He reversed their positions, settling above her with a possessive moan. How had he ever thought her a hard woman? All he’d first noticed of her was her sharp angles and even sharper tongue.
It wasn’t sharp now, as it glided past her soft lips and into his mouth, hotly exploring him as her hips began to roll once more, coaxing his cock to twitch and swell.
Moved by a foreign, frightening emotion, Gavin clutched her to him. “I canna believe—”
The doors to the stables slammed open and Eammon’s voice boomed through the causeway. “I’ve had it with you, you bloody daft ass! No one has all bloody day to wait on you!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Samantha’s heart stopped for several incomprehensible seconds before she registered that Eammon Monahan was, in fact, addressing a mule.
With a low curse, Gavin leaped off her, turning his back to the stable doors while he fastened his trousers, tucked in his shirt, and adjusted his vest.
Watching the elder Monahan in horror as he grappled the stubborn animal into the barn, Samantha set her skirt to rights and then blindly groped around for her cane.
Her husband hauled her out of the straw pile and shoved her cane into her hand just in time for the grizzled Irishman to notice them, and narrow suspicious amber eyes.
“Eammon!” she greeted brightly. “We were just … I mean I tripped and…”
“I know just exactly how ye got in that pile of straw, lassie, and who put you there.” A glower furrowed beneath his beard, but a twinkle of laughter in his eyes gave away his good humor. “You forget I’ve been around the Mackenzie for well nigh thirty years now.”
“Ye know I’m no Mackenzie.” Gavin plucked a few errant straws from her hair, and Samantha suppressed a self-conscious giggle.
“Aye, but what’s in your trousers still is.”
“Careful, old man,” her husband growled, but there was no real heat in the warning.
Eammon crossed himself, thrice, and complained to the stubborn animal beside him. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I forgot that with newlyweds about you have to check every shadow to be sure they’re not tupping in it. Now this straw’s not fit for good Catholic horses anymore.”
“What we did was no sin,” Samantha pointed out. “We’re married.”
“Was more than a wee bit wicked, though.” Gavin pinched her bottom through her skirts and planted a kiss on her cheekbone before sauntering over to Demetrius with a loose, lanky stride.
Samantha tried, and failed, not to appreciate the view as he walked away from her.
“What are ye about, Eammon?” His voice retained a husky note that elicited a secret feminine pleasure to warm her middle.
All traces of levity vanished as the stable master cast her a speaking glance before answering his lord. “I’m after the cart, as we’ve some … rubbish to haul from Erradale.”
“Corpses, you mean?” Samantha decided now was not the time to mince words.
“Aye. We’re glad of the freeze on their account, I can tell you that.”
A wave of nausea overtook a flare of anxiety, and Samantha swallowed a threatening flood of moisture. “What’s to be done with them?”
What she really wanted to ask was, What will happen to me?
Gavin’s eyes narrowed. “Throw them in the sea from the Dubh Gohrm Cliffs and let the Selkies feast on their bones for all I care.”
Eammon’s expression told Samantha that she wasn’t the only one present astonished by the dark vehemence in her husband’s tenor. “But Thorne, they’re each of them Pinkertons. Not exactly agents of the American government, but … they’ll be missed.” He lent his words a regretful grimace.
“Do I look like I give a ripe shite?”
Indeed, he did not. Samantha checked to be sure.
In a powerful yet graceful motion, Gavin mounted his steed and danced around the mule to the tall stable doors. “I’ll claim the pleasure of disposing of them, myself,” he snarled, morphing from the languid lover of only a few moments ago, to a muscled mass of wrath and retribution. “I’ll send the Pinkertons a message. I’ll inform them that their men came to my land, injured and threatened the life of my woman. That I put holes in them, myself. And if I see one more of their so-called detectives set foot in the Highlands, I’ll ship pieces of their butchered corpses back to their offices in crates full of their blood.”
He gave a harsh yah, and spurred Demetrius into a leap, galloping from the stables and across the bridge without a backward glance.
