Highlander Undone

by Connie Brockway

  “Oh my heavens,” Addie breathed. She could feel the laughter welling up. “Tell me you’re not serious.”

  Ted’s eyes twinkled. “’Tis true. So, being a dutiful, if more than slightly resentful, daughter, Zephrina agreed to spend two Seasons in London. That’s all Daddy Drouhin asked of his beloved daughter. Just to give our marquis and earls and dukes the same chance she’d give a cowpuncher.”

  Addie laughed outright this time. “What conceit!”

  “Indeed. But such honesty! She’s already told her father she can find nothing admirable about any of England’s ‘scrawny, lily-white idlers.’ In fact, she has told me the only men who bear even a remote resemblance to the ‘real’ men of her American west are our soldiers. Ergo her entourage.”

  “She’s a fool,” Addie said.

  “Have pity, Addie. Here she is, an avowed despiser of our effete aristocrats and she finds herself attracted to the quintessential example of what must, in her vocabulary, be exhausted European degeneracy.”

  “If she is so attracted to you, why the constant derision?”

  “She’s punishing me for being unworthy of her healthy affections.”

  “A fool,” Addie reiterated. “And I should refuse to continue her portrait if I were you.”

  “Oh, she makes herself a great deal more unhappy than she makes me. Besides, I can use the money and the publicity.”

  She knew her sibling too well. There was more to it than that. She just wasn’t sure what.

  “And how do you feel about her? Are you attracted to her?” Addie asked casually.

  “I should say so,” he replied without hesitation. “In a purely . . . noncerebral way. What man wouldn’t be?”

  The sudden blatant reminder of Ted’s sexuality brought Addie up short. She’d known about his past mistresses. It had been an open secret that his previous model had captured more than his aesthetic attention. But he had never openly discussed anything about that facet of his life with her. His easy tone represented a new phase in their relationship, one in which he was offering her an unprecedented glimpse into the masculine psyche.

  And into Jack.

  “Do you think . . . Jack finds Miss Drouhin, ah, attractive?”

  The corner of Ted’s mouth quirked. “I wouldn’t say that Jack finds Miss Drouhin all that attractive, no.”

  “But you just said that any red-blooded man would.”

  Ted’s answer was a noncommittal shrug.

  Frustrated, Addie wandered about the room, squinting at a canvas here, adjusting the velvet covering of a painting there. “Ted?” she said slowly, without turning around. She could feel herself blushing.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think—Do you think that Jack is . . . well, is interested in females?”

  “Jack? Oh, yes. I think Jack likes women very much,” he answered blandly.

  Addie frowned in consternation. He wasn’t going to let this be easy. “I mean . . . do you think he is interested in females in a . . . ‘noncerebral way’?”

  “Oh!” The taken-aback sound was a little too prompt and Addie had the lowering suspicion that her older brother was laughing at her, but her cheeks were so enflamed with heat now, she did not dare turn to face him and open herself to more of his teasing.

  “Well, now. Let me see. I would have to ponder that!”

  Addie tried to hold back a frustrated growl.

  “Hm,” he murmured, his face screwed up in hyperbolized concentration. “Hm. Is Jack Cameron interested in females in an intimate sense? Hm.”

  She waited, breathless, his answer meaning more to her than she would have thought possible. “Yes?” she finally blurted out. “Is he?”

  “I really don’t know, Addie,” he finally said in an infuriatingly light voice. “Why don’t you find out?”

  I was just a trifle late for the dinner party,” Addie said, then, meeting Jack’s incredulous gaze, amended, “Well, for me it was a trifle late.”

  Jack arched his brows. “What, pray tell, is very late for you?”

  “After dessert,” Addie replied and Jack laughed. She tucked her arm companionably through his and felt him stiffen slightly before relaxing and allowing her to lead the way to the far end of the Merritts’ walled garden.

  Inside the townhouse Lady Merritt’s distinctive whoop of victory could be heard.

  “She and Gerald must have recouped some of the points they lost,” Addie said.

