Beloved Highlander

by Sara Bennett

  Ever since she had come of age, Meg had been tripping over gentlemen, most of them penniless and with an eye to her father’s fortune. She was not the sort of woman men swooned over, or fought duels over, she thought with a wry smile. Her tongue was too sharp, her mind too intelligent, and she was not beautiful. And perhaps worst of all, she valued honesty; she was no gullible fool when it came to the motives of men. They did not want her, only what came with her, and she was not prepared to pretend otherwise.

  She had determined at a very early age that she would marry for one thing only—love.

  It was ironic that the general had caused the destruction of her vow. His wits, once so sharp, had been dulled by illness. He was vulnerable, and his weakness had led him to fall for the duke’s subtle persuasions. By the time Meg had learned of their agreement it was too late: The papers were signed. She was officially engaged to the Duke of Abercauldy. She and her father had argued, bitterly, until Meg came to realize that he had done this thing because he had thought to protect her; because he loved her.

  So, Meg had accepted her fate.

  And then other matters had arisen, serious matters, that had shown her father his mistake was not just in his miscalculation of the duke’s intentions, but might possibly involve Meg’s life….

  “I’m an old fool,” he’d wept, head in his hands. “What have I done to you, my Meg?”

  Meg had been frightened then, for him and herself. They had sat up late into the night, and in the end the general’s solution had been simple. Find Gregor Grant and bring him back to Glen Dhui, and her father would do the rest.

  With a sigh, Meg climbed beneath the covers. A servant had placed a hot brick wrapped in a thick cloth just where her feet came to rest. She gave a wriggle of contentment as she warmed her toes. The journey would be a success, she assured herself. Gregor Grant would return with her to Glen Dhui and help her father stand firm against the duke. All would be well. She must believe that. Because, frankly, the alternative didn’t bear consideration.

  Chapter 4

  Gregor woke in the sharp predawn air. For a moment he simply lay, wondering where he was, for this was certainly not the narrow, uncomfortable bed in his quarters at the barracks. And then he tried to move, and the sickening pain in his arm brought back his memory with a jolt.

  It had begun with the duel.

  He had fought Airdy Campbell and won. Except that winning had been more like defeat, for Barbara, who had begged for his help and played upon his chivalric nature, had returned to her husband, and Gregor had been left to find his own way home, wounded and alone.

  There would be repercussions.

  Like a pebble tossed into a still loch, the ripples would spread far.

  Airdy would not let him forget this. He would have his revenge. And knowing Airdy, it would come when he least expected it. When Airdy struck it would be with a sudden savagery that would probably prove fatal. In the meantime Airdy would do his best to undermine Gregor with the men, spreading poison among them, making his life intolerable.

  Gregor knew he could go to the Duke of Argyll and explain matters, but would he listen? Airdy was his nephew, while Gregor was nothing to him. And although Argyll had the reputation of a man of consideration and reason, things like blood ties were always tricky.

  What should he do, then? Join one of the government regiments and go and fight in a distant country? Or leave the army altogether, and find work as some great lord’s factor, haranguing tenants for their rent when they barely had enough to feed their children? Gregor felt his spirits sink even lower. He did not want that. This was not the road his life had been meant to take.

  As a boy Gregor had run wild through Glen Dhui and the hills that surrounded it, sure in his heart, in his soul, that one day it would all be his. It belonged to him by right. The Grants had held Glen Dhui since Queen Mary ruled and Gregor had never dreamed it would be taken from them. Like the rising of the sun each morning, he had not thought it possible anything so fixed, so familiar, could suddenly cease to be. But it had. Glen Dhui had been lost, the sun had failed to rise, and his world had gone dark.

  He moved restlessly and then bit back a groan. His head throbbed almost worse than his arm. There was a memory, something important. It proved elusive, however. Gregor shifted again in his bed, making the throbbing in his arm into a jagged ache. There had been a woman, a woman with hair like fire. She had been here, he knew it, remembered the scent of her skin. Good God, she had sewn up his arm! Lady Margaret Mackintosh, a redheaded, acid-tongued harridan.

