by Paula Quinn
And he was no longer a fool.
“I was speaking of the kingdom.” He watched the knit of her brow and the shadows they cast over her eyes. Was it disappointment she was trying to conceal? She was difficult to read, innately mysterious, shrouding her emotions behind an alabaster face and lips that knew how to curl at just the right angle to make a man forget every moment before the one in which he saw it. The way she was doing right now.
“Aye, the kingdom.” She looked away and picked up her steps. “Ye must be sadly disappointed that a Catholic now sits on the throne.”
“A notion ye should be putting to yer suitor, Lord Oxford, instead of me. Or don’t ye care anymore?”
“About what?”
He ignored her scathing tone and pressed on, following her around a bend in the hall. “Ye’re aware that he’s a Protestant, nae? Ye favor him with yer company much of the time.” Smiling at him as if ye truly might be considering him as a suitor.
She came to an abrupt halt and turned on him. “And just what is that to ye? Who do ye think ye are, Connor Grant?” When he opened his mouth to answer, she cut him off with the sting of her words. “ ’Tis a wee bit late to concern yerself with the men in my life, d’ye not think?”
It wasn’t true. He’d always been concerned. Always dreading Tristan’s letters, and then always relieved to learn that Mairi had not married. “Nae, I don’t. Whatever else ye have demanded I ferget ye’re still a lass who needs looking after.”
Her jaw clenched and her eyes narrowed on him like twin daggers forged from hellfire. Another man would have recoiled, not fit for the battle, but Connor welcomed it. She was a strong-willed, unbroken mare who would be tamed by no man. It was the first thing he had ever loved about her.
“I dinna’need ye to look out fer me, Captain. I am well equipped to handle whatever comes at me. Yer mother taught me how to wield a blade and ye taught me not to lower my shield.”
When he moved to follow her, she slipped her hand beneath the split in her skirts. Connor saw a hint of her thigh and then a flash of a blade.
“Leave me alone,” she warned, pointing a dagger under his chin as he caught up with her.
Connor held up his hands and took a step back, priding himself on his self-control for not disarming her and hauling her into his arms. But he had vowed long ago to do as she demanded.
He watched the sway of her hips as she walked away and disappeared into the next wing of the palace.
• • •
Mairi looked behind her. Connor was finally gone. She stopped and leaned her back against the wall to breathe. No other man ever made her so angry. He had always been rather arrogant, even boasting when he was twelve that he was born of two warriors instead of just one, thereby making him doubly skilled. But to put questions to her about Lord Oxford and then to insult her by claiming to look after her went too far. So, his was the face that tormented her dreams, so he’d grown older, taller, broader of shoulder. What did it matter when his false heart remained the same?
Lifting her skirts, she put away her dagger and the memory of Connor Grant. She was a MacGregor, made of stronger stuff than weak knees and a spine to match. If he chose to infuriate her every time they saw each other, that was fine with her. If she killed him, she would not be to blame.
The sound of men’s voices speaking of the king drew Mairi into the shadows. It was Lords Oddington and Somerset. Mairi watched the latter pull a key from his waistcoat, look around, then slip it into a door a few paces away.
What were they up to?
When they disappeared inside, she left the shadows and tiptoed down the walkway. She came to the door and pressed her ear against it.
Chapter Five
The next two days were hell for Connor, and tonight didn’t promise to be any better. Standing at the back of the Banqueting Hall, he sipped his wine and glared at the dance floor. He swore if he had to watch Mairi and Oxford laughing together for one more instant, heads would roll. They had eaten together, strolled the gardens together, and danced together every night for the past three nights. Connor wasn’t jealous. He simply felt a tad… protective of her. He’d known her his whole life, after all.
He did everything he could to avoid speaking to her, but it wasn’t enough. Her very presence at Whitehall was enough to distract him.
