He didn’t let go of the candle. “That isn’t why I walked with you.”
“I understand. You’re an honorable man. You were going to offer support for the child.” She gave the candle a tug. “I appreciate your thoughtfulness.”
He hung on like a man who saw too much and didn’t like what he saw. “You are comparing me to your father.”
“Of course I’m comparing you to my father! Honorable men, both.” Too bad she had told him what she really thought of her father.
“Your father was a coward.”
“He paid for my education. What else could I expect from him?” She retained control of herself, she kept a grip on the candle, and she was very proud of herself.
“A welcome to his family? An occasional visit? At the least, an inheritance on his death?” MacLean’s voice rose.
So her voice rose. “Would you be so kind to our child?”
“Our bairn will have the comfort of a father with him all the time.”
“I would never allow you to take our child from me.”
“I’m not taking our bairn from you,” he protested. “I’m marrying you!”
“No . . . you . . . aren’t.” She yanked at the candle. “Now let me go!”
Moving so swiftly that she didn’t realize his intent, he wrapped his arm around her waist, pulled her close and kissed her.
No. No, she didn’t want this. Every time he kissed her, she came closer to the edge of disaster. The ground was already crumbling beneath her feet. She didn’t want to fall over that cliff.
But . . . heat. Closeness. Need. She tasted them all on his lips.
And she . . . she was angry and upset, and those emotions transmuted into passion far too easily.
Nothing could match the seduction of pressing her palms against the chest of a strong man and feeling his heart thunder. The glory of knowing he wanted her so much was an inducement in itself. Their breaths matched; their bodies moved together in the ancient, primal dance of desire. She crumpled his supple linen shirt between her fingers, enamored of the texture of the cloth, of the muscled chest beneath. Here in his arms she felt safe, and no amount of denial could change that. She leaned against him, wanting him. Fearing him and the temptation he presented.
He trembled.
She exulted.
Then he flinched and gasped.
At once, she pulled back. A blush scorched her cheeks and climbed to her forehead. She had kissed him as soon as the opportunity presented itself. He had not been as captivated as she; he had caught himself.
Hastily he placed the candle on the pedestal. “Damn, lass, you made me forget the light!” He peeled the still-soft wax off his wrist.
“Oh.” She shouldn’t have laughed, but she was so relieved that she couldn’t help herself. “You were distracted.”
“Always around you.” He smiled at her, and while it was madness to think so, he looked at her as if she were the most precious of beautiful objects. The only object of beauty that MacLean male could see.
She couldn’t be the object of his veneration. She would not become his wife.
He caught her back to him.
She shoved against his chest.
Paying her no heed, he embraced her, kissed her once again.
She turned her head away. “No!”
Catching her chin, he brought her face back to his. He pressed his lips to hers, soft, soothing little motions. He liked kissing her. Curse the man! He appeared to like kissing even when he knew she couldn’t welcome him into her bed. He ran a hand up her back, massaged the nape of her neck.
Surely she could find nothing to fear in this embrace. This was not pursuit. This was closeness. This was pleasure. Softening against him, she felt the fullness in her breasts and her heart.
She didn’t know how it happened. Somehow, she opened her lips to his, she gave him her tongue and sucked deftly on his. She reveled in the dampness, the passion, the glory of MacLean. As always when in his arms, the future vanished, and he routed the spectre of her fears.
Then, in the quiet of the gallery, the click of a rifle’s flintlock echoed from one end to the other.
MacLean wrenched his head up.
A man shouted, “MacLean, get down!”
MacLean knocked Enid to the floor. He landed on top of her, covering her with his body.
The shot roared, echoing down the gallery.
Someone toppled to the floor, screaming in agony.
Heels clattered on the hardwood, and a distant door slammed behind their would-be assassin.
Lifting his head, MacLean asked, “Enid, are you all right?”
He weighed approximately as much as a wild boar, and he’d tossed her to the carpet, then thrown himself atop her. “Yes,” she gasped. “Who is screaming?”
