The Highlander (5 page)

Held securely in his arms, she felt as though she was floating up the stairs. Once they reached the top and turned down the corridor she was dimly aware of the thud of his steps on the wooden floors, as well as the erratic thumping of her heart.

Sophie's volatile emotions were running away with her. A man had never taken her in his arms and carried her like this before, and she found it altogether a pleasant experience. There was so much strength in this man, and in the feelings he evoked within her. She seemed at war with herself. He was overwhelming, and she could not deny his looming presence in her mind, any more than she could ignore his presence, or her preoccupation with it.

It left her both attracted and frightened.

He pushed the door to the bedchamber open with his foot.

Sophie opened her eyes to mere slits, just enough to see a candle burning on a table next to a very high bed, turned back, with clean white sheets that looked better than anything she could ever remember seeing.

He dropped her on the bed and she rolled over and burrowed into the sheets. She gasped, for they might look inviting, but they were icy cold. Her skimpy clothing was still clammy and damp beneath the plaid, and she could not control the spasm of shivering that overcame her quite suddenly.

"You are cold to the bone. It will take a lot of heat to warm you."

She hoped he was not going to offer his own body for warmth, for she was so cold, she would have found it more than difficult to turn him down.

She burrowed deeper and reached for the covers.

He grabbed her hand. "Not so fast. You canna sleep in damp clothes." He picked up a nightgown from the end of the bed. ' 'This belongs to my sister. It should fit you."

"Your sister is here?"

"No. I came alone this time." He grabbed the end of the fabric, and for the second time that night unrolled her from a plaid.

Beneath his gaze, her body felt like it was melting from the inside out.

"Is that shift all you have to wear?" he asked.

Shivering violently now, she grabbed at the sheet and tried to cover herself.

He cut her off, and removed what was left of her shift with one yank.

Any other time, Sophie would have fought him to the death, but she was weak as a moonbeam, and her teeth were chattering so loud she feared they might crack. She knew any resistance would be pathetic at best, and could only serve to prolong the period she lay naked and exposed to his eyes.

Her second choice was to snap her eyes shut, for she could not bear to see his face during the most humiliating experience of her life. Please, God, she thought, let this be over as soon as possible, and let him not remember a thing about it on the morrow.

When her humiliation was over and he had the gown pulled over her head and her body covered, she heard his chuckle as he said, "You can open your eyes, lass."

He was buttoning the gown with total indifference, but when he reached her throat, he paused to lift the small gold medallion that hung on a delicate gold chain around her neck.

His expression changed immediately to a hard grimace. "Where did you get this?" he asked, his words clipped and cold.

"I...I don't know for certain, but I think it was given to me," she said, her teeth still chattering.

"By whom?"

"I seem to have the feeling I was a lady's maid, and that perhaps she gave it to me."

"You seem to have a very odd way of remembering things and having an explanation handy when it is necessary."

"I have heard it said that the mind works in strange ways," she said in her defense.

"Aye, and it was beyond strange how your mind conveniently conjured up a memory of being a lady's maid when you had no recollection of it earlier."

She was afraid to look him in the eye, but after a few seconds of silence, she could not resist. When she saw the cynical look of detachment, she shivered. "Of course, that is only a guess, a feeling," she said.

"Of course," he said, and dropped the medallion where it rested on her gown, and it seemed to burn into her flesh on contact.

She pushed it back beneath the buttons and out of sight.

He picked up a decanter of wine resting on the bedside table. He poured a glass and handed it to her. "Drink this. It will warm you."

"I'm not thirsty."
  
"

"I didna ask if ye were thirsty, lass. Now, drink it," he said, "or I'll pour it down your throat. You are too pale. It will warm you and put some color on your cheeks."

Her hand came up to touch her face. "I can't even feel my cheeks, so why should I care if they have any color or not?"

"Drink it. It will warm you."

She did not take the glass. "If stripping me naked won't put color to my cheeks, I don't know what will. Do you think I was on that ship? The one that wrecked?"

"Aye, and washed ashore like so much wreckage. It is the only explanation, so it must be the one we accept for now." He thrust the glass of wine toward her again. "Drink it," he said. "I won't tell you again."

She had a vision of him pouring it down her throat as the French do when force-feeding geese to enlarge their livers to make
foie gras.
There was little doubt in her mind that he would not hesitate to do as he threatened.

She scooted back to rest against the headboard and accepted the proffered glass of wine. He pulled the covers over her and tucked them in before he took a seat in the chair beside the bed.

"It really isn't proper for you to be in my bedchamber, even in Scotland."

"Hang propriety. This is an unusual circumstance. I want to make certain you drink the wine.. .all of it. Besides, if you are a lady's maid like you claim, there isn't anything to worry about, is there? In fact, I could ravish you right here and now, and nothing would come of it. It's the privilege of rank...the same as it is in France, but of course you don't remember anything about that, do you?"

Sophie gasped, took a hurried sip and choked. When she finished coughing she took another sip, and another, until she finished it.

