“So it is.” He remained on the threshold, his fierce gaze locked on hers. “And you concern me more than any walls of stone, my lady.”
“Oh.” Caterine blinked, not sure what to say.
She wasn’t used to chivalry.
Even Leo appeared confused. The little dog barked once, then scurried away to a dark corner where he scooted beneath a chair to growl at the newcomer from a safe distance.
“God’s eyes, man, put me down.” Lachlan squirmed in the champion’s arms. “I’ve but a wee scratch and you coddle me as if I’ve lost a limb.”
“You well could have. Be glad.” Sir Marmaduke eased the strapping young knight onto one of the benches set against the wall as if he weighed no more than a sack of goose feathers.
His friend comfortably settled, if scowling at the unwanted attention, he crossed the kitchen with long, purposeful strides, reaching Caterine’s side before she could blink.
Without a word, he took her hands. Turning them, he trailed the backs of his fingers over her reddened palms.
“Lady, I will not allow your hands to grow as calloused as a scullion’s,” he vowed, again glancing at the discarded pail. “Not for any reason.”
A tense silence descended, a quiet so heavy Caterine could almost hear her heart knocking against her ribs.
“I’ve told her the same myself,” Eoghann declared, breaking the spell. He flashed a look at Caterine’s tub-bound stepson. “Isn’t that the way of it?”
“Aye.” James nodded. “We still have servants enough to see to such tasks would she allow them to do so.”
A grin spreading across his face, the seneschal bobbed his head. “See?” He beamed at the English knight. “It gladdens my ears to hear you tell her so. She won’t listen to us. Perhaps she’ll heed you.”
“I shall do my best to convince her,” Sir Marmaduke said, the warmth of his hands on hers near scattering her wits and sending dangerously delicious tingles up her arms.
“Honeyed words do not sway me,” she said, her defiant tone aided by the ill-timed surfacing of other Sassunach voices.
Harsh male voices ordering her to do their will lest they suffer more sorrow on her than the mere taking of their pleasure. Caterine tamped down a shudder, memories plaguing her – distant terrors, resurrected by the Englishness of the man who sought to champion her.
With a speed borne of her shame, she yanked her hands from his grasp, snatched the water pail and dumped its contents into the nearest bathing tub.
“Done!” She let the empty bucket slip from her fingers and met Sir Marmaduke’s calm gaze with a long hard stare. For good measure, she tossed an equally hot glare at the seneschal.
“Bonnie words and courtly airs are purest folly,” she said, her temper spurred on by a parade of leering faces rising cruelly from the depths of her soul. “I stopped listening to such foolery at a tender age and will not be persuaded to do so again.”
She paused, set her hands on her hips. “Most especially not from English lips.”
To her mortification, a flare of sympathy, or perhaps regret, flashed across Sir Marmaduke’s scarred face. Coolly ignoring her outburst, he simply lifted a brow.
“Dare I suggest, my lady, that the fools who tried in vain to impress you did not possess deep enough hearts to put enough of their own into winning yours?”
His words, smooth and rich, embraced her, beguiling her with startling ease and pouring warmth and light into corners of her soul that had never known a shred of gallantry.
She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but he’d already moved to stand before James’ washtub, his withdrawal leaving her oddly bereft.
It was as if all the light in the kitchen had followed him, leaving her to stand alone in the dark. Even the warmth of the cook fire seemed to have cooled.
Waving away Eoghann’s concern when he peered oddly at her, she stared after the Sassunach, uncomfortably touched by his silvered words, the tingles still rippling across her palms and up and down her arms.
He seemed unaware of the turmoil he’d stirred in her. His features controlled, he addressed her stepson. “Sir Alec and several others are making a renewed search of the castle and grounds. If a second intruder yet lurks here, they will find him.”
James stopped lathering his hair. “I was mistaken,” he said, casting a glance at Rhona than meet Marmaduke’s gaze. “There was only one.”
Paying scant heed to their exchange, Caterine stared down at the toppled pail. Water trickled over its rim to form a growing stain on the stone floor.
A stain as dark as the one stamped so indelibly on her heart.
