It was the look of a fox caught in a snare laid out for rabbits.
He watched her grope around for fabrications made less accessible in her mind by the opium tincture and exhaustion.
When it became obvious that she wasn’t going to answer his question about her attackers, he changed tactics.
“How do ye fare, lass?” he murmured gently, surprised by how much he really wanted to know. “Does yer leg pain ye overmuch?”
Wordlessly, she shook her head.
“Then I need to know who hurt ye and ye must tell me the truth,” he prodded. “Once dawn breaks, there’s no stopping me from riding to Erradale and finding out myself.”
He tracked her dilated eyes as they chased erstwhile thoughts, ignoring the strange, wondrous liquid thaw in the vicinity of his chest. She was concocting something, he surmised. Which meant she believed the truth still posed a threat, despite the men she’d killed.
“Someone’s after ye?” he queried. “Ye landed yerself in a ripe bit of danger in America, and part of the reason ye’ve come back to Erradale is that ye’re no longer safe in yer adopted country.”
Her gaze darted away.
He’d hit the mark.
“Why—why are we naked?” she mumbled as if retraining her tongue to form language. “Did you … did we…?”
“We didna,” he soothed, painfully aware of the pulsing arousal resting against her hip. “But we could, if ye think it would help.”
Her eyes rolled in a reaction to his repartee so indiscreet and honest, a delighted laugh escaped him, surprising them both. “Doona fash. If I’d ravished ye, bonny, ye’d be certain to remember the deed.”
“Then why…”
“Hypothermia. Ye were in the cold in naught but yer nightgown and my cloak for longer than was safe, it seems. I saved yer life. Och, nay, lass—” He held his hand up to cut off a profusion of gratitude that was obviously not forthcoming. “No need to thank me. Ye may, instead, answer my question.”
Her brows attempted a scowl, but didn’t quite hit the mark. “It’s hard to think with your … with that pressed against me,” she muttered, attempting to angle her hip away from his aroused body.
“How do ye think I feel?” he teased. “I deserve a medal of gentlemanly conduct for honorable restraint in the face of unmitigated temptation. How many men do ye know that would have yer fine, naked body in their arms and allow ye to maintain yer virginity?”
“I’m no virgin,” she snorted, artlessly squirming a bit to escape their intimate proximity. “And you’re no gentleman.”
Her confession shouldn’t have shocked him. It shouldn’t have aroused his jealousy, but it did.
On both accounts.
“Aye,” he admitted, artfully keeping the strange possessiveness growling through his muscles from seeping into his tone. “Ye’ve caught me. I’m no gentleman, but ye could use that to yer advantage at any time.” He allowed her a measured retreat, but he did not let her go.
Could not let her go.
She made an excellent point, he ceded, that conversation became futile with his insistent cock pressed against her skin.
That particular part of his anatomy wanted to make no discoveries tonight past what it felt like to be buried deep inside of her.
But his soul … his soul couldn’t rest unless he knew who else might pose a threat to her survival.
Who else might be hunting her? For there he would find a predator worth turning into prey.
Despite the wrath churning in his gut, he reached down and smoothed a lock of her uncommonly lovely hair away from her face. He’d known she was young, as no lines branched from her eyes or bracketed her lips, but she looked like a girl rather than a woman curled as she was against him.
Lost. Alone. Afraid. All her impetuous bravado melted beneath the pinch of pain between her brows and the strain of trepidation pursing those soft lips together.
“What happened in America, lass?” He murmured the question, allowing his fingers to brush over the arch of her dark brow, smoothing the crease of tension he found there. Then he followed the hollow of her temple, still damp with recent tears, circling the tender place in a light, kneading motion. “Maybe I can help.”
“Why would you help me?” she asked drowsily, her eyes fluttering closed beneath his ministrations.
“It is ye who decided we must be enemies, not I,” he reminded her. “I may not be a gentleman, but I’m a Highlander, and we protect our own.”
