Claimed By The Highlander (The Highlands Warring Clan Mactaggarts Book 1)

by Anne Morrison

  "Come in, and don't leave the door open! Take a table where you like, and Alice will be with you in a shake!"

  His accent was thicker than Reade's but when Reade spoke, his voice was thickened with the same burr as the innkeeper's own.

  "We're hoping more for a room, and maybe to have a bath and some food sent up. Beg your pardon, but my wife and I have been on the road a long way, and we're ready to be off of it now."

  The innkeeper grinned as wide as a barn door, nodding, as he called for another girl.

  "Seem's like luck's with you two. There's one more room empty, all the way at the top, but it's snug enough since we did the roofs last year. Here, Mary will lead you up."

  Elizabeth, remembering what Reade had said, nodded her thanks, and then she staggered a little as Reade threw his arm over her shoulders.

  "Thanks from my wife and I. We're done with the road, but not with each other, if you get my meaning."

  The innkeeper roared with laughter, clapping Reade on the arm, and Elizabeth buried her face in Reade's chest to hide the very real blush that was staining her cheeks. She managed to hold her peace while the young girl with the round and merry face led them up to their room, and she waited until Reade had turned the latch and they both heard the girl's steps going back down the stairs before she turned to him.

  "You needn't lay it on so thick!" she hissed. "We're not really husband and wife."

  "Oh, I know that, but they need to think we are. And if they think we're busily being very married up here, that'll make them less inclined to come up and check on us, don't you think?"

  Elizabeth subsided because Reade was right, but she sat down on the room's only chair, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

  Reade grinned at her and went to tend the fire, adding a few more logs until it was burning brightly.

  "Reminds me of the first night we were together."

  Elizabeth meant to ignore it, but she couldn't help but soften a little.

  "Does it? I suppose everything happened so fast, I wasn't paying attention. I woke up, and there I was.”

  Reade fell silent, and for a moment, she thought that that was all, but when he spoke again, he was looking at the fire and not at her.

  “I will get you to Glen Warring, Elizabeth. I want you to know that.”

  “I know you will.”

  “Good.”

  There was a knock on the door, and Elizabeth was relieved to see that it was food. It was simple fare, nothing more than chicken and some small turnips from the previous year, but it was delicious after wild game and the hard rounds of bread that Reade had been feeding her. They ate in companionable quiet, and as soon as she had eaten the last bite, Elizabeth sighed with pleasure, dropping back into the chair.

  “It's going to be all right, isn't it?”

  She hadn't expected to say anything at all, but Reade didn't look surprised.

  “Of course, it is. And whatever it is that you are running away from in the South, I won't let it get you.”

  “You promise?”

  “Of course, I do.”

  The calm assurance in his voice made her eyes drift shut. She had been sleeping on the road, of course, but the ground was hard, and even in the spring thaw, it felt as if there was still plenty of winter to leach whatever warmth she could collect during the day.

  The room she was in was warm, she had been fed, and Reade had thrown the latch against anything that could hurt them. It was enough, and when her eyelids drifted shut, she simply let herself drift down into a darkness that for once felt soft and safe.

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  chapter 17

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  Besides the one chair that Elizabeth had apparently claimed for herself, Reade ended up sitting on the edge of the bed to eat his dinner. The fare was plain but good, and he enjoyed it, but it was far more enjoyable in the end to watch Elizabeth.

  It was odd. He had always thought that he preferred his women to be lissome and plush, welcoming as a soft bed on a winter night.

  Elizabeth was many things, but one could really not call her plush or welcoming. Sometimes, it seemed as if her body was made of wire instead of flesh and bone, and sometimes she became so very prickly and protective that she reminded him of a hedgehog.

  Then there were the moments where she remembered that she was not alone, that the world was in fact not out to destroy her, and she softened and sweetened until all he wanted to do was put his arms around her and make sure that nothing ever hurt her again.

  She didn't fall asleep in her turnip mash, but it was a close thing, and when he heard a soft snore from her in the chair, he sighed.

  "All right, little one. Time for you to be in bed, I should think."

  She hadn't had a bed in several nights, and Reade decided that even if she squawked about in the morning, he should at least remove her dress and let her sleep in her shift. She would be more comfortable, and that would mean her dress could hang by the fire, airing out a bit.

  It was easier said than done. Elizabeth herself was as light and small as a cat, but she was as boneless as one, too. She felt like water in his arms, and it seemed to take all of his efforts to get her dress pulled over her head. Somehow, she slept through all that, and Reade smiled until he saw a small bag hung off her hips, over her white shift.

  Reade wouldn't have been chosen to go south to see what the English were planning if he hadn't had a natural curiosity to him. The trait had gotten him into trouble more than once, but that wasn't what he was thinking of when he prodded at the small bag.

  Clever girl, really. She can't get at it, but it means that it didn't get lost when she fainted back in Ayr, and I had no idea as to its existence at all. What could this be?

