His Wicked Highland Ways

by Laura Strickland

  “Perhaps willow tea.”

  “Have you any?”

  “I will brew some.”

  Jeannie turned away to the fire and expected Finnan to remain at Danny’s side, but he followed her instead.

  “I apologize again for this intrusion,” he murmured. “I have turned your life on its head.”

  She glanced at him as she took the jar of willow bark from the shelf, trying to measure his mood. She began to suspect she could take at face value nothing this man presented.

  “It cannot be helped,” she returned. But yes, he had turned her world upside down, and yes, she found it difficult even to think clearly in his presence.

  “I would like to say we will clear out of here come morning, but I cannot make that promise, with Danny this way.”

  “And, as you say, you always keep your promises?”

  “Always.” He spoke the word passionately, an absolute.

  Jeannie nodded toward the lad in the other room. “Has Danny been with you a long while?”

  “Ever since Culloden.” Finnan fell silent for a moment, and his expression turned bleak. “He never should ha’ been there, a mere lad. I found him lying beneath a number of his fellows, all dead, bleeding from the wound where his arm had been. I only heard him because he sobbed for his ma.”

  Jeannie’s throat tightened. So Finnan MacAllister truly did have a heart beneath all those tattoos.

  “Given such a dire injury, however did you keep him alive?”

  Finnan shook his head. “Last evening was not the first time I ha’ stitched him up. Thought sure we’d lose him after Culloden. Geordie and I…” He stopped speaking abruptly.

  Jeannie, curious, looked into his face. It had closed as if a shutter had come down.

  Yes, and that matched the look she remembered seeing in Geordie’s eyes whenever that battle came up: tight, arrested, fierce with pain.

  Finnan sucked in a breath. “But, mistress, I will not sully your ears with such talk. ’Tis not something I would inflict on my worst enemy.”

  Secrets, Jeannie decided, lay behind those tawny brown eyes—some she did not want to know.

  “Well, then,” she said, “let us see if this tea can soothe young Danny’s pain.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Finnan followed Jeannie back to the bed, where Danny still tossed and turned, trying hard to rein in his emotions. What in hell was wrong with him? He had very nearly lost control of his tongue, and his feelings, a moment ago. Wooed, just like Geordie, by a pair of beautiful, wide blue eyes. He had to remember who, and what, she was.

  Perhaps not his worst enemy, given the events of this day, but damn near. He cursed the Avries under his breath again. Let them attack him as they would, but falling on an unarmed lad, and one under his protection, just upped the score to be settled.

  He would settle Jeannie MacWherter also, no question. But that would be easy and, aye, a mite enjoyable. He could not help but watch the sway of her hips as he trailed her back to Danny, and imagine what lay beneath that plain brown skirt she wore. Smooth and soft, no doubt, round white flesh he wanted bare beneath his hands.

  That was not all he wanted. He needed to engage the wench’s emotions and then break her heart, even as she had broken Geordie’s. Turn about made fair play, to his mind. And engaging her emotions would not be difficult. A blind man could not miss the way she looked at him. Tempted already, she was. That blue gaze had been all over his body, had measured the muscles of his chest and arms and trailed the line of red-brown hair that led down into his rough kilt—and that more than once.

  Oh, aye, he would have her on her back and screaming his name within the week.

  But first he had to cope with these other complications. He’d not figured on Danny being so sore hurt and marooned here. The lad held Finnan’s heart—what little of it remained whole.

  “Lift him up,” Jeannie bade him now, “and I will tip the cup to his lips.”

  Finnan did as bidden, and rested Danny’s head against his bare shoulder. Ah, but the lad burned with fever. Jeannie leaned in, which brought her very close to Finnan indeed. He could catch the clean scent of her, and the golden shine of her hair.

  Danny opened fever-fogged eyes and looked at her. “Ma?”

  Jeannie shot Finnan a look of consternation but barely missed a beat. “Yes, son. Drink this for me; it will ease your pain. Then lie back and rest.”

