The Ravishing One

by Connie Brockway

  “Be quiet, Jamie!” Thomas thundered, coming to the side of the boat. “This is … Lady MacFarlane.”

  “MacFarlane? Tha’s no English name.…”

  Fia lifted her chin. “Before my marriage I was—”

  “No one cares who you were before yer marriage,” Thomas interrupted, his eyes dark with warning.

  “I do,” Jamie disagreed. “If she’s a Scottish husband lookin’ fer her, I’d best be warned.”

  “There’ll be no one looking for her,” Thomas said.

  He hadn’t meant to do it, but his words pierced like a little needle.

  “Her husband’s dead. A lowland Scot.” He turned to Fia and plucked her from where she stood on the plank seating.

  “We’ll be staying at the house.” The accent he put on the word “house” struck her as odd, so odd the protest she’d been about to make died on her lips. He bounced her once, redistributing her weight. She flung her arms about his neck, sure he would drop her.

  “The house,” Jamie repeated, his gaze traveling back and forth between Thomas and her.

  “Aye. And see if Mrs. MacNab can help her doin’ whatever it is she needs done.”

  “I don’t need your aid or that of one of your servants.”

  Thomas snorted. “Oh, aye. You’re a font of self-reliance, you are. And ’twas only to keep me near that you heaved up yer dinner each day.”

  “I didn’t!” she clipped out as the blood boiled to her skin’s surface and Jamie burst out laughing. She struggled to gain the upper hand in the only way she knew. “But”—her voice slid an octave lower, became a throaty purr—“mayhap I did want you near me.” She walked her fingers up his chest before delivering the coup de grâce. “Fat lot of good it did me.”

  Jamie hooted with laughter and an unwilling twitch tugged at the corner of Thomas’s mouth.

  “She’s a brave mouth on her, yer English lady,” Jamie said.

  Not all English, Fia thought. Part Scot, born and bred here. The part that wanted to refute Jamie’s assertion, though why this should be was a mystery. She’d never aligned herself either in thought or deed or word with any people. She’d always been Carr’s daughter. But here, now … Her eyes traveled along the black face of the cliffs, toward where she imagined Wanton’s Blush would be. She wanted to see where it had stood.

  “Aye. Brave but never before foolish. If she’s wise she’ll use caution when wielding that tongue of hers, lest she cuts herself with her own clever wordplay,” Thomas said.

  She knew what he meant. It seemed that here, too, what she was and who she was could be summed up in the words “Carr’s daughter,” for clearly Thomas was warning her not to reveal her relationship with the hated “Demon Earl.”

  And hated with good cause in these Scottish hinterlands. Any Scot within twenty miles of McClairen’s Isle had had something taken, stolen, or extorted from him by her father. Many had paid for their defiance of him with their lives.

  “I’m not stupid,” she assured him under her breath.

  “Good.” He raised his voice. “Jamie, throw that trunk and bag into the back of the cart. I’ll drive our guest to the manor.”

  “The manor?” Jamie’s bushy brows rose. “But you’ve yet to see—”

  “It will wait,” Thomas said.

  The giant did not argue. Something within recognized the authority in the younger man and answered with unquestioning obedience. Jamie gathered the luggage the sailors had dumped and tossed it into the back of the cart while Thomas held her, seemingly oblivious to that fact.

  It pricked her pride. Men who held Fia Merrick in their arms were never oblivious to it.

  “I can stand.”

  “The sand is soft and your shoes are thin, added to which you’re about as weak as a kitten.”

  “I assure you”—she looked up at him through the thicket of her lashes—“I have enough strength for whatever you … require.”

  “Quit it,” he said in the tone of one chastising an inappropriately precocious child.

  She blinked.

  He plopped her unceremoniously down on the narrow seat before squishing in next to her. “Jamie?”

  The redheaded behemoth shook his head. “Nay. I’ve work to do here. I’ll see ye here on the morrow.” With that, he slapped the pony on the rump and stood back, his hand raised in farewell, a quizzical look on his blocky face.

