An Auctioned Bride (Highland Heartbeats #4)(23)

“Bugs?” She glanced down at her arm, pushing back the dirt-smudged sleeve, staring at her skin, caked with smears of dried mud. She looked up at him, her expression uncertain. “Bugs in the mud?”

He nodded, crossing his arms over his chest. There weren't any bugs that lived in the mud. How could they? They wouldn't be able to breathe or survive. But then, she didn't know that. “They are like the bugs that bother animals, make them scratch,” he shrugged. “Just stay well away from me and my horses.”

With that, he turned his back, preparing to toss the blanket onto the floor.

“Wait!” She said, quickly rising to her feet and snatching at the blanket, eyeing him first, and then the small meadow beyond the open doorway. “I will bathe. Do you have to watch me?”

“You will have your privacy, but you won't be free.” With that, he stooped and picked up the length of rope that he'd used to pull her from the bog. It wasn't very long, maybe the height of two men, maybe three, but he wasn't taking any more chances. “I will tie you—”

Hands now on her hips, the blanket dragging on the dirt floor, she looked up at him, frowning. “How am I supposed to bathe with my hands tied?”

He growled, the sound moving upward from the base of his stomach. His head hurt. He strove for patience, cursing under his breath. “I will tie only one hand. I will hold onto the other end, standing with my back turned. You will bathe, but I will not take a chance on you running from me again.”

“I won't, I—”

“I do not trust you, Dalla, to keep your word. And until I do, which is questionable in the near future, you will do as I say. If you do not like being tied up every time we go outside or while you are sleeping, I would suggest that you accept your situation, take what I offer with gratitude and dignity, and don't make my life any more difficult than it already is.”

She stared up at him for several moments, her expression not difficult to read. Her look wordlessly conveyed a combination of anxiety and annoyance, her eyes narrowed, her foot tapping softly against the dirt floor, her lips pressed tightly.

Nevertheless, despite her brave and often brazen expressions, he also saw the pulse throbbing in her neck, her chest rising and falling with what he can only imagine was the fear of uncertainty.

So be it.

Slowly, he bound one of her delicate wrists with one end of the rope, then gestured with his chin outside the hut.

“Go.”





14





Dalla walked out of the hut in front of Hugh, hugging the blanket to her chest as she slid past him, her heart thudding in her chest.

When would these indignities end?

So far, Hugh had kept a respectable distance, but now, tied to him by a rope in order to bathe? How was she going to accomplish that without baring herself to his view? Could she count on him not to look? Did she dare ask?

She snickered.

Imagine, her, a captive, requesting that her captor not peek while she disrobed and bathed. She could just hear him laughing.

She followed his murmured directions as they made their way around the hut and down a short slope, at the bottom of which she now distinctly heard a low trickle of water bubbling over rocks. By the time she broke through the brush, Hugh close behind, she stared at the stream in dismay. And relief.

She hadn’t told him that she couldn’t swim. A Norwegian who didn’t know how to swim, and living right next to the fjord? He’d think her foolish—or touched in the head. Unable to learn? Would he then think that she wasn’t worth keeping, that she—

“What are you stopping for? As you can see, it's not a raging river. It will be easy to bathe in. A bit cold surely, but suitable.”

He was right. It wasn't a raging river. It wasn't much to look at, maybe half a stone's throw across, and it certainly didn't look deep. The water might come up to her knees.

She frowned.

How was she supposed to bathe in something so shallow?

She turned to him and saw him watching her with an implacable expression, arms once again crossed over his chest, one hand grasping the twisted rope. Dalla glanced between him and the water, gurgling right there beside her left foot. In a fit of pique, she decided that she would just do what she had to do and hope that Hugh did not turn into a barbarian at the side of exposed skin.

She stood staring up at him in defiance as she started to disrobe, first kicking the filthy slippers off her feet, then reaching down to unfasten the overlarge breeches.

His eyes widened in dismay as one piece of clothing after another landed at her feet.

The cool morning air brushed against her bare legs, raising goosebumps. When she reached for the tunic, prepared to pull it over her head, he stiffened and turned away.

She quickly pulled the tunic over her head and stepped into the water. Its icy coolness sent a shiver up her spine, but she sucked in a breath and quickly sat in it, legs outstretched as she quickly began to splash water over her filthy body.

Cold… so cold!

She clamped her jaw tight to prevent her teeth from chattering. Despite the frigid temperature, however, she felt grateful to wash the days and weeks of dirt and mud from her body. Ridding herself of the memory of the ship's hold as the grime disappeared from beneath her fingernails and the stench of the tar and oil from the keel was scrubbed away.