The Highlander's Lost Lady

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The Highlander's Lost Lady Page 12

by Anna Campbell


  “Aye,” he snapped, struggling to get a firmer grip on her so he could push her off.

  In the struggle, his hand curled around one soft breast. A lightning strike of heat sizzled through him.

  As she cried out in surprise, he bit back a savage curse. This time, he caught her arms and wrenched her to the side. He staggered to his feet and backed away until he hit the wall behind him.

  “Dinna touch me,” he said, holding his hands out to keep her away, as if she had some dreadful disease. “In the name of heaven, dinna touch me again.”

  Closing his eyes, he said a silent, despairing prayer for strength. Then he stumbled across to the hearth and stoked up the fire until the blaze turned the room bright. He ground his teeth as he fought the urge to take her anyway. After all, she was no man’s wife. She was free to give herself to him. Hell, the fire raging in his loins proved he was more than ready to accept what she was offering.

  But as his vision started to work again and the hot tumult of his blood ebbed, he looked at her and knew he couldn’t give in to his base impulses.

  She remained where he’d left her, huddled against the ground. In the stronger light, he saw her clearly at last. And wished to Hades he’d left the room in darkness.

  Fiona looked afraid and defeated. Her face was pale, and her huge blue eyes were bruised and desolate as she stared at him in complete bewilderment. Worse, the flickering light picked up what he’d felt when he touched her cheeks. Tracks of tears. Tears she still shed. It was eerie, how silently she cried.

  The lips she’d pressed so hard against his were red and swollen. He refused to call that desperate contact a kiss.

  When he made a sweeping gesture in her direction, she flinched.

  The anger and frustration churning in his gut turned to sick horror. Surely she couldn’t imagine he meant violence. Of course she did. What else did she know of men but brutality? His loathing for the Grants rose another notch.

  “Don’t be frightened,” he said, his voice bitter. “You’re safe.”

  Because they both knew she’d come close to not being safe at all. There had been an instant in that excruciating embrace where he’d nearly hauled her under him and thrust inside her.

  He watched her straighten and slide back. She pressed against the wall, as if she tried to burrow her way out of the cottage. He finally realized what she was wearing, and dangerous male hunger stirred to life once again, making a travesty of his belief that he’d regained his self-control.

  Her flimsy shift did little to hide her body. The long, graceful legs. The alluring line of hip and waist. The luscious roundness of her breasts with their beaded tips. He wasn’t fool enough to imagine that those hard nipples meant she was sexually excited.

  The first night after he found her, he’d seen her close to undressed. The memory had tortured his every moment since. Now, God damn it, fate delivered another image of Fiona Grant’s half-naked body to drive him insane.

  Diarmid stood still, breathing deeply and battling for restraint. It was a long time before he felt sufficiently in charge of his impulses to approach her. When she flinched away again, guilt knotted his belly.

  Stopping a couple of feet away, he fished his handkerchief out of his pocket. As he held it out to her, he struggled not to stare at the delicate architecture of her collarbones under the sagging shift. “Wipe your eyes.”

  She swallowed. He felt her hesitation like a blow to his solar plexus, before an unsteady hand reached to take the handkerchief.

  Fiona didn’t immediately wipe her cheeks. Instead she kept staring at him with that wounded, questioning gaze, while she twisted the square of white lawn between shaking hands.

  On unsteady legs, Diarmid backed away, hoping a greater distance between them might reassure her. The wild race of his heart slowed. She looked so frail and defenseless, he felt like the worst kind of degenerate for what he wanted to do to her.

  Wanted to do even now, as the fraught silence built between them.

  She bit her lip and raised her chin. These signs of returning self-possession eased his tension, until she spoke.

  “Why?” she asked, her usually sweet voice a croak.

  He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Ye dinna want this.”

  “You do.” The self-hatred that flooded her face made his guilt rear up like a striking cobra. “Or did I get that wrong?”

  God give him strength. He wasn’t sure he was ready to talk about his unwelcome desire for her. But her aching vulnerability meant he had to.

