The hubbub in the room stilled, and Fiona shifted in guilty discomfort as all eyes focused on her in avid curiosity.
“Nothing?” one of the girls said in amazement. “No’ even your name?”
“Katy, mind your manners,” Mags said sharply.
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Curran.” Katy dipped into a curtsy and went back to feeding the fire.
“That’s better.” The older woman cast a gimlet eye around the room, until everyone stopped staring at Fiona and returned to work. Mags must be the housekeeper Mr. Mactavish had mentioned on the ride up from the beach.
“Dinnae ye worry, lassie.” She bustled up to Fiona and placed an arm around her waist. “After what you’ve been through, it’s nae wonder your head is jangling. We’ll soon get ye back as right as rain.”
Mr. Mactavish stepped away, and ridiculously Fiona missed his nearness. “I’ll leave the lady in your care, Mags.”
“Aye, she needs a hot bath and dry clothes and something to eat and some sleep. Then she’ll ken what’s what.”
Fiona suffered another pang of guilt at deceiving her rescuers. But too much was at stake for her to risk trusting them with the truth. She summoned a grateful smile. “You’re all being so kind.”
“Och, you’ve added a wee bit of excitement to our day. Most of the time, life here at Invertavey is gey quiet.”
“Even with the wild and dangerous lassies we breed in these parts,” Mr. Mactavish said, making Mags laugh.
“Aye, even with them.”
The maids had prepared the room with quick efficiency. A fire blazed in the hearth, and the heat on her chilled skin made Fiona feel like crying in gratitude. A tray of tea and scones rested on a table, and a large bed with white sheets and feather covers awaited her. The girls trooped out, leaving her alone with Mags and Mr. Mactavish.
“I’ll just go down and see what’s happening with the bath water,” Mags said, pouring Fiona a cup of tea. “Do ye take milk and sugar?”
“Yes, please.” The kindness and the activity and the retreat of fear—although fear never altogether subsided—left Fiona feeling woozy.
“Och, sit down, lassie.” Mags passed her a pretty china cup in a gold and white pattern. “Ye look likely to tumble over.”
“I’m still wet.” When she took a sip of sweet hot tea, tears pricked at her eyes. She was so dangerously fragile, that even simple human pleasures like a hot drink and a moment’s consideration made her want to bawl like a lost calf.
“The chairs will survive. I’d put ye straight into bed, but ye don’t want damp sheets. We’ll have ye out of those wet clothes and in the bath in a jiffy. You’ll feel better, once you’re warm.”
“I’ll go away and leave ye in peace.” Mr. Mactavish smiled at Fiona as she subsided onto a chair, although his dark eyes remained concerned as they studied her.
She blinked with astonishment as at last she took in her rescuer’s appearance. In all that had happened since she’d woken up in the beach, this was the first time she’d looked at him properly. Even for a woman contemptuous of the male of the species, he was definitely worth more than one glance.
Mr. Mactavish was the most spectacular man she’d ever seen.
How on earth had she missed that? Until now, she’d been too busy deciding if he was a threat or a source of support. She hadn’t registered him as an individual at all, apart from that deep, musical voice rumbling away in her ear as they rode to the house.
It turned out his voice wasn’t all that was beautiful about him. With dazed eyes, she stared into that smiling face, noting the defined cheekbones and jaw, the long straight blade of a nose, the slashing black brows.
Good Lord, the Laird of Invertavey was like a prince in a fairy story.
The urge to tell him the truth rose, to throw herself on his mercy, beg his help. But she beat the impulse back.
If anyone had good cause to mistrust men, it was her. So far, he’d proven himself a good man, but she’d only known him a little over an hour. The risks of betrayal were just too great.
Fortunately he took her silence as exhaustion, not as wondering feminine admiration. So far, he’d treated her with impersonal kindness, the object of his compassion, not his desire. She didn’t want him to start thinking of her as a beddable female.
“Get some sleep. Dr. Higgins will be here soon, I’m sure.” He glanced across at Mags. “Look after her.”
“As if I’d do anything else.” Mags gave a scornful humph. “Away with ye now, Mactavish, so I can get the lassie into some dry clothes. Cannae ye see she’s as cold as a wee icicle?”
