“Feasgar math, Alasdair Og—good afternoon,” she said politely, starting again. “I trust you’re well?”
He took a step into the kitchen and leaned on his walking stick. “I haven’t come for treatment, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Fia felt her face heat again. Dair raised one eyebrow and regarded her flatly. She fixed her gaze on the laces of his shirt. “That’s good,” she said. Was it good? She thought of what Moire had said, that he might still die. She cast her eyes over him, the broad shoulders, the lean, catlike strength of his body. He was the most alive man she’d ever met. She returned to watching the pulse point at the throat of his open shirt.
“So why have you come?” She could have bitten her tongue in two. This was his home, not hers, and she had no right to ask.
“I wanted a bit of bread and broth. I missed breakfast.”
“I can serve you some,” she said, and rose from her seat, glad of something to do. She found and a bowl and a ladle. She was aware of him watching her as she bent over the bubbling pot.
Her hand shook, and she dropped the bowl into the stew. “Oh, no!”
Without thinking, she reached into the pot to snatch it out again before it sank out of sight. The pain was instant and intense, and she cried out and drew her hand back, burned. The ladle in her other hand hit the floor with a clatter.
Dair was by her side in an instant, gripping her wrist, pulling her toward the door, half carrying her there. He plunged her hand into a bucket of cool water. Fia felt tears sting her eyes. “I—” She didn’t know what to say. She should apologize for her clumsiness, but her fingers hurt. His big body enveloped hers, and his hand held hers in the soothing water, cooling her skin. It seemed that every other inch of her was scalded by his touch.
He removed her hand from the bucket, examined it, and the water poured off in glistening streams, soaked her gown, his boots, and the floor. He paid no attention. Her palm bloomed with scarlet blisters. The rest of her hand looked white and very small in his big tanned fingers. “’Tis not so bad,” she said, her voice quavering.
“I’ve no doubt it hurts like the devil. What were you thinking?” His voice was gruff but not mean. He spoke to her the way one might speak to a child—or an idiot.
She looked up, met his eyes. “I wasn’t thinking. At least, I mean—” He was staring at her, his eyes scanning her face, so close she could see the tips of his dark eyelashes were golden. She could feel his breath fanning her cheek. It made her mouth go dry again. “You smell of the sea,” she said foolishly. Her tongue was as clumsy as the rest of her, apparently. She shut her eyes. “I mean—as if you’d been swimming. Have you been swimming? My sisters swim in the loch at home on hot days . . .” She was babbling, and he was still staring. She closed her mouth. She was shaking, and it wasn’t just the burn.
“I’ve been out on the cliff in the wind,” he said. He looked at the pot of salve. “Does that work on burns?”
“Yes,” she managed to say.
He crossed the short distance to the table. “Sit down,” he said, indicating the stool.
She sat, and he dipped his fingers into the pot. He picked up her hand, applied the salve with his fingertips. His touch was gentle, careful. “What’s in it?”
She’d made it a hundred times, but at that moment she couldn’t remember a single ingredient. “Oh, soothing things, healing herbs, flowers, leaves. Nothing bad.”
He released her hand, and she felt the loss of his touch, wanted it back. He was staring at her, his eyes scanning her face. They stopped on her mouth. She was aware she’d caught her lip between her teeth and let it go, flicked her tongue across the wee bite mark. He swallowed.
“It must be magic,” he murmured. “The salve I mean. It takes time to win the trust of a Sinclair. Yet they trust you.”
“Do you?” she asked, her unruly tongue getting away from her again. She trapped it between her teeth.
His brows rose at her boldness. “Ah, but I have more knowledge of the world, and more experience with strangers than they do. I am not a superstitious man.” He put the lid on the pot. “It will take more than herbs and flowers and leaves to convince me of—” He stopped, met her eyes again. “Do you sing, Mistress MacLeod?” It was like being struck by lightning. He knew—or suspected—that she’d been beside him in the night.
“A little,” she admitted, felt her face turn as red as her burned palm.
“Lullabies?” His gaze sharpened, as if he were trying to solve a problem or a complex mystery. Was he shocked or angry? Her skin heated again. She nodded.
