by Paula Quinn
Colin held a puppy out to Edmund. An adorable little bundle of ashy brown fur and scruffy ears. Between his dangling hindquarters, his tail wagged so furiously he near squirmed out of Colin’s grasp. Edmund took a step forward.
“Ye can keep this one, lad.”
They left Harry’s farm with a promise to return soon for another visit.
“He liked Edmund,” Gillian pointed out, waving to the old man as they trotted off.
“Aye,” Colin agreed, looking down at the top of her son’s downy head and the fur bundle clutched in Edmund’s arms. “Who wouldn’t?” He brought his smile back to her as their gazes met. “But ’tis likely ye who will restore life to the man.”
Gillian canted her horse closer to his, drawn by the desire to kiss him. She might have been bold enough to do it if George hadn’t galloped past her.
“Quit pining for each other and let’s make haste. We are almost there.”
“Who has been pining for his wife for the last six months?” Gillian called back, laughing and feeling more grateful for this day than any other. She flicked her reins to catch up with him, but Colin’s hand on her arm stopped her. He drew their horses close, and without caring if George happened to turn to them or not, pulled her in for a brief, beguiling kiss. He withdrew with the promise of more to come in his scalding eyes, and then took off, leaving Edmund’s voice on the wind.
“Do you love Mummy?”
To her utter disappointment, she didn’t hear Colin’s reply. What were the Highlander’s feelings toward her? What were his plans for her after he brought her to Camlochlin? She’d never asked, and he’d never offered to tell her. Would he stay with her or return to the nomadic life of a mercenary? So he cared for Edmund. That didn’t mean he wanted a son. He was young and fit and led an adventurous life, escaping danger and sending would-be thieves to their Maker.
She forced herself to smile when she reined in her mount between them and George leaped from his saddle and ran to his front door.
Colin dismounted, taking Edmund with him. After setting her son on his feet, he came to her and helped her out of her saddle.
“We are truly doing this,” she said, held aloft in his arms for a scant moment before he set her down next.
“Aye, we are.”
His smile was so fearless, so confident, that she allowed her heart to quake at the dreams he restored. She wasn’t going to be forced to wed Geoffrey. She would never again have to worry over losing Edmund. They were free!
She took his face in her hands when he released her and pulled him down, a little closer to her upturned face. “Thank you.”
Whatever reply he meant to give her appeared lodged in his throat. He swallowed and opened his mouth to begin again but she stopped him, sealing his lips with a stolen kiss. When she felt his arm snake around her waist, she broke free, smiling at him.
“Don’t think that George won’t still cut off your hands if you touch me.”
With a slight slant of his lips and a golden glint in his eyes, he rattled her to the core. “Then I shall have to get ye away from him before the night is over.”
“I’m certain you can think of a way,” she said quietly over her shoulder when he picked up his steps behind her.
They entered the house together just as Sarah Gates rushed forward from the stairs, pulling her grinning husband behind her. She was as lovely and youthful looking as Gillian remembered, with deep mahogany hair plaited into a thick braid that dangled over her shoulder, and large, luminous dark eyes.
“Lady Gillian, what a wonderful surprise this day has been. Not only does my George return to me, but he brings you with him.” Sarah was a petite woman, but her embrace encompassed Gillian in warmth. How long had it been since she’d had a woman with whom to share words, secrets?
“And this must be Edmund!”
Gillian watched while her son was scooped up off the floor. She cringed inwardly, praying he wouldn’t begin wailing. He didn’t like being carried, save by Colin.
Thankfully, Edmund kept his thumb in his mouth during the entire introduction, which served only to encourage more cooing.
That is, until Sarah glanced up and took a closer look at Colin. She backed away, clutching Edmund to her, while she dipped her eyes to the array of weapons he had strapped to his body. “And who is this?”
Gillian eyed him standing beside her, his hands folded behind his back, his features hard as stone. He appeared much like he had the first day she met him. Heavens, if this was how he greeted ladies, it was no surprise that he wasn’t already wed.
