By His Majesty's Grace by Jennifer Blake Page B

surfaces, the glasslike edges of her teeth. Her breath feathered softly across his face. She was firmly rounded against him, enticing in her stillness. He released her arm, spanned the slender concave of her waist with hard fingers, skimmed upward until his palm cupped the glory of her breast. The nipple was a small, hard berry under the fine wool of her bodice. As it tightened further, he circled it with his thumb again and again in mindless exhilaration.
    A low sound—part moan, part protest—left her. He heard but was beyond acknowledging it, deepening the kiss instead. The retreat of her tongue from his enticed him; the taste of her held him in thrall. The need for more, and still more of her, clamored in his head, his chest, his heated groin. Her wet softness was his grail and he searched diligently for it, sliding his hand back down over her hip and underneath the hem of her gown. He brushed upward over her calf, her thigh and higher, to where she lay unprotected, infinitely vulnerable to his marauding fingers.
    She writhed, gasping at his touch, his intimate invasion. His overheated brain presented the image of how easy it would be to roll her beneath him and slide into her hot, moist depths, taking her there in the swaying bower of a litter while their guard trotted before and behind them.
    He had forgotten the ford.
    The litter lurched forward as they descended the near bank. Water splashed against the curtains, coming through as a drenching spray. Rand drew a sharp breath, returning abruptly to his senses. He sat for a rigid instant, fighting for control. Then he smoothed down Lady Isabel’s skirts and set her from him. Not trusting himself to speak, much less look at the woman he had mauled with such fine disregard for their circumstances, he waited until the litter lurched backward as its mules climbed from the ford. He batted aside the curtains then, and stepped down, sweeping them shut again behind him.
    Some minutes later, when he had remounted the gray and cantered to the head of the column once more, his half brother fell into place beside him. “Well?” he inquired with a curl to his mouth.
    “Well, what?” The words came out with more of a growl to them than Rand intended.
    “How was she?”
    “Comfortable,” he said, and felt heat burn the back of his neck.
    “No doubt. But was she, is she, of an accommodating disposition?”
    Rand gave McConnell a hard stare. “I have no idea. She deserves better than to be molested while half the men within two counties hang on every moan.”
    “A sad waste of a fine opportunity, then, especially when you have the perfect excuse.”
    “Nor does she need to be bedded by a man who may live only as long as it takes to reach the king’s Star Chamber. She will have a much better chance at another husband if there’s no chance she’s breeding.”
    That was, to the best of his understanding, the reason he had left Isabel alone in the litter. The decision was sudden and in stark contrast to his previous intentions, so he had not been thinking too clearly.
    There were, of course, those who would willingly take a pregnant woman to wife since her condition proved her ability to bear children. Most preferred a virgin, however, or at least a lengthy betrothal that would prove she was not with child. Anyway, the likelihood that Henry VII would now hand over the stepsister of the Earl of Graydon to a man charged with murder was so remote as to be laughable.
    “Very noble, but will offer little satisfaction while you lie in a prison cell. Besides, if she was with your get, she could well inherit Braesford should you hang.”
    “Keeping it from your possession? A strong incentive, I must say,” Rand answered in dry tones, looking away toward where the wooded copse they had traveled through followed the curve of the burn.
    “Or I could offer my aid and support so she might persuade Henry that she requires a new husband to replace my bastard brother. Who knows? He could