Free Bride of the Beast by Sue-Ellen Welfonder Page A

turned away from James's washtub with a half-shrug.
    "As pleases you, my lady, " she thought she heard him say, but already he'd returned to his friend's side. He stood with his broad back to her, whatever emotions might plague him, well hidden from view.
    Eoghann walked away as well, mumbling to himself about chores needing his immediate attention.
    "Yon water grows cold and our guests await their ease," Rhona's voice seemed to come from a great distance. Caterine nodded absently, her attention riveted on the tall knight across the room. He was unbuckling his sword belt and the simple act seemed so blatantly ... intimate.
    A strange prickling sensation sprang to life deep in the lowest part of her belly. A warm pulsing that grew and spread the longer she watched his hands work at the low-slung belt's buckle.
    He caught her staring and tilted his head, calmly watching her watch him. "You do not expect us to bathe in our soiled clothes?" he asked, and the heavy leather belt came free.
    When he reached for the hem of his dark-stained tunic, Caterine's nerve shattered. She swung around, near colliding with the fly-catcher, a honey-dipped rope hanging from the ceiling.
    Embarrassed by her clumsiness, she swatted the dangling nuisance out of her way and stared pointedly into the cook fire. Its flames crackled loudly, wholly unaware of the mad whirling of her senses. Tongues of red and gold licking innocently at the fat logs piled on the blackened hearthstone.
    Her heart began a dull thudding.
    The look he'd fixed on her had been anything but innocent.
    The clunk of his belt dropping on the floor, an explicit challenge.
    The sound of his tunic being drawn over his head, an affront that sent thrilling streaks of pleasure jabbing into a deep-seated core of pure female need she hadn't been aware she possessed until this very moment.
    Stretching her hands to the fire, she used the pretense of warming them to keep her back to him and the two empty bathing tubs looming so close behind her.
    One of them soon to be occupied by him, naked.
    Her cheeks flamed at the notion, her entire body heating up.
    Another sword belt hit the floor, followed by the soft rustlings of a second tunic being stripped off.
    Lachlan 's belt and tunic.
    Or Lachlan 's belt and his hose, for the soft rustling sounds could just as well have been Sir Marmaduke rolling down his leggings.
    " 'Twas only my young friend's shirt," his richly timbred voice solved the mystery.
    And proved to Caterine he could indeed read her thoughts.
    Beside her, Rhona held her own hands toward the flames. "It ill becomes you to appear so inhospitable, my lady."
    "Inhospitable?" Caterine shrugged out of her cloak. "Would I have poured the last of our precious lavender and thyme oils into their bath water or lined the tubs with fine linen did I not wish to be hospitable?"
    Rhona shrugged. "You have not exactly encouraged them to revel in the warmth of your welcome."
    Agitation rising in her breast, Caterine tossed her mantle onto a nearby table. "Were I as unwelcoming as you claim, would I have hung our best drying cloths near the fire so they may dry their bodies with wanned toweling?"
    "There are more ways to warm a man than by offering him heated bath linens."
    Tell me how, a silent voice pleaded from the most secret corner of Caterine's heart.
    As if she'd heard, Rhona's gaze lighted on James. "Watch how I bathe him. You would be wise to tender your champion the same care."
    "I have bathed enough men—" Caterine began, breaking off when her friend walked away. "Wait! 'Tis I who always assist James...."
    Left alone, the ancient laws of hospitality bore down on Caterine's shoulders, a crushing weight, sacred and not to be ignored.
    The intimacies she must spend on the English knight danced across her conscience, as real as if she'd already dipped her hands into his bath water and, even now, smoothed them over his wet skin.
    In truth, he merely lounged against the far wall, watching her in