Not that she hadn’t tried to fill the role. Over the years, Kitt had stomped out every vestige of what could be described as female behavior. No missish tears. No megrims. No eyelash-batting flirtation.
She had learned to fight with dirk and sword. She had listened as her father explained the art of raiding, preparing herself for the day she would go with him. She had hidden her knock-kneed fear that she would not measure up in battle, so he would not see it.
But however much she learned, she was still a female. She still wore a skirt and suffered her courses each month, as her body prepared itself to bear a child. Ironically, it was in being a woman—who could seduce the duke—that she had finally pleased her father. And she had failed him even in that, because the duke was dead.
Kitt had not wanted a bodyguard, because it meant once again admitting she was only a woman and needed someone stronger to protect her. She consoled herself with the knowledge that even a man needed to be shielded from those enemies devious enough to stab him in the back. And Ian certainly qualified. There was nothing wrong with having necessary weapons—like a bodyguard—at her disposal.
Kitt fought a grin as she watched her bodyguard devouring his bowl of oatmeal as though it were Mother’s Eve pudding. He was as hungry as a wolf. And he reminded her of one—wary, watchful. And mysterious. She had to admit she was intrigued by Alex Wheaton. Where had he come from? What was he doing here?
He glanced up and caught her staring.
Kitt felt a thrill—or was it a chill—run down her spine as he searched her face with the one eye that wasn’t swollen shut. She was still trying to think of some explanation for her rudeness when someone knocked on the door.
“Not another one,” Moira said with a groan.
“I’ll see who it is.” Kitt opened the door to find a youth she didn’t recognize. She felt a presence at her shoulder and realized Alex had left the table—hungry as he was—to stand beside her.
“Who is it?” he said.
The boy’s eyes rounded. “Alex! Is that you?”
“Laddie!” Alex exclaimed. “How did you find me?”
“I’ve come with a message for The MacKinnon,” the youth said, holding up a parchment with an embossed wax seal. “From the Earl of Carlisle himself.”
“I’ll take that,” Kitt said.
The boy drew back the parchment and held it clutched against his narrow chest. “ ’Tis for The MacKinnon.”
“You’ve found her, Laddie,” Alex said. “Lady Katherine is The MacKinnon.”
“Well. Ye’ve landed on yer feet,” Mick said with a grin, as he handed over the letter to her.
“You two know each other?” Kitt asked, her eyes narrowing suspiciously as she looked from the boy in ill-fitting clothes to the stranger in equally ill-fitting clothes she had hired to protect her.
Alex realized that Michael O’Malley would spoil everything if he revealed that Alex Wheaton had been an Englishman yesterday. He couldn’t imagine that The MacKinnon would be much pleased by the fact she’d hired one of the enemy to defend her against her clansmen.
“This is Laddie,” he said before Mick could answer. “We grew up on neighboring farms.”
He saw Mick’s eyebrows shoot nearly to his hairline and then the slight nod as the boy acknowledged his clanker. “Would you mind if I have a word with the boy?” he said to his new employer.
“Go ahead.”
As Kitt crossed inside to the table and sat down to read, Alex quickly ushered Mick outside, far enough away from the front door that they wouldn’t be overheard. “I need a favor, Laddie,” he began.
“What is it, neighbor?” Mick asked. “Nothing havey-cavey, I hope. I’ve just gotten myself a plum bit of employment, and I’m not anxious to lose it.”
“I need you to keep my charade as an Englishman a secret from Lady Katherine.”
The boy’s mouth cocked up on one side mischievously. “Oh. Is that all?”
“ ’Tis important, Laddie,” Alex said in his best imitation of a Scots accent.
“Sure, Alex. I understand. Ye wouldna want the lady thinking ye’re crazy.”
“I dinna care if she thinks I’m an idiot, so long as she doesna know I’m English. By the way, how did you find employment with an earl?”
