Tamed by a Highlander

by Paula Quinn

  “Do you know Admiral Peter Gilles? He holds command over one of your fleets.” James gave his nephew a moment to consider his reply.

  “I’ve heard of him, Uncle. I don’t personally know all the men who serve under me.”

  Mairi did not look up from her plate at the king’s reply but she could feel the snap in his voice. “I have reason to believe his men attacked an abbey in Dumfries and burned it to the ground, killing everyone.”

  “On whose account do you have reason to believe this?”

  “On mine,” Connor told the prince, involuntarily bringing Mairi’s eyes to him.

  “You saw him commit the deed then?” William asked skeptically.

  “I didn’t have to. The people who did are trustworthy.”

  “An abbey?” William did nothing to temper his mocking tone. “I can assure you if this is the truth, I will know of it when I return home and will deal with Gilles accordingly. But with respect, why ever would a man of war destroy an abbey filled with nuns?”

  When King James remained silent, Mairi realized what the prince had done. James could not speak the truth—that one of his enemies had killed his true firstborn, for no one was supposed to know of Davina Montgomery’s existence.

  “Mayhap, this Admiral Gilles simply hates nuns.” Mairi quirked a brow at the king and then set her frigid smile on Prince William. “Catholic nuns.”

  Across the table, Connor smiled at her. Mairi ignored him.

  The prince was not a very imposing man, though Mairi could not say the same about his nose. It was like an elbow jutting from between his eyes. She found it difficult to keep her eyes from going to it. He dressed in drab colors compared to the flamboyancy around him. Absent of wig, his hair parted down the center, dangling limply around a pallid face and loose jowls.

  “Miss MacGregor,” he spoke dispassionately, belying the flick of annoyance in his eyes when he turned them on her. “If Admiral Gilles is guilty of such a crime against Catholics, what would you have me do?”

  Beneath the table, her hands balled into fists at the way he spat her faith off his lips as if it were poison. Everyone at the table was quiet, waiting for her response. She was speaking to a royal and there were a hundred different ways to answer with the respect and honor due his station. Mairi did not care about stations—or England—but she did care about her kin. Her behavior at this table was a reflection on the MacGregors of Skye. For that, she bowed her head gracefully before she spoke.

  “With respect, Yer Grace, were I Admiral Gilles and guilty of such a crime, ’twould be God’s punishment that brought terror to my breast. Not yers.”

  Unfazed by her slight insult, William leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other. “If he is guilty,” he parried, then jabbed, “I would suspect he does not give a damn what God thinks.”

  Mairi looked up from the dark veil of her lashes and slanted him a perfectly impassive look. She did not find his defense of an admiral he denied knowing an odd thing. She knew things about William of Orange. “Then he damns himself and there is nothing worse any man can do to him.”

  “Unless he has been appointed by God.”

  “Nephew.” The king finally spoke, his voice thick with warning. “I’m tolerant of your Calvinist beliefs, but I will not have them discussed here. Put an end to it before you offend me.”

  William paled beneath his brown cap. He bowed his head to his father by marriage but not before he cast him and Mairi a steely glance. The moment the next course was over he excused himself and his wife and left the table.

  Mairi wished she knew where he was off to and offered her brother a covert smile when he excused himself from the table soon after.

  She ignored Connor for the remainder of the courses, though it was difficult when Lady Hollingsworth appeared at the table without her husband and bowed to the king. Every man present waited to see if her ample, creamy bosoms would fall out of her low-cut gown. But it was Connor’s gaze the wedded wench sought.

  Mairi practically leaped from her seat when Lord Oxford came to her rescue once again. She welcomed the escape, even though Henry began speaking and did not pause for a good quarter of an hour. They walked the length of the Stone Gallery, which was far indeed, extending from the Privy Gallery to the Bowling Green. The former, her escort told her, housed a Roman Catholic chapel and its vestry at the southwestern end.

  “The principal staircase leading from the Privy Gallery to the garden is the Adam and Eve staircase. So called from a painting of Adam and Eve at the stair head.”