Leaping off of her, MacLean ran down the gallery to the writhing victim.
“Harry,” she heard him say. “Harry!”
Chapter 24
MacLean waited until the gladsome greetings had died down, the men had dispersed, and Harry had settled before the fire in the great hall before making his way over, tray in hand.
Enid still fussed over the invalid, but she straightened at once and looked MacLean over haughtily. “What do you want?”
Ah, she was a beauty, with her proudly tilted chin that warned a man off and her glorious breasts that invited him close.
Those breasts were one of the reasons he wanted Harry to recover, and quickly. She didn’t need to be extending unwitting invitations to other men. “I want to chat with our savior.”
She rested a hand on Harry’s good shoulder. His other arm was wrapped tight against his body; his collarbone had been shattered by the bullet. “He did save us, and since today is the first day I’ve allowed him to rise, you’ll refrain from upsetting him.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Harry grinned at MacLean’s meek answer. “That’s right, MacLean. I took a bullet for you, and by God you owe me.”
“And me.” Enid tossed a rug over Harry’s knees.
Harry’s voice softened. “Although you’re a tyrant in the sickroom, you’ve paid your debt.”
MacLean didn’t like his tone, didn’t like to be reminded that Enid had just spent six days tending Harry. MacLean had come to think of Enid as his. His nurse. His woman.
“I do know what a tyrant she is.” Taking her hand in his, MacLean kissed her fingers. “But a tyrant I live to obey.”
“Balderdash, MacLean,” she said briskly, and gathered her spindle. “I’ll leave you gentlemen to talk.”
MacLean retained her hand. “Stay.”
She paused. She trembled. Without looking at him, she said, “I think it would be better if I leave you alone.”
In the low, vibrant tone he saved only for her, he asked, “Lass, do you always have to be contrary?”
Her gaze flew to his, and for a moment he thought she appeared to be frightened. Frightened. Of him. Why?
Wrenching her hand free, she backed up a step.
“Harry and I are going to talk about who pulled the trigger last Tuesday and how we will capture him. You’re interested, aren’t you?” he coaxed.
Still she struggled with indecision. “Surely Harry will not wish me to stay.”
“You’re caught in the middle of this situation, and if you’ve not been told all the truth, I’m sure you’ve drawn the right conclusions,” Harry said. “And I’d be interested in your opinions on how to capture the culprit.”
Subsiding into a chair opposite Harry, she said, “As you wish.”
MacLean had heard that phrase from her too seldom—and right now it made him want to grind his teeth. She required Harry’s permission to remain with them? Had she and Harry drawn so close in so little time?
“I brought you a glass of ratafia.” MacLean extended the tray to her.
Taking one of the crystal goblets from the tray, she said, “Thank you.”
MacLean asked, “Whisky, Harry?”
; “I’d rather have a good burgundy.”
Indicating the second goblet, MacLean said, “I thought you would.”
Harry pierced MacLean with his dark gaze. “So you recall my drinking habits in the Crimea?”
Enid gasped faintly.
Astonished, MacLean paused in the act of sinking onto the wooden footstool at Enid’s feet. “You were in the Crimea with me?”
Harry sounded as if he would command MacLean. “You must remember.”
“I don’t.” MacLean seated himself. The footstool was low, hard, and uncomfortable on his rump, but he was very aware of the picture he and Enid made as he leaned his elbow against her chair. She held the MacLean suppliant at her feet. Certainly Harry understood the symbolism of that.
Surely Enid did, too. Yet she shifted her legs away from him.
What was wrong with the woman?
“Do you trust me now?” Harry indicated his wound.
Harry had seen the rifle barrel thrust from behind the drapes, yelled his warning and run toward the assailant. He’d been shot for his trouble. “You have my trust.” MacLean indicated Enid. “You saved me and you saved Enid, and you have won the eternal gratitude of the MacLean.”
