Chapter Twelve
Fiona blinked. She and Gabriel hadn’t conversed about church windows that she could recall, but if he’d gone to the bother of conjuring an excuse to be there, something had clearly happened. Setting aside her half-eaten apple, she stood up. “Of course. Father, will ye excuse me? I’ll show His Grace that cracked window. That’s a good place to start, I reckon.”
The parson stood to sketch a deep, too formal bow. “Of course. I’m honored by yer presence at our humble place of worship, Yer Grace. Any repairs ye can make fer us would be welcome.”
As soon as the priest vanished into his vestry and closed the door behind him, no doubt to compose a list of all repairs he’d ever dreamed of, Fiona sat down again. “What is it, fer God’s sake? Ye look like death shook ye and threw ye into a ditch.”
He glanced over at her, briefly amused. She wondered what he saw when he looked at her. This man who’d traveled the world and faulted her for not seeing enough of it, had for some reason set his sights on her. And now, when something had sent him here to her with an excuse on his lips—the first lie she’d ever heard him utter—she felt … Despite what she knew, what she’d been raised to believe about foreigners in general and English in particular, she wanted to see that troubled look gone from his face. And she felt worried. What in the world could upend a man who not only faced death every day, but went riding out looking for it?
“Dunncraigh offered to purchase Lattimer from me. Take it off my hands.”
For a moment she couldn’t breathe. Lattimer, actually returning to Maxwell hands again? That should have left her elated. Gabriel meant to leave anyway, so what did it matter? Except that he should have been elated, as well, and instead he looked almost angry. And he’d come to find her.
“When Wellington told me I’d inherited a dukedom,” he said after a moment, his gaze on the pulpit, “he said he was sorry to have lost a fine officer. It never occurred to me that he knew what he was saying. That last day, when he knew about my title and I didn’t, he pulled me out of the field to go stand on a hill and watch the battle from safety. I couldn’t do it. I saw a mistake my lieutenant was making, one that would cost lives and perhaps even the battle, and I charged in to set things right. That’s when I got this.” He gestured at where the fresh scar on his forearm lay.
“Ye’re a brave man, Gabriel. I’ve nae doubted that, from the moment we first met.”
“It’s not about that.” He scowled. “I wasn’t supposed to go. I should have sent a runner to order Lieutenant Humphreys to slow his advance and look for French cavalry on his flank. The runner would have taken too long, between receiving the message and delivering it, if he’d even survived the run through the middle of the battle, but that’s what I should have done. Dukes don’t lead from the front. They advise, or fund, or supervise drills and formations in their unblemished dress uniform.”
“Ye’re a duke. I imagine ye could do as ye like.”
He shook his head, his expression becoming rueful. “I could, yes. And I’d be forced to surround myself with soldiers whose only duty was to protect me. I could charge into a fight, and they would all die. Because of me. For me. Not in order to win a battle for Britain.”
That made sense. She’d been surprised to hear that he meant to return to the war in the first place, but he’d been so certain of it that she hadn’t questioned. “Ye’ve been too close to the trees to see the forest, I suppose,” she mused.
“I didn’t see the trees, either. God, what a fool I am.”
She frowned. “Ye’re a great many things, Gabriel, and I’ve called ye most of them, but I dunnae think ye’re a fool.” Fiona shook his sleeve. “Is that what Dunncraigh said to ye? That ye were a duke and didnae want to be saddled with Lattimer?”
“That’s precisely what he said. No one told me, you know. Those damned solicitors spent hours detailing how much money I had at my disposal, the artworks I now owned, how many estates I’d inherited. Not one of them could say what owning property meant.” He slammed a fist into the base of the window.
Given the force of the blow, she was surprised the stone didn’t give way. “Gabriel.”
“These people here,” he went on, ignoring her protest. “You look after them. You bring them apples, change their dirty bedding, employ them at the house when they wouldn’t be able to find food or a roof elsewhere. That’s what a duke—a laird—is supposed to do.”
