Kiss of the Highlander

Silvan put his book down and glanced absently at Gwen. His gaze dropped to her cleavage, and a single white brow shot up. He blinked several times.

“There certainly is,” Nell said, circling the table. She stopped behind Gwen and draped a linen cloth over her shoulder, so it tumbled from her neck like a bib.

“Peel yer eyes off the lass’s breasts,” Nell said sweetly to Silvan.

Gwen turned twenty shades of red, sneaked a hand beneath the bib, and tugged at her bodice, trying to jiggle them back down a little. Mortified, she devoted her attention to eyeing the medieval dining ware—plates and goblets made of heavy silver, a fat spoon and broad knife, and heavy blue bowls.

“She’s the one who fluffed them up,” Silvan protested indignantly. “I didn’t mean to look, but they were…so…there. Like trying not to see the sun in the sky.”

Nell arched a brow and circled round the table again. “I hardly think ’twas ye she fluffed ’em for, was it, lass?”

Gwen glanced up and gave an embarrassed shake of her head.

Nell bent over Silvan’s plate, fetching his empty mug for a refill, and her bodice gaped. When Silvan peered down it, Gwen nearly laughed, but the laugh died in her throat when she saw Silvan’s eyes change instantly.

Oh, my, she thought, going very still. Silvan might have looked at her breasts, but he’d looked at them as a man might eye a pretty flower or a well-bred mare.

Now, glancing down Nell’s bodice, he wore an expression of pure hunger, a look both tender and fierce.

Gwen’s smile faded and she stared, filled with a wistfulness she wasn’t certain she even understood. But it had something to do with a man wanting breasts that were much older and not nearly as firm—all because of the woman they belonged to, not because of the breasts at all.

Silvan MacKeltar had deep feelings for his housekeeper.

She stole a furtive glance at Nell, who seemed oblivious to what Silvan was doing as she collected his mug and went back to the kitchen.

Silvan must have felt her gaze upon him, because he jerked slightly, as if coming out of a trance, and glanced at her.

“I wasn’t looking at her breasts—” he began defensively.

“Save it for someone who didn’t see the look on your face. And if you don’t make any funny comments about me fluffing myself, I won’t make any comments about what you feel for Nell.”

“What I feel for—what I—” he sputtered, then nodded. “Agreed.”

Gwen turned her attention to the platter of food, wondering why food tasted so much better in the sixteenth century. Was it the lack of preservatives? The smoky-peaty flavor of the meat? The genuine butter and cream? She slipped a knife beneath a soft poached egg and transferred it to her plate.

“So, why did you…er…” Silvan gestured toward her linen bib.

She sighed. “Because I thought Drustan might be at breakfast and I hoped he’d notice me.”

“Notice you, or drag you off to tup you?”

“I might have settled for either,” she said glumly, helping herself to another egg.

Silvan snorted with amusement. “Are you always so honest, m’dear?”

“I try to be. Dishonesty increases disorder exponentially. It’s hard enough to communicate when you’re telling the truth.”

Silvan paused, his mouth halfway closed around a bite of poached egg. He withdrew the laden fork from his mouth carefully. “What did you just say?” he asked softly.

“Lies,” Gwen said, her gaze on the thick slab of ham she was trying to spear with a misshapen fork. She pierced it with a tine, but it slipped off. “They increase disorder. Difficult to predict all the variables when you keep tossing more variables in.” She glanced at him. “Don’t you think?” she asked, with a nod for emphasis.

“Exponentially?” he asked, his brows furrowing together in a single point.

“Any positive consonant raised to a power,” Gwen said, cornering the ham against the lip of the platter. “It’s a function of math, used to express a large number. Like Avogadro’s number, 6.023 X 1023 and represents the number of atoms in a mole of any substance—”

“Atom?”

“The smallest component of an element having the chemical properties of the element, consisting of a nucleus, containing combinations of neutrons and protons and one or more electrons—hey, maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this!”

Silvan snorted. “I know of what you speak. ’Tis a hypothetical particle of matter so small to admit no division—”