“I don’t want gratitude,” Harry said impatiently. “I want you to remember. Do you realize what’s at stake here? Not just your own safety and the safety of Mrs. MacLean, but the safety of our agents in the field. The future of England. All this depends on your memory.”
MacLean shook his head. “The trip is foggy from the moment I left England until I set foot on the Isle of Mull again.” Although he didn’t tell the whole truth. He did have shards of memory scattered like broken glass in his mind. Yet when he reached for the memories, pain streaked through his head and he broke out in a sweat. Something lurked hidden in his brain, probably the identity of the traitor, and he feared its unveiling—for he worried it was his mercurial cousin. He worried Stephen had tried to have MacLean killed and instead had gotten killed himself.
Beside him, Enid spun her spindle, and a long, uneven thread of yarn drew forth from the wool in her lap. Although she appeared to be totally concentrated on her activity, MacLean felt the tension quivering through her. She listened to every word, and he suspected she feared the same thing he did. She feared her husband had tried to murder his own cousin.
“Throckmorton wouldn’t like what I’m about to do, but nothing else is working and I fear we’re running out of time.” Harry took a breath. “So I’ll help you. Tell me what you do remember about that trip.”
MacLean lounged in his chair, but his blood pulsed through his veins. This was it. Surely, with Harry’s help, he would remember. “I traveled to the Crimea—alone.”
“I was already there. You brought me Throckmorton’s letter of introduction.”
MacLean sat up straight. “That’s right. You said, ‘Another damned Scotsman.’ “
“So you put your fist in my face.”
“I was still in my right mind then.”
Harry laughed, then flinched and held his shoulder. “I’d been supervising your cousin. At first, Stephen had been brilliant. A great gambler and a drinker, the kind of man who could visit a tavern and learn every secret from every Russian officer within an evening. Then, after about a year, the information began to stink. Not all of it, not all the time, but when it counted.”
Enid’s spindle spun slower.
“I’m the one who applied to Throckmorton for assistance, and he sent me you.” Harry grinned, a baring of his teeth. “Another damned Scotsman.”
“I didn’t know any of that.” Throckmorton certainly hadn’t told him. “Stephen’s mother drove me mad with her fears for his safety, so I traced him to Throckmorton and demanded he be sent home.”
“And Throckmorton sent you out to fetch him.”
“Yes.” MacLean struggled against the fog that enveloped the past. “Yes, I gave you the letter of introduction. You looked me over and weighed me with your gaze.”
“You didn’t care what I thought of you. That’s why I decided Throckmorton was right. You could be trusted.”
“So you trusted me?”
“As much as you trusted me.”
“As much as you trust anybody.”
Harry’s mouth curled. “Perhaps. I only know that when Stephen saw you, he looked hunted. Then I knew without a doubt he was guilty.”
MacLean sipped the whisky and tried to keep reproach from his voice. “I wish you’d told me what you suspected.”
“I wish I had, too.” Harry’s teeth gleamed white as he grimaced. “All the way back from the Crimea, when you were torn to pieces by that bomb and I thought I would lose you at any moment, I kicked myself for hiding the truth from you. If you had known immediately, you might have been wary enough to avoid the trap.”
MacLean feared he knew the answer, but he had to ask the question. “But why did they want to kill me?”
Harry surprised him. “Not you. Stephen.”
Enid’s spindle dropped in her lap as she gave up any pretense of spinning.
“At once it was obvious that you held great influence over your cousin, and you were incorruptible.” Harry watched MacLean as he spoke. “Stephen was easily influenced, and the Russians feared that you would bring him back to the English side. He knew too many of the Russian operatives. He probably knew the other English traitors. They couldn’t afford for him to give you names. So they planned to assassinate him, and if you were caught in the blast, so much the better.”
“I remember walking along a street, arguing with Stephen. I thought . . . I feared . . . Stephen was always the wild one, with no more morals than an alley cat. I feared he had betrayed England. Mind you, not that I’m fond of the English.”
“No,” Harry said, “but I thought that once you had declared your loyalty to Throckmorton, you would not waver.”
