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  Sweet fire shot through her veins, immobilizing her.

  He brushed back her tangled hair, then caressed her temple, ending the slow gesture with his hand cupped around her cheek. While Fionna held her breath, not knowing what to expect next, his hand moved lower with tantalizing slowness, down along her throat to the edge of the wide, round neckline of her gown. Her skin began to tingle, and she could almost feel her collarbone beginning to melt in the wake of his fingers.

  Then he laid his hand lightly over her breast. He pressed down more firmly, his thumb flicking across her nipple. She was aware of his touch as if her damp woolen gown and her shift were both gone, as if his hand rested on her bare flesh. Lost in a sensual daze, Fionna heard her own soft moan of awakening pleasure. She shifted restlessly, not sure what she wanted, but hoping Quentin would not stop what he was doing until she had found a release for the peculiar tension that was beginning to build somewhere deep within her.

  Quentin’s hand slid lower still, to trace the curves of her waist and hip, and then her thigh and knee. Fionna did not protest when he began to lift her gown. She gave herself up to the delight of his fingers slowly caressing her ankles and calves, a sensation so compelling she could not think of words to describe it to herself. All she could do was enjoy it.

  She cried out in shocked pleasure when his rough palm stroked across the tender skin of her inner thigh. Far inside her a wild flame uncurled and grew brighter.

  His eyes were dark and gleaming as he watched her reaction to what he was doing. The fine lines of his face were drawn tight. Inexperienced though she was, still Fionna recognized in Quentin a mounting desire that was a more urgent, masculine version of her feminine longing.

  He hadn’t kissed her yet. It suddenly became important to her that he should. She lifted her head, encouraging what she wanted, offering her lips to his. Quentin did not draw back. She was aware of a great shudder flowing through his muscular frame just before she dissolved into the heat of his kiss.

  Quentin’s mouth was hard and demanding, yet tender, too, and when his tongue pushed against her lips, she opened to him, accepting the surge of his entrance, understanding how the quick touch of his finger on her tongue a short time ago had been the merest preliminary testing of her reaction to this impending invasion of moist sweetness.

  The long, heated kiss consumed her, drawing her onward toward a conclusion she did not yet understand. Her body began to tighten like a drawn bowstring, and she wrenched her mouth from his to cry out in mingled apprehension and delight.

  With tantalizing slowness Quentin’s hand moved upward along her thigh until he reached a part of her that Fionna knew no one should ever touch. She quivered in reaction, but she did not protest. What she was feeling was too amazing for protest. Her every nerve and sinew began to vibrate in response to Quentin’s explorations and she became aware of moistness and renewed warmth where he was stroking her. Utter bliss engulfed her senses.

  Then Quentin’s fingers slid inside her, probing gently. Startled by the intrusion and uncertain what he would do next, she went perfectly still. Quentin probed farther. A faint discomfort began to cool Fionna’s growing ardor. Quentin’s fingers reached an obstruction. Fionna winced and he suddenly withdrew his hand, leaving her aching and empty, wanting something more, though she knew not what.

  “My dear girl, I didn’t know,” he said in a strained voice. “You were so eager that I assumed – never mind what I thought.”

  “Quentin, what’s happening to me?” she cried. Unable to stop herself, she was writhing against him, clutching at him, trying to find whatever it was she needed from him. “Please, help me.”

  “That much I can do.”

  His mouth covered hers again, the rhythmic thrusting of his tongue on hers urging her to greater sensual heights, though Fionna sensed an odd control in him, as if deliberate action had replaced raging emotion. Then she ceased to think, for Quentin’s hand was between her thighs again, not reaching into her this time, but stroking and teasing around and on an incredibly sensitive spot. She pushed herself against his hand, certain there were more delights to come, and sure Quentin would not disappoint her.