Samantha stared after him, the sudden chill against her tongue telling her that her mouth had fallen open.
“And he says he’s not a Mackenzie.” Eammon snorted. “What utter horseshit.”
His woman? He’d take the blame for her? A sense of emphatic relief threatened the strength of her knees. He’d said he’d protect her, that Inverthorne would be her sanctuary. But … she hadn’t expected that in such a short time, and without being asked, he’d already begun to set the matter to rights.
Remembering himself, Eammon mumbled, “Do pardon the profanity, my lady.”
“Oh,” she breathed. “None of that is necessary. You can call me Sam.”
“Nonsense. You’re a countess now.”
Oh. Right. “I may be a countess but I’m no lady.” She pulled a face. “Are you still planning to take the cart to Erradale?”
“Aye.” Leaving the harnessed mule where he stood, the stable master retrieved a length of leather with two brass rings on each side. “Several of the Mackenzie showed up this morn, claiming that ye hired them … I’ve a feeling we’ll still need to haul away a few corpses once yer husband finds them.”
Samantha squeezed her eyes shut, cursing the fact that she’d forgotten to amend her agreement with Mena to recruit men to help gather cattle. “Is there room for someone to ride shotgun, in that cart, Mr. Monahan?”
He eyed her cautiously. “Feeling more than a bit better, I wager.”
“Much better.” Instead of pressing her hands to heated cheeks, she retrieved the coat Locryn had lent her, as he was still loath to leave Calybrid’s side. “My … husband agrees I’m fit to ride.”
When she straightened, Eammon had turned back to secure the leather length to the animal’s bridle and harness. “Apparently,” the Irishman muttered under his breath.
“I heard that.”
He flashed her a charming, conciliatory grin. “No offense meant, lassie, I’ve been known to profane a few haystacks, meself, back in my day.”
She didn’t doubt that for a moment. “Does your mule have trouble with tossing his head?” Approaching the animal, she touched its withers, and then stroked the bristly neck and velvet ears as she watched Eammon adjust the strap.
“Good eye. To be fair, this daft animal has trouble with everything.” Retrieving a sugar cube from his pocket, Eammon held it beneath the mule’s nose, then turned his shoulder and strolled toward the cart in the courtyard as though he didn’t care if he was followed. After a thoughtful moment, the mule sighed and turned to pursue.
“Useless beastie,” the Irishman groused, but he stroked the blaze between the silver mule’s eyes as he gave up the sweet rewards in his hand.
Mollified, the beast stood still as Eammon hooked the cart to his harness.
Samantha would have helped if she was able, but her tumble in the hay cost her leg more than she liked to admit. Not that she at all regretted it.
She allowed Eammon to boost her up onto the seat before he heaved in next to her, and she sank into the coat as they plodded down the lane in the winter’s chill.
“Daft ass isn’t half as smart as his mother,” Eammon said conversationally as they crossed the bridge and turned north toward Erradale. “But he’s young yet, and from the strongest stock in the empire.”
“You’re still breaking him?”
His mustache twitched with a frown. “Never liked that word, ‘breaking’ an animal. It means you’ve broken their spirit, doesn’t it? That�
��s not what I do.”
“What do you call it, then?”
“Mhúineadh.”
“That’s a lovely word. What does it mean?”
“I’m their teacher, as Callum is their keeper. They call him the Mac Tíre. It means a Son of the Earth. It’s an ancient privilege in my country, one the Monahans are proud of.”
“Teacher,” she echoed.
“Don’t misunderstand, girl. There is discipline involved, but there is trust to be built, and affection. A broken animal will never be as good to you as a loyal one. I taught Lord Thorne this as a child. Lord knows, his father never did. My boy, Callum, was born with this awareness, instinctually. And I think you were, too.”
“I don’t know about that,” she muttered, ever uncomfortable with compliments.
“Callum says you sit a horse like you were born on one, and you handle the cattle better than any Ross ever did. Did I not know better, I’d have thought him a bit sweet on you.”
“But you do?” Samantha asked with alarm. “Know better, that is.”
