Her eyes flew open. No, it’s not, she nearly snapped. Kiss me.
“To wash it, I mean.” His gaze dropped to the tattered shirt she still held. “Besides,” he added, “I doona need some silly peahen fussing over me. At least the maids doona rip my shirts, unless of course they’re in a hurry to remove them from my body, but that’s an entirely different discussion which is neither here nor there, and one I’m sure you wouldn’t be interested in having with me anyway….”
“Grimm?” Jillian said tightly.
He looked out over the loch. “Um?”
“I hate you.”
“I know, lass,” he said softly. “You told me that last night. It seems all our little ‘discussions’ end on those words. Try to be a bit more creative, will you?”
He didn’t move a muscle when the remains of his wet shirt slapped him in the face and Jillian stomped away.
Grimm came to dinner wearing a clean tartan. His hair was wet, slicked back from a recent bath, and his shirt was ripped cleanly in two down the center of his back. The loose ends flapped above his tartan, and entirely too much muscled back could be seen for Jillian’s comfort.
“What happened to your shirt, Grimm?” Quinn asked curiously.
Grimm gazed across the table at Jillian.
Jillian raised her head, intending to scowl self-righteously, but failed. He was looking at her with that strange expression she couldn’t interpret, the one she’d seen when he’d first arrived and had kept saying her name—and she swallowed her angry words along with a bite of bread that had become impossibly dry. The man’s face was flawlessly symmetrical. A shadow beard accentuated the hollows beneath his cheekbones, sharply defining his arrogant jaw. His wet hair, secured by a thong, gleamed ebony in the flickering light. His blue eyes were brilliant against the backdrop of his tanned skin, and his white teeth flashed when he spoke. His lips were firm, pink, sensuous, and presently curved in a mocking expression.
“I had a run-in with an ill-tempered feline,” Grimm said, holding her gaze.
“Well, why don’t you change your shirt?” Ramsay asked.
“I brought only the one,” Grimm told Jillian.
“You brought one shirt?” Ramsay snorted disbelievingly. “Odin’s spear, Grimm, you can afford a thousand shirts. Becoming a miser, are you?”
“ ’Tis not the shirt that makes the man, Logan.”
“Damn good thing for you.” Ramsay carefully straightened the folds of his snowy linen. “Have you considered that it may be a reflection of him?”
“I’m sure a maid can mend it for you,” Quinn said. “Or I can lend you one.”
“I doona mind wearing it this way. As for reflections, who’s to see?”
“You look like a villein, Roderick.” Ramsay sneered.
Jillian made a resigned sound. “I’ll mend it,” she muttered, dropping her gaze to her plate so she didn’t have to see their stunned expressions.
“You can sew, lass?” Ramsay asked doubtfully.
“Of course I can sew. I’m not a complete failure as a woman just because I’m old and unwed,” Jillian snapped.
“But don’t the maids do that?”
“Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t,” Jillian replied cryptically.
“Are you feeling all right, Jillian?” Quinn asked.
“Oh, will you just hush up?”
CHAPTER 6
IT INFURIATED HER. EVERY TIME SHE GLIMPSED THE LINE of uneven stitches puckering the center of Grimm’s shirt, she felt herself turning into an irascible, beady-eyed porcupine. It was as humiliating as if he’d stitched the words “Jillian lost control of herself and I’m never going to let her forget it” across his back. She couldn’t believe she’d torn it, but years of suffering his torment as a child had proved her undoing, and she’d simply snapped.
He was back at Caithness, he was hopelessly attractive, and he still treated her exactly the same as he had when she’d been a child. What would it take to make him see that she wasn’t a child anymore? Well, stop acting like one, to start with, she remonstrated herself. Since the moment she’d tenderly mended his shirt, she’d been longing to waylay him, divest him of the pernicious reminder, and gleefully burn it. Doing so, however, would have reinforced his perception that she had a penchant for witless action, so instead she’d procured three shirts of finer linen, with flawless stitching, and instructed the maids to place them in his room. Did he wear them?
Nary a one.
