by Paula Quinn
For a moment, he stood alone in the twilight, caught between the two worlds he had rejected. His thoughts returned to the lass… Iseult… and the way she had smiled up at him when he offered her his aid. He could have stayed in that moment forever. But she was wrong about him. He should have told her the truth and made her believe him. He was a thoughtless rogue who only wanted to bed her and then leave her before she formed an attachment.
Or worse, before he did.
Finally deciding which way to go, he turned on his heel and was about to leave Whitehall through the west gate when a dulcet voice called his name.
He turned and saw Lady Pricilla Hollingsworth, a dark-haired beauty who had caught his eye when he first arrived at the palace.
“I missed you in the Banqueting House,” she said, hurrying toward him. “Are you alone?”
His eyes roved over her parted lips and then lower, to the swell of her powdery white bosoms tightly confined in her low-cut gown.
“Fortunately, no’ anymore.” Slowly, he raised his gaze to hers and smiled.
“Lovely.” Her mouth curled with the same decadence that shone in his. “Let’s go for a walk, shall we?” Without waiting for his reply, she looped her arm through his. “Lady Hartley told me that you are a Highlander. I’ve heard many titillating tales about Highland men.”
“No’ more titillatin’ than the tales I’ve heard aboot English ladies, I’m certain.”
She giggled, exaggerating the shiver he apparently sent down her spine. “Oh, I do adore that lilt to your speech. It is both savage and graceful together. Much like your appearance.”
Damn, she was eager. This one needed no pretty words but desired something a wee bit more feral in nature. As he had claimed earlier, aiding lasses was what he did best.
“Dinna’ let my ruffled attire fool ye, lady. What lies beneath is purely animal.”
“Why, Mister MacGregor!” She threw her hand to her chest in feigned offense. “I am a lady!”
It occurred to him when her hand sprang away from her milky cleavage that she might go a step further in her game of cat and mouse and actually slap his face. Instead, she pressed her delicate palms to his chest and pushed him deeper into the shadows.
“But please”—she purred hot breath up the column of his throat—“do not let that stop you.”
Closing his arms around her middle, he hauled her hips against his and whispered over her lips before he kissed her. “I wouldna’ think of it.”
“Pricilla!” A man’s shout cut through the air like an arrow.
“Hell,” Tristan swore, letting her go.
“It is my husband!”
He cut her an irritated scowl as he went to meet justice. “Ye didna’ tell me ye were married.”
“You did not ask me.”
True. He hadn’t.
“My good Lord Hollingsworth. I—”
He ducked when the beefy statesman pulled a sword from its sheath with surprising dexterity and slashed it across Tristan’s throat.
“There is nae need fer that,” he said, avoiding another jab to his guts. “Put doun yer sword and let’s discuss this like—”
Hell, that one was close. Speaking his brand of sense into the enraged fellow’s head clearly wasn’t going to work. He would have accepted a punch to the jaw as his penance for kissing the man’s wife, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to die for it.
The fourth swipe whistled over Tristan’s head an instant before his fist landed on Hollingsworth’s fleshy cheek. An uppercut to the chin next wobbled the nobleman’s knees and gave Tristan an instant to snatch his weapon from his loosened grip.
He tossed the sword over the gate and into the street beyond, then turned angrily to Lady Hollingsworth’s husband. “If ye ever raise a sword to me again, I will kill ye with it. Look to yerself fer the cause of yer wife’s indiscretion and no’ to me or the next man ye find her with.”
He stormed back toward the gate entrance, swung open its heavy door, and disappeared down King’s Street, leaving Hollingsworth’s sword where he’d thrown it. He passed a dozen women hanging about the shadows, offering him pleasures beyond his expectations. He stopped for none of them. He wanted no company, no needy fingers clutching at his clothes, no pleas to return when he knew he wouldn’t. Tonight, he didn’t want to be reminded of what he had become.
Tristan glanced up at the afternoon sky, then gave the stone sundial a curious look. How the hell did anyone tell the time of day by looking at an arrow on a slab of rock? An even better question was what in blazes was he doing here waiting for a lass with a freckled nose and the sound of music in her laughter? He’d thought about her all night, and by the time he fell into his bed he was quite perturbed with her for not leaving him alone. But this morning, he had wanted to see her again.
Unfortunately, one of the disadvantages to a palace with fifteen hundred rooms was that people were difficult to find. He was glad they had planned where to meet the night before.
“Greetings, Sir Tristan.”
He didn’t hear her come up behind him and smiled despite himself at what she called him. He turned to her and gathered her hand in his. He was surprised and a bit moved to find calluses there. “Lady Iseult.” He dipped his head and swept a kiss across her knuckles. “Were yer brothers worried aboot ye yesterday as ye feared?”
She shook her head, and he watched the way the sun played over the rich reds and deep golds of her hair. “Their attentions were otherwise engaged by two French ladies who spent the evening giggling at words I’m sure they did not understand.”
“They say love needs no words.” Tristan crooked his arm and was surprised by the catch of his breath when the warmth of her hand touched him. “I say the right words are true love’s adornment.”
