MAD, BAD & DANGEROUS TO MARRY (The Highland Brides Book 4)

by Elizabeth Essex

  He was infinitely better for her nearness, but he could not say the same with confidence for her—her face was flushed with color and her bright, clear eyes were shining with something he could only hope was admiration. Or attraction. “Aye. Much, much better.”

  “Oh, good. Well, then, I’d best see to—” She turned away and busied herself with the wicker saddle baskets for a good long time while he took himself behind the door of the bothy to finish changing into the clean breeks.

  He returned to present himself for her inspection. “Will I do, lass?”

  “Aye.” The flush in her pretty checks had subsided, but her lips curved into a blindingly bright smile. “Indeed, you don’t look like you’re about to split the seams of those breeks anymore.”

  He stretched and crossed his arms in front of his torso, testing the fit. “Aye. I thank you, Greer.”

  His relief at bringing her name so readily to hand was as physical as removing the binding on his broken ribs—he could breathe again. He had kept her name on the tip of his tongue, whispering it like an incantation to ward off the loneliness. Keeping him sane.

  “Greer.” He tried it out on his tongue again, like a savory lemon tart—another thing his brain revealed even as it concealed. He had no idea how he knew what a lemon tart was, or how it tasted. “I like it.”

  “I’m glad.” Her sweetly pleased smile was worth every effort. “Any progress on remembering your name? Was Dewar any help?”

  He opened his mouth to reply when Dewar’s adamant cautions came roaring back. “Tell no one! No one.”

  But surely this sweet, kind creature who kept her word was not to be feared?

  “Careful o’ that one especially. No tellin’ what she might say up the castle,” Dewar had warned. “They’re the ones that are dangerous. The ones ye have to fear.”

  “I’m recovering,” he said instead. “Day by day. Bit by bit.” It was all he hoped, prayed for, even, staring at the black ceiling of the bothy through the long lonely nights.

  “It will come back,” she assured him. “Given time, and patience. Though I do feel strange not knowing what to call you.”

  “What is your favorite name?”

  “Ewan,” she responded immediately, without the slightest hesitation. As if she knew her own mind so well, this trivial fact was close to hand.

  Ewan. The name sat on his tongue like a hot coal, and his skin felt strange and tight, as if his scalp were being pricked by pins and needles. Yet his balky brain could give no reason for him to feel that way, or why it might matter. Only that it did.

  So he paid attention. “Might you call me Ewan?”

  Everything sunny and shyly animated within her stilled so swiftly he was sure he had made some great mistake—some mad misstep that would drive her from him.

  “I—” she began, and then broke off as she struggled with some unknown emotion, looking at him with such minute, particular attention, as if she might find the answer writ large across his face. “Mayhap,” she finally assented quietly. “Would you like that?”

  “Aye. If it would please you.”

  She nodded slowly. “I believe it might. Thank you. For asking.”

  “You are most welcome.” If what he had felt before was relief, what he felt now was pure exhilaration. “That’s grand.” He tried it out again to let some of the heat—the importance—out of it. “Ewan.”

  “You don’t mind?” she asked.

  “Nay.” Why would he object to anything she suggested? Everything she had done or helped him do was welcome. “It’s an improvement on ‘lad.’”

  “Oh, aye.” She gave him one of her quick, bright smiles. “You’re not a lad, you’re a man grown. And a gentleman by your manners and speech.”

  The pleasing idea that he was a gentleman was at war with his present circumstances—he lived in a bothy on a moor, not in a fine house, and he wore cast-off clothes. “Dewar said I was a local lad—nobody special.”

  “Did he? He’s said a lot of things that aren’t necessarily true.” Her tone was tart. “Even if you are local, you don’t talk like Dewar, or the villagers. I think you’ve been educated.”

  Had he? He knew some Latin and knew about fine sherry and medicine.

  What else had Dewar said—about who he was or what he owed Crieff?

