Yet she took heart that he hadn’t demanded her to stay behind, and hurried after him to duck inside the stable, Alec shutting the door behind her.
He didn’t wait for her, but strode deeper inside to the stall where his gray stallion nickered at his approach, her mare in the opposite stall greeting Rowen with a low snort.
“Och, Tempest…look at you.”
Alec’s heavy sigh told Rowen everything before she drew closer in the lantern light.
Two wounds on the stallion’s right flank where the stones had struck were slathered with a thick herb poultice, so thankfully the stable hands had been tending to the horse.
Yet Alec’s gaze was furious when he glanced at Rowen from where he stood stroking Tempest’s neck, which made her take a step backward, right into a pile of manure.
“Aye, that says it better than anything I could tell you,” Alec grated at her, Rowen feeling sickened not by the pungent smell wafting up from her boots, but at what his stallion had suffered.
“I-I’m sorry, Alec! How many more times must I apologize for what happened tae you and your horse?”
“You canna say it, lass? What happened was my skull could have cracked into pieces and Tempest’s legs broken. Would that have been a fitting end for so magnificent a beast? Would that have been a fitting end forme, your wedded husband?”
Alec’s voice had risen in fury so that each query felt like a lashing to Rowen, while Tempest and Snow both tossed their heads and snorted.
She felt so terrible all over again that any joy she’d known at seeing Alec whole and up on his feet was a distant memory, tears burning her eyes.
She thought to run—aye, to jump onto her mare and ride from the stable straight for the gates in desperate hope they might open before she crashed headlong into them, Rowen wheeling away from Alec to bolt toward Snow’s stall.
“Dinna do it,” came his emphatic command as if he had guessed her crazed plan, but she was already at her mare’s side and unhooking the rope that tethered her?—
“Let me go, damn you!” Like a wild thing, Rowen fought against Alec’s sudden hold upon her, flailing her arms and punching at him even as he pulled her into a fierce embrace.
“Will you injure yourself and your mare, too?” he demanded, shaking her to stop her from struggling. “My men dinna open the castle gates for anyone unless it’s by my command—och, woman!”
Rowen had entwined her fingers in his thick hair and yanked upon it, hard, which only brought his face closer to hers, his gaze upon her lips.
“Curse again at me, Rowen Mackay, and I will only kiss you the harder?—”
“You’re a bastard—no,no!”
His mouth found hers to silence her protests as she twisted in his arms, but to no avail.
Alec held her fast and kissed her just as he had threatened…with such fervor that Rowen ceased her struggles as all thought, all feeling centered upon the stirring sensation of his lips moving against hers.
So warm…the stirring pressure at first heated and then growing tender only to become impassioned again…while she wound her arms around his neck as everything spun around her…
“I would say those are open arms, aye, wife? Come.”
Rowen felt cold air upon her face almost before she realized Alec had swept her into his arms to carry her outside, where he paused only to shut the stable door before striding with her across the bailey.
His footfalls crunching in the snow.
His breath warm upon her cheek as he held her close…only to kick open the door to the keep and stride toward the tower steps.
Rowen still feeling dazed, and trembling now at the import of his words.
She could struggle and fight him, aye, but she knew she wanted him as much as his kiss had told her that mayhap he didn’t despise her after all…and wanted her, too.
His powerful lunges up the steps and long strides down the hall made her heartbeat race until another door was shoved open, Alec setting her down in the middle of their bedchamber to whisk off her cloak and toss it onto a chair.
“Och, lass, those stinking boots must go, too.”
Rowen couldn’t believe she heard a husky laugh from him as he bent down to pull them off her feet and then left her to toss her dung-soiled boots into the hall, and slam the door shut.
