by Julia London
He didn’t smile; he didn’t speak—but didn’t she see a flicker of longing in his eyes? Or had her own longing filled her vision?
“Diah, lad, you donna know you own strength—you all but put me on my arse, you did,” he said, tousling Ellis’s hair.
Ellis beamed up at him, his grin as broad as a horizon. Oh my son, my dearest son. She could see the adoration in his face, and it broke her heart that he likely would not see Cailean again once they left Scotland.
“Arrandale!” she said, forcing cheer into her voice, her attempt to pretend that there was nothing between them.
She picked up her skirts and hurried forward, with the pretense of pulling Ellis from his grip of Cailean, but truthfully so that she might stand closer to him. “I’m afraid you’ve come too late to bowl. We were just finishing our match.”
“I didna come to bowl,” he drawled. Daisy slid her gaze to the two men on horseback behind him. They were stoic, but she realized both of them wore swords, and both of them had their hands on the hilts of those swords, as if they expected to draw them. She glanced over her shoulder at Robert; his gaze was also on the two men, wary and watchful.
“Are we to stalk?” Ellis asked eagerly.
Daisy realized Ellis had not yet released his grip of Cailean. She put her hands on his shoulders and pulled him back, forcing him to drop his embrace.
“No’ today, lad. The bucks are no’ out yet, aye? It’s a wee bit early yet.”
“But...but we are going back to London soon,” Ellis said, sounding slightly panicked.
Cailean’s gaze instantly met Daisy’s.
Before she could say a word, Robert answered for her. “In a fortnight, we will depart Auchenard.”
If Cailean heard Robert, he gave no indication. He kept his focus steady on Daisy. She could feel it, could feel how deeply it penetrated her.
“What business have you here, sir?” Robert asked, stepping up beside Daisy and putting his hand on Ellis’s shoulder.
Cailean slowly shifted his gaze from Daisy to Robert. “What business I have is business with the Lady Chatwick, aye? No’ you, Spivey.”
“Whatever you will say to her, you may say before me,” Robert said, and drew Ellis back, forcing him behind Daisy’s skirts. He braced his legs apart, as if preparing to fight.
“What is the matter?” Daisy whispered sharply. “He has not threatened—”
“A lady does not receive gentlemen on her own,” Robert said and stepped in front of Daisy, ignoring her displeasure, standing almost toe-to-toe with Cailean.
Indignation flared in Daisy—how could he possibly know what a lady did or did not do? “Captain Spivey, I must—”
“You’ve naugh’ to fear, then...for I am no gentleman,” Cailean said casually and smiled.
Daisy felt short of breath, her fear that this could result in another confrontation ratcheting. “Ellis, darling, go and fetch your uncle,” she said, pushing Ellis toward the lodge. “Quickly!”
“But I want to stay here!” Ellis complained.
“Do as your mother tells you!” Rob snapped.
Cailean’s gaze narrowed darkly, and Daisy frantically, impetuously, stepped in between the two men. “That is enough!” she said frantically. “I will speak with Arrandale, Captain Spivey, and I will ask you to please see Ellis into the lodge.”
Robert turned his heated gaze to her.
“If it is business for Auchenard, it is business for me,” she said, trying to breathe.
Robert’s gaze bore through her, and Daisy flinched at the coldness of it. “It is not safe, madam,” he said through clenched teeth.
“It is perfectly safe.”
He considered her, flicked his gaze at Cailean, then reached for Daisy’s hand, bowing over it, kissing the back of it. And then he squeezed it so tightly that she winced. “Do not be long,” he said quietly. “I’ll be just inside.”
Daisy pulled her hand free.
He turned about, gestured for Ellis to go ahead of him and strode to the lodge.
The moment he disappeared through the door, Daisy grabbed Cailean’s hand.
“Daisy—”
“Come,” she insisted, tugging on his hand. “A bit of privacy, please, Cailean.”
He sighed, then said something to his men. He reluctantly followed her onto the path that led through the woods. She pulled him along until she could not see the drive, could not see the lodge, then dropped his hand and turned to face him.
His jaw was clenched, his expression stern. But his eyes, his eyes—she could see how painful this was for him.
Confusion began to swirl in her, kicking up dirt and feelings that felt tight and on the verge of erupting. Her heart was beating too hard for her to find her breath, and she pressed her hands to her belly, as if trying to keep her breath in her. “What business?” she asked.
His eyes moved over her, as if he was reminding himself of her. “I’ve a message from my mother.”
“Your mother!”
“Aye. She’d like to extend an invitation to you and your kin to attend the feill at Balhaire—the festival—at the end of the week. She will, of course, make accommodations for your household.”
“That’s your business?” she asked sharply and folded her arms. “How kind of your mother to invite me,” she said coolly.
Cailean frowned impatiently. “Do you think I ought to have extended the invitation? Do you think your friend would allow it?”
“You might have extended the invitation to him,” she said.
Cailean snorted. “You donna know him as I do. Has he told you about me?”
“Yes,” she said, lifting her chin. “He told me you are a dangerous smuggler and that I shouldn’t associate with you.”
