Aidan MacKeefe watched the slight sway of the new maid, Burna’s, hips as she hurried away from the king’s high table. He had the strangest feeling he had seen her somewhere before.

Beside him, Robert set down his goblet. “That one might bear watching,” he said. “I’ve no need of an English spy in our midst.”

Aidan forced his gaze away from the lass’s alluring backside and turned to him. “Ye think the English king would stoop to trust a woman for such a task?”

The Bruce snorted. “Edward nae doubt is seeking solace from that Gascon knight he is over fond of. ‘Tis his cousin, Thomas of Lancaster, that yearns for more power. If the Earl could gather insight as to how it sits with us… The lass is English, is she not? A wee bit nervous as weel, when I mentioned the fact.”

Yes, she had been. Aidan had noticed how her pulse quickened in her slender throat. He clenched his jaw, forcing his fangs to stay retracted. For centuries, his clan had protected Scotland’s leaders, but no one, not even the Bruce, could know that he was a vampire. Aidan felt the dark stirrings rise, thinking how satiny smooth her soft flesh would feel beneath his lips and how warm and sweet a sip of her blood would be. By the auld gods! He hadna supped on human blood in nigh three hundred years. Why this lass should cause the bloodlust to rise, he dinna ken. “Have ye seen her afore this eve?”

Aidan started and then realized Robert was speaking again. He shook his head. “I doona think so.” He would have remembered someone as beautiful as Burna, with her cornflower-blue eyes, yet something niggled at him.

“I want ye to find out why she’s here,” the Bruce said as he picked up his goblet.

“How do ye want me to do that?”

His monarch grinned. “Och, I never thought I’d hear ye ask how to seduce a lass…not when half of the wenches here are more than willing to draw ye a hot bath and soap ye down as weel—“

Aidan held up his hand and the king laughed. “I ken the rest of it, my lord. But what information is it ye’re wanting?”

Robert sobered. “Listen weel to the questions she asks, especially after… well, ye ken when a lass likes to talk, nae? Let her glean wee bits of information from ye when she thinks ye are in a weak moment. We’ll see what she does with it.”

Aidan nodded, hoping that for once, the instincts that had saved the Bruce’s life on more than one occasion were wrong. For the penalty of spying was death and this lass was far too lovely to be hanged, drawn and quartered. His thoughts turned to a far more pleasant aspect. Having Burna naked beneath him, her hair fanned across the pillows, her legs spread wide for him… to stroke her with his hands and ravage her lips with his tongue… He felt a sharp sting in his mouth and realized his fangs had nicked him. He would have to take care that that didn’t happen when he was with her. Three hundred years ago, he had inadvertently taken the life of a maid when his youthful enthusiasm had taken too much of her blood. He had vowed he would not taste human blood again.

And, until tonight, the urge to do so had remained suppressed. Why was the Blood Lust calling to him now?