  Now that he needed the information, his brain remained stubbornly closed to him. The harder he tried to remember, the more the words and ideas swirled together until they were knotted in a tight, impenetrable coil.

  As if she sensed his growing agitation, she turned the conversation to practical matters. “I’ve brought you fruit—oranges as well as grapes from the glasshouse.” She began to fetch one of the wicker baskets from the pony.

  “Let me.” He might not know who he was, but he wasn’t so weak or confused that he was useless.

  She let him take the burden from her hands. “My plan to get you back to fourteen stone must be working—you’re clearly feeling stronger.”

  “Aye.” He was glad to hear anything admiring from her. “I’ve repaired the stile, and near finished the wall.”

  She glanced toward the great pile of rock that he had sorted from the tumbledown stile. “You’ve made great progress. Dewar and the head shepherd will thank you next spring,” she observed, “when they’ll have no worries about ewes slipping upland onto the moor to lamb. Poor daft creatures.”

  She must think him a poor daft creature as well—a madman with a cracked, slipshod brain, and no clean clothes. He felt like a madman, talking to no one but the wind for days at a time. Until she came. “I’m not mad.”

  “No. You’re not,” she said with a determined sort of kindness that seemed particular to her. “Though you do look a bit mad, with your purple and yellow bruises, and your hair all at sixes and sevens.”

  “Is it?” He ran an embarrassed hand into the uneven mop, still damp from his hasty dip in the burn. “I reckon the doctor sheared it when he bound up my head.”

  “Yes, I supposed that was what happened. But…” She paused and frowned as if debating what to say. “I brought some sewing scissors, in the hamper.” She hesitated again. “I could trim it up for you. If you like.”

  If he liked.

  The words tumbled slowly into his head, landing with weight. He would like so many things it seemed impossible to pick only one—his memory, his health, his very life. But having his hair cut so he did not look like a madman would do.

  Especially if she were the one doing it.

  “Aye.” Because his broken body fairly hummed with heat at the very thought.

  “Perhaps the chair…” And she was off before he could help her, hauling the stout oak chair through the doorway and into the sun with a practical, competent briskness. “Why don’t you sit there?”

  It seemed impossible that he could comply—his muscles bunched with the need to take off running down the glen. To exercise the sudden spate of restless energy that tumbled through him like water racing over rocks.

  But he sat. Backwards on the simple slatted chair so he might have something to hold onto. Facing away down the glen, so he could concentrate on the loch. Or the curlews. Or anything that wasn’t the feel of her standing close behind him, grazing her torso lightly against his back. So close, he could feel the searing heat of her body across his back and shoulders.

  He closed his eyes to savor the contact and hold it close. Close enough to last him through the long, endlessly lonely nights.

  “I’ll just tidy it up,” she murmured. “Make it an even length.” And then her hands were in his hair, combing it through her fingers, gently pulling the strands to and fro as she settled on her approach. “It’s damp.”

  He swallowed. “I wash,” he explained. “In the burn.”

  Behind him, he felt a frisson, as if she had shivered.

  “It’s no’ that cold,” he assured her.

  “Gracious, it’s positively arctic. You’re a local lad, all right.” He could almost f
eel her smile. “No’ that cold,” she repeated with a little hum of a laugh.

  It vibrated through him, that little sound of pleasure, and set up buzzing through his blood. He heard the wicked snick of the scissors and felt the cold line of steel against his nape as she began snipping. But it was her hands he felt most—the slender, articulate fingers, sliding through his hair and cradling his near-broken skull.

  “It’s almost a shame to cut it.” She let the strands sift through her fingers. “It must have been lovely.”

  Must have been. For a moment, he felt that awful sense of diminishment, but her touch made him feel something stronger—alive and vulnerable and exposed and at a loss in a way that he couldn’t articulate. But mostly alive—his blood was singing through his veins.