He drew a quick breath, as if someone had hit him in the belly. His mouth tightened but he said nothing. He rose, moved toward the door.
He paused on the threshold and looked back at her, and the light outside outlined the male silhouette of his body, while the low eaves above him cast his face in shadow, hid the scars. “I knew a physician in Paris who swore the best thing for a burn was honey. Ask Ina for some when she returns.”
Before she could reply, he was gone.
Fia stared after him, shaking, her hand stinging.
He had forgotten to eat.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was her voice he’d heard. Fia MacLeod’s.
Dair hobbled along the passage that led to the hall, his heart pounding. He’d been lost in a nightmare he couldn’t recall. He hadn’t even known she was there . . . he stopped, leaned against the wall, tried to remember, couldn’t.
It wasn’t the whisky that had made him sleep. It was Fia—and something she’d dosed him with, no doubt. He had no idea what it might have been. She sang me a lullaby?
He found John Erly in the hall, carving a flute for one of the village children. His grin faded at the sight of the thunderous look on Dair’s face. He sent the child off with the toy and brushed the wood dust off his hands.
“What happened last night?” Dair asked. John’s grin returned.
“You had a nightmare. Angus carried you up to the tower, and Fia MacLeod—fixed it.”
“Fixed it? How?”
John shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know. She gave you a drink—”
“She dosed me with some potion.”
“No, that’s the thing—it was water, just water. Your father poured it himself. I woke her, brought her to see you. She had no time to fetch anything. I wanted to prove—well, it proved nothing. Do you remember any of it?”
“She sang to me.”
“Yes. Something in Gaelic.”
“I woke up with it in my head. My mother used to sing me the same song. How could she know that?”
“Perhaps your father told her?” John suggested.
Dair shook his head. Padraig Sinclair was a man of money, politics, and war. He’d left Dair’s childhood to his mother and his nurses.
“There’s something about her,” John said softly.
“Oh no, not you too. She’s charmed half the clansmen. They’re lined up out the door for a chance to sit beside her and get a wee bit of magic salve.” Dair pointed in the direction of the bailey. “They’re feeding her bloody cat!”
John threw his head back and laughed. “I’m to blame for that, I think.”
“Is cat charming an English custom?”
“Well it does seems to work with cats, but we prefer to use our talents to charm women instead.”
“Like Fia MacLeod.”
John nodded, his grin besotted. “Like I said, there’s something about her, something I don’t think I’ve encountered before. She’s—different.”
“She’s not different—she’s odd. Don’t tell me a drink of water and a lullaby has convinced you she’s got some kind of magic power? I was drunk. I daresay the whisky helped far more than Fia MacLeod.”
John’s smug grin faded. “It hasn’t in the past. Drink makes it worse, Dair. You know that.”
Dair crossed to lean on the fireplace. “Perhaps it’s not me but you she’s bewitched. Some men find in
nocence irresistible. One pretty lass is much like any other, but a virgin—is that the attraction? Is every man at Carraig Brigh imagining he’ll be her first?”
For some reason, the idea made him angry. She’d be easy prey. It was obvious she had no experience of the world or men. His mere presence in the kitchen had made her blush, babble, and plunge her hand into a boiling pot of stew. He’d read the vulnerability in her eyes. She seemed impossibly fragile. And she was beautiful. Even he, a man of the world who preferred experienced, brilliant, confident women, found himself wanting to protect her, touch her, breathe in the flower scent of her hair . . . He recalled the feel of her in his arms as he tended her burned fingers. She was warm, soft, and feminine. At the mere memory he felt his body respond, stir, and rise. Now, that was something that hadn’t happened in months. He could have turned Fia MacLeod in his arms, pulled her close, pressed his broken body against hers, claimed her mouth . . .
He frowned. She would have thought he was a monster.
But there was no denying the evidence of his own arousal. All because of the smell of her hair? Was that what had turned every Sinclair clansman over the age of twelve into a grinning, fawning fool in Fia MacLeod’s presence? Never mind the ingredients in the salve—he should have demanded to know what was in the soap she used. Soap was soap, logic insisted. But catnip was just a plant, and look what that did to cats . . .
