by Paula Quinn
Heavens, it was tempting.
No. She’d previously drugged Mr. Grant to help him rest and recover without distraction. Drugging him now would be wrong. But it was tempting.
He wanted a senseless twit who did his bidding and kept her mouth shut in the meantime. She sure as hell wasn’t that woman, though she wouldn’t deny wishing he wasn’t a rogue. How could she like him and dislike him at the same time? He was an infuriatingly stubborn warrior who fell weak at the sight of his brother sick in bed, a cad who somehow made her feel as beautiful as Bess.
She wasn’t familiar with the ways of men, but this one boiled her blood. He was dangerous to her heart, and perhaps to her life as well. Why didn’t she hate him? At least, fear him? She was as daft as the rest of the gels.
He’d get his whisky. The cheapest stuff she could find in the brothel.
Fighting with him was better than desiring him.
But first, she found Gunter, surprisingly exiting a room followed by one of the ladies of the house. Emma smiled as Brianne’s favorite rose scent wafted from her.
“Good evening, Brianne,” she said as she offered a genuine smile. Though she was Bess’s best friend, Brianne had always been kind to her.
“Good evening, Emma.”
Gunter groaned when Brianne answered her.
“How are your patients coming along tonight?”
“Quite well, thank you.” Emma liked her for asking and then leaving her alone with Gunter.
“Don’t tell your brother,” her former escort said, knowing it was against the rules for him to have relations with the girls. He was Harry’s guardsman, not a paying customer. He was loaned out to be her escort for the last month and now, thanks to Gascon, returned to his first duty: guarding Harry.
“I won’t,” she promised. She hardly told Harry anything, and after Malcolm’s questions to her, she came to the conclusion that she hadn’t really cared if she and Harry got to know each other. She wanted to change that now. When she left France, she’d wanted her brother back. A decade had passed and Harry was not who she remembered. But was it any reason to give up on her family? “Where is my brother?”
“In the kitchen, most likely.”
She thanked him and continued forward a step before stopping again. “Oh, Gunter, where does Harry keep the cheapest whisky?”
“All the whisky’s cheap. But the worst in the buttery is on the second shelf to your right.”
She smiled in his direction and waved before continuing on.
She found her brother where she should have suspected he’d be. The kitchen was Harry’s sanctuary… or his hell. It was the place where, according to Mary, who Emma overheard one night telling Alison, Harry’s wife had been killed four years ago by a drunk patron who’d wandered in.
He leaped from his stool when she called out to him and led her to his seat.
“What is it? Are the Grants—”
“They are fine, Harry. I came to speak to you about something else. I have some questions.”
“All right.” He agreed to the inquiry and dragged another stool closer. “You want to know why I left you.”
“No,” she told him. “I want to know why you didn’t come back to know if I lived or died.”
“I did return. I was told you died. Almost everyone in the village died, Emma. I didn’t know about Clementine.”
Oui, she understood that and forgave him for it.
“Why did you lose our family home?” she brought up next. Damnation she was angry about that. She just now admitted it to herself. “I dreamed of going back many nights. Now I never can. Why did it mean so little to you that you sold it?”
“It meant everything to me.” His pitch dipped and his voice broke and cracked. Her fine hearing picked up the shift in his breath. “It was all I had left. Literally, all. I was broke and about to lose the last thing I could call mine. The house was doing me no good. What was a bed if you had to sleep in it each night not knowing if you’d still have it the next day? I paid my debtors and bought this place to try to make a little coin.”
She wasn’t expecting him to have a good reason for selling their home, but he did. And she forgave him. She smiled at him—the way she’d wanted to for the last month. She had wanted to care for him and she did. He wasn’t a thoughtless brute but a man trying to survive. She realized she didn’t know about him because she didn’t understand his reasons for the things he did and instead of asking, she remained angry.
