Page 19 of The Highlander's Auctioned Wife
She frowned. “Pardon?”
Shaking his head, he grabbed her around the waist and lifted her up onto his stallion’s saddle. “Cannae have ye goin’ back to the castle like this.”
More for meself than for ye.
He took his stallion’s reins and let the horse move a step. The motion rocked Anna, as Gordon had known it would, and she lunged to grip the pommel, clutching tight.
“Nay warnin’?” she gasped, bright-eyed and scowling.
He resisted the urge to smile, uncertain of whether his mouth was still capable of making that shape.
“Where are ye takin’ me, if nae the castle?” she asked, recovering.
“The loch,” he replied simply.
Believing he now knew the way, scenting the loch through the woodland, he led the horse safely around the perimeter of the bog and through a cluster of rowans and crooked elms. Anna didn’t try to protest—she didn’t say much at all—as he sought out that peaceful body of water, coming to the loch’s edge a few minutes later, his keen nose rarely failing him when it came to water.
“And what, exactly, am I expected to do here?” Anna asked uncertainly.
“Wash the bog off ye,” he replied, drawing a léine out of his saddlebag. “Ye can wear this ‘til yer dress is dry.”
He put the garment on a dry boulder and moved to sit on a different rock, turning his back to the loch. “I have nay intention of watchin’.”
Evidently, she didn’t believe him. Not at first, anyway.
He continued to stare back into the woodland, observing the creatures that roamed cautiously in the morning mist: a different roster of life, quite apart from the night beasts that wandered in the dark.
A few minutes later, he heard Anna get down from the saddle, and listened to every step she took across the pebbled shore. A slight tingle ran up the back of his neck as he imagined her peeling away her dirtied clothes, parting with them like a selkie shedding her sealskin, walking naked into the chilly waters of the loch.
He closed his eyes and pictured that infuriating writing on her skin, wondering how quickly the water would wash it away.
She probably washed it off last night,he told himself, shaking his head. He shouldn’t be fantasizing. He should be keeping a more vigilant guard, in case any of the coming Lairds decided tocut through these very woods, spotting her in such a vulnerable moment.
The thought made him bristle; he didn’t want any other man setting eyes on his bride, even if that meant he couldn’t look either.
“Why were ye in the woods so early in the mornin’?” Anna’s voice came to him across the loch, accompanied by the stirring sound of light splashing, stoking his imagination again: her bare form cutting through that crystal clear water, the wavelets lapping her smooth skin, taunting him as they kissed where he couldn’t.
“I was ridin’,” he replied. “Why wereye?”
“I… was walkin’,” she said, clearing her throat. “I do it often.”
Is that an invitation to join her?He hated uncertainty, and doubly hated that he wasn’t very gifted at this courtship business.
“It wasnae a game, then?” he said instead.
She scoffed. “A game? Are ye quite serious? Ye think I would throw meself in a bog for a trick, nae kennin’ if there was anyone around to aid me?”
“Ye ask if I’m serious, when ye were the one stuck in a bog over a bit of paper,” he reminded her flatly, recalling that apparently precious square that she’d tucked into her neckline.
She seemed to have no retort for that, the conversation ebbing into silence, interrupted only by those tortuous, splashing sounds.
So, it came as something of a surprise when she said, quietly, a short while later, “It was important to me.”
“Important enough to risk yer life for?” he asked, hearing the cold note in his voice, wishing he knew how to thaw it.
“Probably nae.”
Curiosity got the better of him. “What is it? A letter?”