“Aye. His heart belongs to another.”
“Who?” she asked, before it occurred to her that it wasn’t her business.
His gaze skittered away from her. “Well … never you mind who.”
Used to the impatient honesty of hardworking men, Samantha didn’t allow his rebuff to dampen the moment. “You know, I never wanted to be a rancher,” she confessed. “Or to be tied to one place, dependent on the variables of nature and a herd. I despised the very idea. And yet, I came to the Highlands—er—back to Erradale, and I found a new appreciation for it. I was—am content in a way I thought I’d never be.”
“Maybe it wasn’t the vocation that disagreed with you, lassie, but the location.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were raised American, for all intents and purposes, but you’ve the blood—the soul—of a Celt. You are one of the People, now. Perhaps you just needed to find your clan. To find your way home.”
Samantha suppressed a squirm, needled with remorse over her deception. This was not and never had been her home. Not that she really knew where her people came from.
“What about your clan?” she redirected. “Do you miss Ireland?”
Eammon looked to the west, where past the forest, the Hebrides, and the narrow sea, lay his emerald homeland. “Callum supposes that it’s him and Gavin that’s kept me at Inverthorne all these years, but it’s not. Not completely.”
“Eleanor?” Samantha guessed.
His Adam’s apple bobbed beneath his collar as he swallowed, staring straight ahead at the ruts in the road, and the skeletons of lesser trees interspersed with evergreens and pine. “I’ve loved that woman for the better part of twenty years. But … what Hamish did … That broke her. Beyond repair, I fear.”
She was almost too afraid to ask. “What did he do?”
“What a terrible night. A terrible night for almost everyone in Wester Ross.”
It was always a startling sight, to watch such a masculine man’s eyes redden with emotion. It affected Samantha so much, she had to look away.
“Hamish whipped Thorne within an inch of his life and threw him out the window, breaking his collarbone,” Eammon revealed.
Samantha’s hands turned to fists in her skirts. “The scars … his back?”
Eammon nodded woodenly, his eyes gazing into the past. “Poor lad had to listen to what his father did to Eleanor. She hit her temple on the edge of a trunk where he threw her, and lay for who knows how many hours when Hamish left her for dead. He went to the town and caused no end of trouble that night. Poor Thorne was left out in the cold, locked away from his own keep. When Callum brought him home to me that morn, I hied myself to Ravencroft, tore the door down, and brought poor Eleanor to Inverthorne. The surgeon did what he could, but head wounds are tricky, and when she opened her lovely eyes … her sight, and some of her faculties, were totally lost.”
“My God.” A tear froze on her cheek, and Eammon gave a suspicious sniff.
“Aye, well, when the current Laird Ravencroft finally did old Hamish in years later, I happily helped rid him of the body.”
Samantha gaped. “You’re saying Laird Mackenzie … Liam Mackenzie … killed his father? Gavin’s father? Are you certain?”
“Poorly kept family secret, I’m afraid. Everyone suspects. And no one much minds. Bealtaine a anam dhó i ifreann.”
Samantha wanted to duck the fervent words, as though they were an ancient curse, and she stared at the man in silent inquiry.
“May his soul burn in hell,” Eammon translated, spitting past his elbow onto the frostbitten dirt road.
Samantha added her spit to the ground, along with a curse. Seemed like the thing to do. If there was a hell, she’d give her own soul to see Hamish Mackenzie in it.
“So … Gavin knows what his brother did?”
“Aye. Thorne was barely older than a lad at the time, but already a lord. Inverthorne was not much more than a pile of rubble before Callum brought him limping home that morning, bleeding, broken, and flayed open. I was groundskeeper and stable master, which was master of nothing, all told. Hamish paid me a pittance out of the lad’s own income to look after the place, and I took it, God save me, as I was battling the darkness caused by my own wife’s death.”
“Did folks know what Hamish did to his family? Did you know?”