  Danny, utterly trusting, drank the potion like a lamb. His gaze never left Jeannie’s face as Finnan lowered him back onto her pillow.

  “Ma, I hurt. No, do no’ leave me!”

  Jeannie froze in the act of stepping away. Danny’s one good hand reached out, searching, and she clasped it.

  “Stay with me, Ma. Where have you been? I searched and searched.”

  Finnan’s throat tightened. He knew the story full well: not long before Culloden, Danny and his mother’s nearby farm had come under attack by raiders. When the lad, off hunting hares, came home he found the cottage burned and his mother missing.

  He had found her eventually, splayed on the hillside out back, violated and dead.

  Jeannie MacWherter drew a breath, but she did not hesitate. “Of course I will stay with you, Danny. But you must lie quiet. I do not want your stitches to tear.”

  Without a word, Finnan fetched a stool from the other room and placed it beside the bed for her. She lowered herself onto it, looking every bit the compassionate angel. Finnan, watching as her fingers caressed those of the lad, had to remind himself again of her true nature.

  He should not be surprised to find her a clever and deceptive creature. Geordie, despite his air of innocence, had been no fool. No man who had suffered the events and seen the sights they had together could be entirely gullible. And she had fooled Geordie completely.

  No matter. He, Finnan, could be as deceptive as she.

  Jeannie glanced at him precisely as if she could hear his thoughts, and he gave her his warmest smile.

  “Only look how he settles for you,” he crooned, for indeed Danny’s eyes fluttered shut. He added truthfully, “He has wanted his ma for so long. But I doubt she was so lovely as you.”

  Some strong emotion touched her features before she schooled them. “She was beautiful, to him. I can tell by the way he looks at me. What happened to her, Laird MacAllister?”

  “You do not want to know.”

  She gave a grim nod. “I am sometimes reminded that this world in which we live is a terrible place.”

  Finnan could not but agree. “Terrible, dangerous, frightening…and beautiful. All the while I was away, the beauty I remembered here in this glen kept me whole and sane.” Partly sane, by any road. It might be argued he had traded, to the demons that rode him, some of his sanity—or his soul.

  She gave him another of those measuring glances. “Glen Rowan means a great deal to you. I wonder that you ever left.”

  Finnan hesitated. He had no intention of spilling his deepest feelings to her, and so murmured only, “Aye, well, needs must. But the place a man was born seems to always keep a hold on him.”

  She made a rueful face and said in a low voice, so as not to disturb Danny, “I was born in Dumfries, but I can admit to no longing to return there. Do you know what I remember about my home? Rain flavored by cinders, falling down into the wet streets. Drawn curtains and neighbors who never ceased their gossip. Oh, the Nith is beautiful with its stone bridges, but I confess I would not wish to go back again.”

  Yet that was just where Finnan meant to send her, with her tail between her legs.

  He shrugged. “Dumfries—that is the lowlands.”

  She raised to him a blue gaze tinged with mirth. “Whereas, only the highlands are worthy of admiration.”

  “The highlands are the backbone of Scotland.” That backbone might have been broken at Culloden—in fact Finnan knew it had. But, like Danny with his one arm, the sons of this land would fight on.

  He propped himself against the wall
at the head of the bed. “Tell me of your life in Dumfries, Mistress MacWherter.” He welcomed any details he might use against her. “Geordie said little enough of your situation there.”

  She appeared to think about it, and turned her gaze away from him. “It seems I have spent my whole life looking after other people.”

  Not what he expected her to say. His eyebrows jerked upward.

  “My father was a curious man, a scholar and very well educated. He worked at the University of Glasgow for a time, but there were incidents, and they asked him to leave. He took his books and his opinions and his scandalous ideas and moved to Dumfries, where he accepted children of the wealthy class, to educate. There he met my mother. She was a chambermaid at his first residence. Very pretty.”

  She would have been, Finnan reflected.

