“Were ye following me, then, Lattimer?”
Gabriel shook himself out of the tangled cobweb of his thoughts as Fiona Blackstock appeared at the far end of the bridge to put her hands on her hips and glare at him. Somehow she managed to look both formidable and enticing at the same time. “Yes, I was,” he returned coolly, sending Jack clopping onto the bridge. “You mentioned several times yesterday that the Highlands was a dangerous place. I’m here to protect you.” And to see what the devil you’re up to, he added silently.
“I meant that the Highlands arenae safe fer ye, Sassenach. I’m perfectly well, thank ye. Go back to Lattimer before ye frighten the wee bairns. Or all the way to London, and spare the lot of us.”
“Bairns. Those are children, yes?” he persisted, ignoring the verbal jabs as he swung out of the saddle.
As he moved up to keep pace beside her, Miss Blackstock lifted an artfully curved eyebrow. “Aye. Bairns are children. And that’s a cow, and that’s a wagon,” she said, imitating his accent as she pointed.
Her unrelenting hostility amused him. He much preferred a female who handed out clever barbs to someone who pretended friendship while sharpening a knife for his spine. “Are you this foul-tempered every morning, or did I unsettle you last night?”
“Ye didnae unsettle me.” Her shoulders squared. “Ye’re nae the first ham-fisted man to try pawing at me.”
While he didn’t appreciate the “pawing” description—because pawing implied a lack of skill or finesse—the way his gut tightened and his jaw clenched in reaction to her statement actually surprised him more. He didn’t want to hear that other men had been after her, regardless of the fact that he’d only known her for two days and kissed her once. The fact that men had pursued her made sense; her looks and her sharp, clever tongue made her very nearly irresistible. But even though he could barely call the two of them acquainted, her presence left him distracted and keenly focused all at the same time.
The camp women he knew were anything but exclusive. He knew that; he was accustomed to it. This was different. And the fact that other men pawed at her, with a degree of finesse or not … Well, he didn’t like it. At all.
“Nae answer to that?” she prompted.
Damnation. “I’ve been accused of many things, but being ham-fisted isn’t one of them. You—”
He glanced past her to see the end of a long metal tube rounding a corner in their direction, and abruptly he was in battle again. “Get back,” he ordered sharptly, grabbing Miss Blackstock’s arm and hauling her behind him.
Gabriel felt the startled flex of muscles beneath his hand, and then she jerked away from him. “William MacDorry, ye carry that musket pointed at the ground,” she ordered, pushing in front of him again.
“It’s fer rabbits, Miss Fiona,” the older man protested, though he immediately lowered the muzzle. “Mrs. MacDorry said she’d use it on me, if I didnae dispatch the vermin eating her garden flowers.” He grinned, a gap where one front tooth was missing. “Did I scare ye, lad?”
Fiona’s shoulders lifted. Ah. He was about to be introduced as the Sassenach duke interloper. “You startled me,” he amended, before she could begin her speech. “No harm done.”
MacDorry narrowed one watery eye. “Sassenach, are ye? Nae the one Miss Fiona sent off into the bogs, yesterday.”
“Yes, that very same one. Gabriel Forrester. Good hunting to you, sir.”
The old man doffed his cap. “Thank ye kindly, Gabriel.”
Fiona made a strangling sound. “He’s—”
“I’m joining Miss Blackstock on her errands this morning,” Gabriel finished, beginning to enjoy the idea that he’d quashed her plans to reveal his identity. She frustrated the devil out of him; now he could return the favor.
“Well, good day to ye then, lad. And to ye, Miss Fiona.”
She rounded on him as MacDorry shuffled off. “Ye ken he’ll be mortified when he realizes he spoke so familiar to a duke,” she snapped.
“Do I seem offended?” he retorted. “I reckon he’ll recall what a pleasant lad that Sassenach was, and how he didn’t put on any airs.”
“Ye arenae pleasant.” With that she turned on her heel to march up the gravel path between the cottages.