He took the glass from her and placed it on the table. "You don't drink wine like it's medicine. I would think a citizen of France would know that."

"Perhaps I don't care for wine." She stretched and slipped her feet into the depths of the enormous feather mattress and gave a gasp of shock. "Brrrrr. I do not think the wine is warming me at all. It's still very cold."

Jamie mumbled something about being a maid and strode to the fireplace, only to return a moment later with a warming pan. "Move your feet," he said, and after he thrust the pan beneath the covers, he began to move it around slowly.

After a short while, - he carried the long-handled pan back to stand it against the hearth.

"Mmm," Sophie said as she pushed her feet down into the warm sheets of fine Holland linen. Before she realized what she was about, she said, "All I need now is a nice hot bath."

"I stop at warming pans," he said and then, as if he had realized the harshness of his tone, his voice softened somewhat. "Perhaps you can have a bath tomorrow, if you are feeling better."

"Oh, yes, a bath! The thought of it makes me feel better already."

"It's a good thing you had the wine. Your cheeks are getting some color."

She hated to tell him it wasn't the wine at all that brought the flush of color to her face, but for some reason she could not seem to find her voice. It only made things worse feeling the burn of his green gaze, hot upon her skin.

He picked up the glass and stood. "I will bid you good night, lass. We are an honorable clan. Ye have nothing to fear from us."

"Unless I am not telling you the truth."

His eyes searched hers. "Aye, unless you are not telling us the truth. Sleep as long as you like on the morrow. I will rise early to hunt."

"Thank you, for your help, and your kindness."

He started to blow out the candle. "Leave it, please," she said, "until you have quit the room, and then I will douse it." "Don't forget and fall asleep first." "I won't."

She watched his long-limbed body as he left the room, and continued to stare at the door, long after he had closed it, until the sound of his retreating footfalls faded away completely.

She lay there, staring up at the ceiling, until the fire in the hearth was dying and the sheets were growing cold again. Her hand clutched the golden medallion, and she rubbed her thumb over the raised image of a
fleur-de-lis.

Was he familiar with the icon? she wondered.

She prayed Jamie Graham had no knowledge of the heraldic symbol, with its three tapering petals tied by a surrounding band, long used by the kings of France.

A sigh escaped her lips. If he only knew...

Visions came to her... Of a ship foundering in the storm and breaking up against the jutting rocks, the icy cold of the water as she was thrown into it, and the heavy burden of her clothes, like leaden weights pulling her down... down...down...

And then she could see her father's face before her, calling out to her, much as he had done when Sophie had fallen out of a boat when she was a small child, and her father watched helplessly from the shore.

"Take off your dress, Sophie. You cannot swim because of the weight. Remove it! Quickly, child."

Sophie had obeyed her father's command and swum to shore and into his loving arms.

She did not want to think about her father or the shipwreck. She closed her eyes and wished for sleep, but all she saw were the dark, icy waters of the North Sea closing over her head, and the way she struggled to remove her clothes, so terrified that she would drown before she could do so. By that time, she was already so very cold that she had difficulty with the buttons, but she finally managed somehow to rip the dress from her body and kick off her shoes.

When she surfaced at last, she no longer heard the screams of the other passengers. All she could hear was the pounding roar of the sea thrashing, and dashing itself against the rocks. She wondered if she could make it to shore when she was struck by the bow of a small boat, and felt someone grab her and pull her aboard.

She vaguely remembered hearing a male voice and that he wrapped her in a dry blanket. She huddled in the bow of the boat, water streaming from her nose and mouth, while the wind and the sea seemed determined to drive them straight to the bottom.

She must have dozed off at some point, for she the next thing she remembered was being hurled forward as the boat struck something, and the sound of splintering wood echoed with a deafening roar through her ears.

The boat bounced and then crashed back into the rocks, and Sophie was thrown into the sea once again. She struggled to keep her head above water and called for help, but she never saw the man or the boat again.

The current was strong and at first she tried to fight it, but then it occurred to her that the boat had struck a rock, so that must mean the current had carried the boat toward the shore. She began to drift with the current, until the numbness began to slow her. She had only a vague recollection of her feet scraping against rocks, her body being washed ashore, and then the feeling that she was going to die, surrounded by nothing but bitter cold and a driving wind.

Her hand came up to the medallion once again. She rubbed her hand over the
fleur-de-lis,
as she had a habit of doing since her father had given it to her.

"It belonged to your grandfather, Sophie," he
said.
                                             

It wasn't until Sophie was older that she realized the importance of her grandfather, and what it meant to be the granddaughter of Louis XIV, the King of France, and that he had worn this very medallion before giving it to her father. As a child, she was told how very fortunate she was to be the granddaughter of the Sun King.

Having a beautiful face and being the granddaughter of the King of France carried a double curse, Sophie learned later, when she became the pawn of kings.

Enough, she told herself. That part of your life is over now. No one will ever know of your royal blood, if you do not tell them.

She doused the candle and slipped farther down into the bed, wondering how much warmer she would have been if Jamie Graham were lying here beside her.