She didn’t want to pity him, to feel any compassion …
But an ancient pain surfaced from beneath his hard fury like a long-forgotten corpse dredged from the bottom of a loch.
“Well then…” He reached down to retrieve his rifle, and Samantha’s hold tightened on the butt of her gun. “May the best monster win.”
Without another word, he gave her his back and stalked away, allowing both the forest and the storm to swathe him in shadows.
Samantha faced the new mother, who’d silently observed the spectacle with uneasy, exhausted curiosity while nursing the calf, who stood on quivering, unsteady legs.
For many reasons, both identifiable and befuddling, all Samantha wanted to do was cry. She fought it with deep, quivering breaths and lips pressed tight. Somehow, she was certain that the heathen Highlander still watched her from some dark vantage in the forest and she’d take a bullet from his rifle before he caught her crying.
The calf noisily detached from his mama upon her approach, and blinked at her in frozen uncertainty.
“It’s all right,” she crooned. “You can finish supper once we get you home.” He only let out a whuff of protest as she wrapped her arms around his spindly legs and hefted him up against her chest.
For the first time in her life, Samantha bemoaned soiling what was her second nicest gown, but damned if she would leave one more of what was her herd on Inverthorne lands.
The mama made an anxious noise when Samantha heaved the little thing over her saddle and climbed in behind it.
“Well, come on then,” she encouraged. “Follow me properly, and I’ll give him back.”
The urge to cry had morphed into more of a simmering snit by the time she reached Erradale and situated mother and calf into one of the deserted, ramshackle cottages.
She fought another, more insistent urge the entire way home, and lost the battle when the all-encompassing aroma of Callum’s latest offering of fish assaulted her nose.
Doubling over on the porch, she retched and heaved into the undeserving flower beds.
CHAPTER NINE
Gavin approached Erradale with a great deal more caution this time, wary of the gunshots that ricocheted across the moors.
He’d already paused at the top of Gresham Peak and used a spyglass to scope possible danger in the form of a wiry beauty with a tongue every bit as treacherous as her trigger finger.
Callum had revealed Alison would be alone today, as the Mac Tire was at Inverthorne helping his father, Eammon, with some heavy lifting. Locryn and Calybrid took to Rua Reidh on Sundays, for drinking and trading.
And bonny? Well, she apparently used her day of rest to take potshots at a few tins she’d tied with twine to a fence. They danced, jumped, and swayed as holes ripped through them with each masterful aim of her pistol.
Christ. She impressed him. She intrigued him.
Hell, she aroused him. Especially in those astonishingly skintight blue trousers.
Just wasn’t decent of a lass to wrap legs the length of a long plummet into temptation with fabric that revealed just as much as it covered.
He wished he could rip out what he felt at the sight of her and trample it into the mud beneath Demetrius’s feet. Every time he saw her, her indefinable allure grew stronger.
Every. Time.
As he drew closer, he dismounted, taking a moment to appreciate just how the pockets on the back of her trews would fit his fingers as he cupped her wee arse. Wasn’t frequently a man chanced upon such a view of just exactly how much a lass had to fill his hands. She wore no strange contraptions, bustles, bows, or petticoats to hide or enhance a thing.
And she didn’t have to in order to entice his absolute attention.
She boasted a heart-shaped arse, he noted.
His favorite kind, as it turned out.
After emptying her second pistol into the distance, she reached into the pocket of her men’s chambray shirt and retrieved six bullets.
The sun had begun an eventual descent into the west behind gathering storm clouds, but for a moment, the afternoon burnished a rare and flattering gold.
“Well, if it isn’t the infamous Lord Thorne-in-my-boot.” She flipped the chamber to the side to reload.
“It’s better to be infamous than invisible.” He winked, expecting a flash of blue fury in return.
“Not necessarily,” was all she muttered.
Though he’d come to throw down a white flag rather than a gauntlet, Gavin had found himself looking forward to their verbal dance.
Which was why the melancholy note in her reply threw him. Why hadn’t she looked in his direction yet?