  “Interesting.” Mairi did her best to quell a gusty sigh. Before she returned to Camlochlin, she would know more about Whitehall than any MacGregor ever needed to know.

  “Is that the Duke of Queensberry, Marquess of Dumfriesshire?” She pointed to a small group of men gathered at the far end of the gallery. She hadn’t been able to hear much listening at the door to Lord Oddington’s lodgings a pair of days ago, but she did manage to make out the duke’s name, along with the word “Cameronians.”

  “Yes, it is. Have you met him?”

  “Nae, not yet.”

  “Well, come along then.” Oxford looped her arm through his. “I’m sure he will find you quite delightful.”

  Likely not at first, Mairi thought as Henry led her forward, but being a woman sometimes had its advantages.

  As she suspected, Queensberry, a tall, lanky lord, whose high, thick white wig added another two inches at least to his stature, was not at all pleased to make her acquaintance.

  “MacGregor, you say?” He sized her up with a thin, wry smile and dark eyes that told her all she needed to know about what he thought of her name. “Your kin fought alongside the Marquess of Montrose back in ’45, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Aye, against the Covenanter forces outside of Selkirk,” Mairi added with a graceful smile of her own. “Where the Scottish Royalists were soundly defeated.”

  “It must pain you to speak of it.”

  “Not really.” She offered an indifferent shrug. “My mother is a Campbell. My uncle Robert Campbell was the 11th Earl of Argyll.”

  His smile went from sharp to genial in an instant. “A Campbell! My dear, why didn’t you say so?”

  “Yer Grace,” she giggled, turning her own stomach at the sound, “I just did.”

  The men laughed, two of them, including Henry, appeared a bit short of breath when she graced them with a playful smile.

  “Do you dance, Miss MacGregor?” the duke asked, taking her arm from Oxford’s.

  “I do, thanks to Lord Oxford’s patient tutoring.”

  Queensberry eyed Henry and the pale scar marring his features. “I daresay, most women would not offer him the privilege.”

  Mairi’s blood boiled at the unwarranted insult, but her smile remained cool as she looked up at the duke. “I am not most women.”

  She caught Henry’s warm smile before Queensberry led her away.

  “Indeed, I can tell,” the duke said, leaning down, closer to her ear. “You’re intelligent and compassionate. Virtues not always found in one so striking.”

  “Yer Grace, ye are too kind.” She patted his forearm wrapped over hers. “I must tell ye, I admire the same in ye. ’Tis why I asked Lord Oxford to introduce us.”

  “Oh?” His gaze on her went warm. His shoulders squared with pride. Hell, men were so easy.

  “When ye allowed Richard Cameron to post on the town cross in Sanquhar the declaration renouncing King Charles five years ago, all I could think about was how courageous ye were.”

  His smile widened, revealing a row of yellow teeth. “I admit I wasn’t aware that he’d done it until after. It stirred up his followers and got the fool killed at Airds Moss. It also put me at odds with Charles and even James. I had much to do to reinstate my good standing with the late king and his brother.”

  “Then ye did not agree with Cameron’s preachings that a man should refuse to take the oaths of allegiance to an uncovenanted ruler?
” Mairi looked up at him and pouted.

  “I didn’t say that.” He reached up and pressed his index finger to her lips to quiet her. “There are others who would take his place.”

  Fighting the urge to draw one of her daggers and kill the duke where he stood, Mairi pressed in closer to him and smiled at his reaction. She would get a name before the night was through. Could the new leader of the Cameronians be here now, in her presence? Should she do anything about it, or save the information for her militia brothers in Skye? Where the hell was Colin? She looked around at the other men following her and the duke toward the Banqueting Hall stairs.

  Her eyes found Connor almost instantly. Paused outside one of Whitehall’s dozen grand gates (she didn’t know which one, but Henry likely did), he smiled in the moonlight at Lady Amberlaine’s upturned face.

  Mairi’s blood froze. She didn’t realize her feet froze along with it until the duke said her name. She severed her gaze from Connor just as he began to look in her direction. She blinked instead at the lord and lady waiting for her to acknowledge them.

