Chapter Twenty-Two

Kirk watched in silence as Lillian strode to the loch’s edge, the lump of soap he’d pulled from his saddlebags clutched in her hand.

After silently breaking their fast with more stale biscuits and dried meat, she’d requested a bath in the loch.

She needed this day of rest, as did their long-suffering roan. But Kirk needed it most of all, for if he didn’t get his head on straight, all would be lost.

He feared he was already too far gone, though, for as he watched Lillian loosen the ties on her plain blue dress and slip it from her shoulders, a terrible tightness seized his chest.

Damn it all, he was weak. So weak that he’d let himself believe he could sate both his and Lillian’s lust and carry on with his mission. Like a fool, he’d convinced himself that even if he touched her, kissed her, naught would change.

How wrong he’d been.

Now, as he watched her step slowly into the loch, he knew he’d made a disastrous error.

She carried her battered, abused blue dress in one hand, the bit of soap in the other. She still wore her shift, an act of endearing modesty after all they’d just shared.

When she’d waded waist-deep, she suddenly dropped all the way into the water, her head sinking under. She popped back up a moment later with a gasp. No doubt the loch was frigid. Though the sun shone cheerily overhead in a rare cloudless autumn day, the air bore the nip of approaching winter.

She stood with her back to him, her dark hair shining chestnut in the sun and dripping around her waist. She set to scrubbing the wool dress, giving it a thorough cleaning before beginning to wash the shift and her body underneath it.

All the while, he stood just beyond the tree line along the shore, watching.

He could pretend that he stood rooted in place to ensure that she did not try to escape again. After all, her ankle had improved greatly, and her gait was now hardly impeded by a limp.

But that wasn’t why he could not tear his eyes from her slim form. He cared for her—or mayhap more.

For a fleeting moment, he forgot his mission for the Bruce and his assignment from the Order. He forgot that he was playing the part of a ruthless bounty hunter, and that she was his captive. In the dreamlike void in his mind, he let himself drift.

Was this what it would be like if they could both escape this mess alive? Could they make a quiet life somewhere in Scotland, waking together and joining in dawn’s warm glow, then going about their day while Kirk stole glimpses of Lillian’s beauty?

He let out a hissing breath through his teeth. It was naught more than fantasy, yet Kirk’s heart lurched with a painful yearning for such a life with Lillian.

His heart’s longing for her, the crackling heat between them, the trusting vulnerability he’d witnessed in her dark eyes after her first release—none of it could change aught. He could not allow his emotions to cloud his mission.

Hadn’t that been his undoing at Carrickfergus? When he’d allowed himself to care, he’d made himself vulnerable—and he could not lose faith in this mission, as he had after Carrickfergus. For if he did, then all he’d sacrificed, all he’d accomplished up to this point would be for naught.

Just as he steeled himself against Lillian’s power over him, she dropped underwater once more to wash the lather she’d working into her hair. When she reemerged, she turned and began wading back toward the shoreline.

Kirk’s stomach dropped to his feet even as his heart hammered erratically against his ribs. With the way her linen shift clung wetly to her delicate curves, she might as well have been wearing naught at all.

Her breasts were round and high, just enough to fill his palms. His mind shot back to that morning—waking to the feel of cupping one of those perfect breasts had sent his cock aching to drive into her.

His gaze dropped to the dark triangle of hair between her gently curving hips. How he’d managed to stop himself from burying into her, losing himself there, he’d never know. Some shred of sanity had cut through the roaring voice inside his head telling him to make her his and never let go.

As her slim legs rose from the water, she shook out the sodden dress she held. Then she carefully picked her way across the pebbled shore to a large rock and draped the dress over it in a patch of sun.

Kirk snatched up his discarded cloak from beside the fire and strode toward her. She looked up just before he reached her, her eyes wide and her cheeks flushed pink.

He deftly wrapped the cloak around her before his eyes could feast on her exposed body again. “Ye’ll catch yer death like that,” he said gruffly. He stepped back quickly, but not before plucking the lump of soap from her hand. “Go back to the fire. I’ll be able to see ye from here, so dinnae try aught.”

He sounded like the cold, callous bounty hunter who’d first kidnapped her from the Highlands. Good. He needed to remember his place—and all that hung in the balance.

Turning his back to her, he peeled off his tunic and tossed it aside. He heard her gasp, but he didn’t hesitate in stepping out of his boots and pushing down his breeches .