“One pretty lass is like any other,” he said again. “She’s no different.”
John chuckled. “So you’ve noticed she’s pretty?”
Dair shifted uncomfortably, willing the cockstand away. Instead it got harder still. “It makes no difference if she’s pretty or not,” he said angrily.
“Tell me—what do you think of her sister?” John asked.
“What?” Dair couldn’t recall a single detail about Meggie MacLeod, except that she was blond and she’d been dancing with Logan.
John raised one eyebrow. “You haven’t noticed sweet Meggie MacLeod—a fine pair of blue eyes, the body of a goddess, a born flirt? Fia says she’s the family beauty. Now, there’s a lass who should be setting the lads afire. But she isn’t. Fia is all anyone can talk about.”
Dair felt the prickle of an unfamiliar emotion, something dark that made him want to punch the smug grin off the Englishman’s face. John had spent more time with Fia, had spoken with her. John had been awake last night, and sober, to see her work her magic.
Then it struck him. It was jealousy. He, Alasdair Og Sinclair, was jealous. It had never happened before. But then, no woman even looked at another man when Dair Sinclair strode into a room. The ugly emotion was as unwelcome as his unexpected erection.
“Do you find Fia MacLeod pretty?” he asked John, his fists curling.
“She’s not my type—all that virginal purity, that depth of character. In my experience, women like Fia see through me in a week—or less.”
Dair relaxed.
“That leaves all the other men at Carraig Brigh for you to worry about, though. Andrew, Girric, Ruari—all fine, braw, unmarried lads. Does that bother you? Your virgin, wooed by other men?”
Dair bristled. “She’s not my virgin. She’s a guest, and as such, she is not fair game. There’ll be no wooing, no flirting, no—” Sniffing her hair, he added silently.
He needed to think, to make sense of Fia MacLeod. Dair turned on his heel and stalked—limped—out of the room, with the damned lullaby trapped in his brain, his cock aching, and the memory of her perfume tormenting the rest of his senses.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Fia lay in bed as her sister went through her extensive nighttime toilette at the dressing table. Fia knew she’d be unable to sleep. She would lie awake waiting, dreading, yet hoping for, a scratch at the door, for John Erly to arrive and tell her Alasdair Og needed her. Was that wrong? She didn’t wish him ill, just—she put a hand against her heart under the covers, felt it beating fast in anticipation.
Meggie had spent the day riding with Padraig and Logan, visiting the village, touring part of the vast territory controlled by the Sinclairs. She’d come back most impressed, gushing over the elegant manners of the Sinclair men, even though all they’d talked about all day was Dair.
“Everything was ‘Dair built this’ and ‘Dair did that,’ ‘Dair changed the way the water mill works, planted new and better crops, found methods to breed better sheep,’” Meggie said, rolling her eyes as she arranged the lace frill on her nightdress just so. “You’d think there was no other man here! And all anyone else we met wanted to talk about was you.”
“Me?” Fia asked, surprised.
“Yes, you—the cat, your gentle ways, your kindness. Did you really cure a dog of blindness?”
Fia smiled. “Of course not. All I did was pull a wee thorn out of the poor pup’s paw.”
Meggie sat down at the dressing table and began to brush her blond hair. “They also said you vanquished Dair Sinclair’s nightmares with a single drop of water and a charm. Did you?”
“Och, the tales folk tell,” Fia murmured, her face heating.
“I thought not,” Meggie sniffed. “I said you’ve been treating nearly everyone for cat scratches and wouldn’t have had time for anything else. Odd, but people here seem far less fearful of Bel than folk at home. It’s almost as if they want him to scratch them. Perhaps it’s some Sinclair test of bravery. Why, one wee laddie asked me what Bel liked to eat. Why should that matter, unless one is afraid of being eaten?” She looked into the glass and smeared her cheeks with cream made from rose petals. “I told him that cat would eat him if he wasn’t careful, that he wouldn’t be the first child Beelzebub had devoured, and he should stay away from him. The silly child began to cry, and I earned a sharp look from his ma for my trouble.”