Cailean smiled. “Dangerous to him, perhaps. No’ you, leannan.”
“He asked how I might have possibly made your acquaintance. I told him. I told him everything.”
Cailean’s gaze narrowed. “Everything?”
Daisy flushed. “No, not everything.” She tried to look past Cailean, to see if anyone had followed them on the path.
“Do you fear him? Donna fret now—the lads will kill him before they’ll allow him up this path.”
Daisy gasped. “How can you say such things! I don’t know what has gone on between the two of you, but he is a kind man, Cailean. He cares very much for me.”
Cailean looked away from her as if he didn’t want to hear it, his jaw working. “Then he’s made his offer,” he said flatly.
“No...not yet.” She put her hand on his arm. He flinched as if her touch singed him. “We are reacquainting ourselves. You know my situation,” she said.
“Aye, I know it. And I know he’ll have your fortune yet, Daisy,” he said, removing his arm from her hand and turning his back to her, almost as if she were repulsive to him.
“No, he won’t!” she said, frustrated now. “Why do you think he’s come all this way?”
“To cut off your defenses, aye?”
“Pardon?”
Cailean shook his head. He put his hands on his waist and turned his head to look at her, frowning as if he thought her addled. “You donna understand, lass—”
“I understand!” she said angrily. “Don’t condescend to me, Cailean. Robert wouldn’t have come so far if he didn’t hold me in high regard!”
“Are you certain of it? Of his affections?”
There was an almost imperceptible hitch in her thoughts, a tiny shard of doubt. “Of course I am,” she said, furious that he would question Robert’s devotion. “I’m not cake-headed.”
“Then you donna want my advice. Aye, then, do as you will.” He began to stride down the path.
“Are you jealous, Cailean?” she called after him. “Has
jealousy caused you to end your friendship with me?”
He stopped. He stood with his back to her, his shoulders flexing, reminding her of a hawk readying to take flight. But he slowly turned back to her, and with his eyes locked on hers. He deliberately walked back up the path to where she stood. “Are you so certain of him?” he demanded, his voice dangerously soft. “For if you are, you might put his true intentions to a wee test.”
What was left of her patience evaporated. “Oh, how you amuse me, Laird Arrandale,” she said hotly. “How perfectly ridiculous you are! There is no need to test him.”
“No? Then tell me, how and when did he learn of your husband’s death? How is it that all of England knew of it, and no’ him?”
Daisy flinched. That question had already been raised in her mind when he’d given her the necklace.
“Then you might inquire as to what he means to occupy him now that he’s resigned his commission, aye? Surely a captain of the Royal Navy would no’ resign a commission without some thought as to what he meant to do.”
She hadn’t asked him. She’d just assumed they would marry. “Everything happened so fast. I’m sure he’s not had to time to think of it.”
Cailean smirked. “Watch how he will flatter you, Daisy. So much that others around you might expire of the treacle he spills all around.”
Daisy clucked her tongue.
“Aye, he will flatter you,” Cailean said, slipping into the tiny sliver of space her doubt had left in her heart. “But he willna give a damn about your hopes or fears. It’s all part of his scheme—”
Daisy suddenly shoved him in the chest, pushing him back a step. “Why are you trying to ruin this for me?”
Cailean remained silent, and it infuriated Daisy. Her frustration with him, with her situation, with the simple fact that she had no control over her destiny was mounting, exploding. She shoved him as hard as she could again.
He didn’t move.
“What do you want me to do? Refuse him? Marry the stranger Craig presents? Why are you doing this?” she shouted, dangerously close to tears.
His face softened. “Och, leannan, I gave you my word I’d be honest, aye? I donna trust him.”
“And I don’t trust you,” she said, her voice shaking. Her whole body was shaking, she realized. With grief, with fear, with such raging disappointment that she feared she might collapse into it. “How shall I know if a man truly esteems me?” she asked, throwing her arms wide.
Cailean looked at her as if she were daft. “You know.”
“I don’t! All men are very flattering. Should they be any other way? Should they disdain me? All men are helpful and solicitous. Should I look for a man who cares nothing for me? Is that how I am to judge?”
“Diah, leannan,” he said and caught her face between his hands. “You will know it in the way a man looks at you. In the way that he touches you. You will know it in the way he wants to know even the smallest thing about you.”
Daisy’s heart slammed hard in her chest. “That’s odd,” she said softly. “For the one man who has looked at me in any meaningful way, or has touched me, or has wanted to know anything about me at all is only my friend,” she said. “And he doesn’t esteem me.”
Something changed in Cailean’s expression. His gaze turned dark. “I am no’ your friend,” he said. And he kissed her. Hard. He kissed her with such ferocity that Daisy began to dissolve into an appallingly and equally ferocious wave of desire. Nothing had changed—she still craved him, still wanted to feel his body in hers. His lips were succulent, his body hard and supple at once. She was lost in that kiss, lost in her desire and the way her heart seemed to beat so strongly whenever he was near.
