Free Bride of the Black Scot by Elaine Coffman

Juliette with a springy bounce in her walk. “Angus said you could have a
bath, m’lady.”
    “I am too tired to bathe, Edith. Faith! I am too tired to
eat.”
    “Rest then,” Edith said, and hurried back to the cooking
pot. Taking the spoon from Angus, she returned to stirring the pot herself.
    Juliette lay down and closed her eyes.
    Sometime later, the savory smell of food wakened her.
Juliette opened her eyes to see Edith hovering over her with a steaming cup in
her hand.
    “I brought you some soup.”
    Juliette sat up, taking the cup with thanks, drinking the
soup down, in spite of its scalding temperature. After she finished, she
decided the bath she had been offered earlier sounded better now.
    Gathering fresh clothes, she slipped through the open
doorway of the abbey, making her way in the last rays of the day’s light.
    Rising out of the mist like a well-hidden secret, the pool
was everything she had hoped it would be.
    Located low on the side of a cliff, it was fed by a
thundering waterfall that hurled its icy burden over the cliff, then formed a
rushing, gurgling beck that ran down the fellside. There the water’s mad rush mellowed
as it slowly wound its way through the gently rolling heath, glistening like a
string of amber, until it widened into a placid pool.
    Juliette followed a trail that ran alongside the pond to
where the water lay still and smooth.
    There, she also found Stephen swimming.
    She froze. She couldn’t bring herself to look away. He was
waiting for her in the cool, misty darkness. She could feel his gaze upon her
as she came closer.
    “Go back to the abbey,” he said when he saw her.
    She wasn’t about to move…not with him swimming in the water,
as deliciously naked as he had been that day when she first saw him. Stubbornly
she held her ground. “You said I could have a bath.”
    “I’ll come get you when I am finished,” he offered.
    “I will wait here…on this log, thank you,” she said and
seated herself at the pool’s edge.
    He swam toward her and waded out of the water until he stood
waist deep. She felt a twinge of disappointment when she saw he was coming no farther.
She thought it a pity that she would not have the chance to see what she had
seen the other day, only closer.
    “You had best be getting back before I come out and
embarrass you,” he said with a wry twist to his lips.
    She felt it again. The same warming heat as when she had
seen him naked at the pool that day. She tossed him the tartan she had brought
to dry herself with. “Put that around you, if you are modest,” she said, “but
don’t cover yourself on my account. I have seen you before…when you were
swimming at the pool that day…before you took me from my English escort.”
    He wrapped the tartan around himself and waded out of the
water, coming to stand before her. “I am sorry, lass, if the sight of me
frightened you.”
    “I was never frightened,” she said. “I thought you were the
most beautiful man I had ever seen.”
    He cleared his throat. “Weel, I ken it must have been a
shock…”
    Weel …I love that word, too, she thought. “No, it was
no shock, believe me.”
    He raised a brow. “You have seen naked men before?”
    “No, never. Oh, I know this sounds preposterous. Faith! I
don’t understand it myself. Only there was something about you…something that
seemed to reach out to me across the distance. I felt warm all over…which was
foolish, I know—especially since my teeth were chattering from the cold.”
    “I ken you had your first taste of desire, lass, nothing
more.”
    “I ken I had more than a taste…enough to make me want
to taste it again.”
    He closed his eyes, as if to cut off the flow of her words.
She knew it was wrong to speak to him of such things, especially after she had
so foolishly declared her feelings for him last night. No lady would ever dare
speak of such to a man she was not married to.
    If her father ever caught wind of this, he would