By Grace Possessed (3 page)

“She didn’t. She couldn’t have, as I gutted the beast, and will send after him tomorrow.”

Cate straightened. “You…you killed him.”

“It seemed necessary at the moment, though I’d have done better to ride on when it turned on me as I came upon it.”

“But…I was sure I heard him right behind me.”

“For some small distance only. Is that why you didn’t turn back? I thought your Rosie had run away with you, being you got so far ahead of me.”

“Not…entirely.” She had been so certain the boar was behind her, though the noise of her passage through the forest made it difficult to be sure.

“Too bad. All this could have been prevented, otherwise.” He gestured at the brush pile that had become their wood yard, the fire, the woodland beyond, where the outlaws had disappeared.

“What, depriving me of the opportunity to sleep out in the weather?” she said with an attempt at lightness. “Heaven forbid.”

He snorted but made no answer. With a glance at the snow that was falling thicker out of the night sky, he caught the drape of his plaid and unwrapped it from his shoulders, exposing the simple leather jerkin he wore under a short coat of darkest green wool and over a shirt of cream linen so brightly colored it was almost saffron. Shaking the white flakes from his head like a dog shaking off water, he lifted the wool length over it as a covering before wrapping the rest of it around him like a blanket.

His movements were so swift and unstudied, yet rife
with masculine grace, that they stopped the breath in Cate’s throat. His hair was black silk, falling in waves to his shoulders, his jawline square and firm. His shoulders were broad enough that he had dislodged sheaves of snow from them. The movement of his plaid, as he drew it higher, exposed a length of thigh that was brown, hard and corded with muscle.

The sensation that seized her was heated and virulent, an exhilaration in the blood. She had never been private with a man before, never been close to one in quite the same way. Oh, she had been seated next to admirers at table on occasion, had walked in the cloisters at their side. There had always been other people about, however—her sisters, the king’s guards, stewards and sentries—to prevent any untoward familiarity.

There was no one here except her and the Scotsman. He could do whatever he pleased to her with no one to gainsay him. All she had to depend upon was his sworn word that he had no desire to take her to wife.

That said nothing of what else he might desire of her. Her strength was no match for his, no matter how hard she might fight him. She would be at his mercy. And why that thought made her ache with emptiness deep inside instead of terrifying her, she could not have said.

Silence stretched around them, broken only by the whine of snow-laden wind in the limbs overhead and the flutter and snap of the fire. The cold air, scented with wood smoke and snow, hurt the back of Cate’s nose and threatened to freeze her lungs. She was miserable and not precisely secure in her mind. And yet she could have been worse off, she knew, much worse.

“It was good of you to follow upon my trail after killing the boar,” she said with some difficulty. “I am truly thankful. If…if you had not come, I don’t know what might have happened.”

His eyes glinted with a blue steel edge as he glanced at her. “Don’t you?”

“You think they would have…” She shook her head. “I’d have been worth more if held for ransom.”

“Oh, they’d have thought of that, too, I don’t doubt. But rapine and abduction have the same penalty, and a man can hang only once.”

She swallowed, clasping her hands together. “Then I’m even more in your debt.”

“Don’t think of it,” he said. “It didn’t happen.”

“No, but I wish there was some way—”

“And you’d be wise to keep that wish behind your teeth,” he interrupted, “unless you would invite me under your cloak as well as into your shelter.”

Hot chagrin flooded her face, burning its way to her cheekbones, and then receded so quickly that she felt light-headed. “I didn’t mean it that way, and you know it well.”

A grunt shook him. “So much for gratitude.”

“And neither did you mean it.” She narrowed her eyes in sudden discovery. “You wanted to silence me.”

“If so, it didn’t serve.”

“I can be quiet enough,” she said with precision, and turned her shoulder to him. Frowning, she stared out into the falling curtain of white that blended from gray to black beyond the firelight.

Ross missed the music of Lady Catherine’s voice when she stopped speaking. He also missed her pointed questions and even her prying into what was none of her concern. He missed her warm and human company even more after she scooted deeper into the lean-to he had made, turned her back and lay down wrapped in her fur-lined cloak.

He told himself he was better off without the distraction. He could concentrate more on what was around him, on what might be watching from the woods that whispered around him with the falling snow.

