“Do watch that boiling water, Morwenna, lest we have you in to see the doctor next.” Perpetua took her cup and set it safely away from harm on the table. “But you’re not drinking your tea, Ms. Kincade.”
Maggie was huddled before the fire, weighed down by four tartan blankets. Her fingers finally had sensation again, but her shivering had yet to cease.
“Tea?” She pulled her eyes from the closed door across the hall. “Yes, that would be lovely.”
Hope MacLeod put a hand on her shoulder. “What Perpetua means, my dear, is that you should have some of the tea you’re holding in your hands. It will warm you up in no time, especially if there’s as much whisky in it as I think there is.”
Maggie looked down, frowning. A cup was cradled between her fingers, and steam tumbled up into her face. She took a drink, wincing as the fiery spirits seared the lining of her throat.
“Takes a bit of growing used to,” Perpetua said, nodding gravely. “Try it slowly next time.”
But Maggie didn’t hear, her eyes locked on the door where Jared was sequestered with Glenbrae’s octogenarian doctor.
“There’s no reason to fret, my dear. Your man is sound enough.”
Fret? Maggie stared at the door, willing it to open. She wasn’t fretting, she was terrified. She’d thought of nothing but Jared since their return from the grisly incidents by the loch.
“Do you think he’ll lose the leg?” she whispered.
“Nay, lass. The wound was never so deep as that.” Frowning, Ronan poured another bit of whisky in her tea. “The best thing for you would be to have another drink of tea. He’ll not want to see you pale as oatmeal, and anxiously expecting his death.”
With a wan smile Maggie took another sip, her eyes going wide as the potent spirits bit at her throat.
Hope lifted the bottle from her husband’s fingers. “I don’t think she’ll be needing any more of this.”
“But her color’s gone flat,” he whispered.
“She’ll be fine once she sees Jared,” his wife answered firmly.
“Maybe the doctor needs blood for a transfusion.” Maggie turned her cup blindly as tears burned at her eyes. “Maybe he—”
Ronan gripped her shoulder. “MacNeill will need none of that.” He studied her intently. “Though perhaps he will need other things.”
“I’ll gladly give him anything,” she whispered.
The door creaked open. “Ms. Kincade?” The doctor peered owlishly around the kitchen as Maggie stood up. “There you are. Right this way with you.”
“But I’m fine, truly. Just a little cold. And sometimes my throat—”
He tilted her face, peering into her eyes. “Open your mouth and say ahh.”
“But I’m not—” The wooden tongue depressor cut off her protest.
“Very good,” the doctor muttered. “No sign of inflammation. Now let’s have your hand.” Her wrist was caught, turned, probed. The doctor stared at his watch, ticking off silent seconds. “Excellent,” he said finally. “A fine, normal pulse. You’re fit as a horse, young woman.”
“But what about Jared? Will he—”
Over the doctor’s shoulder she saw Jared hobbling toward her. Beneath his kilt a thick strip of gauze covered his lower thigh. “I’ll be fine, woman. As I told you before, it was just a scratch.”
“Not entirely,” the doctor countered.
“Close enough.” Jared took Maggie’s hand and pulled her toward the table.
Maggie looked nowhere but at his lined face, oblivious to the quiet visitors. “You’re too pale. Too tired.”
“So, my love, are you.” Jared pulled her into the chair beside him.
“I told her she should drink all of her tea, but she didn’t.” Morwenna slid a cup into Jared’s hands. “That same advice holds for you.”
Absently he took a drink, then passed the steaming cup to Maggie. “Your turn. Finish the rest of it.” His eyes narrowed. “I think you’re going to need it.”
“Why?”
“The tea first.”
Maggie took a swift swallow, then burst into raw coughing as the whisky hit home.
Jared held her shoulders until the spasm passed, then took her palm in his. “I’ve something to say to you, Margaret Kincade. Something I’ve never said nor even wished to say before.” He eyed the teacup and took a swift gulp, then brought her palm to his lips for a slow kiss that had Maggie’s pulse climbing.
