By Grace Possessed

By Grace Possessed by Jennifer Blake Page B

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Authors: Jennifer Blake
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for your side. Can your manservant bind it? Shall I send for him?”
    “Servant have I none,” he said with a quirk of humor at one corner of his mouth. “I’m nay such a strutting cock as yon Trilborn, needing aid with my dressing like a babe in swaddling, nay, nor with anything else. I can strap it up my own self.”
    “So you might, if you don’t drip so much gore on Henry’s silk carpets that you pass out between here and your chamber.”
    “Henry’s carpets are no worry of mine,” he drawled. “As you have such a care for them, you’d best see to it.”
    He thought her reluctance to see a stag brought down meant she’d no stomach for dealing with a bloody wound. He was sure she would refuse and send him on his way; she could see it in his face. How little he knew her.
    “So I shall, but not here.” She touched his sleeve, indicated the corridor that stretched ahead of them. “There will be cloths for cleaning and binding in my chamber. It’s not far.”
    He drew back. “That I can’t do, and well you know it.”
    “Because I’m a maiden? No one believes that except you, as Trilborn made abundantly clear.”
    “The man’s a fool. If others are not ready to accept it, it’s for their own ends.”
    “Or else they think the worst because it’s so often true,” she said in dry correction. “But what is the point of enduring ill beliefs if I am not to have the advantage of it? Come, this way.”
    He took a step, then stopped. He raked back his hair with an impatient gesture, exposing a black scowl. “You would not prove them right out of anger?”
    “What, wallow in sin because I’ve lost my shiny halo? My pride is greater than that. Besides, Gwynne, my serving woman, will be there.”
    “Well enough, but if I am seen going into your chamber, all the holy angels may not bring back that halo’s polish.”
    “No, but the wound from Trilborn’s knife may turn putrid, so prove the curse of the Three Graces yet again. I would see that doesn’t happen.”
    Rueful humor gleamed in his eyes. “You think the feud will do me in because of this curse? Belike it’s Trilborn who will die of blood poisoning after you set upon him with your sharp, white teeth.”
    “It was all I could do.” Her voice was curt and she did her best to disregard the heat in her face as she urged him toward her chamber.
    “And a fine thing it was, for all it drove him fair mad. Belike, he’ll be the victim of this dread prophecy, as he tried to claim you.”
    “Pray God. Yet you are the more injured.”
    “I’ve also sworn not to wed you, so how am I to fall victim?”
    “Don’t mock it!”
    “Nay, but you must see it makes little sense.”
    She shook her head, a movement heavy with concern. “We are as good as betrothed, like it or not. Come with me now, before you bleed to death from it.”
     
    He should refuse; Ross knew that well. It would be far better if he made whatever bow he could manage, and walked away while Lady Catherine was still talking. The slash halfway across his belly was irksome, but not deep. Certainly, it was nothing he had not dealt with before. A few strips torn from an old shirt, a stitch or two with good Highland wool, and none would be the wiser.
    He didn’t do it. Meek as a newly dropped shoat, he followed where Lady Catherine led. He walked into her chamber behind the intriguing sway of her hips, sidestepped the sweep of her trailing hem as she came to a sudden halt, then waited to see what she would do next.
    The chamber was simple, containing only a curtained bed with a chest at its foot, a table with bowl and ewer, a low stool, and a carpet instead of rushes on the floor. It was warmer than the outside corridor by grace of coals that glowed in the brazier on a three-legged stand. Yet what struck him like a clout to the head was its scents of perfume, spice and warm, indefinably feminine linen.
    His reaction was immediate and all too predictable. There were times when the

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