Thanks to his promise to her father to keep an eye on her, he noted that she appeared distracted most of the time, even while she giggled with her scar-faced admirer. Mairi giggling! She’d never giggled with him. He’d caught her gaze shifting to some of the other lords at court, mostly Oddington and Somerset. What was she up to? He’d seen her standing at Oddington’s door, then scurrying away when the door opened. What had she heard? Why had she been listening?
“According to some,” his mother said, appearing at his side and following his gaze, “you dance quite well. Why do you not ask Mairi—”
“Some other time.”
Claire raised her eyes heavenward. “Then at least sup with us tonight. Your father and I have barely seen you in years and now that we have the chance to spend time with our eldest son, you disappear each night to a tavern. We’ve missed you Connor.”
He looked into his empty cup, wishing it were full again. She was right. He missed his kin too. He missed his brother Finn. He missed Camlochlin. He couldn’t continue to avoid his family because Mairi spent so much of her time with them. His eyes settled on her again, her hand aloft and close to Oxford’s as they danced, her smile radiant, her eyes clear and vibrant.
“Lord Hollingsworth and his wife invited me to dine with them this eve.” He felt like hell refusing his mother yet again, but he wasn’t yet up to sitting with Mairi through seven courses and having to listen to her sugary compliments to a man whose head Connor wanted to smash.
“But, Connor—”
“I vow to dine with ye tomorrow and ye can tell me all about what’s been going on at home.”
Before she said another word to stop him, Connor lifted her hand to his lips and made a quick exit.
Two hours and three courses later, the fate of King Charles I, depicted in the painting over Connor’s head, would have been a welcome reprieve from the company with whom he sat. What tragedy was losing his head if it removed him from both Lord and Lady Hollingsworth? The former, with his thick jowls glistening with the grease of his broiled duck and talking nonstop about who the bloody hell knows what. The latter, sitting beside her husband and licking her fingers while her heavy-lidded gaze offered to do the same to Connor.
Twice, he suffered the tightness her wanton gaze stirred in him. If he had any sense at all, he would meet her later and take what she offered him. It would do him good to release his frustration inside a warm and willing body—and judging by Lady Hollingsworth’s heaving breasts every time his gaze met hers, he thought she would take as hard as he could give. But he had no sense. That had to be why, when the tables were cleared again after the fourth course to make room for dancing—and for more food in everyone’s belly later—he cut across the hall to his family’s table and snatched Mairi’s hand as she offered it to Oxford.
“I beg your pardon, Captain,” the Englishman sputtered with polite indignation. “Miss MacGregor and I were about to—”
Connor ignored him and pulled Mairi toward the dance floor. When she dug her heels in to stop their departure, he gave her a tug that hauled her into his back.
“What do ye think ye’re doing?” she demanded, pushing off him with her free hand.
“I think ’tis quite obvious what I’m doing, Mairi. I mean to dance with ye.”
“Well, I dinna’ want to dance with ye.”
“Noted,” he said, not really caring if she wanted to or not. Only God knew how long she would be here, and he didn’t plan on watching her blossoming romance with Oxford the entire time. Her father would disapprove of such a union. It was his duty to stop it.
When they reached the other dancers waiting for the music to commence, he
stopped and finally turned to face her fully. He tightened his hold and bent his face closer to hers when she tried to yank her wrist free. “There are things that need to be spoken between us once and for all.”
It wasn’t what he’d meant to say. He didn’t know what to say to her that he hadn’t already told her in more letters than he could count.
“I dinna’ care fer anything ye have to say.”
Her eyes seared into his with the promise of vengeance he knew she could deliver. It scorched his blood in a way Lady Hollingsworth, or any other woman, could not.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Unfortunately, ye’re going to hear it nonetheless.”
As if on cue, he released her wrist and tucked his arm behind his back as the delicate strum of a lute echoed off the high ceiling. He bowed to her, as did all the other male dancers to their partners, and used the moments until she fled to think of something new to say. But she didn’t flee. She muttered something under her breath, looked around the hall, then sidestepped around him, as the first step began.
