Only For A Knight by Sue-Ellen Welfonder

the deeper gloom of the stair foot. There were other, more subtle ways to avenge herself than to be caught glaring fury at a blowsy, fiery-haired light-skirt who could be naught but a peasant from the looks of her.
     
A tavern wench.
     
Or Sir Robert MacKenzie’s leman.
     
“A thousand deep plagues on her,” Euphemia sniffed, then pursed her thin lips all the harder.
     
Even the MacKenzie plaid swirled oh-so-loosely round the bawd’s shoulders couldn’t hide the magnificence of her breasts. Full, firm-looking, and most obviously hard-tipped, the oversized orbs threatened to spill from the linen shirt’s low-dipping neckline—a spectacle Euphemia suspected every gog-eyed MacKenzie male gawking about the hall prayed would happen any moment.
     
Equally vexing, the woman held a bundle of squirming brown and white fur in her arms—and despite the proximity of the wriggling, four-legged beastie, her nostrils did not appear to twitch at all.
     
The flame-haired bawd not only possessed more curves than a Highlander-in-rut’s dreams could hold, she did not suffer Euphemia’s need to sneeze and wheeze if a dog even glanced her way.
     
Indeed, the hall’s arched vestibule already reeked with the rank-biting smell of the mangy beasts romping round her betrothed and his whore. The dogs jumped on them both, wagging their scruffy tails and barking.
     
The sight made Euphemia’s skin crawl. She shuddered, her brows snapping together as her temper rose like a hot tide. Worse, her nose began to itch! And her eyes watered and . . . stung.
     
Dabbing at them with the edge of her sleeve, she leveled all her anger at a hapless MacKenzie pushing his way through the throng. His ale-bleared gaze fixed on the bawd’s welling bosom, the man’s tongue nigh lolled from his head.
     
To Euphemia’s annoyance, he paused just outside the stair tower, raised a booming voice. “Heigh-ho!” he roared, slapping a kinsman on the shoulder. “That one will go to his bed naked, eager, and purring her pleasure—unlike the dried-up stick of a shrew he is to wed.”
     
Purring her pleasure.
     
The words curled through Euphemia’s gut like soured milk. She stared after the man as he moved away, fury pulsing through her, seeping into blood and bone.
     
A dried-up stick of a shrew.
     
How little the man knew.
     
How little any of them knew.

 
But she knew, and her confidence in her special skills lessened some of the burning tightness in her chest and even helped ease the streaming of her eyes.
     
Only her hatred continued to burn, banking now to a white-hot smolder. Needing support, she leaned against the cold stone wall beneath a narrow window splay, risked a deep breath of the damp night air.
     
Even the loch’s dangerous vapors were preferable to the choking stench of the hall’s thick-drifting wood smoke . . . the sharp odor of the many dogs.
     
Purring her pleasure, indeed.
     
Euphemia scowled. The lout’s sarcastic witticisms cut deep, the slurs refusing to leave her ears. Closing her eyes, she forced her mind to dwell on other things.
     
Such as how she would have brought Sir Robert to his knees, had him purring in his ease and begging release—if only she’d had a chance to lure him to the bit!
     
An opportunity she doubted she’d have the chance to exploit with other, more lavish feasting hanging on his arm. Hot anger thrumming inside her, she pressed a hand to her roiling stomach and wished the fiery creature to the lowest pit of hell.
     
“So-o-o-o! I find you here, sweet lady,” a husky-deep voice penetrated her anger, its mellifluous familiarity both irritating and exciting her.
     
Big Red MacAlister.
     
Euphemia’s eyes snapped open . . . her woman’s parts flamed and began to moisten.
     
She wet her lips, tried to smooth her rumpled skirts. Then, willing herself not to wheeze, she tilted back her head to gaze up at her father’s most trusted guardsmen, a man prized for his skill and brawn.
     
A ruggedly handsome giant with a