  Thomas guided the sturdy animal up a twining trail to the top of the headland and immediately turned from the sea, riding inland. Fia craned her head around but try as she might she was unable to see beyond the thick mantle of fog that closed in behind them. If McClairen’s Isle was out there, it was hidden from Fia’s sight. Soon only the scent of brine and the sound of the surf gave evidence of the sea’s nearness, and with each passing moment both grew fainter.

  Inland the heavy mantle of fog had lifted, though the sky still hunkered above. Fia breathed deeply of the clean, moisture-laden air. She turned her head often, the sights and sounds both familiar and surprising, like a child’s favored music box lost and then found long after the child had grown.

  Sweet, painful, each turn in the road brought with it the possibility of recognition. Near here she’d chanced upon her brother Raine and his lovely Favor, who’d escaped the company of a long-ago picnic. Favor had been mortified and red-cheeked, Raine angry and protective.

  In that little copse of trees ten years ago she’d found a wee rabbit caught in a poacher’s snare. She’d known that in releasing the creature some Scottish family might well have gone hungry that night, but it was so tiny a thing and its cries so pitiful. Gunna had helped her nurse it back to health. She released it … over there!

  Too soon the memories vanished as the road they took moved beyond where she’d dared wander as a child. They entered territory dangerous for anyone related to Carr, especially his “favored daughter.”

  But unfamiliarity had its own charms, and Fia studied the changing landscape with interest, so taken with the unfolding vista that she decided to postpone the next step in her seduction of Thomas Donne. Besides, she was for once uncertain exactly what her next step would be. Touching him certainly hadn’t brought him to his knees.

  They traveled in silence for an hour before Thomas finally spoke. The sun had given up trying to penetrate the dark clouds overhead and quit the sky, and dusk began to wrap its dark mantle across the landscape.

  “The name ‘Merrick’ is anathema on this coast,” Thomas said in cautionary tones.

  “You don’t say.”

  “And there are those at the manor who’ll remember the Earl of Carr’s daughter’s name, so don’t even whisper ‘Fia.’ ”

  “I don’t generally refer to myself in the third person,” she said politely, winning a chagrined glance from him.

  “Of course not. Foolish of me.”

  She seized the minor opening. “Not so foolish as deluding yourself.”

  He frowned and snapped the lead reins. “How so?”

  “This noble rescue of your friend Barton—your reasons for it are self-deluding.”

  “You are entitled to that opinion,” he said stiffly.

  “Besides”—she allowed the sway of the cart to bounce her lightly against his hip and thigh—“did you ever consider that James might not want to be rescued?”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t,” he admitted ruefully.

  Her pulse quickened with this small success. “But that doesn’t matter.”

  “No.”

  She laid her hand lightly on his thigh. The muscle beneath her palm jumped into iron hardness. “I think you do James a grave injustice. He is quite able to withstand temptation.” She waited a minute, but he only stared straight ahead at the rutted road. “Are you?”

  His gaze slew slowly sideways, his mouth curved. “Lady Fia, would you kindly stop? It’s growing a bit embarrassing. For both of us, I should think.”

  She snatched her hand away as though burned and stared at him with round eyes
.

  His gaze returned to the road before he continued, “I appreciate that you consider my poor self a challenge to your womanly wiles. And that you are bent on teaching me a lesson in order to extract some sort of recompense for the indignity you consider yourself to have suffered at my hands. I even acknowledge that were I in your position I would likely do the same, but not by the same means. Simply put, m’dear, you are simply going to have to find another means to punish me.”

  She blinked, completely nonplussed.

  “One of the hallmarks of maturity,” he lectured comfortably, “is the ability to accept certain immutable facts and adjust one’s expectations and goals accordingly. No matter how beautiful you are, how lovely your face or desirable your body, I will not be seduced by you.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on that,” she burst out.

  He went on as though he hadn’t heard her. “However, you might consider a knife in the rib cage. Though”—he inclined his head modestly—“I doubt you’ll have any more success there. Besides, were I to die there’d be nothing standing between you and the local lads and they do so hate the English. No, best not kill me.”

