a thousand candles burned inside it. The two kittens ran back behind the woodpile, whimpering, and the mother cat leapt into the air, hair standin
g on end. She looked up at Eva and then back outside, almost frantically.
“The storm will be over soon, kitty.”
Eva stroked the animal’s back. But that didn’t seem to calm the sweet thing. It didn’t even purr. Instead, the yowling sound grew more frantic than before, and Eva could swear she heard an answering call somewhere in the distance.
“Is that it, momma? You have a baby out there in the storm?” Eva stood and walked out of the shed under the overhang, squinting her eyes as she peered out over the garden. The wind blew the tree branches, grass, and garden vegetation, causing everything to sway in the breeze like long green and brown tails. The rain pelted against leaves and stalks, and the dark clouds made visibility most inadequate.
But the cat did not stop her calls, and the tiny cries from outside the shed grew louder, sounding forlorn and scared. Eva’s heart lurched. She was going to have to walk out into the rain and search through the grass to find the wee kitten. Shielding her eyes from the rain, she stepped into it, and was almost immediately soaked to the bone. What was the point in trying to stay dry now?
She walked along the paths, rain dripping into her eyes and making her dress heavy. She searched in the grass and up in the tree branches but continued to come up empty. It seemed like the kitten’s calls drew farther away with every step she took, and eventually, she felt like she was turning in complete circles, no closer to finding it.
“Eva!” Strath’s voice cut through the thunder and pelting rain as he ran toward her. Concern etched his handsome wet face, and his dark hair was soaked and plastered to his forehead. “What are ye doing out here in the rain? Ye’ll catch your death. Come inside.” He reached for her hand.
“There is a lost kitten.” She pointed toward the shed, stepping out of his reach in case he tried to force her inside. “Its mother is looking for it.”
“What?” He stared from her to the shed as though she’d gone mad. “The kitten will find its way back to its mother. But ye will end up dreadfully ill.”
“I’ve a stronger constitution than that,” she countered. “I’ve slept outside in the rain and mucked about in the forest for days on end when it stormed.”
He stared at her, rivulets of water dripping down his face in a pattern that almost looked like art. If it were possible, the rain made him look all the more handsome, sculpted, like a statue of the perfect man. Not to mention it caused his shirt to mold to his body, turning the white linen practically transparent, and causing every line and ripple of muscle to be visible. Good heavens. Her breath quickened, and she found it hard not to stare.
“I shouldna believe ye.”
Eva jolted from her lusty stupor. “And why not?”
“Because lassies dinna do such things.”
Eva rolled her eyes. “I’m no ordinary lassie.”
“This I know.” His tone had turned soft, and he stepped closer. “’Tis why I canna seem to get away from ye.”
Eva’s lips parted as she sucked in a breath. In the coldness of the rain, she could feel the heat radiating from his body, enough to cause a little steam to rise from his shirt.
“I’ve tried to keep away from ye. It’s only been a few hours since ye barged into my bedchamber demanding your clothes, and yet with every moment I spend trying to forget about ye, I am only reminded of how verra much I want to kiss ye again.”
Eva was in complete shock. Was she hearing him correctly?
“Kiss me?” Her words were almost lost in the hammering of the rain.
“Aye, sweet lass. I want to kiss ye more than I want to breathe.”
He cupped the sides of her face with both hands, stepping close enough that the tips of their boots touched. Rain slid down the slope of her nose, dripped from her lips and chin, wetted her eyelashes. But she didn’t care. She only had eyes for Strath, for how close he was leaning, the anticipation of his lips on hers.
Kiss me.
“Don’t make me wait,” she whispered.
A ragged breath escaped him, and his eyelids dipped as he closed the distance between them.
Eva held her breath, her entire body reaching toward him, even the hair on her arms. She closed her eyes and parted her lips, and time seemed to stand still until at last, his warm, rain-soaked mouth touched hers, sliding over her lips in delicious, decadent strokes. She sighed into his mouth, accepting the gentle touch of his tongue and demanding he taste her. Eva wrapped her arms around his middle, her fingers clutching at his back. Her nipples hardened, and the scrape of the wet fabric and his hard chest was almost more than she could bear.
Was this really happening? Had he truly come looking for her? Been thinking about her all day? About kissing her?
Strath slanted his mouth over hers possessively, more fiercely than he had that morning, and she thought she might faint from the pleasure of it. He slid his hands from her face, one cupping the side of her neck, and the other wrapping around her waist to tuck her impossibly closer. He backed her toward the shed, out of the rain, and her spine pressed to the wood, his hard body capturing her in a world of sensual hunger.
