The Wedding Dress (23 page)

He started to lunge over the fur-covered mattress, stopped himself. Damned if he dared get any closer to that bed. He might not be able to resist the temptation of catching her by the wrist, dragging her down, pinning her beneath him—sword be damned.

A ragged groan escaped from his throat as he rounded the bed.
The sword. Keep your mind on the sword,
he warned himself.
Or you could bloody well hurt her….

Concentrate, man. Put an end to this before it gets any more out of hand.

But for the first time he could remember since he’d picked up his first sword his arm wouldn’t obey his command. Jared’s breath caught as his gaze slid past her weapon, to where her shift ran amok. Instead of helping matters with her hasty fumbling, she’d made them worse. Embroidered scarlet surcoat and creamy linen shift cascaded down her arm like the waterfall he’d shown her on their first wild ride. Desire seared through him as a swell of breast rose like a pale moon above the cloth.

A gentleman would have called a halt, let her rearrange herself. But Jared had never felt less like a gentleman in his life.

Oblivious to the bounty she was displaying, she leaned toward him, just the rim of her aureole peeking above the cloth, her nipple so close Jared could almost taste it. One tiny tug and he could take her in his mouth….

Jared froze as something cold kissed his throat.

The blunted edge of Emma’s sword.

Chapter Twelve

“G
OTCHA
.” E
MMA GRINNED
, infuriatingly pleased with herself as she tugged her shift back into place.

“You did that on purpose!” Jared accused.

“Give the boy a gold star. Come on, Butler. I’m waiting.”

“For what?” He glowered, not sure who he was more irritated with—her for tempting him with female wiles or himself for falling headlong into her trap.

“Admit it,” she challenged. “It
is
possible the sword fight in the legend is true. I got my sword to your throat. There’s no reason Lady Aislinn couldn’t have done the same thing.”

Outrage flooded Jared. “Lady Aislinn never would have flashed her breast at Sir Brannoc!” He bristled, as defensive as if Castle Craigmorrigan’s lady were standing shamefaced right next to him. “She wouldn’t have lowered herself to such a cheap shot.”

He expected Emma to come out swinging, snapping some cutting rejoinder, clashing with words as fiercely as they’d just battled with swords. But instead of striking back, she suddenly sobered, her eyes misty, her expression far away as if she were trying to peer back through time to find answers six hundred years old.

“Really, Jared?” Emma queried softly. “You’re so sure she wouldn’t show a little bit of skin to save her castle? If the survival of everyone I loved hung in the balance, I’d do whatever I had to do to protect them. Everything I’ve read about Lady Aislinn tells me she would have, too.”

Emma rested the blunted tip of her heavy sword on the ground, her eyes searching his. “But you know her better than anyone else in the world, Jared. What do you think she would have done?”

Emma was waiting for an answer. But for once he couldn’t fire one off, weighted with the authority he’d earned through years of research. Research close to obsession.

He’d been so sure of himself when it came to this castle and the lady who presided over it. But now…He wasn’t sure about anything anymore. Not ancient legends. Not Emma McDaniel, gazing up at him as if he held all the wisdom in the world. Would Lady Aislinn have risked exciting Sir Brannoc’s lust in such a reckless manner? Might she have hoped that her body would earn the survival of the people of Castle Craigmorrigan?

What if her beauty was the only coin she could trade in?

Emma is right,
instinct told him. The medieval lady he’d come to adore would have displayed the same courage, the same resourcefulness Emma had shown. She would have braved Sir Brannoc’s desire to win the lives of innocents and get him to leave Craigmorrigan. Though she’d be damned for it in the end.

How strange that Emma should be the one to unearth that facet of Lady Aislinn’s character, one Jared in all his years of study had never suspected. And yet, it fired his imagination with other possibilities, new theories fascinating him, daring him to prove…

What? That Sir Brannoc had fallen in love with Lady Aislinn? Dark to her light, night to her day?

Would Emma’s interpretation explain the other facet of the legend that had always troubled Jared? The part that claimed an infamous scoundrel like Sir Brannoc had actually fulfilled his end of the devil’s bargain he’d struck?
The day you get a sword to my throat is the day I leave this castle….