As he drew abreast of her, Gavin scanned the north fence where her tin targets swayed. “Who taught ye how to shoot like that?”
“My father.” How her lithe fingers could make loading a pistol seem strangely erotic, he’d never know. Maybe it was her coaxing the rather phallic shafts into their chambers. The perfect fit.
The perfect weapon.
Wisely, he said nothing, but was unlucky enough to find that she’d glanced at him in time to catch his expression. “That surprises you?”
“A wee bit.”
“Why, because your father killed mine with a dueling pistol?”
Unable to look her in the eyes, he watched the west wind toss the long hair she’d secured behind her with a leather thong, his fingers curling at the memory of threading through the silken strands. “Well … I wasna going to mention…”
“I imagine I practice more than he did,” she remarked dispassionately.
He could understand why. If the past repeated itself, it made sense that she’d do what she could to fight. To win.
“Not to be rude or anything.” She picked up the second pistol, her long fingers disappearing back into the same breast pocket. “But what the fuck are you doing on my land?”
God save him, she was lovely.
“I came to cry peace with ye, lass. And to…” Well, he’d meant to apologize for his high-handed behavior. For accosting her in the forest and stealing a kiss.
But he couldn’t seem to. Because, dammit all to perdition, he couldn’t conjure remorse.
The breeze turned from cold to bitter, and he detected a shudder start at her shoulders and roll down her lithe body.
Her nipples were puckered, he knew. And Lord, what he wouldn’t give to warm them.
With his tongue.
“I came to talk sensibly. Perhaps without guns this time.” He allowed irritation to edge the arousal out of his voice.
“If you’re truly talking sense, you’ve nothing to worry about from my guns.”
He opened his mouth to deliver a cautious and practiced apology, but what came out was, “Why are ye here, lass? It’s cold and gray unforgiving. Yer family home is falling down around ye. It willna be easy to put this place back together.”
She paused at the fourth bullet, but still didn’t look at him. “Nothing that matters is easy,” she said, continuing her reload.
For fuck’s sake. He wasn’t starting to … respect her, was he?
Fighting a shudder of his own, he turned away to collect himself.
“Regardless of what you’ve heard about me, I’m not a wealthy woman,” she stunned him by admitting. “Once my mother died … I was disinherited by my stepfather. I truly have nothing left to my name but Erradale. I need this place. Do you understand? I need it to survive.”
He whirled on her. “Nay. Nay, ye doona. Not when I’ll pay ye an entire fortune for it. Enough to keep ye yer entire life. Anywhere ye want to go. In some places, even yer children could live like kings. Yer grandchildren could—”
Her big, wan eyes silenced him as they finally looked up into his. The indecision in her gaze did cause a bit of hope to flare somewhere south of his throat.
“Say I sell to you. What would I do then?”
“Anything ye wanted.”
“But I’d be alone. I’d have no one.”
“
How is that different from now?” He regretted the question the moment it escaped him. She studied him with an exhaustion he hadn’t before seen. A desolation he’d not known she’d hidden behind blue flames and a tarty vocabulary.
Suddenly he felt like the biggest shite to ever walk on two legs.
“I have Locryn and Calybrid,” she said quietly.
“What about in ten years when they’re gone?”
That brought a suggestion of the smirk he’d been missing back to the corners of her mouth. “I think you underestimate them.”
“I’ll give ye that.” He chuckled.
“There’s Callum.” She shrugged. “Someone has to entice him out of the caves every now and again.”
Gavin’s smile died an instant, painful death. Was she implying that she had Callum … or that she’d had him? Just by what means did she entice him out of those caves? He’d known Callum a long time, and the man had never been much of a skirt chaser.
But Alison Ross wasn’t wearing a skirt.
Had they…?
A sick darkness curled deep in his gut, and he pressed his lips together so the question churning inside didn’t escape as some covetous demand.
