Lachlan smiled and pushed up on his elbows. “It pains me but a little,” he said, the tint of white around his lips giving lie to his brave words and smile.
“Hurting or no, you will spend a few days resting until you’ve fully recovered,” Marmaduke said, his voice a shade more gruff than usual.
“Aye, laddie, and it shouldn’t prove a hardship to stay abed with our fair ladies seeing to your comfort,” Eoghann teased him, dropping down beside them. “Our good Lady Caterine has the touch of an angel.”
She looked like an angel, too.
An earthbound one, sent down to tempt Marmaduke past all restraint.
Smothering a curse at the way his pulse leapt at the mere sight of her, he watched her approach, his smitten heart thundering as she crossed the bailey with Sir Alec, the oldest and most battle-torn of his men.
Alec’s long-strided gait had her hurrying to keep pace and her haste sent the voluminous folds of her mantle billowing out behind her. The cloak’s soft dove color blended so well with the gray of morn, she appeared to be walking on air.
Indeed, with curtains of mist swirling about her and her unbound hair flowing to her hips in a shimmering cascade of palest gold, she could pass for a Celtic goddess.
An ethereal being too beautiful for this world.
Too lovely by far for him.
Sure of it, he bit back an oath, way too aware of the fearsome sight he must make with his hair wild and his clothes sweat-soaked and stained with Lachlan’s blood.
Not to mention his face.
Always his face.
Chapter 8
“Icannot see their faces through the fog, can you tell who is hurt?” Caterine glanced at the grim-cast man striding beside her. “Is it him? The Sassunach?”
“Strongbow?” The Highlander’s voice held unmistakable pride. “Nae, it willnae be him. He ne’er takes a scratch. The saints look out of him because he’s already taken his share of battle scars.” He winked at her. “And he’s that good.”
Aye, good. The knowledge came from nowhere and everywhere, lighting on her conscience only long enough to send a tremor rippling through her.
An odd tingling, not at all unpleasant and very much like the delicate shivers that had so surprised her when she’d touched his face on the battlements.
“Is aught amiss my lady?” The big man gave her a questioning look. “Shall I escort you back inside?”
“Nae.” Caterine shook her head. They’d almost reached the seaward wall. “I would see who’s been injured.”
A surge of inexplicable relief swept her when the Sassunach proved as unscathed as the Highlander predicted he’d be. Linnet’s champion knelt beside the youngest of his men, his face turned away from her, the ghost of a breeze ruffling his dark hair.
“Lady,” he said, without looking at her.
“Good sir,” she returned, near choking on the two words, for the tingling sensation had given way to an unaccustomed tightness in her throat and chest.
He shot a glance at her rough-hewn escort. “Any word of the second varlet?”
Alec shook his head. “We searched every inch of the keep, every passage and cranny, all the outbuildings,” he said, shrugging burly shoulders. “There’s some that say the young lord must’ve imagined a second man. I swear to you, if there was one, he must’ve left the same way he came for he’s nowhere to be found.”
“We’ll search again, nevertheless,” Sir Marmaduke said, peering at his man’s face for a long moment before he tore a strip of cloth from the bottom of his tunic and pressed the wadded linen to Lachlan’s wound.
Caterine shifted her weight, grateful he hadn’t fixed her with such an intense stare, hadn’t seen her eyes widen at the sight of him.
Mercy, he may well have knelt before her naked!
So indecently did his hose and dampened tunic cling to his hard-muscled frame.
Every rock-hewn plane.
