Wild Conquest. Hannah Howell

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СКАЧАТЬ Peering through the darkness, she tried to see what he was doing, but could only make out his shape by the wagon. She tried to hide her interest by quickly turning her back to him when he returned to their pallet.

      “Loosen your bodice.”

      “What?”

      “I have a salve that will help that ache, but I need to rub it into your shoulders and back.”

      “Not a horse liniment? They are the foulest-smelling things. I think I would prefer to endure the pain.”

      “Fear not. No unbearable stench shall touch your pampered skin. Aye, ’tis horse liniment in a manner, but ’tis gently scented. A wife of a friend of mine prepared the salve, and I purchase a pot or two whenever I can. Come, loosen your bodice.”

      Her embarrassment eased by the cover of darkness, slowly she obeyed him. As she did so she puzzled over his reference to her “pampered skin” and the tone he had used to speak those words. She was no Letitia, given to milk baths and other such nonsense, yet he apparently thought she was. How he could have come to such a conclusion puzzled her.

      “Turn onto your stomach.”

      When she did as he asked, he brushed aside her hair and began to massage the liniment into her back. He fought to ignore how it felt to touch her slim back, the faint light of a half-moon making it glow a soft ivory. Although he still had every intention of feeding the hungers she instilled in him, he knew this night was not the time to begin his seduction. He did not want her thinking him one of a kind with the soldiers they had fled.

      “I should have thought of this. Should have realized such honest hard work was not something ye would be accustomed to. Weel, that shall soon change. Ere the year is out ye will come to understand that there is more required of a woman than kenning how to pour tea or play callous, flirtatious games with some poor fool.” He bit his tongue and silently cursed his blunder, hoping she did not guess that he considered himself one of those poor fools.

      At first his words stirred Pleasance’s anger, but his final words brought realization. He did think her of the same ilk as Letitia. Despite the month he had spent courting Letitia, the fact that she, Pleasance, had rejected him obviously still pinched. Clearly his pride had been badly stung. She quickly told herself not to be fooled into thinking there was anything more than his pride involved.

      The words required to forcefully defend herself were on the tip of her tongue, but she bit them back. He was clearly still angry and in no state of mind to listen to reason. She was also not sure what she could say to ease that anger. How could she explain that she had hurt him because her parents had told her to, because they had ordered her to cast him aside so that Letitia could have him? That would make her look like a fool, and she did not want Tearlach to know how spinelessly she had acted. She would have to show him the error of his assumptions about her through her actions. In fact, it would be a pleasure to prove him wrong.

      Her thoughts were disrupted by a growing warmth spreading from his hands throughout her body. It felt good—warm, soothing, yet enticing—to have those strong, calloused hands moving slowly over her skin. He pulled from her feelings she had thought herself incapable of having, feelings so strong and tempting she knew they would be hard to fight. Even now, although she felt soiled by the mauling of the soldiers, she had to fight the urge to turn toward him, to throw herself into his arms.

      “The ache is gone. The salve has done its work,” she said.

      Tearlach blinked, her hoarse, clipped words drawing him back as if from a dream. Reluctantly he withdrew his hands and watched her hastily do up her bodice as he wiped his hands on his handkerchief. Another moment and he knew he would have been trying to touch far more than her slim, silken back. When she had spoken up, he had been staring at the nape of her slender neck, thinking how it would feel beneath his lips.

      “Ye may find ye need more on the morrow.”

      Curling up at the very edge of their rough bed, she murmured, “I may. Thank you.”

      “My pleasure.” He set down the pot of salve and slipped beneath the blanket “Any other aches I might doctor?”

      She was glad of the dark, for the answer that popped into her head was so wanton it made her blush furiously. “None that salve can heal. No amount of doctoring can rid me of the feel of their filthy, grabbing hands.”

      Turning onto his side, he gently smoothed his hand over her hair, enjoying the feel of it. “Ye said they didnae accomplish what they had intended.”

      Although she did not wish to discuss what she had endured at the outpost, she hoped talk would keep her from thinking of his disturbing nearness, of how stirred she was by the simple touch of his hand on her hair. “Nay, and that is what I must try to remember.”

      “Aye. Ye must remember that, despite all, ye werenae raped.”

      “Yet I feel as if I have been.” She tensed slightly when he slipped his arm around her waist and tucked her up against him. Her errant desire immediately stirred to life, and she dreaded that he would discover that she still wanted him.

      “I dinnae intend to hurt ye, Pleasance. Merely comfort ye. The distaste of an unwanted touch can fade; the brutal invasion of your body would never have left your thoughts. ’Tis hard for a mon to say the words needed at such a time.

      “Have you heard what happened to my mother?”

      “Aye, Letitia told me.”

      “I had no words to ease my mother’s horror, and eleven years of living since then hasnae given them to me. Ye were mauled, your body insulted by their rough, unwanted touch. Just now it seems the worst of all crimes, but, believe me, if they had gained what they sought, ye would have wounds that might never heal.”

      That he could insult her so easily one moment and try so hard to comfort her the next puzzled her. “I do understand that. It but takes a while for such knowledge to be set firm in mind and heart.”

      “Mayhaps if my mother had lived longer she too would have healed, at least in some ways. She couldnae fully bear even my affectionate embrace after she was raped.”

      “But you had naught to do with it.” She sensed that he found it hard to speak of the crime done to his mother, and she was moved that he did so in an attempt to help her overcome her own horror.

      “I was a mon. Seventeen only, but still considered a mon. She hurt herself as much as I was hurt when she flinched at my touch, but her tortured mind made her see all men as a threat, made her tense warily at even the gentlest of caresses. She wanted death, though she denied it. Though she was nearly past childbearing age, Moira’s birth didnae harm her that much. She simply refused to fight for her life when she got a fever. And that fever was brought on because she wouldnae eat, wouldnae do anything to regain her strength. Those are the scars, the hurts, that rape inflicts upon a woman.” He sighed. “I cannae begin to understand how ye feel.”

      “Dirty, soiled, violated.”

      “Can ye not feel anger and outrage instead?”

      “What?”

      “They had no right, no right at all. Only fools think otherwise and try to blame the woman for their own crimes. Only animals have a blind need to rut. A mon should be beyond that no matter what the provocation.”

      “I СКАЧАТЬ