His Wicked Highland Ways

by Laura Strickland

  He broke the surface with his lips, took a big breath, and settled back again. He might not get the answers he wanted, but the water washed away his rage, if not his sins. And how bonny the day looked through the fluid screen before his eyes—that blue sky with one or two white clouds sailing, the leaves of a rowan tree that leaned over the bank. He did not want to think about anything.

  Certainly not of the traitorous woman he needed to chase from his glen. Anger whipped through him once more at the thought of her. Treacherous lowland hussy—born, no doubt, to trick and deceive. How could Geordie have been taken in by her? Yet there had been a childlike quality about Geordie MacWherter beneath all his courage and bluster. Geordie had believed in love the way Finnan believed in magic. Indeed, it had been one of the things they talked about during their weary, hopeless nights or the terrifying ones before a battle.

  Geordie, like Finnan himself, had been dispossessed, surviving by the sword and longing for things he could not have: a home of his own, someone who would wait for him there, a family. No doubt this lowland bitch, this Jeannie Robertson—or MacWherter, now that she’d wangled marriage to Geordie—had seen that longing in Geordie’s eyes and taken advantage.

  The trout brushed against his left cheek and shoulder. Peace, it whispered again.

  Ha! There would be no peace until he paid that trollop back in full and chased her from the glen.

  He thought of the letter even now tucked into his traveling pouch, the last he had ever received from Geordie.

  I have done everything I can think to make her love me, but she will not. I am not sure I can go on this way, for I love her more than my own life.

  The next Finnan had heard, his friend, his brother-in-arms with whom he had shared the long trail through battle and every sort of hardship, was dead—betrayed.

  He broke the surface again and took another great breath, an angry one this time, before letting himself sink back.

  And now she thought she could invade this place he had sweated and bled to regain, and occupy the home Finnan had saved for Geordie. Staked her claim because she was Geordie’s widow. Ah, but she had no idea with whom she was dealing.

  He closed his eyes, deliberately seeking a return of his elusive calm, and whispered a prayer not for mercy but success. Men about to enter battle frequently reinforced their belief in magic. Finnan had seldom failed to take up his sword without speaking a prayer or performing a small ritual. And this fight against the Widow MacWherter would be a battle of the most sacred kind.

  “Favor me,” he whispered to the trout and to the water.

  Above him the light flickered. He opened his eyes and beheld a vision.

  All blurred and ethereal it looked, seen through the medium of the water, like a reflection of light. Yet he could not mistake it for anything but the form of a woman leaning over the bank to peer at him—graceful and slender, with a bright halo of gold about her head and wide, curious blue eyes. They widened still further when she glimpsed him and realized what he was. Her lips parted like those of a child beholding a wonder.

  Finnan moved in reaction, and the water around him rippled. Or was that the trout chuckling?

  The woman withdrew but, he knew, not far. He could feel her there even as he cursed himself for his incaution. His weapons, like his clothes, lay on the bank. Yet she, a mere woman, could present no real danger.

  Then why did his every instinct cry out in warning?

  Seldom had Finnan MacAllister been caught off guard. Only look what the search for knowledge brought, he chastised himself. How had he forgotten his own rule? A man could never, never let down his defenses.

  Chapter Three

  The man arose from the pool stark naked and dripping wet, like a god newly formed. Jeannie took another half step backward and blinked, not entirely believing the sight that met her eyes: some six foot of male, all rippling muscles, scars, and tattoos, with a curtain of sopping red-brown hair that slapped his shoulder blades, and a handsome, dangerous face. His eyes were tawny brown, almost the same color as his hair, and spiked by wet, black lashes. But after one glance, Jeannie could not make herself look there.

  Instead her gaze dropped—and dropped. Sweet, merciful heaven! Was that how men came equipped? She might be a widow in name, but she had never seen her husband, Geordie, naked. Theirs had not been that kind of relationship, or that kind of marriage.

  But she had an eyeful now, right enough, and for the life of her could not keep from staring. What a ridiculous, daunting, and marvelous appendage! How did men ever manage to walk around like that?

