Free Courting an Angel by Patricia; Grasso

her expression softened. A smile kissed her lips when she said, “I suppose I owe ye that much for killin’ the monster beneath my bed.”
    “Rescuin’ a beautiful damsel in distress is its own reward,” Gordon replied with an answering, thoroughly devastating, smile.
    Rob felt herself blush heatedly at his compliment. When he offered her his hand, she hesitated for the briefest moment and then accepted it.
    “One chance, my lord, doesna mean victory is yers,” she warned, though her smile lingered upon her lips.
    “A verra puir choice of words, my lady,” Gordon chided as he escorted her outside to the courtyard. “Victory implies battle, and I have gentler pursuits in mind.”
    Rob inclined her head. “I stand corrected, my lord.”
    “I applaud ye for that,” Gordon said. “Admittin’ yer wrong is a rare ability that I’ve always admired.”
    “Which ye dinna possess yerself?”
    “I’m afraid not,” Gordon said. His honest admission made Rob laugh, a sweet melodious sound that reminded him of the angelic eight-year-old he’d married ten years earlier.
    “I’m ridin’ astride instead of sidesaddle?” Rob exclaimed, spying the horse he’d had saddled for her. “Why, I havena properly felt a mount between my legs in more than a year.”
    God’s balls, Gordon thought as his privates swelled with need. Didn’t the lass realize how arousing her words sounded? Could an eighteen-year-old actually be that naive, or had jades like Lavinia colored his outlook on women? More important, how the hell was he to face the world with his groin bulging like a boulder?
    Hearing his muffled groan, Rob rounded on him and noted his choked expression. “Is aught wrong?” she asked, touching his forearm. “Ye dinna look well. Are ye ill?”
    “I’m fine.” His brusqueness masked his embarrassed discomfort.
    Gordon grasped her waist and lifted her onto the saddle. One of his hands accidentally brushed against the side of her left leg and detected a foreign object there. It seemed the lass had a bulge of her own.
    Without permission, Gordon lifted the bottom edge of her skirt and saw the infamous sgian dubh, the Highlander’s weapon of last resort. Attached to the garter strapped on her leg was a small, black leather sheath decorated with a thistle and an acorn motif. The blade it carried appeared to be about four inches long.
    “’Tis my last resort,” Rob said without anger or embarrassment.
    “I’m wearin’ one of my own inside the top of my boot,” Gordon replied.
    He looked up and caught her gaze. The intense, smoldering expression in his piercing gray eyes made her feel as if a thousand airy butterflies had suddenly taken flight inside the pit of her stomach.
    “Yer lips say English lady,” Gordon teased, “but yer habits scream Highlander.”
    “Old habits die hard,” Rob told him. “Nevertheless, I will get my annulment.”
    “Dinna bet the family fortune on it,” Gordon replied, mounting his own horse.
    “What does that mean?”
    He flashed her a winning smile. “I mean, I’ve got the next three months to change that adorable mind of yers.”
    Early winter wore its most placid expression. The morning appeared as if Easter, instead of the Yule, lay around the bend in the road of time. The sky was a heavenly blanket of blue, and radiant sunshine melted the coating of powdery snow that had fallen two days earlier. The springlike warmth of the day, like one of the fabled siren’s of yore, lulled the world of men into a false sense of security; bleak winter seemed as far away as the New World across the seas.
    Turning their horses northeast, Gordon and Rob rode at a leisurely pace down the Strand. Londontown, their destination, lay to the east.
    “Does my presence in England trouble ye?” Gordon asked. “Ye look like ye didna sleep a wink last night.”
    “I slept like the dead,” Rob lied, flicking him a sidelong glance. Letting the marquess know that his presence made her edgy was a