gave a little grunt of a chuckle. “Lady, I’ve slept wet on th’ ground for nigh on a year now. This be my first night in a real bed since I turned seven years. Should I sicken, ’twould be from too much comfort, not lack of it.”
“You jest!” she exclaimed, subtly inching away from him to the very edge of the bed.
“Aye, betimes, but not about this. Dinna look afeared. I recall my promise and the bairn ye carry. ’Tis grateful I am ye let me share this much.”
He arched his back and sighed, wriggling out a comfortable niche in the soft, feather mattress. “Sheets,” he crooned. “I forgot how sleek they be.”
Honor inhaled sharply, her trepidation increasing with every shift of his overly large frame. His chest fairly commanded her attention. She could not seem to pull her gaze away from it. Mounds of muscle, crowned by small, flat nipples, heaved with every sensuous breath he took. An intriguing mat of springy curls lay in between, beckoning her hand. Tavish’s chest had been pale, flat and almost hairless. She clenched her curious hands into fists.
He moved again. Then Honor saw that what she had first thought a large patch of dirt he missed washing was a huge bruise surrounding an ugly, poorly stitched cut on his shoulder. “Sir! You’ve taken a wound! Why said you naught of it? Let me see!” She scrambled to her knees and leaned over him, touching the skin near the injury to see whether it felt feverish.
Sir Alan glanced down at it and winced. “I tended to it again today. Mayhaps my sewing’s not so dainty as yer own would be, but ‘twill hold this time. ’Tis on the mend.”
“I have herbs to aid that,” she offered, gently probing the area around the awkward stitching. How could a man sew his own flesh together? It did not bear thought. “It looks reddened.”
He cocked a brow, grinned, and looked straight at her nipples, which were beaded and quite visible through her bedgown. “So will yer face if ye don’t get off me.”
Honor flung herself back to her side of the bed and groaned with embarrassment.
“Are ye ill, lass?” he asked with what sounded like real concern. He rose up on one elbow and peered down at her. “Ye look a bit fashed. Does the child make ye sick?”
“No,” she replied quickly, forcing a smile. “I am past the time for that.”
“Ah well, I know naught of such things,” he admitted in a conversational tone, turning to his side and resting his head on his left hand. “But I should learn now, should I not?”
Honor shot him a wary glance and tried to scoot farther away. The very idea of his touching her made her shake with need. He would surely misunderstand her if she allowed his nearness. A plea dammed in her throat, but she feared what she might plead for if she let it out. She badly needed holding this night, but simply for comfort.
He looked quite willing to do that, but Honor knew he might insist on more. Saints, but she felt ridiculous! Looked ridiculous, as well, she supposed, this far gone with child.
“Will the babe come soon?” he asked as though he read her thoughts.
Honor let out the breath she was holding. “Next month.”
“Ye seem verra small to be so far gone,” he remarked, frowning at her mounded middle, which the covers hardly concealed.
In truth, she was. Nan had told her the babe would be a mite of a thing, given Honor’s own tiny size and Tavish’s slender build and lack of height. “I am fortunate there. Some women become quite unwieldy and have trouble getting about the last few months of confinement. Everything goes well, however. He is quite active, you see.”
“He? Who?” Strode asked, his brow wrinkling as though he had missed some part of their conversation.
“The child,” Honor said, laughing in spite of herself. The man must never have known a pregnant female. “The babe turns and kicks in the womb. Did you not know this?”
The look of surprised wonder on his face almost undid her. He caught his bottom lip between his teeth and his eyes widened in delight. Then he laughed. “Truly? Do you tweak me?”
“No, it is true!” Honor declared, feeling quite superior and not at all afraid of him now. A gentle giant, she thought, smug in her newly confirmed assessment of him. Harmless.
He laughed again, softly this time. “I wonder what that must feel like to ye. Passing strange, I’d think.”
Without aforethought, Honor reached for his right hand, recalling its comfortable strength from the wedding ceremony and even earlier when he had delivered the awful news about Tavish. “Would you like to know?”
“To know what?” he asked, again a quizzical frown marred his brow.
“How it feels,” she explained as she dragged down the covers and placed his palm on top of her abdomen.
He uttered an exclamation of absolute awe when a tiny limb rolled against his hand. He shifted his palm. “There! Again! This is wondrous!” His ready laughter rang out around the chamber and he rolled closer to her, warming to the event as though it were a fascinating game.
Strong fingers undulated gently against the soft fabric that separated his touch from her tightly stretched skin. “Ah, Honor, how do ye bear such sweetness all the day and night? Can ye no’ wait to hold him in yer arms?”
His excitement like that of a small boy, the big knight’s features grew animated. “I cradled a babe once! The mother had a case in the laird’s court—stolen pig or some such—and she thrust the bairn at me to hold when she was called up.” A wistful expression softened his features even more. “I ne‘er forgot the trust in those wee lights. The smile. No fear or worry atall,” he said, recalling the incident with a faraway look. Then he pulled himself back to the present and beseeched her, “Could I hold yers when ’tis small, do ye think? Would ye mind?”
Honor felt tears rise at his question. How could she ever have feared a man who wore his feelings so near the surface, who felt such wonder at tending a peasant’s babe? She touched his face with her fingertips. “Tavish was wise to trust you, I think.”
Surprisingly, he retreated from her then, his smile dying as he withdrew his hand and lay back with a sigh. “Mayhaps not so wise.”
“You had other plans for yourself, did you not?” Honor guessed.
He smirked. “Oh aye, I did. Planned to chase the English right out of England and inta the sea, soon as we finished routin’ them from Scotland. There’s a right ambition, eh?”
Honor toyed with the edge of the coverlet, feeling even more at ease now that the conversation turned to politics. “You hate the English so much?”
“Nay, not all of them. My father’s English. I dinna hate him, though I feel no great liking for him, either.”
“What!” This one, half-English? Nothing he could have said would have surprised her more. She would have sworn Strode was a woven-in-the-wool highlandman.
He elaborated with a negligent wave of one large hand. “When my father was a young mon, a minor baron with a prosperous estate in Gloucester, he swore to King Edward. He rode under Gloucester’s banner in the