“I’m not a Highlander. I’m nobody.” Her lamented whisper tugged at his heart.
“Yes ye are, bonny. This remains yer home, even though ye left.”
She was quiet a moment as his fingers traced and massaged, learning the lovely regions of her features. The knots of her jaw, which he coaxed to unclench. The downy skin beneath her chin. The pronounced outline of her plump lips. The four and twenty golden freckles he counted on her uncommonly high cheekbones.
After a while, her breath had become so even, he thought he’d put her to sleep.
“I killed Bennett.” Her monotone admission stalled time itself.
Gavin’s hand froze, cupped against her chin. Her eyes remained closed, her lashes fanned against her cheek. Neither of them breathed for what seemed like an eternity.
A thousand questions swarmed into his throat, and Gavin had to press his lips together to keep them at bay. Confessions, once they began, traveled at their own pace.
“It was on the train toward Cheyenne, on my way here,” she continued on a swift exhale. “The Masters Gang went after some government bonds and payroll. Something happened in a different car. I heard that federal marshals were shot. And then … Bennett burst in and killed a man in my railcar, then pointed a gun at … And I … And I shot him. I shot him right between the eyes.”
Hot tears began to flow again, and Gavin caught them, his own throat aching on her behalf.
“Ye did well, lass. Maybe even saved lives.”
“Only one life.” She sighed.
“Is it his brothers who are after ye, do ye think?”
“His brothers,” she whimpered in bleak response.
“Aye, what are their names?”
“Boyd and Bradley. Bradley saw me do it. I didn’t think that they would find me here. They somehow figured out that Alison Ross was on the train, and where she—I was going. Then they used their stolen fortune to send those men to Erradale. For revenge, I think.” She hiccupped around a sob; her limbs began to tremble once again as she valiantly fought the rattles of grief and fear in her chest.
Gavin gathered her to him, astonished when she clutched at his shoulders as though he were her bulwark against a battalion of sorrows.
“Shh, bonny, shh,” he soothed, attempting to comfort her with a bit of levity. “Ye doona mean for me to believe that ye’ve only shot one man before today, do ye? For as many times as ye’ve nearly shot me, I was certain that America had turned ye into some sort of bloodthirsty Yankee gunslinger.”
To his delight, it worked. A burp of laughter interrupted her sobs, and she pushed at his shoulder with a self-conscious sniff that he found unutterably adorable.
“That’s only because all of this is your fault,” she accused with a slurring sort of churlishness. “If I’d never been on that train, maybe none of this would have happened. I could have gone to Oregon, like I’d planned. I would be married when—”
“Married?” The word hit him in the chest with all the power of a draft horse’s kick. “Married to whom?”
Her gaze sought to escape his again. “That isn’t the point.”
He caught her chin in a gentle grip, firm enough to force her to look at him. “Married. To. Whom?”
“You’ve never heard of him.”
“Try me.”
She wrinkled her brow again, as though sifting through elusive memories. “Grant … a … a banker.”
“I’ll be honest, bonny, I have a hard time picturing ye settled with a banker.”
&n
bsp; Thunder gathered in her watery eyes. “What of it? He’s a gentleman. A self-made man with a fortune all his own. He’s honest and kind and virtuous. All the things you’re not. He keeps his word and he—”
“Oh?” Gavin interrupted, unwilling to hear anything else about this Grant bastard. “Then, pray, where is this paragon of honor, that I may kiss his boot?” She hadn’t, he noticed, mentioned the word “handsome” among her intended’s myriad of virtues.
“Back in San Francisco,” she hedged.
“He doesna write ye? He willna join ye, even after all ye’ve been through?”
Her lashes fluttered down again. “Circumstances don’t permit…”
“Fuck circumstances,” Gavin snarled, startling them both with the ferocity of his vehemence. “If he loved ye, he’d not let ye face yer enemies alone. He’d have learned of the robbery and have hunted every single one of the so-called Masters brothers to the edge of perdition. He’d have marched them to the gates of hell and handed them over to the devil, himself. Then, he’d return for ye. Claim every part of ye, with his hands, with his mouth, and not allow ye out of his sight again.”
