Page 17 of A Promise of Love

" T he best wool," Judith explained,” is behind the shoulders and down the front legs.

Here and here." With a few practiced strokes, the hapless ewe was shorn of half its coat.

"Always cut from the legs towards the back, and it doesn't matter if you do it in one pass or not.

Most of the time, the wool will have to separated anyway.

It saves a step if you grade it while you shear it.

" She flung one section of fleece towards the small pile to her right, and a growing pile to her left .

So far, only the twins had spotted the MacLeod, not his surprising English wife .

"It's best if you wash the sheep before you shear, but you'll still need to wash the wool , too ."

Alisdair had expected many things of Judith.

He had anticipated that she would stir his clan to irritation, possibly anger.

Perhaps she would bedevil them the way she did him.

But, in all his thirty-two years, Alisdair could not have imagined a scene like the one he came upon after returning from Inverness, with the sun beginning its downward journey into night .

She was, his English wife, astride a sheep .

Her skirt was tucked into her waistband, her bare legs pressed against the woolly sides of a protesting ewe.

The sleeves of her bodice were tied back to the elbows, her hair fixed in a haphazard knot, curls tumbling from it as though she were a well used doxy at the end of a prosperous night.

Her hands were buried in the long fleece, her face brightened by a sheen of sweat, and a dark swipe of something whose origins he preferred not to guess marred her forehead .

A rim of men stood leaning idly against the fence shouting instructions, a gaggle of women stood in a tight circle muttering.

With one hand, Alisdair dismissed the men, a look was all it took to send the women scurrying for cover.

The twins stood on either side of his wife, each grasping two legs of the hapless ewe while she lectured them upon the serious business of shearing .

When Judith noticed that neither of her helpers was moving to control the heavy ewe, she prodded Daniel - or was it David? - in the side with her elbow, her only free appendage, then glanced up to see the source of his fascination .

The MacLeod’s smile was not so much mocking as it was rooted in surprise. Judith forgot how to make a sound, and even now, when the most prudent person would have looked away from the amber gleam of those eyes, she found herself staring like a lackwit at him .

His trousers were not new, but they encased legs too broad and brawny to need any English padding.

His white shirt was old, but constructed of the finest linen and still carelessly elegant.

His coat was blue superfine, his boots polished black.

It was not sartorial elegance Alisdair MacLeod portrayed as he casually leaned back against a fence post, legs crossed at the ankles, hands resting on hips.

He was too tall, too muscled, too tan to be truly a dandy.

Judith had the oddest thought that while he may have only been the chief of a tired clan, his home a burnt out castle, Alisdair MacLeod greeted the world with as much pride as a duke, as much arrogance as a prince .

"Dare I wonder exactly what you're doing, wife?

" he asked, his tone one not of a half-civilized Highlander, but of a bored effeminate indolently lounging in a London drawing room.

For a moment, she could imagine him the medical student in Brussels, or Edinburgh, half his time analyzing the human body, the rest engaged in intense and intimate scrutiny of only female limbs .

"I am shearing your sheep," she said, finally, straightening from her task and placing one hand against her lower back. David and Daniel were still on either side of her, both hands in identical position on the back of the sheep's neck, both legs clamped on either side of the bleating prisoner .

At least twenty naked sheep, their forms curiously fragile shorn of their coat, were bleating their displeasure loudly and furiously nearby .

A nod was all it required to banish the twins.

The trapped ewe was released and scrambling up the slope.

Judith pulled at the hem of her skirt until it fell from her waistband, fluffing out the material in a vain attempt to ignore the MacLeod.

It was no use, she could better ignore an oncoming storm than she could his tall and broad figure .

Whatever she felt about the man, there was no mistaking the fact that it was intensified in his presence.

He was a puzzle, this new, and unwanted, husband of hers.

He treated her with civility, was polite without being overly cordial, deferential without one word of mockery.

He greeted her when they met with a smile which seemed genuine, if a bit tinted by the sardonic twinkle in his eyes.

He inquired as to her health, asked about her daily pursuits as if genuinely interested, wished her a restful sleep.

Once, they’d even discussed Brussels, of his travels upon the continent, his studies.

Not once had he broken their truce, not one time had she cause to fear him.

A month had passed and she had been left at peace .

She wanted to repay him for it .

When she looked up, it was to see a strange assessing look on his face, as if he judged her with some secret knowledge .

Judith could feel the flush rise from her toes to her cheeks .

“ Why ?”

“It is already summer, MacLeod and the sheep are fat with wool ."

"I'd thought to hire some sheep men," he said, his voice soft, almost soothing .

Neither one of them mentioned that if there was coin to be had for hiring men, she would not still be at Tynan .

"I doubt you'd find many to come this far north," she said, partly to ease his pride, and partly to ease the silence between them. It was the first time she’d felt disturbed by the utter absence of sound.

Even the incessant noise of the sheep seemed muffled, as if a great glass jar separated them from the rest of the world .

“I know a great deal about sheep, MacLeod, more than I ever wished to know. My father saw to that.” Squire Cuthbertson had insisted all of his daughters earn their keep, despite the fact that raising sheep required hard physical labor.