Each day that dawned, he donned the same shirt with the ridiculous pleat down the back. She’d considered asking him why he wouldn’t wear the new ones, but that would be as bad as admitting that his ploy to make her feel stupid and guilty was working. She’d die before she betrayed another ounce of emotion to the emotionless man who was sabotaging her impeccable manners.
Jillian dragged her eyes from the dark, seductive man walking in the bailey, wearing a badly mended shirt, and forced herself to take a deep, calming breath. Jillian Alanna Roderick; she rolled the name behind her teeth, a whisper of exhaled breath. The syllables tumbled euphonically. I only wish …
“So it’s the cloister for you, eh, lass?”
Jillian stiffened. The throaty rumble of Ramsay Logan was not what she needed to hear at this moment. “Um-hmm,” she mumbled in the direction of the window.
“You won’t last a fortnight,” he said matter-of-factly.
“How dare you?” Jillian whirled about to face him. “You don’t know a thing about me!”
Ramsay smiled smugly.
Jillian blanched as she remembered that he’d seen her naked at the window the day he’d arrived. “I’ll have you know that I have a calling.”
“I’m sure you do, lass,” Ramsay purred. “I simply think your ears are plugged and you’re hearing the wrong one. A woman like you has a calling to a flesh-and-blood man, not a God who will never make you feel the joy of being a woman.”
“There are finer things in life than being a man’s broodmare, Logan.”
“No woman of mine would ever be a broodmare. Don’t misunderstand me: I don’t belittle the Kirk and Christ’s chosen, I simply don’t see you being drawn to such a lure. You’re too passionate.”
“I am cool and collected,” she insisted.
“Not around Grimm,” Ramsay said pointedly.
“That’s because he irritates me,” Jillian snapped.
Ramsay cocked a brow and grinned.
“Just what do you think is so funny, Logan?”
“ ‘Irritates’ is an interesting word for it. Not the one I might have chosen. Rather, let’s see … ‘Excites’? ‘Delights’? Your eyes burn like amber in the sunlight when he enters the room.”
“Fine.” Jillian turned back to the window. “Now that we’ve debated our choice of appropriate verbs, and you’ve selected all the wrong ones and obviously don’t know a thing about women, you may continue on with your day. Shoo, shoo.” She waved her hand at him.
Ramsay’s grin widened. “I don’t intimidate you a bit, do I, lass?”
“Aside from your overbearing attitude, and the fact that you use your great height and girth to make a woman feel cornered, I suspect you’re more bull than bully,” she muttered.
“Most women like the bull in me.” He moved closer.
Jillian shot a disgusted look over her shoulder. “I’m not most women. And don’t be standing on my toes, Logan, there’s only room enough for me on them. You can trundle back home to the land of the mighty Logan, where the men are men and the women belong to them. I am not the kind of woman you’re used to dealing with.”
Ramsay laughed.
Jillian turned slowly, her jaw clenched.
“Would you like some help with Roderick?” He gazed over her shoulder, out the window.
“I thought we’d just established you’re not a coldblooded murderer, which means you’d be of no use to me.”
“I think you need help. That man can be dense as sod.”
When the door to the Gre
athall opened a scant instant later, Ramsay moved so quickly that Jillian had no time to protest. His kiss was swiftly delivered and lingeringly prolonged. It raised her to her tiptoes and left her strangely breathless when he released her.
Jillian gazed at him blankly. Truth be told, she’d had so few kisses that she was grossly unprepared for the skillful kiss of a mature man and accomplished lover. She blinked.
The slam of the door caused the timbers to shudder, and Jillian understood. “Was that Grimm?” she breathed.
Ramsay nodded and grinned. When he started to lower his head again, Jillian hastily clamped her hand over her mouth.
“Come on, lass,” he urged, catching her hand in his. “Grant me a kiss to thank me for showing Grimm that if he’s too stupid to claim you, someone else will.”
“Where do you get the idea I care what that man thinks?” She seethed. “And he certainly doesn’t care if you kiss me.”
“You’re recovering from my kiss too fast for my liking, lass. As for Grimm, I saw you watching him through this window. If you don’t speak your heart—”
“He has no heart to speak to.”
