His Wicked Highland Ways

by Laura Strickland

  “I will not.”

  “Then run on your way, Mistress MacWherter. But I warn you—best to watch your back.”

  ****

  Jeannie, calling hard on her dignity, walked away from Finnan MacAllister, trembling in every limb and willing herself not to let him see how badly her knees wobbled beneath her. The vile bully! Did he think he could threaten and verbally bludgeon her into leaving the only home she and Aggie had?

  Oh, why had she walked so far, and why lingered? Why peered into the peaty-brown pool at the place where he lay? She should have kept to her own patch of ground.

  What made him want her gone from here so very badly? She pondered the question even as she trod the path home beside the sparkling burn, in the warm sunshine, past Avrie house with its grim, gray walls, buttoned tight. Why did he despise her so? Her mind worried the question the way a terrier worried a rat. He did not even know her, save as the wife of his friend.

  And, for that matter, why had he not been there for Geordie, if their ties remained as close as he claimed? In Dumfries, Geordie had no one but Jeannie’s father and, later, Jeannie herself. Had Laird MacAllister any idea how far his friend had fallen? Did he know how Geordie died?

  Well, and he certainly did not seem the man to sit calmly and listen to her explanations. She saw again the flash of rage in those unusual eyes of his that turned them from warm to terrifying. A wild, unstable, and admittedly attractive creature he seemed—undoubtedly every bit as wicked as everyone said. Did he have the right to toss her and Aggie out of the cottage? If so, where would they go in all the wide world?

  Disquiet speared through her, and her knees trembled harder. What would she tell Aggie? And how to fight this man, with all his confidence? It seemed the only thing he detested more than Jeannie might be the Avries. Could she seek to band together with them in order to defy him? But the Dowager Lady Avrie was just an old woman, and sick at that.

  Yet the Avries might have the wherewithal to hire a lawyer, as Jeannie did not. She resolved to speak with Lady Avrie soon. It seemed her only option.

  What had her father always said about highlanders? Angus Robertson, lowland bred and born, had decried his countrymen to the north as undisciplined. “Scratch a highlander, Daughter, and you will find a savage. They might play at being civilized, but do not ever believe it. They sit up there in those mountains and brood about old wrongs while sharpening their swords and dreaming of spilling blood. As for righteousness—their kirk is whatever land they can hold, and the only place they consider holy.”

  Jeannie stopped in her trek—or, were she honest, flight—and gazed about herself at the glen. Who could blame a man for believing all this beauty revealed the hand of God as truly as stone pillars and stained glass? Especially a man like Finnan MacAllister, who chose to lie naked in the water and then arose like some hero in an ancient legend.

  She saw again the way he moved, and the tattoos that coursed over that body rippling with muscle. Another shiver traced its way up her spine, long and slow—this time caused not by fear but by longing.

  Chapter Five

  Finnan MacAllister scowled at the page that lay before him, half covered in his own bold, dark hand. The letter to his lawyer, one William Cunningham of Edinburgh, impinged the man to use every legal means at his disposal to evict the Widow MacWherter from Rowan Cottage. Finnan smiled grimly to himself. What sort of monster did that make him, seeking to dispossess a widow and desperate to defeat an aging dowager? The very monster Jeannie MacWherter thought him, no doubt.

  He remembered—and not for the first time since their encounter—the way she looked at him, the fear and distrust that flooded those beautiful eyes when she guessed his identity. Oh, aye, they were glorious eyes that had lured poor Geordie to his doom.

  But he, Finnan, not the man to fall victim to such charms, meant to serve her as she deserved. He frowned at the paper and clutched the pen in his hand.

  Would tossing her out of Geordie’s house do that? Would she not just scuttle away back to the lowlands—admittedly precisely where she belonged—to wreak her deceits on some other benighted man? How would that provide Geordie justice?

  Nay, but he wanted her to suffer, needed her to feel what Geordie had felt, the disappointment and betrayal.

  He wanted her to experience in full the harm she had done.

