Page 111 of Laird of Flint
He reached out to cup her chin. “But not a moment will pass when I’m not thinking about you. About your bright eyes. Your sweet lips. Your tender touch. The way you feel in my arms.” He rubbed his thumb across her lower lip and murmured, “I’ll miss your kiss and the warmth of your heart next to mine. The softness of your breasts and the silkiness of your thighs.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “The taste of your womanhood upon my tongue.”
She gulped. Already she craved him again. How would she survive two fortnights without him? How would she survive a day?
“We have to find a way,” she croaked.
“A way?”
“A way to meet. I shall come to Kildunan.”
He gave her a chuckle as he pulled his plaid over his shoulder. “We’re absolutely not trysting in a monastery.”
She didn’t share his humor. The thought of waiting so long to be intimate with him again was unimaginable.
“It wouldn’t have to be a tryst,” she decided. “Surely we can at least meet somewhere for…conversation. Perhaps in the village.”
“’Tis too great a risk,” he said ruefully. “Father James has his eye on me. And you, my lady, can’t go anywhere without an escort. The laird’s daughter meeting the stranger from the monastery in the village?” He shook his head. “The gossip will spread like wildfire.”
He was right. She knew it. But that didn’t change the way she felt.
“Och, Hew,” she said as tears welled in her eyes, “I can’t bear the thought o’ bein’ away from ye for so long.” She retrieved his brooch and came forward to pin his plaid. “How can fate be so cruel as to tear ye from my side when I’ve only just begun to love ye?”
Like a magical incantation, her words broke the last link of chain mail surrounding Hew’s heart, leaving it completely unprotected. Now she could hurt him. Now she could pierce it with Cupid’s arrow and leave him bleeding.
But as he always did, he couldn’t stop himself from wagering everything on his heart. His love for Carenza felt so unique, so pure, so true, he convinced himself this time things would be different.
And as always, when he felt this way—over his head in the deep ocean of romance—his judgment was faulty.
He should have told Carenza to be strong. To have patience. To remember that absence made the heart grow fonder.
Instead he hauled her into his arms one last time, kissed the top of her head, and made a rash promise. “I’ll find a way.”
As it turned out, finding a way was more challenging than Hew expected. For more than a sennight after he returned to Kildunan, Father James was breathing down his neck. Inquiring into what aspects of a monk’s life Hew was interested in. Asking for details about Hew’s clan and his childhood. Even suggesting Hew might wish to show his serious intent by adopting the shaved tonsure of a monk.
Hew did not.
Finally Father James ran out of questions and left Kildunan for his next monastery inspection. After he was gone, the abbot privately assured Hew that he’d done well under the interrogation. He thanked Hew for keeping his secret. He even slipped Hew a congratulatory bottle of wine to enjoy in his cell.
Drinking three-quarters of the bottle in his bed late at night had probably been a bad idea. With only the pale plaster ceiling to look at, he quickly filled it with mental images of Lady Carenza. Of her smooth and lovely skin. Her shining violet eyes. Her cherry red lips. Her dark silken tresses. Her creamy breasts. Her sleek thighs. The soft mystery of her woman’s flower, opening for him.
If he hadn’t been in a monastery, he might have taken matters into his own hands then. Just the thought of Carenza had made him hard as steel.
He reached for the bottle again. Maybe he could drink himself into a stupor.
By the time he finished off the wine, he’d made a decision.
Now that Father James was gone, Hew would journey to Dunlop on the morrow. It had been a fortnight since he’d seen Carenza. The real Carenza. Not some sketches of his imagination drawn on the cell ceiling.
He’d give the abbot some excuse to go. He’d say the physician wished to check on the progress of his burned hand. Aye, that could work.
With that happy thought, he drifted off to dream about the woman he loved.
Unfortunately, in the middle of the night, he was awakened by the arrival of a guildsman in the infirmary. By morn, the physician was already at Kildunan.
Peris stayed the whole morn, tending to the guildsman, whom the other monks confided was close to death. Hew wondered how a physician willing to steal from the church and kill a man with poison had the moral fortitude to sit by a dying man’s bedside.
Then a ghastly thought sent a prickling up his spine.
What if the physician was poisoning men in the infirmary? What if it was more than just the church treasures that went missing? Could Peris and his accomplice be murdering the nobles and robbing their corpses as well?