She blinked up at him for several astonished minutes. “Is—is that what you would do?”
“Och, nay, lass, I’d do one better. If a man touched my beloved in violence, I’d tear off his limbs with my bare hands and beat him to death with them. Slowly. And I’d receive a pardon for it, as well, as it would be no less than he deserved.” His hand curled into a fist as he relished the idea. “While we’re at it, let’s hope I never meet this Grant—this self-made man—for I’d take him back apart again. I’d break his body first, then his will, and then I’d make him watch as I took ye, just to show him how a man does it.”
He blinked down at her for a silent moment, the ferocity melting into bewildered displeasure. Where had this barbaric vehemence come from? This simmer of violence and wrath in his blood?
That place. The one he named Mackenzie. The one he’d shoved into the void and locked behind vaults comprised of dispassionate nonchalance and cold calculations painted with a veneer of charm.
Would that he could cut it out of himself.
He didn’t want to feel like this about her.
He didn’t want to feel …
“I—I don’t think I ever was his beloved,” she whispered, biting her lower lip to still a dreadful wobble in her chin.
“I should think not,” Gavin muttered. “And neither should ye love him.”
“I thought I did … but after everything … I knew it could not be so. Or losing him would have broken me.”
Struck with an encompassing tenderness, Gavin looked down at the woman in his bed with a new and genuine respect. He knew a thing or two about loss.
About a broken heart.
“I’m becoming convinced that there’s nothing in this world that could break ye, bonny.”
Suddenly, a path revealed itself. One better than any he’d yet been presented with. One where both of his desires were bundled into a tidy package and delivered into his anxious, enterprising hands.
“Ye’re certain it was these fuckers, these Masters brothers, who sent those men after ye?” he pressed, his heart accelerating with the weightiness of what he was about to propose.
“I know they are. There’s no one else.”
“Then I can help ye, lass, I can help keep ye and, more importantly, Erradale safe from yer enemies.”
“How?” she whispered, then stronger, said, “I mean, why? Why would you?”
“Because if we married, both ye and Erradale would be mine. And I fight to the death to protect what’s mine.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Marry you?” Samantha wheezed around the heart that had begun to leap into her throat. Was she still dreaming? Dear God, let her still be dreaming. “What makes you think I’d even consider it? We can’t stand each other.”
That devastating dimple indented the groove next to his cheek. “I’ll give ye that, bonny, but what I have in mind doesna involve a great deal of standing.”
“Be serious,” she hissed. “That may be the worst idea anyone’s ever spoken aloud.”
“I’m not asking ye to like me, lass, only to marry me.”
“Is this some kind of cruel fucking joke?” she gasped.
“Do ye mean to tell me there’s no such thing as a convenient marriage where ye come from?” He twisted his lips into an expression of doubt.
“‘Convenient’?” she echoed. “I very much assume that if you considered marriage a convenience, you’d have done it once or twice by now.”
He had the temerity to laugh, the rich sound producing the usual explosion of moths inside of her belly. “Do ye know what I like about ye, bonny?”
“I really wish you’d stop calling me—”
“It’s that ye say what ye mean. Ye doona care what I think. Ye’re an honest woman who isna afraid of her own capability. Also, ye’re cleverer than most, which I wouldna have guessed about ye right away, I’m ashamed to admit.”
An unexpected burst of pleasure at the compliment stole her capacity for speech. An honest woman? Lord, was he ever mistaken. She wondered if he’d realize just how much he’d missed the mark in his estimation of her … She was neither honest nor predominantly clever, though she wished to be both. At the moment, neither was she particularly capable of much, since her leg was out of commission.
Also, to make his compliment false in the absolute, she was beginning to realize that she did care what he thought …
Not that she’d ever admit it to a soul. Especially to him.