  He abandoned his letter, arose, and went to the window, where he gazed out. The fine, fair weather of the last two days had flown and rain had moved in. Lowering, gray skies met his eyes, and drops streaked the windows, unrelenting. No matter—the glen always looked beautiful to him, even with the green turf soaking and the mountains weeping down rivulets like tears. This place occupied in full his heart, as a woman might that of any other man.

  The thought sparked an idea. He contemplated it, and his vision blurred so he saw his own reflection in the glass, mirrored from the light of the single candle behind him.

  Who was he, then? Still the young boy who, dispossessed, had fled unbearable pain with only his father’s sword and used it to make his way in the world? Was he the mercenary who took brass in return for the slitting of throats? The warrior who had stood at Culloden and survived? The madman, as they called him, willing to do what he must to hold this glen?

  He had much for which to seek revenge: his father’s death, the loss of his sister. But, his meeting with Jeannie fresh in mind, he longed above all to be Geordie’s avenger.

  So, how best to settle the deceitful Mistress MacWherter? There seemed but one way—pay her in kind.

  He had little doubt of his ability to seduce any woman. Had he not done so from the borders to John O’Groats? Usually, though, he enjoyed the process. Seducing his friend’s widow would be a far different proposition. Not that he might not enjoy it—in a far different way. He thought again of the curves beneath her plain brown dress, of stripping the fabric away to savor their pleasures, and to his surprise he grew aroused. Aye, well, they said revenge was a dish best served cold—or perhaps flaming hot between the sheets.

  What would Geordie think of Finnan taking his woman? It was a line they had been careful never to cross. If one of them had a lass in his eye, the other stayed well clear. But this situation proved far different. This, he would do for Geordie. And for himself.

  That thought crawled into his mind on a wave of hot blood. He imagined plunging into Jeannie MacWherter’s heat, seeing her eyes go wide, those lovely lips of hers part as she begged for more. He imagined her handing him her heart on a platter, where he could make it bleed.

  He grunted and turned back to the table, took up his letter, and tore it into a score of pieces. He would need no lawyer to settle Jeannie MacWherter’s account.

  ****

  “Will it never stop raining? I swear it is going to drive me mad.” Aggie voiced the belief as she leaned against the window frame and peered out. Jeannie could not imagine how Aggie could see anything through the flowing curtain of water that obscured the glass. “I wish we could go home.”

  “It rained in Dumfries,” Jeannie said with forbearance she did not really feel, and glared at the dress she sat mending. Aye, it had rained in Dumfries; she remembered splashing through cobbled streets on errands for her father before he died, or to fetch him from the tavern. At the end, the tavern had been her only destination.

  “Not like this,” Aggie asserted.

  That was true; Jeannie had never seen rain like that in the glen, elemental torrents that chased any sane person inside.

  Upon that thought, she heard a rapping and lifted her head from her sewing. “What was that?”

  “A flapping board in the loft,” Aggie answered, turning from the window at last. “Did I not say I heard it the other night? Either that, or a ghost.” Aggie paused, eyes wide. “You do not suppose the ghost of your husband would come here?”

  Jeannie almost snorted in derision, but could not quite. Something about life in this place of mist and lamenting skies encouraged a belief in th
e mystical.

  As if to prove her words, she heard the knocking again.

  “That is someone at the door.” She laid her sewing aside, got up, and hurried across the combined kitchen and sitting room to the door. Rowan Cottage, though comfortable enough, felt small as a doll’s house after her father’s quarters in Dumfries. Confined inside, she and Aggie tended to bounce off each other and chaff unbearably. She could scarcely imagine how they would survive winter—given Finnan MacAllister let them stay that long.

  She swung the door wide and lost all the breath in her lungs. Finnan MacAllister stood there precisely as if her thoughts had summoned him.

  Ah, and did the man spend all his time soaking wet? She had to admit the look flattered him, and at least this time he was fully clothed in a kilt over rough leggings, a leather jacket, and his plaid up over his head against the rain. All now shed water, sopping.

  From beneath the edge of the red tartan his tawny eyes gleamed and reached for hers. Alarm, primal and powerful, speared through her. She reacted immediately and attempted to shut the door in his face.

