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throat.
     
Tearing his gaze from her, he stared across the lochan at the cloud shadows teasing their way across the braes—stared until he’d better steeled himself.
     
Thus fortified, he touched her face again, used the edge of his dampened sleeve to wipe her blood-stained cheek. “Have no fear, all will be well,” he murmured, willing it to be so, hoping his assurances weren’t just empty blundering. “You wear your good health as robustly as your high looks—a single wee cut from a ewe’s hoof will not be enough to have done with such a braw fine lassie.”
     
His heart thudding, he lifted the clump of sphagnum and peered at her forehead. Praise the saints, the bleeding appeared to have lessened. But as if his ill ease had not yet been fully unfurled, the moment he pressed the moss to her wound again, a great shudder tore through her and she began to shiver.
     
Uncontrollably.
     
Truth be told, she shook so fiercely that just by holding her he could feel her every tremble echo down the length of his own over-chilled body.
     
Her teeth chattered, too.
     
At once, stinging heat shot up Robbie’s neck. He ought be scorned with a thousand Gaelic curses! The lass was dripping wet, freezing, and like as not catching a surer death than a single ewe’s kick could e’er hope to give her, and he’d done naught but slap a clump of quickly-dug healing moss onto her forehead.
     
His own head beginning to throb, Robbie pushed to his feet, already unbuckling his sword belt. Casting it aside, he drew in a deep, shoulder-bracing breath, prepared himself for what he was about to do.
     
The lass needed to be stripped naked, rubbed dry, then held warm until she stirred.
     
Just as he, too, ought—and soon would be—shedding more than just his sword belt.
     
To prove it, he shrugged out of his drenched plaid, yanked off his boots, and made admirably short work of any other piece of cold and cloying garb yet clinging to him until naught clothed him but the afternoon’s gilding sunlight and the fine Highland breeze.
     
Full naked, and with the living air around him crackling with expectation, he strode to his horse, his purpose soundly fixed. And damn his unchivalrous hide, but he thrummed with excited anticipation as well.
     
A fool could see the lass wore no undergown and that once freed of her soggy kirtle, naught but her fiery braids would cover her luscious breasts. A splendid bounty he’d already feasted his gaze upon. And he wouldn’t be a man if he hadn’t noted that she lacked hose as well—naught but the smooth, sleek skin of her bared calves showed above her sadly scuffed boots.
     
“Blessed Saint Columba!” Robbie muttered as he rummaged in his traveling gear, pulled out a voluminous plaid and two clean linen tunics.
     
Wheeling about, he returned to her, dropped the items on a patch of high-growing deer grass, and, once again, promptly forgot the wholly absurd vow he may as well have scribbled on water. Driven by a force he did not even consider schooling, he let his gaze drift lower than her nose.
     
A good deal lower.
     
Ignoring any shades of reproof his honor might hurl at him, he listened only to the rapid clacking of her chattering teeth and, sinking to his knees, reached for the edges of her torn bodice. Already, the ragged cloth gaped wide, exposing her in all her lush plentitude. Robbie swallowed, his heart pounding as he began easing the drenched gown down her shivering body.
     
Glistening droplets of water sparkled on her full, perfectly formed breasts and tiny rivulets formed, rolling down the wet-gleaming skin of her stomach to form eye-catching little pools where the bundled mass of her soaked skirts yet bunched about her naked hips.
     
Robbie gave himself an inward shake, and summoned all his strength. Then, with a quick downward tug, he freed her of the sopping garments.
     
Again, the sheer impact of her hit him like an iron-balled fist to the gut, her ripe lushness stealing his breath and firing