“What am I going to do with ye?” he asked between nips at her lips. He rested his hand on her ribs, brushing his thumb along the underside of her breast.
Eva gasped, arching her back as she instinctively craved more of his intimate touch.
“Keep kissing me. Don’t stop.”
“Och, lass,” he said, sucking on her lower lip. “Dinna say such things. For if I knew I could keep on kissing ye and never stop, I would…”
Zounds!
Eva exhaled in silent, and sometimes not-so-silent, moans. Thunder cracked overhead, but even that couldn’t drown out the pounding of her heart, and the heady sound of Strath’s demanding growls against her mouth.
Abruptly, he slapped his hands on the shed above her head, ending the kiss on a ragged drag of breath. He let out a low curse, their foreheads pressed together, and his stormy gaze locked on her.
“I shouldna be doing this,” he murmured.
Eva didn’t have to ask why. “Sometimes we do things we think we shouldn’t because we cannot live with ourselves if we don’t.”
“That is exactly right, Princess. And yet, if I continue, it will lead to a place neither one of us is…prepared for.”
“Prepared?”
“Ye’re a lady. I canna simply take ye against a shed.”
“Oh…” She breathed out a sigh, realizing just now that he was speaking about making love to her. That was where kissing could lead. And her wicked mind immediately pictured the two of them without clothes, their bodies sliding together. But not in a bed; instead they were on the forest floor, or in a beautiful meadow surrounded by flowers, or right here in front of this shed.
“Och, lass, dinna look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like ye’re thinking about…”
“But I was.” Oh, saints! She’d not meant to admit that.
“Ye’re too honest for your own good.” He let out a groan, and his lips claimed hers once more.
There was an urgency when he kissed her this time, and it left her breathless and mindless. If he laid her down on the garden floor in the rain right then and there, she would surrender wholeheartedly.
It was only the yowling at her ankles and the scratching of the cat against her leg that brought her somewhat back to the present.
“Mama cat has come to our rescue,” Strath breathed out on a laugh, parting from their kiss once more.
Not wanting their time together to end, Eva slid her hand into his and tugged him back out into the rain. “She wants us to find her baby. Help me?”
“Aye. Of course.”
She was relieved when he agreed without hesitation. Who would have thought the mighty Strath would spend his time searching for a kitten? They combed the gardens some more, finally finding the tiny gray kitten trapped beneath an overturned bucket.
Eva lifted the poor soaked creature against her chest. The
kitten immediately tried to burrow into her wet gown, seeking warmth and dryness.
“Poor thing,” she cooed.
“The sprite is a fighter,” Strath said, stroking his finger over the kitten’s head.
Eva stared at him for half a breath, mesmerized all the more. She could remain this way all day, staring at him, marveling, falling for him…but they needed to get the kitten back to its mother.
They jogged back to the shed and reunited the pair. Mama Kitty immediately tried to lick away the rain from her babe’s head and back, then she clamped her mouth on the kitten’s neck and dragged it behind the woodpile, perhaps to nurse the sweet thing.
“Now that Mama Kitty’s babies are all safe, let’s get ye inside and dry. Ye’ll need another gown.” His gaze raked hungrily over the sodden gown that clung to her like a second skin.
Eva waved away his suggestion, not wanting to deprive his cousin of another gown. “This one is fine, I’ll just let it dry before the hearth.”
Strath’s nostrils flared, and a heated look flashed in his eyes as he dragged his gaze leisurely over her form. “I dinna think I could stand it if ye walked around in that ill-fitting maid’s gown again.”
Eva laughed. “Oh, I wasn’t planning on walking around in anything.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew exactly how it sounded—and she certainly had no intentions to walk about the castle naked. She’d simply meant she’d stay in her chamber.
A low rumble sounded in his chest, and he swiped his hands over his face, looking as though she’d just dangled a sweet in front of him and then yanked it away. “Ye’re a tease.”
“I’m not teasing.” She laughed. “I meant to stay in my bedchamber.”
“Exactly. Come on. I’ll see if Isobel has something else for ye to wear.”
A thrill of excitement passed through her at the notion that Strath couldn’t even bear to think of her undressed in her room. The tension that had been building between them for days, the passion in that kiss, had pushed them into unchartered waters. Excitement and curiosity coursed through her. Was this what it felt like to fall for someone? Oh, how glorious it was.