Page 13 of The Laird's Masked Passion

“It is strategy. Dinnae flatter yerself.”

Colin should have refused. His hand did not require tending. They had more urgent matters than a shallow cut. He should have checked the horse again, watched the road, planned the safest path north when dawn came.

Instead, he sat upon a fallen log and held out his hand. She knelt before him and reached for the cloth he had set with the supplies. The position displeased him at once. It wasn’t because he thought she meant submission, for there was no force in heaven or Scotland likely to make Elspeth Fraser submissive. It was because she looked too much like someone brought low by a day of other people’s decisions.

“Sit beside me,” he urged.

Her brows lifted. “I am tending yer hand, nae courting ye.”

“The ground is wet.”

“Dae ye ken any words that arenae commands?”

“Aye. Many. Few useful.”

With an impatient breath, she moved onto the log beside him, leaving a severe and deliberate space between them. Colin dipped the cloth in water and offered it to her. When she took it, their fingers brushed.

Her hand stilled. So did his.

It was absurd. He had kissed her before a cathedral full of witnesses. He had held her against him for hours on horseback. He had felt her body jolt with every stride, kept his arm locked around her while trying not to think of the soft pressure of her back against his chest, the scent of rain in her hair, the fierce little breaths she made when anger failed to hide exhaustion. Yet that small brush of fingers seemed to strike both of them with more force than sense allowed.

Elspeth snatched the cloth and bent over his hand. The first touch of water stung. He did not move.

“There,” she said. “Proof ye arenae made entirely of stone.”

“Did ye require proof?”

“I had begun tae wonder.”

She cleaned the cut with more care than her words deserved. Her brows drew together. Her mouth, still a little swollen where he had kissed her and she had bitten him, tightened in concentration. Colin watched her because he could not seem to do otherwise. She was furious with him. She feared him, though she hid it like a jewel sewn beneath plain cloth. Yet she could not leave a wound untended. It was an inconvenient kind of goodness.

“Take off yer shirt,” she suddenly ordered.

Colin’s attention returned sharply. “Why?”

“There is blood at yer wrist and sleeve. I cannae tell whether the cut runs higher.”

“It daesnae.”

“Then show me.”

His gaze held hers. “Ye want me tae take off me shirt?”

Color moved into her cheeks at once, swift and lovely and violently denied. “Fer medical purposes.”

“Of course.”

“Dinnae say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“As if I had requested entertainment.”

He leaned back slightly. “Did ye?”

She looked ready to strike him with the wet cloth. “I have never met a man more pleased with himself.”

“That wasnae an answer.”