She asked him about his wife, Lenore. She had asked him about her once before, when she’d first arrived, and found out about her, but Harry had put off speaking about what happened. Now he told her how a drunken patron had stumbled into the kitchen and tried to have his way with Lenore. She’d fought back and was stabbed. The commotion drew Harry’s attention and the attention of another patron.
Malcolm Grant couldn’t save Lenore. But he’d saved Harry.
She sighed a little while later, reaching for the good whisky in Harry’s buttery.
Chapter Nine
Emma lay in her makeshift bed of blankets and pillows and listened to Malcolm’s and Cailean’s steady breaths for another moment before rising to her feet.
Dressed only in her shift and a robe, she tiptoed out of the room with Gascon at her side.
Everyone in the brothel was asleep. All the patrons had left as none were permitted to stay the night. And the night was over. Dawn was about to break and Emma didn’t want to miss it. She hardly ever did.
Harry would never approve of her sneaking outside with only Gascon at her side, but Gascon was enough. He’d never led her toward danger, and after walking the same path with him for a month, familiarizing herself with her new environment, she felt confident enough to move without caution.
She walked toward the kitchen, one hand lost in Gascon’s fur, the other half raised before her, more out of habit than necessity.
She hurried out the back door and stepped into the world about to come awake. She dragged in a great gulp of the air, smiled, and then moved on. She loved experiencing the birth of the day by herself. It filled her world with color. Like green, but not the green she vaguely remembered. If it were left up to her to describe it, she would speak of the crisp, cool, moisture settling on everything, waking up the fertile earth. Waking her. The dew-scented air flooded her lungs and bathed her in renewal. That was green. Red came moments later with the rising sun and the beguiling heat it washed over her. She danced to the sound of birds squawking for their morning meal and barely missed a tree. Twice. Her own laughter filled her ears and the air around her. She muffled her voice lest someone hear her and think for certain she was a mad witch. They’d never believe what the morning brought her, so she kept silent, smiling as she went.
Until a twig snapped behind her and Gascon began to growl.
Malcolm cursed his footing, which was usually as nimble and graceful as a spider. Did she hear the blasted twig snap? How was he going to explain to her what he was doing following her on her pre-dawn walk alone? She’d either think him odd and dangerous, or pitiful and insulting.
He’d heard her rise from her makeshift bed and leave the room. He followed her because… Because… unbeknownst to her, he’d watched her use caution not to wake him or Cailean before she left. She wasn’t making a run to the privy. She was going to do something she shouldn’t, and he wanted to know what it was.
He hadn’t expected her to leave the brothel, but it afforded him more logic when he wondered why he’d come out after her.
And then the sun rose and bathed her in warm golden shafts of light, and logic sprouted wings and flew off. He’d heard her laughter, watched her frolic like a wood nymph, enchanting him senseless.
He only lost his wits for an instant. That’s all it took for him to step on a twig.
“Who’s there?” she called out.
Damn! Should he answer? She’d be afraid if he didn’t. “’Tis Malcolm,” he confessed, and left the cover of the trees.
He moved toward her, and every step that brought him closer became easier to take. He stopped a few feet away though, seeing her anxious expression… and Gascon’s fangs.
“I heard ye leave the room,” he explained, taking in the sight of her long, golden tresses tumbling over her shoulders, her cheeks red, her eyes, so large and haunting. “I just wanted to make certain ye were safe.”
“Thank you,” she said. She didn’t sound angry. “But I’m perfectly fine. Please, go back to bed. The morning air is too chilly for you.”
“I’m perfectly fine as well.”
“You’re stubborn,” she argued.
“So are ye.”
She stared at him and he smiled at her, even though she couldn’t see it. It didn’t matter. He wanted to get closer. As close to her as Gascon was. It was going to be more difficult than he thought when she turned on her heel to leave him.
“D’ye want to be alone then?” He picked up his steps and followed her again.
She turned her ear toward the sound of him approaching her and quirked her mouth at him. He thought about kissing it.
“If I answer oui, will you leave?”
