A Perfect Knight For Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

to start. Besides which, she’d chosen this . . . or something like it. She’d already decided that no matter what awaited her, any fate away from Rochester was better than wedding him.
    The space glimmering in front of her eyes got shadowed and then filled with the huge frame of Thayne MacGowan, crawling onto the ground beside her. He then compounded that surprise by spinning onto his back, showing one tanned and naked upper leg that didn’t get covered as his plaid cloth settled into place. It was vaguely threatening with a view of muscle and strength. She had no need of the reminder. She’d already been held against more male than she knew existed and a lot more than she could handle. He should wear more. And he should wear it properly. Not just tossed on like an afterthought. They all should, although every other man in the makeshift camp paled if compared to this one.
    Thayne acted like he knew the bent of her thinking as he just reclined there, breathing slowly and with deep breaths that raised and lowered the broad span of his chest. He hadn’t shed his shirt but since it was fashioned of thin muslin and was now soaked with rain, it wouldn’t have made any difference. The fabric was useless as a cover. It filmed every shadow and bump and rope of a muscled physique few claimed. Edmund certainly hadn’t. Nor Rochester. Nor had her father. Or any other male she’d ever seen. Thayne MacGowan looked primal and uncouth and menacing even as he portrayed complete lassitude. He kept his head atop bent arms, looking at the tanned skin above him as if he lay atop feathers and not the blanket-covered decaying deadfall of shed leaves.
    Amalie held her breath through countless heartbeats, waiting for the moisture atop her eyes to dry. She cursed silently as more tears joined in, making it inevitable what would happen if she blinked. She thanked the tears at the same time for making him indistinct and blurred.
    “I’ve come to ask you something,” he finally said. He was using a soft low tone with a hint of brogue. “Actually . . . I’ve come to ask you several things.”
    Amalie would’ve answered if her voice worked and if she wasn’t fighting what couldn’t possibly be full-out sobs. She refused the emotion. The rivulet of shivers up and down her back and climbing her shoulders were hard to endure. They’d be worse if she had a witness to it. She knew it instinctively.
    She nodded and looked away into the dark mass of plaid-covered lumps of men. Although the view was firelit, rain-washed, and then tear-blurred, it was still easy to spot the large quantity of Dunn-Fyne men sleeping just on the other side of a fallen log. She tipped her head to send one tear trail into her temple while the other one went down her nose and then she righted her chin again, giving him her profile.
    “I’ll na’ have it bandied about that I’d nae interest in my family. Either my new bairn . . . or the wife.”
    He was worried about gossip?
    “You ken?”
    She’d decided the word ken took the place of ‘understand’ most of the time. It seemed to stand in for ‘know’ as well. And for what should be ‘easily apparent.’ Or whatever else they wanted to use it for. She nodded.
    “I also need you to cease the invite you’ve proffered me all eve. I’m na’ immune. You ken that as well?”
    “In . . . vite?” Her voice was missing. It didn’t seem to matter.
    “Aye. Invite. To enjoy you. All eve. Just as I said.”
    “I never—!” Her exclamation had a hint of sound attached to it this time. It carried every bit of her shock, too.
    “I’ve nae wish to consummate our marriage. Well . . . actually I do, but ’twould go better if I weren’t surrounded by Dunn-Fyne men at the time.”
    Amalie sucked in a gasp, pulled in tears with it, and choked. That started a coughing spasm that filled her eyes worse than before, dislodged the infant into a berth at Amalie’s’s far side, engendered several grunts and snorts from