“Someone should damn well apologize for it,” he said fiercely.
Her breath caught. His gaze met hers and she had the distinct sense that he’d meant what he’d said, even though he regretted saying it. She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, feeling awkward and uncertain, when both sensations were so foreign to her. He bewildered her. One minute the vitriol in his words was so sharp she could taste it, the next he championed her.
While she was pondering this and trying unsuccessfully to account for it, he came to the side of the cart and lifted her unceremoniously from the seat. For a brief moment longer than necessary he held her before depositing her on the ground.
“Come along,” he said. Without waiting he strode around the corner of the house and up the front of steps, Fia trailing behind.
Inside the house kept the promise made by its austere exterior. Not that it wasn’t well maintained. It was. It just wasn’t very clean. Dust coated the few pieces of furniture in the entry hall and the flagstones were in dire need of sweeping. A cobweb occupied the space between the newel post and the first baluster mounting the stairway, its fat matriarch placidly spinning new spokes for her home.
“Here we are. It’s …” Thomas took a look at her face, and frowned.
“It’s dirty,” Fia said. “You’ve brought me to a dirty house in the middle of nowhere.”
It was decidedly not the right tack to take. Thomas immediately became defensive. “Well, I’m sorry if it’s not some scented bower replete with a bed of rose petals and servants in silk turbans to fan you with ostrich plumes, or whatever they do at the sort of place the poor sots you bewitch take you.”
A witch, was she? His imagination far outstripped any reality she’d ever known. Her reputed “lovers” were entirely a matter of other men’s supposition—which, in all fairness, she’d encouraged. She supposed she should be accustomed to such … such blather. But in truth, she’d not expected it from this particular source.
But more, she didn’t know what to expect from him. The uncertainty that had been born on discovering he was Thomas McClairen only exacerbated the situation. Was he an enemy? If so, her enemy or her father’s? Was he protector of his friend? Avenger of his family? She did not know, and thus did not know how to react, and so reacted without thought, something she almost never did.
She hitched her chin higher, looked at him haughtily down her short, straight nose, and drawled, “I’m allergic to feathers. I prefer palm fronds. But rose petals are very nice.”
It was, she knew, rather like poking a stick at a panther, and sure enough, flags of ruddy bronze scored his high cheekbones.
“There’ll be no petals here, Lady MacFarlane, and as for the place being dirty—”
“Filthy,” she sniffed, knowing the appellation to be unfair.
“Filthy. ’Twill give you something to do during the day.”
Her hauteur vanished. “You can’t possibly be serious,” she breathed.
“Entirely,” he replied with a return of his former insouciance. “I employ no permanent staff. I don’t use the place often enough for that. Only a caretaker and his wife, who sweeps—”
“What? Once every other year?”
He ignored her. “Sweeps, changes the linen, and keeps the rooms aired out. I expect she can be persuaded to cook—with enough incentive. And”—he regarded her narrowly—“if you don’t offend her.”
“Offend her?” Fia said. “My dear sir, I am used to servants worrying about whether they offend me, not vice versa.”
“Then,” he said, his voice growing louder as he went, “I suggest now is as good a time as any for you to start worrying, because if you try those haughty lady-of-the-manor airs on a Scotswoman, you’ll find yourself stirring your own gruel, you spoiled little witch!”
He was right. Over a decade and a half under Gunna’s less than fawning care had taught Fia the character of the Highland Scot. Particularly Scottish women. Not that she was about to give Thomas the satisfaction of acknowledging such. “Humph.”
He smiled. He couldn’t possibly take that little grunt to mean anything other than scorn—certainly it hadn’t meant she’d yielded to him one inch.
“There’re brooms in the kitchen.”
“Ah, good,” she said sweetly.
His brows rose.
“I shall conjure up a spell directly and ride back to London. We spoiled witches do that sort of thing, you know.”
He burst out laughing. She stared at him in amazement, which turned quickly to fascination. His eyes crinkled up at the corners, and the seams on either side of his wide mouth revealed those devastatingly attractive dimples again.