  He would have guessed that it was a bit of money Elizabeth had squirreled away, perhaps her wages from her position, but the pouch didn't move right for money. No, what was inside was larger and bulkier than coins would have been.

  Reade unwound the cord from the fabric, and he went still when he poured the contents into his hand.

  There was some money, a modest amount of it, but the jewels were far more striking. There were several pieces, women's necklaces and one ring obviously sized for a man's hand. He recognized garnets in one necklace and what must have been sapphires in another. The ring, when he held it up, was some dark stone that glinted a dull purple in the firelight. It was heavy and had obviously been set in pure gold.

  Some pieces were beginning to fall into place, and Reade's mind raced as he tied the bag back up and tucked a blanket around Elizabeth's shoulders.

  How much of her story is true? How much of it can be true? Was it made up whole-cloth, and she herself is just a rather clever thief fleeing north? Has she made me a party to burglary?

  He remembered what he had suspected, that she might have hurt someone when she fled from her master in Ayr. Had she hurt someone while she was stealing their jewels?

  Reade felt sick to his stomach. Elizabeth was a pretty girl, and he could all too easily imagine a family taking her in to work for them. She would earn their trust so easily, and then, of course, she would go to work for the lady of the house, doing her hair as she had mentioned before. How easy would it be for her to simply help herself to the gems, picking up a handful as if they were candied plums?

  He looked at where she slept in the bed, only the top of her golden head visible and her closed eyes. Her eyelashes were so long they cast shadows on her cheeks, and he could see that there were still purple rings underneath her eyes, the legacy of too many nights sleepless. He was struck by how sweet and innocent she looked, but now he wondered how much of that was true and how much of it was a false front.

  Something in him utterly rebelled at the idea that Elizabeth was a fraud and a thief. He refused to believe it, could not believe it. It was absurd.

  Is it? asked a smaller voice in his mind. You have been besotted with her since she fainted in your
arms. Was that even real? What a good way to get the sympathy of a man who has come to rescue her!

  Reade shook his head hard. That faint was real. Elizabeth's distress at the killing he had done earlier was real, and that the sweetness in her eyes was real.

  The rest of it—fleeing from a house in Ayr, a master who took liberties—was far more suspect, and at the end of it, Reade simply didn't know. He couldn't know.

  Well. I do know one thing. If she truly is a thief, and if I am caught with her, they'll hang us both.

  He glanced at Elizabeth again, but he could see no deviousness to her even now. She looked as she had before he had opened the bag, innocent, beautiful, and exhausted beyond her reserves. Reade wondered at how much had changed in just a few moments.

  I should never have opened the blasted thing.

  His mother had always said that there was no getting spilled milk back into the bucket, and he sighed. She had done what she had done, he had pried where he wasn't wanted, and at the end of the day, they were both going to have to live with that.

  Reade wanted to shake Elizabeth awake and make her explain what she had done, and what she was really running from. Instead, he only leaned down to kiss her forehead before turning to prepare himself for bed.

  What else could he do?

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  chapter 18

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  Elizabeth came awake naturally, and at first, she was simply startled that nothing seemed to hurt. There was still a faint soreness around her legs, but otherwise, she felt hale and whole. The bed was soft, clean, and warm, and she wished for a moment that she could simply roll back over and go to sleep again.

  Then she heard a noise, and she remembered that she was very much not alone. She turned around in the bed to bid Reade a good morning, and then her eyes widened.

  His back was to her, but he was completely and utterly naked. For a moment, her brain was so dazzled by the broad muscular expanse of his back, the taper of his hips, and his well-shaped thighs that she couldn't understand what he was doing, but then she saw heard the splash of water.

  There was a bucket on the table, and he was wringing out a cloth over it before using the cloth to scrub his own skin down.

  I think... I should tell him that I am awake. But what good would that do? They were husband and wife, after all, and if anything, she was expected to help him wash. She told herself that if they could not get any real privacy from each other that she could at least do the decent thing and turn away, but she seemed unable to do that, either.

  Instead, Elizabeth found herself watching Reade wash himself, and for the first time, she really allowed herself to take in the sheer male beauty of the man who had been escorting her north. She had known he was handsome, possessed of a kind of dark good looks that would have made all of the London girls coo and swoon, but it went deeper than that. The kind of charm that Reade showed on the street, the nod and the wink that could still pull someone in, that was obvious.

  When he was alone and thought himself unobserved, however, there was still a kind of grace to his movements, and now she could take in the long clean lines of his body. He was muscular but slender for all that, strength and speed without too much bulk. She found herself wondering what it might be like to take the measure of his shoulders in her hands, to touch her lips to his bare nape, oddly white and vulnerable under his short-cropped black hair.

  Do other women look at him like this? Do they feel the same kind of weight low in their bellies, the fire that kindles there when they look at him?

  For some reason, thinking of other women looking at Reade made her angry, so she pushed it away. The first morning light was beginning to come into the room, and she could see that there was some unexpected red in Reade's dark hair, garnet underneath the raven.

  I wonder if he would let me touch him...

