The Rogue: A Highland Guard Novella (The Highland Guard) (3 page)

“Sparta?” he finished with a smile that twinkled in his eyes.

She was momentarily transfixed, but then quickly managed to return his smile. But good gracious, when he smiled that way, he was so handsome, it was almost ridiculous. “Aye, I’m afraid my attempts to make rock and foundations sound as interesting to my thirteen and fourteen-year-old brothers as swords, shield walls, and ancient warriors failed miserably.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

Izzie grinned. “Sarcasm, my lord? Have care or you will win my heart along with my cousin’s, and doom me to an eternity of heartbreak.”

He shook his head and held her gaze. “Somehow I don’t think there is any danger of that.”

A few minutes ago, she would have agreed. But she had to admit Randolph had surprised her. He was still strung too tightly and took himself far too seriously for her taste, but he did appear to have
some
sense of humor and a couple redeeming qualities beyond his good looks and charm.

She studied the handsome face looking down on her—he was at least two or three inches over six feet—with the same intensity that she’d looked at the stone earlier, trying to penetrate their secrets. To the same effect. They both revealed little.

“Perhaps you would be interested in looking at a few drawings I have of some improvements I’d like to make to my castles?”

“I would love to,” Izzie said before he’d even finished.

Realizing she’d perhaps sounded a little overeager, she was trying to think of a light reply when a loud rumble shattered the peaceful quiet hum of nature around them.

She started to look around. “What was that? It sounded—”

“Watch out!” He pushed her back against the wall of rock she’d just been admiring, pinning her body to it with his own.

The shock of sensation riveted her from head to toe. She’d never been in such intimate contact with a man before and everything about it seemed to strike her at once. He was warm, solid, and very muscular. Were it not for the heat and the way her body seemed to be melting into his, she might have thought she was being pressed between
two
stone walls.

He was wearing a mail shirt but it was the solid strength of the chest underneath that she was feeling. Every ridge, every bulge, every slab, every rock-hard inch—of which there seemed to be quite a lot. Not that she was complaining. He felt good.
Really
good. Flushed cheeks and weakened knees good.

Sensing her shock—and she hoped misinterpreting it—he tried to explain what was happening before her head cleared enough to ask.

“Slide…,” he started to say, but the rest of his words were drowned out by the crash of rock that rained down behind them like a deadly waterfall.

Good God! Had he not reacted as quickly as he had, she would have been crushed beneath all that. He’d saved her life—he really was a hero. The bones in her legs felt as if they’d turned to jelly. She would have slid to the ground had he not been holding her up.

Yet, through it all, he held himself like an iron cage over her. He wouldn’t let anything touch her. She was perfectly safe.

She knew that. It was the only reason to explain why she didn’t panic. Why she stood there calmly, concentrating on the hard warmth of his body, the steady beat of his heart, and the faint scent of rare cinnamon, while the ground reverberated and her teeth rattled with the force of the rockslide.

It lasted only a few seconds, though it felt much longer.

But when the din had faded and the dust had settled, he was still pressed against her.

The beat of his heart had been steady, but oddly she felt it pound harder now.

He turned his head enough to meet her gaze. Instinctively she sucked in her breath. There was something in his eyes she’d never seen before, but which she instinctively recognized.
Desire
. It washed over her—flooded her—with heat and awareness.

Awareness that made her heart start to pound and her body start to tingle when she felt him harden against her.

There was so much of him, it was impossible to miss. Rather than being shocked and offended, however, she became embarrassingly aroused. She flushed with heat, and a strange dampness rushed between her legs. Her body was coming alive with sensations that she couldn’t seem to control.

His eyes were dark and penetrating—almost as if he were looking for something.

Permission
, she realized.
He wants to kiss me.

Her heart jumped to her throat and seemed to pound in her ears. Her eyes were telling him no… weren’t they?

Apparently, they weren’t inclined to lie because a second later he was lowering his mouth to hers.

Her lips parted on their own, anticipation making her forget to breathe. The air was so thick and heavy between them; her body held captive by the tight grip of desire. She couldn’t have moved if she wanted to.

