Page 20 of The Highlander's Auctioned Wife
“Nay,” she answered, more vigorous splashing suggesting she was cleaning her dress with a stone. “It’s just… me sketch. I was goin’ to add somethin’ to it… and the wind… it whipped it out of me hand and into the bog.”
She sounded embarrassed, as though she’d confessed something she hadn’t meant to. The impulse to turn around nearly overwhelmed Gordon, but he managed to keep his gaze fixed on the gnarl of a tree trunk ahead, giving himself a test of his own: a challenge to not give into the temptation of seeing her naked in the loch.
“Is it any good?” he asked.
He wouldn’t have guessed that she was an artist. Considering the words she’d written on her skin, he’d assumed she was a poet or a writer, or just a woman who enjoyed causing a stir.
“Nay, it isnae any good at all,” she hurried to reply, the splashing changing tone, becoming the traipse of someone emerging from the water. The shift of the pebbles underfoot confirmed it, and though it was physically hurting his neck not to turn around, he allowed her, her privacy.
Once he heard the whisper of his spare léine being pulled down over her body did he finally twist around on the rock to look at her. The sodden, cleaned dress lay across the boulder and, before she could dive to retrieve it, his eyes fell upon the piece of paper that had almost cost her dearly.
It had been pinned down with a stone, but the small pebble didn’t conceal any of the drawing. He wished it had. Indeed, he wished he could hurl a huge rock on top of the awful thing, smashing it out of existence altogether.
For on that crumpled piece of paper, he saw himself as she must have seen him, deep down, in the heart of herself: a hulking monster with a patch across one eye and horns protruding from his head, a trail of something that might have been blood trickling from his mouth, dripping down onto the limp and broken bride in his arms.
With a slack mouth and vacant eyes, her body dappled with bruises and missing bites of flesh, he realized it was a dead bride that he held in that picture. A woman dead by his hand. And all around the monstrous iteration of him, black-eyed children swarmed with fangs and cruel smiles, twisted and unnatural. Like their hellish father.
He looked up at Anna, his voice a snarl as he said, “Is that what ye really think of me?”
CHAPTER 10
Arms crossed over her chest,wearing the léine that swamped her smaller frame, still shivering from the loch’s frosty caress, Anna cursed herself for leaving the horrible picture out in the open. But she’d had nowhere else to put it, not unless she’d wanted to submerge it in the loch, letting it disintegrate and vanish into the icy water.
That’s exactly what I should have done. That’s exactly where it belongs.
But before she could say anything, Gordon was up on his feet, walking toward his horse.
“I trust ye can find yer way back without endin’ up in another bog,” he growled, hoisting himself up into the saddle with ease. “Dress properly before ye return. Wouldnae want anyone thinkin’ the worst if ye walk in wearin’ me shirt.”
He wheeled his horse around and, though he didn’t show it on his face and his gruff voice was barely different to its usual tone, she knew she’d hurt him. Or, perhaps, it was her guilt that she couldn’t bear. It wasn’t as if she’d drawn it on purpose but, foolishly, she hadn’t destroyed the thing while she’d had the chance.
She darted forward before he could hasten away from her on his mount, her hand shooting out to touch the only part of him she could reach, her palm settling on the powerful muscle of his thigh. “Dinnae, M’Laird.”
“Dinnae what?” he replied flatly, staring down at her as if she were an irritating insect that had landed on his leg. “I’m givin’ ye yer privacy.”
Her hand curled, holding part of his kilt hostage in case he still tried to leave. “Dinnae leave, M’Laird,” she said in earnest. “Dinnae leave in anger, anyway. I’m sorry that ye saw that drawin’. I’m sorry that ye?—”
“I’m nae angry,” he interrupted. “But aye, Iamleavin’.”
She frowned, swallowing thickly. “The woods or the castle?”
“Lass, think what ye will of me, but I’m nae desperate,” he said in that cool, stony voice. “Ye got what ye wanted. I wish ye well with the horde of Lairds that are about to descend. Now, I’ll take me leave of ye.”
He clicked his tongue and the enormous war horse began to plod forward, sparking such alarm in Anna that her other hand flew out to grab the stallion’s reins. If the beast was offended by the gesture, it didn’t show it, though it did turn its head to stare at her with one large brown eye, as if to say,I daenaethink ye want to do that, lass.
But Anna did, and she couldn’t explain why. Ithadbeen her objective to come up with a way to make Gordon surrender his position in the auction, so why was she trying to stop him from doing just that? Was it because he’d rescued her without hesitation? Was it because she’d thought she might die in the bog and, in that terrifying moment, there he’d been, reaching out to her? Was it because he’d made her laugh, and he'd danced with her even though he clearly hadn’t wanted to? Was it because of what Jackson had said last night about Gordon’s… unknown hunger?
Or was it because she was worried that she really had hurt him, and being mean-spirited had never been part of her plan? If she was going to chase him off, she wanted to do it fairly, in the spirit of a true tournament, not with unkind sketches.
“M’Laird, I never meant for ye to see that,” she told him, trembling from the cold, her teeth chattering. “I dinnae even mean to draw it.”
He raised an eyebrow, his silence so loud, so uncomfortable, that she leaped to fill it.
“I have this… habit, I suppose ye’d call it,” she explained, “where I sometimes draw without thinkin’. It clears me mind and puts everythin’ that’s botherin’ me onto paper instead of it stickin’ in me head. It’s like… takin’ a walk when ye’re angry or goin’ ridin’ when ye have a lot to consider, or– ”
“I daenae have time for this,” he said coldly, clicking his tongue again.
The stallion began to move forward, and Anna had no choice but to release Gordon’s kilt, or she’d end up undressing him by accident, adding insult to injury. But she wasn’t about to let him leave without hearing her out; she’d had more than enough of not being listened to, and shewouldbe given that grace now.
