2
The fire crackled, leaping toward the lower limbs of the great oak overhead. Sparks flew up to mingle with the branches before being extinguished by falling snow. The dancing flames gilded the hands of the man who had built it as he held them out to the warmth, outlining their hard strength in orange and blue light, glancing over myriad white nicks and scars. Above them, the planes of his face were sculpted in fire glow and shadow, with a raptor’s nose and guarded eyes set in a handsome, yet masklike visage that appeared hard and distant, impervious to the emotions that plagued other men.
He seemed dangerous. That was not at all a comforting observation for Cate, given that she was about to spend the night alone in his company. That it must happen grew ever more certain as the minutes passed. Darkness had fallen more than an hour ago, and there was no sign of a search party. It gave her an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach, one that spread deep into her lower body as it grew more intense.
She stirred uncomfortably on the log where she sat, just inside the small lean-to he had formed by propping logs against the oak’s wide trunk and weaving boughs through them. “Do you think the outlaws will return?” she asked with a brief glance beyond the fire’s glow. “I mean, now that it’s dark.”
“Might.” He reached for a twig and began breaking bits from it, tossing them into the flames.
“Mean you to sit up all night to guard against it, then?”
“I do.”
“It’s my belief they are cowards, as they ran away so easily rather than face you.”
“Nay, milady. Only men who have discovered it’s better to retreat than die for no reason.”
“For no reason?” They had expected to take her, after all. Was she not worth some little effort as a prize?
“None at all.” He gave her his attention for a flickering instant. “The poor fools saw there was no hope of keeping you, so abandoned the effort for easier prey tomorrow.”
“There being no shame in retreat for a brigand? I pray they stay away.” She shivered under her cloak.
“Mayhap they’ll be happy with the hunter as reward.”
“At least my palfrey made her escape. Last I saw of her, she was galloping down the track. She may not stop until she reaches her stall at Winchester Castle.”
“Aye,” Ross said in laconic agreement, “but I don’t depend upon it.”
The palfrey showing up at the stable without her would suggest something had befallen her. Whether the stable master would take notice, or be concerned enough to discover if she had returned with the others, were different questions altogether.
She sighed. “No.”
She opened her mouth to ask what he would do if the men came back, after all, but then closed it again. There could be only one answer. He would fight as he had before.
“That’s why you made such a great fire, isn’t it,” she said instead, “so you can see them before they get to us. You don’t really think the king’s men will be guided by it.”
“No way to tell.”
“The hunting party either failed to notice my absence or thought I went back ahead of them. Surely they know by now that I’m missing.”
“To send out searchers in the dark would be foolish. The snow has covered all sign of tracks.”
“Yes, but still…”
“Then they’ll have noticed, not being blind, that I’m also among the missing.”
She frowned at him. “You believe that will relieve their minds?”
He tossed a piece of his stick into the fire, speaking without meeting her eyes. “Or set them smirking, if they have any imagination.”
Cate’s heart sank inside her as she saw his point. Henry would surely be torn between worry that she might be alone and exposed to danger, and annoyance that she was in the Scotsman’s company. She could not think his plans for her future had ever included such a misalliance. “I’m sorry to be the cause of concern,” she said with a frown. “Henry has enough to plague him at the moment.”
“You’re thinking of the whispers that a son of Edward IV still lives? That tale has been around since Bosworth.
He can’t credit it.”
“Can he not?” The two young sons of the late King Edward IV had been heirs to the throne before they were declared illegitimate and confined to the Tower by their uncle, Richard III, so he might snatch the crown upon his brother Edward’s death three years ago. After Richard was killed at Bosworth Field, the Tower had been searched most diligently. No sign of the two boys had been uncovered. The countryside had been scoured high and low, but the princes, brothers to Henry’s queen, Elizabeth of York, seemed to have vanished as if they had never lived.
Cate had never met Edward’s sons, as she had arrived at court only a year ago, after Henry’s coronation. She had seen miniatures of them, however. They had been so fair, so young and proud in their sturdy strength. What fate other than vicious murder could have caused them to disappear so completely? Though it would have sparked more strife and bloodshed between York and Lancaster factions had they emerged from captivity, their deaths were still a horror beyond words.