A small victory in what Connor was certain was only the beginning of Mairi’s war. When she faced him again, he held out his hand and waited, his breath falling harder from his lips while she hesitated. If she ran from him, he deserved the humiliation that belongs to a fool. Duty or not.
Her skin against his charged his heart like a cannonball through granite. Satan’s balls, what kind of pitiful sot was he that a mere touch from her could weaken his resolve to resist her? He closed his fingers around hers the way he used to when she was his, and watched her take the same small inhalation of breath at their touch.
“Still practicing yer swordplay, I see,” he said, rubbing the pad of his thumb over her callused palm, then gritted his teeth to keep any other inane declarations from escaping his mouth.
“Did ye haul me away to ask about my habits then?”
When she stepped under his arm, he assessed the shapely definition of her hips and her backside beneath the folds of her Highland plaid. He allowed the slightest smile to curl his lips when she turned to face him again. “Aye, ye’ve done much changing in seven years. Ye’re not going to whip out another blade and point it at my throat, are ye?” He stepped around her and touched his back to hers.
“That depends on ye,” Mairi told him over her shoulder. “But I must warn ye, I am tempted to do so right now.”
He laughed softly, and facing him, Lady Amberlaine smiled back and tossed him a provocative wink.
“What would yer Lord Oxford think of yer unladylike tendencies, Mairi?”
She spun on her heel, ready to leave the dance floor and him with it. Hell, she was too easy to rile, especially when it came to her behaving like a lady. He only felt a wee bit guilty about using her weakness against her, mainly because it involved Oxford.
He snatched her back and hauled her close against him as the musicians changed their tempo for the volte. “I know ye loathe being a woman, Mairi, but, hell, ye’re good at it.” Ignoring her slight gasp and short, shallow breath, he took hold of her front lower hip with one hand and pressed his other palm to her back. She responded with a sharp glare aimed at an envious Lady Amberlaine dancing with her husband to their left. With reluctance, Mairi set her hand atop Connor’s shoulder and readied for the turn.
“Yer lover hopes ye will drop me.”
“I won’t.” Connor tried to sound as unaffected by their touch as she did. “And Lady Amberlaine is not my lover.” He sprang with her onto his outside foot and lifted the inside foot forward.
“Mayhap ye simply dinna’ recall bedding her, what with so many lasses lapping at yer heels.”
She sounded jealous. Was it possible? Why would she be? She hated him. Didn’t she? And if she was jealous, why in blazes did it please him? Could it be that she didn’t revile him as much as she claimed? There was a way to find out. He would ponder why he cared to know later.
On the second beat, they stepped smoothly onto the inside foot and Mairi poised herself for the spring.
“If Lady Amberlaine was ever my lover,” he said, lifting her into the air with both hands and smiling up at her murderous expression. “I would remember it.”
He lowered Mairi back to the ground, her body pressed indecently close to his. Hell, she was bonnie. She didn’t need red powder with which to paint her cheeks. The blaze in them came naturally. She took a step back and cracked him hard across the face.
Connor stood on the dance floor holding his cheek and watching his partner storm away. He felt Lady Amberlaine’s eyes on him, along with every other dancer’s around him. He didn’t care. In fact, he couldn’t keep himself from smiling.
Mairi did not return to her table when she left the dance floor. She needed to get away from the hundreds of eyes staring at her, from all the women who were either laughing at her or wanting to strike her for slapping Connor. How could he tell her that he would have remembered making love to Lady Amberlaine? What kind of cold, calculating bastard was he? Och, how she hated him! She hated his tongue that had become so sharp and cold when he spoke to her while his lips remained indecently full and inviting. She hated the way his brows knit together when he was angry at her, making those glacial blue eyes even more piercing. But when she looked down into those eyes, into the face she once knew better than her own, she did not care how cruel he was. For an instant she was tempted to do almost anything to be with him again.
