“What? A magic potion?” she scoffed. “Really, ye’ve been quite ill and ye must regain yer strength.”
“But I donna care to simply lie here,” he groaned and leaned his head back, thrust his hands through his hair, and made it stick up even more.
Mared sighed, walked to the bed, and held out the nightshirt. “If ye feel well enough to be abroad, then perhaps ye feel well enough to change yer nightshirt.”
His mood suddenly lightened, and he smiled slyly, looking up at her from beneath hooded eyes. “I’m a sick man, lass, ye’ve said so yerself. Ye must change it for me, aye?”
“I think,” she said, carelessly tossing the shirt on his lap, “that ye can manage.”
“But I should be bathed,” he quickly countered. “The remnants of fever washed away, that sort of thing.”
The very mention of his naked body stirred her, and Mared gave him an exasperated smile. Mary Queen of Scots, even though the man had lain close to dying when she’d bathed him, his body had taken her breath away. She had not imagined a man could be so powerful in his build—his strapping torso atop even stronger hips, legs that looked as strong as Ben Cluaran.
And there was that part of him, too, fascinating in and of itself. She had tried not to ogle a dying man, had tried not to imagine that part of him engorged and moving inside her, and had been piteously unsuccessful, for it seemed that since that afternoon, every time she closed her eyes she saw him holding himself above her, sliding into her.
“Then who will wash me?” Payton insisted, unaware of the desire pooling within her. “By yer own admission, I am too weak to do it myself.” And the roué was smiling suggestively.
“So it is at last borne out…ye are indeed a madman.”
“Me? No, no, I’m a sick man in need of yer assistance.”
“Ye’ve scarcely escaped the grip of death and now ye would entertain lascivious thoughts?”
“Lascivious? Ach, lass, ye make it sound so vile. I merely seek a wee bit of pleasure after facing death…mutual pleasure, I should say.”
She smiled, drumming her fingers on her arm. “I suggest ye seek yer good health instead.”
His frown returned and he groaned impatiently. “What bloody else shall I think of, locked away like an invalid such as I am?”
“How very grateful ye are to be alive?” she suggested lightly and picked up the bed linens and started for the dressing room.
“Wait! Where are ye going?” he called after her. “Come back, Mared! I swear I’ll no’ make improper suggestions, aye? No, donna go, come and keep me company! I canna bear the solitude!”
She glanced at him over her shoulder, and with a little smile of triumph, she turned into his dressing room, where she put the linens away. When she returned to his master suite, she strolled to the middle of the room and gave him a stern look, hands on hips.
“I thought ye meant to leave again,” he said, reading her look and seeming a wee bit abashed by his outburst.
“No, milord,” she said sternly. “I canna leave. There is no one to see after ye until Dr. Thomson comes on the morrow. We are, for better or worse, compelled to remain in one another’s company. So will ye change yer nightshirt?”
He sighed and reached for the thing. “If it is to be only the two of us, then perhaps ye will assist me in answering the post. There are several that must be answered straightaway, and I donna feel up to writing.”
“I’d be delighted. I’ll just fetch pen and paper.”
When she returned, Payton had managed to change his nightshirt and had combed his fingers through his hair, making it seem less wild. She handed him the post, and he sighed, closed his eyes for a moment, then read the first one. “Aha. Direct this one to Mr. Farquart, Esquire, if ye will.” He glanced up. “If ye would, please use the perfect penmanship ye employ when writing me?”
Mared smiled.
“Mr. Farquart,” he said and proceeded to dictate a letter that impressed Mared with its eloquence and off-the-cuff thinking, particularly considering the man was still recovering from his near death bout of fever.
And so they went—Mared remarking on the vast sphere of his influence, Payton reminding her that the influence might have been the Lockharts’ as well, had it not been for their stubborn loyalty to cows. At the end of their session, when Mared’s hand was aching and Payton was obviously tiring, he held up one more letter.
“This is from my cousin Neacel,” he said. “He’s to be wed in a traditional Highland wedding next month.”
“Felicitations to yer cousin, then,” she said.
“There is to be a three-day wedding ceilidh.”