  “No, ye didnae get that wrong,” he muttered.

  She made a helpless gesture. “Then…”

  His mouth tightened. “I’ve never taken an unwilling woman in my life. I’m no’ going to start now.”

  “I came to you.”

  “Ye dinna owe me anything.”

  To his surprise, grim amusement tugged at that lush mouth. “Of course I do, Diarmid. And this is all I have to give in return.”

  She was so proud, it threatened to tear his heart to shreds. What chance did he have against her? He’d wanted her like the devil, even when he believed her a thief and a liar. Now he knew the full extent of her courage and her sacrifice, she was utterly irresistible.

  But resist her he must.

  She’d already ceded too much to selfish male power. He wasn’t going to add himself to the list of men who took advantage of her.

  For the sake of his sanity, he needed to cover her up. He returned to where he’d slept and picked up his coat. “Here. You’ll get cold.”

  She was cold now, if the hard nipples were any indication. He struggled to ignore the way her breasts filled out that infernally transparent linen.

  Her breasts were larger than they’d been when she arrived at Invertavey. A couple of days of good food had added a beguiling roundness to the skeletal figure he’d carried from the beach.

  Another unwelcome jolt of desire shook him, as he recalled holding her breast. Soft. Round. The perfect size for his palm.

  God help him, that wasn’t something he needed to think about when another day’s riding lay ahead. A day when he had to hold her in his arms and devote every agonizing second to reminding himself that she didn’t want him.

  He wished he’d thought to bring a second horse and a cohort of his clansmen on this rescue mission. All this privacy with Fiona tested his honor to breaking point.

  “Thank you,” she stammered, and he saw a flush rise in her cheeks.

  “Ye dinna have to trade your body for my help.” As he watched her tug the coat around her with shaking hands, he felt utterly disgusted with himself. “If you’d gone ahead with what ye tried to do, it would have turned our alliance into a squalid transaction. I pledge myself to your service, Fiona. You’re a victim of huge injustice. My word is enough to bind me. Ye dinna have to confirm my allegiance in any other way.”

  Humiliation flooded her face, and he realized that he was right to think that what had just happened stemmed more from calculation than gratitude. The elegant jaw hardened. “I won’t let my daughter suffer my fate.”

  Diarmid remembered back to that awkward moment when she’d slammed her mouth into his, more an act of violence than of desire. Her lips had been closed as firmly as a bank safe. A man might almost imagine the girl had no idea how to kiss, which was ridiculous, given she’d been married and borne a child.

  He bloody well had to keep his hands to himself. Fiona needed his help, not his seduction. Chivalry forbade him from asking for anything in return.

  But as he stared at her across the room, chivalry’s voice was a feeble whisper against the drumroll of craving.

  I can keep my hands off her. I can.

  Diarmid wasn’t sure he believed it. Because even when she’d trembled with fear, his hands had adored her slender shape, his senses had filled with the warm, floral scent of her skin, and those taut, closed lips had tasted like heaven.

  He clenched his fists at his sides and prowled across to the d
oor. “I’m going out to check on Sigurn.”

  Fiona scrambled to her feet, giving him a glimpse of long, coltish legs and bare, narrow feet. “You don’t have to go. I won’t…I won’t do that again.”

  Her slender hands twined in front of her. The heavy folds of his coat covered her like a nun’s habit. He should feel less on edge, now he’d restored her modesty.

  He felt like he teetered on the brink of a precipice. Because he’d seen more than enough of her tonight. Enough to know he’d never forget the sight of her clad in only a drift of white linen. Plague take her, she could stand before him wearing sackcloth and ashes and he’d want her.

  And tonight he’d touched her. His hands could never unlearn the satiny softness of her skin.

  “Aye, I do,” he said grimly, opening the door. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her take a step in his direction.

  “You’ll be cold out there.”

  “No, I bloody willnae,” he muttered. “And if you’ve got an ounce of sense, lassie, ye willnae follow me.”

  Blindly he blundered out of the bothy and stood shaking with reaction in the soft summer gloaming. He gasped for breath as if he’d run up Ben Nevis.