“The Thames runs close by the Tower,” Ross Dunbar said without inflection, answering her thought, “and has carried many a soul out to sea.”
“Some whisper that Henry’s supporters did away with the boys in secret, to clear his way to the crown.”
“While Richard had them in his charge, watched day and night against just such a trick? Don’t be daft. The warders of the castle might be corrupt on occasion, but not when they could hang for it.”
“They even say Henry’s mother might have seen to it.”
Ross snorted, breaking another twig and tossing it into the fire. “Yon duchess of Richmond and Derby is an officious little busybody, I’ll grant you, with more to say about Henry’s business than most men would allow. She busied herself with putting her son on the throne, right enough. Yet she’s so godly a woman that I’d as soon suspect the Holy Mother.”
“I suppose,” Cate said in agreement. Lady Margaret was well known for devotion to the church, her good works and the black gown she often wore like the habit of a nun.
“More than that, rumors of the boys being done away with came to Scotland scant months into Richard’s short reign.”
“Indeed?” It was odd how relieved she was to hear it. Though she placed little credence in court gossip, it was worrisome all the same.
“The diplomats clacked back and forth about it, so I heard tell, from England to Spain, Spain to France, France to Scotland and back to England like a whirligig.”
“You don’t think Richard could have spirited them away to keep them out of Lancaster clutches.”
“Or Yorkist, mayhap, as those who supported the older boy as Edward V were a far greater threat just then? Nay, where would he have put them that no whisper of it has been heard?”
“Unless this new threat might be that whisper,” she said almost under her breath.
“And wouldn’t that be convenient, a young prince as the rallying point for a push to be rid of Henry.” The Scotsman hunched a broad shoulder. “Not that it’s any worry of mine. The more Sassenachs kill off each other, the better.”
“So Scotland might take advantage of any rebellion by invading,” she said, “another worry for Henry.”
“The very thing the treaty between England and Scotland is supposed to prevent.”
“But will it? Know you anything of what King James will do if rebellion breaks out?”
“How should I, being stuck here as Henry’s unwilling guest?” he returned, scowling at the fire.
That was reasonable enough, Cate thought as she joined him in watching the flames. They wavered in the wind, grasping at the snowflakes that swirled into their clutches. Beyond where she sat, white billows of snow swayed like bed linen hung out to dry. From the corner of her eye, she saw her rescuer tuck his plaid closer to his neck.
“You could keep watch from the shelter, could you not?” she suggested. “There’s more than enough room.”
He gave her a quick, unfathomable glance. “Here is fine.”
“You’ll soon be covered with snow. Will you not be soaked?”
“Belike, it won’t melt.”
The ironic humor in his voice was unexpected. It was also appealing in some odd fashion. Watching the way his mouth curled at the corner, she forgot to answer.
“Any road, it’s a mistake to get too comfortable,” he added with barely a pause.
“Meaning you might fall asleep? ’Tis no great haven of warmth in here.” She indicated her shelter with the twitch of a shoulder, then drew her fur-lined cloak closer around her as a chill draft found its way down the back of her neck. “You should be as uncomfortable as a body could desire.”
His smile was crooked. “You think I like being cold and miserable?”
“You’re doing little to prevent it.”
“So you are inviting me to share your chamber. Is that the way of it then?”
She looked away, made suddenly uncomfortable by the flash of something intent yet secretive in the blue depths of his eyes. The faintest herbal scent came from him, possibly from the sprig of dried heather stuck in his bonnet. Mingled with it were the smells of fire-warmed wool, leather, horse and clean male. The combination made her stomach muscles tighten into knots.
“I’d hardly call it mine,” she said in irritation. “You did build it, after all.”
“For you, being you aren’t used to sleeping in the weather.”
“And you are.”
He made a sound somewhere between a grunt and laugh. “Snow falls fair often in Scotland.”
No doubt that was also why he kept a tinderbox in his sporran, the small bag with its silver emblem that draped across his lower belly. It seemed an excellent habit, one she applauded just now with every ounce of her being. “And you, a lord’s son, are used to it? Somehow that seems unlikely.”