He followed her. “Very well. ‘Pleasant’ is the wrong word. But tell me, Miss Blackstock, have you thought about our kiss? Did you dream about it? I did.”
“If I’d done such a thing, which I didnae, I’d call it a nightmare. Nae a dream.”
“I might believe you,” he returned, not bothering to hide his grin, “if you hadn’t brought me trousers last night.”
“And how is that, precisely?”
“Me being unable to dress and leave the bedchamber would have benefited you, according to the nonsense you’ve been spitting in my direction. You did something counter to your own best interest, and in favor of mine.”
“I gave ye the clothes before ye kissed me, if ye’ll recall.”
“I recall every moment. Do you?”
“What do ye—”
“I jumped into the mud to save your life. In return, you sent me into a bog,” Gabriel stated. “And I only came up here in the first place because you threatened murder. I have two other estates with stewards whose letters and accounts seemed perfectly reasonable. I let them be.”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “I told ye that ye’d have yer figures.”
Most of the women of his acquaintance were camp followers—the occasional officer’s wife, but mainly washerwomen, seamstresses, and the lightskirts who made a living off frightened young lads away from home and facing death. She was nothing like any of them. Every time he set eyes on her he recalled how she’d looked with her muddy muslin clinging to her curves, and he could taste her mouth again.
“You have me interested in different figures,” he returned. “You’re a conundrum.”
“Because I brought ye trousers and I tried to kill ye in a bog? Ye’re a madman.”
Now that amused him. “I don’t mean to insult you, but people far more skilled than you have attempted to murder me, and in far more lethal ways.”
“Aye? What ways?” This time a twinkle danced in her black eyes.
Almost before his mind could grasp the fact that she’d just jested with him, Gabriel stepped forward, nudging her back against the rough cottage wall directly behind her, and held her there with his forearm across her chest. He took her mouth, warm and soft and tasting of tea. And this time he was certain she kissed him back. “You seem more lethal already,” he murmured, teasing at her lips again, then stepping back before she could shove him away. Strategy.
Her gaze remained focused on his mouth, until finally she cleared her throat, looked up, and poked a finger into his chest. “Enough nonsense, Sassenach. Ye wanted to follow me, and here we are. Do ye mean to go inside with me?”
Putting aside the way she’d just accused him of nonsense—a word he’d never heard associated with himself before this moment, he glanced toward the small cottage’s door. “Yes, I do,” he decided. Not many people—none, in fact—made a habit of poking him, either. For a woman who barely came to his chin to do so was oddly arousing. Of course he found everything about her arousing, even if that was counter to every considerable bit of common sense he possessed. She’d called him a madman; perhaps he was.
She nodded. “Through this door, this isnae aboot ye. Or me. Ye keep yer mouth shut, or ye wait ootside.”
Gabriel lifted an eyebrow at the orders, but she’d intrigued him again, damn it all. In a matter of two days she’d proven she wasn’t like any other woman of his experience, and she continued to do so almost by the minute. “Agreed.”
With a last warning look at him, she moved sideways to rap on the simple oak door, put a smile on her face, and pushed it open without waiting for an answer. Gabriel gave her a second, then followed her inside and closed the door behind them.
The first thing he noticed was the dark; it overwhelmed
everything. The cottage had no windows at all, with the only light coming from a small fire in a tiny fireplace. His well-honed instinct for survival kept him with his back to the door while he waited for his vision to adjust to the dimness.
Then the smell touched him; dead, rotting flesh combined with an odd mix of tea and herbs. He recognized it immediately from his years in the army—gangrene, which someone was trying to treat with poultices. Fiona had moved across the tiny space to sit in a chair by its single bed. As she produced a thick slice of bread from the small sack she carried, she began speaking softly in Gaelic.
Gabriel didn’t understand a word of it, but the roll and lilt of her voice mesmerized him. The smell, the cottage, the world itself faded away on the soft rise of her words. He wanted to move closer, but this time sternly resisted the impulse. She’d made it clear that this wasn’t about him, and he had no wish to disturb any of it.