MacLean nodded. “There is that. Throckmorton has a way of engendering allegiance. But those slippery Russians are not even my enemies. They are nothing to me, and when I drank with them . . .” He vaguely recalled a bar filled with men with harsh accents and drooping mustaches, and only too clearly he recalled hating their arrogance and the way Stephen paid court to their leader. “The Russians are a bunch of condescending bastards.”
Harry grinned and nodded. “When I started, I hated the Russians because they thought to compete with England. Now that I’ve met them, it’s personal.”
MacLean nodded. Memories were dropping into place as Harry spoke.
Harry scowled and stroked the side of the cut facets. “I was following you at the time of the explosion.”
MacLean’s heart took a leap. “Why?”
“You asked me to follow you and your cousin. Someone wanted to meet you.”
“Yes . . . that set ill in my belly.” Even now, it sat ill. “What did you see? What do you know?”
“You were arguing with Stephen. He tried to hush you, to tell you something.”
MacLean remembered this. God, he remembered now. “He had a list of Russian agents in England. He wanted to tell me where, but I was so angry. I wasn’t listening to a word he said.” MacLean pinched the bridge of his nose. “A damn fool am I.”
“I’ll not argue,” Harry said.
“He didn’t know what would happen!” Enid protested.
The two men stared at each other. Bless her, Enid defended MacLean, but if he’d kept his reprimands to himself, perhaps they would know the location of that list.
“In the Crimea,” Harry continued, “when you got to the meeting place, it was a deserted street corner with a broken-down wooden wagon and barrels stacked about. But no one was there. I was behind you. I don’t know what Stephen saw, but he knocked you behind the wagon and picked up one of the barrels to throw it—”
“—And it exploded in his hands.” MacLean covered his face, but he still saw the terrible scene. The memories cut at him. His stomach heaved as he lived the moments of bewilderment and terror. “He
hit me, no warning, I didn’t know why, but I lifted my head and saw—”
Enid put her arm around his shoulders. “Don’t.”
If only it were that easy, but now he couldn’t shut off the memories. “Stephen just . . . blew apart. The blast lifted me, burned me, blasted me with pain. My leg splintered. Blood splattered everywhere. Mine. Stephen’s.” The carnage exceeded his most horrific nightmares.
This was the memory he had avoided for so long.
He fought the tears that dripped between his fingers. Enid pressed a handkerchief into his hand. He struggled to maintain control. Somewhere in this hall, someone watched him. If they knew he had at last remembered, they would kill with blithe indifference.
Yet his cousin was dead, and MacLean grieved. To see it in his mind, to know that they had played together as lads, that Stephen had come to such a bad end . . . yet . . . “He didn’t betray me,” he whispered. “In the end, he saved me.”
Beneath her breath, he heard Enid say, “Thank God for that.”
Was she thanking God that he was alive? Or that her husband had had honor after all? MacLean swallowed. Hopefully, both. Probably, both. “After that . . . I really do not remember anything at all.”
Harry picked up the story. “You were unconscious. I picked you up and ran. I thought you were going to die in my arms. I got you back to my house, got an English doctor, who shook his head and said you had no chance. I got a different doctor, an Arab, who put you back together and set your leg. One of Throckmorton’s ships was in the harbor—that was my only piece of luck that day. The Arab gave me instructions on how to care for you. I did, and barely got you back to England.”
In a low voice, Enid asked, “Who decided to bring me under the guise of being his wife?”
Harry flinched a little. “Throckmorton and I dreamed up the scheme. MacLean was so badly hurt, no one could recognize him, and we thought it would be better if the Russians believed Stephen had lived.”
“Why?” she demanded.
“Once Stephen was back in England and not under MacLean’s influence, he had reason to conceal his traitorous activities from us. MacLean, on the other hand, would tell us everything as soon as he regained consciousness. We thought he’d be safer as Stephen.” Harry looked at MacLean. “Of course, we didn’t figure on the loss of your memory.”
Lost in Your Arms Page 25