She didn’t want to, she realized. She wanted him to kiss her. And he did. Thoroughly. Magnificently. With every bit of finesse she would have expected from someone of his reputation. Was it any surprise that Sir Thomas Randolph kissed divinely? That his lips were warm and soft and heart-wrenchingly tender? That his breath was the perfect mix of hot male and warm spice—the cinnamon she’d smelled earlier.

He was a rogue, and he kissed like one.

And from the first touch of his lips to hers, Izzie knew she was in trouble. This wasn’t like any kiss she’d ever experienced. There was nothing delicate or chaste about the feel of his mouth on hers. It was searingly hot, achingly wicked, and thoroughly consuming.

The explosion of sensation shook her to the core and wouldn’t let go. It penetrated in a hot wave of pleasure that radiated through her body from her head to her toes and everywhere in between, concentrating in the place between her legs where he was now wedged even more firmly.

He felt so good that she pressed herself closer. The low groan—growl?—he made in response seemed to reverberate low in her belly.

It was amazing. And then it was ever more so. The sensations grew stronger as his mouth moved over hers. Softly at first—deftly—then with increasing intensity as his tongue filled her mouth. It hit her again. His tongue was in her mouth. She’d never…

Oh God.
The teasing flicks gave way to demanding strokes that seemed to reach deeper and deeper within her, making her want more. Her heart fluttered with every stroke.

She couldn’t seem to get enough of his mouth and tongue as it wrapped around hers in an intimate dance. She felt greedy—insatiable—for the taste of him, for the pressure of his lips, for the pleasure he was building inside her.

For more.

He made a sound as if she might have spoken her demand aloud, and his tongue stroked deeper, harder, fiercer. Finesse and skill gave away to something else. Something even more powerful and exciting. It devoured her.
He
devoured her. Her bones seemed to dissolve as the passion enfolded them both.

His hands were still braced on either side of her head, but when she reached up to circle her arms around his neck, they slid around her to pull her fully into his embrace.

Their bodies fused together perfectly, which was why it was such a shock when he suddenly released her and stepped back with a sharp curse.

She was too busy trying to stay on her feet to notice that it was a rather crude word for such a lauded knight to utter before a lady.

But a moment later she understood what had provoked his reaction.

“Captain!” One of his men suddenly appeared around the bend in the path where Randolph and she had apparently—fortunately—been hidden from view. “We feared the worst when we heard the crash.”

A second man came up beside him. “Did you not hear us calling for you?”

“I was tending to the lady,” Randolph explained evenly, as if nearly ravishing someone against a wall was a daily occurrence.

Was it? She pushed the thought sharply away.

But perhaps he was more affected than he appeared—he still hadn’t looked at her.

“Are you all right, my lady?” the second man asked. “Were you harmed?”

Devastated but not harmed. What had she done? How could she have let him kiss her like that? He was supposed to be courting her cousin, not kissing her. He didn’t even
like
her.

“I’m fine,” she assured him, pleased by the relative evenness of her own voice when her insides were a riot of emotions too tangled to analyze.

“We should get you back to the castle to make sure,” Randolph said.

Their eyes met, and she felt a pinch of disappointment in her chest. The mask was firmly back in place. Whatever lightening of humor, whatever relaxing, whatever common ground they might have temporarily found had been wiped away by that kiss.

He looked just as prickly as when they’d first started out. His arrogant features were set perfectly in place. The mouth that had just plundered hers so tenderly and thoroughly was pulled in a tight line and the jaw below it had turned once again as rigid as stone.

She nodded and looked away, suddenly as eager as he to see this ride over.

CHAPTER TWO

Lost in her thoughts, Izzie didn’t notice right away that the soft buzz of conversation beside her had stopped. She was doing some needlework with some of the other women who’d joined King Robert the Bruce at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh. Bruce was in Edinburgh preparing for the return of the English king and his army—who were threatening to march on Scotland in the summer—by laying siege to two of the most important castles still in English hands: Edinburgh and nearby Stirling. Izzie’s cousin and Elizabeth’s brother, Jamie, had just captured another important castle, Roxburgh, from the English a few weeks ago.

