Instead he hauled her into his arms one last time, kissed the top of her head, and made a rash promise.“I’ll find a way.”
As it turned out, finding a way was more challenging than Hew expected.For more than a sennight after he returned to Kildunan, Father James was breathing down his neck.Inquiring into what aspects of a monk’s life Hew was interested in.Asking for details about Hew’s clan and his childhood.Even suggesting Hew might wish to show his serious intent by adopting the shaved tonsure of a monk.
Hew did not.
Finally Father James ran out of questions and left Kildunan for his next monastery inspection.After he was gone, the abbot privately assured Hew that he’d done well under the interrogation.He thanked Hew for keeping his secret.He even slipped Hew a congratulatory bottle of wine to enjoy in his cell.
Drinking three-quarters of the bottle in his bed late at night had probably been a bad idea.With only the pale plaster ceiling to look at, he quickly filled it with mental images of Lady Carenza.Of her smooth and lovely skin.Her shining violet eyes.Her cherry red lips.Her dark silken tresses.Her creamy breasts.Her sleek thighs.The soft mystery of her woman’s flower, opening for him.
If he hadn’t been in a monastery, he might have taken matters into his own hands then.Just the thought of Carenza had made him hard as steel.
He reached for the bottle again.Maybe he could drink himself into a stupor.
By the time he finished off the wine, he’d made a decision.
Now that Father James was gone, Hew would journey to Dunlop on the morrow.It had been a fortnight since he’d seen Carenza.The real Carenza.Not some sketches of his imagination drawn on the cell ceiling.
He’d give the abbot some excuse to go.He’d say the physician wished to check on the progress of his burned hand.Aye, that could work.
With that happy thought, he drifted off to dream about the woman he loved.
Unfortunately, in the middle of the night, he was awakened by the arrival of a guildsman in the infirmary.By morn, the physician was already at Kildunan.
Peris stayed the whole morn, tending to the guildsman, whom the other monks confided was close to death.Hew wondered how a physician willing to steal from the church and kill a man with poison had the moral fortitude to sit by a dying man’s bedside.
Then a ghastly thought sent a prickling up his spine.
What if the physician was poisoning men in the infirmary?What if it was more than just the church treasures that went missing?Could Peris and his accomplice be murdering the nobles and robbing their corpses as well?
Suddenly Hew had a real reason he could give the abbot to travel to Dunlop—following up on a clue.While the physician was busy with the dying man at Kildunan, Hew could search Peris’s quarters.
Even better, the lady of the castle no doubt had keys to all the chambers.Carenza could give him access to the physician’s things.Looking for valuables among them wouldn’t take long.And then…
Then he and Carenza could take their time reuniting.
At least that was what he planned.
But the instant he strode into the crowded hall of Dunlop and spotted Carenza across the room, his heart leaped, and he forgot all about the first part of his mission.
His ceiling portraits hadn’t done her justice.Though her smile seemed strained as she spoke with two clanswomen near the stairwell, she looked more ravishing than he remembered.
A moment later, her meandering gaze halted on him.He saw her take a deep breath, and her tight smile broadened into a grin of pure pleasure.
He wanted to run to her.To sweep her up in his arms and kiss every inch of her face.To carry her up the stairs to her bedchamber and lock the door.To cast off his clothes and his inhibitions and make sweet love to her.
But they had to be cautious.
So he sauntered toward her, greeting clanfolk as he went, until he was close enough to see the shimmering delight in her eyes.
“Lady Carenza,” he said with a polite nod of his head.
“Sir Hew,” she replied in kind.“How nice to see ye.How long has it been?Thirty days?Three hundred?”She was teasing him.
He gave her a chiding smile.“Only a fortnight, my lady.”
She sighed.“Is that all?”
“Is that Sir Hew o’ Rivenloch?”her father suddenly bellowed, coming up to join them.“How’s your hand, lad?”
