She peeped at him from beneath her brows, her gaze a blatant challenge. A come-hither-if-you-dare look. She hadn’t known she had it in her. But she was realizing there were a lot of things she hadn’t known she had in her, until she’d met Drustan MacKeltar.

“You know naught what you provoke,” he growled.

“Oh, yes, I do,” she shot right back. “A coward. A man who’s afraid to hear me out because I might prove inconvenient to his plans. I might dishevel his tidy world,” she mocked.

The flicker in his eyes blazed into flame. His gaze raked over her exposed bosom. She nearly gasped at the savagery in his expression; he was shaking, vibrating with suppressed…desire?

“Is that what you want? You want me to tup you?” he demanded roughly.

“If that’s the only way I can get you to hold still long enough to listen to me,” she snapped.

“Were I to tup you, lass, you wouldna be speakin’, for your mouth would be busy with other things, and I, of a certain, wouldna be listenin’. So give over, unless you’re lookin’ for a rough roll in the heather with a man who wishes he’d never laid eyes upon you.”

He spun on his heel and stalked out the door.

When he was gone, Gwen sighed gustily. She knew that for a moment she’d almost had him, had almost provoked him into another kiss, but the man’s willpower was nothing short of amazing.

She knew he was attracted to her, it crackled in the air between them. She consoled herself with the thought that he must have some doubts or he wouldn’t be so studiously avoiding her.

Whatever his reasons, too many days were slipping by with nothing to show for them, and the arrival of his betrothed drew nearer, as did his impending abduction.

Although she’d cornered him on two occasions, he’d jumped upon his horse and galloped away, and until her riding improved, it was an effective escape.

She felt like a fool, trying to be everywhere, watching for a glimpse of him. She’d picked the lock on his chamber door last night, only to find he’d slipped out the window and scaled the damn castle wall to get away from her.

When he’d crashed into the prickly bush, she’d stared with wide eyes, any thoughts of laughing firmly squelched by the sight of him nude. It had been all she could do not to fling herself out the window at him. He was magnificent. Watching him stroll around every day was killing her. Especially when he wore a kilt, because she knew from experience that he wore nothing beneath it. The thought of him hung heavy and naked beneath his plaid made her mouth go dry every time she looked at him. Probably because all the moisture in her body went somewhere else.

Her antics had not gone unnoticed, nor had she missed that several of the maids and guards had taken to loitering about the castle proper, watching with unconcealed amusement.

Love hath no pride…

Yeah, well, Gwen Cassidy did, and humbling herself wasn’t a whole lot of fun.

She suspected that by the time she finally wore him down—as stubborn as he was—she was going to be downright pissed off.

Didn’t he know how dangerous it was to piss off a woman?

20

Gwen had a plan.

Foolproof so far as she could see.

She’d had ample time to reflect upon the errors of her ways. Although the list was long and inclusive of virtually everything she’d done since the moment she’d arrived in the sixteenth century, it was not beyond salvaging. She was still astonished by how thoroughly emotions could cloud one’s actions. Never in her life had she done so many stupid things in such rapid succession.

But she was under control now, and soon to be in control of him.

She was going to tell him her story again, only this time he was going to listen to every single detail of it: From the moment he’d awakened in the cave to the moment she’d lost him, including what he’d eaten, said, worn, what she’d eaten, said, worn. And somewhere in it, she was convinced she’d find the catalyst that would make him remember. She’d pondered closed timeline curves for hours last night, along with the thermodynamic, psychological, and cosmological arrows of time. She was convinced the memory was imprinted in his DNA, and despite the arrows indicating one could only remember forward, not backward, she wasn’t quite certain she believed that.

She was going to give it her best shot to prove the theory wrong. After all, the quantum was rarely predictable. Even Richard Feynman, winner of the Nobel prize in physics for his work in quantum electrodynamics, had maintained that nobody really understood quantum theory. Mathematical theory was vastly different than the world implied by such equations.