“There’s no attempt to define it. Iain graciously accepts it as superstition, while Dunc goes quietly mad.”
“And you?”
“I think there’s something to it.”
“Do you? What?”
“I think that three men with a single purpose are more powerful than three hundred divided.”
“Purpose?”
He leaned forward, hands on his knees; then he stood. He started around the helm to the bow, walking as skillfully on the bobbing deck as on land.
He was staring at something in the distance. She rose to follow him with Poppy at her heels and wondered if he thought he had glimpsed his darling. She didn’t speak until she was beside him. There was nothing to block the wind here at the bow, and cold spray splattered her cheeks. She shivered and wished she had taken his offer of a coat. “Do you see something?”
“Aye. Over there at Gerston’s Cottages. It looks as if they’re tearing down the piers. It’s an odd thing to do so late in the evening. There was no one working there forenoon or after.”
“Maybe the owner hired men who can only work at night.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps she does no’ want anyone to know what she’s doing.” Andrew turned to Fiona. “Or perhaps Kaye Gerston has nowt to do with this at all.” He moved past her to the helm again. She followed him again and watched him take the wheel. “We’ll have our look at the cove, I promise, but I think I’ll investigate first. Do you mind?”
She was disappointed that the revelations about his childhood were over, but he had already given her much to ponder. She spoke as she braced herself for a faster ride. “Nope. I thrive on mysteries.”
Loch Ceo was both long and wide, a small loch in comparison to Ness or Lomond, but large enough to make it impossible to view one side from the other. As they drew closer, Fiona could see what had intrigued Andrew. There were three narrow piers extending a short distance into the water, or at least there had been three narrow piers earlier that day. Now two of them looked like the bones of filleted fish, nothing but skeletal posts and crossbeams, and those were fast giving way, too.
Andrew pulled the boat up to the end of the pier that held a lone workman. “Harry Dutton, is that you?”
A blond-haired man who was kneeling at the middle of the pier ripping out boards looked up with no surprise on his face. Fiona suspected he had seen them coming. “Evening, Andrew.”
“Looks like you’ll soon make short work of that.”
“That’s what I’m being paid to do.”
“Kaye’s going to put some money into better piers, is she?”
“No’ Kaye, I shouldn’t think. It’s no’ her property anymore.”
“Is that so?”
“Sold it, she did.”
“I had no’ heard.”
Harry stood. Fiona saw that he was a huge man, a side of beef on thick elephant legs. “It’s all going,” he said. He swept his hand behind him. “Cottages and all.”
“And why is that?”
Harry shrugged. “I should think to make way for something new.”
“Do you know what?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“Is Kaye still on premises? Or has she left already?”
“Oh, she’s here. Should be for a while. She’s a lifetime of memories to pack.”
“Aye.” Andrew stood with his hands in his pockets. He had taken on the attitude of a man smoking a pipe, vigilance overlaid by endless patience. He didn’t even look around, but Fiona knew he was aware of everything, the other men too far away to speak with, the darkness beyond the piers where the doomed cottages lay, the mellow light spilling from the windows of a small frame house nearer the water.
He moved at last, just a shift of weight from the balls of his feet to his heels, but she found she had been holding her breath.
“Do you know who the new owner might be, Harry?” he asked.
“There’s two of them. From London. That’s all I know.”
“Two, you say?”
“I only saw one, a fat, bald chappie. Never heard his name.”
“Martin Carlton-Jones.”
“Someone you know, then?”
Fiona saw that Andrew’s face had grown grim. “No,” he said. “Someone I never plan to.”
* * *
“I have no favorite spot on the loch, but this is one of my favorites.” With practiced ease, Andrew dropped anchor in the middle of a deserted cove. The boat lurched a bit, then settled for lazily riding the gentle waves.
Fiona stood at his side. “One of how many?”
“A hundred.” He recalculated. “Two at most.”
“It’s all so perfect.”
He leaned against the railing and crossed his arms. Moonlight had turned her hair a soft wheat gold and her eyes the color of expensive aged whisky. “I’ve always been glad they could no’ develop here. The shore’s too steep and the land too rugged.”
“Someone determined enough could find a way.”
“No one has been that determined. No’ yet. Perhaps the time is coming.”
“It does seems odd to me that so much beauty has gone untapped in a country with limited resources. It’s almost as if Druidheachd was left off the map.”
“It has been left off many. Until now we’ve been too wee, too off the beaten path, to bother with.”
“Until now?”
He had no desire to burden her. Not yet, and certainly not now. “Even Druidheachd can no’ resist the march of progress forever. The day will come when we have our own McDonald’s in the center of town.”
“Well, maybe McDonald himself originated here. Did you think of that? Fergus MacDonald of Druidheachd, a poor immigrant lad, cast away on the streets of New York with nothing in his pockets but a recipe for his old granny’s minced beef sandwiches.”
“Aye, you’re right, of course. We should build him a memorial.”
“I can see it now.” She framed it with her hands. “Golden arches. Two of them intersecting.”
He laughed and reached for her hand. “I’ve nothing against progress. I only care when it steals what’s dear to us.”
