Page 21 of To Wed a Laird
And she was lovely. Although, of course, that was a quality that was not a necessity in a governess, it pleased him to be able to see and admire Rose every day.
Admire?
Was it just admiration, or were his body and feelings not telling him it was more than that? Every time he spoke to her, he had to look away or cut the conversation short because of her bewitching eyes.
Damn it! What was she doing to him?
When they left the meadows where the sheep grazed behind them and went into the woods, they stopped chatting and listened instead to the birds singing, the rustle of small creatures scuttling in the undergrowth, and the sighing of the breeze in the trees.
Rose looked up at the canopy of leaves above them, which formed a lacy pattern of green and gold and sent shafts of sunlight onto the forest floor, forming a dappled pattern on the carpet of leaves. There was a delightful woody scent in the air, intermingled with the fragrance of fresh air and wild flowers. Rose looked enchanted.
“This place is so beautiful,” she remarked happily.
“Mammy always said so too,” Elspeth agreed. “She said it was the most beautiful place in the world.”
“I agree with her,” Rose said, smiling. “It is almost magical.”
Rose’s mind suddenly went back to her girlhood, when she and her sisters would climb the trees in their garden. Now shewould happily have done the same again had circumstances permitted. She laughed aloud at the thought.
“What are you laughing at?” Elspeth asked, smiling.
“Oh, I was just thinking about the trees I used to climb when I was your age,” Rose answered. “With my sisters. We got up to a lot of mischief!”
Elspeth laughed, then said, “I wish I had sisters.”
Her voice was sad, and Rose wished she could magically conjure up some siblings for her since she was so lonely.
They rode on, but instead of turning away to go to the loch, Cormac pointed towards a little rise a short distance away. “We can see the village from there,” he told them. “It is a beautiful view, so I will take you up there first, and then we can go to the loch.”
Rose watched him as he led the way, riding a few yards in front of her. From this angle, she could see the breadth of his shoulders and back, tapering down to his narrower hips. His powerful thighs were holding on to the saddle, keeping his magnificent stallion completely under his control. Even his hair was perfect, glossy, black and tamed only by a thin leather thong.
She felt a strange sweet pulse between her thighs, a part of her body she had never thought much about before, then she began to tingle all over.
My god,she thought in a panic,what is happening to me?
Rose had never felt this way before, but she knew it had something to do with Cormac. He was a heady mix of masculine strength of both body and character, yet it was tempered with gentleness and kindness.
And was there vulnerability too? Yes, she had seen it, especially when Elspeth talked about her mother. He was an extraordinary man, and the more Rose saw of him, the more he affected her in ways that she could hardly bear to admit to herself.
She had no idea how she was going to cope if he married again, but who knew what the future held? Rose knew that there was no hope of her enjoying his affections, but it was a lovely dream.
Anyway, she was only a governess, and she was what the Scots dismissively called a Sassenach, so why was she worried? It was not as if Laird Cormac MacTavish were going to look twice at her.
Rose shook the thoughts out of her head and concentrated on admiring the scenery as they emerged from the woods and came out into the open again. She contrasted the high, rugged hills, with great granite outcrops jutting through the bright, green grass, with the smooth and level grasslands of her own country.
Rose thought it was very intimidating, yet she would not have changed a thing, since she had come to love this rough, hard, beautiful land. The people were a little wary of her and her southern English accent, but Rose was sure that in a while she would be able to win at least some of them over. Even the staff at the castle seemed to be warming to her a little, albeit very slowly indeed.
Rose and Elspeth reached the top of the hill and dismounted, then looked down. The village of Inverrigg lay below them, not the tiny place Rose had imagined, but a substantially sized village on the shore of a great grey body of water.
Elspeth and Nell had told her the story of the monster in the loch; a giant serpentine creature dwelling deep in the waters, and although Rose did not believe it, she was surprised at how many people did.
She thought of it now as she looked at the loch, then her eyes drifted to the village, where she could see the roofs of the cottages, some thatched, the more expensive ones tiled. Smoke drifted from their chimneys. There was a church with a pointedspire on one side of a market square, although there was no market that day.
The well in the middle of the square had a little crowd of people around it waiting their turn to draw water. They were too far away for her to see properly, but she imagined them all talking and laughing with each other as neighbours do, just like her own country’s folk.
It was so peaceful and soothing that Rose could have stood and watched all day.
Then she turned her attention to Cormac, who was standing gazing down at the village with a faint smile on his face, and wondered what he was thinking about. She swallowed nervously as she looked at him, wondering how it would feel to kiss him, then she reprimanded herself.
