Page 53 of Captured By the Highland Devil
“Ye fell asleep,” Ruben said calmly, his face grim. His eyes flickered between hers. “I can only assume ye were seein’ the man who tried to take ye.”
Pulling her knees to her chin, Paige wrapped an arm around them and rested her head on her forearms. “I did.”
“Did he say anythin’ to ye?” Ruben asked.
Her eyes flickered up to him. “The only thing he said was, ye’re comin’ with me.”
“Nay word of who wanted to take ye?”
Silently, she shook her head.
Grunting, Ruben pulled up the small stool and sat. His gaze was firm, while his slightly wet hair told her he had just bathed as well. He smelled like river water.
“Lass, what ye did earlier today was beyond reckless,” he said firmly, and she could hear him holding his tempter under a tight tether.
“If ye dare do somethin’ like that again and I am nae with ye, ye will be taken. Ye’ll vanish like Norah did and if they are the same men who took her, they’d probably kill ye.”
Cold, crushing realization was a tight belt around her middle. Her lips parted then clamped tight again. “I—I’m sorry.”
Ruben pushed away from the stool and gave her an eye. “Ye will be when they take ye and God forbid, do all manner of evil things to ye.”
“Ruben—”
“When are ye going to learn that this is nae the idyllic house yer faither ran?” he demanded. “This is nae a dream or a fairytale. In these lands, ye have to be smarter than that. One single mistake will be the death of ye and I will nae have yer blood on me hands.”
“But Ruben, if I’d died, me blood would be on me hands, nae yers,” she tried. “T’would be me fault, nae yers.”
“Matters nae!” he argued. “If ye were taken I—I could nae live with meself knowin’ I could have stopped it.”
Spinning on his heel, Ruben marched out of the room leaving Paige to scramble. She hurried out of the tub and grabbed her towel. Hastily drying off, she dragged on her waiting smock and hurried off to find Ruben.
I cannae allow this argument to end this way,
Ruben did not have the words to tell her that, at that moment, seeing her being hauled onto the horse, he’d feared the worst. He’d seen what might have happened with Norah—and his heart had dropped to the very earth.
In his chambers, he flung the windows wide open to liberally inhale the night air. Another storm was coming, he could smell it, feel the charge of lightning on the air lifting the hair on his arm.
If it was not so late and for the storm coming in, he would have returned to the loch and swam another ten rounds. The frustration—and fear—in his system had to go somewhere.
“Ruben, please, talk to me,” Paige said from behind him.
Spinning, his eyes landed on her and ground his teeth at the image she presented. The moonlight and the light from the fire three her smock into a see-through scarp of nothing wrapped tightly around her ample breasts.
It did not help that she had not dried properly, and some part of the smock pressed wet to her skin. It was hard to ignore the imprint of hard nipples against her tunic, by he did.
“I understand that ye are upset, reasonably so, because of what happened to Norah,” she said softly. “And I am sorry I forced ye into thar position.”
Ruben turned back to the window and braced his palms on the sill. “The night Norah went missin’, I combed through every street, nook and shadow of the village. I dinnae sleep or eat for days.”
He stared into the roiling darkness. “I scoured every village, every inch of the forest, I’d have swum the sea and looked at the bottom if I could have.
“In all me years of being on the battlefield, I have never felt that sort of fear—” he looked out at the trees, now whipping around in the wind. “—and I faced that again, today.”
As he spoke, it occurred to him that his words could be interpreted as more than he wanted them to be. He did not want her to think he was over his head in love with her—but he did care for her more than he wanted to admit.
“We dinnae find Norah for months,” he said, his tone tortured. “Months, Paige. To this day, Norah has nae told me, told anyone, what she suffered. Who is to say whether the man who took her was the one about to take ye too? I daenae think he would be so kind to let ye go as well.”
A hand attentively rested on his back and Ruben stifled the urge to throw the hand off. He kept still. “I never want ye to feel that way.”
