A Soldier's Salvation (Highland Heartbeats Book 7)(28)

She told herself he wasn’t chuckling as they walked to the house, that he hadn’t watched her playing alone in the river.





13





It was at times such as these when Rodric was glad to be a decent man. Otherwise, there was no way he’d have been able to control himself after seeing her in the river.

He’d noticed her right off, as soon as the McMannis house had come into view. Her skin shining like silver in the moonlight when she stood with her back to him. It had nearly been enough to stop his heart.

He’d battled with himself then, wondering if he should call out to her as a warning—only the vague notion that someone might hear him doing so and come to explore had stopped him. A silly idea, in hindsight, as there hadn’t been a soul in sight except for her.

But it had been enough reason at the moment to hold his tongue and see what would happen next.

“Whoa,” he’d whispered, slowing the horse to barely a walk as he’d crept up on her. It had been the wrong thing to do, like as not, but there had been no helping it. The closer he drew to her moonlit magnificence, the further away his resolve seemed to flee.

The slim arms, the curve of her shoulders. The way her waist narrowed before flaring just slightly at the hip—he hadn’t been able to see more than that, the water covered the rest of her. But that slight beginning of a flare, just the mere hint of it, was enough to fuel a lifetime’s worth of dreaming.

He’d remembered the young lass, the one he’d grown up with. The fourteen-year-old who he’d left behind. In some part of his mind, he’d known she must’ve grown up. He had, after all.

But what she’d grown into. He couldn’t have imagined that, had no idea of it while she wore those large, shapeless, clearly borrowed clothes.

He stretched out on his side with his back to the latched door, staring out into darkness broken only by the moonlight coming through a window above his head. The kitchen wasn’t a large room by any means, but it might as well have been the great hall of the Duncan manor house for all the distance between him and the lass on the other side of it.

Would that she were awake.

What would he say to her if she was?

That would always be the trouble: not knowing what to say to her. They were no longer children and had no understanding of each other as adults. How could they hope to reach each other, then? When it seemed that no matter how he tried, every conversation ended in an argument?

Longing for her wouldn’t help things. He needed to sleep at least a bit, needed a clear head in the morning when it came time to devise a plan for getting her to safety. He’d need his men, naturally—there was no sense in leaving them at the inn, no matter how pleasurably they might pass the time in his absence.

The mere hint of this, combined with a body which already ached to be pressed to the one which rested across the room from him, drew from him a frustrated groan.

“Hmm?” A sleepy voice replied. She stirred beneath the thin blanket.

He averted his eyes—in the state he was in, even that slight bit of movement was nearly enough to inflame him. “I’m sorry. Go to sleep.”

“Are you all right?” she whispered, raising herself up on one elbow as though to get a better look at him.

“I’m well. Go to sleep now.”

She sighed. “Now I’m awake again.”

“I’m sorry to have awoken you.”

“I sleep lightly.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

She snorted. “Why would you?”

“I don’t know. It seemed as though you deserved an answer.”

Another snort. “You sounded uncomfortable, or worried.”

“I said, I’m well.”

“All right. Good night.” She sounded doubtful as she lowered herself to the floor once again, her makeshift bed nothing more than a bundle of blankets. Even so, he would’ve wagered she was more comfortable than he was.

Not that discomfort meant much. He’d been in far worse situations before—sleeping in muck, mud which carried the stench of waste and blood, during torrential storms, and in cold worse than anything he’d ever experienced.

Except, perhaps, the night he and Alan had gone out to secure the livestock during the great blizzard.

He rolled onto his back, one arm under his head as he remembered. The wind, the snow caking itself to his face. The certainty at one point that he was beginning to lose sensation in his feet and hands.

And why had he gone? To keep Alan in line, as always. To ensure that his brother didn’t do something stupid or reckless which would only get him killed. Even then, when he was little more than a child who thought he was a man, he’d been looking out for his older brother.

What good had it done?

There had been one moment, one heart-stopping moment, when everything could’ve gone far differently.

He closed his eyes, almost feeling as though he were back in that storm in spite of the warm, summer night of the present day. The swirling snow had all but wiped away every trace of familiar land or building. He could see nothing—no barn, no stables, no house. No light from candles in the windows.

It was as if the entire world had disappeared, leaving him and his brother wandering, searching in vain for something which no longer existed.

Alan had tugged his arm, gesturing wildly to the right. Wanting to move in that direction.