“Why would I lie?” he asked, finally succeeding in propping himself up on the mattress she’d made and remade over the last five years. She refused to sleep in the bed she’d once shared with William, and so she’d fashioned the mattress from pieces of flax linen ticking, and stuffed it with down and dried rushes she’d found while foraging. So, to think that another Rees was now soiling her bed—it took all her will to keep from pulling the man onto the floor. He was wounded, after all. And she was a god-fearing woman.
Pushing her nose into the air, she stuck out her chin. “That’s one of the two things Rees men do well.”
He arched an ink black eyebrow and she had to fight down the urge to moan at the sight. Damn but the man was beautiful. And he knew it.
And there you are…falling for another black-hearted Rees.
She shook her head, nearly missing what he asked.
“What is the second thing?” That voice! He was using his voice like a weapon, he had to be! There was no earthly reason for his voice to be that deep…that alluring.
She sucked in a breath and answered, “Seducing women.”
A mirthful smirk brightened his features, and she growled.
A boom of laughter filled her cabin, and the beat of her heart galloped ahead.
He’d thrown back his head to chuckle into the ceiling, exposing his thick neck, which only drew her gaze to his broad shoulders, and then to the planes of his chest smattered with wisps of dark hair.
He lifted his head and she snapped her gaze back to his face. It was a mistake. The gorgeousness of his grin was only matched by the flashing green of his eyes, which had darkened from sea foam to sea storm in a blink.
“Seducing women is a favorite of mine…”
She swallowed, her sharp retort lost in her trembling frame—trembling with rage and not desire. At least that’s what she was telling herself.
He sat up, which made the blanket slip down his belly. His taut, trim belly with ridges of muscle that bunched and smoothed as he twisted to get comfortable. Once again, she had to tear her gaze away from him.
Damn her for caring enough to undress him to look for hidden injuries. Thankfully, she’d done most of it in the dark, with only a tallow candle with which to see. She’d been careful to not inspect any of his more…obvious parts, but she had tarried a little over the thick ropes of muscles in his thighs…and the muscular definition of his upper body…and the striking lines and hollows of his face. Even in unconsciousness, the man had been much too handsome.
There must have been something telling in her expression because he chuckled again, then coughed. The cough was rough, hoarse, shaking the whole of him.
“Water,” he croaked. Startled and disgusted with her own lack of thought and consideration for the battered man, she spun on her heel and sped across the room to the water pot beside the wash basin. She poured cool, clean water into a wooden cup and then turned back to make her way to him. He was still coughing—though less pronounced—but he was also staring at her, a curious look on his face.
Of course, there is! He’s probably wondering where your mind has gone; pestering him like a harpy when he’s just awoken and is still recovering from his injuries.
Shame pummeled her—just as surely as the waves pummeled the man before her as he struggled to survive the storm. Sighing, she forced a smile and walked toward him. As she handed him the cup, his fingers slid against hers…slowly. Purposefully. She snatched her hand back which made the cup spill its contents all over the man’s chest. The water sluiced down his belly, through the muscled ridges like a river through a rocky gully, and then disappeared beneath the blanket. Her gaze followed the flow of water…and she noticed that the blanket did nothing to keep her mind from wondering…what’s beneath it?
He said nothing as she stared at him, her eyes wide. Then…that damn smile appeared, lopsided and hellishly sensual.
“I think I need more water,” he drawled, humor lacing his words.
Glynnis narrowed her gaze and pursed her lips. Without a word, she turned and retrieved more water, this time handing it to him while carefully avoiding his touch.
Wanton! You want his touch! You want to wipe the memory of William from your body… And this beautiful rogue is the perfect man to do it.
Nay! Not another Rees! He may have denied who he was, but he looked too much like William—all of them, for that matter—to hold on to that lie for long.
She watched him drink, and he watched her watching him, and the silence in her little cottage became a living thing, grasping at her with long, calloused fingers.
Like his fingers…
The sound of the man’s stomach growling broke the silence and she flushed. She should have seen to his needs the moment he’d awoken, but his eyes had turned her mind into porridge. She hadn’t expected them to be green…though, she had wondered. His black hair and the fact that he was shipwrecked off the coast near Port Enyon, the smuggling operation port for the Rees family, should have been warning enough about his identity.
They will be looking for him… A thrill akin to terror surged along her limbs. Get him well, and get him out. She wanted nothing to do with the bloody Reeses.
Chapter Four
It was another two agonizing days later, when she finally decided it was time for him to get out of the bed. She’d been sleeping in the chair by the fire, which only made her bones ache during the day when she would make herself busy so she wouldn’t have to see or speak to the Rees in her bed. She fed him, emptied the pot beside the bed, and even gave him some of the herbs she’d grown that were meant for pain. He’d tried to speak with her but she always replied with clipped responses, nothing too personal.