Her hand was cold inside his, and she looked away shyly as he eased it under the hem of his jacket. “Doesn’t every kind of progress rob us of something? Before television people spent more time visiting and talking. Now they sit in their own houses and communicate with the world, but it’s completely one-sided. Something was lost at the same time something was gained.”
He placed her palm against his waist. He could feel each separate finger through his shirt. “I like the old ways. I dinna own a telly. There’s poor reception on the loch to begin with, but I’m afraid if I had one, I’d watch it.”
“That would be the point.” She turned more fully toward him, and then she shivered. “What do you do instead?”
“You’re cold.” He shook his head. “I should have fetched you a coat after all.” He tugged her closer. “Come here.”
She came with just a hint of resistance. He tucked her under his arm and against his side. “You’ll warm up in a moment.”
“Tell me what you do instead of television.”
There was a persistence to the question that intrigued him. He guessed it was at least partially a demand that the conversation continue just as it had, despite the fact that she was now intimately snuggled against him. The other part was intriguing, too. She seemed genuinely interested in how he spent his hours, as if she wanted to be able to visualize a portion of his life. Her life had been so sheltered and conscribed. How often had she imagined the daily activities of others and expanded her horizons through them?
He answered without admitting that in the last weeks at least some part of every day had been spent thinking of her. “I walk and I climb. I’ve no real passion for golf, but I play when I can. I practice my pipes more than anyone who’s heard me might think.”
“Pipes?”
“Bagpipes. Has Duncan no’ complained to you of my pl
aying?”
“Not a word.”
“It’s what I do when I need to think.”
She looked up at him, cheeks kissed by the moonlight, lips soft and vulnerable. “Oh, I want to hear you play. I’d like nothing better.”
“You might no’ say so after you’ve heard me.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Her eyes were shining with anticipation. His heart constricted painfully in his chest before it began to speed faster. He knew better than this. He knew who and what he was, and he knew what she needed. She was the princess in the tower, badly in need of rescuing. But he was no knight. He was the son of a drunken fisherman, a Highlander with no aspirations to be anything but exactly what he was.
And what was he at that moment except a man who wanted to hold Fiona in his arms?
His own hand seemed to stray against his will, to steal up her arm to her shoulders, her neck, her hair, to burrow into the midst of the unruly strands until her face was turned to his. His thumb caressed her cheek. His thumb was callused and her skin as soft and undefiled as spring’s first wildflowers. He touched, tentatively, patiently, the corner of her mouth. He heard her breath catch and felt her body tense.
“What chances…will you take?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Her eyes widened. “This terrifies me.”
“Does it?” He stroked his thumb over her bottom lip, slowly, tenderly. “Is that all that it does, Fiona?”
“What can I offer you?” She put her hand on his cheek to stop him from shaking his head. “It’s more than a lack of experience or false modesty. You only see a part of me, Andrew. There is more.”
He thought of the parts of himself that no one saw. The nights when he sat alone and stared into the darkness. The days when he moved faster and faster to rid himself of black thoughts and bottomless doubts. “Have I asked you to be perfect?”
“I’m very far from perfect.”
“So am I.”
“Are you trying to misunderstand?”
“I understand exactly. Do you?” He leaned forward and kissed the place he had touched at the corner of her lips. Her mouth was ripe and ready for harvest, as enticing as forbidden fruit. He touched her bottom lip with his tongue, following the path of his thumb. He could feel the warmth of her breath as she sighed, but she didn’t pull away. He enclosed her in his arms, a safe, warm harbor, and took her lips fully, slanting his against them. There was such sweetness, such innocent seduction, in the way that she yielded, a sigh, a gradual melting of her body into his, slowly, ever so slowly.
He had never been one to play games with women, to pressure or even to woo. Women had come to him, women with no thoughts of commitment or ownership. Women who liked his warm smile and the touch of his strong, wide hands. Women who had remained friends when they were no longer lovers.
Women so different from the one he held in his arms.
She was new to being kissed, and the teaching of it was more arousing than he could have imagined. He felt the tentative forays of her tongue in places she barely touched, places he wanted her to explore. Wanted badly. Her sweater skimmed his jacket, and as he tightened his arms around her, her breasts sank slowly against his chest. Slowly. Carefully. As if she were afraid he would find something there to disappoint him.
“Fiona,” he whispered against her mouth, and once more against her cheek. From the night that he’d kissed her in the room where she had almost died, he’d had some vague idea that he could help her step over the brink into womanhood, that he could make her see that she was worth a man’s attention and that any man would be luckier for it.
Now he saw how dangerous the most honorable intentions could be. But somehow, despite burgeoning fears of his own, he couldn’t stop kissing her.
She stroked his cheek with her palm, then skimmed it lightly down his neck and along his shoulder. Each separate fingertip made an impression on his upper arm. He could feel each hesitant flutter of her hand as she continued her explorations. He was adrift in the scent of her hair, the silk of her skin, the pillow soft give of her breasts. Her hips nestled against his, intimately, then more intimately still. If she was frightened by what she found in return, she didn’t pull away. He wondered if she understood exactly what his own arousal meant, and what proof it was of her feminine powers.