His smile was broad and rife with pleasure; his teeth were clean and straight. Delight filled his pale blue eyes, sparking them with silver.
Then slowly the laughter died in his throat. The room grew hushed, the air still with expectancy. With intimacy.
His brows drew together a fraction, but in puzzlement, not anger. The silver sparkle in his eyes banked to a darker luster. She could see the pulse beating at the base of his throat. Her lips trembled on the brink of opening—
“The bedroom is ready,” Gordie announced from the top of the stairs.
Fia leapt back. How had she come to be standing so close to Thomas? He was frowning in earnest now, looking as confused as she felt.
“M’lord?”
“Yes, Gordie. Thank you. Lady MacFarlane?” He gestured for her to precede him up the stairs. When they were at the top, Gordie led her to the end of a narrow hallway. He opened the last paneled door and stood back, allowing her to enter ahead of them.
She looked around without enthusiasm. The room contained a bizarre and atrociously mismatched collection of furniture. A massive oak four-poster sat squarely in the center of the room, its drab dun-colored curtains tied back at the posts, exposing an improbable red counterpane. Beside it stood a delicate cherrywood dressing table with a pedestal mirror attached, a bench carved with griffin heads before it. A pair of lime green wingback chairs flanked a small fireplace, in which a peat fire burned.
She did not think she would be spending much of her time in here.
“I … I hope it meets with your approval, ma’am?” Gordie said shyly, twisting his hands together and shuffling, clearly embarrassed to have entered a lady’s chambers.
“My approval?” she echoed. She was about to laugh and make some snide remark about being more likely to approve a nightmare when a splash of unlikely color caught her eye. She turned. Someone had picked a small bouquet of yellow flowers and set them on the windowsill. That someone, she was sure, was Gordie.
Why, he’d probably been given the responsibility of pulling together some sort of suite of furniture for her unexpected arrival. The room was his inspiration, and now, looking at it, she realized he’d gathered together what he must suppose to be the most beautiful and rare objects in the house—regardless of whether they suited one another. In another room—and with a different seat—the dressing table would have been lovely. And the Oriental screen in the corner was a work of art.
As were those yellow flowers. She turned back, smiling warmly.
“It’s lovely. I am sure I shall be most comfortable here.”
The boy released his breath and grinned with pleasure. “I’m happy ye like it, ma’am. Jamie had one of the lads ride here like the devil was on his trail to say as how ye was comin’ with the laird. I done what I could in what time I had.”
“If you knew I was comin’, then why’d ye point yer rifle at us?” Thomas asked in exasperation.
“Well, how’d it look if ye rode up and I wasn’t guardin’ the house? Ye’d think me a poor sort of man then, wouldn’t ye?” Gordie asked with impeccable logic. He turned back to Fia. “And did you see the flowers?” He pointed at the blooms.
“They’re beautiful,” she said sincerely. “No one’s ever given me their like.” Which was true. Roses and tulips she’d received by the dozens, but no on
e had ever given her a simple country flower.
“Cowslip they be, and the last of them at that,” Gordie said proudly. “Late this year, they were, but I remembered where I’d seen some still bloomin’, and whilst you and the laird were chattin’ I slipped out and fetched ’em. I ’spect ye were wonderin’ where I’d got to, eh?”
“Ah, yes. Yes, we were,” Fia lied, her gaze slipping to where Thomas stood, unnaturally silent and watchful. “Weren’t we?”
Whyever was he looking at her like that? She hadn’t said a blasted provocative thing to the boy and yet his expression had gone grim again.
The man really should learn to relax and laugh more often. He had a lovely laugh. And then the irony of her, Fia Merrick, criticizing another for being too somber struck her and she grinned—as it was, in Thomas’s direction. He blinked, grimness metamorphosing into bewilderment.
“Weren’t we, milord?”
“What?” he asked, coming out of whatever trance held him. “Ah. Yes. We were wondering where you were. Now we know. Come on, Gordie. I’m sure Lady MacFarlane would like to change clothes and prepare for dinner.”