“I thought ye might go to Blackthorne Hall, so I went there myself. Ye never know with the Quality,” he said sheepishly. “Sometimes they’re a little dicked in the nob. Ye could have been … someone.
“Anyway, I went to the kitchen door to ask for food and to see if you were there, and Cook was wailing that the Duke of Blackthorne was dead, drowned in the sea. ’Twas sheer luck that the earl saw me there as he was leaving the Hall. He asked me if I wanted work and here I am.”
Alex had heard nothing after Laddie said, “The Duke of Blackthorne was dead, drowned in the sea.” His heart began to beat faster. Had he been with the duke? Was that how he had ended up in the sea as well?
“How did the duke drown?” he asked.
“The earl told me the duke’s ship went down in a storm off the coast. Everyone drowned except three sailors, who lived to tell the tale.”
Three sailors and me? Alex wondered. Something more than a storm had wreaked havoc on that ship, he’d wager. Otherwise he would not be so battered. Otherwise his hands would not have been bound.
“What happened to the three sailors?” Alex asked.
“The earl didna think much of them,” Mick said. “He said the ‘stupid louts’—his words, not mine—went back to the London docks where they came from.”
Alex frowned. Should he try to follow them to London? Perhaps they knew who he was. Or perhaps they were the ones who had tried to kill him. He would be better off investigating his identity here, he decided, where he had at least one friend in Michael O’Malley. And where he had a roof over his head and food in his belly.
“What does the Earl of Carlisle want with Lady Katherine?” he asked Mick.
“He did a lot of muttering while he was writing, but the long and short of it is, I think he means to woo her, wed her, and bed her.”
Alex’s jaw dropped. “What?”
Mick pulled Alex close so he could whisper, “The earl kept me standing by his side while he wrote his letter. I couldna help but read it.”
“You can read?” Alex asked.
“Certainly,” Mick asserted, his chest puffed out. “Canna say I knew every word, but most of them I did. Taught myself. Ye never know when such a skill might come in handy. This time it did.”
“So the earl’s planning to court The MacKinnon?”
“He’s asked her to tea at the castle—Castle Carlisle that is—next week. Do ye think she’ll go?”
“I dinna know,” Alex said, staring in through the open door at the woman sitting in the shadows. “The earl would be a better catch than any of her clansmen. But the earl’s also English. If she’s like the rest of the Highlanders, she canna like him simply on that score.”
He tried to imagine what an earl had to gain by marrying an impoverished noblewoman, although her beauty was reason enough, he supposed, for any man to desire her. He might have believed that the lady herself was all the young earl wanted, except right now he could not—dared not—trust anyone.
“Alex, would you come here, please?”
Alex stepped back inside the house with Mick on his heels and stood waiting to hear what Lady Katherine had to say.
“Tell the earl I’ll be glad to come for tea next week,” she told the boy.
Mick touched his forelock and said, “I will, milady.” And then, to Alex, “Take care, neighbor,” and took his leave of them.
“I’ve been invited for tea next week at Castle Carlisle,” Lady Katherine said. “I’ll need you to go with me.”
“I’m ready to serve you, my lady,” Alex said.
“You’ll meet most of my clansmen tomorrow at the kirk.” She wrinkled her nose and said, “I think perhaps we had better clean you up a bit first.”<
br />
Alex flushed as red as a mangel-wurzel. He was aware his clothes stank—how could he not be? They had been a constant offense to his senses. But he had nothing else to wear. “I—”
Lady Katherine rose and put her fingertip to his lips to silence him. His body quivered at the touch. “Dinna feel ashamed, Alex,” she said quietly. “The clothes are fine enough, but I canna be wrinkling my nose at the smell of you when I’m telling my clansmen I’ve hired you as my bodyguard.
“Go to the barn and strip off your trousers so Moira can wash them along with your shirt. She’ll fill a tub of water for you to bathe in.”
“I …” What could he say? He could not protest that this was not how he normally dressed … or smelled. He did not know for sure.
