“Then why do you not seek it for yourself?”
Jamie’s face was so serious Stephen had to fight not to smile. God, he loved this boy.
“For the right woman,” he said, meeting his nephew’s eyes, “I would give up all the others without regret.” He thought it might even be true.
“So, while a man waits for the perfect woman, he is free to waste time on frivolous ones,” Jamie said with a grin. “Then I say, do not hurry, Perfect Woman. Take your time!”
Jamie ducked as Stephen’s boot sailed over his head.
“Move over, you lout!” Stephen said, crawling into the bed.
Long after Jamie’s breathing grew steady, Stephen lay awake, thinking. When Catherine came into his mind, he smiled. The one perfect woman. He missed her.
With an enormous sense of relief, he realized he’d not imagined taking his sister-in-law to bed in years. Not since he was Jamie’s age—and everyone knew what youth of that age were like!
Perhaps he was not as bad as he thought.
His mind drifted to the lady from Northumberland… and to that look she gave him in the first moment they met.
A man might do a lot to see that look again.
Chapter Six
Stephen cursed Sir John Popham as he followed the path along the castle wall to the bailli’s residence. With mist hovering over the ground, the bailey yard was eerie at this hour. Did Popham set their appointments earlier each day just to spite him?
He tried to turn his thoughts to the business of the day, but they kept returning to the more interesting subject of Lady Isobel Hume. The more he saw of her, the more intrigued he became. And he saw her often; he made sure of that.
Flirtation seemed not a part of her social repertoire. Unusual, especially for such a pretty woman.
Her smiles rarely reached her eyes. He’d yet to hear her laugh. As with flirting, his efforts there came to naught. He tried to imagine what her laugh would sound like. A tinkling? A light trill?
Aye, he was intrigued. Almost as much as he was attracted. It was not just that she was beautiful, though she was that. He wanted to know her. And her secrets.
Curiosity had always been his weakness.
A peculiar sound interrupted his musings. Peculiar, at least, to be coming from one of the storerooms built against the wall. He went to the low wooden door and put his ear to it.
Whish! Whish! Whish!The sound was unmistakable. Drawing his sword, he eased the door open to take a look.
“Lady Hume!”
She looked as surprised as he was to catch her alone in a storeroom attacking a sack of grain with a sword.
“The poor thing is defenseless,” he said, cocking his head toward the sack. Grain was seeping onto the dirt floor from several small tears.
“Close the door!” she hissed. “I cannot be seen here.”
And what a sight she was, with her cheeks flushed and strands of dark hair sticking to her face and neck.God preserve me.He stepped inside and firmly closed the door behind him.
“I meant for you to remain outside when you closed it.”
Though she took a step back as she spoke, she kept a firm hand on her sword. As she should.
With her glossy dark hair in a loose braid over her shoulder, she looked even more beautiful than he imagined. And he’d spent hours imagining it. No man saw a grown woman with her hair uncovered unless he was a close family member. Or a lover. The intimacy of it sent his pulse racing.
Aye, the lady had every reason to feel nervous at finding herself alone with a man in this secluded place.
“That sack cannot provide much of a challenge,” he said, trying to put her at ease.