“The word is laird,” he corrected, “and has little that’s lordly or noble about it. It means only that my father is a landowner of manifold responsibilities and goes, betimes, to attend Jamie’s parliament.”
“But you will inherit that one day?”
“Aye, as I’ve no brothers or sisters, or at least no legitimate ones.” His smile had a fierce edge. “Well, and if the old warhorse doesn’t decide I’m too soft.”
She laughed; she couldn’t help it. “You, soft?”
His gaze met hers for a long, intent moment that sent a quiver deep into her lower body before he looked away again. “I think too much to suit my father. He acts first and worries about it afterward, if at all. And he’d as soon ride out on a cattle raid in a rattling snowstorm as not—never mind that he’s likely to lose half the cows before he gets them home. In fact, he’d rather ride in bad weather, as he’d be more likely to catch our enemies sleeping.”
“Your enemies, the English.” The thought was disturbing, though why, she could not say.
“Sassenach with more cows than sense, though usually ’tis Trilborn cattle.”
“Trilborn?”
The Scotsman inclined his head. When he spoke, his voice was hard. “The same as we rode with this day.”
Winston Dangerfield, Lord Trilborn, had been with the hunt. His estates were in the north, as she recalled. “I can’t imagine his family allows the theft without retaliation.”
“Nay, nor his father and grandfather before him.”
Cate met his gaze between tongues of leaping flames. “You sound as if there’s bad feeling between you.”
“A blood feud of long years standing that involves more than cows.” Ross Dunbar shrugged. “Though a raid on his herd is more satisfying than on any other.”
The last was meant to distract her from the enmity between him and Trilborn, she thought. It seemed just as well to allow it. “So you do steal other cattle?”
“On both sides of the border,” he said with a low laugh.
“Both sides…you don’t mean your father steals the cows of his neighbors?”
“Oh, aye. ’Tis a game of sorts, do you see, a wee bit of competition.”
“It sounds dangerous.”
“’Tis that which makes it worthwhile. Though the poor beasts have been chased back and forth on so many moonlit nights, have mingled and bred so often, it’s near impossible to say who owns any cow.”
Cate tilted her head as she watched snowflakes settle on his bonnet and the dark waves of his hair, turning all gray-white. “At least your presence here prevents your father from raiding across the border now. I believe that’s the purpose of it?”
“In part,” he said, inclining his head so snowflakes shifted onto his knees. “Fair ruined his fun, it has. No more rapine and pillage of his sworn foes.”
She lifted a brow. “Rapine and pillage?”
“Ah, well, there may be less of it than he remembers, but he does like the old tales.”
The tales weren’t that old, she was almost certain. The border Scots, descended from Vikings who had once raided those northern shores, were known for their bellicose natures. Some named them Steel Bonnets for the helmets they wore on their lightning forays into English territory. It seemed reasonable that Ross Dunbar was of that warlike tribe, given the dark Nordic blue of his eyes.
There was a lulling quality to his voice, with its soft vowels that turned the word cows into “coos.” There was also a barely concealed smile in it, as if he had enjoyed his forays into cattle theft, or at least taken pleasure in the skill and daring of the moonlit chase. Yes, and in tweaking the noses of his hereditary enemies.
Cate’s mouth curved a little as she watched him. Leaning forward, she rested her elbow on her knee while holding her chin in the palm of her hand. “And what do you do with these ‘coos’ when you bring them in from a raid on such a snowy night?” she asked, as much to hear him talk as from the need to know.
“Put them in with our others in the cow byre, and guard them against being taken back.”
She sighed, shivering a little as the icy wind lifted the hood of her cloak. It was a moment before she went on. “I wish I knew Rosie was safe in a cow byre this night, if she didn’t return to her stable.”
“Your palfrey, you mean?”
“I can’t help thinking she might have come across the boar again.” It was a legitimate fear, as a boar’s tusks could open the soft underbelly of a horse in an instant.
“She didn’t. She couldn’t have, as I gutted the beast, and will send after him tomorrow.”
Cate straightened. “You…you killed him.”
“It seemed necessary at the moment, though I’d have done better to ride on when it turned on me as I came upon it.”
“But…I was sure I heard him right behind me.”
“For some small distance only. Is that why you didn’t turn back? I thought your Rosie had run away with you, being you got so far ahead of me.”
