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Finn lifted his cup and clanked it heartily against her father’s vessel. And just like that, the dancing was forgotten. Her sire laughed loudly and waved to the harpist to keep playing.
While Violet enjoyed a small sigh of relief that she’d eluded her father’s command, she could not deny a sliver of gratitude toward the hulking guest for diverting him. Finn’s lingering gaze upon her now told her he had done so deliberately and for her benefit.
But why? Did he think this one act would make her look upon him favorably?
The heat of her fevered skin swelled again, making her twitch restlessly as the servers began their parade of trays for her inspection. She nodded approval impatiently, thinking that Finn would bring naught but trouble. She needed to warn Morag that a warrior had arrived to stamp out mischief in the forest. The wise woman would do well to remain indoors until the trouble had passed. Besides, Violet needed to see her mentor again to obtain a cure for the unsettling reaction to the useless love potion.
Because right now, taking a seat beside Finn at the table, she hardly knew how she would survive the meal without her whole body taking flame.
* * *
The keep’s free-flowing wine would not quench Finn’s thirst.
And he had made a monstrous effort to douse the fire inside him over a meal in which his dining companion sighed and fidgeted, stretched and squirmed on the bench beside him. Her constant activity had, by turns, set her knee to graze his thigh, loosened her neck cloth until it slipped down her back, and repeatedly tightened her bodice along the tops of the breasts he remembered so vividly from early that afternoon.
If he did not know better, he would believe she sought his notice. Yet her quiet, surly manner said otherwise. Clearly, she had not wanted him to serve her father in the first place or she would not have pretended ignorance when he asked about the Caladan earl back in the forest. Why then did her face flush so deeply whenever he spoke to her? Indeed, the warmth emanating from her womanly form enhanced the scent of her skin—an enticing floral fragrance that sharpened his senses and made him keen for a taste of roses.
If nothing else, he wished to lean closer just to inhale deeply. He had not wanted to indulge himself while his quest for vengeance loomed. But after this meal, he began to think he would never be able to focus on his mission until he indulged himself as thoroughly as possible with Lady Violet.
“Your food does not please you?” he asked her once the earl had fallen into a wine-induced stupor. He could soothe his curiosity if not his lust.
She’d eaten little when she waved over a server to declare herself finished.
“The talk of a killing in the forest does not inspire my appetite,” she announced, tugging hard on the neck cloth she couldn’t seem to keep in place.
The thin fabric unsettled a silver butterfly brooch, the jeweled wing of the decoration hovering over bare skin for a moment. The rapid rise and fall of her chest gave life to the creature as if it had alighted there only briefly. Finn longed to chase it away and replace the cold silver with his mouth, licking a path with his tongue over the delicate wash of color in her skin.
While she had no appetite, it seemed his had shifted to her. Nothing less than a taste of her would assuage the churning hunger that had begun the first moment he’d seen her.
With an effort, he dragged his eyes up to meet her gray gaze.
“I will deliver your people from this scourge,” he assured her, wishing she would at least sit still long enough for him to concentrate on something else besides the compelling scent of her.
And the memory of her baring creamy, full breasts to a fast-rushing stream…
“Aye, but at what cost?” she asked, keeping her voice low in deference to her father as the older man began to snore in his roasted pheasant. “The forest is full of the poor and outcast who have done nothing wrong save failing to feed their families. How will your sword determine who is guilty of more serious crimes and who has merely stolen a few loaves of bread to stave off starvation for another sennight?”
Was this the source of her concern? Did the lady possess a tender heart to deliver secret food stores to the forest dwellers? He wondered how much she knew of the crimes that went on in her father’s lands.
“My blade will seek only those who warrant it.” His conversation with the earl had reinforced his belief that the rogue knight who’d killed Finn’s brother had taken refuge near Caladan. Though the body that had appeared at the forest’s edge lacked the stab wounds that had marked Fergus’s body, the local victim had had the same unnatural paleness in his skin. Fergus’s body had not showed the unusual signs until hours after his death, alerting Finn too late that his brother had been murdered by means more foul than a mere enemy blade.