His lips twitched with humor, although he didn’t argue. He gave Fiona a brief bow. “Your servant, madam.”
She’d been frightened since he’d discovered her, not just because he was a stranger, but because he was a man. She knew what men did to defenseless women. Yet when he left, she battled a stupid need to call him back to her side.
Chapter 3
“A wee dram before ye go on your way, John?” Diarmid rose from behind his desk to greet Dr. Higgins, after the man descended from attending to his mysterious guest.
“Aye, I don’t mind if I do.”
The sun poured through the library windows to gleam off polished mahogany and the bronze celestial and terrestrial globes displayed on two ormolu tables in the center of the room. It was late afternoon, and the view across the peaceful glen belied last night’s violent weather.
“Biddy Calvert’s baby was safely delivered?”
“Aye, although it took all night and half the day for the wee lassie to arrive into the world.”
“I’m glad they’re fine. I’ll call in to see the family this week and offer my congratulations. We were lucky ye were in the village when I needed you here.”
John Higgins was the only doctor for miles around, and he spent much of his time riding his rawboned roan mare to isolated settlements up and down the coast and deep into the hills.
“Aye. I was lucky, too. Barring some emergency that finds me here now, I’m only a short ride from my own hearth.”
Diarmid smiled. He’d always liked the spare young doctor with his wise eyes and generous heart. Passing across a glass of Bruce Mackenzie’s finest whisky, he gestured Higgins toward a leather armchair. “I willnae hold ye up long. You deserve your rest.”
Higgins sat and took a sip. A long sigh of pleasure escaped him, as he stretched his long legs across the Turkey carpet.
“Och, that’s a bonny drop.” He shot Diarmid a sharp glance, as the other man sank into the nearest chair. “I suppose you want to know about my patient upstairs.”
“Aye.” Diarmid sampled his own whisky. Bruce Mackenzie ran an illegal still on his friend Fergus Mackinnon’s estate. Diarmid was among the lucky few away from Achnasheen who received the benefit of the crofter’s illicit activities. “Is she injured?”
“No, not seriously. Plenty of scrapes and bruises after being tossed around in the wreck, but she’s come through remarkably well.” Higgins paused. “Apart from not remembering anything, of course.”
“Aye, so she says.”
Higgins’s eyes remained unwavering on Diarmid’s face. “You don’t believe her?”
“Have ye ever seen such a thing, a woman forgetting all her past, including her name?”
“I haven’t seen it.” Higgins frowned thoughtfully down into his drink. “Although I’ve seen men lose a few days of memory after a head injury.”
“This is more than that.”
“I’ve heard of such cases.”
Diarmid negated that with a gesture. “Aye, so have I. In a novel or on the stage. It always seems too convenient to be true, even in a story.”
Higgins shrugged. “I can’t tell if she’s pretending or not. What makes you so sure she is?”
Diarmid frowned, as he struggled to put into words something that was more instinct than knowledge. “When she told me she couldnae remember anything, she wasnae frightened enough of what was happening inside h
er head. A past that’s nothing but blankness should scare the living daylights out of her.”
“Forgetting her name mightn’t have her in a panic, but I get the feeling she’s frightened of something. She’s as nervous as a cat in a kennel.”
“Ye picked that up, too?”
“It’s hard to miss.”
“So ye think she’s a sham?”
Higgins considered his answer before he spoke. “I can’t say for certain. Head injuries are mysterious beasties, Diarmid. What purpose lying to us, when surely she must want to return to her friends and family?”
Diarmid’s jaw tightened. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
Higgins resumed watching him. “She’s a bonny wee thing.”
“Aye, even when she was as wet as a herring, that was clear.” Diarmid heard the betraying flatness of his tone.
Higgins’s crooked smile wasn’t devoid of compassion. “Not every beautiful woman is a liar, my friend.”
Diarmid gave a grunt of acknowledgment. John Higgins had lived at Invertavey for five years. He was party to all the glen’s secrets. Not that the late Lady Invertavey’s many infidelities and scandalous and tragic death had ever been any great secret.
“In my experience, the prettier the face, the more deceitful the tongue.”
“She’s not your mother.”
