“Or the making,” Fia said, her lips tight, her body tired, aching with her own sorrow—for Dair’s loss, for the senseless, violent death of the chief and his clansmen. Dair had already taken charge. There had been no madness clouding his eyes when he rode out to bring back the bodies of the fallen, nor when he returned and walked among those who’d lost a son or a husband. He ensured his clan was safe, fed, and cared for before he took himself off alone to his chamber. Did he weep, or rage, or mourn in some other way? Donal MacLeod had buried eight wives. He always remained strong for his daughters and his clan, yet in the privacy of his chamber, she knew he wept, grieved alone. Fia longed to offer Dair a comforting word, a touch, but he’d stood among his people, stone-faced and rigid, and hadn’t even spared her a glance.
She couldn’t forget the kiss they’d shared, the look in his eyes when he’d come to find her by the fire. She’d been in love from that moment. She understood why he hadn’t sought her out since—with all there was to do, she was the last thing on his mind. Well, perhaps she didn’t understand at all, since her heart leapt and hoped whenever he appeared, then broke when he didn’t notice her. She was invisible yet again.
“’Twill be as the goddess chooses,” Moire mused. “But the clan won’t forget his madness or stop blaming him for her death. And when they remember that, ’twill be easy to blame him for these deaths too. Alasdair Og is unlucky. They won’t want an unlucky chief.”
“He’ll be a fine chief,” Fia insisted. “He was a trader, a leader, a captain, and he brought prestige and power to the Sinclairs. Surely they’ll remember that too.”
“Och, ye defend him like a woman in love. I heard how he kissed ye by the fire. As good as claiming ye for his own, though naught’s been said, no promises made.” Moire reached out to grasp Fia’s hand. “Have a care, lass. He’s fire, and fire burns, destroys. I see pain and heartache to come, and it could break you the same as it broke him.” She searched Fia’s face, then let go and got to her feet. “Ach, there’s no point in telling ye now. ’Twill all happen as it’s meant to. Not for me to interfere. I’m going.”
Fia watched her leave. Moire was wrong. Dair wasn’t fire. He was water. He could navigate through storms and heavy seas and come safe home again. She wrapped her arms around her body and shut her eyes, and hoped he’d find his way now.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“Really, Fia, to let him kiss you like that, in front of everyone. People will think you’re his—” Meggie paused, her cheeks pink. “You’re not, are you?”
Fia felt her own cheeks blaze under her sister’s scrutiny. They sat in the hall and she looked around to see if anyone else had heard. For the first time in days, no one was staring at her, wondering . . . She was spared the need to reply to the question when John entered the hall with Angus, and Meggie turned her attention to them instead. Angus filled pewter tankards with ale, and they sat down.
“Such a terrible time for the Sinclairs. I feel we may be intruding. Perhaps Fia and I should go home?” Meggie suggested.
Angus shook his head. “Dair has forbidden anyone to travel until we’ve discovered who attacked the chief.”
“No doubt it was a rival clan,” Meggie said. “We’re Scots—it’s always a rival clan.”
Angus looked up from his cup. “Padraig had plenty of enemies, but none so bold as to attack him on his own land. If they wanted him dead, they would have done it in Edinburgh.”
“Why would they want to kill him at all? He seemed a fine man to me,” Meggie said.
Angus sent Meggie a level look. “There are those who resent the Sinclairs, mistress.” He tapped his forehead. “We’re canny as well as strong. There was a scheme a few years back—you’re probably too young to recall it—where a few braw Scots came up with a plan to make Scotland’s fortune by setting up a trading colony at the Isthmus of Darien in the new world—all the trade from east and west, Atlantic and Pacific, coming through Scottish hands. If it had worked, we’d all be rich, and we could thumb our noses at the English. Many clans invested their fortunes in the venture—and they lost everything when it failed. The Sinclairs wouldna do it—Dair had been to Darien. It’s naught but flies, sickness, and nasty neighbors with sharp spears. He warned Padraig not to invest, saved the Sinclair fortune. Those who lost everything suspected some kind of treachery.”