“Aye.” His heavy shoulders caught on a tired sigh. “He was scarce better to his clan than he was to his kin. Thorne used to romp about the forests with Callum as a wee lad, and I knew it was to escape his father’s cruelty. Stitched the boy up more times than I should have allowed, to my everlasting shame. But Hamish Mackenzie was a mountain of a man, just like Liam, and a marquess besides. So many of us relied on him for a living. The distillery, the fields, and the forests. None of us knew what to do. That is to say, none of us were man enough to do what needed doing.”
“We’ve all of us deeds that we’re ashamed of.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “And sometimes it’s not what we made happen that haunts us, but what we allowed to happen.”
“You’re kind.” He looked toward Gresham Peak, beyond which lay Erradale. “The Mackenzie lads, they’ve more demons than most.”
“I’m starting to understand that.”
“’Tis why they’ve always been at each other’s throats, I think. More’s the pity. They’re left a legacy that’s more pain and indignity than pride or joy. It takes a rare and patient lass to walk alongside their demons.”
“It’s strange. Gavin’s all smiles and charm.” Except when he wasn’t. “I never would have guessed…”
“Some men hide their pain behind anger and bloodshed, others behind vice and levity.”
Samantha nodded, understanding that he presented to her the different paths that Liam and Gavin walked.
“What happened after that night? After Gavin and Eleanor came to Inverthorne?”
“Hamish never came after Eleanor, though I know that Gavin had to pay for her freedom with blood. He planned on going after his father once he was old enough. Hated the bastard with single-minded vehemence. We all did.”
“But Liam got to him first.”
“Aye.”
Now Eleanor’s absence from the wedding made much more sense. She’d wondered if it could have been more than just a headache. And it was … so, so much more.
“How does it happen?” Samantha wondered aloud, lost in her own past as much as her husband’s. “How do some men become such monsters?”
“There’s no simple answer to that. Some are made so by circumstance. Others, like Hamish Mackenzie, are born to it. He was the type that tortured wee beasties as a lad. That took pleasure in both power and pain.”
“I hope his death was slow,” she said through clenched teeth.
“I wasn’t part of that, unfortunately.” Eammon looked at her as though she pleased him. “But I only regret that parts of him lingered with his sons, even
after his death.”
“Scars,” she murmured.
“More like … open wounds. Ones that still fester, I think.”
Like the shards of Gavin’s heart that Eleanor had warned her about. Broken one too many times to ever give away.
Suddenly Eammon’s gaze became penetrating, as though he could see her secrets and her deception. “You’ve granted him what he’s always wanted, what he’s always been denied. Independence from Inverthorne’s reliance on the Ravencroft Distillery income. A family. A future. To him, Erradale represents salvation. And maybe ye do, too.”
“I—I hope I can—”
“Sam.” He said her name with absolute gravity and none of his usual respect. “I’d not see him wounded again.”
This time it was Samantha’s turn to look straight ahead as her heart began to pound. Guilt twisted and rotted in her gut, and she pressed her fist there.
“Neither would I,” she whispered.
* * *
Samantha had a long cart ride to prepare herself for her husband’s ire. So she resented that the sight of him bearing down on her at full gallop once she descended the gentle slope of Gresham Peak affected her nearly as much as the sight of Erradale in ashes.
Those pleasant white cottages were nothing but bits of char, and only the grand stone fireplace and chimney still stood in the rubble of the so-called manor house.
This place might not have meant much to Alison Ross, but for a short time, it had been everything to her. A sanctuary. A new beginning.
A home.
She surreptitiously surveyed the ruins for the bodies of the men who’d come for her, and found no one. Gavin had already taken care of them. Did he toss them in the sea, she wondered, as he’d threatened to do?
Had he found anything on their corpses? A new and frightening prospect lanced her with terror. What if they’d had documentation of some kind regarding her real identity? If they were hired by Boyd and Bradley.
That was certainly likely.
Perhaps it was her uncovered secret causing the furious set of her husband’s perfect jaw as he pulled Demetrius up short and took five full seconds to unclench his teeth in order to speak to her.
The Scot Beds His Wife Page 25