“No,” he said grimly. “But I’d still wager she’s got a lying tongue.”
“Who knows?” Higgins shrugged and finished his whisky, setting it on the table at his elbow. “Whoever the lady is, she’s in no state to go anywhere tonight. I’ve given her a sleeping draft, so hopefully she’ll wake tomorrow and tell us who she is. I’m a great believer in sleep’s healing powers.”
Diarmid made himself smile, even if the reminder of his treacherous, unfaithful mother set old anger coiling in his belly. Although of course, his mother’s ghost had hovered at his side since he’d discovered the lovely waif on the beach. “Ye are due some sleep of your own.”
“Aye. I’m for my bed.” Higgins stifled a yawn and stood. “I’ll call tomorrow and see how my patient fares.”
Once Higgins had gone, Diarmid stood at the window, finishing his whisky and staring out over the estate. He didn’t see the wide, sparkling river or the heather-covered hills rising away from the coast. Instead he saw a beautiful, vain woman always more interested in her latest lover than her family. He saw a good man worn down by loneliness and disgrace. He saw an only child deprived of a mother’s love and gradually displaced from a father’s heart, as the weight of betrayal filled up the space where paternal affection should thrive.
Aye, John Higgins was right, curse him, about Diarmid’s prejudice against lovely women. But that admission didn’t shift his conviction that the spectacular creature sleeping upstairs had no more lost her memory than he could sprout wings and swoop across the Minch to Lewis for a picnic.
***
Diarmid waited until after dinner before he went up to see his guest. Quietly he pushed the door open to find Mags dozing in an armchair beside the bed, some mending resting forgotten in her lap. A couple of candles and a roaring fire provided the only light, so the large four-poster lay in shadow.
His housekeeper started awake. “Och, Mactavish, ye surprised me.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Come to check on the puir wee bairn?”
“Aye,” he said, biting back an objection to hearing the girl in the bed described as a child. She was young, but no child. He’d guess she was a couple of years younger than his twenty-eight, and those remarkable eyes held knowledge beyond the range of any juvenile. He kept his voice to a whisper, too. “How is she?”
“Went out like a light after I gave her that potion Dr. Higgins left. She hasnae stirred since.”
Diarmid hid a smile at the acid tone. Mags and Dr. Higgins had never seen eye to eye. His housekeeper was a proponent of age-old folk remedies, while Dr. Higgins subscribed to every medical journal he could lay his hands on. Even in this isolated backwater, he kept abreast of new developments in science.
“That’s braw news. She was exhausted when I found her.”
“Aye, sleep will do her more good than anything else.”
Diarmid refrained from pointing out that Mags’s nemesis had said something similar before he left. “Did she manage to eat anything?”
“Aye, she took a wee bit of supper. Skin and bones she is, and covered in bruises, too.”
“The boat came to pieces on the rocks at Banory Head. She’s lucky to be alive. Before she went to sleep, did she say anything that might help us find her kin?”
“No. Nothing beyond a few words of please and thank you. The lassie has bonny manners. That’s no humble crofter’s daughter ye found there, Mactavish. She’s a lady.”
Aye, she was. He’d known that the minute he’d seen those expensive, sober clothes, even torn and wet through with seawater. “Ye found her some clothes?”
“Aye, a nightgown at least, although she nearly disappears inside it. Down in the kitchen, we’ve done our best with what she was wearing when ye brought her inside. We may manage to rescue her frock, but I hae ma doots.” Mags cast a pitying glance over the unmoving figure on the bed. “Puir wean. Imagine forgetting everything, including your name. She must be feared to death.”
It was clear Mags had no suspicions that the girl lied about her memory loss. Was Diarmid too mistrustful? Somehow he didn’t think so.
“You’re no’ sitting up with her all night?”
“Peggy’s taking over at midnight.”
Diarmid frowned. It was only just nine. Mags was no longer a young woman, and she’d been up at dawn to see to the day’s baking. “I’ll sit with the lassie until then. Go to bed.”
“That’s verra kind of ye, Master Diarmid.”
She rarely called him that. It took him back to his childhood, when Mags had been more a mother to him than his own. “I’ll see ye in the morning.”
