Page 47 of My Scot, My Surrender
The problem was, he didn’t know if he could do both.
Chapter Thirteen
The night had been long and cold, though Sorcha was thankful that it had, at least, not been storming. She and Brandt had tucked themselves into a small copse of trees near the river and lit a small fire, the rush and gurgle of the water the only noise throughout the night.
She’d barely slept, fearing both another attack from ruthless bounty hunters and an infection settling into Ares’s injury. She’d washed the wound the first chance she’d had, applied her mother’s salve liberally, and then bandaged it up. None of it, though, was a promise against infection. They needed Ares.Brandtneeded him, and not just to transport him from place to place.
Ares was Brandt’s companion. If something were to befall the horse, it would hurt him deeply. It would also be yet one more bad consequence of her scheming back in Selkirk. She didn’t want to think of how Brandt might blame her, so instead, she’d looked up at the stars most of the night, the sky clear enough to show off every last twinkling constellation. She’d traced Orion and Gemini with her eyes, the Plough, and the Seven Sisters. It had been some while before she realized Brandt was not sleeping, either. His breathing was too quiet, his limbs restless as they stirred under his plaid. He might not have been keeping watch outside their encampment, but he remained alert. Alert and a few arm’s lengths away from her own bedroll.
As dawn lit the fields, Sorcha had found her husband already at Ares’s side, inspecting the animal’s leg, the bandage off.
“It looks well,” she said. The wound had started to heal instead of fester.
“Because of you,” he replied, discarding the old strip of linen bandage into the meager flames of the fire. Sorcha tried not to flush at his praise, but her mind was relentless in the way it sought the pleasure such a thing brought.
She got to her feet and stretched, then went to her pack for the salve.
“Because he is a strong animal,” she rejoined before moving toward Ares and reapplying a new layer. Brandt then bandaged him again.
“He’ll be fine until we reach Montgomery,” he said with a gentle caress of his palm over his mount’s knee. “Once there, he can rest in more comfort until he recovers.”
Sorcha bit her lip against the instant reply springing to her tongue.What if the Montgomerys aren’t welcoming?
Saying as much would only cast a shadow over what was, so far, a fine, blue-sky Highland morning. The air was crisp, but with the sun and the rare lack of wind, it would soon warm. It might even get hot.
Self-consciously, she took stock of herself. They’d washed up at the monastery, but drenching rains and a night spent in a muck-filled field hut had made her feel as if she hadn’t bathed in days. Before leaving the monks, she and Brandt had been welcomed to fill their packs with supplies for both themselves and their horses. Among the piles of stores found in the cellarium, there had been a crate of charity clothing and fabric. She’d found a simple green dress with few marks and mendings, a threadbare but clean linen shift, and a shawl that had but one spot of well-done darning.
Showing up at the Montgomery keep in her current grime-covered clothing was out of the question. She would already have to withstand the stares and whispers about her face; she would not give them anything else to gossip about.
“I’m going down to the river,” she announced as she took the dress and shawl from her pack. As her hand reached, she saw how dirty it was. A small amount of her lavender soap remained in her saddlebags, and she palmed the jar now along with a square of linen.
Brandt gave her a small nod. “I’ll keep watch.”
Of course he would, she thought with a smile as she walked out of the trees, toward the wide, languid river. It wasn’t as loud as it had been the night before. Sunlight did that; it muted things. Sounds, sensations, fears. Though as she stopped at the river’s edge, placing her clothes and soap on a flat-topped rock jutting halfway into the clear water, she thought of how little it muted her longing for her husband. At night, yes, it was more pointed, but even now as she pictured him at the camp tending to their mounts and stomping out the fire, she longed for him. It was silly really, how thirty or so yards felt like miles upon miles.
Sorcha shook her head and undressed to her shift. The icy river water bit at her feet as she entered, but she knew the longer she took to get in, the worse the cold would be. So instead, she gripped her jar of soap and went straight into the shallows. The riverbed dropped into a pool, the rocks at her feet worn smooth, and the bracing cold sent a rash of gooseflesh all over her skin as she submerged nearly to her shoulders. Sorcha couldn’t stop the little yelp of surprise, then a jittery burst of laughter.
Quickly, she lathered her body with soap, scrubbing at the streaks of dirt on her arms and hands, scouring her neck and chest and legs, concentrating hard on the rims of her nails. She took a breath and dunked her head, the cold water stabbing her cheeks and nose. She pushed back to the surface, another bubble of laughter at the cold releasing.
Her hair! It was a mess of knots, and as she lathered it with soap, tried to untangle each one. But it would take far too long, and already she was starting to feel numb from the knees down, her jaw beginning to chatter. The sun would warm her quickly once she was out, and then she could sit on the rock and comb out the tangles. So she gave up, simply dunking her head once more to rinse before turning to go back to shore.
Sorcha stopped, a pulse of shock skittering through her at the sight of Brandt, standing on the flat-topped rock next to her pile of discarded clothes. He held a length of clean plaid, one side of his mouth bowed into a mischievous grin. Sorcha felt another shiver through her body, though this one was unrelated to the cold. Instead, a spike of pure heat shot through her, centering low in her abdomen.
“How long have you been standing there?” she asked.
The grin intensified, encompassing his whole, beautifully formed lips. “Long enough to think you need to pay better attention to your surroundings.”
“I was distracted,” she said, the excuse and the cold making her voice high. “The water is freezing.”
Brandt’s eyes dropped to the twin slopes of her breasts beneath the wet shift just cresting the surface of the water, and Sorcha felt the graze of his stare to her shaking bones. The river water was clear, and she knew that despite the slight distortion the surface may provide, the outline of her body in her sodden garment was plain for him to see.
Though her nipples had tightened into hard, pebbled tips from the cold, her breasts still managed to suddenly feel heavy and full. And warm. This man. He was a flame, and she craved his heat. She wanted to throw herself in the very center of it and burn to willful destruction.
“I brought you this,” he said, holding up the length of plaid. “To dry off.”
He set it on the rock, by her clothes, and straightened to leave.
“Wait.” Sorcha’s feet moved over the smooth riverbed rocks, and her breasts cleared the surface of the water. She didn’t know what had made her do it, only that she hadn’t wanted him to turn and take his flame away from her. Or maybe because this was the last time they would truly be alone.
