Free Highland Champion by Hannah Howell

least try to believe him. It irritated him that his word was not good enough, but that could be dealt with. If Keira had not met Mary, who had made it painfully clear that he and she had once been intimate, he might have already begun to win Keira to his side. Unfortunately, in Keira’s eyes, that latest meeting had only added veracity to Lady Maude’s claims.
    Frowning a little as he sat by the tub and struggled to wash his hair, he wondered if it might be best to just let her stay angry. Everything within him immediately rebelled at that thought. He knew she deserved someone higher born, someone with a fuller purse and someplace fine to call home, but he was now determined to try to win her for his own. Although he was not sure what he felt besides lust, when he looked at her, he saw his mate, his partner, and the mother of his children. If in gaining that, he had to reach high and angered a few people, so be it.
    After squeezing the water from his hair, he gave it a brisk rub with the drying cloth and then struggled to his feet. The way Keira started to turn, obviously moving to help him, and then visibly stiffened as she turned back to her meal, caused a flicker of hope to stir within him. She was not completely cold to him. Anger and disappointment he could deal with, bothersome as they were, but if she had utterly rejected him, he feared he would have been at a complete loss as to what to do.
    He sat down across from her at the table and helped himself to some food and ale. Watching her closely as he ate, he felt that small spark of hope grow hotter. In the tense way she sat and in the way she would start to raise her head to look at him only to return slowly to staring at her food were proof that she was finding it hard to ignore him. If she were now completely cold to him, looking at him would not be a thing she would need to avoid so strenuously. Regaining her trust would be difficult, but he felt he could do it with hard work and patience.
    A small part of him was angry that she would not simply accept his word, but he would do his best to smother that resentment. There was good reason for her to question the wisdom of trusting blindly in his word. In the past few hours, she had heard one woman claim him as her lover, making each harsh response he had made to Maude and his vigorous attempts to avoid the woman look like the actions of a callous man who used women mercilessly for his own pleasure. And then, she had been confronted with Mary, awoman he had bedded. If the situation was turned around, he suspected he would be angry as well. Violently angry, he thought with a little surprise, hastily banishing the images of Keira with another man. He just had to convince her that even though his past might be nothing to be proud of, if he pledged himself to her, he would hold to that vow.
    Liam’s eyes widened slightly when Keira made a noise that sounded very much like a soft growl and then abruptly stood up. She moved toward the bath, gathered up the clothes she had worn, and started to wash them in the bathwater. He slowly smiled and began to eat with real enjoyment, his lagging appetite fully restored. Keira Murray MacKail was most definitely not cold toward him. Let the battle begin, he thought, and nearly laughed.
    Keira was disgusted with herself. She had been living with the man for a month. One would think she could easily conquer her need to look at him. When he had been too weak and injured to tend to himself, she had seen every part of him. True, he had not been quite so beautiful, but once the swelling had eased and the bruises had begun to fade, he had grown more handsome each day. She was sure he had reached the limit by now. Since she had been looking at him in this pleasurable guise for several days, it was past time to cease finding it such a delight.
    As she wrung the water from her shift with a vigor she feared might ruin it, Keira admitted to herself that she had abruptly left the table because she