  He moved before she could, splayed his fingers on the oak panel beside her head. Shocked, Jeannie stared at the long brown digits of his right hand, tattooed all round with the figures of twining snakes. Or were they dragons? Before she could decide, he spoke.

  “Good day to you, Mistress MacWherter.”

  “It is most plainly not a good day.” She struggled to shift the door, but it might have been braced by rock for all her success. Heavens, but the man possessed formidable strength!

  He smiled, and wicked light invaded the tawny eyes. Jeannie promptly lost all the breath in her body once again.

  “Still, Mistress MacWherter, I have walked all the way down the glen. Will you not invite me in out of the rain?”

  Jeannie clung to the door latch, caught by that smile the way a salmon might be pierced by a gaff. Her heart beat hot blood into her face. As soon invite him in as a marauding wolf.

  “Why did you walk all the way down the glen, Laird MacAllister?”

  “To call on you, of course.”

  Jeannie lifted her chin. “Correct me if I am mistaken, but when we parted yesterday afternoon, it was not on terms that might encourage a social visit.”

  “That is precisely why I am here.” He donned a look of remorse, as unconvincing as the afore-imagined wolf playing at being a lamb. “I have come to apologize, Mistress MacWherter, having realized too late how very rudely I behaved. Indeed, it tortured me all the night long.”

  Yes, and Jeannie had thought of him all night, as well, relived the shock of seeing him lying in the water, and recalled the sight he made emerging. She had been teased by the question of whether, before he snagged the plaid and covered himself, she had seen a tattoo even on that appendage most private to him.

  “Apology accepted,” she said and tried once more to shut the door.

  The muscles of his arm flexed and kept it open. “Och, Mistress MacWherter, but I ha’ barely begun to beg your pardon.”

  Why did his voice, lilting and musical, make something suggestive of that statement? Jeannie had a sudden image of him on his knees, aroused and begging.

  She fought for breath. “Does this mean you will call off your demand that we vacate this house?”

  “For the sake of mercy let me in from the wet, and we will discuss it.”

  Against every instinct, Jeannie stepped aside. She heard an abrupt movement in the doorway of the parlor—of course, Aggie had listened to all.

  “Come warm yourself beside the fire,” she told MacAllister.

  He padded behind her, as soundless as the wolf she envisioned. Just inside the main room she met Aggie’s wide eyes.

  “Make us some tea, please, Aggie. And perhaps find a cloth so our guest may dry himself.”

  For once Aggie moved to obey without a word. MacAllister stepped further into the room, which looked smaller for his presence. It also looked bare and shabby. Jeannie had been able to bring so few things from the south. A single candle burned beside the bench where she had been sewing, the brown dress tossed down in a tumble. The fire smoldered on the hearth; the room felt dreary and chill.

  Finnan MacAllister’s gaze swept the place, and she wondered what he saw: a haven? A room of little comfort?

  “Miss,” Aggie hissed from the hearth, and thrust a cloth into her hands. Jeannie experienced yet another flashback to Dumfries. Aggie had been terrified of spiders, and after the death of Jeannie’s father, before the two women were tossed from his quarters, the job of removing them had fallen to Jeannie. Aggie would sidle up to her just so and hand her the dusting cloth, careful not to get too near.

  Jeannie urged herself to think of Finnan MacAllister as nothing more than a great, ugly spider with which she must deal.

  Impossible. The man moved with smooth, fluid grace and, well, quite honestly, was much too handsome.

  “Here, Laird MacAllister.” She offered the cloth, which he ignored.

  Instead, all dripping leather, wool, and hair, he stepped to the hearth, where he said, “Do you call this a fire? ’Tis a poor and pitiful excuse.”

  “We have had trouble coaxing the chimney to draw,” Jeannie said a bit defensively. Also, it being August, she hated to waste fuel, of which she had precious little, though she would not admit that to him.

  “There is naught wrong with the flue. I had this cottage gone over for Geordie’s sake.”

  “Well”—Jeannie shifted from one foot to the other—“it will not draw.”