Nothing and no one could have held him to it. He’d forsworn himself so many times before, broken oaths he’d made on his honor as a knight. There was no reason on God’s earth why Lady Aislinn should have trusted him to keep his word. Brannoc had nothing left to lose.

Yet he’d been preparing to leave Castle Craigmorrigan when a trembling squire had brought him the dread news. Lady Aislinn and the fairy flag had vanished. Instead of taking his rage out on the castle folk, he’d raced out into the night, half-mad, wandering Scotland in search of them both.

Jared had been so sure it was the fairy flag the black-hearted knight sought, but now as he peered into Emma McDaniel’s face he wondered.

“Jared?” she prodded, questions in her eyes, shields she’d held up to him for so long lowered, leaving her soft parts with no defense. He thought he’d taught her better than that.

“I suppose anything is possible,” he said, taking refuge in science. “There’s no way to prove your theory either way.”

“I’m not asking you to prove it. I’m asking what you feel.”

“My feelings are immaterial. I deal in facts.”

“I don’t believe that. Maybe your science depends on carbon dating and luminescent whatever-you-call-it, that stuff Davey told me about. But you…you feel this legend as deep in your bones as I do. The magic. The mystery. Things you can’t touch or taste or write down as fact in that little notebook of yours. So tell me. Do you think Lady Aislinn might have tried to seduce Sir Brannoc into surrendering or not?”

If the castle’s valiant lady had been even half as beautiful as Emma, Jared admitted to himself, it wouldn’t have taken any effort at all to turn Brannoc’s head from war to far more dangerous pursuits.

Had Sir Brannoc’s breath rasped like Jared’s did now? Had the knight’s heart hammered in his chest? Desire welling up inside him so hot, so ferocious, that he couldn’t stop himself from touching, tasting…taking.

Jared’s hand itched to bury itself in black curls, pull Emma’s mouth to his. Could she see it? Feel it? Alarm flared in Emma’s eyes, as if she suddenly realized she’d let down her guard. He felt her shields slam shut.

“Oh, well. It doesn’t matter. Like you say, we—we couldn’t prove it anyway,” she stammered, breathless.

Hefting her sword again, she turned away from him, hastening back to the middle of the room. Jared knew damned well the woman was trying to put space between them. As if that tactic would cool his blood at all. Didn’t she know it was the oldest aphrodisiac in the book? A woman tempting a man to madness, then retreating before he tasted her?

“Listen, I don’t think I quite had that last maneuver right,” she said, tossing her hair back over her shoulder. The glimpse of her graceful throat made Jared want to bury his face in the silky column, kiss the fragile skin until it made her moan. “Do you think we could try it again?”

“Try what?” Jared jerked his mind back from the tantalizing image.

“Sword fighting. That last maneuver.”

Jared scowled. “You’ve already won the damned bet.”

“Right.” Her face clouded. “I bet you’re just itching to head down to your trailer, fax the studio and tell Barry Robards you were wrong about me. That I’ll make a brilliant Lady Aislinn. That was our deal, right?”

“Right,” Jared said between gritted teeth. Nothing like the prospect of eating crow to irritate the hell out of a man. For an instant he wished he were more like Sir Brannoc. Could say the hell with the deal. So Emma
was
turning out to be better than Jared had expected. He still thought Angelica Robards would make a more believable Lady Aislinn.

Even so, he couldn’t stop remembering Emma’s face when she’d told him the castle’s lady would do whatever necessary to save the people she loved. Angelica Robards hadn’t come up with that insightful bit of characterization. And neither had he. “I said I’d call Robards,” he grumbled. “I will. At least I’ll have
something
to say for a change when I answer the endless faxes and phone calls he’s been pestering me with.”

“Robards has been contacting you to see how my training is coming?”

“He’s—”
Scared his pet project is going to crash in a ball of flames. Has far too much time to imagine Jade Star playing opposite Oscar winner Liam Neeson leaving Robards an industry laughingstock.
But Jared couldn’t say that to Emma, wound her that way. Not anymore.

“He’s…worried,” Jared finished lamely.

“Listen, I know exactly how he feels about me. And I don’t want any praise I don’t earn. And I certainly don’t want anyone to lie about how they feel my performance will be. So don’t.”

“What?”