Ronan cleared his throat. “We’ll be leaving now. I’d best have a look to check that our prisoners are secure out in the storage shed. Nicholas Draycott’s people from Edinburgh should be here soon.”
“I don’t mind if you stay,” Jared said. “I don’t mind if everyone hears.” He didn’t take his eyes from Maggie’s face. “I love you, Maggie Kincade. I never thought I would or could, but you’ve turned me inside out, with no hope of ever going back to what I was.”
Her hand tightened. “Jared, you don’t have to—”
“No, don’t argue.” He muttered something in Gaelic, then held out a hand to MacLeod. A moment later the whisky bottle hit his fingers, and he downed a tidy amount, flinching only slightly.
“Listen to me, Maggie.” Jared’s throat was tight and his pulse was ragged. Damn and blast, who would have thought a simple question could be so hard in the asking? His throat felt raw, and if she turned him down, he’d go straight out to the loch and shoot himself.
He cleared his throat. “I’ve had my reasons for holding back these words, my heart, even when you slid beneath all my shadows. Your touch changed me. What we found together changed me. But up until today, one thing wouldn’t change.” His hands tightened. “I’d seen my own death out there in the snow, Maggie. A dozen times in Thailand I lived through every cold detail.”
Perpetua Wishwell frowned, stroking her amber brooch and murmuring softly.
But Maggie saw nothing but Jared’s beloved face and determined eyes.
Jared took a harsh breath. “I saw every detail. The blood on the snow. The tree with a broken branch and the MacNeill tartan fallen against the ground. It might have been me—probably would have been me, had luck and good friends not stood on my side.” He shoved a hand through his dark hair. “It appears that I won’t be dying here today after all.”
A tear streaked down Maggie’s cheek. Silently, Jared bent on one knee before her and brushed the salty bead away with his thumb. “I couldn’t offer you a future before this, Maggie, but now I can. And I’m asking now. Hoping.” Dying, he thought. His hand opened over her cheek. “Would you marry me, mo chridhe? No man could love you more than I do.”
All movement stilled. Silence wrapped around every corner of the room.
“M-marry you?” Maggie’s heart did a painful jackknife. He hadn’t thought this through. He’d nearly died out by the loch, after all. She swallowed hard. “You don’t have to say this. It’s been a long day and a vicious week.”
“There’s no one else for me, Maggie. Nothing else I could ever want more than this.” He pulled away from her, his eyes hard and dark. “I won’t say there haven’t been women who’ve touched me, women I’ve admired.”
“Jared, you can stop now. You don’t really—”
“I can and do. Not one of them touched me as you did from the second I saw you. When I slipped into your mind that day, Maggie, I was lost. Trapped in colors and light, caught in all your passion and dreams. I was jealous of the man who’d find your fire, but I didn’t dare to hope he could be me.” Jared’s hands clenched. “Tell me yes, Maggie. I know you best, mo chridhe. I’ve seen all the way to your soul every time we touch.”
Behind Jared, footsteps rustled up the stairs, but neither he nor Maggie noticed. Maggie straightened her shoulders. Doing the right thing had never seemed so hard before. She knew her face was pale and her voice reedy. Suddenly the whoosh of the snow at the window seemed very loud.
“If something’s wrong, tell me.” His eyes darkened. “I won’t believe there’s s
omeone else. I’d have felt him in your mind.”
“Not that.” She started to reach out to him, then remembered his singular gift. Closing her hands tightly, she turned away. “The answer is no, Jared,” she said mechanically.
The silence stretched, lethal and taut. Hope, Ronan, and the Wishwells were nowhere to be seen. Only snow moved, whispering at the windows.
“Talk to me, Maggie.” Jared frowned, reaching out for her hands.
“Don’t,” she whispered hoarsely.
“Why?”
“Because we have to resolve this without your touch. Because I don’t want you in my head,” she said desperately.
“Then tell me in words.”
Behind Maggie, Hope MacLeod tiptoed past. On her way to the stairs, she gave Jared a swift thumbs-up.