“Nae,” he replied honestly.
“You would deny a lady’s wishes?” she asked him.
“Ye can be alone later.”
Instead of a number of different reactions she could have had, she smiled at him and then tilted her face to Heaven.
Malcolm couldn’t keep his gaze from falling hungrily on her exposed throat. His mouth grew dry and his heart accelerated at the sight of her, so he looked away.
“How is it that your brother’s manners are impeccable and you lack even the slightest courtesy? Did you each grow up in a different household?”
Now it was his turn to laugh. “Nae, lass. We grew up together. He had more interest in m’ grandmother’s tales of Arthur and various other knights.”
“I know those stories,” she told him. “My mother always read to me. I’ve forgotten many things, but not her tales of honor and chivalry.” She smiled into the past, making him want to be there with her. “I miss those knights.”
“They are hard to live up to.”
“Which is what makes them heroes.”
He laughed, then felt a little sick. He was no hero.
“I leaned more toward other pursuits,” he informed her.
She tossed him a knowing smirk. “Women.”
“Fightin’,” he corrected. “I practiced every day with some of m’ cousins.”
“Ah, oui, I forgot you are the most skilled warrior in all of Scotland.”
“One of the most skilled,” he corrected.
“Forgive me.”
“Ye mock me.”
She turned to laugh at him and tripped over a fallen branch. Gascon whined but it wasn’t the dog’s fault she fell. She wasn’t paying attention to where Gascon led. She sat in the grass, her hair falling over part of her face, and laughed at herself.
Malcolm watched her, coming more undone with each passing moment. He wasn’t sure which he preferred more, the adorable crinkle of her nose when she chuckled, or the sound of her, like a symphony of tiny bells heralding in something wonderful. He wanted to know what that something was.
“I think I tore my stocking.”
He dipped his gaze to her hand reaching for her leg. He watched her pull her skirt up over her knee and feel around for the tear. He saw it, but said nothing, ashamed to be staring. She had no idea how beguiling she appeared to him, which was part of her appeal. If he didn’t react, she wouldn’t know he was a cad.
Why did he even care? That was the question that had begun to prick at him. He’d never been tempted senseless by a woman before. Why now? How hard had he been hit in the head?
“You should go.”
Her dulcet voice startled him. His eyes looked away from the shapely curve of her calf. How could she know?
“My brother doesn’t like me consorting with the patrons.”
Is that what they were doing? Consorting? He couldn’t help but smile at her. “I’m not a patron. I havena’ paid fer any lass here.”
She tilted her chin up at him. Her dark, beguiling eyes searched him deeper than mere sight ever could. “So?”
“So,” he answered, bending to sit in the grass with her, “we can consort.”
She nodded, then shrugged. “If Harry was the only thing stopping me we could.”
There were two questions he could put to her next. He could ask her what the other thing was, or, “Stopping you from what?”
She bit her lower lip and turned a shade more scarlet. But she spoke. It surprised him that she did. “Wanting to kiss you.”
Nothing in Malcolm’s life had ever tempted him the way Emma’s candid confession did. She wanted to kiss him. It made his heart race. It made him forget for a moment why he had stopped being a rogue, and about what he ran from. He leaned in, his mouth inches from hers. He wanted that and much more. Just one night with her… No. He leaned back. He’d fought temptation for a long time. He wouldn’t fail now… now, with a lass he admired and to whom he owed his and Cailean’s lives. She deserved more than a meaningless tumble.
She laughed again, but this time her nose didn’t move. “That’s not what I meant to say. I must have hit my head when I fell. Oui.” She brought her hand to her head. “There, I do feel a bump.”
Satan’s balls, he’d never wanted to kiss a lass so bad in his life! But he wouldn’t force her. And he wouldn’t break his word to Harry, or to himself. “We should get ye back then.”
She nodded and then stiffened when he stepped in front of her, shoved his hands under her arms, and hauled her to her feet.
