Page 123 of Laird of Flint
“We love each other, aye?”
He nodded.
“And we’re married where it counts. In our hearts.” She placed her hand over his chest, where that utterly smitten heart pounded. “Whate’er we do with our bodies must be right and pure, because we love each other.”
She wove her words like a net around him. Lulling him. Luring him in. Trapping him.
He knew she was wrong. Things were never that simple. But he was already caught. And he had to admit he was not unhappy to be entangled in the net of her affections.
“Findin’ this bed here…” She shook her head in wonder. “’Tis as if my mother herself has given me her blessin’.”
“You think so?”
“I do.”
Hew had other ideas about that. The pallet was horribly uncomfortable. If he hadn’t been distracted by the lovely maid riding him, he would have moved to the floor.
“Because I’ve ne’er had a pallet poke me in the backside with such enthusiasm.”
“What?”
“It feels like ’tis stuffed with sticks and stones.”
“’Tis stuffed with goose feathers.”
“Are you sure they plucked them off the geese?”
She moved off of him. “Let me see.”
He got up from the bed and made use of a linen square from the tub to clean up.
She settled onto the pallet and began rolling back and forth.
“Och!” she said, arching up as something prodded her in the back. “What is that?”
She knelt by the bed then and began exploring the contours of the pallet with her hands.
“I think there’s somethin’inhere.”
He knelt beside her and felt the same contours. “Orunderit.”
He slipped his hands under the pallet and lifted it up off the knotted frame.
She gasped.
Chapter 22
Though she’d never seen them before, Carenza recognized what they’d found at once.
A gold chalice. A silver cross. A jeweled Bible. And various pieces of costly jewelry—rings, medallions, brooches. They were piled on a large square of linen atop the bed’s rope frame.
“The missing artifacts,” Hew breathed.
“How did they get here? Only my father and I have a key to…” She shivered at a sudden chilling thought. “Ye don’t think…?”
“That your father is a thief? Nay.”
She had to admit it seemed improbable. She was glad Hew thought so too. But all evidence pointed to the Laird of Dunlop. Or his daughter.
