A Promise of Love by Karen Ranney Page B

the room atop the stairs. If she could only delay it, she would forestall the pain, also.
    Alisdair wondered exactly who Judith was, that she could hate as deeply as a Scot, and tremble with fear at the same moment. For all she wished to hide herself, he’d read those emotions well enough.
    Rain had plastered her hair down, sheened her face. Her lashes were long, spiky, her lips were full and wet. Alisdair wanted to tell her that a mouth could be used to better pursuits, a voice to softer demands. Instead, he only stopped and stared at her, wondering why the rhythm of her heart would be so audible to him, why his own breath, raspy and winded, would echo hers so exactly.
    The staircase had no railing, no banister. Those were frivolous notions for manor houses and estates. This staircase had been built with defense in mind, steep downward sloping steps that were difficult to mount if one were tired, or sick, or like Sophie, aged and frail.
    At this moment, Alisdair felt all four.
    Despite the trembling in his arms, he held his temporary English wife out over the sheer drop.
    "Now?" he hissed.
    She felt the tremors in his arms, and held onto his bare chest. He grimaced at the discomfort of her nails digging into his skin.
    "Now?" he repeated.
    "No," she said softly, defeated.
    "Are you sure? It would be no trouble at all." He could feel his own heart pounding so loudly that surely she could hear it. He was tempted to throw her over, anyway.
    She shook her head, frantically, and he stepped back and wearily leaned against the wall. He lowered her legs and allowed her to stand, but kept a firm hold on her upper arm. He pulled her inside Ian’s room, and swung her around as if she weighed no more than a feather. Her skirts slapped around her, wet, muddy. The beautiful blue sprigged dress - the prettiest dress she’d ever worn - was ruined.
    Alisdair stood, hands on hips, and watched his newest burden as she scrambled up on the sagging mattress. She remained on her knees, her eyes flashing fire. Such temper was still a welcome change from the vacuity they displayed so often.
    He smiled, a particularly infuriating grin which prodded her to words more prudently left unsaid. Yet, if she was going to be punished, then let it be for something, not simply the innocence of self.
    "Is it that you wish me to fawn over your bastard, MacLeod? Your prowess as a male applauded and saluted? Very well, I applaud and salute you. You have fathered a child. Congratulations."
    "I am not Douglas's father."
    "And I am the King of England, MacLeod. Believe either if you will, they are both lies."
    "Do you call me a liar then?" His scowl was too fierce. Her heart beat strongly, urging her to caution.
    "No," she said, scooting away from him.
    "I am sick unto death of you slithering away from me,” he ground out between thinned lips, his voice low and intense. “I am not a monster, nor am I a lovesick fool. You have nothing to fear from me.” Because he was irritated and not a little confused by the emotion he’d felt in the stairwell, he frowned fiercely at her, determined not to allow compassion to soften his words, or lead him into dangerous thoughts.
    “If your husbands craved you with carnal lust, then it's because they had not seen another woman in months!" His conscience cringed at his cruelty, his manhood relished the open battle at last. "You are not Helen of Troy, nor are you an ethereal vision of loveliness. You are in a word, my English wife, a scrawny, sour tongued hag!"
    He left the room in a whirl of motion and rage, leaving Judith staring after him.
    Her eyes felt as though they had been dusted with pepper, tiny pinpricks of hurt.
    It was only the rain in her eyes.
     
     

CHAPTER 9
     
     
    "Was it very bad, Alisdair?" Sophie asked. Her soft voice conveyed compassion, her worried eyes concern for his obvious fatigue.
    Judith watched the MacLeod warily. They had not spoken since his outburst a few days earlier. She had managed to