  The thought crossed her mind just as Reade turned, putting the cloth over the edge of the pail and then freezing as he saw her watching him. Elizabeth's face lit up bright red, and she simply did the first thing she could think of, which was to hide her face under the covers.

  What a terrible reaction, she thought in dismay, and that was even before Reade started to laugh.

  “Lass, what in the world is the matter with you? If you wanted a look, you should have just said so.”

  “I didn't! I didn't want to look, it was just... I woke up, and you were there!”

  “Did you see something that you liked? I can show you closer if you're curious...”

  “No! No, I don't want to... that is, I'm sorry I was looking. I didn't mean to.”

  Elizabeth thought there was a very good chance she was going to simply sink into the bed in humiliation and dismay, and she wished that Reade would simply allow her to do so. Instead, when it became clear that she was not going to come back out on her own, he tugged the blanket down. She found herself looking into his face, and for a moment, she was simply struck by how handsome he was, especially now, when he was smiling with a warmth that went right through her.

  “Reade...”

  “You're fine. Don't fret about such a small thing, lass, not when there are so many other things in the world to fash you. If you want to look at me, if you want to touch me, go ahead.”

  There was a moment when she was certain that she couldn't resist him. She wanted to reach out and run a soft hand over his body, over the hard planes that were so dissimilar from her curves, to feel where he had hair and she was smooth and even to push her hand down to really feel the differences between them...

  “Reade, I can't!”

  “Poor sweet lass. I'm sorry. I'll stop teasing you now.”

  She told herself that her sigh of exclusively one of relief. She was not disappointed when Reade turned away and stepped into his trews. She sat up in bed with a yawn, and then she felt oddly awkward again when she realized that he was looking at her more seriously this time, his green eyes a deep emerald.

  “What... what is it?”

  “You know that you can tell me anything you want, lass?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Just... anything. If you want to tell me, you ought not be afraid.”

  Elizabeth, who thought that she couldn't blush any harder, felt as if her cheeks were on fire. No. She was not going to say anything she had been thinking, speak about any kind of touching she wanted to do. She kicked off the blankets and lifted her chin high instead.

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” she said, walking over to her dress. It had been shaken out and was roughly presentable again. She slipped it over her head and tightened the side lacing until she felt protected enough to face the day. She glanced up to find that Reade was still looking at her, and now his expression was impossible to understand.

  “What?”

  “If something troubles you, tell me. That's all.”

  For a moment, she wanted to take him at his word. The flight from Blaken Keep haunted her, and sometimes, it felt as if every man who passed an extra moment watching her must have been sent by her uncle. It was ridiculous; they had not had any troubles so far. Perhaps her uncle was even glad to be rid of her, whatever plan he had come up with fallen through.

  She wanted to lay all of this at Reade's feet, to come clean, but fear stilled her tongue.

  There's no reason to tell him all this, not when I'll soon reach Devon, and he'll take his fee and go do whatever it is he needs to do.

  She shook her head and turned away from Reade. She wondered if she felt a strange disappointment from him, but that was brushed away as they got ready to go.

  “The next leg of the journey is going to be a little rougher. I've not been this way in some time. I should talk with the innkeeper for the best route to Glen Warring.”

  “Oh! I can get us some food for the journey, shouldn't I? I've been letting you take care of it.”

  “I had assumed your wealthy cousin would take care
of it at journey's end.”

  Why did it sound as if there was some kind of barb when he spoke of it?

  “Well, no worries when I do have some money of my own. You go ahead and speak with the innkeeper, and I'll get out some money and go speak to the cook.”

  “All right.”

  She wasn't imagining things. There was something curt about the way that he spoke to her, and the door closed behind him with a decisive click that she thought was rather more pointed than it needed to be.

  Well, I suppose anyone can wake up on the wrong side of the bed. But something about that didn't feel quite right.

  Still, there was no use worrying about it now, and she went looking through her small bag for some money for bread and possibly cheese. Reade was an able hunter with his sling, but she had missed real bread and cheese fiercely.

  Before she closed the bag again, she touched her mother's jewels.

  Mother, what would you think of all of this? Am I doing the right thing? Could I possibly have stayed at Blaken Keep and married my own uncle? What in the world would you have thought of Reade?

  There was nothing her mother could say to that. Her mother was gone and would never return, and the only counsel she had was her own. For a moment, that black tide of despair and pain nearly rose up and overwhelmed her again, but she fought it back. Elizabeth knew in a way that she had never considered before that she no longer had the luxury of looking backward. The past was a shattered place, and though it could comfort her, she could not afford the pain it might bring. Her path led her forward, into a future she had not truly given herself a chance to wonder at.

  All right. Forward with Reade.

  She went down the stairs, unaware that everything had changed.

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  chapter 19

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  Reade came down the stairs, his thoughts full of Elizabeth. He could still remember the scent of her, the feel of her in his arms, the way her gaze felt like sunlight sliding over his skin. It certainly wasn't the first time a beautiful woman had taken pleasure in watching him while he was naked, but he was certain that no woman had ever affected him the way that she did.