“Aye, it is.”
“Is this it?” he returned, more forcefully. “A fight … a fight that can’t ever be won? Tilting at the same bloody windmill on the same bloody patch of land for the rest of your bloody life? What—”
“Then sell it,” she interrupted, matching his volume. “If Lattimer is nothing but a chain holding ye doon, then sell it. Put it oot of yer mind.”
Gabriel clamped his jaw closed. “Dunncraigh said I’m the curse. My ancestors and I. That we’re the reason for this mess.”
Later Fiona would have to give herself a stern talking-to over why she felt the need to be so damned honest with this man, when it might be easier, and it would certainly be much simpler, to let him think what he chose and keep her blasted mouth shut. “It isnae you,” she said, emphasizing the word. “Or them. It’s that there’s been nae a man to see anything but that windmill. This place isnae a windmill, Gabriel. It’s nae some broken princely manor, and it’s nae a pile of muck withoot a speck of value. It’s nae a burden. But to know that, ye have to see it differently.”
“See it how?”
She pursed her lips. Her clan chief wanted this property. For that to happen, Gabriel would have to sell it. Given that, she had no business encouraging him about anything. But he wasn’t only asking her about Lattimer. He was asking how he was supposed to live the rest of his life.
Loyalty, kinship, clan—yesterday the Duke of Dunncraigh had admitted that he hadn’t stepped in to help stop the sheep thefts. He said he’d stayed away because he was in the middle of arguing with the English government over whether he could purchase Lattimer outright. Strategically it made sense, given that the less profitable the property was the more eager the Crown would be to dispose of it. But this place wasn’t just property. It was people. Her people, and even more directly, the Maxwell’s people. As far as she was concerned, people should not be a strategy. And her clan chief should have known that.
“Come with me,” she said, wrapping her fingers around Gabriel’s and pulling.
If he hadn’t wanted to go with her she would have had better luck pulling a boulder up a hill, but after two or three hard tugs his hand tightened around hers and he stood. He truly wanted an answer, then. And she would give him one, because in the last eleven days he’d done more for Lattimer than any Maxwell laird. What she didn’t know was whether the answer she gave him would be the one he wanted to hear. Or what it would mean for her.
They left the church behind and headed down the slope toward the heart of the village. As they neared Ailios’s cottage, though, Gabriel pulled his hand free of hers and stopped. “I don’t want to see Ailios and be reminded that she hates Englishmen,” he said. “I’m not in the mood for torture today.” He turned, looking back in the direction of the castle. “What I am in the mood for is liquor. A large quantity of it.”
“Eyes open and mouth closed,” she said crisply. “And ye need a change of clothes, now that I look at ye, ye redcoat.”
“Fiona, I—”
“Nae.” She stepped around in front of him to make certain she had his attention. “Ye asked me a question. I think the answer is someaught ye have to see, and nae words I can say to ye. And if ye think I’m nae risking anything by being seen holding hands with ye, especially while ye’re in that uniform, think again.”
His shoulders lowered, though she wasn’t certain if it was acquiescence to her argument, or overall defeat. “Then find me a blanket I can put over my shoulders.”
“Mm-hm. This way.”
She led him to the smithy. Tor
mod MacDorry was the only man in the village of a size with Gabriel, though convincing him to lend out his clothes to a Sassenach, especially with the Maxwell wandering about, could be problematic. Luckily, though, Tormod didn’t seem to be home.
Fiona knocked at the door of the cottage that backed up against the smithy, waited a moment, then knocked again. When no one answered she pushed open the door, tightening her grip on Gabriel’s hand to pull him in after her.
“I’m not stealing another man’s clothes,” he stated.
Putting her hands on her hips, Fiona whirled around to face him. “Stop being a petulant boy and make a decision, then. Ye cannae stop being a duke, and that means ye cannae live yer life as ye intended. So ye can weep and stomp yer feet, or ye can choose a new life. Do ye have any idea how many people never get that chance?”