“Oh, aye, I bet she would,” Gordie agreed promptly, in his artlessness reminding her of her own unclean and doubtless fragrant state.
She looked down. The lace edge of her bodice was grimy and a smear of dirt marked her bosom. Her once crisp brocade skirts hung like limp rags from the hoops of her petticoat. These, too, were dirty, stained with what, she had no intention of considering. As for her face and hair … She was very glad she hadn’t looked into the mirror on the dressing table.
“I should like to bathe. How do I go about getting a hip bath?” she asked.
“Hip bath?” Gordie repeated uncertainly, leading Fia to suspect anew that the lad’s acquaintance with bath, hip or otherwise, was limited.
“Fill that big pot standing over the hearth with water,” Thomas told Gordie, “then heat it. As soon as it’s hot, haul it up to milady’s chambers.”
“But what’ll I do with it then?” Gordie asked.
Thomas huffed in annoyance. “I’ll empty the rain barrel from the backyard and bring it here. Ye’ll empty the water in that.”
“You expect me to bathe in a barrel?” Fia asked.
He turned on her. “I don’t care if you bathe or not. That’s as good as ye’ll get whilst in my home, lady, and ye ought to be thankful for that.”
She returned his glare placidly. “Why is it, do you suppose, that since arriving here you’ve reverted to that extraordinary accent? It isn’t even Scottish, really. Sort of a conglomeration of accents. Where were you transported to, anyway? The Colonies?”
“I … I don’t know what you mean,” he stated in clipped, impervious, and extremely British tones. He looked at Gordie, who was snickering behind his hand. “Get on with it!”
The lad bobbed his head and scooted through the open door and down the hall, leaving Thomas with Fia.
“Well?” she said, arching one brow.
He stalked out of the room.
“I’ll get the bloody rain barrel. You stir the fire.” Thomas tramped out into the dusk and rounded the corner of the house. He found the barrel and tipped a foot of brackish water out of it before hefting it to his shoulder. As he did so he glanced up. A light sprang to life in the corner room above. A second later Fia’s dainty silhouette grew larger as she approached the window. She dipped down, and Thomas knew she was smelling the cowslip blooms.
The remnants of his anger faded as he watched—anger not at Gordie or Fia, but at Carr for his willful neglect and misuse of his only daughter.
No one had ever given her a simple flower, and Thomas wanted to know why the bloody hell not.
Even the most obtuse man alive could not have misread the surprised pleasure that had suffused Fia’s usually enigmatic features, making them for one moment something more than ravishing, something uncomplicated and clean and honest, something breathtakingly pretty.
She moved away from the window and he readjusted the weight of the barrel on his shoulder, the side of his mouth drawing up in chagrin. He’d been standing beneath the girl’s window mooning over her like a green lad. Worse, he was jealous of Gordie for being the first to give her cowslip. Not because the act had so obviously touched her, but because it had awoken a response in her he’d never thought to see: kindness.
There was no way around it. Fia had been kind to Gordie, tacitly agreeing that she—and he, he remembered with surprise—had wondered about the length of the lad’s absence. And she hadn’t balked a bit at staying in that nightmare of a room Gordie had arranged. In fact, he suspected Fia had guessed Gordie’s involvement before he’d even admitted it. She’d shown compassion in dealing with the boy. His expression turned quizzical.
Kind? Sensitive? With naught in it for her?
This was dangerous. Fia, unaffectedly pleased and laughing, impulsive and charming and kind, was dangerous. Even more dangerous than the Fia who’d calculatedly purred well-rehearsed double entendres as she slithered against him. And that Fia had already been far dangerous enough.
He stopped at the kitchen door and kicked it open, his thoughts in a whirl. He’d an acute sense of having just sailed into uncharted waters. And he was certain there could be no going back.
Chapter 17
Having caught a glimpse of herself in the dressing table’s mirror, Fia disrobed as soon as Thomas left and was waiting in dirty chemise and limp petticoat when he returned, for once absolutely innocent of calculation. But if she’d for a moment forgotten her stated intent to seduce Thomas, he hadn’t.
