Page 41 of The Scot Beds His Wife

She should have been grateful that he’d given her a chance to correct him. At any other moment, she’d have pounced on it like an alley cat, claws extended.

But… he’d just ceded a point. He’d begged her pardon. Well, perhapsbeggedwas a bit of a reach, but he’d returned her gun. In her experience, confronting a man while questioning his intentions was more likely to acquaint her with the back of his hand than his admission of fault.

In the West, to call a man’s pride into account was to flirt with the business end of his pistol. Not the other way around.

“Look,” she admonished softly. “The cow isn’t rabid.”

He turned and followed the direction of her finger towhere a little black nose and two ungainly hooves had already emerged from beneath the laboring heifer.

“Holy Christ,” he marveled. He reached for her, gripping her elbow gently as though he’d forgotten himself. His focus never wavered from the spectacle. “What do we do? I read that ye can help by pulling the wee thing out… should we…?”

It took Samantha longer than it should have to abandon her shock at his friendly hold on her elbow. People—men—just didn’t touch her like this. Casually. Gently.

She… liked it.

Clearing her throat, she answered. “Unless she’s in trouble, there’s really no need. Best to let her do it on her own.”

“Does she look like she’s in trouble to ye? How do ye tell?” he queried, taking only a moment to check her expression for an answer before his notice was dragged back to the delivery.

The beast’s great body was seized by another convulsion, and she instinctively pushed, and the little creature emerged to the shoulders.

“No trouble at all,” she was glad to note. “She’s doing beautifully.”

“Aye. Aye, that’s good.” He squeezed her elbow in a kind, grateful gesture, a dimple of pleasure appearing in his cheek.

He didn’t let go.

Instead of watching the quick, messy birth, Samantha observed the Earl of Thorne with something akin to openmouthed incredulity.

An alert anxiety had transformed him from a haughty, cynical Highlander to someone much, much younger. He studied the event with an intent concentration colored with a bit of excited, almost… boyish wonder. On features sofiercely masculine as his, the expression was unrelentingly endearing.

In the moment of unguarded distraction, Samantha couldn’t stop herself from laughing softly at his grimace of disgust as the new mother began to lick her newly emerged calf clean. Nudging it encouragingly with her nose.

“It’s a wee bit… slimier than a litter of cats or pups, is it not?” he remarked with an impish curl of his nose.

“Don’t tell me the great hunter Gavin St. James, Lord of Inverthorne, is squeamish,” she teased. “What will the ladies say?”

His sheepish smile unleashed a swarm of butterflies low in her belly.

“Blood and offal is one thing, this is… something else.” They fell silent, though Samantha thought she wasn’t alone in cheering the little red creature to gain its feet. “Something better, I think. The giving of life, instead of the taking of it,” he murmured many minutes later, in a voice so low, Samantha wondered if he’d realized he’d spoken out loud.

By now the cold and wet had become a part of them, seeping into their bones. Even through her layers, Samatha couldn’t remember ever being consumed with such a pervasive chill. She couldn’t imagine how he fared in only a shirt and trousers.

His focus drawn by a violent shiver she couldn’t hide, he turned back to her. “Where’s yer cloak, lass?”

“It was soiled so I washed it last night, and foolishly hung it somewhere beneath a leak in the roof I was not aware had sprung until the storm hit last night,” she confessed with chagrin. “I thought the rain had passed when I left Erradale. I assumed my wool pelisse would be enough.”

“Highland weather is as temperamental as a randy stallion,” he remarked, striding past a few dark trees to anoak with low branches where he’d lashed his horse. He returned with a dry, folded length of cloak retrieved from his saddlebags. “Blue skies one moment, confounding mist the next, which might be chased away by a sea gale in an hour or so.”

“What about you?” she protested as he unfurled the cloak and settled it around her shoulders.

“I’ve a woolen in my other bag. Besides, this stretch of road runs through Inverthorne land and…” Samantha watched in horrified fascination as his eyes narrowed in suspicion as they traveled the length of her best dress, darted to her discarded hat, and then followed her horses’ damning tracks back toward Ravencroft.

“What have ye been up to, lass?” The mild note in his tone wouldn’t have sounded false to an ear untrained in deception. “Had ye business in Strathcarron today?”

“No,” she answered simply.

“Ravencroft, then?” He enunciated the syllables of his brother’s title and keep very carefully.