  “She doesn’t like losing,” Jack replied.

  “That’s why she insisted Gerald be her partner against Ted and Mrs. Morrison. Ted is, if possible, an even worse whist player than I.”

  “Ah. I see. I was wondering why she all but shoved us out the door in the middle of the night.”

  “Middle?” Addie asked. “Jack, it’s barely eight o’clock. Don’t try to tell me you’re now keeping monastic hours.”

  “Oh, I assure you, I am quite worthy of a monk’s cowl,” he said, his voice deepening with odd emphasis. “And while it isn’t, perhaps, the middle of the night, it’s cold and dark.”

  Addie looked up at the heavens, surprised by his querulous tone. Above, the sky had turned indigo, spangled over with a million stars. The moon, nearly full, spread a thin veil of milky illumination over the garden. She did not feel in the least bit cold, as the shawl she’d slipped about her shoulders kept her more than adequately warm.

  “And that paltry excuse for sending us out here,” Jack sniffed, “‘November is when the garden is most interesting.’ Fustian. She simply wanted us gone. I see evidence of nothing here but her gardener’s lack of industry,” he said. “Those trees want pruning.”

  As usual of late whenever they chanced to be alone together, Jack’s posing became at once more exaggerated and more obviously a mask. He kept peering around through a quizzing glass, his gaze here and there, everywhere but on her.

  They reached the end of the garden, the brick wall covered with holly. A small marble bench stood close against it and without waiting for his invitation, Addie sat down.

  He stood by, carefully inspecting the holly, the wall, the bare pear tree, everything but her.

  “Jack,” she said. “Do sit down or I will suspect that you don’t have a proper appreciation of my company. It is lovely, isn’t it?”

  “Lovely.”

  “I agree with Lady Merritt, though we might not share the same reasons. Nothing is as fantastical as a winter garden in moonlight.”

  “I would have supposed you’d preferred autumn with its riot of colors.”

  She shook her head emphatically and seeing his quizzical glance, continued, “Oh, autumn is very nice with its rich palette. But what the moonlight robs of color, it returns in subtlety and texture.” She touched the dark, glossy leaves of the overhanging holly. “There is something about a graphite landscape, the feathered silver on the lawn, the impenetrable blackness of deep shadow, that is mysterious and evocative. Color can too easily hide the essential nature of a thing, its basic structure, its form.”

  She cocked her head, regarding him closely. “Like you, Jack,” she murmured. “What does all that color conceal about you?”

  He speared her with a sharp glance, so rapidly come and gone that if she hadn’t been studying his face she would have missed it, before a lazy smile spread over his lips. “La, Addie. I am afraid that without my ‘color,’ as you so quaintly put it, I am merely a sketchbook scribble.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “And I appreciate your doubt. Really, I do.”

  He’d done it again, diverted her questioning. “Please, don’t stand there towering over me, Jack,” she said, hearing the frustration in her voice. “Be seated.”

  He lowered himself to balance on the edge of the marble slab.

  “What can I do for you?”

  His head snapped around. “Ma’am?”

  “Please. I have asked you so many times to use my given name. It’s not that difficult to pronounce. I’m certain I’ve heard you
say it once or twice. It’s a friendly sort of gesture and one you seem reluctant to adopt. Each time I think we are friends, you . . .”

  “I what?”

  “You draw away from me,” she said, embarrassed but determined to speak.

  “I am sure you are mistaken.” He looked at her, a darkness far deeper than the night in his eyes. “I feel quite . . . friendly.”

  His reassurance frustrated more than reassured her, but she did not see what more she could say so she returned instead to the subject at hand.

  “Very well,” she said. “How can I help? Who would you like to meet? I have some rather exalted family connections, but no more lofty than your own.”

  “My own?”

  “Lord and Lady Merritt. They are received by the ‘best’ people. I’m afraid my usefulness to you would be better served in a different capacity.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, not to put too fine a point on it, while the Merritts are received by the best, I am received by the worst.”

