Kate Wingo - Highland Mist 01 (5 page)

“No, I do not love
him,” she retorted. “Nor do I expect to grow any fonder of the earl with the passage of time.”

“And why is that?”

Yvette assumed that Iain’s consumption of whisky was responsible for his loquaciousness, the man having spoken more in the last few minutes than he’d uttered during the course of the interminably long day.

“Because I can not love a man
for whom I have no respect,” she said in response to the intrusive question.

The Earl of Angus, like many a greedy nobleman who owned large estates in
both
England and Scotland, paid lip service to King Edward
and
the newly crowned Robert the Bruce. She could not respect a man whose loyalties shifted with the passing wind.

“’Tis true that love and respect go hand in hand,” Iain murmured
quietly.

Surprised by the morose tone in his voice,
Yvette glanced upward, just in time to see a heavy-hearted expression skim across the laird’s face.

Nay!
I am greatly mistaken
, she vehemently told herself, certain that she imagined his sad expression. She doubted the brute had ever experienced love. Or pity. And certainly not grief.
‘I am the MacKinnon. I do as I please.’
Those weren’t the sentiments of a tenderhearted man, but rather an uncompromising one. In her experience, such men paid scant heed to the emotions of the heart, ruled as they were by ambition, avarice, and the obsessive drive for vengeance.

“There, it is unlaced,” she informed
the laird, relieved to have finally
finished with the unnerving task.

“Ach, it feels good to have that bloody piece of cowhide off my body,”
Iain crooned as he pulled the breastplate over his head. Given that the entire inside of the vestment was lined with metal plates riveted to the leather that faced it, Yvette suspected that it was a most uncomfortable garment.

“Ye can turn yer head or no’.
It makes no difference to me,” Iain next remarked, that being the only warning he gave before he reached for the hem of his tunic and yanked it upward.

Catching sight of his naked groin, his fully aroused sex impudently protruding from a nest of
black curls, Yvette shrieked.

The sound of which
caused Iain to instantly shove the garment back over his hips.

“Christ above!
Wha’ is the matter wi’ ye woman? Ye canna be telling me that ye’ve never seen a naked man before.”

I
n as imperious a tone as she could muster, Yvette said, “I forbid you from removing your tunic.”

“
It’s easy for you to be so high and mighty given that ye’re wearing the only dry piece of clothing in the room. But I’ll no’ be sleeping in a wet tunic,” Iain said matter-of-factly before he yanked the linsey-woolsey garment off of his body.

Horrified by his bold immodesty,
Yvette immediately turned her back on him. But not before she caught sight of Iain’s powerful shoulders, his ridged torso, and the long, muscled length of his bare legs, the brawn attributes a testament to his years of training for battle.
Truly, the perfect savage.
And though she desperately tried to blot the brazen image from her mind’s eye, she feared it was now permanently engraved upon her memory.

Unwillingly, she recalled her husband Roland Bea
uchamp on their wedding night. Recalled his pale white skin and frail body.

She’d been promised to Roland when she was seven years of age
and he was but a boy of five. On their wedding day – which was the first time that they’d set eyes upon one another – he’d been a pimple-faced, fifteen-year-old who spoke in a high-pitched wispy voice. But Roland Beauchamp had also been the Baron of Monmouth, all that had mattered to her ambitious father.

Needless to say, i
t was a marriage doomed from the start.

Bringing her thoughts back to the here and now, Yvette peered at the
shadows cast upon the wattle-and-daub wall, from which she ascertained that Iain had hung his tunic upon a ceiling hook before reseating himself on the stool. When, a few moments later, she heard a grating metallic sound, she unthinkingly turned toward her captor.

Spellbound, she watched the muscles in
Iain’s back repetitively flex as he slowly ran a small whetstone over the length of his claymore.

Yea, the perfect savage.

She’d heard tales of how the ancient Celts used to charge naked into battle, their faces and bodies painted blue. All too easily she could envision Iain, naked, his muscular arms and torso covered in a primitive array of tattoos, engaged in battle with a Roman centurion. A beautiful, merciless Celtic warrior.

“S
tep closer to the fire, woman. I can hear yer teeth clattering all the way over here,” Iain remarked, glancing over his shoulder at her.

Frozen in pla
ce, Yvette returned his stare. To her chagrin, her teeth
were
clattering.

As the silent seconds slipped past, a palpable tension reverberated between
the two of them. It was an unusual kind of tension, one with which she had no experience. Taut. Potent.
Vital
. And even though she was frightened of what was to come, to Yvette’s surprise, she found the tension strangely compelling.

God in heaven
. . . can I possibly be attracted to Iain MacKinnon?

The man wa
s little more than a barbarian. Moreover, he came very close earlier in the day to taking her life. If his cousin Diarmid had not interceded on her behalf, she would have met her death on a misty Scottish glen.

And Iain may kill
me yet if I don’t find some means of escape.

Unthinkingly,
Yvette glanced at the battle ax and falchion in plain sight only a few feet from where she stood. It made her wonder if it might be possible to purloin one of the weapons while her captor slept.

“Dinna think it, lass,” Iain cautioned, having
noticed the direction of her gaze.

She
dismissed his warning with an airy wave of the hand. “You may rest assured that I would not attempt anything so foolhardy,” she lied. “I could not lift your claymore, let alone swing it through the air.”

“Maybe so,”
Iain remarked as he continued to hone the weapon in question. “But I’ll wager that given half a chance, ye’d have no problem hefting either the falchion or the battle ax in my direction.”