“Don’t tell Harry I came out alone,” she said before he let her go.
“I willna’ tell him.”
“Give me your word,” she demanded.
“How do you know I’ll mean it?” he asked.
Her eyes seemed to look at him deeply so that she appeared to be listening to the air. What did she hear? he wondered as she retreated.
“If you say you will,” she said, “then ’tis your word. Would you break it?”
“It depends.”
Incorrect answer. He knew it when she scowled at him and picked up her pace with Gascon, back to the brothel. What was the correct answer? Didn’t it depend on each circumstance? Sometimes, like when your enemy has captured you and you give your word not to kill him if he lets you go, it’s perfectly fine to go back. Who the hell would keep his word about that anyway? Should he explain things to her? No. Why bother? He was leaving as soon as he was able. He knew his body needed time to heal fully. So did Cailean’s if they intended to take revenge on some Winthers.
“I spoke to Harry last night, before I brought you your whisky.”
He turned to her while they walked. He hadn’t wanted to drink the spirit, not sure if she had drugged it. She’d given her word that she hadn’t. Still, he drank a cup and made Cailean wait a half hour before partaking.
She hadn’t done it.
“I put some questions to him that were on my mind,” she continued. “And I asked him about Lenore.”
Malcolm wasn’t sure why she was telling him, but for some reason, he liked that she did.
“Ye never asked about her before?” he asked her.
“No. And he never offered to tell me. Last night though, he told me what happened. He told me you were there.”
He nodded, forgetting for a moment that she couldn’t see. He opened his mouth to clarify but was interrupted by Alison coming upon them, out of breath.
Malcolm and Emma both paled in the morning sun. “What is it?” Malcolm asked on a rattled breath, knowing whatever it was, it was about his brother.
“His fever has spiked,” Alison told them on the verge of tears.
Malcolm took off after Emma and Gascon. They entered the brothel and hurried up the stairs. When they reached the bed, Emma reached out to Cailean and pressed her palm to his forehead.
“You feel hotter,” she confirmed on a shaky voice, leaning down closer to him. She rested her head on his chest and listened intently for a moment or two and then straightened once again.
Behind her, Malcolm was about to ask her what was happening and if she needed his help, when she turned on her heel and walked into him.
He caught her in his hands, close to his body, a hairsbreadth away. The instinct to catch her pained his shoulder, near his collarbone where he’d been shot.
He needed to heal. And so did Cailean.
“What d’ye need? Tell me and I’ll fetch it.”
She inhaled deep beneath his fingers before she told him. “My jars are all labeled. Can you read?” She didn’t sound hopeful.
“Aye, sure as hell, I can. What d’ye need?”
Hours later Malcolm fell into the chair near his brother’s bed. His hand shook as he brought it up to his head.
“Malcolm.” His brother’s voice had grown weaker in an hour. “I’ll be fine. Alison’s here and she can help Emma. Go. Go and lay down before these poor lasses have two of us to tend to yet again.”
“Oui, come.” Malcolm felt her scrawny but strong arms reach under his arms and give him a tug. “Let’s get you back to bed.”
If he wasn’t already half asleep, he would have smiled because Emma thought she could lift him.
“What is it, lass?” he asked her when she pulled him away from Cailean’s bed. “If he’s healing, why does he have another fever?”
“Infection, most likely,” she told him in a quiet voice. “We’ve given him remedies for many infections, Mr. Grant. He’s strong—”
“Aye, he is.”
“He’ll be fine,” she comforted him. “Better by tonight.”
She smiled and damn, but it quickened his slumberous thoughts. He hadn’t thanked her yet for working without stopping to prepare and administer all her remedies to Cailean. He wanted to thank her but another thought occurred to him as he yawned. “Did ye drug me again, Miss Grey?”
“Honestly, Mr. Grant,” she huffed, and gave him a little push that landed his arse in the bed behind him. “Your body is made of flesh and blood. Like the rest of us. It will rest with or without your approval.”