“Not…entirely.” She had been so certain the boar was behind her, though the noise of her passage through the forest made it difficult to be sure.
“Too bad. All this could have been prevented, otherwise.” He gestured at the brush pile that had become their wood yard, the fire, the woodland beyond, where the outlaws had disappeared.
“What, depriving me of the opportunity to sleep out in the weather?” she said with an attempt at lightness. “Heaven forbid.”
He snorted but made no answer. With a glance at the snow that was falling thicker out of the night sky, he caught the drape of his plaid and unwrapped it from his shoulders, exposing the simple leather jerkin he wore under a short coat of darkest green wool and over a shirt of cream linen so brightly colored it was almost saffron. Shaking the white flakes from his head like a dog shaking off water, he lifted the wool length over it as a covering before wrapping the rest of it around him like a blanket.
His movements were so swift and unstudied, yet rife with masculine grace, that they stopped the breath in Cate’s throat. His hair was black silk, falling in waves to his shoulders, his jawline square and firm. His shoulders were broad enough that he had dislodged sheaves of snow from them. The movement of his plaid, as he drew it higher, exposed a length of thigh that was brown, hard and corded with muscle.
The sensation that seized her was heated and virulent, an exhilaration in the blood. She had never been private with a man before, never been close to one in quite the same way. Oh, she had been seated next to admirers at table on occasion, had walked in the cloisters at their side. There had always been other people about, however—her sisters, the king’s guards, stewards and sentries—to prevent any untoward familiarity.
There was no one here except her and the Scotsman. He could do whatever he pleased to her with no one to gainsay him. All she had to depend upon was his sworn word that he had no desire to take her to wife.
That said nothing of what else he might desire of her. Her strength was no match for his, no matter how hard she might fight him. She would be at his mercy. And why that thought made her ache with emptiness deep inside instead of terrifying her, she could not have said.
Silence stretched around them, broken only by the whine of snow-laden wind in the limbs overhead and the flutter and snap of the fire. The cold air, scented with wood smoke and snow, hurt the back of Cate’s nose and threatened to freeze her lungs. She was miserable and not precisely secure in her mind. And yet she could have been worse off, she knew, much worse.
“It was good of you to follow upon my trail after killing the boar,” she said with some difficulty. “I am truly thankful. If…if you had not come, I don’t know what might have happened.”
His eyes glinted with a blue steel edge as he glanced at her. “Don’t you?”
“You think they would have…” She shook her head. “I’d have been worth more if held for ransom.”
“Oh, they’d have thought of that, too, I don’t doubt. But rapine and abduction have the same penalty, and a man can hang only once.”
She swallowed, clasping her hands together. “Then I’m even more in your debt.”
“Don’t think of it,” he said. “It didn’t happen.”
“No, but I wish there was some way—”
“And you’d be wise to keep that wish behind your teeth,” he interrupted, “unless you would invite me under your cloak as well as into your shelter.”
Hot chagrin flooded her face, burning its way to her cheekbones, and then receded so quickly that she felt light-headed. “I didn’t mean it that way, and you know it well.”
A grunt shook him. “So much for gratitude.”
“And neither did you mean it.” She narrowed her eyes in sudden discovery. “You wanted to silence me.”
“If so, it didn’t serve.”
“I can be quiet enough,” she said with precision, and turned her shoulder to him. Frowning, she stared out into the falling curtain of white that blended from gray to black beyond the firelight.
Ross missed the music of Lady Catherine’s voice when she stopped speaking. He also missed her pointed questions and even her prying into what was none of her concern. He missed her warm and human company even more after she scooted deeper into the lean-to he had made, turned her back and lay down wrapped in her fur-lined cloak.
He told himself he was better off without the distraction. He could concentrate more on what was around him, on what might be watching from the woods that whispered around him with the falling snow.
Of course, her resolve to be silent would not last beyond the first idle thought to cross her mind. She would sit up again, give him one of her penetrating stares and begin talking of nothing. It was a rare woman, in his experience, who could or would hold her tongue. Curiosity and the dislike for having no one to share their thoughts would not allow it.
He was wrong.