  By heaven, the sooner he got his charge safely to Achnasheen, the better. He hoped to hell that seeing Fergus and Marina would remind him he was a man who had a few principles.

  It took far too much effort to force himself to make the short journey to the stables, where he intended to stay until they rode out in the morning. Two nights with Fiona Grant, and already he felt wrong when she wasn’t sleeping within reach.

  Chapter 14

  It was the evening of the next day when they came over a ridge and Fiona found herself looking at a scene from a fairy tale. From where she sat, warm and safe in Diarmid’s arms, she drank in the spectacular landscape. The green slope swept down to a turreted castle standing guard over a glittering loch, with the sea a shining silver mirror behind it. Across the water, a line of jagged hills rose against the clear violet sky.

  She must have made some sound, because Diarmid pulled a tired Sigurn to a halt on the brow of the hill. “Bonny, isn’t it?”

  Through this long day on horseback, he hadn’t talked much. She supposed he was still angry with her for last night’s failed seduction. Nor had she tried to coax him into conversation. She’d been too busy cringing at the memory of her clumsiness. The constraint between them had made a hard journey more exhausting than it needed to be.

  “Aye,” she said softly, wanting to apologize for making herself cheap, for everything, really. She’d brought him nothing but trouble.

  But what was her apology worth, when for Christina’s sake, she’d do it all again?

  Humiliation still churned inside her, made today’s skimpy rations lie like stones in her belly. He’d known straightaway that her kisses last night were a self-serving attempt to bind him to her. She owed him her gratitude, but gratitude wasn’t the reason behind that disastrous encounter.

  If she became Diarmid Mactavish’s mistress, he wouldn’t abandon her before they rescued Christina. She’d steeled herself to endure a man’s possession. Only to have her shabby bargain rejected as unworthy of her. And of him.

  When he said no, he exposed the rot in her soul. He’d recognized her seduction as the counterfeit it was and sent her back to her bed, alone and ashamed.

  And even more astonishing, a little miffed. Not to mention…disappointed.

  That unacceptable disappointment was the hardest memory of all to bear. She’d gone to Diarmid feeling like a brave martyr for a good cause, and he’d left her with the knowledge that she was nothing more than a wee hypocrite.

  “That’s Achnasheen.” The way he spoke the name rippled through her like music.

  After years of nothing but harsh voices, the sound of Diarmid Mactavish’s deep baritone made her want to weep. It reminded her of a time when every word wasn’t angry or critical or peremptory.

  “That’s where we’re going?”

  While she made herself appear cheerful, she shrank from meeting Diarmid’s friends. She must look a fright, not to mention she arrived in their home, after spending days in the company of a man to whom she wasn’t married.

  The world would condemn her as a slut. And if Diarmid told his friends the full story, they’d know she was not only a slut, but a liar and a thief. If it meant saving Christina, she’d suffer any derision, but still her pride smarted.

  “Aye.” He clicked his tongue to Sigurn, and the horse set off at a gentle canter. She too must want food and warmth and rest. “We’ll stay here while we decide what we do next and while ye recover your health. You’ll like Fergus and Marina.”

  “Right now I’d like anyone who offered me a bed and a hot meal.”

  “I can promise ye that much.”

  She supposed she should welcome the presence of other people. It might ease the tension simmering between her and Diarmid.

  But even after last night, the thought that they’d no longer be alone together stirred a forbidden regret. Since her father’s death, she hadn’t enjoyed any amiable or interesting company. While their circumstances over the last few days had been uncivilized, Diarmid hadn’t been. He’d remained courteous throughout, treating her like a lady, when surely she’d relinquished any claim to the description.

  Over the last ten years, she’d fought for her very survival. Life’s more sophisticated pleasures hadn’t got a look in. But since meeting Diarmid Mactavish, she’d remembered that every minute didn’t need to be a brutish scramble. She hadn’t realized how she’d missed that gloss of grace and manners. If she failed, if her daughter stayed out of reach, if she had to return to Bancavan, life there would be unendurable now she’d glimpsed something sweeter.

