Her long, tawny hair wild around her. Her cheeks a bright pink. Her saucy breasts rising and falling with outraged indignation beneath her white nightgown of so delicate a cloth that her nipples pressed taut against it.
With a gasp, she followed his gaze to their rosy outline—and then looked up at him with sudden alarm in her eyes.
“No…no!”
She tried to bolt past him, but Gabriel caught her in his arms as Euna and Donella fled with fresh shrieks out the door, clearly wanting no more part of tending to his wife.
Meanwhile, the young serving maid holding the tray of still-steaming soup stood a few steps inside the room, her eyes wide and her face blanched white at what she must have witnessed.
“Leave the tray on the table and shut the door,” he commanded, grunting again as Magdalene dug her elbow into his ribs, struggling mightily.
“Aye, Laird,aye!”
The poor girl couldn’t oblige him fast enough, Gabriel wondering if there would be any soup left in the bowl for how quickly she deposited the tray and skittered away.
The door left yawning behind her, though she returned an instant later, bobbed a chagrined curtsey, and then slammed it shut.
Magdalene jumped in his arms, gasping at the sound, and began to struggle all the harder, even as Gabriel picked her up and carried her to the bed.
“No…please, no! No consummate!No consummate!”
For a fleeting moment, Gabriel considered what it might be like to lay Magdalene down upon the mattress and strip the nightgown from her—by God, she wasn’t a lunatic after all and no more a child in her mind than he was the monster she believed him to be!
Just to look at her…to drink in a vision he hadn’t seen since pulling her out of that fountain, his loins tightening at the memory.
Her body naked and wet and so lovely, like a mythic nymph risen from the lough to tempt him—aye, he was sorely tempted right now. Yet Clovis’s warning came back to him not to push her past what she could bear, and clearly she had a wide-eyed, desperate look that helped at once to clear the desire fogging his brain.
“Maggie, I came here tae try and get you tae eat,” he murmured, setting her down gently upon the edge of the bed. His heart went out to her that she sat so tense and alarmed like a sparrow ready to take flight, and he went at once to fetch the bowl of soup to prove his intentions. “Ah, good, it’s still hot.”
To his relief—and no small amount of surprise—she hadn’t flown from the bed and run to the door, but instead perched there with a look of astonishment on her face as he grabbed a chair and settled it in front of her. Then he sat down, his knees touching hers though she immediately shifted them away.
“Shh, wife, I’ll not hurt you. You’ve every right not tae believe me after staying in this room all week, but I came at once when Clovis told me you havna eaten for two days. Has the food not been tae your liking?”
She didn’t answer, looking from his face to how he stirred the thick soup and then raised a spoonful to his lips to blow upon it.
“Hmm, I think you’ll like Cook’s chicken soup. You havna met him yet, but he’s as round as a barrel—just like Tam, my steward. Will you try some, Maggie?”
Again, he heard only silence, Magdalene turning her head to one side and looking away…that is, until his stomach growled so noisily that she glanced back at him in surprise.
“Och, I’m ravenous as a wolf, but I’ll not eat a bite until you have a mouthful or two. Will you oblige me and sample Cook’s soup?”
She simply stared at him, but when his stomach growled again, even louder than before, he could swear he saw her expression ease and even the slightest hint of amusement in her gaze.
“Here, I’ll hand you the bowl and fetch you a slice of buttered bread. Eat, Maggie, please. You’ve got me worried about you…”
Relief filled him again that she took the bowl, not hurling it across the room but lifting it to breathe in the aroma. Suddenly, he heard her stomach growl noisily, too, a small laugh escaping her that sounded like the sweetest music to his ears.
He stared at her, mesmerized, but she sobered just as quickly when he rose from the chair.
“Ease yourself, lass. I’m fetching the bread, is all.”
Gabriel kept his movement slow and purposeful, not wanting to startle her in the least as he heard a gentle slurping behind him. Now he smiled, too, the mood in the room as peaceful and calm as when she’d lain in the bed with little Rhona in her arms—and he wanted to keep it that way.
He wasn’t surprised at all when he retook his seat that the soup was half gone, Magdalene having forgone the slower spoon to lift the bowl to her mouth. She looked up at him with some embarrassment, which wasn’t what a madwoman would have done at all.
She seemed to have realized her mistake, too. She fairly grabbed the slice of bread from his hand and shoved a good portion into her mouth as if determined to appear the lunatic—aye, he could see so clearly now what she’d been doing.
Any time she had forgotten herself and her ruse, she had redoubled her efforts to make up for it, which left Gabriel wondering what she intended to do next…the calm before the storm. He couldn’t have been more startled when she handed him the half slice that remained, her voice muffled as she chewed.