Of course, her resolve to be silent would not last beyond the first idle thought to cross her mind. She would sit up again, give him one of her penetrating stares and begin talking of nothing. It was a rare woman, in his experience, who could or would hold her tongue. Curiosity and the dislike for having no one to share their thoughts would not allow it.

He was wrong.

An hour passed, the snow sifted relentlessly down, wind clattered the icy tree branches together, and still she said nothing. She was a stubborn wench. Or rather a stubborn lady—he could not call a female who wore a gold ring and velvet habit under an ermine-lined cloak by a less exalted title.

She was also as hardy and uncomplaining as any cottager’s drab. Who had taught her to retreat into herself, to accept what came and endure it? She had been through enough in one evening to throw most gently bred ladies
into strong hysterics, yet she was able to overcome it, to smile and take interest in someone else.

Not that he had noticed her smiles all that much, of course.

He had barely been aware of the glow of firelight on her pale skin, or the way it turned the tresses spread over her cloak into spun gold. Nay, hardly at all. It had only come to him half a dozen times that he was the only man other than her future husband who would ever see the shining length of it in such casual disarray, without the cover of a veil. Yes, and somewhere deep inside he was loath to think even her husband should have that right. How dim-witted could he be?

She was an Englishwoman. She wanted no part of him and he none of her, and he’d best not forget it.

Except that was a bald-faced lie. He’d take all of her he could get but for the small matter of binding himself to her as a husband. She was fair to look on and lovely to touch, and she stirred his blood as no female had since he was three and ten, and saw his first naked woman, his sister’s nursemaid, in her bath. He fair ached to see Lady Catherine in the same state of nature, clothed in nothing except the shining cape of her hair.

Not that it meant twopence. The need for coupling was like any other appetite for him, satisfied when the means was at hand, controlled when it was not.

The old laird, his esteemed father, was rabid in his dislike of the Sassenach; only his hatred of those who went by the name of Trilborn went deeper. He’d go off in an apoplexy if his firstborn son dared bring an English
woman home to Scotland. That was if he did not disown him for even thinking of such a betrayal.

Not that he was, Ross assured himself, as he traced with his gaze the sweet curves of Lady Catherine’s backside for the thousandth time. His thoughts were wandering only because there was nothing to occupy them, nothing to be seen in this interminable night except clouds of snow, the gray ghosts of trees and the orange heart of the fire in front of him. He was half-blind with watching them, half-frozen from the back of his neck to his rump, half-roasted on his front from sitting so still. Yet he dared not shift his position except to shove another section of log into the flames, throw another broken branch into their maw. Once erect and moving, there was no telling what he might do.

A quiet clicking sound came to him. He glanced around quickly before pinpointing the noise inside the shelter, which he’d positioned so its opening took advantage of whatever warmth there might be from the fire. Lady Catherine’s teeth were chattering where she lay huddled on the hard ground. She was no more asleep than he was, and her position put her farther from the fire.

He could ease inside with her, slip under her cloak while throwing his plaid over both of them for extra warmth. He could pull her close and turn her so her fine, firm bottom pressed against the hard rod of him, and his arm clasped her waist. He could bury his face in her hair, pressing his lips to the tender curve of her neck at the vulnerable nape as he had first wanted when he saw her trembling with shock. Mayhap they would both be warm then.

Mayhap he was a half-wit.

He had no pretence to sainthood, so could not trust his hands not to stray where they did not belong. She might scream, then, fighting away from him. Or worse, she might not. She might turn to him with soft murmurs, sweet kisses and sighs, urging him to the one place certain to hold the sweet heat of paradise. And he would go there, blindly willing, strutted in rampant desire. He would enter her in heart-pounding fervor, taking her wet softness, her clinging, pulsing comfort, in such mindless rut that he’d care not a whit what came on the morrow.

It was a trap, that comfort, one that could close them both in its stranglehold and never let them go. A single step in the lady’s direction now and their fates were set. Conscience as well an English king would demand it.

He had given his word that he would never marry her.

Rising so abruptly that his knees cracked and he dumped snow from his back and shoulders with a slithering crash, Ross moved to drag another log onto the fire, then another, and another. He piled the timber high until the flames spat and crackled like demons, lighting the night for a dozen yards around, spreading heat like a benediction. He laid on more until he was sure it would warm the lady, yes, and do it more safely, for all its fiery danger, than he could.