Oblivious to the direction of his thoughts, she surveyed the cattle lining the far pasture, and the new mother and calf in the round corral. “My entire life I’ve felt like I’ve been waiting for something to happen. I’ve been staring across the empty desert of the future with restless desperation, and never finding a path that was mine. Here, I have purpose. Something I’m good at. A safe home for…” She let the thought trail away.
“But what about the ghosts that haunt these moors? The reminders of all ye’ve lost.” Of what his family did to her.
To his utter astonishment, she shrugged. “The past is a place that only gets bigger and farther away … it’s not all darkness. Erradale doesn’t have ghosts for me. It has potential. Possibilities for a life I really need right now. A life you’re trying to take from me.”
“To buy from ye. Goddammit. I’m not the villain here.” He stabbed a thumb at his own chest. “That was my father. Do ye truly believe I should be punished for his sins?” Hadn’t he been punished enough?
Listlessly, she shook her head. “I don’t think I believe in villains. Heroes either. Just people. People with agendas and the things they’re willing to do to get what they want.”
Something else they had in common. Gavin’s gaze charted the bruised exhaustion left beneath her eyes, and he suddenly longed to do something about it.
“Why do you want Erradale so specifically?” she queried. “You have a castle, a title, money, obviously. You have everything most men would kill for. You could buy land anywhere. Why do you want this broken-down old place?” She pointed with the barrel of her pistol at a sag in the eaves.
“Ye want the pure and simple truth?”
She made a caustic noise that tugged at his heart. “The truth is rarely pure and never simple. It’s usually hard. I want the hard truth.”
Christ. He’d known she was bonny. That she was small, strong, and spirited. What he hadn’t known was that she was wise. A wisdom bordering on the cynical, he noted. Who’d caused such a tendency in a lass so young?
Gavin had tried every trick in the book to lure her to accept his offer.
All, that was, but honesty.
“The hard truth is, I detest running my brother’s distillery. I loathe traveling there for the sowing every spring, and the reaping every autumn. Ravencroft Keep is where all my ghosts still live, and I yearn for the day I never have to see it again.” He looked to the south, beyond which his childhood home hunched at the top of the Balach na ba pass. Red stones that seemed to run with blood upon a rainy day, blood spilled by the past Mackenzie Laird’s infamous tempers. “I’ll admit, it wasna so bad when my brother Liam was away at war all the time. But now that he’s returned…”
Resolve hardened in his bones and tightened his jaw. “I am not a man who can be ruled. Not by him, not by anyone. I want my own trade. To make my own way. And Inverthorne’s forests are too ancient and sacred to be cleared for timber. Her grounds too craggy for true agriculture. Erradale has the potential to provide me my own legacy. I roamed these moors endlessly as a boy. They’ve always … meant something to me.”
Gavin thought the sound she made might have been one of distress, but when he looked back at her, it was appreciation he read in her eyes.
For once.
She’d really wanted the truth. She accepted that he’d given it. And, all told, it felt like his burden had been made a bit lighter in the telling of it.
“My brother. He’s a true Mackenzie. A violent, high-handed lout. An arse, really. More like our father than he’d ever admit. I’m nothing like them. I would look after yer father’s lands. Cherish them. I would—” God, he was perilously close to begging.
“It seems our only problem is … I want the same things from Erradale that you do.” She said this with a conciliatory gesture. As though she regretted that fact. “They’re not my father’s lands anymore. They’re mine.”
“Not if Liam takes them from ye. Or did ye forget the lease?”
Her features hardened. “Well, that’s up to you, isn’t it? Lady Ravencroft said he wouldn’t.”
“Mena’s not the Laird. She’s a sweet English lass, but she underestimates her husband’s ruthlessness. She doesna ken how to think like the Demon Highlander. Like I said, if ye sold Erradale to me, I’d fight Liam for it, should he lay claim to it, and I’d win.”
“How do you know I wouldn’t?” Her usual blue fire snapped back into her eyes, and Gavin hadn’t been aware of how much he’d missed it until that moment.
“Ye underestimate my brother.”