He angled down the chin that had shot up in pride and defiance when Lady Katherine had first spoken and said, “As you wish, Lady Katherine.”
Alex turned and left the cottage with as much grace as he could manage. It took all the restraint he had not to run the whole way to the barn. Once he got there, he leaned against a wooden stall and lifted one foot to pull off the too-small borrowed boot, then yanked off the other and threw it aside. He untied the rope that held up his too-large trousers and jerked them down, along with the one thing that fit him, his smalls.
It was only then he realized he could not very well hand over his clothes to Moira naked as the day he was born. He looked around for something to cover himself and found a woolen blanket that smelled of horse, though he had seen no horse since his arrival. It was not a large blanket, and it barely covered him in front and not at all in back.
He jerked around when he heard a female gasp.
“I didna think you would already be—”
Alex found himself facing Lady Katherine, her face flushed with the same heat he felt in his own cheeks. He cleared his throat but could think of nothing to say.
“Here,” she said, thrusting a stack of things at him.
To take it, he would have had to let go of the blanket. Instead, he asked, “What do you have there?”
“Clean clothes.”
“The only clothes I have are lying there,” he said, gesturing with his chin at the pile he had dropped on the straw-littered dirt.
“You’ll need something to wear while those are drying,” she said. “You can wear these. I also brought a pair of shoes that may fit better than your own. And a dirk. You will need a weapon.”
He recognized her charity for what it was and wanted to refuse, but remembered his blisters and kept his mouth shut.
She hung the articles she had brought over the top of the wooden stall, set down the shoes and the exquisite blade in its jeweled sheath, stooped to collect his dirty clothes, then stood up and stared at him without speaking.
He stared back. “Is there something else?”
She opened her mouth and closed it without making a sound, but her eyes spoke volumes. The attraction was there.
He watched her fight it. And conquer it.
While he stood like a dolt, both hands clutching the blanket, she crossed past him with the handful of soiled clothes to the corner of the barn and dragged a large wooden tub out into the middle of the dirt floor.
“Moira is heating water now,” she said in a rush. “You willna have to wait long.”
Then she was gone, as though she had never been there. Alex began to wonder if it had all happened in his imagination. Except, the part of him that was male had reacted quite violently to Lady Katherine’s appearance and left visible proof that she had been there.
“Bloody hell.”
“Ye needna swear at me. I’m moving as fast as I can,” Moira snapped as she entered the barn.
The sight of the old crone carting a heavy bucket of water prodded him into action. “Let me help.”
“Best ye hang on to yer dignity,” Moira said as he started to let go of the blanket, “and let me handle this.”
He reached for the plaid lying across the stall where Lady Katherine had left it and wrapped it around his waist to cover his nakedness. When he turned to face Moira, the old woman gasped. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
She stared at him with a trembling hand held over her heart. “I knew she liked ye,” Moira said. “I didna realize she trusted ye so much.”
She looked almost frightened, and Alex felt himself becoming frightened at the thought the old woman might keel over at any moment. “What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“She gave ye his things,” the old woman said in awed disbelief. “His plaid and his dirk and his belt.”
“Whose things?” Alex said, anxious because the crone seemed to regard the clothing as something special.
“Those things she brought for ye to wear …” she said in a reverent voice. “They belonged to her father.”
Chapter 7
Kitt had offered her father’s clothes to Alex because it was all she had that she thought might fit him. But she was unprepared for the sight of him actually standing in her father’s shoes.
Unlike her father, Alex was fair-haired, which had only become apparent after he bathed, and gray-eyed—Moira had put an herbal compress on his black eye, which had reduced the swelling so she could more easily make out their color. But his confident bearing reminded her of her father when he had still been a young and powerful leader of his clan.
Alex looked like a laird should look, his back ramrod straight, his shoulders squared impressively, his chin lifted in a pose that might have seemed arrogant except she knew he was a simple man who had become her bodyguard to keep his belly full and a roof over his head.