Wrapping himself in his plaid once more, then, he squatted well back from the great, bright conflagration. Face set, eyes hooded, he endured.

C
ate stood waiting as the horsemen rounded the bend in the track. She’d heard them coming from some distance away, a full score of gentlemen and men-at-arms, making a great clatter on the frozen track. The watery sun overhead reflected on helms and sword hilts with a dull sheen, and their horses blew white plumes into the icy air. They had come from the king, for they rode under his banner.

She should have been overjoyed at their arrival. Instead, her chest was tight with apprehension.

The snow had stopped by the time she woke an hour ago, and the world was hushed under its smothering layer of white. The only thing that moved was a bird or two, flitting among branches that clicked and clacked with ice. Her skirt and cloak had been wet near the knee where snow had drifted into her shelter and melted with the heat of Ross’s fire. That burned still, a great, leaping pyre that sent a plume of gray-blue smoke skyward. It was, without doubt, what had brought their rescuers to them.

Ross stood a few yards away, where he had been
breaking more limbs to thrust into the flames. A bleak expression lay in his eyes, and his mouth was set in a grim line. He made no move to step forward or lift a hand in greeting, but only waited for the horsemen to come to him.

Nor did Cate move from where she had taken a stance with her back to the fire to allow her skirts to dry. She recognized the cavalcade’s leader as Winston Dangerfield, Lord of Trilborn, and was in no hurry to acknowledge him. She would as soon someone else, anyone else at all, had arrived as its head.

What chance that his presence was a coincidence, she thought, when she and his sworn enemy had been lost from the hunt at the same time? What chance, when he had made her the object of his cautious gallantry since the early autumn?

Trilborn was of medium height, well-made, and far too satisfied withal. On this dreary day, he wore a black surcoat edged in silver braid over his mail, both covered by a heavy black cloak that was lined with beaver and held on his shoulders by a multitude of silver chains. His hat was of beaver, as well, and stuck with a great white plume that curled over the brim to lie on his shoulder. He was pleasing enough in his features, though his peat-brown eyes were a little close together and his chin made to appear needle-sharp by his pointed black beard.

“Lady Catherine, by all the saints!” He slowed his mount to a walk, throwing up a hand with more force than necessary to halt the men behind him while he came closer to the fire. “We had nigh given up hope.”

“Milord,” she said with the barest of curtsies.

He swung down, swept off his hat and fanned the snow at her feet into a white whirl as he made his bow. “The others were for turning back an hour ago, but I would not have it. You would be found, so I told them, found safe and well.” His eyes were tense at the corners, as if he had doubts about the last.

The smile she gave him was brief. “As you see, though for the last I am indebted to Henry’s Scots guest. I believe you are acquainted with Ross Dunbar?”

Contempt flickered over Trilborn’s face as he nodded in Ross’s direction. “I would ask how he came here before us, but he has ever had the devil’s luck.”

She could have allowed it to be assumed that the Scotsman had come upon her only that morn. Common sense dictated the polite lie. Her conscience would not allow it.

“The good fortune was mine in this instance,” she said in clear tones. “Had he not been here, I might have been taken by forest outlaws or died from the cold during the night.”

The men who had pulled up behind Trilborn exchanged glances, muttering among themselves. The earl stiffened and his hand went to the hilt of his sword, which swung from its scabbard worn low on one hip. “He has been here with you all this time?”

“Of a certainty,” she answered in disdain. She would not be affected by the suspicion she could see being levied against her. No, not at all.

“You might have done better, I should think, to take your chances with the outlaws.”

“Sir!”

Ross moved with negligent, muscular grace to take a stance at her side. “What he means to say, Lady Catherine,” he drawled, “is that he would have preferred it. No gentleman enjoys knowing that his enemy has been overnight in company with his lady.”

The glance Cate shot the Scotsman was scathing. “I am not his lady, nor am I likely to be.”

“Through no fault of his own, I’ll be bound,” Ross replied for her alone. “Don’t tell me here’s another man you would save from the curse of the Graces?”