  “I wouldn’t dirty my hands.”

  “No? Since when have the Merricks been so fastidious?”

  There it was again. The intimation that Thomas had knowledge of some terrible wrong committed by Carr. Well, of course Carr had committed terrible wrongs. Many, in fact. But Fia had the distinct impression Thomas spoke of a personal experience. Which was odd. She could not remember the name “Donne” amongst the secret hoard of blackmail papers she’d gone through in her father’s library at Wanton’s Blush. Still, she’d only had her hands on that packet of papers once, and she’d been looking for other information then.

  “I suggest you ponder the question a while. Besides, ’twill give you something to do whilst I’m away.”

  “Away?” Such a scenario had never suggested itself to her, and she scowled heavily. “You’re going to just leave me at this house of yours?”

  “Only during the day. Come night I’ll return. There’s a project I’ve begun on my land. I’d like to complete as much of it as possible before I … before we return to London.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “A few weeks,” Thomas replied, making silent notes that he should return to the house only in the dead of night, when Fia would be tight in Morpheus’s embrace. Better Morpheus’s than his. Aye, let the poor god of dreams be the one to try to resist Fia when she was determined to be irresistible.

  Thomas kept his eyes firmly ahead. That and distracting Fia by pretending disgust with her proposed seduction had been all that he’d had to counter his potent attraction to her. And pitiful weapons they were, too.

  It wouldn’t take her one full day to discover that all she’d need to do is persevere a bit and his defenses would collapse like the house of cards he knew them to be. For all his brave words and disregard for her charms, the last hours had played pure hell with his body and his mind.

  The solution was simply not to spend a full day in her company.

  Or he could just give in—and would that be so terrible? If she wished to invoke a penalty for his crime and it was one he was not only willing but near panting to pay, why not? He ground down on his teeth. Because what if once was not enough? Already she seemed to him like some exotic opiate, deadly, fascinating, addictive.

  And she was Carr’s daughter.

  The realization ambushed him. He’d forgotten for a short time. How could that be?

  “Whose house is that?” she asked, breaking his reverie.

  They’d climbed a steep grade through a stand of pines and as they emerged Fia caught sight of a square manor house. The hard lines of its gray stone were softened by a tangle of creeping ivy overlaying narrow, mullioned windows. Lights glowed from the bottom level. As they approached, the front door swung open and a figure stood poised in the rectangle of yellow light.

  “Who be there?” a young man demanded loudly.

  “ ’Tis I, Thomas!”

  “Thomas who?” the young man answered, bringing a long, narrow shape to his shoulder and pointing it in their direction. The fool was pointing a rifle at them. Damn the boy!

  Thomas glanced at Fia. He hadn’t wanted to tell her. Not yet. Mayhap not at all. But what did it matter? Her father would be reporting his identity to the authorities as soon as he realized that Thomas hadn’t upheld his end of their “bargain.” He stood up in the cart.

  “ ’Tis Thomas McClairen. Yer laird.”

  Chapter 16

  Who did you say?” Fia asked.

  Thomas snapped the reins, setting the tired horse trotting into the house’s side yard.

  “Thomas McClairen,” he answered without looking at her.

  “Colin McClairen’s son?” she asked, stunned. Colin McClairen had been gone during the uprising of ’45, having left his sons, John and Thomas, under the care of his older brother, Ian, the laird of the McClairen. He’d returned from afar to find Ian dead, killed at Culloden, his wife dead in childbirth, himself the new clan chief, and his sons hanged for treason.

  Or so Fia had always been told. But now … She studied his averted profile, saw in the proud bearing and bold features the unbowed spirit of the Highlander. She’d known him so long and never guessed. Yet it all made sense now. He’d come to McClairen’s Isle incognito, seeking revenge, and revenge he’d nearly had upon her brother Ashton, if not Carr.

  Fear began unrolling within her. Was she to be the next move in some decades-long chess match between him and her father?

  “They didn’t hang you,” she whispered.

