you do not?" Aveline looked at her, certain she'd never seen a more vivid, breathtaking creature.
All burnished coppery hair, sparkling eyes, and dimples, she breathed charm and enchantment.
She was worldly as well. Aveline could see it in her eyes. "You do not care what the glen wives say?"
Gelis laughed and dropped onto the trestle bench beside her. "Not if I can help it!" she said, settling herself. "Worrying is for graybeards and ... Jamie!"
"Hah! And the moon just fell from the sky," a raven-haired beauty put in from across the table. "My sister worries all the time. Regrettably, too often about things that do not concern her."
Lifting her wine cup, she smiled. "I am Arabella," she said, as serene and self-assured as her sister brimmed with gaiety. "And" - she indicated an older, equally stunning woman farther down the table - "that is the Lady Juliana, our brother Robbie's wife. Like myself, she is along to keep young Gelis out of mischief."
"'Young'?"Gelis leaned forward, her plump breasts swelling against her low-cut bodice. "I am not so young that certain braw eyes haven't been admiring my charms!"
Arabella set down her wine cup. "As you can see, she is overly modest as well."
Gelis gave a light shrug. "If you weren't so swaddled in the folds of your arisaid, I vow you'd have a few manly eyes looking your way, too," she quipped, picking up the end of her braid and wriggling it in her sister's direction. "We both know your charms are even bigger than mine."
Running a finger up and down the side of her wine cup, she looked through her lashes at a passing MacKenzie.
An especially bonnie one.
"Yours jiggle more, too," Gelis observed, returning her attention to her sister. "Or they would if you'd put them to better advantage," she added, her fiery hair bright in the hearth glow.
Arabella flushed. "We did not come here to flash smiles at hot-eyed guardsmen,"
she minded her sister, something in her tone sending a shiver down Aveline's spine.
But the dark beauty's face revealed nothing. She sat ramrod straight, the image of polished dignity, her sole attention on the bannock she was smearing with Morag's special heather honey.
Only her flame-haired sister seemed fidgety.
Gelis squirmed on the trestle bench and kept sliding cheeky glances into the main area of the hall, her gaze going repeatedly to a long table crowded with young MacKenzie guardsmen.
And, Aveline knew, several of Jamie's bolder cousins.
She also knew no man had ever looked so hungrily at her. Unlike the MacKenzie women, she had tiny breasts that would never strain and swell against her bodice, threatening to spill over the edging in a provocation that had surely delighted and stirred men since the beginnings of time. And in her case, a pitiful lacking that clamped white-hot fire tongs around her heart, squeezing hard and jabbing sharp little green needles into soft and hurtful places she didn't care to examine.
Until she heard someone mention Jamie's name and remembered how his eyes had darkened with passion when they'd kissed in her father's solar and her gown had slipped, baring her left nipple.
She remembered, too, how gently he'd touched her.
At once, a pleasurable heat bloomed inside her making her almost ache with the need to feel his hands on her again. She'd never imagined a man's touch could be so exquisite. Just remembering sent tingly warmth sweeping across her woman's parts and a deliciously weighty sensation to her belly. She shifted on the bench, hoping no one would guess the reason for her restlessness. Hoping, too, she might later have the chance to explore such tingles in earnest.
"Baldreagan cattle, eh?"
Munro's booming voice cut into her reverie, and she glanced down the table to see him in deep conversation with Lady Juliana. To Aveline's relief, he looked anything but feeble or frightened. Indeed, she recognized the glint in his eyes. It was a look she knew from her father, as well, but the MacKenzie woman appeared Munro's match.
Well made and exceedingly comely, she had fine glowing skin and a wealth of reddish-gold hair that glistened in the torchlight. And like her two young charges, she'd been blessed with one of the fullest, most alluring bosoms Aveline had ever seen.
"My good father, Duncan MacKenzie, wishes a new stirk come the spring," she was saying, watching Munro over her wine cup as she spoke. "He might even take two if the conditions are amenable."
"'Amenable'?" Munro slapped the table and hooted. "My conditions - "
"Will be more than amenable," Jamie