Page 47
Then he’d sent another man on horseback to find her and bring her back because as much as he would have rather ridden out himself, he was needed for sword training. The attack from the forest had showed that even the workers who lived in the village needed to be better trained.
He still needed to go down to the port and supervise the repair and reinforcement of other birlinns to prepare them for the battles to come. Some of the people who lived on the other side of the island had reported an English ship not far off their shore.
But before the man he’d sent had returned to the castle, Jenny, Mhairi, and the children came back. Shortly after Jenny took Mhairi to the physician, she’d disappeared again.
He put his sword back into the sheath. He was so goddamn furious with her. After last night… He’d thought they shared something. For seven years he hadn’t allowed a woman to come close to him. He’d been terrified of falling in love and losing another woman like he’d lost Leitis.
But with Jennifer, he couldn’t resist. She pulled him to her, made him feel things he’d thought he’d never feel again.
He’d thought with Leitis, the great love of his life was dead. That he was destined to be alone for the rest of his life.
So, he wasn’t furious with Jenny because she had left the castle against his word.
He’d been terrified harm would come to her. What if the English decided to land on Islay again? Or outlaws arrived without him knowing?
What if they hurt her? Something broke in him at the thought. Whether he liked or not, he felt so much more for Jenny than he wanted to admit.
He looked at the raspberries in the open palm of her hand, threw a cautious glance around him. Several curious gazes rested on them. The wound in his left shoulder pained him sharply as he grabbed her by the upper arm, more roughly than he’d intended, and dragged her away behind the stables, far from prying eyes.
“What’s wrong with you?” Jenny exclaimed, snatching her arm away. The berries scattered on the ground, and she leaned down and picked them up one by one. “Ruining perfectly good raspberries. They’re delicious, by the way.”
“I couldna give two horse shites about the raspberries. Ye left.”
She glared at him. The strands of her hair were framing her face. Her warm brown eyes were dark and glistening. “And you are behaving like a caveman.”
“I woke up this morn and ye were gone,” he grated out through clenched teeth.
Her cheeks blazed. “Deal with it. I do not belong to you.”
She did not belong to him… But how he wished that she did.
He took a step closer to her. She was small and now in direct proximity to his body. He could smell the scent of sun and flowers from her head, and her own womanly smell he wanted to inhale and make part of his body and his soul.
“Maybe ye should,” he said. “I made my intentions clear last night. And I didna make them lightly.”
Her eyelashes fluttered. She opened her mouth and closed it. Then she stepped away from him and waved her hand towards the village. “How can you keep chasing me when you have so many issues in your little kingdom that need immediate attention?”
He frowned. “Issues?”
“The orphanage was a disaster. A breeding ground for bacteria…miasma, I mean.”
“I already have a man that’s dealing with that.”
“Yes, but what about the church? The sewage pit?”
He blinked. “What is wrong with the church?”
“It needs to be cleaned and aired out. Many of the people coming out of there have tuberculosis.”
He blinked. “Tubercu— What?”
“Um. Consumption, I guess that’s what it used to called.”
“Aye. There’s consumption in the village.”
“The drinking water is right next to the sewage pit. It means disease. People are basically drinking their own excrement.”
His face paled. “’Tis far enough.”
