hidden by the slender, budding branches, her arms crossed and her expression as disgruntled as her tone had been.
“So do you, but I don’t think the guards, the villagers or the peasants trying to sow their crop would appreciate that fact.”
She scowled as she pushed herself from the tree and came toward him, moving aside the curtain of branches. “I don’t want to marry you,” she announced.
“Really?” he replied with a calmness distinctly at odds with the way he felt.
“No, I don’t,” she said firmly, planting herself defiantly in front of him.
“Well, I certainly cannot accuse you of playing the flirtatious maid with me. Might I inquire why my proposal is to be rejected before I even make it?”
“Isn’t it enough that I don’t want you?”
He fought to subdue his anger at her sarcastic tone. “Your father approves of the match and there are certain facts in my favor,” he remarked, turning away from her and going to the brook. He picked up some pebbles and tossed them into the water as he counted off the reasons why she should want him. “I am wealthy. I am generous. I would treat you well. I am on good terms with several powerful lords. I am not without some personal attributes that I have been told women find appealing.”
“Don’t forget vain and dissolute,” she said with a sternness that would have done credit to her father as she came to stand beside him.
He raised his eyebrows in a gesture of surprise that masked his growing vexation. “These are serious charges, my lady. I suppose you think me vain because I like fine clothes, and dissolute because I prefer to make my surroundings as pleasing to the eye and comfortable to the body as possible. If your family prefers a spartan existence, that is their right, just as it is mine to spend my money how I choose.
“While I see no reason to justify how I spend my money to you if we are not to marry, I will say, in my defense, that I never exceed my income, I always pay whatever taxes my overlord and the king require of me, and I have never been in debt.”
Her gaze faltered for the briefest of moments, then she raised her chin to glare at him again. “I think the way you waste your money is a sin!”
“Think what you will, my lady,” he said, facing the defiant, passionate woman who did not want him. “But, pray tell me, what is it you do want in a husband? Breadth? Height? Arms as thick as tree trunks? The manners of a boar? Red hair?”
She sucked in her breath and crossed her arms defensively as he continued to stare at her. “I want a man, not a conceited clown!”
“I am a man.”
She sniffed disdainfully. “I suppose you have the necessary physical attributes—but that is all.”
“For most women, that and what I have said before, would be more than sufficient.”
“Well, not for me! I want a man I can respect. A man I can admire. Why, I ride better than you, can surely loose an arrow better than you, and with more accuracy. I daresay I could even wrestle better than you, if I had to.”
“That may be true, my lady,” he replied coldly, “but I smell better than you.”
She gaped at him in outraged shock.
He leaned his weight casually on one leg and surveyed her slowly. Impertinently. “Let me guess the kind of man you think you would like for a husband. He will be admirably strong and a champion in the manly arts, as long as brute force is the main requirement. Such force is what he will bring to everything he does, including the marriage bed. Force, not pleasure. Not tenderness.
“At first, you will indeed respect him, until you realize that he gives you the same respect he gives his horse or his dog.” She looked about to speak, but he did not give her the chance. “I have seen what happens when a woman is forced into marriage too many times to wish to experience it myself. So calm yourself, my fiery Aileas. If you do not wish to marry me, simply tell your father so, and that will be the end of it.
“And as for that redheaded brute you seem to find so fascinating, I regret that the feeling is not reciprocated. He has left you.”
“What?”
“He left Dugall Castle immediately after the noon meal.” With that, George marched to his horse and took hold of the reins. He glanced back to look at her once more.
She stood motionless, no longer defiant, her expression one of surprise and dismay.
A primitive urge unlike any he had ever felt enveloped him, and suddenly, George’s veneer of elegance and breeding dissolved. He strode across the space between them and tugged Aileas into his arms, pressing a hot kiss onto her tempting lips.
Desire, raw and needy, coursed through his veins the moment he touched her, and when she seemed to melt into his arms, offering no resistance, he held her tighter, leaning into her and pushing his tongue into her yielding mouth.
But it was not George’s way to take without asking, or to behave with callous disregard, whatever his emotions, so his kiss changed, became gentler, more tender, yet still with the promise of that more powerful passion waiting to be released again-Her response startled and delighted him, for she began to return his passion, kissing him as if she desired him with a yearning equal to his own.
What was happening? He didn’t know. He could barely think, for he was overwhelmed and uncertain—
He broke away and, using every ounce of self-control he possessed, put a casual expression on his face as he looked into her desire-darkened eyes while she gasped for breath. “Go, Aileas, and tell your father that we shall not marry.”
She swallowed and backed away, nearly stumbling. Her fingertips touched her lips for a moment. Then she reached for her horse’s reins and yanked the unwilling beast out of the water. Still without speaking, she mounted swiftly and kicked her horse into a gallop. In another moment, she was on the other side of the trees, and then she was gone.
George sighed and slumped onto the ground near the banks of the brook. What had just happened here? What had he done?
He had never experienced anything like the sudden, wild, passionate desire he had felt for Aileas Dugall, and he could no more have prevented himself from kissing her than he could hold his breath for a day.
To what end?
How could he force his kiss on her like the worst of brigands, he who knew the price such unthinking, intense actions could exact?
Surely it was just as well that she didn’t want to be his wife. No other person had ever stripped away his self-control as she just had.
He would find someone else. Someone calm and pliant, who did not rouse him so. A gentle woman, who would not inflame him.
That was the kind of wife he needed.
Chapter Five
Aileas angrily swiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and then her nose. She wasn’t going
