Read Embers for Free Online Page B

take your tunic and your shirt off."
    She cursed herself for stumbling over the words, such ordinary, practical words, but—
    He stood up, reaching for the gilded belt buckle, garnet-crusted, wrought into the sinuous shape of a backward-looking beast. Shining colours caught the sun.
    She folded her hands in the coarse wool of her skirts, and then she could no longer watch.
    Of course it was not possible to have given your heart to a man, to have shared pain and grief and loss, to have felt the measure of his courage, all the mad tumult of his passion and your own confused and frightening response to it…and to know less than one of the virgin sisters at the nunnery.
    He must not realize that. He must not know that her heart beat and her blood surged like white fire just at the thought of him. And that she was afraid.
    He must have had enough time. She turned round.
    She had her face schooled into its impassive, slightly disdainful mask. The mask that had hidden every personal thought she had ever had in the dangerous halls of Craig Phádraig.
    She did not know where to look.
    The first glimpse of his naked skin made her insides clench so that she could scarce draw breath. She had held his body in her arms, taken his kiss, felt all the wild pent-up passion of their dangerous flight.
    She did not know him at all.
    She should have done.
    The tightly muscled planes of his body seemed carved and fitted together to define his maleness, to force her to know what all that strength and fierceness was about. She had never seen, never had to face that, not in this way.
    Her mind numbed. That was what he was like. That was what he was. This was what she had loved with all that was in her, and yet never known. Never had the chance to know.
    What would it have been like to have all that power and all that raw vital grace and all that fiercely drawn strength surround you, possess you? In the embrace that belonged to lovers. To know it with your body, feel the burning life of it and the maleness, and know no barrier. Just the total elemental completeness that existed between man and woman.
    Her skin shivered with such thoughts. But she could not stop looking at him.
    He took a step towards her, utterly unconcerned, completely self-possessed. Sunlight glinted on him. Sunlight and shadows.
    She stepped backwards before she knew she had done it and nearly dropped all she was carrying. She saw the brief flash of surprise in his eyes. She looked away. But it was too late. He must have seen how she stared. Like a green-sick maid on her marriage night.
    "Ready to begin?"
    "Of course." Her voice, at least, was quite as cool and expressionless as became a princess of the Picts. Her face was back in its mask.
    Too late. Her weakness had been placed in the open.
    He sat down in the sunlight, so that she could see the wound. His movements were smooth and controlled and quite unhurried.
    She looked at the blacked mess of his arm. It was appalling, blood-matted. Older.
    "It was truly not the sword that hurt you."
    She got a Northumbrian sound of disgust.
    "The sword. You could not have hit a hay bale with that, let alone killed me. I have never seen anyone with an unhandier grip. You did not even have your thumb wrapped round the hilt."
    "I… Then what was it?"
    "Call it a parting gift. From some of the late King Osred's hired mercenaries."
    "
Osred's
men?"
    "Aye. You are going to spill that."
    Her ringers tightened on the bowl of clear water and she could feel the heat rise in her face. How could he know what she thought? Damn him for that, for being able to see— She set the bowl down before she spilled the contents.
    "King's men, or what was left of them after Osred had been killed."
    "After—"
    The knowing eyes raked her.
    "Aye. After. Though they thought I had had a hand in his death. Obvious conclusion, is it not?" She looked down. "By that death, all that I had lost was restored, and now it is my kinsman who sits on the throne."
    Her gaze