At nine, Judith had learned to shepherd the stupid things, walking from hilltop to hilltop on her father's vast acreage.

She'd learned to wash the long virgin fibers and card the wool before she was twelve .

“And so, you’d teach what you’ve learned ."

“That, and the weaving, if you wish." All of them, even Elizabeth, had worked the looms and if Judith had a favorite activity of all of them, it was that.

She could sit on the hard bench behind the six foot wide loom, pressing the long narrow board with her feet, while her hands automatically placed the threads in position.

She'd become so adept at it that she could spend hours weaving, mesmerized by the sounds of the click, clack of the boards shunting across the tight threads, lost in her own world of thoughts and dreams .

Alisdair found himself curiously entranced .

Her face was dirty, her hair a tousled mess of long dusty locks, a thousand small white curling strands of fleece clung to her clothing; she smelled of sheep and good, honest labor .

Her eyes flickered like a candle flame, he thought, wondering what caused her more consternation, the fact that he emulated her way of mute defense, or that he could not help but be captivated by this new, unanticipated side of her .

She raised her eyes to examine his face and found herself oddly trapped by the look in his eyes.

It was not censorious, or even angry, but filled with the strangest sort of curiosity, and if she didn't imagine it, a hint of vulnerability.

As if he dearly wished to know who she was and what she was about and such inquisitiveness rendered him open and susceptible .

"Why do you care, Judith?” he asked softly. Calling herself back to the present, she spoke in as soft a tone, as if the world had suddenly become still with listening and their conversation too intimate to be overheard .

"If you cannot import shearers or weavers,” she said, answering his question in a roundabout way, “then you need to train your people, MacLeod. Women have more patience for the weaving, and men more strength for the shearing ."

She turned away, but her movement was not quick enough to escape the arm that easily grasped her around the waist .

"Why, Judith?" he asked, when he tilted her chin up so that her eyes could meet his.

They were too close, too near to each other, which was why she could barely breathe, and why her heart was beating so quickly.

The wisp of his breath brushed across her cheek, the hand upon her waist spread until it nearly reached her underarm and the curve of one breast .

Her lashes fluttered like the wings of a trapped bird, he thought.

And her pulsed raced as rapidly. If he had not thought she would have fled his touch, Alisdair would have placed his finger there, to prove to his eyes how quickly her heart beat.

Or breathe upon it, his lips only an inch from the softness of her skin, his warm breath a comfort.

Instead, he plucked one curling wool fiber from her bodice, wondering if the pressure of his fingers singed her skin as ably as the touch of her softness made his fingers itch .

“You’ve been fair in your truce, MacLeod. I’d thought to repay you, that is all.”She looked away, down at the ground, up at the darkening sky, anywhere but at him .

“Has your life been so devoid of simple kindness, Judith, that you would feel a debt for it ?”

His words coaxed her attention. She glanced at him, away, then slowly back. On his face was a look he’d worn for Douglas - how often had she seen him look so? - sweet patience and gentleness .

Judith wanted, in that moment, to tell him everything.

This man enticed her strangely to honesty, coaxed her to feel safe in a world still strange and foreign.

In a moment of time, outlined against a world hastening to dusk, a second passed, and then another, in which she pretended that he might be unlike any man she’d ever known or that she might not be the person she knew herself to be.

A fleeting clutch of seconds, a silver drop of purity, only a moment passed, but it was gilded with a thought as errant as a rainbow in her palm, precious, but impossible.

What would it be like to speak the truth?

The moment passed; Judith did nothing more dangerous than continue to look at him, wondering if the last chance for expiation vanished also .

“It will make the time go faster, MacLeod ."

One finger touched the bridge of her nose and then slipped softly to her temple.

It was such an odd gesture for someone to make, especially someone as large and strong and Scots as the MacLeod, that for a moment she forgot that she was trapped so close to him that a mere inch would cause her lips to meet his tanned skin.

For a second, she almost forgot that danger came with closeness, and kindness often masked cruelty.

Gentleness. Tenderness. The two worst lies .

She stiffened in his arms, and it was a response Alisdair had waited for from the first moment he touched her. The delay pleased him. Perhaps his English hedgehog could be gentled by a touch after all .

"Your help would be welcome," he said then, as he released her.

She was unprepared for the full effect of his smile.

It was too charming, too intense, and too dangerous.

She swallowed heavily, gripped her hands before her and nodded, not looking at the MacLeod after all, but forced by something - some fleeting emotion which tickled her stomach and made her heart lurch in her chest - to stare, wordless, at the stony ground in front of her .

She nodded then, mutely. With the sun having tinted her nose pink, and her long lashes brushing against the curve of her cheek, and her lips tilted to a self-conscious half smile, Alisdair MacLeod had the strange and sudden thought that beauty was more than just good looks, that it came from the soul.

That it was more than a ripe figure pressing against the bodice of a too snug gown, more than shapely ankles and long, long legs.

It was more than a face as delicately carved as a bust from ancient Greece.

More than a simple smile. That beauty was kindness and concern.

Maternal nurturing, friendship, love. That in the soul of her, Judith MacLeod had all the raw material for true, exquisite beauty, and he probably had willfully and willingly ignored it until now .

Dangerous thoughts for a man counting the days until his freedom .