His Duty, Her Destiny
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She had dressed in men’s doeskin breeches, a shirt and short padded jerkin in order to do justice to the young man’s challenge issued last night at supper, and though she had given no thought to the indisputable fact that she was just as fascinating in this garb as in her finest gown, neither did she realise that now there was an androgynous element about her that any man would find unsettling. As had been proved. Her abundant dark hair was still contained within one plait, but no one would have been fooled into mistaking her body for that of a lad when her unbelted jerkin swung open at each move and the roundness of her hips filled the breeches as no man’s ever could.
The sleeves of Sir Fergus’s linen shirt were rolled up to reveal his wrists, and now he pulled at the cord of his neck to open the front, a trick her brothers had tried in the past to deflect her attention. She was not caught off guard as he had intended, and although she made no headway at all in the first few moments, nor did she allow him through her defence.
As she had done, he held back, hoping to lure her into a false confidence, though she knew this to be a ploy too, and would not be drawn. But soon she began to tire as the bout continued and, as his pressure became more intense, perspiration began to run into her eyes and stick her soft linen shirt to her chest. She found his style intimidating, his skill with a sword far superior to hers, his energy phenomenal, for he was not even perspiring, and instead of anticipating his next move as she should have been doing, she could not help but wonder how much longer she could continue before her rapier would go the same way as her previous opponent’s.
After a vigorous exchange, she allowed her point to lower and saw to her surprise that he was changing his rapier over to his left hand, tapping the point of it under hers to make her lift it again, goading her, telling her that he could beat her left-handed. It was a disconcerting move, and the end came well before she could score a hit or even remove the patronising smile from his face.
Panting, and aching with fatigue, she made a mistake at last and felt the fierce sting of his point catch beneath her jerkin and slash like a razor through the thin stuff of her shirt. She leapt backwards, dropping her rapier and holding her breast with one hand, fending him off with the other as he closed in too quickly for her to evade him. Backing her against the panelled wall, he held her there with his body, his face so close that she could see the steel-grey fearlessness through his eyes which, as a child, she had both admired and found intimidating.
‘Well,’ he said, watching the torrent of dark brown hair fall across her face, ‘some things have changed for the better, but not the temper, it seems. You’ll have to deal with that, my lady, if you want to play men’s games.’
Her eyes blazed fiercely into his while she chafed at the shameful closeness of him and at her own stupid helplessness, her voice betraying her agitation. ‘What right have you to walk unannounced and uninvited into my house? And how would you know what’s changed?’ she panted through a curtain of silky hair. ‘My temper is none of your business either. Get off me!’ She heaved at him, but he was as solid as a wall and, instead of moving, he prised the hand away from her breast, turning her palm over to reveal a sticky patch of blood upon it.
He moved back quickly to inspect the vertical slash on her shirt and the red stain that oozed through the fabric, and it was clear to her then that he had not known of this, not perhaps intended it. It had been the same when she was younger, getting hurt while trying to keep up with her brothers and him not caring of her damage, nor of the silence she had kept about her injuries, particularly to her pride.
Their fathers, close friends for years, had promised the two of them as future man and wife, but who could expect an eleven-year-old tomboy to understand or accept the implications of that? And what brash sixteen-year-old would not be more interested in the child’s brothers than in her? Fergus had felt no need to pretend, having more pressing things on his mind than parents’ promises.
Clutching at herself, Nicola tried to turn away, but already her legs had begun to shake with fatigue, making her stumble as he caught her quickly under her knees, tilting her body into his arms. She saw the bright window swing away over her head, then felt the sudden sting of her wound and another rush of anger that forced a strength into her arms. ‘Put me down! Let me go, you great clod! I can manage without you. My steward will…’
But his hands and arms tightened and there was nothing she could do but suffer him to carry her, writhing and fuming with humiliation and her undone plait hanging over his arm, down the length of the hall, up a narrow staircase and through two doors. Finally, he lowered her on to her own tester bed with his arms on each side of her to prevent her from rolling away, ignoring her protests that she could manage well enough without him after all these years.
His face was at first in shadow, so she was only able to guess at the degree of concern in his eyes, or otherwise. But there was little doubt in her mind about his intentions when he caught both her wrists and, transferring them to one large strong hand, held them easily above her head and pressed them down into the soft brocade coverlet. His grip held her tight, and her breast had begun to sting like a burn.
This was as bad as anything she had suffered as a child. ‘No!’ she gasped, almost voiceless with fear. ‘Please…no!’
‘Hush, lass,’ said Sir Fergus. ‘I’ve a right to see what damage I’ve done, and I doubt ye’re going to show me willingly, are you?’
‘You have no right. You are not welcome here. Who asked you?’
‘Your brother George invited me. I came early, that’s all, and as your intended husband I claim the right to inspect the goods beforehand. Hold still.’
As he spoke, his hand was moving her jerkin aside, then the bloodstained slash of her shirt so that the whole of her right breast was revealed, scored lightly across the surface by a bright red line on the inner curve. The blood had already begun to congeal as if a string of rubies had been laid around it.
Speechless, mortified, Nicola watched his eyes in the vain hope of seeing him shamed, but what she saw was not the obnoxious young stripling of her earlier memories. Instead, here was a grown man impervious to shame whose arrogance was beyond anything she had encountered from any of her suitors. Not one of them, she thought, would have dared do such a thing to her.
He had grown even better looking in the last twelve years, his contours more chiselled, his bone structure more sculpted under the bronzed skin, the cheeks lean and blue-shadowed around his square jaw. His cap of short, almost black hair made a peak on his forehead, and a pale scar line ran beneath it, almost touching one angled eyebrow. He wore a gold ring in one ear, and he smelled of the outdoors and a hint of woodsmoke. And he had better say no more of intended husbands. Or intended wives.
‘Tch!’ she heard him say. ‘Not too badly marked. I expect I’ll still have ye, scar and all.’
‘That you’ll not, sir!’ she snarled. ‘Not if you were the last man alive in England. Now get out. This is my house. Get out!’
He did nothing to cover her up again. ‘Then ’tis just as well I’m of Scotland, lass. Isn’t it?’ As if knowing that she would bound up like a spring to attack him, his release of her was cautious, his move backwards catlike, taking him well out of range and halfway to the door just as her two maids entered, alerted by the sound of voices.