“Ye know much about true love then?” she asked him, with humor dancing across the vivid green of her eyes.
“I know nothin’ of it,” he admitted, leading her away from the crowded lawns. He thought of Lord and Lady Hollingsworth. “But it doesna’ take a supremely intelligent man to know that the lady he loves enjoys it when he tells her that all he has is hers. His body, his mind, his heart. That she is the master of it all.”
“Yes,” she agreed, moving a little closer to him. “I would think that would be verra nice to hear. But how do ye know the secret of what women want when so many others do not?”
“Sir Gawain,” he replied, happy that he had remembered the tale last night. “He gave his word to marry the old crone, Dame Ragnell, after she provided King Arthur with the answer to that eternal question and saved his life.”
“Did he keep his word?”
“Of course he did,” Tristan told her. “He was…” He paused, feeling oddly shaken by what he was about to say and the old sentiments it dragged to the surface. “He was a man of honor.” Quickly, he changed the path of their conversation.
“D’ye have a man waitin’ fer ye at home, fair Iseult? A husband, mayhap?” This time, he would ask first.
“No.” She laughed softly. “There is no one who would grant me mastery over his heart.”
“Fools then.”
They looked at each other and smiled. She, seeming to see beyond his flippant resolve and touching a place he’d guarded for ten years. He, seeing a woman, mayhap the only woman capable of tearing away his defenses. He looked away, needing them to survive happily in the world he was born to.
“I saw him last eve in the Banqueting House.”
“Who?” he asked, turning to her once again. He wanted to kiss her—to prove to himself that he could and still remain untouched.
“The devil who killed my father. I have never forgotten his face. When I saw him, I could not stand to look at him overlong.”
“Ye saw him commit the deed then?” Tristan asked, his heart breaking a little for her. He had seen the man he loved lying dead on the ground. It was not a thing one was likely to ever forget.
“I watched from my window as he stabbed my fat
her through the heart with his blade.”
Hell. He stopped walking and reached his fingers to her cheek as if to wipe away the tears he imagined she had shed that terrible day. “Ye didna’ tell me why this beast murdered yer father.”
Her eyes closed for an instant at his tender touch. “He believed my father killed the Earl of Argyll during a raid.”
Tristan’s hand froze, along with his heart.
“The earl was their kin,” she went on mercilessly. “The Devil MacGregor’s brother-in-law, I was told. If he was anything like his barbaric relatives, he deserved his death.”
Nae! Tristan’s mind fought to reject what he was hearing. This lovely, spirited lass who had made him think on things he had forced himself to forget could not be Archibald Fergusson’s daughter! She had not just told him that his uncle deserved his death! Dropping his hand to his side, he backed away from her. He wanted to damn her kin to Hades, but how could he when his uncle’s death was his fault? She was wrong about Robert Campbell, but he was too angry about her accusation to tell her, too stunned to do anything but stare at her.
“I must go.”
“What?” She looked surprised and reached out for him. He moved away from her hand. “What is the matter?”
He should tell her who he was, that everything terrible in her life was his doing. But he didn’t have the heart, or the courage, to do so. “I just recalled that I promised my sister I would show her the king’s theater. Good day to ye.” He left without another word and without looking back. She was a Fergusson, and for her own safety, he would forget he had ever met her.
Chapter Three
And to the right just a bit, you will see the Apotheosis of Charles I.”
Tristan glanced up at the Banqueting House’s painted ceiling where Henry de Vere, son of the Earl of Oxford, directed Mairi’s view. Tristan felt a wee bit sorry for his sister, forced by seating arrangement to give the English nobleman her attention throughout eight courses. Tristan didn’t care a whit about the aggrandizement of dead kings—or live ones, for that matter. But listening to the man’s mindless drivel took his mind off Archie Fergusson’s daughter.
He’d intended to put her out of his mind forever, but for the past six hours since he had left her, she had remained constantly present in his thoughts. Why? Why her? He had never had any trouble in the past forgetting a lass the moment he left her. Even the ones he’d bedded never plagued him the way Miss Fergusson did. Her delicate smiles, the calluses on her hands, all her damned talk about gallantry and her difficult home life that made him want to charge into it and rescue her from it all.
What the hell had he been thinking?
He was no knight plucked from the books his mother and uncle used to read to him. He’d given up ever trying to be one, and even if he hadn’t, how could he save Iseult from the hatred of his own kin? For while he did not blame her father for what had happened, the rest of the MacGregors did.
“And that is the Union of England and Scotland,” Oxford droned on, pointing upward and to the left.
Tristan downed his wine and motioned for a server to bring more. It was going to be a long night with this dullard sitting between him and his sister. Briefly, he thought of escaping to Lady Eleanor Hartley’s table. He could delight for a bit in her lovely breasts, but she was about as sharp as the edge of a bedsheet. Before he could stop it, his gaze swept the crowded Hall seeking another face. One without powder and without guile.
“That is most interesting, m’lord.”
Fortunately, his sister’s voice dragged his thoughts away from his kin’s worst enemy.
“I am astounded by yer vast knowledge of Whitehall’s history,” she practically sang. “I would love to hear more.”
