Devil of the Highlands Page 0,7

letting the water wash away the blood.

"Come, let me see," she ordered, when he straightened, pushed the hair out of his face, and started back out of the water.

The man raised an eyebrow at her demanding manner, but paused before her and turned away. Evelinde stared at the wide wall of his back and rolled her eyes. He was nearly a foot taller than she. She couldn't see a thing.

"Here, you need to sit down." Catching his hand, she tugged him to a fallen tree trunk lying at the edge of the clearing. She urged him to sit, then stepped between his legs and clasped his head to bend it forward so she could see the back of it. With Mildrede's help, Evelinde had taken over tending to the injured and ill when her mother died. It wasn't a task Edda had bothered claiming when she'd become the new lady of d'Aumesbery, so Evelinde had carried on with it and was used to bossing grown soldiers about like they were children. Quite honestly, in her experience, that was exactly how the men tended to act when injured or ill. They were worse than any child when ailing.

"Hmm," she murmured, examining the abrasion. It was still bleeding, but head wounds tended to bleed a lot, and it was really more of a small scrape than a deep gash. "It does not look so bad."

"I told ye I was fine," he rumbled, lifting his head.

"You lost consciousness, sir," she fretted. "Let me see your eyes."

He lifted his face, and Evelinde clasped him by both cheeks, her gaze moving slowly over his eyes. They looked perfectly fine to her, however. More than fine. They were really quite beautiful; large and a deep brown so dark they appeared almost black. They were also fringed by long black lashes. The rest of his face was rugged, however, with sharp planes, an arrow-straight nose, and his lips—

Evelinde's eyes paused there, noting that his upper lip was thin, but the lower one was full and looked as if it would be soft to the touch. Before she could think better of it, curiosity made her shift one thumb to rub it over the pillowed surface, and she found it was indeed soft. Then Evelinde realized what she'd done. She could feel a sudden blush rise to cover her face and released him abruptly.

"There was a bit of dirt there," she lied, trying to step away at the same time, but his legs immediately closed on either side of her. Finding herself trapped between his knees, Evelinde felt her first moment of disquiet with the man. Not fear, exactly. For some reason she felt sure she had nothing to fear from this man, but the action did make her nervous.

She opened her mouth to ask him to release her, then sucked her breath in on a hiss of pain when his hands rose up to catch her by the hips. His hold eased at once, but he didn't let her go. Instead, he held her in place and lowered his gaze to the spot he'd touched, a frown claiming his lips.

"Ye took some punishment in the fall as well," he growled, sounding displeased. "Ye've a bruise on yer hip."

Evelinde bit her lip and tried to pretend she was anywhere else but there as his gaze rose along her side, one hand following the path, then pausing again on the side of her chest just below her left breast. The action stirred an odd tingling along her skin.

"And here."

She glanced down with confusion. The bruising would be from her fall in the water, but there was no way he could see through her chemise to the bruises he was—

Evelinde's thoughts died as she saw that her still-damp chemise was transparent. She could clearly make out several dark patches through the clinging cloth. One was the large mottling bruise on her hip, the other another even bigger bruise on her ribs, but the others were not bruises at all. Her darker nipples were clearly displayed in the damp shift, and the dark gold at the apex of her thighs stood out against her pale skin.

A gasp of horror caught in her throat, but before Evelinde could pull away and cover herself, he'd taken hold of her arm.

"And here."

She peered distractedly down at the arm he'd turned slightly. She had seen all these bruises earlier, the result of her tumble in the river, not from falling from her horse as he