Never! She did not want him anymore. She had been young and foolish when she fell in love with his wide, winsome smiles, the promise of her future in the depths of his eyes. But she was older now, with wisdom of how false a man’s heart could truly be.
She stepped out into the Pebble Court. Broad walks above and below encircled the grass plot for promenading, though the walks were all but empty now. She lifted her face to the balmy drizzle that had begun, letting it cleanse her of Connor Grant.
But nothing ever would. She had done her best to rid her heart of him, but he remained. How could she truly forget him when everything about him reminded her of what she loved most? Home. Seeing him again was like stepping though time, into the past. Why last night, while Lord Oxford droned on eternally about the different species of birds inhabiting the king’s aviary, she found herself lost to the memory of Connor running along the pebbly shore of Camas Fhionnairigh. His laughter, as he looked over his shoulder at her chasing him, lost on the wind blowing in from the Cuillians. He had taken her doll and would not give it back. Tonight while she was supposed to be concentrating on steps Henry was teaching her on the dance floor, she was remembering a day, years later, when she and Connor raced together up the snowy mountainside on horses that flew against the bracing chill of winter. They wore furs that they used to soften the floor of their secret cavern, cut deep in the braes of Sgurr Na Stri. They made love for the first time while the wind battered against the walls, singing a song that belonged to the Highlands alone. A se’nnight later he told her he was leaving Camlochlin.
She had to remain strong. Those days were gone, never to be lived again. She had to resist him and forget what he had once meant to her.
“Leave me,” she cursed softly, fisting her hands at her chest as if to tear his memory from her soul. She had withstood a lifetime of days tormented by images of him lying dead on a battlefield far away, or alive and vibrant, naked and poised over some harlot, ready to give her what belonged to another. She had withstood him. She had conquered him. She would not let herself think of going back.
“Mairi.”
She turned around at the sound of his voice. He stood just inches from her, wet from the rain finally falling harder now, and as still as her heart. His hair dripped about his face, shielding her from the full force of his tender gaze. For a moment, she saw him as he used to be, free of England’s salacious spell, a boy more beautiful than summer heather on the moors.
“ ’Tis time to put this terrible thing between us away.”
She would not let herself go back. She swipe
d her fingers across her cheeks, freeing them of rain. “What is between us, Captain, is deceit and betrayal.”
“As ye see it,” he corrected softly, and moved a step closer. “I asked ye to come here with me many times.”
“Ye knew how much I loved Scotland.”
His jaw tightened around something he looked like he wanted to say. He fought it and, winning the battle, said, “Ye commanded my absence when I would have come home. ’Twas what ye wanted.”
“Aye,” she managed on the aftermath of a strangled sob. Saints help her, she did not want to be having this speech with him. Opening old wounds only made them hurt again. “And ye were only too happy to stay here, demonstrating year after year what I truly meant to ye.”
He moved like a wraith caught between shadows and lightning, a phantom come to life from her dreams… and her nightmares. She did not move when he stood over her. She did not breathe when he spoke to her.
“Ye meant everything to me,” he whispered in the rain. “How could ye not know that?”
“Miss MacGregor?”
At the sound of Lord Oxford’s voice, she startled free of Connor’s spell and stepped away from him. His eyes followed her, dark beneath the shadow of his brow.
Tipping her head around his body, she saw Henry raise a wide-brimmed hat above his wig and step out from beneath the protection of the upper galley.
“Is everything all right?” he asked, reaching them quickly, the curls in his long wig drooping around his face.
The rain lightened but the air crackled at the deadly frost in Connor’s gaze when he set it on Oxford. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
A loaded question that any man with a spark of sense in his head would have declined to answer.
“My apologies if I’ve insulted you, Captain.” Oxford smiled, straining the scar running vertically down his face. “But your reputation with the fairer sex precedes you. I am only concerned for the lady’s honor.”