A condition she would not suffer.
Rhona yanked on her sleeve. “Have you noticed the bulge of his arm muscles and the size of his shoulders? You could do worse, my lady,” she purred. “Many are the maids who would crave his favor.”
“Who would not admire his fine form?” Annoyance flickered in Caterine’s chest. “Or do you believe me as withered as Sir Hugh claims? Beyond taking note of a man so tall, so broad-shouldered?”
Rhona gave her a wounded look. “Ne’er would I call you-”
“I am neither wilted nor blind.” Caterine held her friend’s gaze. “Linnet’s champion is a compelling man. If not dashingly handsome, and despite his English blood, he has an air of strength and assurance that is appealing.”
“But?”
“But nothing.” Caterine made light of Rhona’s probing. “Acknowledging such qualities or his powerful, well-muscled form is no different from admiring the fine lines of the great warhorses his accursed countrymen ride about on.”
Except no English destrier had ever set her heart a-flutter with one gallant hand kiss.
Rhona reached across the table and poked her arm. “In the shadows of the hall, it’s almost possible to imagine what he must’ve looked like before he was scarred.”
“In mercy’s name!” Caterine almost jumped up, ready to flee. “It scarce matters to me what he looked like then, or…” she trailed off to stare at the Sassunach’s table.
He and his men now stood, and his companions had donned fur-lined cloaks. Two of them followed Eoghann toward the hall’s vaulted entrance, disappearing with the castle steward into the cold night while the other two made for the turnpike stair.
Upward spiraling steps that led to the wall-walk.
They meant to patrol Dunlaidir’s ramparts.
Caterine’s breath caught at the unexpected lurching of her heart. An unaccustomed sense of being protected,cared for, cloaked her with all the warmth and comfort of a much-used and well-loved blanket.
Such a wash of security, of ease, was an unfamiliar emotion, but powerful enough to wage fierce battle against her irritation.
Too many were the months she’d gone to bed wary, half afraid to sleep lest she awaken to find de la Hogue’s henchmen looming over her.
Or worse, the earl himself.
A kick to her shin shattered the troubling image. “He – is – coming,” Rhona mouthed the warning, barely finishing before the tall English knight stood before them.
“Ladies,” he said in the fluid tongue of the Highlands, his voice deep and smooth.
“Good sir…” Her own tongue too clumsy to form more than the simple response, Caterine slid a glance toward the hearth, hoping support from Sir John, the only person at hand who loathed the English as soundly as she, but the sore-battered lord had slipped from the hall. The deep shadows where he’d stood loomed black and empty.
Wishing she could vanish as well, Caterine peered up at her sister’s ill-chosen champion. “I hope you’ve dined well enough,” she managed, her voice declaring her wariness despite the polite words. “We were not prepared for guests.”
He didn’t blink. “So it would seem.”
“So it is.”
“I understand, my lady.”
You cannot possibly, Caterine’s heart answered.
Their gazes locked, and a strange giddiness rippled through her. A curious breathlessness she’d never before experienced. Light from a nearby torch cast a sheen on his dark hair and glanced off the steel rings of his mail shirt, gilding them in such a way that his rock-hewn arm and shoulder muscles appeared all the more pronounced.
Faith, but he unsettled her.
“…ill suits you…” he was saying, but his looming presence flustered her so thoroughly she caught but a snippet of what he’d said.
She blinked. “If what ill suits me?”
“If he speaks with you,” Rhona supplied.
