Free The Reiver by Jackie Barbosa Page B

equally out of the question. Eventually, he would realize the truth and hang her for a thief. No Scottish border laird could afford to allow a reiver to go unpunished, even a female one.
    In the meantime, however, it would be good to be well-fed, dry, and comfortable, especially at the laird of Lochmorton’s expense.
    But she would give him nothing. He was a Maxwell. Her mortal enemy. And that she would never forget. Or forgive.

    Duncan always knew when Reva—as he had taken to calling her—entered the room he was in. In the two months since she’d become his “honored guest,” he had come no closer to determining her real first name or her identity, but his nerves had become intimately acquainted with every nuance of her bearing. He recognized instantly the weight and rhythm of her footfalls, the cadence of her breath, the citrusy scent that was uniquely hers.
    Despite the low, buzzing din in the castle’s main hall, each and every harbinger of her arrival registered on him in ripples of awareness, like pebbles cast into a still, blue lake. It came as no surprise to him at all, therefore, when she set her trencher of blood sausage and bread in the center of the long table and sat down to eat. As always, she studiously ignored his presence, bending her head over her food so that her auburn curls partially shielded her face from his view. Fortunately, her hair, which had been cropped in deference to her masquerade as a boy, was still too short to hide much, and so Duncan could still make out the elegant slope of her nose and the stubborn point of her chin.
    As he watched her tear off a hunk of the bread and wrap it around the sausage, he pondered what name to give her today.
    It was a game he had devised since her second day at Lochmorton. At each meal, he greeted her with a different name, hoping she might betray by some small reaction her true first name. She had, of course, never so much as flinched as he worked his way through all of the more common women’s names, both Scottish and English, and a few much more uncommon ones as well. At this point, he was fairly well out of likely options, but he wasn’t about to give up the game.
    When she opened her small, bow-shaped mouth wide to encompass the makeshift sausage roll, which bore an undeniable resemblance to a phallus, Duncan went soft and hard all in the same moment. Of course, she immediately spoiled the effect by sinking her teeth into the sausage and tearing a large bite from it, but the sheer bliss that suffused her features as she chewed was equally, if not more, erotic. Christ, he wanted to see that look on her face when she was naked and spread out beneath him. He wanted that look to be for him .
    His body’s response was an absolute puzzle to him. In any other circumstance, he would likely not have given her a second glance. Although six weeks of proper meals had eliminated the emaciated, hunted look she’d had that first night and filled out some of her curves, she had not been binding her breasts as he had suspected. The dark green gown she wore—a cast-off from his sister, Alys—fit well enough from top to bottom and across the shoulders, but gaped at the chest despite obvious attempts at alteration.
    Duncan found himself trying to catch a peek down the bodice as she bent over her trencher. He cursed himself. Even when he couldn’t think of a single reason to be attracted to her, he couldn’t stop thinking about bedding her. It was perverse. She was nothing he thought he wanted in a woman…and everything he desired.
    And that gave him this morning’s name.
    “Good morrow, Venus.”
    He expected the same response he always got, which was, of course, none. So he was surprised when she raised her chin with a jerk and fixed him with a blistering stare. A casual observer might have called her eyes brown or perhaps hazel, but to Duncan, her eyes were the color of the moors—a dark, mossy green flecked with rich brown and bright gold—and like the