Her heart began a hard thudding.
The look he’d fixed on her had been anything but innocent.
Theclunkof his belt dropping on the floor, a direct challenge.
The sound of his tunic being drawn over his head, an affront that sent streaks of excitement straight to the deep-seated core of pure female need she hadn’t been aware she possessed until this moment.
Stretching her hands to the fire, she used the pretense of warming them to keep her back to him and the two empty bathing tubs looming so close behind her.
One soon to be occupied by him,naked.
Her face flamed at the notion, her entire body heating.
Then another sword belt hit the floor, followed by the soft rustlings of a second tunic being stripped off.
Lachlan’s belt and tunic.
Or the younger knight’s belt and the Sassunach’s hose, for the soft rustling sounds could just as well have been Sir Marmaduke rolling down his leggings.
“’Twas only my young friend’s shirt,” his richly timbred voice solved the mystery.
And proved to Caterine he could indeed read her thoughts.
Beside her, Rhona held her hands to the flames. “It doesn’t become you to appear so inhospitable, my lady.”
“Oh, come.” Caterine shrugged out of her cloak. “Would I have poured the last of our precious lavender and thyme oils into their bath water or lined the tubs with fine linen did I not wish to see them comfortable?”
“You have not exactly encouraged them to enjoy the warmth of your welcome.”
“Pah.” Caterine tossed her cloak onto a nearby bench. “Were I as ungracious as you claim, I’d not have hung our best drying cloths near the fire so they may dry themselves with warmed toweling.”
“There are more ways to warm a man than by offering him heated bath linens.”
“Is that so?”
“Oh, aye.” Rhona smiled, her eyes lighting. “The possibilities are endless.”
Then share them, a silent voice pleaded from the most secret corner of Caterine’s heart.
As if she’d heard, Rhona’s gaze slid to James. “Watch how I bathe him. You would be wise to show your champion the same care.”
“I have bathed enough men-” Caterine began, breaking off when her friend walked away. “Wait! I am the one to always assist James…”
Left alone, the ancient laws of hospitality swept down on her shoulders, a crushing weight, sacred and not to be ignored.
She did swallow hard, tried to ignore the blood rushing in her ears. Mercy, the intimacies she must grant the English knight rode her conscience, as real as if she’d already dipped her hands into his bath water and, even now, slid them over his soapy-wet skin.
In truth, he merely leaned against the far wall, watching her, branding her with the heat of his stare. Raw masculinity poured off him, and just being in the same room with him made every inch of her thrum with crackling anticipation.
Turning aside, she smoothed her hands on her skirts.
I have nothing to fear – I have seen scores of unclothed men.
The backs and the fronts of them.She mouthed the words, a silent litany, her palms growing more damp with each beat of her heart.
She had no cause for alarm.
Many were the visiting knights and nobles she’d granted such attentions over the years.