For a hard beat of her heart she thought he might strike her. And that would alter everything. His light gray eyes were ice and fury, and his right hand coiled into a fist. Abruptly he grabbed a pot off the small table and hurled it into the wall so hard it chipped the stone.
“‘Petulant?’” he snapped. “Tell me honestly that you would be laughing if someone walked up to you and informed you that you had to leave Lattimer and would only be allowed to bake bread for the rest of your life.”
“That’s precisely what I thought ye meant to do when ye arrived here.” She lifted her chin as he took a step toward her. Aye, he was a violent man, but one with fierce control. If he lost those reins, though, they would all be in for it. Beginning with her.
Gabriel drew in a hard breath, his jaw clenched so hard she could practically hear his teeth grinding. Then with an audible growl he began stripping out of his red coat. “I have a shirt. I need trousers.”
Letting out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, Fiona hurried over to the small chest beside Tormod’s bed and began digging through it. She found a neatly folded full kilt, but set it aside. Even if Gabriel agreed to wear one, which she didn’t think he would, having him walk outside in Maxwell colors where Dunncraigh and his men could stumble across them would be a very poor idea, indeed.
“Here,” she finally said, freeing an old, patched pair of brown trousers from the bottom corner of a drawer. “His winter clothes, I reckon.”
Keeping his gaze squarely on her, he stripped out of his boots and trousers, the plain white shirt he’d worn beneath his coat hanging past his hips and just barely hiding his privates from her view. She swallowed. Neither of them was in the mood for sex, but that didn’t stop her from thinking about it, or him, and the way he’d looked lying beside her in the bed. The way he’d felt inside her. And how much she wanted to repeat the experience.
He shrugged into the borrowed trousers and buttoned the front. “Tormod has more girth than I do,” he commented, his voice easier but still too cold and precise for her to relax in his presence. Digging into the back of the waist, he tightened the gusset ties. “It’ll do, as long as there’s no running and jumping.”
There. A bit of humor. “No running and jumping,” she agreed. As he tucked in his shirt and stomped back into his boots she found an old turnip sack. Leaving his uniform there for Tormod MacDorry to find would never do, so she stuffed the red jacket and white trousers inside the sack and tucked the bundle under her arm. “Let’s go, then.”
Gabriel followed her, at least, but she’d already begun to worry. What he wanted, the opportunity to continue as he had been in the army, didn’t exist. If she didn’t know him as well as she felt like she’d begun to, she could well end up failing not just him, but herself—and thereby everyone for fifteen square miles. But he’d asked for help, and so she would try to give him an answer. He’d asked her, and that meant more than she felt comfortable even dwelling on today.
Outside Ailios Eylar’s cottage she knocked, then pulled the rope latch and stepped inside. Behind her, Gabriel stopped halfway through the door.
“Madainn mhath, Fiona,” Ailios greeted her, giving a slight nod from the mound of pillows propping her up in her new wooden bed. Well, not new, because it had come from one of Lattimer’s myriad closed-up bedchambers, but it was clean and sturdy, and certainly new to Ailios.
“Good morning, Miss Ailios,” she returned in English, for Gabriel’s benefit. “Where’s Eppie?”
The old woman’s sharp eyes went from her to Gabriel and back again. “My daughter’s oot picking fresh flowers,” she said, changing to English as well. “Now that we have windows, she says they pretty up the cottage.” She set aside her knitting. “Is this him, then? The English?”
“I mean no offense,” Gabriel said gruffly. “Fiona suggested I visit you.”
“She’s been telling me aboot ye, lad. How ye held me in yer arms, and how ye ordered me to be taken to the grand hoose fer air and medicine. And how when she said I’d nae set foot in the castle while it bore the name Lattimer, ye made workmen come and cut me windows for real glass that opens, bring me a new bed, and fix my chimney to stop it smoking.”
“I’m glad to see you so much improved, ma’am.” He walked to the side wall of the tiny house and tapped a knuckle against the glass of the half-open window. “I’d like to put down a wood floor as well, if you’ll allow it. I think that would keep you warmer in the winter than dirt or even stone.”
