The Hunter (Highland Guard #7)(24)

“And you have figured out that I do not qualify?”

“I did not mean to offend you.”

“You didn’t. I was fostered with a local nobleman and had some tutoring. Languages come easily for me.” She made a face, and he laughed. “I take it that it is not the same for you?”

She shook her head. “Latin was the worst.”

The words were out before she could take them back. She hoped he wouldn’t notice, but, of course, he did.

“I would have thought with Italian being so closely related, it would have been easy.”

“For most people it is,” she said. She feigned a yawn. “If you don’t mind, I think I should like to go to bed. I’m very tired.”

And talking to him was dangerous. It was easy to forget herself, in more ways than one. For a few moments, she’d forgotten that she was a nun—or planned to be soon—that they should remain strangers, and that they were alone in this room. For a few minutes, she’d felt as comfortable with him as if they were truly man and wife. For a few minutes, the intimacy had seemed … natural.

But suddenly being alone with him felt awkward again. She was deeply conscious of him as a man. And as much as she wanted to pretend that she was a nun, her body seemed to know differently. Being alone with a too-tall, too-handsome, too-virile warrior made her feel very feminine and very aware of that femininity in a way that she never had been before.

She pulled the plaid around her shoulders more tightly, even though the room suddenly felt too warm. It was the room, wasn’t it? But that didn’t explain the heat in places she had never felt warm before. Warning beacons seemed to flare all around her. She needed to get away from him.

He must have picked up on the charge in the atmosphere as well, because he suddenly seemed very eager to leave. “If you give me your clothes, I will take them down to the innkeeper to hang by the fire. You don’t need to leave the candle burning for me; I will be able to find the floor when I return.”

She bit her lip, wanting to ask how long he’d be but not wanting to make him suspicious. Because she had no intention of being here when he woke up.

With his father’s penchant for drink, Ewen wasn’t much for whisky, but at times he could appreciate the dulling effects of the fiery brew. The last time he’d drunk too much was after one of his friends and fellow Highland Guardsmen, William Gordon, was killed in an explosion in Galloway. Before that, it had been when he and MacLean had finally made it to safety after surviving the slaughter that had befallen Bruce’s men at Loch Ryan at the hands of the MacDowells. Eighteen galleys, and only two had survived.

But tonight, it wasn’t the pain of losing friends that had driven him to drink, but another kind of pain—the lustful kind. Knowing that he’d lie awake all night hard as a rock if he didn’t do something, he spent a good hour draining a flagon of very peaty whisky, trying to cool his heated blood. He was tempted when an alternative method of dulling his lust presented itself in the form of a comely barmaid, but the whisky must have already been having an effect, as her flirtatious grazes and bold glances didn’t get the barest rise out of him.

By the time he returned to the room, he was good and relaxed, and the source of his trouble was fast asleep and bundled up safely out of eyesight under the blankets. He threw his plaid on the floor, barely noticing how hard it was before passing out in a whisky-induced haze.

But the drink didn’t penetrate his sleep. He dreamed of her. Hot, restless dreams of high, round br**sts and a curvy bottom. He imagined touching her, cupping her, running his hands over every naked inch of baby-soft flesh. His body was hot, his blood rushing, his nose filled with her soft scent. The sensations were so strong, they tore him from his sleep. Or at least he thought they had. But when he opened his eyes, his hand was wrapped around her wrist and she was looming over him, her eyes wide with shock.

Then he knew he had to be dreaming because he could feel the soft stroke of her hands on his hair and hear the soft, soothing tones of her voice as she filled his dreams with the lulling sounds of song. He felt his body relax. Felt the tension that had been teeming through his limbs release under the gentle, calming strokes. It was nice. He’d never had a mother to put him to bed when he was young, but he suspected it would have been something like this. The last thing he remembered before she left was the soft brush of her lips on his cheek.

He woke to a cold room and the first rays of dawn streaming through the cracks in the shutters. Though weak, the sunlight sent shards of pain piercing through his drink-thickened head like daggers. He closed his eyes, listening instead to the peaceful sounds of … silence. Absolute silence.

His eyes snapped open again. Ignoring the pain, his gaze went to the woman sleeping on the bed. Or the woman who should be sleeping on the bed. But even before he jumped to his feet and tore back the bunched-up plaid, he knew.

It hadn’t been a dream. His damned “wife” was gone.

Six

Janet didn’t think her heart started beating again until she was halfway to Roxburgh.

After she’d managed to get him back to sleep, she’d retrieved her belongings from the hearth downstairs and slipped past the sleeping occupants of the inn to escape into the cool morning darkness with little trouble. But her heart had jumped straight through her throat earlier, when she’d tried to step over him to get to the door and he’d opened his eyes and grabbed her by the wrist.