Bending, Marmaduke retrieved a grimy leather pouch off the floor near the long-cold smelting furnace. He upended the sack and shook it hard. When nothing but dust emerged, he leveled a hard look at his companion.
James Keith reminded him more of himself at a younger age than he cared to admit.
“Come here,” he said, something fiercely elemental twisting inside him at the anger and doubt he knew plagued the Dunlaidir heir.
Potent enemies, both.
And capable of laming the young man in a far worse way than some long-ago horse kick.
Fending off his own demons, Marmaduke held out the leather pouch. “’Tis shadowy in here,” he said. “You have two good eyes. I have but one. Our purpose is better served if you search the corners, while I gather what I can from the area near the door where the light is stronger.”
“I-” James started, then snapped his mouth shut and came forward to snatch the pouch from Marmaduke’s outstretched hand. “Grating material, you said?”
Marmaduke nodded. “That, and anything that may aid us in securing such a grate.”
“Aye, well then.” Mumbling to himself, James began moving about the forge, stuffing odd lengths of wire, once used to craft links for mail, and rust-caked tools, into the leather sack.
Near the entrance, Marmaduke held up a good-sized drawplate and pretended to examine its many holes of varying sizes. The large sheet of metal was ideal to seal off the cliffside latrine chute. In truth, though, he paid little heed to the absent smith’s prized tool for making wire, preferring to study James out of the corner of his good eye.
Though still grumbling beneath his breath, he moved about easily enough, displaying only a trace of his usual awkward gait.
Just as Marmaduke had hoped.
Seeing the younger man too preoccupied to remember to limp, warmed Marmaduke’s heart and encouraged his conviction that he’d been sent across Scotland for more reasons than simply lending his warring skills and his name to a lady in need.
At the thought of her, other parts of him began to warm as well, so he smoothed his fingers over the cold metal of the drawplate, testing its strength, and letting its chill staunch the flow of heated blood to his loins.
He quirked a half-smile at the irony.
What his most-times unflagging resolve couldn’t achieve, keeping his baser urges at bay, the onerous task before him accomplished with ease.
The distasteful undertaking would steal the itch from any man’s tarse. And if it didn’t, he’d simply make good his vow to bathe in the sea.
Trouble was, he desired his new lady with more than a persistent pull in his groin. He wanted her with his entire being.
Body, heart, and soul.
And neither his iron will nor the shock of the North Sea’s icy waters was a mighty enough elixir to douse a need that burned so deep.
* * *
Later,in another corner of Dunlaidir, Caterine found herself still unnerved by the kiss her champion had placed on the inside of her wrist. Equally disturbing, the name Arabella kept echoing in her mind, pestering her as she climbed the winding turnpike stair to her tower bedchamber.
Iron-bracketed wall torches set at convenient intervals hissed and sputtered, their uneasy flickering mirroring her jangled nerves. At the landing, her little dog, Leo, abandoned her to streak down the shadow-cast passage, then hurl himself against her closed bedchamber door.
By the time she caught up with him, he stood with his forelegs propped against the door’s oaken panels, his tail wagging furiously.
Rhona.
Caterine’s companion had to be inside her room. No one else earned such an enthusiastic response from Leo. She braced herself, for she’d hoped to enjoy a few moments of solitude before looking in on Sir Lachlan. Then she squared her shoulders and opened the door.
Leo gave a yelp of joy and dashed inside.
Caterine gasped.
Her friend was in the room, but rather than Rhona’s pretty face, it was her companion’s well-rounded bottom that greeted her.
Bent near double, Rhona had opened the iron-bound strongbox at the base of Caterine’s curtained bed and appeared to be rummaging through its contents.
