Page 49 of Highlander's Sinless Nymph
Charlotte was quite taken aback. Edward’s scant regard for the proprieties of undressing around her was something that she had not forgotten. On the contrary, the recollection of him stripping off and heading out to hunt in the rain had etched itself in her memory with a vividness that she doubted she would ever forget. However, she was not sure that shequiteshared this carefree approach to life just then.
“Uh,” she stuttered, not quite sure where she should cast her eyes.
The reeds were well over man’s height, tall in places, and Charlotte thought that she could probably find herself a section of lake where she could bathe and wash in privacy, using the reeds as a natural screen.
“Um, Edward, I’m going to walk off a little and see if I can find a more, um, secluded spot to wash, if you don’t mind,” she said.
Edward paused in the act of removing his shirt and looked over at her quizzically. Charlotte caught a glimpse of the sharply defined muscles of his stomach, her eye seemingly dragged downwards of its own accord by that captivating V cut into his pelvis.
“Oh,aye,” Edward said, the eyebrow with the scar through it raising a fraction as he noticed Charlotte watching him. “Aye, I see. Ye’re a lady and ye want yer privacy. I understand, Sassenach. Aye, well, there’s a wee clump o’ reeds around there that’ll do the job nicely.”
Charlotte nodded, trying to hide her blush behind her curtain of curly hair. “Excellent, well, enjoy your bath then.”
Edward grinned roguishly. “Careful nae to swim out too far if yer worried about yer modesty. The currents are slow but strong, and will drag ye down here if ye let ‘em.”
Charlotte blushed deeper. “Yes––well,” she said, “I told you that I’m a good swimmer…”
Edward pulled his shirt over his head, nodded and turned away. “Aye, that ye did,” he said. “That ye did.”
Charlotte managed to only glance back once as she walked up the lakeside. She watched the Highlander, his back to her, as he unfastened his breeches. The muscles and sinews of his back moved under his skin in a way that spoke of a lethality and power that Charlotte found quite beguiling. It was only the startling white of his bare buttocks, when he unconcernedly pulled his breeches off, that broke the spell and made her look away with her hand to her mouth.
I am not a spy. I am not a spy. I will not spy on this man. It is wrong.
She told herself these things as she hurried away and around a bend in the little lake that screened her from Edward with a small outthrust of rock.
I will bathe and I will wash and I will not think of him.
If she was after a distraction from that beguiling image of the naked Highlander, then the first touch of the water did the job. It was cold, so cold that she gasped and stepped back out after she set foot in the lake. However, she gritted her teeth, took a breath, and strode into the water in a way that she imagined the fair, brave Highland women did.
Once she had gotten over the initial shock of it, the water was actually quite pleasant. It was cool and fresh, simultaneously waking her up and making her feel instantly clean. As the currents of the two merging rivers kept the water moving constantly, it was also crystal clear. The lake bottom was not mud as she had feared, but made up of little smooth, round stones that massaged the soles of her feet.
After a few moments of hesitant paddling about in the shallows, Charlotte waded a few steps deeper, took a few fortifying breaths and dunked right under the water. When she was underwater, she floated down to sit on the lake bottom. Then she ran her fingers through her hair, doing her best to wash it without soap. She rubbed herself all over, doing her best to rid herself of the grime and muck that had accumulated on her skin whilst they had been riding.
Charlotte surfaced and found that she was smiling. The setting sun was falling perfectly onto Amar Na Chrodh Mara, turning the gently swirling waters of the little lake to liquid gold.
I wonder what Edward is doing.
The thought slipped through her mind like a fish, before she had any chance to vet it for appropriateness.
And by that, I suppose you mean, you wonder what he is looking like right now, don’t you?
Charlotte actually laughed out loud at her own subconscious at this thought. She stared at the bank of reeds that presumably hid her from Edward’s sight, and vice versa. She felt quite wicked for thinking it, but then, why should she?
She suddenly felt more free and uninhibited and excited than she ever had in her whole life. Just like that, naked, in the middle of some remote lake in the Scottish Highlands, Charlotte had an epiphany that shook her to her foundations.
I am my own woman! I can be free to make my own decisions, if I want to!
Charlotte laughed again and pirouetted in the water, her arms raised and her face to the sky.
“I am my own woman!” she breathed, to herself and to the world.
Then, her foot came down on a particularly slick stone. Before she had a chance to get her footing or snatch a breath, the bottom of the lake seemed to drop out from under her and she felt herself plucked irresistibly up by the current and dragged out into the middle of the lake.
As people are prone to do in such situations, Charlotte panicked. She thrashed in the water, only driving herself deeper under the water and further into the currents embrace. Silver bubbles erupted around her, her hair tangling around her face, getting in her mouth, wrapping her head like weeds. Her backside bumped the bottom of the lake. Then, suddenly, she found herself tangled up in amongst something, something hard but giving.
She thrashed, but she could not budge from whatever it was that she had become wedged against––a fallen branch, tree roots, who knew what!
My God, I’m going to drown, and I’m going to drown naked…