  With skin like milk and a mouth more luscious than any ripe fruit.

  A heavy knock on his door interrupted his pleasant thoughts. Gregor sighed, lifting his head to call “Come in,” then wished he had not as the room swam dizzily around him. “Who is it?” he croaked.

  The door opened to admit a sturdy, dark-haired man, who cautiously approached the bed. Gregor squinted up at him, his throat scratchy. Memory was returning. Duncan Forbes. This was definitely Duncan Forbes.

  Duncan had been one of his father’s tacksmen, and here he was, looking older, but otherwise, more or less, the same stiff-backed Duncan he had always been.

  “How are ye feeling, sir?” he asked diffidently, as if Gregor were still the Laird of Glen Dhui.

  Gregor swallowed and found his voice. “I’ve been better, Duncan. What are you doing here? I thought I dreamed you.”

  Duncan gave him a sickly smile.

  “I have not seen you since you came to the prison, after my father died,” Gregor went on, as if his head were not threatening to cleave in two halves. Duncan had not fought in the 1715—he had remained at home, to take care of Gregor’s mother and sister, and estate matters. Duncan had traveled to the prison after Gregor’s father’s body was buried at last in the ground of his ancestors. He remembered it so well, Duncan’s gloomy face, and the word picture he’d painted of Gregor’s father’s burial when he came to see Gregor.

  He had described the black-draped bier carried in turn by the loyal Grant men, the women wailing, and the piper’s lament like a shroud about them. It had been, said Duncan, a fitting end to a Highland chieftain, no matter how misguided his politics. Gregor had wept, genuinely mourning his father, even if he had never shared his Jacobite fanaticism. The Stuarts had brought greatness to the Grants—the family had been loyal to Queen Mary, who had gifted them Glen Dhui in the first place. But the Stuarts, in the form of the Pretender James, had also been their ruin.

  Duncan was still watching him with quiet, dark eyes. “Do ye really not remember last evening, sir?”

  Gregor rubbed the ache between his brows, trying to ease it, trying to clear his befuddled mind. “I remember it well enough, Duncan.” He took a shaky breath. “Sit down, man, you make my neck hurt.”

  Duncan sat carefully on a sturdy chair. As the chair looked substantial enough, Gregor could only assume his caution was because he really didn’t want to be there.

  “Where is Malcolm Bain?”

  “He said he was going to the barracks,” Duncan replied, pursing his lips in the same way he had always done when something didn’t please him. Some things didn’t change. Gregor bit back a smile.

  “We need ye to come home, Gregor Grant. We need ye to stand up for us. Lady Meg needs ye….”

  Gregor managed a creaky laugh. “The redheaded termagant? If it has not escaped your notice, Duncan, I am already in employment.”

  Though for how long, once Airdy had his way?

  “’Twas not yer fault ye lost Glen Dhui, sir.”

  Gregor felt his face stiffen. What Duncan said was true enough, but for all that, he didn’t want to hear it. When the Stuarts had called from across the water, his father had answered, and so it was that Gregor and his father had gone out in the 1715. They had lost, and with their loss had come the staggering weight of fines and the confiscation of their lands and all personal belongings.

  With his father dead, Gregor had borne the brunt of it. />
  Newly released from prison, seventeen years old, Gregor had had no choice but to pack up his mother and younger sister and find them lodgings in Edinburgh. His mother had landed on her feet, she always did, and his sister was young enough to adjust. But Gregor had felt as if a part of himself had been ripped out.

  He was no longer Gregor Grant. He did not feel like himself, but rather he was a stranger, embittered and lost. He had only fought because it was his father’s wish, because he was the Grant heir and his father was his chief, his laird. He had fought for his father, but his interests lay elsewhere. The land, that was what drew Gregor. The seasons bleeding into each other, the cycle of life and death in the glen. The constancy of it, and the comfort. He had understood it, felt a part of it. The glen had been his world; it was all he had ever wanted.

  When he left…Well, he had survived, he had stayed alive, but he had never again been the same man.