“What happened in Edinburgh?” Fia asked.
“More foolishness,” Angus said. “The Scots accused the crew of an English ship called the Worcester of stopping a Scottish ship and murdering all aboard her, just like Dair’s ship. Padraig would never let that go. They made the English captain stand trial for piracy and hanged three men as an example and a warning.”
“Was that motive enough for killing Padraig?” Fia asked.
“No,” Angus said. “No Scot ever objected to hanging an Englishman or two—begging your pardon, English John. No, the men who attacked the chief were Scots, but without the courage to show their faces or wear their plaids.”
“How do you know?” Meggie asked, her eyes wide as saucers.
“They used claymores,” Angus replied. “An Englishman can’t even lift such a mighty weapon. The chief’s escort would have sliced English attackers to ribbons while they were still trying to raise the blades.”
John ignored the taunt. “Will said they came out of nowhere, called one of Padraig’s men by name before they killed him—and they drew their weapons first.”
Angus shook his head. “A Sinclair warrior is a formidable foe. He takes no chances. I trained most of the lads in the chief’s tail myself. They were the best fighters we have.”
“What will happen now?” Fia asked.
“Dair is chief,” Angus said. “It may take time for folk to get used to that. Some will disagree, and it might take a few cracked heads to change their minds, but the chief’s final words will stand so long as I have breath in my body.”
“They fear having a mad chief, you mean,” Meggie said baldly, and Angus flushed scarlet.
“He’s not mad. Fia has healed him,” he said.
“Has she now?” Meggie said, folding her arms over her chest. “Then why didn’t she heal Padraig?”
Angus’s brow furrowed as if he hadn’t considered that. He shot a glance at Fia, and she felt her skin heating. “His wounds were too great. He’d lost so much blood,” she said.
“Men die,” John added. “You know that, Angus. You saw the wound.”
Angus grunted and looked at John. “I know you’re a friend to Dair, but mind yerself, English John. Ye aren’t one of us. Some might think . . .” He let the terrible idea trail off.
“Folk would take revenge on John?” Meggie demanded. “Even my father, who hates Sassenachs, wouldn’t do something so dishonorable.”
“Hasn’t there been revenge enough?” Fia asked. “It hasn’t helped. In fact, it’s made things worse.”
Angus leaned in. “Padraig should not have hanged innocent men, for all they were English. I’ll watch your back, John Erly, if you help me watch Dair’s.”
“You have my sword, sir,” John said in English.
“Eh?” Angus squinted at him.
“I’ll gladly fight beside ye, Angus Mor Sinclair,” John said in Gaelic instead.
Angus raised his cup again. “Then here’s to the chief—the live one and the dead—and to health and good fortune for all the Sinclairs of Carraig Brigh.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Fia paused in the doorway of the library when she saw Dair sitting at the desk. “I don’t mean to intrude. Should I go?”
He rose to his feet. “No, stay.” She noted the dark rings under his eyes and wondered when he’d last eaten or slept. She longed to touch him, brush the lock of hair back from his forehead, but there was no warmth in his eyes. His expression was flat and polite. “Have you come for a book?”
“I was hoping to read more of the Italian poems,” she said. “Angus said Meggie and I aren’t to leave the castle.�
�� She was bored, restless, and unable to think of anything but Dair. She hadn’t seen him for days. She let her gaze fall to his mouth, remembered, and felt a blush rise like fire.
Something kindled in the gray depths of his eyes, as if he remembered too, but he looked away. “I have the book here,” he said, finding it under a pile of papers. “I was translating more of them, before—”
Her mouth went dry. “For me? I mean—” She stopped before her tongue got her into more trouble.
“Aye, Fia—for you.” He picked up a page and handed it to her, and she came forward and took it, her fingers brushing his. She read the first few lines of the poem. A lass was remembering her lover’s farewell kiss as she watched him ride away from her. She wanted him back, yearned for his touch, his body on hers in the secrecy of night . . . A blush, and something more, suffused Fia’s whole body. She understood that kind of longing now, felt it. “It’s wonderful,” she said, her voice husky.
