“The authorities would hang you if they knew you were a smuggler.”
“Aye, they might, if such crimes could be proven.” He spoke with no small amount of amusement, considering that Friar Tucker could be hanged for the very same transgressions, along with half the borderland lords with him. “My conscience has already settled the fact in my mind that I am a criminal at heart.”
He gave her what was left of a stale oatcake from the knapsack he’d stolen along with the horse. “You are not eating?” she asked, hesitantly.
“I ate while you slept.”
If she’d been less starved, he suspected she would have denied him the satisfaction of accepting his hospitality. But she was so hungry she even ate the crumbs that fell on her lap. Accepting his generosity should have been the worst of her sins, he realized, as she swallowed the last bite and he met the awareness in her eyes.
So she feels it, too.
He offered her the whisky flask and was surprised when she took it. He watched as she carefully sipped.
Sunlight cast a golden glow over her skin and hair and her impossibly full mouth, over the full mounds of her breast visible beneath the thin cloth of her shirt. He did not understand the connection between them and his lasciviousness began to irritate him.
And she was a virgin, no less.
“Thank you,” she rasped.
Hardly expecting the sentiment, he laughed. “For what exactly am I being thanked?”
Her attention paused on his mouth where she had knocked him with her elbow last night. He could stillfeel the tenderness. “For saving me in the river last night. I hope you were not too wounded.”
The corner of his mouth turned up at the blatant lie. “What is a bit of blood shared between intimate enemies? Hmm? I still have my tongue.”
“ ’Tis a shame. Tongues can be rather useless in the wrong mouth.”
This time he did laugh aloud. “An empirical statement coming from you, Rose.” She suddenly slid away. But he was ever quick to block her with his arm. “Especially from someone who has probably only used hers for eating and saying all the wrong things.”
“I do not want to be attracted to you,” she said bluntly.
“Duly noted.”
He did not want to be attracted to her either.
And there it was. The reality of it as vexing as a splinter beneath his flesh, as if the thought had plagued him all along but had only taken shape now for what it was. As if her beauty was not enough to admire or endure without also enduring his own honesty and the reason she was with him now.
He needed her.
Without Rose, he did not have enough with which to bargain for his brother’s life.
But even were he not in her life, she would still not be free.
She must have recognized this.
His chest suddenly moved with silent laughter at the utter absurdity of his lust. He crossed his wrists and returned his attention to Rose, his control tenuous at best.
“You may find all of this amusing. I do not.” Her chin lifted. “I have spent most of my life at the abbey andamong the people of Castleton,” she said. “I may not be a sterling example of female gentility, but I have always tried to treat people fairly and with kindness, believing that one’s actions would lend to a like treatment in return.”
“Then you expect payment for good behavior?” He purposefully misconstrued her words.
Her gaze widened. “Most certainly not.” She brushed crumbs from the cloak as if casting about for a way to better frame her thoughts. “I have little memory of my father,” she said after a moment.
Some of the verve left her tone as if she sought to remember what she could of the man who was her sire. “I know people despise him. Even as I know he once served the admiralty as a decorated war hero. Now he is returned to Kirkland Park, the hated king’s warden, for he dares enforce laws in the borderlands to rein in certain lawless elements.”
“Is that who you think he is?”
She blinked and looked away. “How can I know the character of a man I do not remember? Mayhap I need to believe he is more decent than others say. I only know he has left Hope Abbey alone.”
