Page 13 of Cadell the Dragon

Johanna knew what he meant. People treating her like a dangerous enemy, or just plain ignoring her presence.

“I’m afraid it is,” she answered, too dejected to even pretend everything was well. With Cadell, she felt she could be herself and he wouldn’t judge. “Since I arrived, the people here have been very dismissive of me, sometimes even wary. It doesn’t help that I only know very few words of Welsh. It means we cannot really communicate and allows them to pretend they don’t understand what little I actually tell them. One of the girls, a young maid named Efa, even seems to be afraid of me. She runs away every time she sees me.”

Johanna shook her head. Opening up and exposing the truth to another person was making her see just how bad her situation was. Finding herself unable to do the only thing that gave her life sense hurt her deeply, as did being seen as an enemy when she had done nothing wrong.

“I think it was a mistake to come here. I thought I should see for myself if the people had been neglected during Rhun’s lengthy absences and help if I can. And indeed, you have seen for yourself that they do need my help.” Only a fool would have missed the castle’s state of disrepair, and Cadell was no fool. “But these people do not want their mistress to take an interest in them, if that mistress is English.”

She could tell he would have said something, but at that moment the first drops of rain started to fall. It would not be long before it became a deluge. If they didn’t want to be soaked, they had better move.

“Come, let me take you to your bedchamber so you can get changed.”

Cadell was trying to keep his fury under control but he was appalled. The look on the woman’s face earlier, when she had seen her child in Johanna’s arms had sparked righteous fury inside him. Had the devil in person gotten hold of her little girl she could not have looked more horrified. That would have been bad enough but the total disregard for Johanna’s safety from the people of Bryn Glas caused his blood to boil in his veins. She had come back from her ride on a stranger’s horse and with her arm wrapped in a blanket. It would be obvious to anyone who cared to look that something had gone very wrong. Yet no one had rushed to her aid, or even come to see to the horses, as was their responsibility. No one had asked about her injured wrist. What the hell was wrong with these people?

He looked around him with a critical eye. The door of the postern gate didn’t appear to close properly, dust was covering the chain on the drawbridge and grass had started to sprout between the stones on the north facing wall.

Bryn Glas had evidently been neglected for too long. As a result, it looked about to crumble and what was worse, the people working there had forgotten the respect they owed their mistress, neither acknowledging her presence nor seeing to her comfort as they should.

Doing his best to hide his simmering anger, he followed Johanna to the only tower. Right now, she needed calm, not the added strain of having to deal with an irate man.

In the bedchamber at the top, which should have been a haven for her, the traces of neglect were even more glaring. Though it was evening already, no one had come to tidy the sheets on her bed yet or take away the tray bearing the remnants of her morning meal. Cadell clenched his jaw. He would make sure to have a word with the steward before leaving, demand that the servants started to do what they were here for and look after Johanna properly. He would not tolerate anything less.

Johanna fell rather than sat on the folding stool by the bed, looking both exhausted and defeated. The sight tugged at his heart. She should be smiling that special smile of hers, the one that sent heat to his body, she should be proud of her courage in coming here all alone. But she looked like a lost little girl.

Her boots were muddy, thanks to her trudging along the wet path before he’d found her. She made a move to reach them then looked at the blanket still holding her arm in place and frowned, obviously wondering how she was going to remove them one-handed.

“Let me help you with these,” Cadell offered, his voice low.

Removing a woman’s shoes was a shocking proposition but she would quickly see that she had no choice but let him do it. Her wrist would be throbbing too much for her to use her fingers efficiently and she would never be able to undo the mud-caked knots with one hand.

To his relief, she agreed. “Thank you.”

He dropped to one knee, the gesture so evocative that his groin instantly started to pulse in rhythm with his heart. In that position, he looked about to pleasure her as intimately as a man could pleasure a woman. He couldn’t help but pray she wouldn’t think the same thing and change her mind, worried by the intimacy of the action or what he would think.

Slowly, making sure to give her the opportunity to voice her concern, Cadell lifted the hem of her dress. Seeing that she didn’t protest, he started to work on the leather laces, which had indeed gone tight because of the dried mud. Even with two hands, it took him a while to loosen the knot. Once her left foot was freed, he started to work on the right boot. When she was only in her stockings he looked up at her.

“Do you want help to remove these as well?”

His voice was so rough that he knew his desire for her would be obvious. Fortunately, she didn’t seem frightened by it, rather…intrigued. His heart started to beat even harder. Was she as affected as he was by their position? By his proximity? Oh, if only…

“No,” she said in a rasp that matched his own. “I should manage with my stockings, thank you.”

He stood back up, making sure to clasp his hands in front of the bulge tenting his hose. If she saw how aroused attending to her had made him, she would definitely get scared. He didn’t remember ever being so hard, but it was little wonder that he should be, considering what he had been doing and where they were. The other night at the banquet he had merely been sitting next to her and they had been surrounded by people. Earlier in the forest he had knelt at her feet, but they had been out in the open and he had been examining her for an injury. This time he had seen her legs, not her arms, and they were in a private room, with a bed in it.

A bed he desperately wanted to tumble her on.

Johanna’s head was spinning. Cadell was towering over her, his eyes ablaze with concern and all she could think was how much she wanted him. She had been right to think that this shocking desire he provoked would need addressing soon. Indeed, it was progressing at the speed of a wildfire.

Outside the tower, the storm seemed to have reached full force. Rain was hammering on the roof, and there was a low rumble in the distance. Inside her body, her heart was drumming hard and a slow pulse was warming her blood. Desire. Unmistakable. Potent. Irresistible. Why was she so affected by this man of all men? She didn’t really know him, and the other day at the banquet he had been, if not exactly rude, at least rather cold toward her.

Perhaps because today he had been nothing but helpful and efficient. She had no idea what she would have done without him. Had he not appeared out of nowhere, she would be under the downpour even now, hoping not to get a chill from the ordeal or fall prey to the many ill-intentioned individuals roaming the woods.

But as grateful as she was for Cadell’s help, and though she trusted he would not take advantage of the situation, she could not let him peel the stockings from her legs. If he did, and she felt his fingers on her bare skin, she might lose her mind and ask him to touch her somewhere else and then use his mouth on her. It had been so long since she’d melted under a man’s touch…too long for any red-blooded woman. Marriage to a virile man had given her a taste for lovemaking and she guessed that Cadell would be an assertive, yet generous lover, just what she liked. Just what she needed after so many years of neglect.

Johanna shook her head. What was she thinking? She didn’t need a lover, just a way of being accepted in her new home. That was her priority at the moment.

“I will manage on my own,” she repeated, doing her best to ignore temptation, trying to convince herself that she was not aroused, or desperate to be touched.

But there was no denying that she was presenting a very wanton sight at the moment. She gulped. Shouldn’t she be covering her legs? Definitely. But she was suddenly under the impression that she was with a man who was allowed to make love to her, not a man she barely knew, and that she had every right to expose herself thus. The unmade bed opposite her beckoned, creating an intimate atmosphere that was hard to ignore. It looked as if she had just experienced a moment of wild passion in his arms, and this was not a situation near strangers usually found themselves in.