  “He ruined her,” Jeannie said, speaking as distantly as if of someone else, “and then decided it would be good, equitable and just, to marry her and raise her to his level. My father was always an equitable man. He claimed to see no differences between the classes and, I think, more than half believed it.”

  “You were that child?”

  She smiled bleakly, and her fingers, soft and gentle, caressed Danny’s hand. “The only child they had. My father decided to educate me as I grew. My mother—” She paused abruptly.

  Finnan asked, with unwilling sympathy, “Is she dead?”

  “Probably, by now. I do not know.” She shot him another look, this one defiant. “Why do we speak of this?”

  “Because you said you have always looked after others.” He nodded at the bed.

  “I looked after my mother until she left. She went mad. Father claimed reason could cure her. It could not.”

  That sent a jolt of surprise through Finnan. “I see.”

  “No, Laird MacAllister, I doubt you do. My father drove her mad with his expectations.”

  “How is that, then?”

  “She could not be what he wanted. You would have had to know him, if you were to understand. He could be very kind, very idealistic. He could also be so closed into the workings of his own mind he became unreasonable. Things to him were very simple and yet immensely complicated.”

  “You say your mother left him?”

  “Left him, and me. I was ten at the time. I took over running the household, and took care of my father and every stray soul he brought home.”

  “There were many of those—stray souls?”

  “More than you can imagine: thieves, prostitutes, swindlers, and some good people also, gone astray. He met them on the streets or in the ale houses. He began drinking after my mother left and never looked back.”

  And so was that all Geordie had been to her, another stray? Why marry him, then? Why bother to break his heart? Anger burned in Finnan anew, despite the way her words pulled at his sympathies. Yet she sat there stroking Danny’s hand and said, “I understand how this lad feels, wanting his mother.”

  Aye, and no wonder she did not want to go back to Dumfries. And no wonder, with such an upbringing, she had grown into a deceptive and ruthless creature. Anything to survive.

  Finnan understood that edict. But he would never harm those he loved.

  “Is that how your father died?” he asked. “The drink?”

  “My father,” she said with an edge in her voice, “could drink vast amounts of whisky with very little apparent effect. He just became…more so. More intelligent, more dictatorial, more absolute. It was his arrogance that killed him. Oh, I am sure the drink contributed. His health and his body were both ruined well before the night he died.”

  “If you do no’ wish to speak of it…”

  “I do not. He was fall-down drunk that night, yes, and stuck his nose into business that did not concern him. An argument broke out.” She lifted cool, blue eyes to Finnan’s face. “I got all this from Geordie, you understand—I was not there. My father decided to tell someone how to treat his servant, got knocked down for his trouble, and hit his head.”

  Finnan contemplated it. Was that arrogance, or conscience? The man’s daughter plainly thought the worst of the man.

  “Geordie came and told me,” she concluded. “I fell apart in his arms. We were already two months past due on the rent, had pawned most anything of worth. My father drank it all.”

  So she had decided to wrap Geordie around her finger, had she? Use his vulnerability against him?

  Aye, well, any sympathy he might feel for her, reluctant or not, would not stand in the way of his intentions. But it might make him see her well-settled with a year’s rent when he sent her back to Dumfries. If only for Geordie’s sake.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Are you sure you should move Danny so soon?” Jeannie asked as she stepped out into the morning sunlight. Golden radiance flowed over the mountains to the east and, as so often at this time of year, the air quickly warmed.

  Just as well, she reflected, for Finnan MacAllister still went but half clad. The sunlight brushed his shoulders as he moved, and defined the muscles of his chest and arms.

  Her fingers tingled, and she acknowledged how she wanted to touch him. What had come over her last night, speaking to him as she had in the depth of the darkness, telling him of her past? She so rarely confided in anyone. But something about the moment, or the man, had invited confidences.

  She had to admit, Danny looked a bit better. The lad actually sat upright on the back of his horse, pale but able to speak.

  As she watched, Finnan reached up and closed the lad’s single hand more firmly about his reins.