  She stayed for the most part behind him, only venturing around the side of the chair as far as his ears. But finally, after what seemed an age of tugging and snipping, there was nothing left but for her to come around the front where he could see her. And because there was a God, his eyes were level with the lovely curve of her bosom. And then she stepped nearer, between his outspread knees.

  It was everything he could do to sit docile and unmoving with his palms flat against his thighs—not to let his hands stray to her waist. Not to trace the sinuous curve of her bodice and follow it up and around. Not to touch.

  He closed his eyes and tried to simply be, to inhale the soft, bright scent of her. To luxuriate in the pleasure of her presence. It was an eternity, and only a moment before she stepped back.

  “There.” She lingered, letting her fingers play with his hair as she surveyed her handiwork. “Well.” She drew in a sweet sigh of a breath. “Well, if you aren’t a handsome fellow, Ewan.” She said the name quietly—reverently almost. And then, as if sensing she had been too solemn, added, “Broken nose and all.”

  He felt his chest expand as if he were inhaling every last breath of air in the whole of the glen. She thought him handsome.

  He could die happy. Except he had no thought of dying—only of living and living for this lass. For her company, and smiles, and her good opinion.

  “Thank you, Greer.” The words came without effort, without torturous thought.

  “You’re quite welcome, Ewan.” She brushed some hair off his shoulder. “Is there anything else you can think of that I can get for you, or help you with?”

  He could think of a million things, and also just one. But he remembered himself enough not to say it. “Have you got a razor?” he asked instead.

  This time it was a sensation—the cool slide of a sharp blade drawn down his cheek—rather than an image that filled his mind.

  “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” she confessed. She reached out and almost touched the bewhiskered line of his jaw. Almost. “I don’t think I could be trusted with a razor.”

  “I would trust you with anything,” he responded. “I would trust you with my life—for I already have.”

  Her surprised smile grew into an unrestrained grin. “Aye, I suppose you did. And I’m very glad to have been of assistance. Very glad.” She brushed a stray clipping off his sleeve. “Anything else I can do?”

  “Come again,” he reached for her hand. “Please. As often as you can. As often as you’d like.”

  She didn’t try to pull away but turned her palm to mesh with his. “I’d like that.”

  The rush of emotions—the relief and giddy hope colliding inside him—took the last of his words. But though he could not seem to think enough to speak, he could feel, and so he raised her soft, capable, caring hands to his lips, and brushed a kiss across her knuckles. Like a gentleman.

  This time, there was a voice in his head to match the image of a tall white-haired man. “Like a gentleman, lad.” A deep voice, low and stern and loving.

  Grandfather.

  He had a grandfather. A family. Somewhere. Perhaps even looking for him. Perhaps looking for him now. “I have a family.” He was so elated he wanted to kiss her again, to pull her flush against his chest and cover her soft mouth with his and—

  “Oh.” She took a tentative step backwards, out of his reach. “How lovely. Who?”

  “I don’t know who. Not yet.” But it was lovely. And she was lovelier. And his life was getting better by the day. For the first time, he felt himself truly relax. Because he could truly believe that he really was going to recover. “But I will remember. I promise you that.”

  And no matter who he was, he was determined to be a man who kept his promises.

  Lord Ewan Cameron

  St. Salvador’s College

  St. Andrew’s, Fife

  6 March, 1789

  Dear E,

  It has done nothing but rain, rain, and rain for four whole days—such buckets of water from the sky, the dogs and I have been confined to the house. It is so dreich, Mama fears the influenza. The dogs are about to go mad, and me, even madder! I have curled myself up in a dry corner of the library where I have taken to re-reading your letters and putting pins in the globe to mark your journeys across the world.