He settled his hands at her waist and urged her closer. Her sweater drifted over his hands as his thumbs traced the waistband of her skirt. At the precise moment that he touched the bare skin of her back, the sensuous spell ended.
“No.” She stepped back so swiftly that she might have fallen if he hadn’t had his arms around her.
His breath was erratic, but not as erratic as his heartbeat. Hands that were usually rock steady trembled badly. He had gone from control to a nearly total lack of it in mere moments. He stood very still as reality filtered through the erotic veil that had shrouded his common sense.
“Fiona, are you afraid I’ll make you do something you do no’ want to do?” he asked when he was certain that the voice that emerged would sound like his.
She didn’t answer for a moment. She turned away from him, and he let her go. She walked to the railing and looked out over the cove. “What are we doing, Andrew? This can’t go anywhere. You’ve made that clear, and I knew it, anyway. Of all people I should know better than to play with fire.”
“Is that what we were doing?”
She faced him at last. “You wouldn’t have liked what you found if you’d continued touching me.”
“I know you have scars,” he said bluntly.
“I am scars. There are places where that’s all I am. It’s not pretty. It’s worse than that. There’s no way a man could touch me and feel anything except…”
He waited, but his gaze stayed connected with hers. He waited, silently demanding that she finish.
“Except pity,” she said at last. “Or compassion, which is only a slightly more enlightened version of the same. And I don’t want your pity. Not yours. I couldn’t stand it.”
“Then you’ll no’ have it.”
“And horror? Can you really tell me that you wouldn’t find the evidence of what happened to me horrifying?”
“What happened to you was horrifying.” He steeled himself to add more. “What’s happened to you since is more so.”
Her eyes widened, and she stepped back against the rail as if he’d struck her.
He pushed on. “You’ve determined that a man will find nowt about you to love, that no man is clever or caring enough to see past scar tissue to the woman herself. You’ve decided that because you’re no’ perfect, a man could no’ be aroused by anything else about you, the softness of your breasts or the curve of your hips. Your lovely smile, the way your hair dances in the wind.” He turned up his palms hopelessly. “You had the evidence pressed up against you, and you simply ignored it.”
“You don’t know. You can’t.”
“I dinna know it all, perhaps. But I know that there’s nowt about you that could horrify me and much I desire.”
“Have I become a mission to you?” There was no anger in her voice. If there had been, he would have walked back to the helm and started the engine. But beneath the starkness of her words he heard the cry for comfort and reassurance.
“You have become a complication,” he said honestly. “I’ve loved you forever, Fiona. But you no longer feel like my wee sister. Perhaps once I wanted to give you confidence. Now I want to give you myself, and that could be dangerous for us both.”
He knew that she didn’t, couldn’t, really understand what he meant. But he couldn’t have explained it any better.
Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “This is going to end badly, isn’t it? You’re Duncan’s best friend, and Iain’s, too. I could destroy that.”
“Aye, if we let it come to that. But we have the power to be certain that it does no’.”
“Then we ought to stay away from each other.”
“That wou
ld be the coward’s way out. Is that what you want?”
“What do you want?”
“More than I should.”
“Do you have to speak in riddles?”
“All right, then. Judging from the state of my body, I want you in my bed. Scars and all, Fiona. But when you climb out of it, I want you to leave without a backward glance. I know who and what I am, and what I can offer. And I can no’ offer a life you would want.”
“You know that already? You know without giving me a chance to decide? Are you going to make my decisions for me, too?”
“I know who I am.”
“We’re a pretty pair, aren’t we?”
He felt the tension that had held them in its grip crack wide open. He smiled, and suddenly the night was warm and the breeze a gentle caress. “Maybe we were put on God’s green earth to be a trial to each other. Did you think of that?”
Her body softened; her shoulders slumped, and she shook her head. “You work hard at pretending you’re a simple man.”
He moved forward and cupped her chin in his hand. Slowly, inexorably, he turned her face to his. “Oh, I’m no’ simple at all. And you’re no’ the sweet innocent you pretend to be. There’s a woman inside you clawing her way out, Fiona. And one day soon, she will have her way.”
CHAPTER 9
Kaye Gerston could drink a man under the table, then help him home to bed, tuck him in with a jovial flourish and leave him with the imprint of a huge smacking kiss in the center of his forehead. She was a tall woman with large bones and belly, who stood on wee Cinderella feet—which were her only vanity. Her age was indeterminate; she had always dyed her hair a flaming red, and her face had been as weather-beaten and lined during Andrew’s childhood as it was now.
Kaye’s face had always been open, too, as easy to read as a screaming tabloid headline, but today it was as incomprehensible as a Turkish daily.
“Do I owe you an explanation, Andrew?” she asked. “Have I given you the impression at one time or the other that I have a duty to explain myself to you?”
Andrew was an engineer, not a psychologist, but he understood guilt and fear and the ways in which they manifested themselves. Days had passed since his discovery that Kaye had sold her land, but she had avoided his phone calls and pretended not to be home when he had visited once before.
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