Kissing the Countess by Susan King Read Free Book Online Page A

voice hoarse. If nothing else, that forlorn little voice decided him.
    "Are you familiar with the old custom of bundling?" he murmured.
    "Aye. It is still practiced here in the Highlands."
    "Is it? You've bundled with your own young man?"
    She sat up. "No one has courted me."
    He blinked. "I find that hard to believe."
    She shrugged. "I am the plain girl."
    "The what? You're not plain at all."
    She laughed, a soft, delightful sound. In the firelight, a dimple appeared, vanished. "It is another custom in some parts of the Highlands. I am the youngest of my siblings, and so I am called the Plain Girl. The one who stays at home as her parents age to run their household. Plain girls do not usually marry."
    "You agreed to this?"
    "It was always assumed that it was my place in the family. My mother passed away years ago, my older sisters married and moved away from the glen, and one of my brothers has left Scotland to seek his fortune. I remained at Glenachan to care for my father and my brother Finlay." She looked at him, and he saw a little spark of defiance. He suddenly wondered how completely she had accepted that fate. "I have never been courted, never bundled with a suitor. Besides, there are not many young men left to court anyone in the glen now."
    "Because of the clearings?"
    "Aye, and the greed of Earl of Kildonan."
    He let out a long breath. "I see. So Plain Girls never wed?"
    She fed a chunk of peat into the fire. He saw it smoke and not quite catch. "Sometimes, after their parents are gone. Usually by then it's too late for them. Mostly they become old spinsters, set in their ways, no husband, no children."
    "I would think you will have suitors no matter how long they have to wait for you."
    She glanced at him. "Thank you. But it's true I'm plain. I'm... well, I am called Catriona Mhor."
    He knew some Gaelic from boyhood. "Big Catriona?"
    "Aye, and I'm taller than my father and my sisters and brothers but for Finlay. Strong as an ox, my father says of me. My aunt says I am built for hard work like a man."
    He did not much like the aunt or the father, he decided. He watched the hearth's glow give her hair the color of flame. "You are tall, but not so big. My sister is nearly as tall as you are, and no one calls her big. Nor are you plain. I would call you... Catriona Bhan," he murmured, drawing out the whispery "v" sound of the Gaelic word. "Fair Catriona."
    She half smiled. "That's very kind."
    "And I would be honored to bundle with you. It will keep us from freezing, after all."
    She regarded him warily, and looked with longing at the abandoned blanket. "Very well."
    He sat by the blanket and she followed. Deftly she folded the blanket neatly around them and lay back, as he did. The material wrapped over him and under her, with its end tucked between them.
    "Interesting." He folded his arms over the cloth.
    "Keep your arms inside," she said in the darkness.
    He slid his arms under the material. "I promise to behave myself. But you had better, also."
    "I will." He heard a laugh in her voice.
    "Are you comfortable?"
    He heard the chatter of her teeth. "Almost." He saw a puff of frosted air as she spoke.
    Lying beside her, he felt his body arouse and tighten. He had not slept beside a woman for a long while, and his body reacted to her nearness. As warmth collected in the space between them, he felt a distinct throbbing, a surge, gathering desire. But he had no intention of acting on that compelling need to take her into his arms. He willed himself to stillness again.
    Soon he realized that she slept. Glad of the trust implicit in that, he tried to follow suit, tried to keep his thoughts away from her lush shape, sultry voice, gentleness—and irresistible nearness.
    Just a few hours more in this bitterly cold little house and this chaste, barely warm little nest, and soon they would awaken to morning sun and melting ice and snow. Then they could make their way to the glen, and home.
    He envied Catriona MacConn, in a way.