“Laird? Is aught amiss?”
“The lass had a bad dream, nothing more,” he sought to explain, and then waved the farmer away. “Go back tae your bed, man.”
A low “Aye” greeted his command and the door was quickly shut, leaving Roger still uncertain of what to do while the horse snorted in its stall, sheep bleated and a coop full of chickens clucked and flapped their wings.
“Aye, the rest of you, too, settle down and go back tae sleep.”
To his surprise, within moments the barn had grown quiet while Julianna no longer appeared in a dead faint. She was fast asleep again, her breasts gently rising and falling against the bodice of her gown.
A green silk gown rumpled from their three days’ flight, the hem soiled and torn.
Her long hair fanned out and flecked with golden bits of straw, her cheeks flushed pink and her lips slightly parted as she uttered the gentlest sigh.
Strangely mesmerized, Roger could only stare at her, his heart thudding against his chest…until he finally decided what he must do.
If the nightmare returned, he would be right there to awaken her. As quietly as he could, he lay down beside her—though not touching her—and closed his eyes to try and get some sleep.
The soft, steady sound of her breathing lulling him, Roger overcome by an unexpected sense of peace that he had not known in months.
“Juli,” he murmured, trying out the name she had called herself while locked in the terror of her dream. Or had it been a haunting remembrance of how she had lost her parents, her brother?
A jarring realization suddenly struck him, the peace Roger had felt vanishing as quickly as it had come.
De Vescy. So Julianna’s family had been one of those attacked during that border raid into England ten years ago, and her brother whom William had killed…
“Och, God.” Tunneling his fingers through his hair and shutting his eyes tight, Roger wished now that they hadn’t stopped at all for the night and had kept riding north.
At least then he wouldn’t have overheard Julianna’s nightmare and connected his own family to the deaths of her mother, father, and brother…Roger imagining the hatred he would see in her violet eyes if she ever learned the truth.
Aye,ifshe ever learned the truth. He had no idea what King Robert intended to do with her, another highborn English hostage to mayhap use to secure his wife’s release.
So much for Roger thinking he might have spared her from a marriage to a man who would despise her.
The thought deeply galling him that Charles de Montfort might wed her after all if Julianna was returned to Cumberland, he rolled over onto his side to stare at her again in the flickering lantern light.
Her delicate profile limned in gold, her dark eyelashes a stark contrast to the paleness of her skin.
She slept so peacefully now…this beautiful and caring Englishwoman who had done everything she could to help him—her enemy!—though other Scotsmen had cost her so much.
His own brother, aye, and mayhap his father, too.
A pain piercing Roger that had nothing to do with his bruised body or the healing cut on his forehead…but came from his heart.
* * *
“I hopeRoger never makes it home—aye, I pray for it!”
“Blasphemy, man! You speak of our own brother and the laird here—”
“Not while he’s gone!” William spat at Evander, who sat opposite him in the great hall, his younger brother’s bald head reflecting the light from the flaming logs in the fireplace.
Evander appeared shocked, dismayed, yet why would that be? William had never made a secret of his intense dislike of Roger, who only by a mistake of birth had won everything that he so craved.
The Douglas lairdship.
Wealth.
Lands.
