Taken by Angeline Fortin (great books of all time TXT) 📗

“I had thought to escort ye to dinner, dear Scarlett.”  A sly grin spread across his lips.  “Perchance, were ye expecting someone no’ so nice?  My brother perhaps?  Should I offer my apologies for disappointing ye?”

A hot blush crept up her cheeks.   Such humiliation burned through her on how things had ended between her and Laird the previous night.  Laird had brought her to the edge of release and she had left them both hanging.   How was she to face him after that?

It certainly wasn’t what she had planned on and he had every right to be angry with her or worse.  Honestly, after the way they parted, who knew what he was thinking?

“You have a dirty mind, Rhys.  No, actually I was expecting… or rather hoping for a bath.  I asked Graeme a half an hour ago if I could have one.”  Two days without a bath was two too many.  Scarlett felt grimy and was afraid she was starting to smell something awful.   The steward had reacted like she was asking for the moon.  For such a religious group of people, they didn’t take the cleanliness is next to godliness theorem very seriously.

“Did the servants no’ bring ye water to bathe?”

“They brought a bucket of water and a cloth.  That is not a bath.”

“Ye wanted a full bath?”  His voice held more than a little surprise.  “While some, like Laird and myself, prefer to totally submerge ourselves as well, opportunities to do so in the castle are rare.  We will often bathe out of doors in the rivers or streams.”

“Why?” Scarlett asked curiously, pushing open the door and inviting him in.

“No’ only is it a great deal of work for the servants to prepare frequent baths, but some, like my lady mother, believe that bathing in such a manner opens the pores,” Rhys answered as he took a chair near her empty fireplace.  “Allowing for evil humours and disease to enter the body.”

“Evil humours?  What disease?”

“The plague for instance.”

“What a load of…  You don’t actually believe that do you?”  Scarlett gaped at Rhys.  Dirt was not a protective barrier between a body and the germs. Somehow, she needed to relay that to these people.

“I dinnae, but some are superstitious.”

“But that’s not how contagions work.”

“Are ye so educated that ye ken these things better than the priests?” he asked, slouching back in the seat and propping his feet up on a nearby cushion until Scarlett was treated to a fine view of his muscular legs and a glimpse of his bare butt under the draping of his kilt.

Scarlett chewed her lip, distracted by the thought of what Laird might or might not be wearing beneath his kilt and that long shirt.  “I think I know a bit about it.”

“Yer educated then?  Can ye read, Scarlett?”

Scarlett shifted her gaze up to his.  There was a glimmer of keen interest in his eye and she wondered what he was digging for.  “Of course.  Can’t you?”

“I can.”  Rhys considered her thoughtfully.  “No’ many ladies of my acquaintance are so skilled however.  Can ye do sums and such, as well?”

“If I count on my fingers and toes,” she answered dryly, bringing a smile to Rhys’ lips.  “What’s with all the questions, Rhys?  You don’t still think I’m a spy, do you?”

Rhys chuckled, shaking his head.  “Nay, but I do wonder if ye might be of the church.  Did ye flee the nunnery, Scarlett?  Is that how ye came to be at Dunskirk?”

Laughter bubbled up inside of her and Scarlett wagged a finger at him.  “You do ask all the best questions, Rhys.”

“That is no’ an answer.”

No, it wasn’t but it was amusing to toy with him when he’d so often done the same with her.  “Let me ask you this: why would you think I am?”

Rhys stroked his chin thoughtfully as he studied her.  “I dinnae think it myself, only cast the lure to bait another but I began to think upon it and wondered if it might be true enough.  Yer a smart lass.  Clever.  Educated.  Ye hae a way of looking upon a man as if he were somehow inferior to yerself.  I once knew a Mother Superior at a convent in Edinburgh who looked at me just so.  And too, few women other than those in God’s service shave their heads.  Novices do so to humble themselves before taking their vows.”

“So every smart woman with a pixie cut must be a nun?”  Scarlett laughed again.  Laird might be able to tie in her knots in moments but his siblings were such good company.   Rhys, in particular, should have been renowned for his diverting banter.

“Ye hae no’ the look of an experienced woman, either, for all yer years and sharp wit,” Rhys said, looking her up and down until Scarlett was plucking at the laced sleeves of her linen dress under his scrutiny.  “Ye do seem to hae a bit of the devil gleaming in yer eye but even so there is something virtuous about you.”

Yes, one that had been a huge part of her Hollywood success story but a nun was the last role she would ever be cast in.  “That’s quite poetic, Rhys, but I’m not that innocent.”

Rhys shrugged as if he didn’t quite believe her.

“What do you think says experience?  The sultry lady of the night look?”  Scarlett shot him a practiced smolder through her lashes that had graced more than one magazine cover and Rhys lifted that brow once more.  He was impressed but then she had practiced it often enough.  A look that said she knew all men wanted her and knew it well. The photographers had loved that naughtiness juxtaposed against her natural wholesome looks. “Experience doesn’t have a look, Rhys.  I don’t have to be experienced to look it or act it.  People fake it all the time.”

“Fake it?  Bah, I could tell,” he said with confidence.

“Could you?” Scarlett