Free Highland Knight by Hannah Howell Page B

fate?”
    “Iain told me that he had tried to do just that, but it didnae work. Your brother nimbly evades every trap.”
    “Aye, he would. He has learned that game verra weel.”
    “He makes a habit of seducing young lasses, does he?”
    “Nay, ye thick-witted lout,” she said very sweetly as she stripped down to her underclothes.
    For a brief moment, Avery had contemplated sleeping in all her clothes, but she decided that she was sick to death of continuously trying to preserve some scrap ofmodesty. Her crisp linen shift and the delicate linen braies she had made for herself were modest enough. She did wish she had the courage to watch Cameron as she shed her gown, certain he would be stunned, but she decided he would see that as too much of a challenge. The abrupt, heavy silence in the tent gave her enough satisfaction as she made herself comfortable on the rough bed and tugged the blanket over her.
    Cameron was astonished when Avery stripped down to her shift and those odd underbreeches she wore with such calm, almost as it he were her brother or some maid. As if he was a man she did not have to worry about, he thought with a spark of annoyance. He had been doing a fine job of seducing her since she had stumbled into his grasp, even making her shiver with need, and pant and moan. She ought to worry about him. She ought to worry about him a lot. His increasing irritation grew with a bound when he realized what she had just called him.
    “’Twould be wise for ye to keep a sweeter tongue in your mouth, lass,” he growled, annoyed that simply saying the words tongue and mouth had him hard as iron.
    “I thought I did speak sweetly,” she replied.
    She had, he mused. Her tone had been sweet as thick honey. Cameron decided to return to talking about her brother. She would be quick to argue with him, and that could well work to cool the lust now throbbing in his veins. He did not think he should try to seduce her tonight. After all she had done today, it would be discourteous not to give her at least one night’s respite.
    “Ye have called Sir Payton handsome, gallant, sweet, honorable, brave, clever, and a mon all the lasses slobber o’er. Are ye telling me he is also monkish in his habits? That he hasnae used all these wondrous gifts to pull the lasses into his bed?” Cameron could see that his sarcasm enraged her, and he almost smiled. He would certainly be getting that argument he wanted now.
    “He doesnae have to pull any lass into his bed,” Avery snapped. “Nay, he often has to kick them out.”
    If Sir Payton was not oozing vanity from every pore, it certainly was not because his sister kept him humble, Cameron thought wryly. “He fair trips o’er lasses tumbling at his feet, does he?”
    Cameron’s sarcasm made Avery ache to hit him. “Nearly so. Ye will see.”
    “All I wish to see of your brother is his back as he kneels afore a priest to wed my sister and restore the honor he has stolen from her.”
    “And I keep telling you that my brother would ne’er steal anything from a lass, has ne’er had to. And, if he had bedded your sister, he would ne’er deny it. Why, he e’en once faced a Douglas mon squarely and told him that he had bedded down with the mon’s betrothed. Of course, Payton was warning the mon about the evil of the woman, and the Douglas mon didnae really want her because he thought she had already murdered three of his kinsmen—which she had, but that doesnae matter. The tale shows that my brother is a verra honest mon.”
    Not knowing the whole tale, Cameron felt it could also show that Payton Murray was a reckless fool. One just did not go about confessing to bedding the betrothed of a Douglas man. Douglas men didnae take such insults well. There was clearly a great deal more to the tale, but he would drag it out of her later. Right now he had work to do. He had to get her so furious with him that she would neither look at nor speak to him but would try to stay as far away