Whether the whisky was drugged or just too much for his young system, the next thing he remembered was waking in a haze, to find her sneaking out the door. He had tried to stop her but his legs refused to work properly. He managed to grab her skirts, but she attacked him with his own dirk and he fell backward, hitting his head. When he awoke the next time, Marie was gone.
And along with her his silver.
No, he had no doubt that redheads were dangerous. It had taken him only two encounters with them to learn that lesson and learn it well. He had the scar on his arm from Marie and another on his heart from the even more treacherous Elizabeth to prove that fact.
He closed his eyes, splashing water over his face as if he could wash the memories of those two women from his mind. While the first had been an embarrassing lesson, the second had driven him to leave his family, trekking across the world, throwing himself into battle, risking his life on foreign soil. The campaign where he had met Isabella’s father.
Isabella. Another redhead.
To clear his tangled thoughts, he swam over to the waterfall, allowing it to crash down over him like an icy shower.
It wasn’t as good as what had become part of his daily ritual back home, but it would do. Next time he came up here, he’d have to bring along some soap so he didn’t end up stinking on a regular basis.
Like everyone else in this time.
The thought had barely formed before he realized with a start it was a falsehood. Not everyone smelled bad.
Isa smelled of a summer breeze and fresh-mown grass, not the common stench of unwashed body. Even now, if he let his mind wander, he could recall her enticing scent as if she were somewhere nearby, but, of course, that was no more than his overactive imagination.
The same overactive imagination that forced his body to harden with need at the thought of her.
He dove under the water and turned, pushing off from the bottom to propel himself to a shallower spot before he stood. Breaking through the surface, he rose, lifting his face to the setting sun, hoping the waters would wash away his impure thoughts of Isa.
To no avail.
The memory of her standing before him, her wet nightdress clinging to every enticing curve, filled his mind even as her scent filled his nostrils, stronger than before.
Surely she should be asking some higher power for forgiveness. She was wicked. Truly wicked. She should back away as quietly as she’d come upon this scene. Back away, run down the mountainside to her cottage and forget she’d ever seen any of this.
And yet, Isa could not bring herself to turn away.
Ahead of her, Robbie bathed in the waters of her pool. What she’d only glimpsed last night, she stared at openly today.
He dove, then burst up through the surface, water sheeting down his sculpted body as he stood. When he flung back his head, droplets from his hair glinted in the sun’s last rays as they flew into the air, forming a shining arc around him. Not even the scars on his body could detract from his allure. He was more beautiful than any nature god could ever hope to be.
Isa sank to her knees and huddled next to a broad tree trunk. She was ashamed of her inability to turn away, ashamed of hiding in the foliage where she could continue to watch. Ashamed of the physical need building inside her.
She might be inexperienced in the ways of men and women, but that didn’t mean she had no knowledge of such things. You couldn’t function in the natural world or raise your own animals without knowing the ways of life.
Except that the difference between the knowledge of what happened and the feelings she actually had coursing through her body right now was vast beyond belief. It left her with a frustration beyond anything she’d ever encountered.
Once. To have a man like that take her in his arms and sweep her off her feet. To crush his mouth to hers and lower her body to the ground underneath him. To put an end to the heavy wanting filling her loins right now. What she wouldn’t give to experience that for herself just one time.
Her freedom. That’s what she wouldn’t give.
She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, rubbing as if she intended to force the vision of his naked beauty from her memory.
Pointless, of course. And damned unfair.
She’d realized long ago that people simply served to bring grief and unhappiness into her world and she would be better off without them. All of them. As a result, she’d spent the last eight years building her own life of solitude, away from everyone. She’d learned to hold her emotions tightly in check and spend her days doing as she pleased.
Nowhe’dcome along, determined to insert himself into her life whether she wanted him in it or not, bringing with him all these...feelings. All these wants. All these needs.
And if she gave into these feelings? If she followed the path her body urged her down?
She would never be rid of him. Any man who held on to an unfulfilled vow for twenty years took honor much too seriously to dally with a woman he saw as his responsibility and then leave simply because she told him to.
She wanted him gone. Didn’t she?