Tristan looked heavenward and shifted restlessly in his seat, readying himself for another hour-long discourse on the history of Whitehall. Just when he thought he might have to leave before he insulted Oxford and every other Englishman present, the tedious nobleman rose from his chair.
“And hear more you shall, dear lady,” Oxford crooned. “But first, I must have a word with Lord Huntington, whom I see has just arrived for supper.”
He excused himself. Tristan barely looked up. “Tell me the truth, Mairi,” he said, turning to his sister. “Ye dinna’ find his lecture on the history of this place as uninspiring as the scar running from his eye to his jaw?”
“I find his scar rather intriguing.” Mairi crooked her mouth into an elusive smile as she brought her cup to her lips. “And if ye had any sense in that pretty head of yers, ye would know that one can learn much from a man with a flapping tongue.”
“Sister,” Tristan sighed, knowing full well what she meant, “yer bloodlust to find Covenanters is beginnin’ to worry me. No’ to mention the gray hairs ye’ve added to our faither’s head over the past year. He’s still no’ convinced ye had nothin’ to do with the rebel militia that killed those four known Cameronians beyond the shores of Skye last spring.”
“Ye know I cannot abide traitors to Scotland,” she told him as softly as a purring kitten. “But I would never wield a sword against a man.”
Tristan cast her a look as sly as her own, knowing that somewhere hidden within the folds of her kirtle were at least five daggers she could wield almost as well as the one in her mouth.
He was about to tell her to be cautious in her endeavors to save Scotland from its political and religious enemies when he saw Miss Fergusson standing at the entrance with a man on either side of her, waiting to be announced. She looked nervous and out of place among the statelier, more proper ladies of the court. Hell, he was a fool to think her not as beautiful as the rest. She was as fine as any. Finer, in fact, than most, with her long ginger curls falling loose about her shoulders, her eyes taking in the finery before her. She wore no adornment around her fingers or throat. She didn’t need any. The flawless alabaster of her cleavage above the emerald green of her gown would draw more glances than any pricey bauble.
“Who is she?” Mairi inquired, following his steady gaze.
The lad on her right had to be Alex Fergusson. In the ten years that had passed, Tristan had not forgotten those piercing blue eyes filled with menace.
“I dinna’ know who she is. She is no one,” he added and looked away from the entrance. They were enemies. Let the lass think what she would about his uncle. He would think of her no more.
“She’s lovely,” Mairi commented, sizing her up.
Aye, she was. Tristan glanced at her again, only to find her looking straight at him. She smiled at him as her name was called out. Isobel Fergusson and her brothers Alex and Cameron. Isobel. Her name was Isobel.
“Fergussons!” Mairi’s appreciative gaze sharpened into an icy glare. “What the hell are they doin’ here?”
Tristan could have given her a dozen logical answers, but Miss Fergusson and her brothers were heading for his table and he could think of nothing but why the hell he hadn’t told her who he was this afternoon.
“Do my eyes deceive me or are they truly approachin’ our table?”
“Mairi”—Tristan finally broke his gaze away from Isobel—“dinna’ risk more bloodshed. They have been through enough. Say nothin’ and let them be on their way.”
Mairi cocked a wary brow at him. “D’ye know her, Tristan?”
“Good evening, m’lord, m’lady,” Miss Fergusson greeted them with the respect due to a noble family. Damn him, he should have told her and saved her from the mortification that was about to come. “I do hope ye will fergive this intrusion, m’lord, but I wanted ye to meet the brothers I spoke of.” Her smile grew a tad bit animated as she motioned with bright, wide eyes to the older of the two men standing with her.
If he didn’t think any one of their siblings would draw a weapon, Tristan would have smiled at her less-than-subtle plea for his aid, and then he would have granted it to her. After what his kin had done to hers, he would likely have granted her anything.
But as it was, Al
ex eyed him narrowly from beneath his dark, brooding brows. “Isobel, ye know this bastard?”
“Ye spoke to her this morn?” Mairi demanded at the same time, then whirled on Alex. “Watch who ye call a bastard, or I’ll—”
Tristan set his hand on Mairi’s arm, stopping her before she said something they would all regret. “Miss Fergusson,” he said softly, turning to her, “why dinna’ ye—”
“Stand away from my kin’s table,” Mairi finished for him, rising to her feet.
Tristan rose with her, but she missed the warning in his eyes not to continue when Lord Oxford returned to the table and stood between them.
“You heard the lady,” Oxford sneered while his haughty gaze skimmed over Alex Fergusson’s threadbare plaid. “Step away before I have you removed by the king’s guard.”
Tristan turned to stare at him. He might not believe in killing a man in cold blood, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to smash out every tooth in Oxford’s self-important snarl. It was unfortunate that he would only prove to Miss Fergusson that he was, indeed, a barbarian if he did so.
“My apologies for running off.” The Englishman turned, feeling Tristan’s eyes on him. “I returned as quickly as I could.”
“How fortunate fer us all.” A cool smile skittered across Tristan’s lips and then hardened into something far less amicable. “Why dinna’ ye take yer seat now.”