“I suppose you might need to see to your…needs.” Glynnis said as she entered the cottage after spending the morning in the pig pen and then trying to find where Arlene had been laying her eggs. Over the last two days, she’d tried and failed to not think about the man she’d saved from the beach. The more time she spent in the cottage with him—even in silence—the more she was drawn to him, which made her more determined than ever to get the stranger out of her bed. Heat bloomed in her cheeks. “There is a bucket there, beside the bed, you may use…unless you need my aid.” The thought of touching him sent waves of slow burning want through her. Why did she even ask that? He’d been fine on his own before then…
You don’t want him. Any man would do. Nay! She didn’t need any man, for any need, least of all to pleasure her. She had no need for pleasure. She just wanted to survive from one day to the next.
“Nay…I think I can manage, I have been,” he replied, and she nodded, turning away to get him something to eat. The stew would be ready now, and she needed to stay busy or else find herself studying the stranger again.
“Once you are finished with that, you can use that blade there”—she pointed to a leather shaving kit she’d bought for William as a wedding present. He’d never even seen it before he’d died—“to shave…if you care to.”
He said nothing as he peered at the leather sack then back at her, a slight smile curling his lips.
“Would the lady like me to shave?” his deep, rumbling voice made her belly flop onto its head.
She forced a blank expression and shrugged. “I care not. Your face is just as homely either way.” Liar!
He chuckled. “Homely? I have never been called homely before.”
She sniffed. “There’s a first time for everything, I assure you.”
Silence fell after that, and she refused to look at him to see what he’d chosen to do.
Feed him and flee, just like you do every day.
“I hope you like fish stew,” she called over her shoulder, wondering at her inability to think clearly.
He cleared his throat then answered, “I do.”
She nodded and filled a wooden bowl with the steaming concoction of fish, parsnips, and a few mussels she’d pried off a sea rock the day before. She placed the bowl on the tab
le to give it time to cool, and to give the man time to finish with his…needs. Again, she blushed. “I will be just outside if you need anything. There is water for shaving in the basin on the table,” she muttered as she pulled her shawl from the hook beside the door, and left the cottage for what felt like the twentieth time that day. Soon, she’d be sleeping in the pen with Bard.
Damn! I have let a Rees push me from my own home! But…best to let him finish his private needs before I return… The last thing she needed was to walk in on him naked.
Waiting until her stomach cried out for the fish stew she’d left in the pot, she rapped her knuckles against the door.
“Are you finished?” she called through the wood.
“Aye,” he replied. Taking a breath, she pushed the door open and stepped inside to find him standing before the bed, arms stretched over his head, reaching toward the low beams overhead. Every inch of his honed flesh was on display.
She gasped then turned away, anger blasting through her.
“What do you think you are doing?” she spluttered, her mind filled with images of him, gloriously naked, and well endowed.
“Stretching,” he said simply, as if he hadn’t just twisted her into a knot.
She scoffed. “You know what I meant! Get back under the blanket or—better yet, get dressed so that you can leave.”
“Because I am a Rees?” Why did that sound like a question and not a statement?
“Exactly,” she snapped. “A despicable, thieving, whoring Rees.”
“Again, I am a Bowlin. I have never met a Rees.”
Rage spilled over into her throat, mingling with the bile already there.
“Then why do you look like the very image of Ioan Rees?” Ioan Rees, the man who’d created a legacy of smuggling and piracy in Wales. The man who’d fathered her late husband.
Silence was his answer and so she turned back, hoping he was covered, to find him sitting on the side of the bed, the edge of the blanket thrown over his lap…and a stark look on his face.
“Ioan Rees?” His voice came out in a harsh, nearly inaudible whisper.
A sensation like uncertainty filled her. “Aye,” she answered, wariness in her tone.
He stiffened, his green eyes snapping with a fire unlike she’d ever seen before.
“And this Ioan Rees… Did he ever kidnap a woman by the name of Ilone?”
Struck by his question, and the utter lack of guile in his voice, she quickly answered, “Kidnap? Nay. Marry, aye.”
If she were the laughing kind, she would have chuckled at the look of shock on his face; all color drained away to reveal dark lines and hollows.
“Married?” he asked, his voice a ghost of what it once was. Unsure what to say to help appease him, she only nodded.
“Ioan Rees and…Ilone?”
She nodded again, this time, wrapping her arms around her belly as if to ward off the strange twisting within.
Seeming to have lost his bravado and charm, the man slumped, his great shoulders dipping. And she hated it. A man like this should never know the kind of weight that would break him so.
“And what of it?” she asked, keeping her own voice as even as possible. What did this man know or not know that had made this information like a lance to his soul? “Surely you knew this…”
“I am not a Rees! I am a Bowlin…” The strength of his voice diminished even as he spoke, his words like a dying declaration.
Sighing, Glynnis held out the now cool bowl of stew and waited for his gaze to land on it. She had seen intelligence and keenness in his eyes—he wasn’t touched in the head. So…why did his rejection of the truth sound so…real?
Perhaps he truly doesn’t know. Perhaps…you are wrong.
“It’s best that you eat.” This time, her voice was soft, compelling. “You need your strength.”
Stiffening, the man blinked at her, his gaze slowly sharpening. Her stomach flipped at the sheer power of his gaze.
He reached out and took the bowl from her. “Thank you.”