“Have you no idea who this man is?” Trilborn demanded, slapping his hat against his well-hosed lower leg. “His family has been the scourge of the Scots march that borders Trilborn lands for a hundred years or more, Scots vermin who dare to abduct Trilborn women, steal away Trilborn villeins, Trilborn cattle.”

“Aye, and can nay persuade them to go back home again,” Ross said, grim humor lacing his exaggerated Scots burr.

Trilborn clenched his hand on his sword hilt as if he meant to draw it. The Scotsman merely swung out his arm, showing his sword already in his fist, its tip resting on the ground, while half its length was revealed from behind the skirt of his plaid.

“Your grandsire kidnapped my grandmother,” Trilborn declared in a growl.

“Indeed he did, to ransom ten young girls your own grandsire carried off after burning their village.”

“He put his bastard get in her belly.” Trilborn shook his hat at Ross.

“That he did, as he found her winsome and easy to
love. He’d not have given her up except for the pleas of his people, who longed to see their girl children. Yet he kept her until the child was born so your grandsire could not kill the babe. And a good thing it was, too, for he certainly killed its mother when she was returned.” Ross glanced at Cate. “My own grandmother had died years before, you know. My grandfather so regretted giving up the Trilborn lady, mourned her death so deeply, that he never took another woman.”

“Certainly not another Trilborn,” the English lord declared.

Ross snorted in hard contempt. “Nay, though two Dunbar wives were then kidnapped in retaliation and returned in such desperate shape that one drowned herself and the other entered a convent.”

“What of the child?” Cate asked, because she could not help herself.

“Brought up with my father, like his own brother. He was shot in the back from ambush, though not before he sired a son, my cousin Liam.”

“Shot during a cattle raid,” Trilborn said with a sniff.

The Scotsman’s hard gaze did not waver. “Oh, aye, being as daft for reiving as my father. But enough. Lady Catherine is weary, hungry and half-frozen, and grows more so while we stand here nattering. Do you have a mount for her, or must she walk back to the castle?”

It was a point Cate would have been glad to have made herself, had she not been transfixed by what she had learned. Border feuds were notorious for their violence, but this one seemed more vicious than most. She had never before seen Trilborn in a rage; he was usually
all smiles and studied pleasantries. The glances he divided between her and the Scotsman were murderous. Either his interest in her was greater than she had known, or it had been sharpened by discovering her with Ross Dunbar. Well, and perhaps by the knowledge that a forced marriage was the usual result.

He could not know that she and the Scotsman had vowed between them to see that no such sacrifice was necessary. Let him discover it when he would. That was soon enough.

Accordingly, she summoned her most wan smile, looking as fatigued as she was able. Trilborn offered his arm and she took it, ignoring Ross’s dry laugh as she allowed the nobleman to lead her to a sturdy gray rouncy.

She paused, reaching to allow the horse to sniff her hand, and then rubbing its soft muzzle. The rouncy was more suitable for a man, or else for transporting a body, she saw with a small shiver. “Is this the only extra mount?” she asked over her shoulder.

“We knew not what we might find, so prepared for the worst,” Trilborn said with an air of haughty defense. “Dunbar can run along behind us, or else wait until another horse is brought back for him.”

It was purest insult, that suggestion that the Scotsman run along behind them like a serf. “Or I can ride pillion behind him,” she pointed out. “The saddle is a man’s, after all.”

“If that’s your preference, then you shall ride with me,” Trilborn said at once.

His arrogance was incredible. She was possibly more tired than she knew, for it made her contrary. “I would
not dream of subjecting your stallion to such an indignity,” she said before turning to the Scotsman. “Sir, if you would be so kind as to mount and then allow me to settle behind you?”

Ross came forward, his gaze considering as it rested on her face. He did not answer, however, but only vaulted to the saddle with such swift ease that the ends of his plaid flew wide. Once seated, he held his hand down to her.

Cate met the rich blue of his eyes for endless seconds while an unaccountable impression of safety settled deep inside her. She stretched high to clasp his arm above the wrist, then, while he did the same to hers. A brief heave with iron-hard muscles, and she was seated behind him with her arms locked about his waist.

