Free Onyx by Elizabeth Rose Page B

and she’d just looked the other way and pretended not to care.
    But that was all over n ow. She didn’t need a husband, nor did she want one. She just wanted to find the book and use the charms written inside to cure her mother, and hopefully use them on herself to cure her color blindness as well.
    She pretended to be petting the cat that was rubbing up against her leg, until Ian and Aidan’s attention was distracted by something they heard in the trees.
    “I bet it’s a wildcat stalkin’ us,” said Aidan. “Mayhap one of Tawpie’s relatives.”
    “Nay, more like a crow or an owl ,” Ian protested.
    “Ye ’re wrong, and I’ll prove it.” Aidan picked up a rock and threw it into the trees at whatever animal they heard. Something fell with a thump, and when they went to investigate, she decided to sneak away.
    She pulled a candle from the pouch she carried at her side and lit it in the fire. Then she pulled her hood up to cover her head and quickly took off into the thicket toward the brook she’d heard earlier.
    She stopped when she reached the water, putting her candle between some rocks a nd sitting down, pulling a parchment out of her pouch next. Her fingers fumbled with the cord that tied it, and she felt her hand shaking as she pulled away the binding and unrolled it, holding it up near the fire to read.
    She had taken this from h er mother’s private storage chest when she knew she wasn’t looking. She’d seen her mother looking at it one night and chanting some odd words she couldn’t decipher. Her mother had been spouting off that she was a witch lately, but Lovelle didn’t know if it was true or just her addled mind making her say it. But she did concoct herbal potions a lot lately, drinking them down saying it helped her. Lovelle didn’t believe it, as it seemed to her the potions only made her mother worse.
    She was just about to look at the parchment when she heard a loud splash in the water. It startled her, and she jammed the parchment back into her pouch and picked up the candle, deciding she didn’t want to be alone in the wilderness of the Highlands, even if she was among fools.
    Then she heard something else. A man ’s voice coming from the brook.
    “Och, this is colder than a witch’s teat,” shouted the man, who she now knew was none other than Onyx. She headed to the water’s edge, meaning to talk to him, but stopped when she saw him step out from the lake stark naked.
    “Oh!” she cried, her eyes fastened to his body, not able to look away. He strode forward toward her, not caring he wore nothing but what God gave him, and stood before her in the firelight of the candle she held in her hand.
    The flames danced in shadows on his chest, and her eyes drank in his manly beauty of corded sinew and muscles beneath his skin. Her eyes dropped downward curiously, past the dark arrow of crisp hair and to his nether regions that were very well endowed. His legs were strong and sturdy, and he stood barefoot in the thin layer of snow, with water dripping down his body as if he didn’t care.
    “Like what ye see, lassie?”
    Her attention shot upward to his eyes. Though her sense of color was almost gone at night, she did not miss the intensity of his stare.
    “Well?” he asked, the crisp air making his breath visible in the night as he sp oke. She was wrapped in her velvet gown and then a hooded, wool, fur-lined cloak as well, and still she shivered beneath it. Yet this madman stood stark naked in the cold of the night, with droplets of water nearly turning to ice as they ran down his chest, and still he seemed as if he didn’t notice it at all.
    “I didn’t know you were here,” she said, looking away quickly.
    “Didna ye?” he asked with a chuckle, and she heard the rustling of his clothes as he donned them. “Then why were ye out here in the thicket in the dark by yerself?” he asked.
    “No reason,” she said, then add, “I just needed to use a bush, that’s