  Duncan moved, uneasily, and Gregor realized he had been silent for a long time. He scowled at the smaller man, not caring what he might think of his former Laird. It was time Duncan understood that Gregor was not the boy he had once known, the obedient, malleable boy. That in his place stood a man, toughened and hardened by circumstances, whose troops might fear his tongue and look askance at him when he smiled, but who at least knew his own mind.

  “Glen Dhui is mine no longer, Duncan.”

  “Mabbe not, sir, but I think ye’ll find it’s harder than ye think to extinguish the memory of the Grants after so long in the glen. Twelve years away is but a drop of water in Loch Dhui. Ye are still the laird to us, and will be until we die. We look to ye for help, sir. Will ye no’ consider it?”

  The pain was quick. The memory of all he had lost. Gregor rubbed again the spot between his brows; he did not want Duncan to see his emotion. It was still too raw, too painful, even after all this time. He had thought himself over it. He should be over it! He did not want to go through the pain of loss again. His new life may not be perfect—In fact, he knew it was far from that!—but he had learned to put Glen Dhui behind him.

  “I’m sorry, Duncan, but the answer is no. I am not one for retracing my steps. Whatever the trouble is, you must find another way.”

  Duncan looked nonplussed, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he had just heard. He opened his mouth to answer, but just then a sharp, impatient tap sounded on the door. Duncan cursed under his breath. “Not now, blast the woman!”

  “Captain Grant? Are you awake?” The woman in question was waiting outside, and by the tone of her voice she would not wait very long.

  Bemused, Gregor looked from the door to Duncan and back again. He recognized the voice, and when the door opened a crack and a woman’s face appeared, he recognized that too. Her eyes were so blue they were blinding, so that he actually blinked against their brightness.

  “Captain Grant? I wish to speak with you. Are you decent?”

  Gregor wondered whether it would have mattered if he weren’t. He had the feeling she would still have come in. Carefully, he drew the covers farther up his chest, reminding himself that she could not see that he was naked beneath.

  “Lady Meg,” Duncan said loudly, “it would be better if ye waited until I am done. This is men’s talk.”

  Lady Margaret gave this comment all the respect it deserved, by pushing open the door and marching in. “Nonsense,” she said briskly. “There is no time to be lost.”

  Chagrined, Duncan said nothing, although Gregor could see that he really wanted to. But Duncan had old-fashioned manners, while Gregor no longer considered it necessary to have any manners at all.

  Lady Meg was staring at him—she had taken up a stance at the foot of the bed. Flame-red hair, creamy, freckled skin, and those eyes of a particular pale, piercing blue. He had not imagined her. She was the woman of last night. Although he did not recall her as being quite so feminine. Last night she had worn trews and a jacket, and very fetching in them she had been, too; today she wore a blue gown with little taffeta bows marching invitingly down the tight-laced bodice….

  “Captain Grant, I wish to speak with you on an important matter,” she said imperiously, autocratically. And yet, thought Gregor, there was sweetness in the curve of her mouth, and her lashes were long and thick, and under the gown her body was all woman….

  No! No, no, no. Had not Barbara and her pleas for his help been enough? Did he really want to go down that road again? He had been a gullible fool once this week; he did not intend to make it twice.

  “Sir, this is Lady Margaret Mackintosh,” Duncan interrupted. “She and her father are the owners of Glen Dhui. She has come all this way to find ye and ask ye to help us.”

  Lady Margaret Mackintosh gave him a speaking glance. “Thank you, Duncan, but I can introduce myself. Have you told him all?”

  “Not yet, Lady Meg.”

  “Then I shall do so.”

  She opened her mouth with that intention, but Gregor did not let her speak.

  “You have done me great honor then, Lady Margaret, by coming all this way to ask for my help, but you have wasted your time. I am no longer Laird of Glen Dhui, and what happens there is no longer my concern. I do not want it to be.”

  She looked taken aback. Her gaze slid to Duncan and she raised a brow meaningfully. No fool, Duncan, he rose to his feet.