The smell of pine needles and juniper lingered in the quiet air. “Why, Maggie?”
She stood stiffly, gripping the marble mantel, now covered with a length of coiling green holly. “Because it’s a bad idea. Because,” she said flatly, “you’ll only regret it.”
“Never.”
“You will. Any man would.”
Jared started to curse, to haul her into his arms and block the words, but reason held him still. He was too wise a man not to recognize her pain. She’d listened to his bleak story once, and now he’d do the same for her. He’d be civilized and listen for hours.
Then he’d handcuff her to his bed until he changed her mind.
He crossed his arms at his chest as Perpetua Wishwell moved past in the hallway, her hands full of pillows. She gave him a reassuring nod before disappearing up the broad stairs. “I’m listening.”
Maggie was pacing now, hands locked at her waist. “It’s not about you, Jared. Don’t take this personally.”
“It’s rather hard not to.”
Maggie paced to the window, turned sharply, then cut back to the opposite wall, her eyes dark with conflicting emotions. “It’s like melting solder and metal. When they bond, if you’re careful, they stop being two elements and create something entirely new.”
Jared kept his voice level, trying to follow her. “That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes it is. It all depends on how you plan to use them and how they’ll work together.” She took a harsh breath. “It’s me that’s the problem. Me, not you, Jared. I don’t know how to say this any other way.”
Jared felt as if a steel fist had torn out his heart.
She doesn’t love you, fool. She can’t take the kind of life you’d give her. She needs crowds, excitement, people. With the danger past, she must have realized that clearly.
His jaw hardened. “What part of you is the problem?” he asked roughly. “Your eyes? Your hair? That unbelievable mouth of yours?”
“All of me.” No smile. No quick look. Only a crushing tone of sadness in her voice.
“Oh? And what is it that’s so terrible about all of you?”
“You’ve had so much pain already, Jared. I can’t bear the thought that I’d bring you more.” Her eyes, blurred with tears, rose slowly to his face. “And I would. Not because I don’t love you, but because I love you too much.”
The air seemed to shimmer. Jared felt a burning in his throat as he saw her hand rise, then fall to her side. What he said next would be infinitely important to their future, and he chose his words carefully. “I see. You love me,” he repeated slowly. “And that’s why you can’t marry me.”
Maggie nodded, shoving at one wet cheek. “You need someone beautiful and normal in your life. Someone wonderfully calm, with an impeccable background and solid social standing.”
Understanding hit Jared in a flood. So that was it. Not the lack of love, but something else entirely. “This is because of your father. Because of the rumors and the scandal.”
Her hands tightened. “What’s happened here made me see all the loose threads. It’s not over, Jared. There will be more police. More reporters and more frenzy. I can’t put you through that after—”
He moved in a blur of speed before she could say another bleak word. Ignoring the burn at his thigh, he gripped her hand and pulled her down onto his lap. “Did it ever strike you, woman, that normal is the last thing I want or need? That calm and impeccable would drive me mad before one week had passed?”
“That’s only now.” Her chin rose stubbornly. “Later you’d change your mind when the doorbell didn’t stop ringing. When you couldn’t walk down a street without a thousand questions shouted at you.”
His finger traced her lower lip, sending fresh heat spearing through his body. “Gentle Maggie. Stubborn, impossible Maggie who I love beyond all describing.”
“You can’t. I won’t let you. You were the one who told me every question had a price. So answer this question, because it may save you a great deal of pain later: can you ever rest, wondering if my father did more than he said? I don’t think I can,” she whispered. “Even if I could, the reporters wouldn’t let me. For them the story will never be over.”
Jared felt her anxiety bleed over him, a storm of reds and leaden grays. Yet in the middle of those warring colors he felt the fierce, shining flame of her love. White hot, it filled him, seared him, enveloped him. She was determined to protect him, he realized, even when protection was the last thing he wanted. “Stop giving me reasons why we can’t be happy.”
“No.” She turned her head away, her shoulders set. “I shouldn’t be touching you. Touching you makes me want you, and then I lose all sanity.”
