Page 35 of Highlander's Sinless Nymph
Charlotte, between a wealthy young woman’s upbringing and the careful, tyrannical sheltering that her father had implemented whilst they had been on campaign, had never seen anything that even came close to the sight of Edward standing in just his breeches.
He was so far removed from the perfumed dandies that she was constantly being introduced to as the “men of real standing,” “fine breeding” and “excellent lineage” that she almost burst out laughing. She might have laughed, if she only had the breath. It seemed though, that her breath had got lost somewhere between her lungs and her lips.
The man was as perfectly shaped as some of the statues that decorated her home, Brodenstone Manor, back in England. Each muscle of his chest and stomach seemed to have been picked out in exacting detail. His arms were a collection of sinews, as thick around at the bicep as Charlotte’s thigh. The ridges of his stomach in particular held her gaze, held it so that she could not, for the life of her, look away. The segmented muscles led down to a captivating V at the bottom of his abdomen. A V that led down to…
“I’ll head out now,” Edward said, and Charlotte started with a jerk.
“I––you––what?” she said guiltily. Her senses seemed to be swamped with the Adonis-like apparition in front of her; all she could see were those muscles gleaming like dull bronze in the light of the fire.
Edward frowned at her, bemused. “Are ye all right, Sassenach?” he asked, scratching at his rough beard and looking out into the night.
“I, um, yes, yes I’m fine. I just––why have you removed your, um, your shirt?” Charlotte managed to say, trying––through a supreme effort of will––to keep her eyes above Edward’s collar bone.
The Highlander seemed quite unconcerned with standing half-clad in front of a relative stranger, not to mention one of the opposite sex.
“Hm? Oh, well, it does nae make much sense to get all of me clothes soaked through whilst I’m out in the storm, does it?” he said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“No, I–– Quite right,” Charlotte said.
“This way me skin gets wet, but that’s about all. Then I’ve got a nice dry shirt waitin’ fer me.”
“What about your breeches?”
The words were out of her mouth before they had even had the courtesy to run themselves past her brain. Charlotte sat open-mouthed, stupefied by her own question.
What must he think of me now? That I am some sort of fast or loose woman?
Edward though, seemed to pay the question no real mind whatsoever.
“Hm, well, that cannae be helped in the circumstances,” he said seriously. “Unless ye do not care fer havin’ a lad walkin’ about in naught but what God saw fit to give him.”
This thought, coming so hard on the heels of the reality of the half-naked Highlander in front of her, was a lot more than Charlotte’s brain was capable of dealing with just then.
“Um,” she said.
Edward looked at her in that passive and inscrutable way he had, his brows knitted slightly over his brown eyes. Charlotte could not help notice that his thumbs were tucked carelessly into his breeches.
Very much as if he intended to take them off, if only I were to tell him that I had seen it all before…
There was a pause, a pause in which the sound of the rain and the river, the crackle of the fire and the grumbling thunder was all that could be heard.
“Aye,” Edward said, “I did nae think so.”
And he stepped out into the torrential rain with his bow and arrows and was gone.
12
The moment he stepped back in, out from the curtain of rain. The young doe over his shoulder. Blood upon his hands. The way that the water streamed off of his naked torso, his long blonde hair dark with the wet, moisture beaded on his lashes and beard…
These memories––as well as some slightly more imaginative and fictional thoughts––were enough to keep Charlotte well occupied for most of the next day’s ride.
The country was more of the same; jagged, saw-tooth hills and cliffs, sweeping expanses of storm-tossed grass punctuated by riots of yellow gorse and purple heather. The tops of the low mountains were hidden in moody cloud.
Her mother had used to say to her that, in some situations, rain was just another type of fine weather. She had used to say that if Charlotte and she were caught out in a shower. Then she would hug Charlotte to her and laugh.
She used to say that it all depended on who you were getting wet with.
The screen of silver rain parted every now and again to show them one magnificent vista after another. She had less a mind to keep an eye out for the landscape though, thanks in part to the continual heavy rain that had not relented since the previous night. Instead, Charlotte snuggled down in her voluminous cloak, pressed herself tight to Edward’s broad back, closed her eyes and let her memories of the previous night warm her.
