Chapter Five
She sped across the empty dining room and plucked a candle from its perch, intent upon using its wan light to wind her way to the hidden linen closet beneath the stairs. There she might make her bed. Grimacing, she turned down the back guest hallway, which was only a short few doors on the way to the stairs. Evelyn had never been fond of small spaces. They terrified her, in fact. Her stomach twisted uneasily at the idea of spiders that surely made their nocturnal homes in the dank recesses of the cupboard.
Better to spend her night with them than the MacKay. Spurred on by the terrifying thought, she hastened her steps toward the foot of the stairs. She intended to ponder on the strange and frightening phenomenon she’d just experienced once safely locked away.
She jumped at the unexpected sound of heavy boots making their way towards the hall. Within seconds, the man would cut her off from her intended hiding place.
Panicking, she snuffed her candle and shoved it in the linen basket, hoping to dispel the fresh smoke. Then, she ducked into the closest guest room doorway alcove and balefully eyed the closet and its comparative safety, now steps out of reach.
Holding her breath, she flattened herself against the doorjamb, certain the darkness veiled her completely.
The weighty footsteps paused before rounding the corner where Evelyn hid. Tremors weakened her legs, and a throbbing pain pulsed in her jaw where she clenched it tightly. After a moment’s hesitation, the footsteps resumed and a large, dark shadow passed her hiding spot trailing the clean smell of leather, earth, and heather.
Roderick MacLauchlan.
What was he doing out so late? And how was it possible for him to make his way in the darkness without the aid of a candle? Even with eyes adjusted to the dimness, Evelyn had difficulty distinguishing his hulking form.
He stopped ten paces beyond her and turned the key in its lock. The lamplight of his room spilled from the open doorway and onto the burnished skin of his bare torso. Fortunately, the illumination didn’t reach her alcove.
Her breath caught again as she drank in the sight of his unclothed back. He momentarily filled the expanse of the entry, and then disappeared into the room.
As his door latched, cloaking her in darkness once more, Evelyn sagged against the wall. A whispered prayer of relief escaped her lips. But before she was able to form a coherent thought, the door burst open and Roderick stepped out into the hallway pinning her where she stood with his unrelenting glare.
Alarm spiked her heartbeat, and his nostrils flared; as did a banked fire in his fathomless glittering eyes.
At that moment, Evelyn began to understand the nature of a Berserker. A man possessing the speed to leap across an entire dining room faster than the eyes could track. That could easily break a brawny man’s thick bone with one hand. Someone who had acute hearing and night vision akin to that of a bird of prey and who could easily identify the scent of fear.
Evelyn couldn’t slow her breathing as they stared at each other. The way his eyes insolently traveled the length of her body, even with half of it covered by a heavy linen basket, caused peculiar warmth to spawn low in her belly, and tendrils of it to curl upwards toward her heart and spread out through her fingertips.
Embarrassed and confused, she lowered her gaze to the expanse of his smooth, hairless chest. The rounded muscles flared into immense shoulders, which ebbed and crested into the thickest biceps she’d ever seen. Long, thick and veined, his arms remained hairless until below his elbows where a light dusting of black hair gleamed in the lamplight and crawled toward his wrists. As he stepped out of the doorway, more hair caught her eye, this trailed between the obdurate ripples of muscle that made up his torso and disappeared into his dark trews. The glossy strings of his damp ebony hair confirmed a recent bath.
The niggling warmth became a pervading flood and hot bewildering moisture pooled between her thighs, which she was suddenly aware she’d been clenching together.
Roderick’s nostrils flared wider and he tightened his jaw, an unholy knowledge lurking in his otherworldly eyes.
After a tense moment, he broke their mesmerizing connection to slowly gesture with his eyes toward the light of his room and then looked back at her. He jerked his head toward the doorway a few times. An unmistakable invitation.
He was asking her into his bed.
Roderick remained patiently immobile as she battled her uncertainty. What if bedding a berserker was dangerous? Could he control his formidable strength? What if, in her ignorance, she did something to make him angry? Evelyn knew a little of what happened when a man took a woman. She’d come frighteningly close to understanding it in the convent where she’d spent her childhood. In any case, her entire limited experience lent her to believe that she was better off a virgin for the rest of her life.
Yet, a knowledge that lay dormant all of her twenty years whispered that she unequivocally desired to see the rest of this magnificent man.
Shifting her eyes to the cupboard, images of being stashed in other closets and nooks danced before her. Listening to conversations no innocent child should be privy too and saving or damning people with her sight at the point of a bishop’s dirk. Crying in the night as the blood of the innocent dead called out against her in her dreams.
The sound of irate masculine conversation carried down from the stairwell. Moorland’s Inn stood only three stories high and she knew without a doubt who descended from the attic in search of her.
Hastily making her reckless decision, she ducked past the half-naked warrior into his room, laundry basket and all.