“You have been in the fencing room,” she said, attempting to unfasten the jack so she could touch the warm flesh beneath.
He lowered her feet to the ground. “Aye, Colum needs the practice.”
His hands moved along her spine. He undressed her as quickly as he undressed himself. He bared her breasts and fell with her to the bed. Both of them seemed to disappear into the soft silken folds of eiderdown and fur.
She clung to him, knotting her fingers in his hair, then cradling his head against her breast, feeling his tongue against her hardening nipples, and she gave herself to his touch. She was very wet. Then the hardness of him was against her flesh and he was pushing inside her. He pressed up on his hands to look down at her, watching then catching her cries with his kisses and filling her with sensual fire.
“Ah, Rose,” he pressed his mouth into her hair. “I do love ye so, lass.”
Rose awakened late, which was not her usual custom. It had still been dark outside when she had awakened earlier to find Ruark sitting on the edge of the bed fully dressed. “I have to go out, love,” he told her, pressing his lips to hers. “I shall be back soon. Do not fret. Go back to sleep and dream of me.”
She had walked to the window, wrapping her arms around herself for warmth as she watched him and a dozen other men ride out. “That is the problem,” she said. “I am always dreaming of you.”
Then she crawled back beneath the covers, yetworried as she somehow managed to sleep away the rest of the morning, when she and McBain had their rounds to attend.
Rose splashed cold water over her face, brushed out her hair and plaited the length before Anaya arrived and helped her dress. The first big chill of September had arrived, and as Rose looked out her window, she saw a layer of frost on the ground. Grabbing her plaid wrap, she opened the door.
Colum sat on a chair, his arms and ankles crossed, his chin against his chest as if he were asleep—as if he had been there since Ruark left just before dawn. She gritted her teeth. She had promised her husband she would not contact the emissaries staying in the village. And hestillput a guard on her. His lack of trust in her gnawed.
Rose saw that Colum was awake, pulled her shawl tighter about her shoulders and walked past him. He caught up with her at the stairs. “Madam,” he complained. “ ’Tis too early for jaunty exercise.”
“Does he think I would seek out my father? Is hemad?”
“Ruark trusts you fine, my lady. ’Tis your father he does not trust. Ruark has gone to send away the emissaries.”
Rose turned to face Colum. “He told me he sank theBlack Dragon.”
Colum scraped a palm across his cheek. “Went up like a Viking funeral pyre. A person could see the glow for miles.”
“I know he didn’t want my father to have the ship. But why ...?”
“He was retiring from the sea anyway,” Colum said philosophically and she glared at him in disbelief, unable to believe the man could joke.
She turned on her heel. Colum stepped in front of her. “I am to keep you company today, madam.”
“Is Stonehaven under threat?”
“Your father is encamped twenty miles away. Nowhere near Stonehaven. However, I am still to keep you company.”
Some of the tension left her shoulders. “Still, if he is concerned enough to sic you on me, then I am concerned enough to make sure the boys stay in today.”
Ever since Ruark had taught Jack to ride a horse, he and Jamie were off every morning to the falls.
Clouds had formed by the time she reached the stable yard fifteen minutes later. “We were beginning to think you had forgotten us, dear,” Mrs. Simpson said. “What is it?”
“Have the boys been down this morning?”
Rose walked past Mrs. Simpson into the stable and saw that both of their horses were gone. She clutched her shawl and walked back outside. “How long have you been down here?
“Thirty minutes. You did say we would be leaving at eight.”
Rose looked over her shoulder at McBain knobbing it down the hill like a pirate with a wooden shank. “Tell McBain that we need to postpone today,” she said, and looked up at Colum. “We need to fetch the two scoundrels back.”
Before she knew what she was about, she was riding out of the stable on a feisty dun-colored mare. She knew the location of the falls, as she had gone there many times to collect plants for the herbal. But Ruark had warned the boys on more than one occasion not to go up there alone as ’twas dangerous to swim in the waters beneaththe falls. The two had become good friends but together they caused naught but mischief.
Colum rode beside her. Rose was not wearing a riding habit and the wind pulled the hair from its braid. She sat with her cloak and blue muslin skirts tucked beneath her legs and stout leather half-boots in the stirrups and kicked the mare to a run, leaping a low stone wall and scattering a flock of tits foraging around a stream. Water sprayed around her.
They galloped for three miles before reining the horses back to an easy lope. The sun emerged from behind the clouds. She spied the two horses walking free some distance from the wooded path leading up to the falls. Her heart suddenly pounding with heightened physical tension, she pulled up short. A puff of fog rose from the mare’s nostrils.