As she spoke, she tore off small pieces of the bread, dipped them in a cup of water, and fed them to the withered figure on the bed. A woman, he decided, only because of the length of the gray hair piled about her head.
A second figure stirred from right beside him. It took every ounce of his training not to jump. Eyes that reflected the firelight stared at him as she scurried over to the bed. Pulling the thin blanket aside, she removed the heavy bandage on the old woman’s left foot, washed the wound, and put on fresh wrappings.
When Fiona stood to put her arms beneath the old woman’s shoulders, clearly meaning to lift the figure off the bed, he stepped forward. Putting a hand on Fiona’s hip, he nudged her aside and slid his arms beneath the invalid’s shoulders and knees, then lifted.
It was like lifting a doll, he imagined, though he’d never had occasion to hold one. The old woman seemed more dust and cloth than flesh, and he held her as carefully as he could. In front of him Fiona and the other woman stripped the blanket from the bed, carried out the top layer of straw beneath it, and brought in armloads of fresh, sweet-smelling stuff to replace it.
Once they’d put down a blanket and secured it over the straw, he laid the old woman down again and stepped back. Fiona tucked her in, still talking quietly, then kissed the woman on the forehead and backed away. She gestured at Gabriel, and he pulled open the door and followed her back outside into the sunlight.
“That woman needs light and fresh air,” he said with a scowl as soon as he closed the door behind them. “And maggots to clean out the corruption. The damp in there will finish her off more quickly than the gangrene.”
“Aye,” Fiona answered, walking back to the edge of the stream, where she knelt and washed off her hands and arms.
“You have a castle with fifty rooms sitting a mile away. Why haven’t you—”
“Oh, my goodness!” she exclaimed, straightening again. “Why didnae I ever think of that? Thank heaven ye came along when ye did!”
Gabriel narrowed his eyes, and declined to offer her an arm as they made their way back to the path. “And yet despite your sarcasm, she’s still lying there in the dark.”
Fiona bent to pick up a fallen shovel and set it back against a cottage’s stone wall. “A hundred years ago, yer castle was the seat of Laird MacKittrick, a clan Maxwell chieftain. This corner of the clan gathered there every year to arrange marriages and feast and celebrate. Then Laird MacKittrick stood up fer the Jacobites and against the Crown. He lost his head, and the Crown gave his estate to a Sassenach duke.”
“Lattimer,” he finished, wondering what in the world this had to do with an old woman suffering from an infected foot. “I’ve heard the story.”
“It’s nae a story,” she retorted. “It’s true history. And it means yers is a Sassenach hoose now, whether the Duke of Lattimer resides here or nae. And Mrs. Ailios Eylar willnae set foot in it. And before ye suggest we carry her to Lattimer whether she likes it or nae, I’ll tell ye she’d rather die in her own wee cottage than leave it fer an English castle. Because taking her inside Lattimer would be akin to dragging her oot of the Highlands.”
He’d encountered that level of hatred before, though previously it had been on the battlefield, over the point of a weapon, or as he and his men marched through a village that might have preferred not to be liberated. The idea that the frail woman he’d lifted in his arms hated him because some dead king had given a gift to some ancestor whose name he didn’t even know, unsettled him. He’d never had a lineage to even speak of before now. And he’d apparently inherited its burdens, as well. “That’s why you told me to be silent, then. So she wouldn’t know I was English.”
“Aye.”
By now word of his presence had obviously spread through the village, because everywhere he turned Gabriel caught glimpses of faces—peering at him from around corners, from behind wagons, out of half-closed doorways and through shop windows. Did they know he was the Duke of Lattimer? Or did his simply being English make him a feared curiosity?
“The old duke,” he said aloud, stopping while Fiona untied her black mare from the hitching post. “Was he a cruel man? Or did you just hate him for being English?”
“I only set eyes on him once,” she responded, stepping into the stirrup and mounting astride, and giving him a tantalizing glimpse of bare calf before she settled her skirts again. “I was but two years old. A wee bairn. I’ve nae heard that he was a cruel man. Why? Are ye a cruel man?”
