By Grace Possessed Read Online Free PDF

short coat of darkest green wool and over a shirt of cream linen so brightly colored it was almost saffron. Shaking the white flakes from his head like a dog shaking off water, he lifted the wool length over it as a covering before wrapping the rest of it around him like a blanket.
    His movements were so swift and unstudied, yet rifewith masculine grace, that they stopped the breath in Cate’s throat. His hair was black silk, falling in waves to his shoulders, his jawline square and firm. His shoulders were broad enough that he had dislodged sheaves of snow from them. The movement of his plaid, as he drew it higher, exposed a length of thigh that was brown, hard and corded with muscle.
    The sensation that seized her was heated and virulent, an exhilaration in the blood. She had never been private with a man before, never been close to one in quite the same way. Oh, she had been seated next to admirers at table on occasion, had walked in the cloisters at their side. There had always been other people about, however—her sisters, the king’s guards, stewards and sentries—to prevent any untoward familiarity.
    There was no one here except her and the Scotsman. He could do whatever he pleased to her with no one to gainsay him. All she had to depend upon was his sworn word that he had no desire to take her to wife.
    That said nothing of what else he might desire of her. Her strength was no match for his, no matter how hard she might fight him. She would be at his mercy. And why that thought made her ache with emptiness deep inside instead of terrifying her, she could not have said.
    Silence stretched around them, broken only by the whine of snow-laden wind in the limbs overhead and the flutter and snap of the fire. The cold air, scented with wood smoke and snow, hurt the back of Cate’s nose and threatened to freeze her lungs. She was miserable and not precisely secure in her mind. And yet she could have been worse off, she knew, much worse.
    “It was good of you to follow upon my trail after killing the boar,” she said with some difficulty. “I am truly thankful. If…if you had not come, I don’t know what might have happened.”
    His eyes glinted with a blue steel edge as he glanced at her. “Don’t you?”
    “You think they would have…” She shook her head. “I’d have been worth more if held for ransom.”
    “Oh, they’d have thought of that, too, I don’t doubt. But rapine and abduction have the same penalty, and a man can hang only once.”
    She swallowed, clasping her hands together. “Then I’m even more in your debt.”
    “Don’t think of it,” he said. “It didn’t happen.”
    “No, but I wish there was some way—”
    “And you’d be wise to keep that wish behind your teeth,” he interrupted, “unless you would invite me under your cloak as well as into your shelter.”
    Hot chagrin flooded her face, burning its way to her cheekbones, and then receded so quickly that she felt light-headed. “I didn’t mean it that way, and you know it well.”
    A grunt shook him. “So much for gratitude.”
    “And neither did you mean it.” She narrowed her eyes in sudden discovery. “You wanted to silence me.”
    “If so, it didn’t serve.”
    “I can be quiet enough,” she said with precision, and turned her shoulder to him. Frowning, she stared out into the falling curtain of white that blended from gray to black beyond the firelight.
     
    Ross missed the music of Lady Catherine’s voice when she stopped speaking. He also missed her pointed questions and even her prying into what was none of her concern. He missed her warm and human company even more after she scooted deeper into the lean-to he had made, turned her back and lay down wrapped in her fur-lined cloak.
    He told himself he was better off without the distraction. He could concentrate more on what was around him, on what might be watching from the woods that whispered around him with the falling snow.
    Of course, her resolve to be