He took one look at her in her unprepossessing dishabille, scowled fiercely, and mumbled something about someone called MacNab taking care of her. Before she could frame a reply, he left.
She’d finished her bath—an undeniable luxury, despite the rain barrel—and was dressing in fresh clothes when a knock sounded at her door. She opened it to find a tray of food at her feet. Ravenous, she gulped down the food, expecting Thomas to appear at any moment. He didn’t.
The next day, she waited in her room for him to come scratching. He didn’t. She took both her midday and evening meals alone in the bedroom.
The third day, she wandered downstairs to an empty house, dressed in all the splendor she could contrive out of the few garments she’d brought with her. This, to be honest, was perhaps not so very “splendid” after all, for she’d found it impossible to lace her corset by herself to the degree necessary in order to produce the flamboyant figure that had so bedazzled men in London. And her filmy dressing wrap was not all that provocative, either, unless men found the sight of gooseflesh stimulating. She’d forgotten how chilly it was in the Highlands.
Still, the extra sleep she’d enjoyed had improved her looks. The texture of her skin was smoother, the whites of her eyes were as bright as porcelain, and the shadows at her temples and beneath her eyes had disappeared. She was definitely passable, and found it caused her no small amount of disappointment when Thomas did not appear at her bedchamber door begging for admittance.
By now she realized that not only was Thomas not returning for supper, he wasn’t returning to the manor at all.
On the fourth day, she found Gordie piling rocks around the house. A few questions ascertained that Thomas had given him the task of rebuilding the kitchen garden wall—thus, Fia suspected, keeping the boy from her dire influence. On the subject of where exactly Thomas was, Gordie turned as mum as a post, mumbling, blushing, and finally darting away.
She’d no doubt that she could have gotten the information out of Gordie, but that would have landed the boy in trouble, and she was loath to drag the young man into … whatever this thing between her and Thomas was.
She turned east, toward where she supposed McClairen’s Isle might be, but drawn to it though she was, she knew better than to try to walk that far a distance. She hadn’t needed Thomas’s warnings about highwaymen to scare her into staying where she’d been so summar
ily put. She’d lived in these lands. The face of poverty-inspired desperation was no stranger to her; her own father had been its author.
So she wandered back into Thomas’s unsoaped, unwashed, unscoured, unrinsed, and unwiped house, idly watching Gordie’s narrow sunburned back as he stacked stone upon stone around the place, until it finally drove her mad. Or to such madness as housekeeping was.
She removed corset and petticoat and donned a simple—and warm—dress and commenced to work, finding if not pleasure in the activity, at least the means to fall asleep at night without Thomas’s image haunting her.
That evening Fia finally met the hitherto unseen Mrs. Grace MacNab—a woman whose talents in the kitchen more than made up for her lack of prowess with a broom. The elderly woman eyed Fia with monumental disinterest, muttered, “Good. Now I’ll not have to tote tha tray up tha stairs,” and went back to placidly stirring the pot of vegetables simmering on the hearth.
It took Fia somewhere under an hour to determine that Mrs. MacNab’s conversational abilities ranked somewhere below her housekeeping skills. But after one bite of the dour Scotswoman’s rich, savory stew, Fia decided that if a dirty house was the price one paid for Mrs. MacNab’s stew, it was a bargain.
When Mrs. MacNab did speak, she was invariably blunt, but she was also, with the exception of the perennially blushing and tongue-tied Gordie, the only person Fia saw. Thus, on her fifth evening at the manor, Fia was already in the kitchen when Mrs. MacNab arrived from wherever it was she lived.
“Ah! You’re early. Good. I’m famished,” Fia said, when the kitchen door swung open and Mrs. MacNab entered, a load of fresh vegetables piled in her plump arms.
“Did na’ eat yer dinner, then?” Mrs. MacNab asked, scrutinizing her closely as she dumped the produce on the table. “Are ye sick? Fer if ye are, I’d best send Gordie ta fetch the laird.”
“No,” Fia hastened to assure her. “I am fine. I just have a healthy appetite.”
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