  She cried out as unexpected ripples of intense pleasure coursed through her, releasing all the strange tension, leaving her breathless and limp when the sensations gradually ceased. When Quentin finally took his hand away she protested the loss with a wordless gasp. But he wasn’t finished with her. He gathered her close to his warm, strong body, holding her as she had asked him to do, and she found comfort in his chainmail-clad embrace.

  She lay content in his arms for a few minutes until, having regained her senses, she became aware of a hard, manly part of him pushing against her thigh, hot and insistent beneath his armor. Into her mind flashed the memory of the stable at Dungalash, and of a naked groom and maidservant tumbling in the hay.

  “Quentin,” she said, “there’s more, isn’t there? You want – you need more.” She reached down between them to touch his arousal, feeling his flesh springing eager and ready through the thickness of chainmail and his undergarment. The immediate response inside her own body answered questions that had long perplexed her. Now she understood the warmth that spiraled upward from the spot between her thighs where Quentin had caressed her. But Quentin was withdrawing from her, pushing her out of his embrace.

  “Don’t,” he commanded with a stern resolve that communicated itself instantly to her newborn comprehension. He caught her stroking hand, removing it from contact with his intriguing hardness. “You are right; I do want, but it’s not necessary for me to I have what I want. I can bear abstinence. At the moment, it’s a painful condition, but it’s neither permanent, nor deadly.”

  She considered his words, wondering if she would have been left in a similar state of aching desire if he had refused to continue touching her. She longed to give him the same release he had granted her, but she wasn’t sure how to go about it. Nor could she think why he was annoyed with her.

  “Quentin, exactly what did you just do to me?” she asked in renewed confusion.

  “Nothing to prevent you from marrying any man you choose,” he told her. “I was surprised to find you a virgin, but I left you as intact as I found you. You are merely a little less innocent than you were an hour ago. There is no need for you ever to tell anyone what happened between us, if you would rather not speak of it. I swear to you, I do not discuss my private affairs with anyone. What happened will remain between the two of us.”

  She digested his incredible speech for a moment or two, before she seized on the words that had startled her far more than the coolly imparted information that she remained a virgin.

  “Marry whomever I choose?” she exclaimed, scrambling away from him to crouch at the far edge of his cloak. “Of course. How foolish of me not to understand. A mighty Norman baron will not concern himself with a Scottish girl who is too ignorant to know what he has done to her. Rest assured, my lord, I will never speak of this to anyone! In truth, I’d be too ashamed to let my fellow Scots know I was foolish enough to let you put your hands on me!”

  “Not concern myself?” he yelled at her. “I have concerned myself with little else but you since the night I found you by Liddel Water. Were it not for you, I’d be riding for Wortham Castle at this moment, which is what I ought to be doing, instead of traipsing through a Godforsaken countryside where only brigands and bandits live!”

  “I never asked you to follow me!” she cried. “But go right ahead, my noble lord; blame me for everything!”

  “Fionna, for heaven’s sake, be sensible. Why do you persist in misunderstanding me?” He reached for her, but she moved quickly to put more distance between them.

  “Don’t touch me!” she screamed. “Don’t even speak to me, you insufferable lout!”

  “Ungrateful wretch! I have been trying to protect you!”

  “Do you call what you just did protection?”

  “I did it because I could tell how unc
omfortable you were, how desperate to find release. I denied myself the manly pleasure I craved, in order to leave your body intact,” he told her with lofty arrogance.

  “My body?” she repeated. She sniffled and blinked away tears before continuing in a calmer voice. “I am not ungrateful, my lord. I am angry. If you cannot understand why, then there’s no hope for you.”

  “I admit to a few moments of most unchivalrous indiscretion,” he said, “but, I repeat, no permanent harm was done. I tell you again, you remain a maiden.”

  She longed to demand what he proposed to do about the harm wrought upon her maiden’s heart. She stopped herself just in time, before the words could leave her tongue. She didn’t think Quentin was capable of understanding how a girl’s heart could become fixed on a man who was then free to torment that heart however he pleased.