“From what I saw at court I’d wager that’s true, but you’ll never know for certain until you try,” Ramsay continued. “I’d just as soon you try, fail, and get it over with so you can start looking at me with such longing.”
“Thank you for such brilliant advice, Logan. I can see by your own blissfully wedded state that you must know what you’re talking about when it comes to relationships.”
“The only reason I’m not blissfully wed is because I’m holding out for a good-hearted woman. They’ve become a rare commodity.”
“It requires a good-hearted man to attract a good-hearted woman, and you’ve likely been looking in the wrong places. You won’t find a woman’s heart between her—” Jillian broke off abruptly, mortified by what she’d almost said.
Ramsay roared with laughter. “Tell me I could make you forget Grimm Roderick and I’ll show a good-hearted man. I would treat you like a queen. Roderick doesn’t deserve you.”
Jillian sighed morosely. “He doesn’t want me. And if you breathe one word to him about what you think I feel, which I assure you I don’t, I shall find a way to make you miserable.”
“Just don’t be tearing my shirts.” Ramsay raised his hands in a gesture of defeat. “I’m off to the village, lass.” He ducked quickly out the door.
Jillian scowled at the closed door for a long moment after he’d gone. By the saints, these men were making her feel like she was thirteen again, and thirteen had not been a good year. A horrid year, come to think of it. The year she’d watched Grimm in the stables with a maid, then gone to stand in her room and gaze sadly at her body. Thirteen had been a miserable year of impossible duality, of womanly feelings in a child’s body. Now she was exhibiting childish feelings in a woman’s body. Would she ever gain her balance around that man?
Caithness. Once Grimm had considered the name interchangeable with “heaven.” When he’d first arrived at Caithness at the age of sixteen, the golden child who “adopted” him had been lacking only filmy wings to complete the illusion that she could offer him angelic absolution. Caithness had been a place of peace and joy, but the joy had been tainted by a bottomless well of desire for things he knew could never be his. Although Gibraltar and Elizabeth had opened their door and their hearts to him, there had been an invisible barrier he’d been unable to surmount. Dining in the Greathall, he’d listened as the St. Clairs, their five sons, and single daughter had joked and laughed. They had taken such obvious delight in each step along the path of life, savoring each phase of their children’s development. Grimm had been acutely aware of the fact that Caithness was not his home but another family’s, and he was sheltered merely out of their generosity, not by right of birth.
Grimm expelled a breath of frustration. Why? he wanted to shout, shaking his fists at the sky. Why did it have to be Ramsay? Ramsay Logan was an incorrigible womanizer, lacking the tenderness and sincerity a woman like Jillian needed. He’d met Ramsay at court, years ago, and had witnessed more than a few broken hearts abandoned in the savage Highlander’s charming wake. Why Ramsay? On the heels of that thought came a silent howl: Why not me? But he knew it could never be. We canna help it, son … we’re born this way. Senseless killers—and worse, he was a Berserker to boot. Even without summoning the Berserker, his father had killed his own wife. What would the inherited sickness of the mind, coupled with being a Berserker, make him capable of? The only thing he knew with any degree of certainty was that he never wanted to find out.
Grimm buried both hands in his hair and stopped walking. He pulled his fingers through, loosening the thong and reassuring himself his hair was clean, not matted with dirt from living in the forests. He had no war braids plaited into the locks, he was not brown as a Moor from months of sun and infrequent bathing, he no longer looked as barbaric as he had the day Jillian found him in the woods. But somehow he felt as if he could never wash away the stains of those years he’d lived in the Highland forests, pitting his wits against the fiercest predators to scavenge enough food to stay alive. Perhaps it was the memory of shivering in the icy winters, when he had been grateful for the layer of dirt on his skin because it was one more layer between his body and the freezing temperatures. Perhaps it was the blood on his hands and the sure knowledge that if he was ever fool enough to let himself feel for anyone it might be his turn to come to awareness with a knife in his hand and his own son watching.
Never. He would never hurt Jillian.