“And then what?” the old woman asked.
Fiona frowned. Ailios’s conversation could be biting, but this was not the blasted time for it. “If ye—”
“I mean to say,” the invalid interrupted, “my neighbor, Mrs. Dinwoddie, says ye’re only making improvements so ye can clear us oot and bring in English tenants. Or it’s because ye pity us poor Scots, which is near as bad.”
He shook his head. “This is your home, ma’am. And your daughter’s. You know things about this land that I could never hope to learn on my own. If you’ll allow me to ask you a question from time to time, I would consider myself more than repaid for some windows and a floor.”
Ailios sat in silence for a moment. “Well, isn’t that a surprise,” she finally muttered almost to herself. “I suppose I’ll wait to see what questions ye choose to ask, or if ye come calling to ask any at all.”
With a relieved smile Fiona went to kiss the old woman on her paper-thin cheek. “Dunncraigh’s aboot, so we must get back to Lattimer. I’ll be back to call on ye on Thursday.”
Outside, Fiona headed back toward the church where she’d left Brèaghad to graze among the tombstones. Gabriel walked behind her, but she didn’t try to engage him in conversation. Whether she’d shown him anything useful or not, he had a decision to make—and it was one that would for better or worse impact her life nearly to the degree that it would his. Had she done the right thing? Her uncle wouldn’t think so. Dunncraigh would likely banish her from the clan if he ever learned anything about it.
Then again, she hadn’t precisely said anything. And even if for God knew what reason Gabriel decided to keep Lattimer, that didn’t mean he would be a better landlord than the old duke had been. She supposed if he went about interfering in the wrong way, he could be a worse one. Or he could merely be absent. And she didn’t think she would like that, either.
“Did ye ride here?” she asked belatedly, ducking under a tree branch to collect her mare.
“No. I walked.” His palms settled on her shoulders, and he turned her to face him. “I didn’t do those things for Ailios Eylar. That was you.”
She shook her head. “It’d been a fortnight since she fell over that blasted hoe and cut her leg. I’d been going to see her daily. I knew she’d nae live with that infection, but I thought to make her comfortable. Ye were the one who bellowed that she should be at the castle, and that she needed fresh air and clean bedding.” Fiona tapped her forefinger against his breastbone beneath his plain white shirt. “Ye made me mad, accusing me of being a half-wit, or so I told myself ye had, and so I had those things done to prove that it wouldnae have made any difference. And then she started t
o get better.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
Did he understand, then? Or was he still so occupied with looking for a way to change the impossible that he hadn’t seen it? Fiona tilted her head, regarding him. At least he looked calmer. “Ye said when ye have a battle to fight, ye look at it as an obstacle and find a way past it. And when ye’ve done that, ye move on to the next battle.”
“I’m not a complete idiot, Fiona,” he returned, exasperation touching his voice. “You’re suggesting there are battles here that I can win. And then stay on to see what victory looks like.”
“And feels like. Aye. Here ye may have less use fer yer saber, though in the Highlands ye cannae be—”
He pulled her forward and kissed her. Tangling her hands into his thin shirt, she lifted on her toes to meet him more squarely. Heat speared through her, his touch flavored with both desperation and hope. Hope that she’d given him.
Finally he lifted his head again. “Your own clan chief wants me to sell Lattimer to him. Do you truly not want me to do that?” Gray eyes seemed to gaze all the way into her soul, making her wonder what he saw there. “Do you want me to stay?”
And now it was all back on her shoulders again. She had only eleven days now by which to measure him, put against a lifetime of seeing how the leaders of her own clan regarded this castle with two names. How they regarded the cotters who lived on this land. “Aye,” she said softly. “If ye mean to make a fight of it, then I want ye to stay.” God help her, but it was an excuse, to say she wanted him there for the sake of the tenants. Because she couldn’t say the other part, that she wanted him there for her.
Hero in the Highlands Page 21