  “I will leave ye to yer talk, Lady Meg. I have matters to see to in the town,” he added, and hastened from the room.

  Lady Margaret waited until the door closed. The silence gathered in expectation.

  “He does not approve of my being here,” she said quietly, those brilliant eyes watching. “Do you remember last night at all, Captain? I sewed your wound for you and you promised me your gratitude. Is this how you repay me? By refusing my request outright, before you have even heard it?”

  “I don’t need to hear it. I do not want to hear it. I am done with Glen Dhui; my life lies elsewhere.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, and then strolled gracefully around the bed. He admired the sway of her skirts, the tilt of her head. There was something compelling about her, he couldn’t deny it. Not the soft pliancy of Barbara, the insincerity of Barbara. This woman would not lie lightly, and she would not be soft. She was honest fire. But that did not mean she would not do anything in her power to get her own way, if she were desperate enough.

  She was standing beside the bed now. His amber gaze slid down over her face, closing on her mouth. It was just as luscious as he had remembered, and Gregor wondered what it tasted like. Whether she would resist him if he reached up and kissed her, or sink willingly into his embrace. The silence grew uncomfortable before he spoke again.

  “You are wasting your time.”

  “I thought a gentleman’s word meant everything to him?” She said it sharply, leaning forward over him, her hands planted on her hips, her jaw stubbornly set. Suddenly he was very tempted indeed to do just as he had imagined, to reach up and pull her down onto the bed with him, to use his mouth and his hands on her until she gasped with need, with want.

  “But I am no longer a gentleman,” he reminded her huskily.

  He watched her from beneath his lashes, wondering if she was convinced yet of the impossibility of what she was asking. She was watching him as well, and now her face was a little paler. But whether it was because she was beginning to understand the futility of her journey, or her sensing of the tension between them—him and her, alone in his bedroom—he didn’t know.

  Her gaze rested on his and then, reluctantly, began to slide down over his throat, across that part of his chest that was exposed above the covers. As if realizing what was happening, her eyes shot back to his, startled as a grouse caught out of cover on the moor.

  He smiled, slowly. Did she desire him, too? If so, then she was hiding it from him now, with her gaze turned watchful, cautious. Was there desire beneath that careful mask? Gregor was used to seeing desire in women’s eyes; it had been there all his life. And yet this woman was
different, beyond his ken.

  “Will you not even hear what I have to say?” Her voice was softer now, with a note of pleading in it.

  He felt himself quiver, deep inside, but did not let her see the weakness. Gregor knew very well that he was weak where women were concerned; it was a fault he had tried hard to correct. This time, he swore to himself, he would not be brought to his knees by a soft voice and a tearful gaze.

  “You would be wasting your time.”

  There must be a way, Meg told herself desperately.

  Last night she had believed Gregor Grant was hers, and now, this morning, she had made the discovery that somehow he had slipped out of her grasp, eluded her. Was it his pride that was hurt? Or was he simply too selfish to care what happened to the people who had loved him—loved him still? She had come here with the expectation that some fondness would remain in his heart, some responsibility for his former tenants and his land. That he must feel that same joining of heart and soul to the land that she felt. Evidently he didn’t. The boy he had been—that she had believed him to be—did not exist.

  The man who stood in his place had neither heart nor conscience. She was wasting her time.

  And yet she had come so far!

  Meg took a breath, opened her mouth to try again, to say…something. But before she could begin to form the words, there was a loud noise outside the inn. The clatter of a horse’s hooves as it was drawn to an unruly halt on the uneven cobbles. And then a voice like gravel at the bottom of a pail, echoed through the building.

  “Gregor Grant! Gregor Grant come out here and face me, you bloody bastard! You yellow-livered worm!”

  Gregor went still. The muscles on either side of his mouth went white. He took a harsh breath and, with an obvious effort, sat up in the bed. Meg gasped and put out her hands to stop him. The skin of his chest was smooth and hot, and shocked, she quickly pulled her hands away. But he was already swinging his legs over the edge and, grasping the post of the bed as support, hauled himself up onto his bare feet. He was certainly an impressive-looking man.