“Aye, but call me if ye have any bother.” She gathered her mending and rose with a stiffness that reminded him she deserved better reward than sitting up in a chair most of the night. It wasn’t precisely proper that he and the girl remained alone in a bedchamber together, but his reputation for decency should save him from too much gossip.
Once he was alone, he didn’t immediately take Mags’s place in the chair. Instead curiosity drew him to pick up a candle and cross to the bed. He wanted a better look at the mermaid he’d rescued from the sea.
She curled up under the covers in a pose that seemed defensive, even in sleep. Her exquisite face lay in profile on the pillow. The promise of beauty he’d seen on the beach was fulfilled a hundredfold, now she was warm and dry and at rest.
Faint pink colored her skin, and lush lips parted to reveal a glimpse of small white teeth. The wild tangle of hair had been washed and brushed into order and plaited back from her high, pale forehead. Her hair was a soft blond, with just a hint of gold to brighten the silver. The thick lashes resting on her cheek were darker, as were the delicate eyebrows.
The girl was like a lost Norse goddess, as perfect and fragile as glass. He’d thought her beautiful when he found her. Now he admitted she was the loveliest woman he’d ever seen.
Diarmid had learned early to mistrust feminine beauty. Beauty demanded too much of both its possessor and the men who vied to acquire it. His mother Ida had wielded her beauty like a weapon, laying waste to everyone in the vicinity. His mother’s beauty had cursed his father’s existence.
Even when he’d been too young to probe the causes, Diarmid had sensed the misery poisoning the air in this house. By the time his mother ran off to Jamaica with her last lover, to die in Kingston from some tropical fever, he knew where to place the blame. He watched how his father’s frustrated yearning for his lovely wife blighted his life—and the life of his son.
He’d also seen how not even death and dishonor broke his mother’s evil hold on her husband’s soul. Love had weakened his father, led him to
forgive every infidelity. The previous laird would have forgiven this last adventure, too, if only Ida had come back to him. Her death left George Mactavish a shell of a man. He faded from life slowly but inexorably, to die five years later, when Diarmid was twenty.
Aye, beauty was a curse to a woman and to any man unlucky enough to fall under its spell. But och, for all that, it was a powerful pleasure to behold. He raised the candle to see his mermaid more clearly. The elegant features. The skin like new cream.
Even knowing her loveliness was a cruel trick of heredity, he couldn’t help staring. Nor could he stifle the rise of masculine hunger, even if he had no intention of acting on it. He was only human, after all, and the good Lord had created young men to admire a bonny face.
The girl made a sound of distress in her sleep, and the fine brows contracted in a frown as she turned away from the light. Diarmid bit back another sigh—he needed to remember that she was too pretty for him—and set the candle on the nightstand. He settled back in the armchair and fished a small volume of Robbie Burns’s poetry from his pocket.
The lassie could sleep in peace. He knew better than most what it would cost him if he tried to place any claim on her.
***
“No…”
The soft, choked word disturbed Diarmid’s restless doze. Sitting up in the chair, he muffled a groan. He was a tall man, and he’d fallen asleep at an awkward angle. His neck ached like blazes. As he raised a hand to rub the painful area, he bent forward to check the girl.
“No, not that, please.”
Some nightmare gripped her. She probably relived the shipwreck. She’d been restless for a while, he could see. The quilt had slid to the floor, and the sheets were tugged loose from the base of the bed and twisted about her legs.
For a guilty, sizzling moment, he stared down at her as lust sank its claws into him. He tried to tell himself that she needed his help and that was all that brought them together. But leaning over her in this quiet room while she shifted against the crumpled sheets, he was blazingly conscious that she was a woman and he was a man.
His avid eyes devoured the slender—too slender—body stretched out before him. The white flannel nightdress billowed around her, far too big, but full of wicked tricks to trap a man’s attention. Her wriggling pulled the material tight over the perfect roundness of one breast and revealed the jut of a distended nipple. The nightdress hiked up to reveal long white legs. Every drop of moisture dried from Diarmid’s mouth, when he realized she wasn’t wearing drawers.
The Highlander’s Lost Lady: The Lairds Most Likely Book 3 Page 3