By the time he began wading into the loch, he could hear her footsteps hurrying across the rocky shore toward their little camp. And when the cold water lapped around his heated groin, he looked over his shoulder to find her busily tending the fire, keeping her gaze pointedly on the flames.

He sank down into the loch waters, praying that they would cool his raging lust and clear his muddled thoughts.

****

By the time Kirk trudged back to the fire, Lillian had gathered her wits enough to think clearly once more. However, no matter how hard she stared into the fire, the flames could not burn away the memory of Kirk’s naked body as he’d strode into the loch.

Could a man be carved from stone? Every lean, hard inch of Kirk’s flesh might as well have been marble for its smooth, chiseled perfection. The power in his muscles bunched and strained with his every motion, yet there was a rugged grace to his movements that had no doubt been earned through countless hours of combat. Never before had the sight of a man’s form so completely hypnotized her.

Silently cursing the heat that climbed into her cheeks, she took a deep breath. It was time she pressed him for answers—and shed some light on what lay beneath his cold, gruff exterior. If she had any chance of escaping the fate Richard had suffered, it lay with the glimpses of honor and goodness Kirk had revealed.

“You worked for Robert the Bruce.”

Kirk froze in the middle of tying back his dripping dark hair at the nape of his neck. “What?”

“That man—Patrick—the one you met with outside Inverness,” she said, willing her voice to be steady. “He said he hadn’t seen you since the Bruce sent you to Ireland.”

Kirk gave her a hard-eyed stare for a long moment, and she feared he wouldn’t answer her, but at last he exhaled slowly. “Shite,” he muttered.

“Plus, Patrick wore Robert the Bruce’s coat of arms on his sleeve,” she went on carefully. She needed to push him, but not so much that he would shut down. “That man you were talking to last night—the first one. Colin. You said he was from your past. He had the look of a warrior about him. Did he work for the Bruce as well?”

“Why do ye want to ken?” he said warily. “What do ye hope to achieve?”

Richard’s comment about her great career as a strategist if only she’d been a man shot through her mind. Apparently Kirk hadn’t missed her affinity for strategy, either.

She could lie, but she’d never had a gift for it. And judging by Kirk’s keen stare, he would see right through her anyway. So she drew in a deep breath and told the truth.

“I do not believe you are who you say you are. Or mayhap you are more than one person.”

Kirk’s jaw tightened until a muscle in his cheek jumped. “Oh? And what makes ye think that?”

“Your meeting with Patrick, for one,” she said, squeezing her hands together in her lap to keep them from trembling. “And with Colin. I do not understand what role Logan Mackenzie plays in all this, but you seemed to be walking a fine line with him as well. And it is more than that. You helped that hawk when you could have walked away. And…” She swallowed, trying to clear the tightness from her throat. “And you have been kind to me when you didn’t have to be.”

“And why does any of that matter?” he said flatly. “Whoever I am, I’m still taking ye to the one who put a bounty on yer head.”

She didn’t miss the fact that he avoided addressing everything she’d mentioned, and that he’d tacitly agreed that he wasn’t who he said he was. This was her opportunity to press.

“It matters because I know you don’t want to be doing this,” she replied softly. “You aren’t heartless. There is good in you. I’ve seen it.”

His fists balled at his sides, and he took a long time to respond. “But that doesnae change aught,” he said at last, so quietly that she almost missed it. His eyes, pale and frigid as a winter sky, locked with hers. “It doesnae matter what is in a man’s heart, only what he does. My actions are all that matter.”

“I don’t believe that,” she murmured. “A good man can do bad things, but it doesn’t mean he is evil—or that he can never be good again.”

Kirk shook his dark head slowly. “Ye dinnae ken me, lass. Ye dinnae ken what I have done—what I am still capable of doing.”

“Then show me,” she whispered. “Let me see the real you.”

He began to shake his head again, his lips compressed in a hard line, but she reached out for him, catching his hand. “If it truly doesn’t matter what I say, or what is in your heart,” she said, gazing up at him, “and if naught will change your course of action, then it cannot hurt to talk to me.”

He glanced down at where her hand rested on his. Slowly, he lowered himself to a crouch beside her, his gaze drifting to the fire.

“Aye, it willnae change aught,” he said quietly. “But at least ye’ll ken the truth.” He turned to her, his eyes sad and as hard as chips of ice. “What do ye want to ask me?”