“This is Colin Campbell,” George told his wife. “He’s a—”
“MacGregor. Colin MacGregor.”
Gillian was tempted to elbow him in the ribs so he would smile at the poor woman.
“—a friend of mine,” George continued. “He’s taking Lady Gillian and her son away from Dartmouth.”
Sarah Gates’s mouth fell open and she turned to her husband. “And you’re letting him?”
He sighed deeply and took her hand. “Come, let’s show our guests to their rooms. I shall explain everything to you later.”
“Are you certain he can be trusted?” Sarah whispered to the captain on their way up the stairs. “He looks quite dangerous.”
“He is. But not to her or the babe.”
Following them up the polished wooden stairs with Colin in back of her, Gillian smiled at their hushed words and thanked God for the hundredth time for sending her one of his warring angels.
Please, she beseeched, don’t ever call him back.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Colin dipped his head over the basin in his room—just down the hall from Gillian’s, in Gates’s lavish manor house—and rinsed his cleanly shaven face with the cool water. He’d done it. He’d gotten Gillian and Edmund out of Dartmouth.
It had been difficult for him since they left. The moments he had alone with Gillian were brief. He missed kissing her on the turret stairs, and every time she but smiled at him while they rode, he ached to have her in his arms again. Many times during their journey to Essex he had contemplated telling Gates that his feelings for her were deeper than either of them had feared.
He didn’t want to bring her back to Dartmouth, but he had to. He had to remain on the path he’d set or Devon would come after them.
His path. When had it become so indistinct? When had her and Edmund’s safety become his duty and desire above all else? He understood now why his brothers had been so willing to cast aside their pride, and everything that came along with it, for their women. He’d wanted no part of such weakness and spent his years either training or on battlefield to avoid it. But it had found him and once it had, he was shocked to find that it actually made him feel more invincible.
He was certain he loved Edmund. He’d never seen such pure joy on any face as on Edmund’s when he’d handed him that pup. He’d never felt his heart, his muscles, and his bones go soft all at the same time. He wanted to protect him, raise him as his son, and teach him to grow into a strong man.
He was doomed and he knew it, but it was what he felt for Gillian that frightened him most. It was what he would do to the king, his old friend, if James came after her again that kept him awake at night. It was the danger he was willing to risk to himself and to his kin by defying whoever sat on the throne in the days to come that convinced him that his heart was no longer his own.
He ran his wet palm over his head, then gave his head a brisk shake to dry off… and mayhap shed him of his constant thoughts of her. What if she didn’t share his feelings? What if she gave in to his kisses because she was grateful to him, and nothing more? What the hell would he do then?
A soft rap on his door yanked him from his troublesome thoughts.
“Colin?” Her sweet voice on the other side brought a smile to his face.
Hell, he was revolting. Truly.
Opening the door only made him feel worse. This couldn’t be his heart slamming against h
is ribs like some peach-faced whelp that had just set eyes on his first goddess. It couldn’t be his mouth opening to utter words he’d never spoken to anyone before.
“Hell, lass, but ye rob the seas and the stars of their beauty.”
He watched the scarlet hue burn across her cheeks and found himself willing to recite every chivalric word his mother had ever burned into his head if she would continue to look at him the way she did now.
“Thank you.” She offered him a dainty curtsey, then turned her bonny face up to his. “Forgive my boldness, but Edmund is already below stairs with his puppy and I hoped you would escort me to breakfast. George promised that Sarah is quite skilled in the kitchen.”
He thought about pulling her into his room, bolting the door, and feasting on her. He wanted to undress her slowly, carry her to his bed, and make love to her. His body twitched with the need to do it. But he would be as bad as Edmund’s father if he did… unless he wed her. What the hell would he do with a wife? What kind of life could he give her while he was off fighting this king or that? What if he died on the battlefield and left her alone with even more bairns at her ankles?
“I’d be happy to escort ye,” he said, stepping out of his room and closing the door behind him. “But ye don’t need a chaperone here. Ye’re free to come and go as ye please.”