  He feigned shock, drawing away, his hand to his chest. “In what manner ‘worst’?”

  She shrugged, enjoying herself. “Oh, artists and their ilk are invariably ‘worst.’ It is part of their mystique. Even if they don’t engage in reprehensible and degenerate behavior—which I hesitate to confide, most of them do not—they would still claim to. They have their reputations to consider.”

  He laughed and she rocked back on the bench, catching her knee in her interlaced fingers, enjoying herself immensely. “So, whom among them would you like to know?”

  The smile stayed on his lips, but the pleasure died from it, leaving it a hollow approximation of enjoyment. She struggled to understand what had happened.

  “Oh, I don’t think you need bother introducing me to any particular persons,” he said. “I am content to fraternize with the artists in your brother’s studio.”

  “Artists don’t frequent my brother’s studio. And certainly not members of Mr. Morris’s lot. They are far too political for my brother. He’s an artist, not a revolutionary.” She narrowed her eyes on Jack. “In fact, as one of his acolytes, why aren’t you more political?”

  Jack lifted his head. “My father was a soldier, Addie. He might not approve of what I am doing now”—he spoke this with a strained sort of guilt—“in fact, I know he would not, but I heartily approved of what he was and who he was, and that was a soldier who served his country. I would not dishonor his memory by preaching anarchy.”

  “A soldier.” She’d almost forgotten.

  “Yes.”

  Poor Jack. Pity welled up inside of her. No doubt Jack had failed his father’s expectations. “It must have been a difficult relationship,” she said sympathetically, “he being a soldier and you being of an artistic nature.”

  “Not at all.”

  She glanced at him in surprise.

  “He was a fine parent. An exceptional and loving father.”

  A tingle of apprehension pricked the edges of Addie’s consciousness. She shook it off. “Well, be that as it may, you’ll find no other artists in Ted’s atelier. Except Gerry.”

  Jack plucked a dried, brown leaf from the ground and began methodically shredding the papery tissue between the tougher veins. “Perhaps,” he said, his attention focused on his hands, “this Season, I should be content to watch your brother’s work and meet what society comes through his doors—and Lady Merritt’s.”

  Addie frowned. “Society, as far as my brother’s Season is concerned, will apparently be limited to Miss Zephrina Drouhin and her”—she bit off the word she had been about to use—“officers.”

  “Officers can have excellent connections. Only witness my father,” he said, grinning.

  She smiled at his foolishness. There, he’d done it again. He’d teased her out of her dark musings, made her look beyond herself. He clearly cared for her in some manner, even if it was no more than a fraternal affection. The problem was, she didn’t want another brother.

  She shifted irritably on the bench. Her shawl caught on the holly vines and was dragged from her shoulder. She shivered in the sudden cold.

  At once, Jack shrugged out of his coat and carefully set it about her shoulders. “See? I told you it was cold.”

  She closed her eyes. She could smell him on the cloth, the tang of his sandalwood soap mixed with the heady male scent that was so uniquely his own. She pulled the jacket closed, relishing the feeling of his captured heat enveloping her body.

  He lifted the soft velvet collar up around her neck. The backs of his fingers grazed her throat. Electricity danced beneath his touch.

  Drowsily, her lids drifted open. His face was inches from hers, the blue of his eyes cobalt in the moonlit garden, his fair hair gleaming like platinum. His hands stilled then as, slowly, his fingertips skated with exquisite delicacy along the line of her throat, tracing her jawline and tilting her unresisting chin.

  She could see the quiver of his nostrils as he took in her own scent, see his black pupils dilate, his lips open a feather’s thickness, feel the warm exhalation of his breath on her own suddenly swollen-feeling lips.

  She leaned toward him and their lips met. It was sweet. So sweet. A glissade of firm warmth as his lips touched and clung to hers. His hands slipped beneath her heavy coil of hair to cup the back of her head. His thumbs bracketed her jaw, levering her head gently up to his.

