Page 79 of The Laird's Masked Passion

Elspeth did. She told herself she meant only to know whether it was safe to pass. This was an excellent argument until she reached the gap and looked through it.

After that, she could not pretend prudence had any share in the matter. The room was small, perhaps used for mending linen or storing household things that had lost their purpose. A single lamp burned upon a shelf, throwing gold over folded cloth, a stool, a narrow table, and the two figures tangled near it.

The maid had her back against the wall. The stable boy’s hands were at her waist. Her own hands were in his hair. They were kissing as if they had been starved and found one another necessary. This was not the brief, alarming press of Colin’s mouth upon hers before witnesses. Nor was it the dangerous, controlled kisses he had stolen later.

This washungry. This wasglad.

The young man bent his head to the maid’s throat, and she arched with a breath that made Elspeth’s own catch in answer. His hand moved over her bodice with reverence and impatience together, and though Elspeth knew she had to look away, her eyes remained fixed, wide and disobedient.

The maid was not crying. She was not lying still. She did not look as if she endured anything at all. She looked as if every touch pulled light through her.

Elspeth’s mother’s voice returned to her with cruel clarity.

It isnae pleasant.

Lie still if ye can.

Dinnae fight him unless he is the sort made worse by it.

Yet the woman inside the room did not lie still. She drew the young man closer. She whispered his name against his mouth. She trembled, yes, but not with fear. When his hand slipped beneath the fall of her skirts, she made a sound so full of startled pleasure that Elspeth’s palm flew to her own lips.

A strange heat moved through her. It was not the heat of shame, though shame came quickly after it. This began lower, in the secret center of her body, a slow unfurling warmth that left her knees uncertain and her breath shallow. She remembered Colin’s voice in the dark of their chamber, low and maddeningly sure.

When I touch ye, ye willnae be frightened of wanting it.

She hated him for saying it. She hated the arrogance, the certainty, the wicked calm with which he spoke of her body as though it might one day become an ally to him and traitor to her.

But now…

Elspeth swallowed hard.

Inside the room, the stable boy sank lower before the maid, his hands steady at her hips and his face hidden by the fall of her skirts. Elspeth’s eyes widened until the lamplight blurred. Themaid covered her mouth with her own hand, but the sound escaped her fingers all the same, broken and sweet and almost pained, though not from suffering.

Elspeth’s body answered with such suddenness that she gripped the doorframe. There was a damp warmth between her thighs.

For one suspended moment, she did not understand it. Then understanding arrived. Her face burned. Her body had become soft and secret and aching, as if some part of her had listened to the scene before her and believed itself invited.

So this was what Colin had meant. Not with his exact words, perhaps. But he had said there could be pleasure. He had said her body might respond. She had thought him wicked. She had thought him amused by her innocence.

Now the maid’s head fell back against the wall, her lips parted, her eyes closed, and the young man between her skirts held her as though her pleasure mattered to him more than his own breath.

The sight shook Elspeth more deeply than fear.

A woman could want.

A woman could be wanted gently, fiercely, gladly.

A woman could be touched and not diminished by it.

The maid’s hand tightened in the young man’s hair. Her whole body drew taut, then shuddered with a soft cry she barely managed to smother. The sound passed through Elspeth like a struck string. She stepped back, horrified by herself, by the heat in her blood, by the ache beneath her shift, by the terrible little question blooming where certainty used to be.

What would it be like?

Not with a nameless man in a ln room but with Colin. The thought was so improper, so vivid, so entirely her own, that she nearly stumbled.

She had to leave at once, before she was discovered, before the couple emerged, before her own body betrayed her any further with its shameful curiosity and its shameful longing.

Elspeth turned, but at that very moment, a hand clamped over her mouth. Another arm seized her hard about the waist and dragged her back against a solid chest. The scream that rose in her throat died beneath rough fingers. Her candle fell soundlessly onto the rushes. The corridor, already dark, seemed to blacken around her.