Images shimmered through her mind and left Jared’s body hardening. She wanted his hands, his laugh, the hot weight of his body as he filled her. She wanted him with a hunger that bordered on pain.
Jared cleared his throat. “The hue and cry will soon be forgotten. Nicholas Draycott will see to that.”
“Just like that?”
“He’s a very persuasive man, my dear. Especially when something personal is at stake.”
Maggie frowned down at his sweater. “They won’t forget back in New York.”
“Then we’ll go to ground for a few months. We’ll sail to Tahiti and backpack through Bali. No one will have the slightest interest in two lovesick, sunburned tourists who can’t keep their hands off each other.” His mouth curved. “Speaking for myself, of course.”
She gave a wistful smile. “You make it sound so easy.”
“It is easy.”
Footsteps tapped through the hall. “Jared’s right, my dear. There are hundreds of places where you’d be unrecognized. One of them isn’t a day’s drive from here, where green hills skirt a silver loch. Right here.” Morwenna Wishwell opened a heavy book and thrust it into Maggie’s hands. “You can see it here. A lovely house overlooking the sea. Sheep everywhere and a fine Neolithic hill fort.” Her keen eyes swept Jared’s shocked face and twinkled. “That man of yours will tell you all about it.”
She was gone before Maggie could look up from the book. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered, peering down at the blue-green hills ringing a loch dotted with wooded islands. “Isolated, too. It would make a lovely place to stay. I wonder who lives there?”
Jared watched the hills and water blur before his eyes. He remembered the sounds of falcons and the wind singing over the cliffs. He remembered a grand house that had once been filled with laughter. “You like it?”
“It’s breathtaking. Just the place to be alone.”
“I suppose I might speak to the owner.” Memories surged. Laughter that had turned to silence, silence to aching sadness.
Maggie twisted eagerly. “Do you know him?”
“That I do. Very well, in fact.”
“Do you think he might consider it? Not that I’m agreeing to anything,” she added hastily. Even then her eyes didn’t leave the open pages of the book.
“He might,” Jared murmured. “With the right inducement.”
“You mean money.” She gnawed at her lower lip. “Well I haven’t very much, and I won’t let you go man
aging this on your own,” she said firmly.
“In that case, we’ll have to find some other inducement,” he said gravely. “Something a man simply can’t do without. Something that will set him on his ear.”
“Cufflinks. Maybe a matching watch.” Maggie shifted again. Muscles that Jared didn’t know existed slammed to agonizing arousal. “Maybe a ring for a woman. Is he married?”
“Not yet. The poor man never finished his proposal. I believe the woman in question left him without two clear thoughts in his head,” Jared muttered, trying to find a more comfortable position.
And failing grandly.
“Besides,” he continued, “I think he would like something more lasting than jewelry. Something he can wake up with in the morning and go to sleep with at night.”
She frowned. “A dog? You want us to give him Max?”
Jared would have laughed if he hadn’t been in such pain. “What he wants, Maggie, is you. Beside him at dawn. Wrapped around him at midnight. All your laughter and your smiles.”
She looked down at the book, then looked back at him. “You mean…” She caught a breath. “You own this place?”
“Every stone and tree. Will you mind living inside drafty old granite walls half of the year?”
“But you can’t—I didn’t—” Her mouth closed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I was hedging my bets, in case you didn’t like old, isolated castles. And I don’t want to take any chances. I want your elbow gouging my ribs and your hair on my pillow when I wake. I want that impossible mouth of yours all over me when I slip into bed at night.” He smiled. “Or any other time we choose.” He took her hand. “Will you marry me very soon?” he said roughly. “I can maybe manage to wait a week.” She blinked away her tears, and his heart crumbled. “Then again, maybe I can’t.”
“What if I hurt your leg? Muss your hair and straighten your tie?” She gave a little sigh and eased her mouth against his, lingering, tasting.
Affirming.
Answering him with her heart.
Intractable Scotsman. How can I say no?
“Say the words,” Jared said hoarsely. “I want to be sure I’ve got them right.”
The Perfect Gift Page 37