  “Norman!” she exclaimed. At the moment, it was the worst oath she could muster.

  “No wonder your brothers tossed you into the river,” he snarled at her.

  While Fionna sought a suitable response to that cold-blooded remark, Quentin rolled over to face the fire, keeping his back to her and thus signaling an end to their quarrel. Fionna took a few deep breaths to calm herself. Having no other place to spend the night, she lay down beside him with her back toward him. She grabbed the edge of Quentin’s cloak and hauled it across herself, not caring if she left him uncovered. He made no protest.

  She could not sleep. She kept thinking about the groom and the maidservant in her father’s stable, who had clearly been enjoying themselves. Then she considered the way her mother and her sister-in-law each dreaded the attentions of an uncaring husband. She pitied both ladies, for neither of them had ever experienced the kind of magic Quentin’s hands had worked on all of her senses.

  It was a magic she dearly wanted to repeat, though after the harsh words she and Quentin had exchanged she feared he would never again want to touch her so intimately, much less treat her to the kind of vigorous, exciting thrusts the groom had expended on his willing lass.

  Chapter 7

  “Must I tie you hand and foot?” Quentin asked as they were gathering up their possessions in preparation for leaving the hut. “Or will you agree to ride where I am determined to go?”

  “Oh, my noble Norman lord, are you saying you’ll trust the word of a foolish Scottish lass?” Fionna snapped at him. She was infuriated beyond reason by his apparent calmness while she was torn between the notion of running away from him a second time and the hope that if she stayed, he’d embrace her again and tell her he cared about her. The longing she felt to have his arms around her was terrifying.

  “If you give me your word of honor not to cause further trouble, I will accept it,” he said. “Before you answer me, however, let me offer a warning. If you attempt to leave me again, I will beat you. If you try to flee after that, I’ll be forced to kill you.”

  “You would never kill a woman!”

  “Can you be certain I won’t? Thanks to your unbridled impulsiveness the completion of a very important mission for my king has been delayed and Cadwallon must make my report for me. Why should I allow you to bedevil me any longer?”

  His demeanor was so stern, his tone so cutting, that Fionna experienced a twinge of fear. Still, she wasn’t going to submit to his wishes without a final protest.

  “I never asked you to keep me with you,” she reminded him. “You insisted, even after I refused.”

  “If you care nothing for your own life,” he said, “think of the lives of all those who will die if war erupts between England and Scotland.”

  “I heard you tell Lord Walter in Carlisle that a war is most unlikely,” she exclaimed.

  “Don’t imagine you know everything that’s happening,” Quentin warned. “There are always secret plans, and spies—” He stopped then, almost as if he thought he’d said too much.

  His remarks shook Fionna’s confidence. Aside from her brothers’ often-expressed, bitter resentment against the Norman encroachers, she knew little of the long conflict between the two countries. She wondered how much, if anything, Quentin knew about Murdoch and Gillemore’s scheme to create a violent incident that they devoutly hoped would start the war Quentin was apparently working to avoid. She was still angry with Quentin, but she hoped the agreement he had made with King Alexander would bring an end to the schemes of men on both sides of the border who wanted war. Then she thought about the spy her brothers had mentioned, the man Colum was taking to France, to sell to King Louis. She couldn’t do anything to help that man, but she could help Quentin.

  “I will go with you,” she said to him. “I promise to cause no more problems, so long as you hold to your promise to help Janet as soon as possible.”

  “Agreed.” He responded so quickly that Fionna decided he had been certain of her compliance before he demanded it.

  “You needn’t try to frighten me with threats of a beating or murder,” she said, putting haughty irritation into her voice. “I can no longer be frightened, and I can reason as well as a man.”

  “Can you, indeed?” He drawled the words, making them into an insult to the reasoning powers she claimed to possess.