“I thank you for the clothes,” he said as he stood in the doorway to the cottage, tugging on the plaid. “Moira said they belonged to your father.”
“Yes.” She swallowed past the sudden constriction in her throat and crossed to help him adjust the plaid beneath the belt. “Yes, they did.”
“Perhaps I shouldna—”
“He would have wanted you to have the use of them,” she said, cutting off any further discussion of the subject. “Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?” he asked, his eyes following her around the room as she made preparations to leave.
“I have visits to make to my people, to see how they’re faring.” To admonish them not to poach on the duke’s domain, no matter how great the temptation. Her lips thinned before she added, “And to leave food.”
He frowned. “There’s hunger here? I walked the road and the ground seemed fertile.”
“It is.” She had mended her torn blouse while he was bathing and now arranged a woolen plaid around her shoulders against the chilly wind. She froze as he lifted her hair, which she had left down, out from under the shawl and let it fall over her shoulders.
“ ’Tis beautiful,” he murmured as his fingers brushed the length of it. “Silky as … I cannot think of anything to compare it with.”
Kitt shivered as his fingers brushed the length of it. “You shouldna be noticing such things,” she said, stepping away from him.
His lips flattened, but he gave her a deferential nod. “Aye, my lady.”
She picked up the basket Moira had filled with foodstuffs, but he took it away from her and settled it on his arm. Because it would have been silly to argue that she could carry it herself, she let him have it.
Kitt set out at a brisk pace for Patrick Simpson’s cottage, worried that he might have ignored her advice, wondering how she could persuade him of the folly of poaching on the duke’s land. She was grateful for Alex’s silence at first. She had a great deal to contemplate, not the least of which was her meeting next week with the Earl of Carlisle. He had been in the neighborhood for a year and had completely ignored her. Why the sudden interest in her now?
As the minutes passed, Kitt became distracted by the large shadow her bodyguard cast, which led her to examine the corded sinew in the forearm that was curved around the heavy basket he carried, his large hands, and his long, lea
n fingers.
“I feel like a particularly succulent roast on a platter,” he said with obvious humor in his voice.
Her gaze skipped to his face, and she saw the same humor reflected in his eyes and mouth. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not,” he said. “Perhaps you’ll want a taste later.”
The innuendo was there. The male interest. The totally inappropriate interest, considering their respective roles. “You said you had no designs on my person,” she reminded him.
“You didna make the same claim, I’m thankful to say.”
She stopped in the middle of the worn footpath that edged the duke’s land and turned to confront him with her hands on her hips. How he could look so masculine holding a woven basket on his arm? “Even if I found you attractive—”
“Then you do?” he said with a grin meant to charm, and which, she had to admit, was quite charming.
“Even if I found you attractive,” she repeated through gritted teeth, “I could not possibly indulge such an interest. I have an obligation to marry where it will best serve my clan.”
“Even if you canna like the man?” he said, the grin gone.
“My feelings canna matter,” Kitt said. “My father made that plain to me before his death.”
“I dinna understand such thinking.”
She started walking again, unwilling to endure his disapproving look. “You must see we are a poor clan,” she said. “Even more so since the Duke of Blackthorne began raising the rents to force us off our land.”
“Greedy, is he?”
“He’s raised the rents thrice in a year. Most can barely feed their bairns after they’ve given the duke his due.”
“Have you confronted him and asked for relief?” Alex questioned.
“He wasna here to confront,” Kitt retorted. “He lives—lived—far away in the south of England where he couldna see the damage his demands wrought. Now he’s dead and heaven only knows what Blackthorne bastard will replace him.”
“Perhaps the new duke will be more sympathetic to your plight.”
“I’m not counting on it,” Kitt said. “I had only one hope of saving my people, and that died with the duke. I tell you, Alex, it has been a very long six months since my father died and named me his successor.”
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