An hour passed, the snow sifted relentlessly down, wind clattered the icy tree branches together, and still she said nothing. She was a stubborn wench. Or rather a stubborn lady—he could not call a female who wore a gold ring and velvet habit under an ermine-lined cloak by a less exalted title.
She was also as hardy and uncomplaining as any cottager’s drab. Who had taught her to retreat into herself, to accept what came and endure it? She had been through enough in one evening to throw most gently bred ladies into strong hysterics, yet she was able to overcome it, to smile and take interest in someone else.
Not that he had noticed her smiles all that much, of course.
He had barely been aware of the glow of firelight on her pale skin, or the way it turned the tresses spread over her cloak into spun gold. Nay, hardly at all. It had only come to him half a dozen times that he was the only man other than her future husband who would ever see the shining length of it in such casual disarray, without the cover of a veil. Yes, and somewhere deep inside he was loath to think even her husband should have that right. How dim-witted could he be?
She was an Englishwoman. She wanted no part of him and he none of her, and he’d best not forget it.
Except that was a bald-faced lie. He’d take all of her he could get but for the small matter of binding himself to her as a husband. She was fair to look on and lovely to touch, and she stirred his blood as no female had since he was three and ten, and saw his first naked woman, his sister’s nursemaid, in her bath. He fair ached to see Lady Catherine in the same state of nature, clothed in nothing except the shining cape of her hair.
Not that it meant twopence. The need for coupling was like any other appetite for him, satisfied when the means was at hand, controlled when it was not.
The old laird, his esteemed father, was rabid in his dislike of the Sassenach; only his hatred of those who went by the name of Trilborn went deeper. He’d go off in an apoplexy if his firstborn son dared bring an Englishwoman home to Scotland. That was if he did not disown him for even thinking of such a betrayal.
Not that he was, Ross assured himself, as he traced with his gaze the sweet curves of Lady Catherine’s backside for the thousandth time. His thoughts were wandering only because there was nothing to occupy them, nothing to be seen in this interminable night except clouds of snow, the gray ghosts of trees and the orange heart of the fire in front of him. He was half-blind with watching them, half-frozen from the back of his neck to his rump, half-roasted on his front from sitting so still. Yet he dared not shift his position except to shove another section of log into the flames, throw another broken branch into their maw. Once erect and moving, there was no telling what he might do.
A quiet clicking sound came to him. He glanced around quickly before pinpointing the noise inside the shelter, which he’d positioned so its opening took advantage of whatever warmth there might be from the fire. Lady Catherine’s teeth were chattering where she lay huddled on the hard ground. She was no more asleep than he was, and her position put her farther from the fire.
He could ease inside with her, slip under her cloak while throwing his plaid over both of them for extra warmth. He could pull her close and turn her so her fine, firm bottom pressed against the hard rod of him, and his arm clasped her waist. He could bury his face in her hair, pressing his lips to the tender curve of her neck at the vulnerable nape as he had first wanted when he saw her trembling with shock. Mayhap they would both be warm then.
Mayhap he was a half-wit.
He had no pretence to sainthood, so could not trust his hands not to stray where they did not belong. She might scream, then, fighting away from him. Or worse, she might not. She might turn to him with soft murmurs, sweet kisses and sighs, urging him to the one place certain to hold the sweet heat of paradise. And he would go there, blindly willing, strutted in rampant desire. He would enter her in heart-pounding fervor, taking her wet softness, her clinging, pulsing comfort, in such mindless rut that he’d care not a whit what came on the morrow.
It was a trap, that comfort, one that could close them both in its stranglehold and never let them go. A single step in the lady’s direction now and their fates were set. Conscience as well an English king would demand it.
He had given his word that he would never marry her.
Rising so abruptly that his knees cracked and he dumped snow from his back and shoulders with a slithering crash, Ross moved to drag another log onto the fire, then another, and another. He piled the timber high until the flames spat and crackled like demons, lighting the night for a dozen yards around, spreading heat like a benediction. He laid on more until he was sure it would warm the lady, yes, and do it more safely, for all its fiery danger, than he could.
Wrapping himself in his plaid once more, then, he squatted well back from the great, bright conflagration. Face set, eyes hooded, he endured.