“O waly, waly, up the bank, And waly, waly, down the brae…”
He drew a deep breath through his nose.
The lady’s acting skills would land her no parts on the stage.
But her voice…
“Where I and my love were wont to gae. I leant my back unto an aik, Thought it was a trusty tree…”
By God, her voice.
Ethereal and divine as any siren’s, Meghan Smith’s singing would send sailors crashing into rocks.
Meghan offered him her leg, and he forced himself to return to the delightful task of running the damp cloth over the toned limb.
“But first it bow’d, and syne it brak, Sae my true love did lichtly me…”
She murmured languidly, “It was a snowflake.”
Culross paused. “What?”
“You were wondering what I was drawing in the water before, were you not?”
He had wondered what she looked like beneath those clear depths—andabout her invisible sketch.
Disturbed she had known, he tossed the cloth into the dirty water and ignored her observation.
Culross stood.
He fetched a towel.
When he returned, he snapped the fabric open and Meghan glided to her feet.
He stood transfixed by her naked buttocks and the long graceful expanse of her back.
Meghan arched a guileless look over her shoulder that, from any other woman, would have been practiced.
Blinking quickly, he hurried to drape the towel around her.
While she undertook the enviable task of drying herself, Culross collected the white shift and gown hanging in the corner cabinet.
When he returned, he forced his gaze to the top of her head and handed her the shift.
Culross closed his eyes.
No words were exchanged.
No lust-filled caresses.
The whisper of fabric stirred the air.
His need for women did not extend beyond carnal matters.
So why did this act—the singularly most unsexual act he had performed with and for this woman—leave him hungering in ways he had never hungered before?
Am I the player in their plot against me?
Culross flexed his fingers once.