  “That is because of the rain. The wet, heavy air damps the fire down.” Even as he spoke he plied the iron poker, showing skill he might employ with a sword, and the fire leaped up wild and bright. He tossed on more fuel, and Jeannie bit back a protest. Time enough to worry about future shortages after he left.

  “There now.” He straightened and regarded her with satisfaction. “No sense you sitting here cold in your own room.”

  Jeannie scowled. She found it difficult to accept this changed attitude he professed. Every instinct screamed danger, even as she offered him the cloth once more.

  “As I say, Laird MacAllister, I did not expect to find you at my door.”

  Busy using the cloth, he did not answer. She watched him rub his face, dab at his arms and those long, muscular legs, and swab his neck. When he took the toweling to his hair, her fingers began to itch. She wondered how it would feel to plunge them into that thick, wavy mane.

  “Well, but ’tis the truth I told you,” he said in that lilting voice. “No sooner did we part yesterday than I began to regret my harsh attitude. And then I had my own visitor during the night.”

  “Visitor?” Jeannie echoed, and cocked her head. What was it to her whom he entertained?

  But he leaned toward her and lowered his voice. “Aye, Mistress MacWherter, and it was none other than the ghost of your husband.”

  Chapter Six

  From the hearth came a crash as the maid dropped the tray and all its contents. At least, Finnan thought, one of the women in this house had bought his tale. His eyes moved to Jeannie and measured her reaction; would she swallow it also? An intelligent if deceitful woman, she might be far harder to fool than an empty-headed servant.

  He heard her draw a sharp breath and saw annoyance flood her eyes. With him, or the maid? No doubt, he thought, she rode her servant hard.

  But when she turned to the lass, she sounded patient and gentle. “Here, Aggie, pick that up best you may.”

  “But I’ve broken the teapot!” the maid wailed. “And it came with us all the way from Dumfries, wrapped in your petticoat.”

  “Nothing to be done about it now. Find two more cups.”

  “There are no more cups!” The maid cried, clearly overset.

  “Find whatever you can and pour straight from the kettle.”

  Finnan heard a sob, and the girl began to gather the crockery. Jeannie, her expression indecipherable, straightened and turned back to h
im. “My apologies, Laird MacAllister. It seems tea will take a few moments. Will you not sit?”

  There were but three seats, a narrow bench and two stools. Finnan took one of the latter, avoiding the bench that had her gown draped over it. She gathered the garment up carefully and laid it aside before seating herself in the flickering light from the candle.

  Ah, and how blue her eyes looked in that golden light. He could see why poor Geordie had thought her the bonniest thing he had ever seen.

  “Forgive me,” he murmured. “I seem to have startled your maid.”

  “You make an incredible assertion, Laird MacAllister. A ghost?”

  “Not just any ghost, but that of Geordie. What did he tell you of our friendship?”

  She considered it and shook her head. A tendril of gold, one single curl, tumbled down beside her ear. Finnan struggled not to notice. “He spoke of the past but rarely, and only when in his cups.”

  Finnan frowned. Geordie had not been a drinker, at least not in the days when they traveled and fought together. Oh, aye, he would take a dram when offered—what man would not? But he had often chastised Finnan for drinking to excess.

  “As I said when we met beside the pool, Geordie and I were close as brothers—closer. There is a particular bond between fighting men.” That he could not expect her to understand.

  “He once told me you were the best friend ever a man could have.” She twined her fingers together in her lap and raised those wide, blue eyes to Finnan. “That is why I find it so difficult to understand why you should want to chase me from his home now, when I am in need. You say he wrote you letters.”

  Anger licked up inside Finnan at her feigned innocence. “So he did.”

  “Might I ask what he said of me that angered you?”

  Finnan fixed her with a fierce gaze. He could not let his ire overset him, not when he played the part of the remorseful friend. He spread his hands. “You must understand we were used to confiding in one another, always. ’Twas part and parcel of the pact we made to one another, to keep in touch. He sent the letters to a mutual acquaintance in Fort William, and I collected them whenever I could.” Sometimes sorely late, but he had them, every one. “Of you, he said many things. I acknowledge now I may have taken his words a-wrong—I was not aware he had turned to drink. Whisky can affect both a man’s mood and his opinions.”