“What?” James looked at her flatly.
“Just, I don’t know,” she stammered, looking nervous to say the wrong thing. “Move the battle or something. You know, just come at them from a different place, maybe?”
“It’s impossible.” He shook his head. “The plans have been drawn. The Dee is in flood. Our strength is firepower; we’d never get the men and their weapons across a swollen river.”
“Well, you don’t have to use just the guns, right? I mean, people cross rivers all the time. And most of your men have swords anyway. You just said the Highlanders don’t even have muskets.”
James started to dismiss her once again, then began to think. “I suppose it could work,” he said after a time. “So simple, aye?” He nodded now, considering. “With the Dee in flood, they’d never expect us from the right flank.” He began to think out loud, passion renewing his voice. “We scout downriver a bit. Surely we’ll find some place to ford across. The ponies could manage it. And I know just the lot of men for the job. So simple. It’s brilliant, lass.”
He enthusiastically cupped his hands on Magda’s cheeks and planted an offhanded kiss on her mouth.
He pulled away quickly, and they both froze. James memorized her face, so close to his, and her eyes, glittering green like a cat’s in the evening twilight. He marveled at their vibrancy, alight like some rare gem. He looked into those eyes for just a heartbeat too long and felt panic skitter through him. He sensed himself in a very different kind of danger, even as her gaze pierced him through and warmed him to the soul. And it was in that instant James realized he was capable of loving, truly loving, a woman.
Something flickered on the fringes of his mind, urging him to flee, to avoid at all costs this vulnerability. To be rid of this sudden feeling of want that he hadn’t known possible.
Instead, unwilling to help himself, he reached out to her. Tangling his fingers through the fine auburn silk of her hair, he cradled her head and brought his mouth roughly to hers.
She was so soft in his arms. Her full lips opened to him with an eagerness that nearly undid him. He inhaled deeply, hungering for as much of her as he could take, wanting to consume her, to feel Magda’s tongue in his mouth and her breath in his lungs.
She wrapped her arms about his neck and pressed herself against him, her breasts firm against his chest. His hand trembled as he drew it carefully from her hair, grazing down her cheek and jaw, her skin as soft as those rose petals beneath his fingers.
Magda stretched higher, pulling closer, rubbing against him, and more than anything he wanted to bring his hand down and tear the dress from her, taking those breasts in his hands, his mouth.
“Och.” With a groan he pulled himself from her. “Good Christ, lass, but I want you so.” He brought his forehead to hers and tried to calm his thundering heartbeat. He breathed slowly, deliberately. “I’m a ruined man, Magda. Like an angel you are, sent to me from some place beyond my ken, and you’ve doomed me to forever crave your touch.”
“James.” She whispered his name, and tracing her tongue along his lip, she beckoned him back.
“Magda,” he murmured. “Lovely Magda.” He brought his mouth to hers gently then, and the taste of her moan in his mouth broke him.
He couldn’t do this. She didn’t belong there, in such a brutal, uncertain time. He’d not ravage her in some tent on the eve of battle. He might be a man forever destroyed by her touch, but he’d not bring her down too.
“I must go.” His voice was a hoarse whisper. James rose from her, had to turn his back to avoid seeing what was the most powerful temptation of his life. He knew if he were to look once more at her, see the invitation he knew he’d find in her eyes, there would be no going back. He’d not be able to stop himself again.
With a muttered oath, he wandered blindly away, to lose himself in the gray smoke of the soldiers’ camp.
Chapter 14
Even in her confusion, Magda’s face flushed as she thought of James, of last night. His kiss had crashed over her, consumed her, his mouth urgent to taste every part of her.
And she’d felt the same hunger. Magda had wanted to take him to her, to touch and taste away all the rest, to forget the world of the future, and the pall of death that hung like a physical thing over their present. His fingers had traced with unexpected gentleness along the curve of her cheek, down the slope of her neck. She’d longed for them to ease lower, sliding down the front of her dress, fantasized how it would feel for his roughened palm to chafe her breast and take her in hand.
They’d pulled apart reluctantly. James had rested his forehead on hers, murmuring words of adoration that, though entirely new to her, had felt familiar and right.
But then he’d left so abruptly, and she’d returned to the smells and din of the crofter’s cottage, where she stayed with a few of the cooks and grooms not far from the soldiers. The bizarre transition from something so intimate to a situation so foreign left Magda feeling unreal. James had insisted on her privacy, and the embarrassment she felt at having an entire room to herself while the others made do on the floor in front of the hearth was only more isolating.
Adjusting her plaid shawl one last time, Magda stepped into the clearing before she lost her nerve. She’d left her room before dawn, knowing that if Napier saw her, he’d never allow her to venture to the soldiers’ camp. But she had slept fitfully the night before and wanted, needed, to see James before he was off. She had to find out what the kiss had meant to him. What she meant to him. Even if she discovered what they’d shared had been nothing more than a flare of lust, the knowledge of where she stood would be something solid to hold on to.
She heard James before she saw him. A broad laugh rising above the voices of others. He had clearly heard something that delighted him, and she had to smile at the sound of it. His easy pleasure was a constant surprise, reassuring, and welcome like a chance break in the clouds in an overcast sky.
“The sun, she rises.” James snuck up behind her, his breath hot on her neck in the chill morning air, and traced his fingers lightly up and down her spine. Her body shivered, nipples pulling taut against the rough fabric of her dress.
She turned to look at him. Dawn was beginning to filter through the trees, and the shapes of things slowly appeared out of the fading dark. The early morning mist shrouded the camp in an unearthly haze, James a gray silhouette standing close by her side. A shiver crawled through her, terror of the coming battle like a spear in her belly, even as the sight of James—long and handsome, donning armored breastplate like some magnificent hero of old—made her feel like a woman undone.
“To what do we owe this honor?” His voice was suddenly formal. Then she spotted a stoic group of men who’d appeared and were heading toward them.
“I wanted to wish you good luck,” she said, cursing the anxiety that seeped through in her voice.
“I cannot imagine a greater boon than your bonny self, hen. Though,” he added with a laugh, “Napier will surely burst a vein to find you gone from your room.”