  Refusing to bicker with him any longer, Fionna flounced out of the hut with her saddle and saddlebag slung over one arm. Quentin followed close behind. In the little shed he concentrated on saddling his horse, ignoring Fionna and letting her deal with her own horse. When they were ready to leave she expected him to offer to help her mount, as he always did at the start of a day’s ride. This time he ignored her. He swung into his saddle and sat there, waiting in undisguised impatience until she was on horseback, too.

  “After you,” he said, pointing in the direction he wanted her to go. “Stay just ahead of me.”

  “So I’ll be the first one attacked if there are bandits in these woods?” She tried to speak the words in imitation of his cool fury, but she sounded more peevish than arrogant.

  “Do you really think I’m going to allow you out of my sight?” he asked. “You will ride before me, not after me.”

  “I gave you my word not to cause trouble.”

  Quentin didn’t answer that. He just looked at her with raised brows and an unreadable expression in his eyes, until Fionna kicked her horse’s sides and set off in the direction Quentin had indicated. He stayed right behind her, close enough to catch her easily if she tried to break away from him.

  With new understanding after the passionate interlude they had shared, Fionna realized his ire was only partly because she had led him on a chase for two days, thus delaying the end of his mission. She was sure Quentin was also frustrated as a result of his forbearance after he’d been aroused into wanting to use her as a man uses a woman.

  When Fionna’s brothers were angry for any reason at all, they shouted dreadful oaths, or struck out with their fists. Either way, noise and physical action characterized the rages of Murdoch and Gillemore. In Fionna’s view, Quentin’s anger was all the more deadly for being quiet and contained. It was Quentin’s icy self-control that unnerved her, for it was the same self-control that had kept her a virgin when she had been all too willing to give herself to him. She wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disappointed that he hadn’t taken advantage of her naive eagerness, and she couldn’t help speculating on what Quentin would be like if he ever relinquished his self-control and allowed himself to be ruled by passion.

  In fact, as they rode silently through the forest she found it impossible to keep her thoughts away from Quentin, and what they had done in the hut. The rhythmic motion of her horse between her thighs affected her newly awakened senses until she was ready to weep with longing. Her aching awareness of Quentin directly behind her, watching her every move, was enough to make her grind her teeth to keep herself from pleading with him to put his arms around her, so she could experience once more his tenderness and strength, and know the soaring delight only he could give her.

  She told herself she was being ridi
culous. Quentin despised her. She was nothing but trouble to him, and his arousal when she lay in his arms was no more than a man’s easily stirred lust.

  Quentin called a halt at midday so they could eat and relieve themselves. He watched Fionna with cold disapproval when she knelt beside a pool to splash water on her face and throat. She was so upset by the way he was staring at her that her hands began to shake and she dribbled water all over the bodice of her dress.

  “You spend your days in damp clothing,” Quentin said, looking rather pointedly at the fabric clinging to her breasts. “You will develop an inflammation of the lungs, as my men do when they grow careless about keeping warm and dry.”

  “I promise you, if I were dying of lung fever, still I would not delay your very important mission any more than I have already done,” she snarled at him.

  “Get back on your horse,” he ordered in a cold and indifferent tone.

  She obeyed him, but she moved slowly and deliberately, wanting to irritate him. She couldn’t understand how she could be so angry with Quentin, and yet want to be in his arms, with his mouth on hers and his hands roving over her body.

  By midafternoon she could no longer stand the prolonged silence between them. If Quentin would not talk to her, she would talk to him until she forced him to respond.

  “This is a barren countryside,” she remarked as they rode past a ruined farmhouse with a tree growing through the remains of its roof. “I haven’t seen a village, or even an inhabited house all day.”

  “Few people live in this part of Cumbria,” he said. “You are looking at the results of a war.”

  Fionna digested that information for a few moments before asking, “Where will we sleep tonight?”

  “Probably, under a tree. It’s how I slept the first night of my search for you.”

  They rode a little farther, until Fionna tried again to break the strained silence. This time she chose provocation.