Page 114 of The Highlander's Auctioned Hellion
“We will, but I am the only man who gets ye home tonight. Anyone who tries to hurt ye will have to go through me.”
He bent his head as though to kiss her, but paused, sucking in a breath as he ran a thumb over her neck. She could feel a trickle of blood from where the knife had cut her skin, and Callum growled as he saw it.
“Come, I have some clean bandages and a spare coat in me pack. We’ll get ye warm and get ye home.”
Lydia huffed, pulling at her skirts.
“I am caked in mud, and I don’t know where my shoes are.”
Callum looked back at her, chuckling when she glared at him peevishly.
“I will buy ye a thousand new gowns and a hundred new pairs of shoes if ye wish.”
“I am not traveling to the castle on horseback, covered in mud,” she said, looking at the lake beside them and tugging at her gown. “I can clean myself up at the edge of the water. If we lay this over a tree branch, it may dry a little before we have to travel back. I need to get this muck off my skin. It is tight and painful.”
Callum watched her incredulously, his hands on his hips as she pulled off her outer garments.
Twilight had fallen, and as the rain passed, there was just enough light to see by to get down to the water’s edge. The sky was a silvery gray expanse, its reflection visible on the water’s surface.
Lydia already felt freer without the heavy dress pulling her down, and she moved to the black edge of the water, dipping in a toe to test the temperature.
Now that she had time to focus on them, her feet were hurting damnably, cut to ribbons by the forest floor. She just wanted to bathe them to wash off the blood and the grime before they made their way home.
Callum was behind her, searching through the grass, and gave a small cry of triumph as he held up her sodden shoes.
He placed them carefully on a log at the water’s edge and came to stand beside her.
“I havenae been swimmin’ outside me own lands in a while.” He looked down at her. “And I have never done it with me wife.”
“Callum, I am not swimming in it. Are you mad? We are both soaked through, and it’s cold!”
“Aye, well, we are both already wet, so there cannae be any harm in havin’ a dip.”
She stared up at him in astonishment as he stripped off his léine and his kilt and stood entirely naked and unashamed before her.
It was such a magnificent image, his body silhouetted against the silvery sky, that she could not drag her eyes away from him.
He waded into the water and sighed with relief.
“It’s warm from the rain, are ye comin’ in?”
“Absolutely not.Warm from the rain.I can feel how cold it is from here,” she said, flicking some water playfully at his face.
Callum grinned. She had seen him smile a few times, but this one was different. It was free of the burdens he had carried for a long while, and he seemed more carefree, relaxed in a new way.
He moved onto his back, lying in the water and allowing himself to float.
“You are quite mad,” she said.
“If ye come in here, I’ll make sure ye’re warm again,” he said as Lydia looked at the mud cracking across her arms and legs. She could feel that her hair and face were covered in it too, and despite the cold, the water was tempting.
Throwing off her doubts, she stood, enjoying the way his eyes widened in happy surprise as she began removing her underclothes.
She was too shy to take off her petticoat, but with the way the fabric was clinging to her body, it did not leave much to the imagination.
Stepping into the water, she sucked in a sharp breath.
“You are a liar,” she said, about to step back out again, when Callum, in all his glorious nudity, stood up and grabbed her, pulling her into the depths with him.