“Would you care for more whisky, my lord?” Yvette impulsivel
y inquired, having heard stories about the Highlanders penchant for the intoxicating beverage.

God willing, he’ll fall in a
drunken stupor.
At which point, she could sneak into the stables and steal a mount.

A
nd though she had no idea as to her whereabouts, she did know that the Grampian Mountains had been on the forward horizon throughout the day. Using inverse logic, if she kept the mountains to the rear of her, eventually she would arrive from whence she came.

Iain’s hands suddenly stilled on the blade.
“While yer sweet voice is pleasant to the ear, it has about it a conniving undertone.” Craning his neck so that he could look her in the eye, Iain then said, “It makes me wonder what manner of trickery ye’re plotting.”

“My only intention is to afford you the courtesy that is your rightful due.”

“Mmph! I suspect ye’d be anything but courteous once ye knocked me over the head with yon kettle, snatched my battle ax, and pilfered my horse.”

Yvette’s face heated
as warm blood rushed to her cheeks.

Sweet Mary! H
ow did the brute so accurately surmise my plan?

“It’s wha’ I would do if I were in yer boots,”
Iain remarked, having correctly gauged her thoughts.

“As fate would have it, I’m not wearing any boots,”
Yvette muttered dejectedly, all hopes of escape now dashed.

The sullen
reply caused Iain to fix his gaze on Yvette’s bare feet, enticingly visible beneath the hem of her chemise. The mere sight of which aroused all manner of lurid imaginings in his mind’s eye.

When
Yvette earlier unlaced his breastplate, it’d been all he could do not to take her against the wall. In fact, the whole entire time she’d stood there under his raised arm, he’d been battling the urge to grab her by the arse and hoist her into the air. With just one thrust, he would have been seated to the hilt. Halfway to heaven.

But to
his extreme discomfort, he’d made a vow not to ease his lust on Yvette like some great rutting beast rolling around in the muck. If it killed him, he would wait until they arrived at Castle Maoil.

Admittedly, he had no idea why i
t was so important that he wait. He suspected it had something to do with respect, a word that had earlier been bandied between them. For all that she was a Sassenach, Yvette Beauchamp was a noblewoman. She was not a whore. She deserved some measure of respect.

Respect aside,
Iain wondered why she continued to stand on the far side of the room as though he had some putrid contagion.

Damn the woman! She
takes as much notice of my naked state as she would a passing shadow.

For some perverse reason, Iain wanted Yvette to take heed of him
. To acknowledge that she found him a brawn warrior and a bonny man.

But even as the thought crossed his mind, he
again
caught Yvette covertly eyeing his battle ax and falchion.

There’s
treachery in that sly sideways glance, as God is my witness.

“You canna escape me, woman.
If ye try, I’ll hunt you down,” he warned, hoping it would never come to that. “And I warrant that ye’ll no’ like the punishment that follows.”

At hearing that,
Yvette’s brown eyes fearfully widened.

Och, such beautiful eyes
my stone Madonna has.

“Your point is well taken,”
Yvette mumbled.

“
See that it is,” Iain told her before he slid the claymore into its scabbard.

A few moments later, yawning,
he rose to his feet. Stretching his arms, he slowly rolled his neck, trying to ease the pent-up tension from his muscles.

Relieved that her captor had finally stopped honing his monstrous sword,
Yvette surreptitiously watched as Iain slowly rolled his head from side-to-side, riveted by the sight of his bare buttocks. Unable to tear her gaze from his backside, she noticed that the squared, muscular flanks were bracketed on either side by a lean groove, the fire casting a golden sheen onto his skin.

“It’s no’ completely dry, but it’s no’ soaking wet either,”
Iain announced as he ran his hand over the green and brown plaid. “Either way, it’ll have to do. I canna keep my eyes open much longer.”

Lifting the plaid from the ceiling hook, Iain spread it on the floor, not far from the fire. He then folded it in half, ma
king a sleeping sack of sorts.

“I didna think my arse was so captivating,”
Iain drolly remarked as he settled himself between the two halves of the plaid.

Mortified, Yvette self-c
onsciously cleared her throat. “You are gravely mistaken. I would no more cast my gaze upon your—”

“Come to bed.”

“But . . . my clothes are still w-wet,” she balked. Nervously taking several backward steps, she was abruptly halted in her tracks when she inadvertently bumped into the wall.

“What in bloody hell do yer clothes have to do with anything?”
Iain countered, raising himself on his forearm as he stared at her.

Although
the plaid concealed her captor’s lower body, his bare chest emphasized the fact that not only was he naked, he was bigger and stronger. So much so that he could do as he wished to her.

For he is now
my lord and master.

“I cannot
— That is to say, it is indecent to lie beside you attired in naught but my chemise,” Yvette stammered.

“Ye look decent enough to me.”

“Maybe so, but I am—”
Afraid.

An admission
Yvette could not,
would not
, make to him. She knew full well what would happen if she were to lie down beside him. He would roll on top of her. Then, pinning her beneath his weight, he would spread her thighs wide apart and couple with her.

“Come, lass
. I willna hurt ye,” Iain said, extending an arm in her direction.

Maybe not intentionally, but he
would most certainly
hurt her. How could he not, being as big as he was?

Too terrified to speak, Yvette mutely shook
her head, refusing to comply. She recalled how it had been with Roland. The anger. The violence. The hateful taunts.