“I haven’t had time to finish it.”
“I should like to know how it ends,” she said. “Does he come back to her?” She bit her lip when he raised his brows, his mouth rippling. Heavens, was he thinking the same thing she was? Her body tingled, burned. Only the width of the desk separated them. Her mouth watered for another kiss. She should say something sensible . . .
“I’m sorry about your father. He was a fine man,” she said. “Would you prefer that Meggie and I leave? ’Tis hardly a time to have the burden of visitors,” she said, though she didn’t want to leave him now—or ever.
“No,” he said quickly. “I cannot send a suitable tail of men to escort you. I need them here. For the moment, you’re safer at Carraig Brigh than on the road.”
With him. Physically, yes, she was as safe as could be. But her heart was in terrible peril. She looked at the shadows under his eyes, the lines of grief around his mouth, noted the fact that his lean body had grown leaner still. She curled her hand into her skirt.
“I have not thanked you. You did your best to save him,” he said.
“You will be a fine chief, Dair.”
Something dark passed through his eyes. “Will I? Many clan chiefs have sobriquets—your own father, for example, is the Fearsome MacLeod. I suppose I will be known as the Mad Sinclair.” She frowned at the jest. “No?” he said, half smiling.
“I saw you, the night your father died, and after—you’re a fine leader.” She held his gaze, tried to make him believe it, but he looked away.
“It will be the choice of the clan, of course. Despite my father’s wishes, they will vote.”
“They would be fools to choose someone else,” she said. “You are strong, clever, brave . . .”
He was looking at her with amusement. “One kiss and you know all that? Oh, mistress, how wrong you may prove to be.”
She raised her chin. It was two kisses, or a hundred, perhaps, one on top of the other . . . Sparks of lust turned to ire. “All my life I have stood in the shadows. One learns to observe, to read people, to understand when it’s safe to come out and show yourself. You are not mad. And as I recall, I kissed you first.”
“So you did.” He came around the desk, stood before her. “Do you know why I was at the bonfire?”
The barrier between them was gone. He was standing right in front of her, close enough to touch. She tilted her head back to look at him and shook her head. He put his hand against her cheek, and stared at her mouth. “I went because I wanted to kiss you again. In fact, it might have gone beyond kisses, if not for—” He met her gaze again, his eyes tormented. “Things happen for a reason, Fia.”
She stepped back, put her hands on her hips. “Do you really believe that Father Alphonse’s God, or Moire’s goddess, or fate itself, intervened and killed your father to keep you from kissing me?” He didn’t reply. “I have never heard anything so daft in all my days!” She turned away from him and began to pace the rug. “If not for Jeannie’s death, I would never have come here, we would not have kissed at all, or likely ever set eyes on each other, Dair Sinclair. Do you think I should regret coming, just because you kissed me?” She thrust the sheet of poetry back into his hand and tossed her head. “I liked it. I very well might have let you do more than kiss me on Midsummer’s Eve.”
He gaped at her in surprise.
Her unruly tongue hurried on. “I don’t care a whit if I’ve shocked you. I’m not likely to get many kisses in this life, and—” She closed her mouth. She only wanted the kind of kisses she would remember always—Dair’s kisses.
He leaned on the desk and looked at her, amused. “And what?”
She stomped her foot, nearly toppled. He let her right herself. “And you are the most irritating man I’ve ever met!”
He grinned. “But you like my kisses.”
“Yes! No!” She was entirely muddled, unused to playing flirtatious games. What would Meggie do, or Jennet, or Aileen? They’d flirt right back. She boldly tipped her chin to a saucy angle. “I think I liked your kisses just fine, but not having anything to compare them with, I cannot say for certain. Perhaps I should do more of it with someone else before I render an opinion.”
The amused look folded into a frown. “You do, and I’ll send you home at once, Fia MacLeod.”
“You won’t let me kiss anyone else?”
“Not while I’m chief here. Your lips are off limits.”