  A smile like a lightning strike slashed across his face, brief and devastating. “No. My youth spared me my older brother’s fate. Not that I’m surprised you didn’t know. Why would you trouble to ask what happened to those whose lands and homes your father stole?”

  “I thought they were all dead. All the McClairens,” she said. Carr had claimed with awful relish that he’d eradicated every last McClairen from Scotland. But he’d overlooked at least one.… “But, if you are Thomas McClairen, that means that Favor is …”

  “A McClairen, too. Aye.”

  “Raine knows.”

  “I suppose. I don’t really know.”

  Had Raine had been spared a part in Thomas McClairen’s revenge? Because he’d married Thomas’s only living relative, his young sister?

  Thomas jumped to the ground and went to the horse’s head as Gordie came trotting down the steps. “Well, at least now you don’t have to waste any more thought on how to avenge your abduction. Aye, there’s a worthy revenge for a Merrick, m’love. As soon as you return to London you can inform the authorities that Thomas McClairen is back on English soil.”

  She bent a startled glance at him. He was wondering what revenge she was concocting? The fear that had been building began to fade. “You could always kill me,” she said testingly.

  His face folded into disgusted lines. “I’m not Carr.”

  No. He wasn’t. The rest of her fear evaporated.

  He tch’ed lightly, the bitterness of his expression startling her. “But if you want your revenge, lass, you’d best hurry before your father preempts you.”

  “Carr knows who you are, too?” Impossible. Carr would have had Thomas arrested years ago. There would have been no reason for Carr to spare Thomas, the virile scion of the once-proud clan Carr had set himself to destroy.

  “Aye. He’s held the knowledge for years, but he won’t be holding it much longer.”

  “Why?”

  “Does it matter?” Thomas asked flatly.

  Yes. If Thomas hadn’t brought her here as part of some scheme to hurt Carr and if Thomas was, indeed, only keeping her here until he felt James was safe from her influence, if Thomas had really meant his vow not to harm her, it could matter a great deal. To her.

  But she’d no sooner recognized that essential truth than she also recognized how foolhardy it
would be to reveal it to Thomas. One never placed one’s … sentiments at another’s disposal.

  When she didn’t reply, Thomas tied up the horse and went round to the back of the cart. There he removed her trunk and portmanteau, tossing first one then the other at the young man staring with gape-mouthed reverence at his laird.

  The youngster stood a head shorter than Thomas. His sandy hair was matted and scraggly, his breeches stained, and his shirt torn at the cuff, but his face was clean enough. At least Fia could see a smattering of freckles covering his snub nose.

  “Take these upstairs, Gordie. Lady MacFarlane will be staying in the corner bedroom.”

  “Aye, aye, m’lord. So Tim Gowan said when he come with Jamie’s message.” Gordie bobbed his head and with a grunt heaved the trunk to his narrow shoulders. He turned his head toward her—his laird’s as yet unexamined guest—and his eyes widened. His smile grew into a grin. There was no mistaking the admiration in it. Perhaps Gordie wasn’t as young as she’d first thought.

  “Be sure ye don’t slip in that puddle of drool as ye go, Gordie,” Thomas said flatly. The boy’s cheeks flamed in response and he shuffled away with his burden.

  “Leave the boy alone, Fia.”

  “I have no intention of—”

  “Spare me the denials. I’m warning you, Fia. The boy is just that, a boy.”

  “Hardly. He’s probably near my own age,” she answered.

  Thomas snorted. “Years have little to do with age when one is speaking of you, Lady MacFarlane.”

  He was right, but hearing him put into words what she’d often thought herself was unexpectedly painful.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  She looked up. He’d drawn near. His face was skewed in grave, troubled lines.

  “Forgive me. That was inexcusable.”

  “But true?” She tried on a smile, felt it quaver, and let it dissolve.

  He met her gaze squarely. “Yes.” He sounded regretful, and that hurt even more.

  “No matter,” she said pertly, but when her flippancy did nothing to shake the pity from his expression, her puzzlement overcame her hurt. “You’re a strange one, Thomas. You steal me away and then apologize to me—not for the abduction but because my past precluded a childhood.”