Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 02] by Master of The Highland (html) Page B

his daring rescue touched her more profoundly than she ought allow. His tender ministrations to her wounds poured warmth of purest, molten gold straight into her heart and pricked the backs of her eyes with scalding heat.
Biting her lip, Madeline stared hard at the distant blue line of the Highlands, and willed the unshed tears not to spill. At length she turned back to him, her vision once more clear, but still far too vulnerable to long-un-quenched needs inside her for her own good.
Far too vulnerable to him.
She stared up at him, saw his own struggles mirrored in the tense set of his jaw and the slight narrowing of his peat brown eyes. Her gaze not letting him look away, she lifted a shaky hand to the well-worn warrior’s hauberk he wore over a finely woven linen tunic.
Finely woven, and of highest quality . . . as was the leather of his hauberk, despite signs of wear.
More the trappings of a braw Highland laird than what he seemed.
Watching him carefully, she withdrew her fingers . . . but not before lighting them briefly on the finely tooled sword belt slung low on his hips. The belt, like his padded leather hauberk, appeared well worn but of superior craftsmanship.
“You are no ordinary pilgrim, sir,” she said, not surprised when a brief flare of pain flashed across his hand some face.
A faint smile, a sad one, flickered over his lips. “And you, sweet lass,” he began, gently skimming his knuckles down her cheek, “are you a true postulant?”
“I am on my way to enter a nunnery, aye,” Madeline confirmed, a shiver of regret rippling through her at his evasive answer and the necessary half-truth of her own.
“Will you tell me your name if not who you are?” she asked, not wishing to prod too deeply, bespelled or nay.
Not when she held her own silences.
“I am Iain,” he told her, the smooth richness of his voice spooling through her, entrancing her just as thoroughly it had in the cathedral . . . and her dreams.
“Iain . . . ?” she urged, so beguiled by his golden warmth, his dark masculine beauty, and the mysterious yet so compelling air of sadness surrounding him. She could almost believe he’d manifested from some silver-tongued bard’s fireside tale of legend and romance.
Her gaze dropped briefly to his handsomely tooled sword belt again, lighting, too, on his equally fine waist belt, then the buttery-soft leather of his dusty but well-made boots. “You are Iain of . . . ?” she encouraged, for to possess such fineness—and his innate aura of power and grace—he could only hail from a very great house.
He looked away without answering her, and the humming silence stretched so taut its tension crackled in the cool afternoon air.
Madeline cleared her throat. “Please, good sir, I would know but who—”
“I am just Iain,” he said, glancing back at her, the flatness of his tone revealing far more than the few spoken words. “I’ve no style to tag on to my name, lass.”
Lest you wish to call me Master of Nothing.
The unspoken words hushed past Madeline’s ear, swift as the wind and lancing her heart.
“Then I shall give you one.” The sudden urge to do so welled up from the very roots of her soul. “A very fine style.”
He cocked a skeptical brow. “Say you?”
She nodded. “Aye . . . to honor your gallantry and valor.”
Another shadow passed over his face. “I must warn you, lass, nary a soul walks this earth who’d call me either gallant or valorous.”
Madeline bristled, the pain behind his words making her simmer with anger at whoe’er or whate’er had embittered him. “And heed you, sirrah,” she informed him, all fire and energy, her own cares momentarily forgotten, “Madeline of— . . . I am not a maid to be swayed by common opinion. I gather and hold my own.”
“Then, sweet lassie, you are not just fair to look upon but also of good and generous heart, and I . . . thank you,” he said, a faint but unmistakable catch in his deep voice. “So what style shall you give me?”
Madeline glanced away, her mind whirling.