Sue-Ellen Welfonder by Only for a Knight

Author:Only for a Knight [Knight, Only for a]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

JULIANA PACED THE HERBARIUM’S trampled earth floor, stopping at the worktable just long enough to trail her fingers along its thick edge and compose her wits before she swung back round to face the man she was beginning to think of as both her light and her darkness.

Her light because ne’er had any man stirred such deep feelings in her, awakened such a keen sense of inner knowing. Faith, his very smile or just one twinkling glance melted her and filled her with such sweet golden warmth she wondered she could contain its brilliance and not glow like a roomful of candle shine.

Darkness because no other man held the power to unleash true calamities on her heart. This one, she knew, could shred her soul if she weren’t cautious. She shivered, did not even want to consider the yawning abysmal void he could plunge her into so easily.

She recognized that threat with absolute surety.

Ne’er could any affection between them bloom into aught more than a fiery physical conflagration—even if she were willing to step over such bounds as his betrothed whiling beneath this very roof.

Or a sire who not only lairded it with an iron fist, but who also appeared ever so wont to smash down that balled might right onto her head!

“Yon plaid is a MacKenzie plaid.”

The deep voice came so close by her ear, her fingertips stilled on the table edge.

“Aye, and well I know it,” she said, her back still to him.

She took a deep breath, wished he hadn’t come up so close behind her. Sensual heat, both seductive and annoying, poured off him, warming and unsettling her to such a degree even the tops of her ears began to tingle and burn.

His scent beguiled her as well.

A heady blend of clean linen, leather, and pure masculine musk laced with a faint trace of peat, the scent swirled around her, thrilling her, and almost making her forget her purpose.

But not quite.

Bracing herself, she whirled to face him, tried to pretend he wasn’t standing so maddeningly near, arms folded across his chest, and looking at her as if he held some irrefutable and unspoken claim on her soul.

Her soul, her heart, her body and mind—her very life, each indrawn breath of it, every exhale.

Not about to admit any such dependency, she tilted her head and regarded him as solemnly as she could.

Fearing she’d embarked on a losing battle, she began to fidget—a demeaning trait she’d ne’er been bothered with until this very moment. But somehow it proved easier to meet his perusal if her booted toe worried a pebble in the hard-packed dirt floor and if her fingers repeatedly tested the texture of woolen arisaid slung round her shoulders.

A borrowed arisaid, she minded herself.

Loaned to her by his lady stepmother—as was everything else she wore . . . including the buttery-soft kid boots on her feet, a luxury so unlike the rough-leathered brogues she was accustomed to wearing.

A kindness she sought to repay by making herself useful in the herbarium and where’er else she could find some task in need of doing.

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