With Edinburgh Castle under siege, the abbey was serving as a temporary court for Bruce. This afternoon, Izzie, Elizabeth, and Jamie’s wife, Joanna, had joined the others in Lady Margaret Bruce’s solar. The three women had set themselves off a little—Izzie wasn’t alone in her unusual quiet—but it wasn’t until Elizabeth spoke to her that Izzie realized Joanna had gotten up to sit with some of the women on the other side of the solar, and Izzie and her cousin were alone.

Her heart sank, anticipating what was coming. It didn’t take long.

“You’ve been so quiet since you returned, Izzie. Did something happen on your ride today with Randolph?”

That was one way of putting it. A stab of guilt pricked her conscience. Izzie looked over at her cousin and for a moment thought about telling her the truth:
I temporarily lost my mind and let the man you are intending to marry kiss me against a cliff side… and oh yes, by the way, I might have kissed him back.

The two cousins had always been extremely close, and Izzie suspected Elizabeth would be surprised—God knew, she certainly was—but not angry or heartbroken. It was clear this marriage, if there was to be one, was for duty and dynastic purposes, not affection. Her cousin’s heart was not engaged any more than Randolph’s. Nor was it likely to be, which would serve Elizabeth well when Randolph inevitably strayed from the marriage bed.

It was silly and perhaps unrealistic—fidelity was hardly common among noblemen—but Izzie wanted more from her marriage. She wasn’t naive or romantic enough to think she would marry for love. Women of noble birth in her and Elizabeth’s position married to forge alliances and advance their families and clans. But she wanted respect, loyalty, and affection from the man she married. Her mother had had that with her first husband, Izzie’s father, but not with her second. She’d warned Izzie before she’d died not to make the same mistake—not to be fooled by a man who seemed too good to be true.

Izzie had learned the hard way that she should have listened to her. She would not make the same mistake again.

But her cousin didn’t seem to have the same concerns. That she and Randolph liked one another was enough, boding well for a perfectly happy and successful noble marriage. The Douglases would benefit from Randolph’s great landed wealth and royal connection, and Randolph would have Elizabeth’s generous tocher and the most dazzlingly beautiful woman at court as his wife.

Her cousin was far more than that—Elizabeth was smart, accomplished, generous, and kind—but Izzie suspected the reason Randolph had been persuaded to give up his prized bachelorhood was because he knew he would be unlikely to find a more “perfect” bride to complement his “perfect” knight. With her blond hair, big blue eyes, and poppet-like features, Elizabeth looked like a faerie princess drawn straight from the pages of a children’s tale, and not surprisingly Randolph had claimed the part of the handsome prince by her side. The abbey was already buzzing with admiration for the two after Randolph’s grandiose “romantic” greeting the other night, riding into the abbey yard in full, shiny mail on a great black charger and dropping to his knee to kiss Elizabeth’s hand.

How could Izzie compete with a faerie tale?

Not that she wanted to, although she had to admit she’d had a few—maybe more than a few—confused thoughts after that kiss. Something tugged in her chest, perilously close to her heart. For a moment…

For a moment she’d been half-crazed. She must have been to have succumbed so easily to that kiss and the man who’d wielded it so expertly—Lord knew, he must have had enough practice. “What’s not to love?” Well, it certainly wasn’t the way he kissed. Sir Too-Good-To-Be-True was indeed too good to be true in that regard.

Had she actually thought even for a minute that she’d felt something special? What she’d felt was desire.

The physical reaction was hardly unexpected. He is gorgeous, who wouldn’t be attracted to him?

Your cousin for one,
a little voice pointed out. It was true; if Elizabeth was attracted to him, she hid it well.

But Izzie pushed that annoying voice aside. Just because
she
was attracted to him, didn’t mean anything. She wasn’t going to let one kiss make her act like a silly, starry-eyed maid with dreams of fate and everlasting love.

Not with Sir Thomas Randolph, at least. He wasn’t for her any more than she was for him. Izzie wasn’t beautiful and accomplished like her cousin. She was more want-to-be scholar than princess or suitable consort for a hero, content to stay in the background rather than be the center of attention. Randolph and her cousin were the same in that regard, both seemed to have been made to be on pedestals and to shine. Although Izzie had been told she was pretty, she was a mere mortal and not in her cousin’s realm of jaw-dropping beauty. Izzie was even-tempered and made people laugh with her wry—sometimes mischievous—observations, but she certainly didn’t dazzle.