Cailean twisted her about, put her back to the tree and muttered something in his native tongue before dipping to kiss her neck, her chest. This was madness, utter madness, and she was careening down a dangerous path with abandon, with no regard for her future. Robert could find her at any moment. She would risk everything, and yet she couldn’t tear herself away from him. She wanted Cailean so violently that it confused her. She wanted Robert. These feelings for Cailean were to have dissipated the moment she saw Robert on the terrace.
And yet...and yet.
Was it so wrong? Was it so wrong to want him as she did? To wish this man would fill her up? Was it wrong to feel such passion for him when she would make a match with another?
He crushed her to him, holding her tightly in his arms as he kissed her, nipping at her bottom lip, his hand kneading her breast. Daisy returned the kiss with the physical hunger that had been gnawing at her since the moment she had met him, and the pressure kept building, kept pushing, kept seeping into every fiber.
Cailean slipped his hand into the bodice of her gown, his fingers cool on the hot skin of her breast, her nipple rigid between his fingers. She gasped with pleasure and clutched at her gown, trying to pull it up, around her waist.
But just as suddenly as he’d kissed her, Cailean stopped. “No,” he said, his breath short. “I canna give you that.”
No. She tried to kiss him, but he leaned back.
“Daisy, no,” he said. “What you want—what I want—I canna give you, aye?”
“Cailean—”
“No, Daisy,” he said. He took her face in his hands and forced her to look at him. “You donna want to do this. No’ like this,” he said. “The moment will satisfy you, aye, but on the morrow, you will no’ like what you’ve done.”
“That’s not true.”
“Then I know I will no’ like what I’ve done.”
The pressure in her suddenly evaporated, and in its place, overwhelming sorrow rose. She innately understood the sorrow, because she’d felt it once before in her life. She knew that the sorrow she felt was the sort that came from the loss of something or someone she loved.
Daisy folded her arms defensively across her middle. Cailean’s expression was cool now, his emotions hidden behind the mask of the mighty Highlander who had ridden down from the hills that warm summer day.
“You’ll return to London soon. You’ll marry as you must, and, God willing, you’ll have more children, aye? I willna allow you risk it all, here on this path.”
“It is not for you to allow or disallow,” she said coolly, her sorrowful fury so utterly consuming she was afraid she might put a fist in his mouth. “It is for me to allow or disallow. I’ve had a father and a husband and an uncle and a bishop to command me and advise me. I don’t need my friends to do it, too, Cailean.”
“Daisy... I am no’ your friend, aye? I am a threat to you, just as your captain has warned you. Go to him now. Marry him. Be happy.”
She couldn’t look at him another moment. She hated him in that moment, almost as much as she loved him. She pushed away from the tree and started walking, uncaring if he followed her or not. She could scarcely see the path before her, so volatile were the thoughts and images mixing dangerously in her head.
She wished she’d never met Cailean Mackenzie. Her heart had gone out to him, and now she wanted it back.
She couldn’t face Robert just yet, not with her thoughts swirling and building in a bank of clouds as towering as those building overhead. A gust of wind caught her; she gathered her wrap around her and walked around the lodge for her garden. The wind had picked up, and the temperature had dropped since yesterday.
The summer was truly at an end.
“There you are!”
She turned her head, saw Robert striding to her across the terrace. “I’ve been very worried,” he said and shrugged out of his coat, draping it over her shoulders.
“I’m quite all right,” she protested.
“What business did he have?” he asked, peering at her with concern. “You shouldn’t have resisted me, Daisy. You should have allowed me to speak with him. You don’t
understand the sort of man—”
“He is my friend,” she said. Or at least, she had believed him to be. She shoved the gate of her garden open with such force that it banged against the hedge.
“He is no friend of yours,” Robert said. “Undoubtedly, he would like you to think that is true, but he is no friend. I will be right glad when we’ve gone from this den of thieves and traitors.”
Daisy halted in her walk and whirled around to him, looking into those brown eyes, so familiar to her after all these years, and yet unrecognizable in some peculiar way. “You do realize that Auchenard is Ellis’s legacy, do you not? He likes it here. And he clearly admires Arrandale.”
Robert made a sound of disgust. “Do you really wish for your son to admire a smuggler?”
Daisy winced and looked at her feet.
“Lord Chatwick is better suited to Chatwick Hall. He’ll be quite happy there, as well.”
“Chatwick Hall?” she repeated, distracted by the sprout of weeds she saw beneath the wild orchids.
“Yes, Chatwick Hall,” he said, looking at her strangely. “I assume you will reside there when you return to England.”
She hadn’t lived at Chatwick Hall since Clive’s death. “Why do you assume so?”
Curiously, Robert blushed slightly. “Well, I...that is where you resided when you and I were forced to part. It’s quite large, room enough for a family and what have you.”
What have you? Did that mean a husband, too? Daisy turned her gaze back to the weeds.
“You do want a large family, don’t you?”
“I have Ellis,” she said simply. “And I’ve lived in London since Clive’s death.”
“But surely you want more children. Another son, perhaps?”
Another son? Why? In case something happened to Ellis? The very idea made her shiver. Daisy didn’t know if she wanted a large family—she hadn’t thought of it in so long now that she wasn’t entirely sure. She knelt to pull the weeds.