“The ride obviously agreed with you, Meggie. You look very pretty this evening,” Fia said to change the subject.
Meggie pouted. “More’s the pity, then. It was such a quiet supper, what with you eating here because of your burned hand and Chief Sinclair not there for the meal either. He’s leaving for Edinburgh in the morning. A lot of his clansmen are riding out with him.”
“Is Dair—Alasdair Og—going too?” Fia asked.
“Och, no. What good is a madman in Edinburgh?” Meggie said. “The chief is meeting with other Scottish lords, to debate what to do about an English act of Parliament that has taken away all the rights of Scots with property in England and forbids Scots like the Sinclairs to trade with English colonies—or some such thing. He told me all about it, though I scarcely listened. It’s a matter dear to the chief’s heart, since he has ships and trading interests all around the world. Alasdair Og was very canny about getting round British navy patrols, bending the rules, making trades with countries the English are at war with. He earned a fortune on every cargo. The English hated him, called him a pirate, though he isn’t one at all.” She looked at her eyes in the mirror, smoothed her hand over the curve of her eyebrows. “Padraig is sure that’s why the English stopped Alasdair Og’s ship, impounded it, stole the cargo, and killed his niece and the crew. Alasdair Og hasn’t set foot on a ship since it happened. I did my best to convince the chief that I have a great interest in politics and should accompany him to Edinburgh—I would truly love to see Edinburgh, Fia! But he said he would be happier if I remained here, safe, to enjoy all the comforts and pleasures of Carraig Brigh.”
Fia’s breath caught in her throat. Dair, a pirate? She could imagine it . . .
“Fia, are you listening?” Meggie said.
“Of course I am,” Fia said. “It shouldn’t be difficult to enjoy Carraig Brigh. Have you seen the library?”
Meggie rolled her eyes and began to braid her hair in deft motions. “Books are not my idea of fun. I shall have to convince—well, somebody to have a party while the chief is away, with more dancing.”
“Midsummer is coming. There’ll be a bonfire and dancing then, if the Sinclairs celebrate the way we do at Iolair.”
&nb
sp; “Hardly an occasion to wear silk and jewels, now, is it? Dancing barefoot around a fire is for ordinary folk and bairns. I want a ball. The chief was telling me about the grand dances Alasdair Og attended in France, at the court of King Louis. Isn’t that wonderful?”
Fia let Meggie tell her all about the ball, but she wasn’t really listening. Her mind drifted back to Alasdair Og, how he’d looked at her in the kitchen, the way he’d asked her if she sang. He didn’t remember. What if he’d opened his eyes, seen her hovering above him in the dark of night, singing? She felt a tingle rush through her body. She remembered the way he’d tended her burn, gentle, kind, and gallant. He hadn’t said a word about her being clumsy. She sighed.
“Fia? You’re not listening! You’re daydreaming again. I suppose that’s how you came to burn yourself today, isn’t it? I’ll write and tell Papa you’re not being careful—”
“Oh, please don’t do that!” Fia felt panic rising in her breast.
Meggie’s gaze narrowed. “Oh? Why not?” she asked. “I saw the sweet look in Andrew Pyper’s eyes this afternoon when your name was mentioned. Have you made a conquest?”
“Me?” Fia squeaked. “Of course not. Who would look at me with you here to charm them? Are you not enjoying our visit here? Because if Papa summons me home, you’ll have to come too.”
Meggie’s hand tightened on the hairbrush as she considered that. “Well, it wouldn’t do to leave too soon, I suppose—to depart before the Sinclair returns from Edinburgh and we can say a proper good-bye.”
“Of course,” Fia said, and turned to fluff her pillow.
“Then we’ll not say a word to Papa for now,” Meggie said as she blew out the candle and climbed into bed.
There was no scratch at the door that night, and Fia woke at dawn from a sleep broken by dangerous dreams of Dair Sinclair gazing into her eyes, asking her to sing. And behind him, the face she’d seen in the spring waited in the shadows, with baleful blue eyes eyes locked on Dair.
Beauty and the Highland Beast Page 11