  “May I present the Earl of Dorset and his charming wife, Antoinetta,” the duke supplied graciously.

  Mairi gave them the customary nod expected and answered a query or two about what she thought of the weather. Soon, she was forgotten in favor of the duke, giving her nothing more to do but wait until their speech ran out… and sweep her gaze about the long gallery.

  A captain of the Dutch navy had replaced Lady Amberlaine’s place at Connor’s side. Sedley, Mairi recalled his name from having heard it whispered on the lips of over a dozen females, ladies and servants alike. A rogue, just like Connor, who presently tossed back his head with laughter at something Sedley said.

  Damn him to Hades but he looked so irresistibly handsome when he laughed, so heart-wrenchingly haunting. He used to laugh that way with her.

  Now, he did it with Protestants.

  Chapter Eight

  I did a bit of investigating into Admiral Gilles.”

  Connor pulled his gaze away from Mairi dancing with the Duke of Queensberry and looked at Nick Sedley sitting with him at the king’s empty dais. They’d come in from the damp outdoors, mainly because Connor wanted to know what the hell Mairi was doing consorting with men who were long rumored to be Covenanters—even Cameronians.

  “He has most definitely sworn his allegiance to the Duke of Monmouth. If you heard rumor that Gilles has landed in England, then it seems likely that Monmouth will be arriving sometime in the future.”

  Curious that Prince William hadn’t used that pretext when questioned by James in the Stone Gallery earlier.

  “I suspect that Monmouth will make a stand against the king,” Connor told him. “He is King Charles’s illegitimate son and believes the crown should have gone to him, but I heard nothing of Gilles raising an army to aid him.”

  Sedley eyed him over the rim of his cup. “What did you hear then?”

  Connor shook his head. His gaze shifted back to Mairi. “That he attacked an abbey along the border.”

  “Your witness could have been mistaken.”

  “True,” Connor allowed mildly. He’d known Nick for years but that was no reason to trust that he wasn’t covering for the prince. ’Twas obvious that William of Orange wasn’t being truthful when he denied knowledge of Gilles’s involvement in the massacre at St. Christopher’s. Hell, Connor didn’t want to believe Sedley knew of it and did nothing to stop it.

  His eyes followed Mairi when she stepped around the duke, her wool skirts swaying at her dainty feet. She’d been cheeky with the prince and it could be dangerous. He’d have to watch her more closely. He liked her fearlessness, admired her streak of brash Highland confidence, but William was a dangerous man. Connor was certain of it.

  “That’s the clan chief MacGregor of Skye’s daughter, isn’t it?”

  Connor blinked and cut his gaze to Nick. “Aye, ’tis.”

  “If memory serves me,” his old friend said, watching her, “she’s the one you used to speak about every day when you first arrived here.”

  Connor shifted in his seat. “I was a peach-faced lad, even younger than Edward at the time.”

  “So nothing ever became of the two of you?”

  “We’ve moved on,” Connor told him woodenly.

  “Your eyes have been on her all night.”

  “Her father asked me to watch over her in his absence.”

  “She’s lovely.” Nick studied her with the same smoky gray eyes that used to land a different woman in his bed every night.

  “Stay away from her, Sedley,” Connor warned. He had enough men in her life to worry about. He sure as hell didn’t want to add the rakehell Nick Sedley to the list.

  “If I didn’t know any better—”

  “Ye don’t,” Connor cut him off. “There’s Lady FitzSimmons. Didn’t ye once tell me she had a lovely mouth and knew how to use it?”

  “I did, and she does. I was with her last night.”

  “She eyes ye now.” Connor smiled, looking at her, then turned it on his friend. “Mayhap ye didn’t satisfy.”

  “Highly doubtful.” Sedley rose from his chair, tugged on his military jacket to straighten it, then took off after her.

  Alone, Connor gave his full attention to Mairi while the duke escorted her back to his table. He should be at The Troubadour with his men instead of sitting here by himself, wishing Mairi would look at him. What in bloody hell was wrong with him? How many times could a man vow to put things from his thoughts only to let them plague him over and over again? But it was more than just the memory of Mairi that weakened him, it was the sight of her now, proud, beautiful, bold. It was the spark in her eyes when she spoke to him that ignited his nerve endings. The fight she made him want to win. The feral mare he wanted to tame.

