Kiss of the Highlander

Page 10

“In a cave,” she muttered, feeling less than charitable toward him. First, he’d tried to have sex with her, then he’d insulted her clothing, and now he was behaving as if she’d done something wrong to him. “And you should apologize to me.”
His brows arched with surprise. “For waking up to find a half-clad woman lying on top of me and thinking she wished me to pleasure her? I doona think so. And I am not simple,” he chided. “ ‘Tis clear I’m in a cave. In what part of Scotland does this cave reside?”
“Near Loch Ness. Near Inverness,” she said. She backed away from him a few steps.
He blew out a relieved breath. “By Amergin, ’tis not too much of a fankle. I am but a few days and not many leagues from home.”
Amergin? Fankle? Who’d taught the man English? His brogue was so thick that she had to listen intently to decipher what he was saying, and even then not all of it made sense. Could the glorious man have grown up in some obscure Highland village where time stood still, cars were twenty years out of date, and the old ways and manner of speech were still revered?
When he was silent for several minutes, she wondered if perhaps he really was hurt in some way and had been resting in the cave. Maybe he’d struck his head; she hadn’t explored that part of him. Damn near the only part you didn’t, she thought. Gwen scowled, feeling vulnerable in the cavern with the dark, sexual man who occupied too much space and was using more than his fair share of oxygen. His confusion was only adding to her unease.
“Why don’t you show me the way out, and we can talk outside,” she encouraged. Perhaps he’d be less attractive in broad daylight. Perhaps it was merely the dim, confined atmosphere of the cave that made him seem so large and dizzyingly masculine.
“You vow you had nothing to do with how I came to be here?”
She raised her hands in a gesture that said, Why don’t you just take a good hard look at little ole’ me, and then look at you?
“There is that,” he agreed with her wordless rebuke. “You doona amount to much.”
She refused to dignify his comment with a response. When he rose from the slab she realized that, contrary to her initial impression, he wasn’t wearing unfashionably long plaid shorts, like some of her elderly tour-mates had worn, but was clad in a length of patterned fabric fastened about his waist. It brushed above his knees, and his feet and calves were encased in soft boots. She tipped her head back to look up at him and, disconcerted by how he towered over her, blurted, “How tall are you?” She could have kicked herself when it came out sounding awed. Standing beside him, few people would amount to much. Although she’d never get involved with a man like him, it was impossible to remain unaffected by his incredible height and powerfully developed body.
He shrugged. “Taller than the hearth.”
“The…hearth?”
He stopped his intent perusal of the cave and glanced at her. “How am I to think with you chattering away? The hearth in the Greathall, the one Dageus and I vied to outgrow.” An expression of deep sadness crossed his face at the mention of Dageus. He fell silent a moment, then shook his head. “He never did. Missed by so much.” He demonstrated the space of an inch with his finger and thumb. “I’m taller than my father, and taller than two of the stones at Ban Drochaid.”
“I meant in feet,” she clarified. Speaking of the mundane gave her a measure of calm.
He eyed his boots a moment and appeared to be doing some rapid calculations.
“Forget it. I get the picture.” Six and a half feet, perhaps taller. And to a woman five foot three inches on her best day, daunting. She stooped and grabbed her backpack, sliding a strap over her shoulder. “Let’s go.”
“Hold. I am yet unprepared for travel, lass.” He moved to a pile by the wall, which Gwen had thought was a jumble of rocks. She watched nervously as he retrieved his belongings. He did something she didn’t quite follow with the blanket thingie he was wearing, where part of it ended up over one shoulder. After fastening a pouch about his waist, he draped wide bands of leather over each shoulder so that they crossed in an X over his chest. These he secured at his waist with another wide band of leather that belted them snugly in place, then he donned a fourth band that encircled his pecs.
Was he dressing in some old costume? Gwen wondered. She’d seen something similar to his attire in a castle her group had toured yesterday, on one of the medieval sketches in the armory. Their guide had explained that the bands fashioned a sort of armor, adorned in critical places—such as above the heart and over the abdomen—with ornate metal discs.