  But this man did not attempt to walk. He merely stood in the shallow pool with the water lapping around his…Jeannie’s strained mind supplied the word “weapon”…and gazed at her as if he found her as hard to fathom as she found him.

  Ah, and she never should have walked so far down the glen. But dearly as she loved Aggie, Jeannie sometimes needed to escape her chatter, and the beautiful day had lured her on.

  Into danger, clearly. Who was he? Obviously someone of ill repute, a traveler, a dangerous outlaw, a madman. What if he decided to use that terrible weapon on her, and she on her own?

  Instead he spoke the way a man might to a frightened horse. “There, now, no need to be afraid. I’ll not harm you.”

  Jeannie took another judicious step backward. If she ran, would he be able to catch her? No doubt, given those long, muscular legs.

  She shook her head, and her hair tumbled about her shoulders. Never well-disciplined, the yellow curls invariably escaped their pins, and she’d lost most of those on her walk down the glen.

  He spoke again, in a voice smooth as warmed honey, lilting, and very Highland. “Where are you from, lass? You’ll be a maid at Avrie House, no doubt.” Deliberately he snagged his plaid, which lay on the bank, and wrapped it around his waist.

  “Why were you lying in the water?” Jeannie forced her voice past suddenly stiff lips. “I thought you dead, drowned.”

  “Did you, now?”

  Jeannie curled her lip. “Well, I do not usually go peering at naked men.”

  He smiled, to devastating effect. Mischief lit his face and brightened the oddly colored eyes. “So I would imagine. What is your name?”

  “Neither do I go about giving my name to strangers.”

  “Wise lass.” He stepped from the pool onto the bank, every muscle rippling once again. By heaven, he made a splendid sight, with that mane of hair flowing over his back, broad shoulders complete with several scars, and a supple chest decorated with tattoos and a line of brown hair that led straight downward like a roadway to temptation.

  Jeannie shook herself, a woman emerging from a dream.

  “I will just call you ‘Bonnie,’ shall I?” he continued. “For bonny you certainly are.”

  Jeannie edged back another step. On the bank, even in his bare feet, he loomed over her. Why didn’t she just run? Perhaps because she felt like a mouse before a hawk—if she ran, he would swoop in upon her, and then…

  “Are you a rover?” Jeannie eyed the rest of his clothing, still on the bank: worn leather boots, a leather vest, and what looked like leggings. “A poacher?”

  “Nay.” He drew himself up and then made her a magnificent bow, very much like some pagan deity. “I am lord of this place.”

  Oh, no. Jeannie caught her breath while alarm skittered through her still more strongly. He was the wicked man, the one Aggie had been busy describing only yesterday afternoon. Yes, and wicked he did look—every inch of him.

  Jeannie more than believed the stories now. Yet he had once been her husband’s friend, Geordie’s very closest companion. She should tell him who she was. But the words stuck in her throat. “I must go,” she said instead.

  “Wait.” He held out a hand; Jeannie narrowed her gaze upon it in fascination. Brown from the sun, unexpectedly graceful and long-fingered, it—like the rest of him—was marked by scars, one of which bisected the tattoo of a running horse, all spiraled line
s rendered in the Celtic fashion. “Do not go just yet. ’Tis not often I see a vision walking.”

  His gaze, marked by those absurd dark lashes, examined her in a deliberate, leisurely way, hovered over her mouth, moved to her bosom, and swept down her body in a look as tangible as a touch. Despite her native caution and despite knowing who he was, something inside Jeannie melted in that heat. Indeed, this man would have had his way with women—scores of them. Perhaps hundreds. Wicked.

  “I am no vision,” she retorted as stridently as she could. “I am…” But the words would not come. She thought again of the harsh letter hidden back home, and tried to equate its elegant script and wording with this savage. It was obvious he must have had a lawyer write it for him. Yet the signature, a bold scrawl that read Finnan MacAllister, had been made in the same hand.

  He took a step toward her. “’Tis warm and pleasant here in the sun. And I am sure we could find a way to pass an hour or two.”

