The Recruit (Highland Guard #6)(16)

After a moment of shock, Robert had burst out laughing and told her she sounded just like her sister. Isabel, he’d meant. The bold, speak-her-mind sister he’d fallen in love with and married when he’d been a lad of eighteen, and who’d died a few years later in childbirth. Mary hadn’t realized how much she’d changed, but he was right.

Of Janet’s presumed death, his sorrow had been nearly as great as Lady Christina’s. And like her brother’s widow, he claimed to know nothing of what had become of her.

The peace envoys had managed one small success, however, in extending the truce until November.

Mary could hear the sounds of merriment coming from the Hall as she hurried down the stairwell from the tower chamber she shared with some of the other ladies and the two attendants Edward had provided for her—probably to keep an eye on her.

Highlanders could dance until dawn, and from the sounds of it, the feast was still going strong. Perhaps I should have …

She stopped herself. She was right to have begged off the feast tonight. She couldn’t allow herself to be drawn in.

She’d been doing her best to keep to herself, but it was getting harder and harder to stay away from the festivities. Harder and harder not to get caught up in the excitement. In the fun.

God, how long had it been since she’d had fun? She’d almost forgotten what it was.

But being here made her remember. Being here made her remember a lot of things.

One more week. That was all she needed to make it through. They were leaving at the end of the Games, and then she could return to her life in England.

But the sounds around her seemed to challenge that characterization. Music. Voices. Laughter. Those were the sounds of life.

No. She pushed it aside. Quiet. Peace. Solitude. Independence. That was what she wanted.

Finding those things at a castle in the midst of the Highland Games, however, was all but impossible. She hurried down the corridor and out into the barmkin, heading for the postern gate, which exited toward the beach.

It would be peaceful there, gazing up at the moonlit sky. The stars were different in the Highlands. Bigger, brighter, closer. Her mother had told her it was because the “high” lands were so near to heaven. Mary could almost believe her.

The stars in England were—

She stopped herself again. She couldn’t let herself keep comparing; it would only make leaving that much more difficult.

Don’t dwell on what you can’t have.

She was about to pass by the stables when she heard a strange sound that stopped her. It sounded like a pained moan. Glancing around, not seeing anyone, and thinking that it was odd not to have a stable lad at the entry, she was about to walk away when she heard it again. Louder this time, and followed by a hard grunt.

Was one of the horses in distress?

She rushed inside, following the beam of light from the torches, barely noticing the pungent smells of animal and hay that hit her the moment she entered. It was pleasantly warm and sultry, the animals providing a natural, radiating heat.

Two torches had been fixed on the posts at the entrance, spilling off a wide enough pool of light to see that nothing appeared out of the ordinary. Well, except for the apparent absence of anyone to watch over the animals. The horses were in their stalls, and—

She stopped, hearing it again. Then, as if following their own direction, her feet started moving toward the sound, which seemed to be coming from one of the stalls at the far corner of the building. More moans and cries. Not animal, she realized, but …

She felt a prickle of something tingle down her spine, a premonition, right before they came into view.

Human.

She came to an abrupt stop, as if she’d slammed into a wall. She sucked in her breath, her body frozen in shock. The sight that met her eyes was unlike anything she’d ever seen. She felt as if she’d been plunged into a den of sin, an orgy of sensation, a sensual banquet for the eyes.

A man—an extremely muscular and powerfully built man—stripped to the waist, with his braies loosened and hanging onto his bu**ocks by the barest of margins, was on his knees in the hay, gripping the hips of a woman who was on her hands and knees before him. He was plunging in and out of her from behind. Mary’s eyes widened. From behind!

Her first reaction was one of concern. Was he hurting her? But although the scene was in profile, from the half-lidded eyes and fierce sounds of pleasure the woman was making no effort to contain, she was enjoying it. Enjoying it rather a lot.

Mary knew she should go, but her feet seemed incapable of movement. She was transfixed by the look of rapture on the woman’s face. She didn’t recognize her, but she was young, probably about nineteen or twenty, and very pretty. Her long blond hair was loose and tumbling around her shoulders in soft waves. She was well curved, with wide hips, full br**sts, and softly rounded limbs. Although technically the woman was clothed, her gown was loose to the point of falling off at her bodice and the hem was tossed up around her waist, leaving little of her body that was not exposed.

“Oh, yes!” the woman cried. “God, it feels so good. You’re so big.” She was arching her back, rocking her hips against him eagerly.

The man’s movements, by contrast, were almost lazy. He reached forward to fondle one of her sizable br**sts, and the woman’s moans and cries took on a frantic edge.

Mary couldn’t look away from his hands. Darkly tanned against the pale softness of the woman’s skin, they were big, well formed, and as strong-looking as the rest of him. He was a lean, perfectly honed weapon of war. Atholl had been a muscular man, but this man defied comparison.