“Maybe you underestimate me.” Turning, she lifted her arm, aimed, and nailed every one of the hanging targets all those yards away.
Ye gods, that was unexpectedly erotic.
“Perhaps ye’re right,” he agreed, suddenly distracted. “Ye know, bonny, I’ve hunted my whole life. Mostly with rifles and arrows, but I’ll admit I’m only a passing fair hand with a pistol.”
The look she leveled at him was knowing and sly, but she shrugged and handed him the spare gun. “Show me.”
Challenge heated the cold autumn air.
Blood singing with it, Gavin took her gun, stepped his left foot back, canted, aimed, and hit two of the four remaining targets.
She assessed him for all of two seconds before she said, “The man who taught you to shoot was a small man, wasn’t he?”
Her guess amused him, mostly because she was right. “Aye, lass, a slight Spaniard. How did ye know?”
“Because you cant your wrist to the inside at a fifteen-degree angle, which I do as well, to mitigate the recoil of the pistol.” She wrapped her long, elegant fingers around his wrist, and twisted it until the pistol perched vertically. “Big as you are, I’d suggest that you’re … er … strong enough to keep your wrist erect.”
“I didna think ye noticed.” He flashed her a flirtatious smile and fought the urge to adjust himself. Wishing she hadn’t uttered the word “erect.”
“Don’t be cute. It’s just the hard truth.”
Aye. And the longer she touched him, the harder it truly was.
“Also,” she continued. “Your aim is more accurate if you face what you’re shooting at.” She moved behind him and put her hands on his hips, nudging him to square off with the targets.
He pressed his lips together, staving off a groan. “I’m a big target, lass, I turn sideways to make myself smaller should someone be shooting at me.”
“Anyone shooting at you now?” She released his hips and stepped around him, a level expression feathering her gaunt features.
“Nay, but I’ve learned to keep my watch up around ye in that regard.” Dammit, why did she refuse to smile? He thought he’d die of old age before he saw her blush, and here she was pink as an autumn sunset, but still refusing to smile.
<
br /> “Well, you have my gun so I’m trusting you to be a gentleman.”
Big mistake.
“Show me how to stand, again? Like so?” he asked, all innocence and absorption. His forward direction purposely atrocious, his boots together. His arm bent at a shameful angle.
“You really are bad at this.” There it was. At least the ghost of a smile. She adjusted his position again, this time from the front. Kicking her boot between his. “Part your legs,” she ordered. “And bend your knees a little.”
He swallowed around a tongue gone suddenly dry. “Generally speaking, bonny, those are commands given by me.”
She snorted, but the unladylike sound was close enough to a laugh that he decided it counted. “Just when I was beginning to think you weren’t as much of a pig as I’d initially assumed.”
He grunted out a sound of amusement—for her benefit—as she moved out of the way and motioned to the targets. Concentrating, he inhaled, and squeezed the trigger four more times. Three of the four targets pinged his triumph.
He’d have hit the fourth one, if she hadn’t bent over to pick up her bandana in those fucking trousers.
His dry mouth watered.
Turning around, she caught him staring, and slapped him on the arm with her dusty bandana. “You talk all this nonsense about separating yourself from a tainted Mackenzie legacy—”
“It’s not nonsense.”
“Then why insist on being such a hooligan?” she challenged. “I heard of your boudoir scandals and shenanigans long before I even made it to the Highlands. You’re infamous in your own right.”
He decided, now that he’d established a certain length of trust between them, he might give honesty a longer attempt. “I look at it this way … I’m adjusting my expectations for a satisfied life.”
“How’s that?” She reached for her pistol, and he caught her palm in his.
“If I put out my hand for a drink, a gun, or a woman to fuck, my hand is always full … my expectations always met and my life a merry one. But what do ye suppose happens when I reach for something more? For honor. For justice. For truth. For understanding or love…”
She only thought about it for a beat, examining her small fingers wrapped in his with undue exactitude. “You’re always reaching.”
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