Trilborn was displeased, but could hardly order a guest of Henry’s unhorsed. He stalked to his stallion, snatched the reins from the man-at-arms who held them and accepted a leg up into the saddle. With an imperious gesture, he detailed two men to put out the fire and then swept around, leading the troop from the small clearing, making for the castle.

Cate looked back, imprinting the fire and the snow-covered shelter that lay behind it on her mind, while an odd sense of loss made her chest ache. For a few short hours, she had been free. No one had cared how she looked, what she wore or how she stood, walked, sat, ate or prayed. She had not been expected to dip curtsies like a duck bobbing for river weed, had not been required to recall obscure titles and who took precedence over whom. She’d had no need to watch every word for fear
of offending or having something she said repeated to the king. She had been herself without let or hindrance, something she might never be permitted again. She had enjoyed the company of a man who did not simper, posture or attempt to take advantage of her.

She did not turn away until that small clearing, with its ring of mud where the heat of a great bonfire had melted the snow, vanished behind the track’s wide bend.

Ross devoured two servings of beef, a loaf of bread soaked in the meat’s juices and a currant cake, all washed down with a hot posset and most of a butt of ale. With these as well as a hot, herb-scented bath and change of clothing, he began to feel less like a chunk of ice. He was returned to normal, except for the undoubted fact that he could not go more than a pair of breaths without thinking about Lady Catherine.

Had she ordered a hot bath to warm her chilled flesh? What he would not give to have seen her in it. Had a serving woman bathed her? He’d have been more than pleased to perform that service, could think of many ways to make it pleasurable for her. To dry her with slow care seemed a magnificent way to while away an hour, and one not without promise of reward. To apply a brush to the pale golden glory of her hair, holding its warm, silken weight in his hands, was a fine fantasy. Sharing a meal with her in the privacy of some chamber seemed more than enticing. They could feed each other bits of this and that while whetting other appetites.

God’s blood, but what ailed him? He was no mooncalf reduced to standing and staring at his beloved’s window
in hope of glimpsing her shadow. He was a grown man with duties and obligations that left no room for lusting after an English lady, be she ever so beauteous and daring. The incident in the forest had been a few hours out of his life, a mere snippet taken from a pattern woven before he was born. No place existed in it for a female of English blood.

He needed to put the episode behind him. Other matters were far more important, such as judging the strength of any force Henry might be able to put into the field, plus the loyalty of those around the king and how they might react if it were to be tested. He would attend to that without further ado. Aye, he would indeed, as soon as he assured himself that Lady Catherine had suffered no ill effects from her night spent in his company.

She was not in her chamber, one of the cramped rooms allotted even to the nobility in this ancient castle built for defense rather than comfort, its only luxury being a small, glowing brazier that made it barely less frigid than the corridor it opened upon. Her serving maid stood barring the door, a woman of early middle age who had, from all appearances, been clearing away after her mistress’s bath. She eyed him with disfavor, he thought, looking him up and down with all the doubtful care of a housewife appraising a pig at market. He did not flinch under it, even as the tops of his ears burned. Nor did he show her the least reaction when he learned Lady Catherine had been summoned by the king.

It was not an official audience, as it turned out. On gaining the castle’s great hall, Ross saw her, a bright beacon in the smoke-hazed gloom, where she perched
on a low stool at the foot of Henry’s great armchair. The king’s canopied throne sat on a dais along with the castle’s famous round table, which some said had once been used by King Arthur of distant legend. No one encroached upon this private colloquy; none appeared to notice it taking place in their midst.

Men talked in groups, played at knucklebones or chess, or watched the antics of the fool who juggled and told jokes for their amusement. The place smelled of wood ash, sweaty men who had been to horse, dogs, shattered green rushes and the ghosts of bread, beef and ale from the recent morning’s repast. The fitful sunlight falling on the snow outside penetrated the high, narrow windows with faint gray light, leaving the space in gloom except for the bright islands of standing oil lamps.

Ross found an unoccupied bench and flung himself down upon it, using the wall behind it as a backrest. He watched the king with Lady Catherine in brooding displeasure. He did not care for the way Henry leaned toward her, speaking in measured phrases while tapping the arm of his chair for emphasis. He looked displeased, or else more interested in her welfare than was seemly in a king not yet thirty years old, one with a wife of only a year, and a two-month-old son.