No sidesaddle for Fiona Blackstock. She sat in the saddle well, completely comfortable. “That depends on who you ask.” Gabriel put his fingers to his mouth and whistled for Union Jack.
“Ye’re a violent man, though. I dunnae need to ask anyone aboot that.” At least she hadn’t tried to ride off without him.
“I’m a soldier.” Jack trotted up, and Gabriel swung into the saddle. “A farmer milks cows, and I kill enemies of the state.”
“Ha. That’s very practical of ye,” she noted, leading the way as they trotted back over the bridge. If she had any other visits to make it seemed she’d decided to postpone them until he was elsewhere.
“I’m a practical man,” he agreed with a half smile, settling into a comfortable canter beside her. Glancing down, he again took in the sight of her bare calf above men’s work boots. How the devil was he supposed to see to Lattimer when he couldn’t conjure anything but how her soft-looking skin would feel against his? “Are you a practical woman?”
She pursed her lips, and he nearly brained himself on a tree branch. “I reckon I am. That doesnae make us the same.”
This time he grinned over at her. “I may not be a Highlander, lass, but I do know the difference between a man and a woman. I have an almost artistic appreciation for those differences, you might say.”
Fiona snorted. “Do ye? I’d nae noticed.”
No, they didn’t have much at all in common, but he was fairly certain that this was flirtation. And it was a damned fine beginning.
Chapter Five
What sort of man kissed a woman twice within two days of being introduced? Certainly not a gentleman. Fiona glanced sideways at the six-foot man and a trained warhorse, walking two feet away from her.
And what sort of woman encouraged that behavior? Because while the first kiss last night had truly surprised her, she could make no such claim for the second. Yes, it had been partly curiosity; what lass wouldn’t want to be certain if a kiss had been as fine as she remembered it, or if her imagination had given it merits it didn’t deserve? Now she knew that if anything, her recollections hadn’t given that kiss enough credit. Good heavens.
“You just admitted to being practical,” he said abruptly. “If you pretend now to be overwhelmed with shyness I’ll simply keep making statements until you feel compelled to respond.”
“I’m nae being shy,” she retorted. “I was thinking that old coat and those trousers might’ve fooled Ailios into thinking ye were a visiting Maxwell farmer or someaught, but they didnae fool me. Nae fer a second.”
“I wasn’t trying to fool anyone. I’m not a spy
. I am precisely what you see.”
Perhaps that was so, but what did she see when she looked at him? Not quite the same thing she’d noted when he’d first jumped into the mudhole. Fiona clenched her jaw. Why was she even contemplating the question? “Why did ye follow me?” she blurted, to change the subject before she could begin mooning at him or something equally outrageous.
“I saw you heading for the stable,” he returned promptly in his deep English tones. “You owe me a look at the ledgers, and I didn’t want you escaping somewhere.”
“‘Escaping’?” she repeated, scoffing. “That would make me a coward, which I amnae. And I dunnae call me attending to my duties escaping.”
“Nor do I.” She felt rather than saw his gaze on her, because she deliberately looked elsewhere. His gray eyes seemed far keener than they should have, and she absolutely didn’t want him thinking that she found him … interesting. That might lead to more kissing. “But strictly speaking,” he continued, “they aren’t your duties, are they?”
Back to that again. Damn her for being too stubborn to answer one of the solicitor’s bloody letters, anyway, and bringing this mess down on her own head. “They were my father’s duties, they were my brother’s, and now they’re mine,” she stated, with every bit of confidence and disdain that she could muster. “If the old duke didnae like my ways, he had nearly four years to tell me so.”
“Ah. So he knew you’d assumed the position of estate manager?”
“He knew Lattimer was being run well and fairly,” she retorted, though privately she doubted old Ronald Leeds had given Lattimer Castle more than a passing thought in twenty years. “We’d nae earned him much of a profit, but he didnae have a complaint that reached my ears.” As far as she could tell he’d tried to forget the place altogether. And that suited her quite well.
Hero in the Highlands Page 9