  An hour or two? She doubted she would survive ten minutes at his hands. Or maybe she would. Perhaps touching him would change her at some fundamental level, call up the primal woman she suddenly suspected lurked inside.

  Nonsense. She had been raised a decent, moral woman in the sane if sometimes difficult world of lowland Dumfries. She needed no truck with a Highland wild man. Yet she stood, precisely like the mouse before the hawk she’d pictured, while he took another step closer.

  Oh, and she could see him so much more clearly now, the individual droplets of water gathered on his skin, the sheen of hair around taut, hard nipples, the utterly fascinating array of tattoos. A woman might spend all afternoon tracing them with her fingers, one by one.

  He asked softly, his voice pure music, “Will you get in trouble wi’ your mistress if you are no’ home soon?”

  She was already in trouble, standing on quicksand that sank away beneath her feet. She shook her head.

  “Well, then,” he crooned, “you can stay and welcome me home. I ha’ been away a while, but I have come back now with just a wee bit of business before me.”

  “What sort of business?” Jeannie asked. As if she did not know. Yet he thought her a simple housemaid, his for the charming and taking.

  “I’ve a she-devil to see on her way, a right cuckoo, who has taken up residence in the wrong nest.”

  “Oh?”

  “Aye, but she’ll get her comeuppance soon enough. How long have you been at Avrie House? I will fair admit, I do not remember you. And I would remember such a face.”

  He took yet another step closer. Barely a whisper now separated them. He reached out with that beautiful hand toward Jeannie’s cheek, and the breath froze in her lungs.

  All sorts of thoughts and wanton images immediately flooded her mind. She wanted to tear that plaid from his loins. She wanted to throw herself down on the mossy bank, hike up her skirts, and offer herself to him in a primal dance attended by the warm air, the warmer sun, the earth, and the water of the pool. She wanted to taste him, starting with his lips and working her way downward. Of course, she told herself a bit wildly, she would do none of those things. But he possessed a potent—and wicked—magic.

  She imagined his warm, strong fingers curling round her face and into her hair, the sensation both beguiling and possessing, but she took a decisive step back out of his reach and fixed him with a fierce stare.

  “Wait.” Now she spoke the word, her voice a-quiver. Hauling on every bit of courage and determination she owned, she looked up into his eyes.

  She’d been mistaken—they weren’t just tawny brown but flecked with gold and copper that caught the light like the peaty trout pool. All his intelligence shone there, along with that bright desire, an entirely potent combination.

  She told him, “I am not who you think.”

  A smile lifted the corners of his mouth, revealing two dimples. “Who are you, then? A fairy woman come walking from the nearest sidhe? You are surely enchanting enough.”

  “I am the cuckoo you wish to chase from the nest.”

  Yes, and his wits moved very swiftly indeed. With a hiss very like that of a snake, he withdrew his hand without having touched her, and the expression in his eyes changed from teasing warmth to hard disparagement. He leaped back so quickly he tottered on the edge of the pool.

  “You?” His gaze measured her in a new way, dismissing the brightness of her hair, rejecting her face and form. “I should have known. Geordie said you were beautiful—and coldhearted.”

  “He said that of me?” Despite herself, Jeannie felt surprised.

  “Aye, did you think he would not write his nearest friend, telling the events of his life?”

  Jeannie thought Geordie had spent his days and nights too sore drunk to pick up a pen or put it to paper. She did not say so. Instead she voiced the obvious. “You are Finnan MacAllister.”

  “I am.” He straightened his spine, and Jeannie experienced a sharp echo of the attraction that had so nearly undone her. “And you are the scheming trollop who broke my friend’s heart.”

  Chapter Four

  Well, so this was Jeannie Robertson—Jeannie MacWherter now, to give the she-devil her due. Geordie had married the wench fairly, even if he had lived to regret it. Finnan told himself he should have expected her to be this beautiful. Geordie was not the man to give his heart easily. Beneath all his muscle and bluster, Geordie had cherished a vision of the perfect woman, carried many years.

