The Ghost Read online

  3

  JOAN COULD BARELY close the door behind her, her hands were shaking so badly. Actually, her entire body was shaking. Her skin was like ice. Fear and panic had invaded her body like a snowstorm in the dead of winter and wouldn’t let go.

  It’s all right. You are safe. It’s over. Nothing happened.

  But it had been close. Too close.

  She crept through the darkness of the corridor, winding her way down the stairs of the Captain’s Tower from Sir Richard’s third-floor chamber.

  She felt clumsy . . . awkward . . . tentative. Her heart was still beating like a drum in her chest and ears. She couldn’t shake the moment of terror. God, she could still feel his hands on her, pinning her down, not letting her move. The memories had come hard and fast and for one horrible moment she had been paralyzed with fear. It had been too similar. She’d thought he was going to . . .

  But then her plan worked and the threat had collapsed in a drugged heap. The panic, however, remained.

  Good gracious, she’d been so shaken she’d almost forgotten to search his room! A search that had resulted in a missive with his orders and details regarding the ports and shipping routes for getting the necessary supplies into Scotland for the war. An army of the size Edward was gathering would require far more than they could carry, even in an extensive baggage train. Now she knew how it would get there.

  There were probably only a handful of people who knew the information she had discovered, and soon one of them would be Robert the Bruce. Thanks to her.

  It had been worth it, she told herself. But her frazzled nerves didn’t seem to realize that. The shadows seemed to jump out at her as she wound her way down the darkened corridors. At well past midnight, most of the lamps had already been extinguished for the night. She hurried down the stairs, going down faster than she should, trying to put as much distance between her and what had nearly happened back in that room, when her slippered foot landed awkwardly on one of the narrow stairs. The stairs were made of stone, and as they became worn with use, they could become slippery. She discovered this the painful way when her foot slid out from under her.

  She tried to catch herself, and in doing so wrenched her ankle in the effort to find her footing. She tumbled down the last part of the spiral staircase, and likely would have landed in a painful heap at the base had someone not caught her.

  “Christ! Are you all right?”

  She was so startled to feel the man’s hands on her, it took a moment for her to process his words . . . and his face.

  But when she did . . .

  God in heaven! A heart that she thought incapable of catching did just that. If she still believed in handsome knights riding to the rescue, this man would have personified her fantasy. Dark golden-blond hair shimmered in the flickering light. Piercing blue eyes that were so crystal and clear they seemed to sparkle in the darkness. A finely featured face that might have been boyish were it not for the slightly skewed once-broken nose and the dark shadow of stubble shaped into a quarter-inch beard. Tall and broad shouldered, he had the lean solid build of a man who lifted a sword for a living. He’d caught her as if she weighed nothing, and the hands holding her were big and strong.

  But even were he not wearing chain mail and surcoat, she would have known he was a knight. He looked like he should be riding on a white charger with his sword held high in the air ready to vanquish dragons and rescue fair maidens, which given their current position was appropriate.

  Suddenly aware that he’d caught her in a way that might be construed as intimate—and the feel of her breasts crushed against the solid steel wall of his chest certainly felt that—she blushed (for real!) and tried to regain her composure as she pushed back to extract herself from his hold.

  “I’m fine,” she said unevenly, sounding more like a starry-eyed maid than she’d ever sounded in her life. “Thank you. I’m sorry to have troubled—”

  She stopped suddenly, crying out in pain as she stepped back and put weight on her twisted ankle. She might have stumbled again had he not still been holding her arm.

  “Careful,” he said gently, steadying her on the stair above him. “You’re hurt.”

  He had a very nice voice. Deep, soft, and soothing. There was something kind and almost gallant about it.

  Good gracious, she really was getting carried away with the knight fantasy, wasn’t she? A long time ago she’d believed in the stories of handsome men in shining armor who not only espoused knightly ideals but also lived them. Now she knew differently; experience had cured her of all her illusions. Men like that only existed in faerie tales. With every lecherous look and dishonorable suggestion by the “knights” around her, they proved it to her. Honor, nobility, and respect didn’t mean a thing when lust was involved. Men—even knights—only wanted one thing.

  But this man wasn’t looking at her like that at all.

  Not knowing what to make of it, she frowned and told herself to give him time. He would probably try to turn his role of rescuer to his advantage soon. She could hear it in her head: How can I thank you? she would ask, and his response with a wicked smile, I’m sure we can think of something.

  Aye, something that no doubt included mouths and tongues, and him trying to grope her chest.

  Having successfully cleared the stars from her eyes, her voice (and heartbeat) returned to normal. “It’s my ankle. I seem to have twisted it.”

  His expression shifted to one that seemed to be of genuine concern. “Are you sure it’s not broken?”

  She nodded. “It’s a little tender, that’s all. I will wrap it when I get back to my room, and I’m sure it will be fine.”

  She’d never noticed how tight and narrow the stairwell was—or maybe it was just because he was so big. His shoulders almost spanned the width. He seemed to have confiscated all the air. She was finding it difficult to breathe, and then when she did . . . her senses were filled with leather, wind, and the hint of something spicy . . . maybe cloves?

  She was a tall woman at six inches over five feet, but even standing on the stair above him, the top of her head only came up to his chin. But their faces were close, and she was too aware of every inch between them—of which there were only a precious handful.

  She studied his face again. He was even better looking than she’d realized initially. There was something vaguely familiar about him . . .

  She gasped, shock making her forget herself for a moment. No wonder she thought he looked like a fantasy. He was a fantasy—her fantasy, as it turned out.

  Joan had never forgotten the handsome young knight who’d caught her fourteen-year-old girlish imagination at the market in Roxburgh six years before. At the time, she hadn’t realized he’d been with her mother. She simply thought him the most magnificent young knight she’d ever seen. Sir Alexander Seton. She’d learned his name in the intervening years, and his place in the Guard . . .

  Suddenly, what else that meant struck her.

  Her thoughts must have shown on her face.

  “Is something wrong, my lady?” he asked.

  Aye, something was wrong. Alex Seton wasn’t a gallant knight by any cry of imagination—he was a traitor.

  Rescuing two young women in as many days was a bit excessive—even for him. MacSorley would have been making jokes at Alex’s expense for weeks.

  The fact that this was among his first thoughts after catching the woman falling down the stairs told him how much the confrontation with his former brethren still was weighing on him.

  His other thoughts were equally troubling—especially when he recognized the young woman in his arms. Having lustful thoughts about Bella MacDuff now MacRuairi’s daughter shamed him. But Christ, the lass was even more stunning than he remembered (and old enough for him to notice, as opposed to the last time he’d seen her). With her dark-as-midnight long, wavy, and naughtily mussed hair, her wide, red mouth, snow-white skin, and take-me-to-the-bedchamber-and-ravish-me-senseless eyes, the lass was sin and sensual pl