  Soft. Tender. She kissed him back, pressing her mouth more firmly to his. Her hands slid between them and crept up his chest. Beneath his shirt, his body was hot and tense and hard, his heart beating thickly beneath her palm. His kiss deepened and sighed with pleasure.

  At once, his hands dropped and he backed away from her. “Jesus!” The word, though whispered, exploded from him.

  “Jack? Jack, what is it? What have I done?”

  “You?” He threw his head back. His teeth ground together. “Rather ask me what I have done. No. I beg you, don’t. You have done nothing.”

  “But, why—”

  He leapt to his feet and loomed above her, tall and ramrod straight. He took a deep breath and held out his hand. Uncertainly she took it and he pulled her roughly to her feet. “We should go back.”

  “Jack, I don’t understand. Was I too—”

  “No!” With an obvious effort he repeated more quietly. “No. Addie, nothing you did was anything but natural and honest and . . . lovely. It is not you, Addie. It is me.”

  And with those words, he turned and left her alone in the garden.

  For God’s sake, man, hold your position!” Jack screamed above the deafening roar of firearms and mortar. He could barely see through the swirling smoke and showers of dirt that coated his plaid and his face. Muddy sweat trickled down his forehead and cheeks. The pungent scent of powder mixed with the metallic tang of blood.

  High above, a flat bright disc of sun blazed. It shimmered across the battle-woven shroud of sand and dust and acrid smoke, the small vortex of hell the soldiers had created on the hilltop.

  A bullet struck a nearby boulder and splintered shards of rock, which hissed past his ear, scoring his cheek. Another bullet sliced through his kilt, filleting the fabric open across his thigh. Another struck his claymore.

  A mortar erupted behind him, sending a soldier vaulting head over heels down the side of the hill. Like broken tin soldiers, men lay strewn and bleeding in the short, saw-bladed grass, even more vulnerable in death than they had been in life.

  More men—his men—scrambled over the ground, looking desperately for some cover, some leadership, while valiantly trying to defend an indefensible expanse of bare earth.

  They should have entrenched. They ought to have dug in. Four times he’d sent word to the commander; four times he’d been denied. Now the Boers had made the summit of Majuba Hill, Colley’s “inaccessible position.” Expert marksmen picked off his scuttling troops like rabbits on an open heath.

  He fired his rifle. Futile. Waste of ammunition. The Boers had crept u
p the mountainside like lizards. Now they clung just below the rim, hidden and deadly.

  Jack bit down on his anger, frustration balling his jaw as he swung his rifle about. What the bloody hell had happened to Colley’s men?

  “Regroup!” he shouted again above the cacophony of yells and rifle blasts.

  “They’ve hit the sergeant!” yelled Connor, the young piper ahead of him. And then, suddenly, “The colors are down! The colors!”

  The lad jumped up from his half crouch. His eyes were fixed on the regimental flag lying beside the outstretched hand of the dead color sergeant. Jack could see the boy’s down-covered jaw set.

  “Forget the bloody colors!” Jack yelled.

  “The colors are down!” Connor called out, pride and determination warring for precedence on a face more appropriate to the schoolroom than a battlefield.

  Then it began. Inevitable. Hideously constant.

  The boy ran. There was nothing Jack could do to stop the young fool’s brave dash for the colors. He’d tried. God, he’d tried. A thousand times, in a thousand different dreams, he’d tried to change the outcome of the lad’s mad race.

  The too-familiar scream tore from Jack’s throat, reverberating in the suddenly empty drum of time and dream.

  For the thousandth time, the bullet grazed his forearm. For the thousandth time, the small bird alit on a thornbush and cocked its head before darting away.

  “Connor!”

  For the thousandth time, the boy sprinted forward.

  “No!”

  For the thousandth time, an odd, slanting shaft of light struck the gun barrel emerging with liquid slowness from a huddle of rocks thirty feet away. Salty sweat blinded Jack’s left eye and, for the thousandth time, he blinked. It would be another dream-elongated eternity before he realized it wasn’t sweat but blood.