Margaret folded her hands before her skirts. He shrugged off his coat next, the dark wool falling easily from his shoulders. Margaret had seen him without it before, on the road and in the library, but the quiet intimacy of the chamber made the gesture different.
“Ye may sit,” he said.
She stiffened. “I am quite comfortable where I am.”
“Ye look as though ye are preparing tae flee through the wall.”
“I would require a hammer.”
He smiled. “Ye would manage just fine without one.”
For a moment, neither spoke. Then he began loosening the laces at his collar. Margaret told herself she would look away.
She did not.
The shirt beneath his coat was plain linen, worn from use, and the fabric was pulling slightly across the breadth of his chest as he moved. He unfastened the ties with unhurried fingers and drew it over his head. Margaret’s breath caught before she could stop it.
Domhnall Campbell was a man built by war and labor rather than vanity. His shoulders were broad, and his torso was marked by faint scars that crossed his ribs and one long pale line near his side. Candlelight traced the strength in his arms as he folded the shirt and set it aside.
Magnificent.
She had not meant to notice. She certainly had not meant to stare.
“Me lady.”
She blinked. “Aye?”
“Are ye studying me?”
“I am nae.”
“Ye are.”
She forced her gaze upward, feeling the heat rising in her cheeks.
“I was observing,” she corrected stiffly.
“Ah.” His expression remained infuriatingly calm. “And what conclusions have ye reached from this observation?”
“That Highland lairds possess an alarming disregard fer modesty.”
“Dae they?”
Why did he have to be so handsome? It would all be so much easier if he were not.
“Ye appear entirely untroubled,” she pointed out, trying to think of anything other than his body before her.
“I have fought half me life among men who bathe in rivers and sleep beside horses. Yer opinion of me modesty is unlikely tae wound me.”
“That is fortunate.”
He reached for the long nightshirt laid across the end of the bed. Margaret watched him draw it over his head, with the linen falling to his knees. The garment softened the starkness of his bare skin, though it did nothing to disguise the powerful shape beneath.
He turned then, noticing that she had not moved an inch. She was still standing by the fire, still in her gown, still staring at the bed as though it were a battlefield.
Domhnall leaned one shoulder against the bedpost.
“Ye may breathe, Margaret.”