  As they neared the castle, she realized it was bigger than she’d thought. The fairy-tale magic hardened into a fearsome defensive structure.

  She liked that. The days of sieges might be over, but even if the Grants found her here, she’d be safe behind thick stone walls.

  Today, the portcullis was raised, and Diarmid rode in without a challenge. They trotted through a dark tunnel where the weight of centuries-old stone pressed over her head. Then they emerged back into the evening light.

  “Good evening, Jock,” Diarmid said, as a burly Highlander rushed out into the large courtyard to take Sigurn’s reins. “I hope Fergus and Marina are at home.”

  “Good evening to ye, Mactavish. Aye, the Mackinnon and his lady are here.”

  The doors at the top of the impressive stone staircase opened, and a tall and spectacularly handsome man with auburn hair ran down to greet them. “Diarmid, this is an unexpected pleasure. Ye sent nae word you were coming.”

  “Aye, well, it was a spur of the moment thing. Can ye offer a friend and his companion shelter?”

  “Shelter, is it? That sounds dire.” An expressive russet eyebrow tilted in inquiry. “Last I heard, Invertavey House was still standing.”

  “Aye, it’s standing. But it’s no’ safe for us right now. I have a tale to tell, but no’ in the middle of the yard. Is it all right if we stay for a wee while?”

  The tall man made an expansive gesture. “Och, my doors are always open wide to a friend in need. Although you’ve caught us at a difficult moment.”

  “Marina?”

  “Aye. The baby’s due in the next few weeks.”

  Fiona made a sound of protest. “We can’t inconvenience you, sir.”

  Steely gray eyes had already subjected her to a swift, but thorough inspection. “There’s plenty of room, Miss…”

  Diarmid’s arms tightened around her waist. “This is Mrs. Grant.”

  She assumed Mr. Mackinnon must know about the history of violence and hatred between her family and the Mactavishes, but he didn’t mention it. Nor did he comment on her married name. “May I help ye down, Mrs. Grant?”

  She was strangely loath to leave Diarmid’s arms, and she wondered if he felt the same. He seemed re
luctant to release her. “Thank you. You must be wondering why…”

  Mr. Mackinnon took her by the waist and lifted her to the cobblestones where she staggered. After a day in the saddle, she was stiff and awkward. He kept hold of her arm and saved her from a tumble.

  “Steady there, lassie. There’s nae need for explanations on the doorstep. Come away inside and have a hot bath and something to eat. We can save getting acquainted until you’ve settled in. Any friend of Diarmid’s is a friend of mine.”

  She wasn’t sure if she was Diarmid’s friend. She didn’t know how she’d describe what drew her and the Laird of Invertavey together. Nothing as benevolent and uncomplicated as friendship, that was for sure. But after the last few days, she was exhausted and heartsick. A chance to catch her breath before she shared her story with yet another person was a blessing.

  Behind her, she was aware of Diarmid dismounting. She was always aware of where he was and what he did. He loomed up behind her and as if at a silent signal, Mr. Mackinnon released her arm. She was firmer on her feet now, but even so, she appreciated the warm strength of Diarmid’s hand at her back.

  “We’re grateful, Fergus.”

  “Och, it’s nothing. It’s no’ as if we dinna have the space, laddie. And Marina might like another lady in the place at such a time.”

  Fiona took a deep relieved breath. So far, thank heaven, their host didn’t seem ready to treat her like a scarlet woman. The silvery eyes that settled on her were bright with curiosity, not condemnation.

  “Jock, will ye take Sigurn?” Diarmid asked. “She’s had a rough few days and come through like a champion. A bit of your famous touch with horses willnae go astray.”

  “Och, she is a bonny champion. All of Banshee’s get have hearts as big as the Highlands. But I can see she’s due to be treated like the queen she is. Leave her to me, Mactavish.”

  “Come away in,” Mr. Mackinnon said, gesturing toward the stairs. “We’re due to have dinner in an hour or so. We’ll put it back half an hour, so ye can slough off the travel dust. Diarmid, you’ll join us?”

 

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