  She looked up, as if feeling his eyes on her, and met his gaze across the crowded hall. He wanted to tell her that he missed her. A part of him always would. But it would do no good. Too much had changed between them. He wanted to tell her that her father had requested he look after her, that he wasn’t the wretched sot he appeared to be, unable to control his own heart. She looked away first and returned her smiles to her host.

  Seated at the other end of the table, Oxford didn’t look too happy. That made Connor feel better.

  He almost missed her departure from the hall when Lady Eleanor Hartley slipped into the empty chair beside him.

  “If you dance with me, I promise not to slap you.”

  Connor suppressed a yawn and turned a playful grin on her. “Perhaps I deserved it.”

  He saw Mairi rise from her chair from the corner of his eye and turned toward her. Oxford nearly leaped from his seat to get to her the instant she was alone. She shook her head at something he said, then patted his arm and moved away from him. She was retiring to bed. Alone.

  “Captain Grant?”

  He remembered Eleanor and spared her a brief glance as he stood. “Pardon me. There is something I must see to.” Mairi should not return to her lodgings unattended. Colin was nowhere in sight, so it was up to Connor to see her to her destination safely.

  Before he left the hall, he eyed Oxford one last time to make certain he wasn’t going to follow Connor following her. When he stepped outside, he looked toward the stairs and then up at the walkways that led to her door. At first he didn’t find her and his heart drummed madly in his chest. But then he saw her creeping along the northern end, toward the nobles’ lodgings.

  Hell.

  He raced up the stairs as quietly as his boots would allow, pausing and moving deeper into the shadows, when she stopped and looked over the railing. Certain once again that no one saw her, she continued on toward the duke’s rooms. For an instant, Connor’s blood scalded his veins. Was she meeting Queensberry for some nightly tryst? Had she stopped hating Protestants and Covenanters then? He narrowed his eyes on her as she lifted her skirts, pulled something he suspected was a dagger from beneath, and began
working the lock.

  He smiled, then scowled. She wasn’t meeting the duke. She was breaking into his room! He didn’t move, didn’t breathe as she opened the door and took one more look around before disappearing into the darkness inside.

  Was she mad? Had his fiery mare gone daft in the years since he’d last seen her? Why had no one in his family or hers told him? Thinking back, he did remember his mother mentioning something about there being much he didn’t know since he left.

  Damn it, why hadn’t he pressed her further?

  He made his way across the promenade and stopped at the door. He pressed his ear close and listened. Nothing. Cautiously, he fit his fingers around the iron handle and cracked open the door. He slipped inside and wished there was more light illuminating his way than the dull gray glow of the moon from the windows. He was about to whisper her name and demand that she get the hell out of here before she was discovered when he heard her shuffling about behind a slightly ajar door to his left.

  He moved silently toward it, pushing softly on the cool wood. Soft silvery light fell onto a table in the center of the large study. Bookcases lined the wall behind it. A large, cool hearth to the right. But no Mairi.

  He stepped inside, his senses sharp in the dim light. He smelled her before he saw her, heather and lavender, and all sorts of other wildflowers that clung to her plaid from their Highland home. He lifted his arm in time to block the heavy object coming for his head.

  Moving in a flash of speed, he gripped her wrist and yanked her close. A knee close to his nether regions nearly dropped him to his knees, but he held fast to her arm, knowing she meant to do as much damage as possible. He tried to speak her name but her free fist to his jaw momentarily stunned him. Och, but she was a hellcat! She struggled viciously against him, even trying to sink her teeth into his hand that still held her.

  With no choice but to subdue her as quickly as possible, he spun her around, hauling her spine hard against his chest. Her hand, still clutching what he guessed by the shape and length of it pressed into his belly was an iron candleholder, was twisted behind her and caught uselessly between them. He coiled his free arm around her waist, pinning her other arm to her side.