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girl might receive?” Alice’s face felt very hot indeed, and the sounds of the highlanders behind her seemed to recede behind the rushing of the blood in her ears. She looked at MacAlpin, trying to determine whether he were indeed serious, and he looked steadily back at her, holding her chemise, which looked very white indeed against his tan skin and the dark green of his plaid. Suddenly Alice became aware of how very comely a man he was, with his long dark locks and his close-trimmed beard.
    “Indeed,” he said. “I do not wish to spank you at all, my lady, and I am especially unwilling when you have had the sort of shock you have had. When a woman behaves like a child, though, I am of the belief that she should be treated that way. And I am not certain that it would do you ill, in your shock, to feel that I am willing to take care of you thus.”
    Take care of her . That thought had been on this side of the road, a few moments ago, when she had decided she must cross to the other side.
    He will not, her mind said, remaining desperately fixed on the decision she had made to cross the road and take charge herself. “I suppose you must spank me, then,” Alice said.
    MacAlpin sighed. “You do not think I will do it, do you, my lady? I must show you, though I will try to do it gently and only until you understand that I am serious. Come here, if you please.”
    “I will not!” Strange feelings seemed to course through Alice’s breast. Truly she had thought… well, perhaps he had not been jesting, but she had felt certain he made idle threats upon which he would never make good. Nor would he now. But why did she suddenly feel that she wanted to know whether he would or not?
    “My lady,” MacAlpin said softly. “I do not think you would wish me to call Callum over to hold you down so that I can spank you until you promise to come with me to Kilmorin.”
    Alice felt her eyes go wide and her heart pound in terror. At the same time, however, the idea grew that this man was trying to take care of her, and using the available means to do so.
    A spanking: Alice could not remember the last time her governess had spanked her, and it could not have been when she was older than ten or eleven. Past that age, mademoiselle had simply made her charge stay in her chamber until Alice ‘saw reason.’ MacAlpin had said a few moments before that he thought it might do her… not do you ill, was what he had said. Alice felt that though her mind rejected the idea with scorn, something in her heart—something very little, and indeed little by nature—wondered whether to have a chastisement visited upon her that suited not a grown woman but rather a small child would somehow soothe the terrible roil of memories and impressions that threatened from moment to moment to overwhelm her.
    “Come here, my lady,” Niall MacAlpin said again, and now, slowly, Alice obeyed, crossing back from the middle of the dirt road to the side where the village chief stood. She took one step, then two. She could not look him in the eye anymore; she did not want to. “We shall turn away,” MacAlpin said much more gently, “so that no one may see your punishment.”
    He stood a full head higher than she did, and she realized as he stepped close and put his arm around her waist, that she had never stood so close to a man; even Lord Roderick had kept his distance, and only kissed her hand, when she had accepted him. Certainly she had never had a man’s arm around her adult waist—as she supposed she had had MacAlpin’s a few minutes past, without even realizing it. And, as… as the outlaw’s hands had taken hold of her and tied her wrists behind her knees, opening her, there. There where Joan the scullery maid had been open.
    She pushed that memory far back. “I am going to hold the plaid in front of you and look away,” MacAlpin said, “while you don your shift, my lady. Then I shall spank you through the shift, so that you may keep your modesty