She was even more beautiful than he remembered. Jillian was a woman full grown now, and he had no defenses against her but his will. It had been his formidable will alone that had brought him this far. He’d trained himself, disciplined himself, learned to control the Berserker … for the most part.
When he’d ridden into the courtyard a few days ago and seen the golden, laughing woman surrounded by delighted children, regret for his lost childhood had almost suffocated him. He’d longed to insert himself into the picture on the gently sloping lawn, both as a child and as a man. Willingly he would have curled at her feet and listened, willingly he would have taken her in his arms and given her children of her own.
Frustrated by his inability to do either, he’d provoked her. Then she’d raised her head and Grimm had felt his heart plummet to the soles of his boots. It had been easier for him to recall her with a younger, innocent face. Now the saucily tilted nose and sparkling eyes were part of a sultry, sensual woman’s features. And her eyes, although still innocent, held maturity and a touch of quiet sorrow. He wished he knew who had introduced that into her gaze, so he could hunt and kill the bastard.
Suitors? She’d likely had scores. Had she loved one?
He shook his head. He didn’t like that idea.
So why had Gibraltar summoned him here? He didn’t believe for a minute that it had anything to do with him being a contender for Jillian’s hand. More likely Gibraltar had recalled the vow Grimm had made to protect Jillian if she ever needed it. And Gibraltar probably needed a warrior strong enough to prevent any possible trouble between Jillian and her two “real” suitors: Ramsay and Quinn. Aye, that made perfect sense to him. He’d be there to protect Jillian from being compromised in any way and to break up any potential disputes between her suitors.
Jillian: scent of honeysuckle and a mane of silky golden hair, eyes of rich brown with golden flecks, the very color of the amber the Vikings had prized so highly. They appeared golden in the sunlight but darkened to a simmering brown flecked with yellow when she was angry—which around him was all the time. She was his every waking dream, his every nocturnal fantasy. And he was dangerous by his mere nature. A beast.
“Milord, is something wrong?”
Grimm dropped his hands from his face. The lad who’d been on Jillian’s lap when he’d first arrived was tugging on his sleeve and squinting up at him.
“Are you all right?”
the boy asked worriedly.
Grimm nodded. “I’m fine, lad. But I’m not a laird. You can call me Grimm.”
“You look like a laird to me.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“Why doesn’t Jillian like you?” Zeke asked.
Grimm shook his head, begrudging a rueful twist of his lips. “I suspect, Zeke—it is Zeke, isn’t it?”
“You know my name,” the lad exclaimed.
“I overheard it when you were with Jillian.”
“But you remembered it!”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Zeke stepped back, gazing at Grimm with blatant adoration. “Because you’re a powerful warrior, and I’m, well … me. I’m just Zeke. Nobody notices me. ’Cept Jillian.”
Grimm eyed the lad, taking in Zeke’s half-defiant, half-ashamed stance. He placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “While I’m here at Caithness, how would you like to serve as my squire, lad?”
“Squire?” Zeke gaped. “I canna be a squire! I canna see well.”
“Why doona you let me be the judge of that? My needs are fairly simple. I need someone to see to my horse. He doesn’t like to be penned, so his food and water must be brought to him wherever he happens to be. He needs to be brushed and groomed, and he needs to be ridden.”
With his last words, Zeke’s hopeful expression vanished.
“Well, he doesn’t need to be ridden for some time yet, he had a good hard ride on the way here,” Grimm amended hastily. “And I could probably give you a few lessons.”
“But I canna see clearly. I canna possibly ride.”
“A horse has a great deal of common sense, lad, and can be trained to do many things for his rider. We’ll take it slowly. First, will you care for my stallion?”
“Aye,” Zeke breathed. “I will! I vow I will!”
“Then let’s go meet him. He can be standoffish to strangers unless I bring them around first.” Grimm took the lad’s hand in his own; he was amazed by how the tiny hand was swallowed in his grip. So fragile, so precious. A brutal flash of memories burst over him—a child, no older than Zeke, pinioned on a McKane sword. He shook it off savagely and closed his fingers securely around Zeke’s.