Page 21 of A Hellion for the Highland Hawk
She paused, a frown creasing her brow as if she’d just had a poignant thought. “I touched it… and then there was an earthquake.” Her voice was slow and distant, as if she were talking to herself. “I grabbed it, and it fell on me. Then, I woke up here. It was a… tapestry of you.”
“Of me?” His own frown deepened.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” she said quickly, dropping her chin to her chest. “I’d like to go to my room now.”
“Where was this tapestry, eh?” Hunter pressed. “Who did ye take it from?”
“I didn’t take it!” she snapped. “I grabbed it because I was scared, and when I woke up here, it wasn’t there anymore. But I… I think it’s how I got here, somehow. I think it… sent me here.”
“Well, perhaps we can find it and send ye back, so ye willnae be trapped here with us brutes,” he said dryly, though his mind churned with confusion.
How could a tapestry have sent her here? Had she been tasked with a mission to bring a tapestry to someone? Perhaps the tapestry had been aboard the ship he assumed she’d arrived on, and this ‘earthquake’ had been the thing to wreck the ship?
If the tapestry washed ashore, the wrecked ship would likely be nearby, giving at least a clue about where she’d come from. There might even be other survivors to take her back with them. Nothing else made sense to him.
But the way Nancy bit her lip and glanced away spoke of things unsaid. The tension in her neck added to his suspicion, as though the truth were trying to fight to the surface.
“Out with it,” he commanded.
“I can’t find it.”
“Why?”
She took a breath. “Because… if I’m right… If I’m right about why the tapestry wasn’t there when I woke up, then… it hasn’t happened yet. In this world, in this time, the tapestry doesn’t exist.”
A strange shiver ran through him, hard to explain. It was akin to feeling something or seeing something as if one had lived it before, when that wasn’t possible. It buzzed in the back of his mind like a hive of angry bees, the hairs on the nape of his neck standing up on end. The spot where curses and spells could sneak in, according to his mother’s old warnings.
Shemight have known what to make of all of this, but she was dead and gone. No one had understood more about the unseen world of myths and spirits and magic than her.
“Witch,” he rasped, for it was the only explanation. “Ye’re a bloody witch.”
Nancy grabbed his arm as if to either balance herself or to half shake some sense into him. “A witch? Me?”
“How else would ye explain it? What else should I think, with the way ye act and the strange words that come out of yer mouth and the way ye look, eh?”
He pressed his palm to her chest to hold her against the wall and to feel the beat of her heart. He knew the rhythm of a liar. It was the only good thing his predecessor had taught him, though he wished he hadn’t learned it the way he had.
Soft, tempting flesh moved against his palm, her breath quickening.
“I told you,” she said thickly, defiantly, “what I wore when I arrived is normal where I come from.”
Her heart was beating hard, but not unsteady.
“And where is that again?” he bit out, her skin so hot against the roughness of his palm.
It had been a mistake, stoking himself up when he should’ve been cooling himself down. The urge to slide his hand under the neckline of her gown, to feel those ripe breasts, was a potent thing that ravaged his mind, until it was pretty much the only thing he could think about.
His head dipped until they were so close he could’ve claimed her mouth in an instant, his lips tingling with want as every shallow breath of hers caressed them.
He yearned to press himself against her, so she could feel what she was doing to him. He longed to just silence his questions and suspicions by catching her mouth with his, so it wouldn’t matter, even if just for a while.
“America,” Nancy replied breathlessly, her neck arching, almost pushing her bosom against his hand as if she, too, wanted to feel more. “About three hund?—”
Footsteps echoing in the hallway forced him to pull back, though it was a singular kind of torment. A few more moments, and he was certain he could have discovered how she kissed, with the hope that it was as fiery as her temper. As passionate as her ire, put to better use.
Beathan came around the corner as Hunter descended a step, though Nancy remained where she’d been, pressed against the wall, her cheeks flushed, her lips still slightly parted as ragged breaths continued to move her chest in a frantic rhythm.
Nae a liar, but nae tellin’ the truth either.