  Papa promises that once the weather has cleared and the roads are dry we will make a visit to Edinburgh! Papa has business to attend to, and Mama should like a chance at the drapers’ warehouses. I am pinning all my hopes on a new pair of half-boots as I have worn my old pair out beyond the repair of the village cobbler with all my walks up to Glas Moal in search of a glimpse of you far to the east. I know you yourself have been to Auld Reeky, as Papa calls it. Is there anything you most recommend I do? I promise to make a good accounting of myself and not act the country bumpkin, although I fear I am sadly lacking in airs and graces. But how else is one to attain them, than by going to the city and finding that out?

  I remain, your devoted, G

  Lady Greer Douglas

  Dalshee House

  Perthshire, Scotland

  1 April, 1789

  Dearest G,

  It is my decided opinion that the only air you need is mountain air, and the only grace required is what you clearly already have in abundance. The only reason you should travel is to enjoy yourself and see the things that are not available at Dalshee. The world is a large and interesting place, but the important things—honor, friends, family—already abide with you in Dalshee. Travel if you must, but never forget that home is the most important place there is. And whatever you do, don’t believe a word of anything an Edinburgh buck might say to you—they are all blether and havering. And pray don’t accept any kisses other than the ones I send you here. I pledge to send you more, while I remain,

  Your steadfast servant, EC

  Chapter 16

  Greer returned to the glen the next morning as early as the long ride—and necessary subterfuges to leave Dalshee undetected—would allow. She wanted to forego the inevitable lecture on the dereliction of her duties at Dalshee should her Papa find out she was still visiting her friend in the glen. And touching him. And letting him touch her. And calling him Ewan.

  It had seemed harmless—even helpful—at the time, to let him have the name. It had seemed fitting, and apt. Because her stubborn heart insisted that he could be Ewan.

  He might be. Maybe. It was possible.

  But when she was home, in the quiet confines of her own room, she knew it was wrong, and even dangerous to let her feelings and imagination and grief run riot over her better self. To let herself construct such a fantasy of her betrothed out of whole tweed cloth.

  But it was such a pleasure to be with him, a pleasure to do something concrete to help someone who asked nothing of her in return.

  Nothing but her company. And her kisses.

  She could still feel the warm press of his lips against her hand, shocking and soothing all at the same time. She could still see the sheer, unadulterated happiness that shone from his eyes like a beacon when he looked at her.

  If the eyes were the window to the soul, Greer felt as if she could see something within his—something beyond the confusion and frus
tration and determination to return to his former self—something hopeful and warm and inviting that despite his apparent madness, spoke to her of trust and honor. Something that moved her to quietly saddle her mare and sneak away from Dalshee with no one the wiser just as dawn was lighting the eastern sky.

  This morning she took a different path following the run of the burn down into the glen. The clear morning sun shone down on the ribbon of water that led like a green and silver path to—

  A man.

  Greer instantly halted. Ahead, a figure stood waist deep in the deep pool that formed just below the rise. A half-naked man—his big, bare body glistening in the morning sun.

  Ewan.

  She knew it was he from his close-cropped hair, like a bright otter pelt. But everything else that filled her sight was astonishing and intriguing—the tapered line of his flanks, painted with streaks of dull yellowing purple along the line of his ribs. The sleek muscles of his shoulders, flexing and bunching as he sluiced water through his hair. The smooth contour of his chest shimmering as the water ran down his bare skin.

  He was not so big and muscle-bound as the farrier or the teamsters working the plows on Dalshee’s home farm, but he had gained flesh in the past month. His body was beautiful—sleekly fashioned, and honed down to the essential elements, as if there were nothing extraneous, nothing but the honest, essential man himself.

  Nothing overwhelming. Nothing, surely, to frighten.

  So why had her mouth gone dry? Why was her heart clamoring like a kirk bell within her chest? And why did her skin suddenly feel tight and strange, as if she had taken a chill? Why was she staring at his chest as if she had never seen one of the farm lads leave off their shirt before?

  Was this why she wanted so badly for him to be Ewan—so she might feel alive and aflame instead of half-buried in grief? Was her interest in this man that selfish and shallow?

  And still she did not move. Did not stop staring.