Unable to trust her voice, she simply nodded then turned to retrieve her own bowl. She sat in the chair across the cottage, nearest the fire. Furthest from him. And they ate in silence, the only sounds were of him swallowing…and she couldn’t help but watch his throat working, the thick cords of his neck moving.
Finally, she set aside her uneaten stew and waited for him to finish his.
“More?”
Wiping his mouth with his forearm he shook his head.
“Nay, but I thank you for the offer,” he replied, his words plunging into the depths of her. She’d never known a man like him to thank anyone for anything—at least sincerely. Not once in their disastrously short marriage—if one could call it that—or their short courtship—which was more a artful deception than a proper courtship—had William ever said thank you. Certainly, he said “please,” he was quite skilled at quirking his eyebrow and getting her to succumb to whatever he wanted, but he never showed any form of true appreciation or supplication.
Stop comparing this man to William. For all you know he is a faithful and loving husband to some woman across the Irish Sea. Then again…would a faithful and loving husband be such an unrepentant flirt with strange women?
And why did the thought of this stranger being married bother her so much? She didn’t even know his name!
“What should I call you?” she blurted then immediately stiffened, the heat of her embarrassment blasting into her cheeks. Pushing her strength to the surface, she asked again, this time with less stammering, “If you are not a Rees, and in fact are a Bowlin, you must have a given name.”
His gaze flicked from her eyes to her cheeks, to her mouth, and then finally back to her eyes. The heat in her cheeks grew hotter.
“Aye. My name is Robbie,” he answered, his black eyebrows arching upward, and that damned smile only just forming on his lips. “Most call me Ravishing Robbie.” There was that teasing in his voice.
Narrowing her eyes, she replied, “Most but not me. I would call you nothing if you weren’t like a babe, dependent on my food and good will.”
A chuckle rumbled from his chest, and she hissed, her anger rising once again to best her wits. “And you best remember that, Robbie. My good will only stretches so far before it snaps like a rope tied to a storm-ravaged sail.” She knew she was being careless with her choice of words, but it didn’t bother her. Much. She needed to regain control of her wits, her body, and her home.
Rather than looking green around the gills as she’d hoped, the blackguard had the audacity to fully unleash his wicked grin.
“Oh, aye, I will remember that…Mary?” He said the name with a quirk of his brow. He was trying to seduce her name from her. The fool. All he had to do was ask politely. “Agnes?” At that name she grimaced. He chuckled and her stomach flipped. “Not Agnes then…” He reached up a long-fingered hand to rub at the newly clean shaven flesh of his angular jaw. “Perhaps your name is Selkie or Kelpie…you must’ve been on the shore to have found me after the wreck. Mayhap you are really from the ocean, only come ashore to beguile and devour helpless sailors.”
That wrested a snort from her throat. “Aye, and my mother was a siren and my father was a seahorse.”
Before he could respond, the door to her tiny cottage burst open, and the last person she ever wanted to see crashed into the room, his sabre gripped in his fist, his face a mask of all too beautiful danger.
“Glynnis…” he drawled, not in the least winded or even visibly guilty for nearly destroying her door.
“Saban! What in God’s name are you doing here?” she sneered, her momentary fear replaced by boiling rage.
Saban waved off her words as though they meant nothing, his ghostly green eyes deadly in their chill.
Chapter Five
Robbie lunged to his feet, the blanket covering his nakedness falling to the floor. Instinctively, he reached to his side for his rapier, but it wasn’t there. It was lost to the sea
.
“I see you have replaced William with another,” Saban Rees sneered, his strangely familiar face twisting into a hateful expression. “Lucian said it would take you ten years to find another to warm your bed. I said you never would. I guess neither of us wins the pot.”
Gasping, the woman—Glynnis—stepped toward Saban, murder in her brilliant violet eyes.
“I will kill you both for even breathing my name let alone speaking about me with such disrespect. I might have married your cousin, but you are no family of mine!”
Married your cousin? She was a Rees then… And from the looks of the animosity between her and Saban, she had reason to despise the Rees so much she nearly bit his head off when she thought he was one of them.
His gaze took in Saban’s long black hair, twisted into five braids, his long black beard, and his striking green eyes. Green eyes he’d seen in his own reflection for twenty-five years.
And you just might be… Nay. He was no more a Rees than he was a king.
“You watch your tongue. This woman has done nothing but save me from death after the wreck of the Saint Anne. She has done nothing to earn your spite, Rees,” Robbie drawled, his tone one of depth and danger. Even without his sword, he would kill Saban Rees—it wasn’t the first time he’d faced battle bare-handed. But from the looks of Saban’s wicked sabre, it just might be his last.
Saban grinned, flashing his teeth, like a wolf brandishing his fangs. “I know. I heard all about you from a weasel named Berks.”
The sour bile of betrayal rose into his mouth. Robbie spat. “He should have known to keep his mouth shut.”
Shrugging, Saban loosened his hold on his sabre and crossed his arms over his broad chest—though, not so broad as Robbie’s—dipping his head to one side. “He could do naught but what I wanted. My sabre is sharp and so is my temper; he was loath to hold his tongue when I asked about the man asking about me.”
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