She paused. “Is this—flirting?”
“Don’t you know?” She shook her head. “That’s why you’ll not be kissing anyone else while you’re at Carraig Brigh, Mistress MacLeod.”
“Only you?” she asked, breathless.
He shut his eyes. “No, Fia. Not me. Especially not me.”
She stood still for a moment, considered the possibility of never kissing him again. It wouldn’t do. Even now, her lips tingled, and her body remembered the way it felt to be pressed against the hardness of him, the sweetness of being held in his arms.
She walked forward until she was facing him, toe-to-toe. “All my life, people have told me what I should and should not do. They believe I have limits, you see—too frail, too fey, too scarred.” She poked a finger into his chest. “I’m stronger than you think, smarter, too. What about what I want for myself? Am I not to have dreams, or desires, or enjoy—pleasure? ’Twon’t do, Alasdair Og Sinclair, kissing a lass, and then forbidding her to have any more, when it’s your fault I like kisses.”
She stood on her toes, cupped his face in her palms, and pressed her mouth to his for a long moment. Then she stepped back. Her heart pounded against her ribs, and the tingle that ran through her body demanded more. She put a hand to her lips, as if she could hold the warmth of his mouth on hers, save it forever. “There now,” she said firmly, aware that he hadn’t moved, or even blinked. What else was there to say? She turned on her heel and left the room.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
If he’d been the old Dair, the rogue, the captain, the pirate, he would have pursued Fia MacLeod, chased her, shown her just how dangerous it was to tease a man with maidenly kisses. His battered body was healing, his natural need for sex returning. He was hard as a bloody caber just from a peck on the lips, a few moments of clumsy flirtation.
She spoke of desire and pleasure. How easy it would be to show her, teach her. She was the most alluring lass he’d ever met.
He started after her. She wouldn’t turn him away.
He stopped. Her desire was newly born, a flower unfurling. If she had no idea what flirting was, she wasn’t ready for more, and he was a mad, dangerous, broken bastard. Was Fia truly the antidote to madness, or was she just another form of it, sent to torment him? He ran a hand through his hair and swore.
Whatever she was, he wanted her more than he had ever wanted a woman, or a drink, or anything else on earth.
And there was enough of the old Dair left after all to know he couldn’t have her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“Isn’t that Muriel’s black cat?” Ruari asked. T
he pretty wee feline sat in the sun daintily licking her black paws, her back to the stable door.
“Aye, that’s Angel,” Angus said, glaring at the cat like a protective father. “Get away home, cat.” The cat ignored him.
“She’s been here all day, playing hard to get, pretending she doesn’t know Beelzebub’s watchin’ her,” Ruari said.
They watched as Bel appeared in the doorway. His pupils flared as he spied the dainty black cat sitting in the yard. She saw him at the same moment. Her ears flattened as she arched her back and hissed.
Bel sat blinking silently, waiting.
“Does he like her?” Andrew asked.
Jock laughed. “Like her? Look at that manly stance, the complete calm in his eye. It’s his turn to play hard to get. Just watch. He’ll turn, go back inside, let her chase him.”
“I saw Dair do just that at a party in Paris, with a duchess,” Angus said.
“Aye?” Andrew asked. “Did she follow him?”
“Of course she did, right into his bed.” They exchanged a manly laugh.
Beelzebub turned his back on the spitting female and strode into the stable. She looked surprised for a moment before she raised her tail like a battle flag, lowered her head like a battering ram, and followed him. “Look at that,” Ruari said.
Jock held out his hand. “There ye are. I win. I found his mate. Pay me.”
Andrew folded his arms over his chest. “She came on her own! If she’s still here in the morning, then we’ll pay—not until.”
“She will be. You’ve heard the old tales,” Andrew said. “My da tells ’em—how there’s one woman meant for every man? The first of our line, Sir William Sinclair, had his Mairi. Once a man finds his true mate, no other lass will ever catch his eye again. He’ll give his heart, his hearth, and his wits over to the one he loves.”
Beauty and the Highland Beast Page 17