“And I came to fetch you.”
’Twas astonishing how quickly the quirk of her mouth, the way the light flickered over her eyes, made him forget everything else. He held out his arm and waited while she looped her hand around the crook of his elbow. He didn’t have to pretend to be someone else here, away from his enemies. But he hadn’t been Colin MacGregor for so long, he’d forgotten how.
“You look quite pensive today,” she noted as they walked down the corridor together. “What are you thinking about?”
He smiled in spite of himself and answered truthfully. “I was thinking about how ye have cast me into uncharted waters.”
“Oh?” She tossed him a playful glance. “Are you trying to say that you’ve never met anyone like me?”
“Aye,” he admitted. She was perceptive. He added that to the list of things he valued in her while the sight of her lips, dangling there beneath his, parted slightly, tempted him to forget the shame he could possibly bring her. “And how dangerous my desire fer ye is.”
She looked deep into his eyes, laying him bare before her. Whatever she saw warmed her smile. “You’re correct,” she said softly, moving a bit away but not disengaging her arm from his. “And more concerned for my good name than I. Are you certain there are no wings beneath your shining armor?”
He shook his head. “Trust me, lass. If I had wings, they would not be white.”
His gaze traced the sleek contour of her neck when she tossed back her head to laugh.
“I don’t believe it.”
He moved in closer, mayhap to taste her pulse with his tongue. “Ye make me ache to prove it.”
They grew serious when his lips fell to her throat. Her lusty sigh nearly snapped his control right there in the hall.
“Campbell!”
Gillian broke from his touch at the snap of Gates’s voice. But the captain wasn’t angry. He did his best to mask his apprehension when he turned to Colin calmly and said, “I think your family has arrived.”
Much to Gates’s disappointment, the MacGregor chief was not among the four horsemen reining in on his front lawn. Colin was satisfied with whom he saw though, knowing Edmund would be in safe, skilled hands on the journey home. No one took protection as seriously as his eldest brother did.
“Rob,” Colin greeted the tallest among them as he swung his long claymore over his hip and dismounted first. “ ’Tis good to see ye.”
Colin pounded his brother on the back, then turned to Connor Grant, his brother-by-marriage and once captain of the King’s Royal Army.
“How’s my sister?”
“Short-tempered,” Connor told him, with a smile deepening a dimple on either side of his face. “She threatened to cut out my heart with a dagger if I ever tried to get her with child again.”
“Becoming a mother fer the third time hasn’t changed her then,” Colin noted, then moved on.
When he saw his cousin Will MacGregor, he expelled a slight sigh. “Better ye than Tristan, I suppose.”
“Why?” Will met his feigned disdain with a spark in his eyes that promised no mercy. “D’ye think I canna’ irritate ye with a wit as sharp as yer brother’s?”
Colin shook his head. “Ye lack his natural ability to the task. I rarely want to kill ye. Let’s keep it that way, aye?”
Will laughed and shoved him out of his way to hand his reins over to Gates’s stableman.
“Ye must be Lady Gillian Dearly.”
Finlay Grant. Hell. Colin turned to watch Connor’s younger brother—and the demise of every young lass at Camlochlin—step around him and tip his cap to Gillian, who was standing at the door. ’Twasn’t, according to his brothers when last Colin had visited home, that Finn took advantage of his admirers. He was no rogue. He was a poet. And a dashing one at that.
“Yer description in Colin’s missive was sorely lacking, my lady,” Finn crooned while his pale yellow hair fell free around eyes as green as Ireland after a rainy spring. “Rest assured, I will remedy that.”
“Bard.” Colin’s steady voice gave Finn’s mouth pause above her knuckles. “Yer duty is to recount yer laird’s deeds, not to seduce lasses with yer pretty words.”
“ ’Tis his visage that wins hearts,” Will warned him with a grin. “Ye best keep him away from her if ye mean to keep her.”