  “I have no wish to intrude upon you further, Mistress MacWherter,” Finnan told her, and added softly, “You have been kindness itself.”

  Aggie slipped out the doorway behind Jeannie and went to Danny’s horse, where she spoke to him.

  Finnan stepped to Jeannie’s side and gazed down at her. “Geordie was right about you, it seems. He said you were an angel.”

  Among other things, apparently. Jeannie schooled herself to remember the anger Finnan had directed at her when first they met, and not fall victim to the seduction in those half-veiled eyes. He’s changed his mind about you, her traitorous emotions whispered to her. He’s learned better.

  She said, “Are you certain you can get safely past Avrie House? Danny will not be able to stand another attack.” She wanted to make it clear her concern was all for the lad and not for him.

  “We will take a different route, up along the hillside. Trust that I know every path through this glen.”

  “Still, you might be better leaving him here and coming back for him with a guard.” Jeannie looked again to where Aggie now leaned up to Danny’s horse, her hand covering the lad’s.

  Finnan said ruefully, “I have no guards. Unlike the Avries, I ha’ no force of hired men. And as I say, I would impose on you no longer.”

  Jeannie nodded, unwilling to admit she feared for him. Or how thoughts of him—of his safety, that was—would occupy her mind. She moved to step back, but before she could he reached out and caught her hands in his.

  And just like last night beside the fire, when he had stroked his hand through her hair, the shock of it—the pure, searing pleasure—flared through her from where his warm, strong fingers clasped hers. Her gaze flew to his and held, caught like a hare by a hound.

  What did she see in his eyes? It was difficult to read his mood at any time, and now the light there held only mystery. Its gleam might be that of desire, or gratitude—or even malice.

  Danger, her mind screamed at her a moment before he said, “Thank you, Jeannie MacWherter. You ha’ been most kind.”

  He leaned toward her, and her pulse sped unpreventably. His lips found her cheek in a kiss that should have been chaste but instead burned like the touch of hot iron on her soft flesh. Ah, how she felt those lips! The warm, agile texture of them, sending ripples of awareness through her, seemingly carried by her accelerated heartbeat to that place where no man had ever touched her.


  She ached to turn her head so her mouth met his, desired it with a deep and sudden hunger she’d never dreamed of feeling. Heart, mind, and body all reached for it, and only shock kept her still.

  He straightened, withdrawing all the promised pleasure, and stood there looking at her. The newly risen sun made a halo of his hair, flamed red.

  No halves for him, Jeannie warned herself. He is indeed a wicked man. But everything within her wished to experience, in full, his wickedness.

  “You will have a care going home,” she said in a voice that sounded nothing like her own. His fingers still held hers captive, and heat still thrummed through her in waves.

  “Aye, you may rely upon it. And, Jeannie MacWherter, will I be welcome to call on you again?”

  “Certainly, Laird MacAllister. Aggie and I will both be most anxious to learn how Danny gets on.”

  He bowed his head toward her again, and she steeled herself for another brush with that impossible pleasure. But he only spoke in her ear. “I did no’ mean that. I would like to call on you, Jeannie, the way a man calls on a woman.”

  Shock speared through her again with still more intensity, though she would not have believed she could perceive such shades of difference with all her senses scorched and burned.

  Discerning her thoughts, no doubt from her expression, he asked, “Why look so surprised? You are a widow, after all. And I am alone in the world.”

  Alone in the world. Something in those words spoke to Jeannie, fell into the deep, empty place in her heart. Not wise, a tiny voice in her mind warned. You know what he is—a wolf before the sheep. And anyone who can affect you so with one chaste touch could wound you very deeply indeed.

  Yet he stood there waiting, watching her with those mysterious eyes, irresistible as the summer’s morning.

  She attempted to draw her fingers away; his tightened, and a whole new wave of heat beat through her.

  “I am sure that is not what Geordie—or the ghost of him—meant when he asked you to look after me.”

  “Perhaps not. But grieve for it as I might, Geordie has gone to his rest, while you and I remain.”