“Don’t call. I already have the role and you still don’t think I’m right for the part.”
Do you?

The question shone in her eyes, but she didn’t ask it. He couldn’t answer. His gaze dipped down to where her pulse beat in the hollow of her throat. Her fingers fluttered up, covering that vulnerable spot as if he’d kissed it.

“You won the fight,” he said. “What more do you want?”

He’d expected her to turn away, hurt. But she seemed to appreciate his honesty. Her eyes flashed with a challenge old as time.

“What I want is to make the fight scenes in Lady Valiant as realistic as possible,” she said. “I want people to share her triumph, feel her passion, just like I do now.”

Passion?
Jared thought.
She seemed as turned on as he was and he hadn’t even touched her.

She moistened her lips. He bit back a groan. “I mean, really, Jared,” she taunted, the husky note in her voice betraying her. “Do you have any idea how spectacularly the scene would film if I could disarm you—I mean, Sir Brannoc—completely?”

He barked a derisive laugh. “That will never happen.”

Sparks of all-too-familiar stubbornness lit her eyes. “Butler, Butler, I would have thought my little triumph a few minutes ago would have taught you never to tell a McDaniel something is impossible.”

“This time it is. Because after that little feminine trick of yours, I won’t be holding back.”

She latched on to his verbal thrust as if it were a life raft in stormy seas. Her eyes glittered. “Oh, so now you
let
me win. Is that your story?”

“We’ll see soon enough. Woman or no, you’ll be getting the full power of my blade this time.”

The double meaning raked at Jared’s self-control, and he imagined how she’d feel beneath him. Emma caught the full curve of her lower lip with her teeth and he wondered if she was thinking the same thing.

Dream on, man. A woman like her wanting a man like you?

And yet, he couldn’t deny the magnetism between them. “Let’s get on with it, then,” he ordered, voice low. “I’ve just remembered a crucial bit of training I forgot to pass on.”

Her eyes narrowed with that incredible intensity he’d come to admire, the dedication she brought to anything having to do with her craft. What must it be like to work that hard, be that devoted to acting and suspect somewhere in your heart what Jared already knew—that your best would never been good enough? Your talent would never measure up to the genetic accident that made you almost too beautiful to be real. Empathy welled up in Jared, filling him with emotions he didn’t want to feel.

She was getting too close, burrowing into him too deep, past defenses that meant survival.

She raised her blade to the ready, balancing lightly on the balls of her feet. “So, quit looking at me like the big bad wolf, Butler. Let’s see this crucial bit of training that’s going to help me kick your butt even more magnificently than I did the last time.”

Jared crossed his sword with hers, each swing precise, graceful in what his sword master years past had called his dance with death.

Emma met him blow for blow, new confidence making her eyes shine. But this time his focus couldn’t be shattered. He narrowed his gaze, determined to use the one weapon at his disposal—the single blow he was dead certain would dissolve the perilous connection between them once and for all.

“I’m…aging here, Butler,” she taunted, breathless. “You planning to…show me your…new move any time…before my next birthday?” she dared him. “Or can’t you get past my…guard? Come on…sword boy…hit me with…your best shot. What’s this…crucial bit of strategy?”

He drove her sword wide to the right. Before she could whip it back to defend herself, he caught her wrist with his other hand, leaving her body open. But instead of bringing his own weapon to bear, he shoved her back against the tower’s stone wall. “I fight dirty, too.” His mouth crashed down on hers.

Emma reeled, struggling to keep her knees from buckling as Jared’s hot, hard kiss set her body on fire.

She could have stomped on his instep or kneed him in the groin and given the man any of the lessons in self-defense her grandfather had taught her. Instead, she did the unthinkable. Kissed Jared Butler back.

Her sword dropped from numb fingers.

He felt so good as his lips devoured hers, that rock-hard body pinning her against the rough stone wall. She could feel his heart thundering, his breath rasping as he angled his face to ravish her mouth more deeply. His tongue traced her lips, demanding entry, and she let him in, her own tongue dueling with his, tasting all that was male and primitive, a desperation far too deep, mingled with sudden anger and confusion.

Her fingers delved into the thick, dark waves of his hair, silk against the white-hot sensation of the powerful cords of his throat against her skin.