“I don’t—” Colin didn’t finish, but turned to her instead and changed his mind about what he meant to say. “Finn.” He glanced at his longtime friend. “Back off.”
Finn did as requested but with eyes wide with disbelief and then humor as he turned his radiant grin on the others.
“What’s this?” Naturally, ’twas Will who laughed first. Colin would teach him a lesson for it later. “Has someone finally conquered that lion heart of yers?”
“I’ll be happy to let ye judge how stout my heart is, Will.”
“Practicing?” Captain Grant asked him, coming to stand in front of Gates.
“Every day,” Colin told him.
“I’ll see how diligently ye have been at it,” Rob said, brushing past him. He bowed before Gillian and smiled at the same time, catching sight of Edmund running around them with a puppy hot on his heels. “Fergive my brother’s poor manners.” He introduced himself and the others and moved to Gates next.
“This is Captain George Gates,” Colin offered hastily, poor manners or not. “Of the Royal Horse Guards,” he added, hoping his brother would catch his inflection and not mention Colin’s being a general in the king’s army. “He is a trusted friend.”
Rob looked the captain over from foot to crown, then clapped him on the shoulder. “A trusted friend is always welcome.”
Sarah Gates looked about to pass out right there in the grass when Rob moved on to her next. Unlike Colin though, he eased her nerves with a smile as warm as the thick woolen plaid draping his shoulders.
Gates invited them inside and waited to enter behind them with Colin. Edmund rushed by them all with what he was now calling Aurelius scraping the floor to keep up.
“My Sarah is blushing like a milkmaid. What is that one called who laughs with her?”
“Connor.”
“He’s quite handsome.”
Colin regarded Gillian’s captain with a doleful look. The man could fight off an entire garrison single-handedly for almost four years, but ’twas his wife who brought fear to his eyes.
“Her heart is yers,” Colin pointed out with some sort of morbid fascination piquing his curiosity. Was this what was to become of him?
“So then,” Gates said, eyeing Rob as he swung his mantle off his shoulders, “the thought of Gillian at Camlochlin without you doesn’t trouble you?”
Aye, it did, now that Finn seemed to be taking a liking to her.
“We will sleep in here tonight,” Rob announced, entering the sitting room.
The captain and his wife followed them inside. “My servants are happy to give up their beds for the night.”
Rob smiled and unbelted his scabbard. “This room will serve fine. We’ll sleep on the floor. We havena’ come to put anyone oot. We killed a few rabbits on the way, so we willna’ be a burden at yer meals.”
Gates appeared somewhat awestruck and slightly disturbed, like he had to have been mad to involve himself with such men.
His wife, on the other hand, didn’t seem bothered in the least by all the virility in one room. “Nonsense,” she promised him. “You’ll be no burden at all. Will they, George?”
Colin smiled at the scowl on Gates’s face… until he looked at Gillian and found her smiling at Finn.
“Something other than warm water might be well received though,” Will interrupted both men’s dark thoughts.
“I have whisky,” Gates informed them and called to one of his servants. “I helped myself to some of Devon’s unspoiled brew before we left.” He winked at Colin as the servant went to the task.
“Good man,” Colin tossed back at him, already returning his attention to Finn, who was beckoning for Gillian to come sit by him.
“Brother.” Rob dragged his attention away from Gillian accepting Finn’s offer. “We have much to discuss. Take a seat and bring wee Edmund with ye.”
“Why didn’t faither come?” Colin moved across the room and sat next to his brother. He kept his eyes on Finn.
“He’s off visiting Connor Stuart in France with Mother, Graham, and Claire,” Rob told him.
“Rob’s chief now,” Will said, producing an apple from his bag and biting into it.
“Well, ’tis about damn time,” Colin offered, unfazed by the news. As firstborn, Rob had been preparing his whole life for the duty of protecting the clan. Colin had no doubt the MacGregors of Skye would be safe in his brother’s capable hands.
They raised a toast when the whisky arrived, then settled in to hear Colin tell them of Gillian’s dilemma.