“To keep Erradale, ye’ll have to stay on the land, lass,” he pointed out. “And it sounds to me like going back to America with these Masters brothers after ye is out of the question.”
“I’m not safe from them here, either, apparently,” she lamented.
“Ye’d be safe from them at Inverthorne.” His levity disappeared, and his jaw tightened with absolute solemnity. “As my wife, ye’d be a countess. The walls of Inverthorne withstood English sieges and battles. They can certainly keep out a few American train burglars.”
“Train burglars?” It could have been his earnest distaste for the word, or the ridiculousness of the phrase, but Samantha caught a gasp of a giggle, even as she groped for reasons to refuse him.
At least, ones she could repeat out loud.
She wasn’t really Alison Ross. Erradale was not actually hers to grant to anyone. She couldn’t betray Alison’s wishes after the woman had provided her sanctuary. She’d been Bennett Master’s wife little more than a month ago.
She was pregnant with a murderer’s child.
“I can’t marry a Mackenzie,” she said lamely. “I swore an oath.”
“Consider this, bonny, if ye married me, ye’d technically not be surrendering Erradale to a Mackenzie, as I technically willna be one for long. Or so I keep having to remind ye.”
She had to admit, that seemed a more salient point in this moment than it had before.
“Besides, this blood feud is a bit too Shakespearean, if ye want the truth. I’m no Montague, and ye’re no Capulet. We’re naught but the victims of the circumstances of our births. Think on it, lass, would not joining our families do more good than harm? Would it not put the matter of our parents to rest for generations that come after?”
“I’d fight to the death to protect what’s mine.” His proposal echoed through her addled mind clearer than the screech of an eagle over the stark plains of Wyoming.
Samantha’s hand drifted up to rest on her stomach, still flat and toned by arduous years of work.
Five weeks—nigh to six now—since she’d boarded that train. Since she’d last lain with her husband.
And almost three weeks late.
What if … what if she confessed? What if she told him she wasn’t Alison Ross, but Samantha Masters, and that she was likely carrying her deceased husband’s baby? Oh, and also that the fact that she’d shot said h
usband between the eyes was the reason for the vacancy of said position in her life at present?
Would he still want to protect her then?
Likely not.
Would the next hired guns Boyd and Bradley sent give a care that she might be pregnant with the Masterses’ niece or nephew and spare her?
Not a chance.
“Mutually beneficial marriages have been little better than land contracts for millennia,” the Earl of Thorne continued with infuriating rationality for someone so astoundingly nude. “Think on it, lass. I’ll not stop until I get what I want, so ye might as well give in and save us both a great deal of effort. I doona see what other choice ye have. What with yer estate burned to the ground, yer herd scattered, yer homeland crawling with yer enemies, and a pending appearance in front of the Magistrate’s Bench…”
He let his list trail off, and Samantha filled in a few points of her own. Any cash or paperwork with the claim to Erradale she’d had from Alison blew away with the ashes of Erradale. She’d a leg that would be useless for a month or longer, which left her little more than helpless.
And a child on the way with no father.
God, she wasn’t really allowing for his absolutely naked, utterly unromantic proposal, was she? How much of that tincture of opium had she been given?
“I’d be a very good, somewhat faithful husband to ye, lass,” he vowed, plying her with his most charming smile.
“Somewhat faithful?” she echoed.
“Well, as we established, I’m no saint, and neither, by yer own admission, are ye. I see no reason a marriage between us should be a prison sentence.”
“You’re saying … you don’t expect fidelity…?” she clarified carefully.
“I suppose not,” he said lightly, then he frowned. “But perhaps we should wait to take lovers until our familial duties are carried out. We’ll need a St. James heir, or both Inverthorne and Erradale would just go to my nephew, Andrew, upon my demise and, seeing as he’s Liam’s son, that would deliver Erradale right into the hands of a Mackenzie Laird, which supplants our purposes outright.”
The Scot Beds His Wife Page 16