  Finnan stood on the bank of the pool with the warm sun striking his back and regarded the woman with distaste. As young mercenaries, he and Geordie had fought their way across most of Scotland, seducing whatever women crossed their paths. But that was just coupling, an act as basic as enjoying a flagon of ale. Through it all Geordie always saved a part of himself because Geordie believed in the real thing: love.

  How many nights—or days—had Finnan and Geordie, lying beneath the high, distant stars or huddled in the rain, talked about someday?

  Someday, for Finnan, had always meant coming home and regaining possession of this sacred place, taking it from the grasping fingers of his enemies. He’d done that, and the glen possessed his heart.

  For Geordie, someday had always centered around a woman—the perfect woman. “We’ll have a home, Finn, a real home, and I won’t have to go wandering any more. She won’t want me to go wandering because she’ll miss me so. She will be beautiful, warm, and true—and she’ll love only me.”

  Geordie believed he had found that woman when he met Jeannie Robertson. Finnan still remembered the words scrawled on the paper in Geordie’s difficult hand.

  She is everything I ever imagined, everything a man could want, sweet, kind, beautiful, and with a good head on her shoulders. She looks like an angel, with golden hair and eyes so blue I cannot think straight when I gaze into them.

  Aye, and she did look like an angel, Finnan admitted, glaring at her now—the treacherous wench. Treacherous she must be, for that had been only the first of Geordie’s letters, penned before she took his heart into her hands and shredded it.

  But how dare she appear so innocent? The curve of her cheek, which he longed to touch, was sweet and rounded as that of a child; those blue eyes looked guileless, and the same deep shade as the sky over her head. Her body, well-curved also, pulled at him from beneath her plain clothing with a promise equal parts chastity and seduction. He ached to strip that drab brown dress from her, just to see what lay beneath.

  Had she, indeed, been a housemaid, he might well have had his way with her. He shuddered, an involuntary reaction.

  “Did you no’ receive my letter?” he demanded. “The one bidding you leave Rowan cottage?”

  “I did.”

  “Then why are you still here?” He added viciously, “You are not wanted.”

  She licked her lip nervously, calling up a lie, no doubt. Against Finnan’s will, his gaze followed the motion of her tongue.

  “As Geordie’s widow, I have a right to occupy his home.”


  Finnan experienced a flash of rage. “The home I kept for him, not you.”

  “As his wife…”

  Finnan let her get no farther. “Aye, you made damn sure of that, did you not? Buttoned it up all legal.”

  “Mr. MacAllister, I am not quite sure why you have formed such a hard opinion of me.”

  “Geordie was my brother-in-arms. Have you any idea what that means?”

  “Certainly.” She raised that delectably rounded chin. “It indicates a close bond.”

  “Bond? We were more than bonded. We were brothers beneath the skin. I would have done anything to defend him.” He added with a flash, “I would still.”

  “Admirable.” Her chin jerked up still further. “Then where were you when he needed you in Dumfries?”

  “Eh?” Did the bitch seek to chastise him? “Aye, I would have done well to be there and keep him from your grasp.”

  “Think what you will, Master MacAllister.”

  “Laird MacAllister.”

  “What?”

  “’Tis what I am, and what you will call me. I worked hard, suffered and bled, to claim this glen, and it is mine, every leaf and stone of it.”

  “Oh?” Mockery invaded those seemingly sweet blue eyes. “Is it hard work, then, terrorizing a helpless old woman?”

  “If you are speaking of Lady Avrie, there is naught helpless about that old cailloch.”

  “She is eighty years old.”

  “And she bred a nest of vipers more terrible than she. I have already dealt with her son. Her grandsons have taken fright and run away.”

  Jeannie Robertson—MacWherter—sneered at him. “Most honorable.”

  “How dare you toss that word at me?” She, who had schemed over a man’s most vulnerable possession, his heart.

  “I am surprised you know its meaning. We have heard of you since coming here, Laird MacAllister. It seems there is little to which you will not stoop for your own gain.”

  He smiled viciously. “You had better believe it. Now will you take warning and vacate Rowan Cottage?”