She wrenched open the door. “Without question you must not importune a lady—no matter what pricks of conscience you endure. Now, I would like to retire. Again, thank you for championing that boy. Again, good-bye.”
He followed her with suspect obedience. But at her side, he reached beyond her and shoved the door shut, bracing it closed with his palm flat on the panel. The muscles of his exposed biceps bunched beside her cheek, but she refused to back away. “Where will you find another driver?”
“I shall inquire of the innkeeper,” she answered in exasperation. “He’s bound to know of someone willing to drive me.”
“You’ll have to flash a handful of gold to get anyone to head north at this time of year.” He studied her carefully. “You don’thave a handful of gold, do you?”
There was no use denying it. “No.”
“So. This driver that you haven’t met is supposed to take you to northern Scotland on the basis of what? Your pretty face?”
“You needn’t sneer,” she said. “I shall assure him that the marquis of Parnell will compensate him upon our arrival.”
“And you think that will prove enough to persuade this unnamed gallant?”
“I don’t see why it shouldn’t.”
“It won’t, because these people have been promised things all their lives, Mrs. Blackburn. Lower rents by absent landlords, laws to protect what little they have by politicians, a higher day’s wage by estate managers, and justice by the courts. None of those promises have been kept.
“We Scots are wary of promises, Mrs. Blackburn. Even from such a comely lass as yourself. Or maybe especially from such a comely lass.”
“But I am not lying!”
“It doesn’t matter. No one here knows you. Except me.”
For some reason, his self-assured claim drove the breath from her lungs. “You don’t know me. You know nothing about me.” She ducked beneath his arm, but he caught her wrist, swinging her around to face him.
He jerked her closer, and she pulled back frantically. No one had ever laid hands on her in such a way before, a way that expressed violence in check and effortlessly demonstrated a complete physical control. Helplessness bloomed within her, full and terrifying, closing her throat and pulsing in her temples.
“Listen to me,”he said, oblivious to her distress. “Even if you found some man who would accept your terms, have you thought about what sort he must be? What happens two days out, alone on the road? Your last driver was vouched for by an agency, and look at his sterling character. Any man you find willing to drive you won’t come with a recommendation.”
She finally yanked free, or rather, he let her go so quickly that she fell back, her shoulders banging against the wall. He followed her in swiftly, looming over her, cutting her off from the rest of the room.
“Say you were to just disappear.” His beautiful eyes rested on her like some sated predator still capable of being roused for a bit of sport. Her heart leapt in her chest. “Who’ll find you? Who’ll even look for you?”
He leaned over her, bracing a brawny forearm on the wall above her head, his body caging her in. She twisted, pressing her cheek hard against the wall. His fingertips dangled near her temple. If she moved, he’d touch her. Panic swirled in her blood like some potent drug. His gaze slipped languidly over her face, falling to ponder on her lips. She shut her eyes, trembling. “Who’ll know where to ask or who to ask it of?”
He could do whatever he wanted to her right here, right now, and no one would interfere. But that was his point: If she was vulnerable here, how much greater were her risks on the open road? She understood. She agreed. It still didn’t matter.
For years, she’d searched for a way out of their present circumstance. This was the first meager opening she’d found. Fear and risk, no matter how great, weren’t enough to make her turn back. Not now.
She opened her eyes. “I have to go.”
“Why?” She’d thought he was done with his instruction, but apparently the lesson was not yet over, for he continued watching her mouth, as though the manner in which she formed words fascinated him.
“Do you remember my cousin Grace?”
“Aye?”
“She married the marquis of Parnell’s younger brother, Charles. They lived in his family’s castle near Clyth.” The words tumbled out in a rush. “A few months ago Grace wrote that she and Charles were relocating to London.” She hazarded a glance at MacNeill’s lean face.
“She sent a trunk filled with personal items, things of little monetary value, which she asked me to keep until their arrival.” She gestured to the open trunk. A brass telescope, several books, and a flat traveling writing case filled the top layer. “Shortly afterward, we learned that Grace and Charles had died in a boating accident.
“The marquis is grief-stricken and has written asking that, for sentimental reasons, I return their effects. I promised that I would bring them myself.”
“Why, Mrs. Blackburn, you are a veritable font of tender feelings,” MacNeill said wryly. He brushed away a strand of hair that caught at the corner of her mouth. “But I am sure his lordship can struggle through one winter without his brother’s bric-a-brac.”
He was forcing confessions she did not want to make. She looked away. “The marquis and I… we met some years ago. I believe he remembers me kindly,” she said, abdicating pride to necessity. “I hope that in his sorrow, and by way of his onetime… regard, I can encourage him to become my family’s benefactor. We are Grace’s last living relations.”
MacNeill laughed. “The poor relation? It doesn’t suit you, Mrs. Blackburn.”
“Starvation suits me even less!” Her head snapped around. How dare he judge her? Many lived on the sufferance of family members luckier than themselves. She and her sisters wouldn’t be the first.
He held her gaze a short moment before his mouth twisted, wordlessly conceding her the point. “The spring will serve as good a time as any for your mission.”
“I will not have the wherewithal to make this journey come spring.”
“I have the ready.” Abruptly, he pushed himself away from the wall, his hand dropping to his side, no longer interested in toying with her. She’d been dismissed. To his mind, the matter had been dealt with. He would send her back to York and give her a purse with enough coin to hire a coach come spring and then ride off, having finally satisfied his debt to her family. Only spring would be too late. She needed the marquis’s help now .
“And have you the ready to support us through the winter? To pay the tuition at Charlotte’s school? To buy her dresses?” She had too much pride to let him know that dresses were hardly the most pressing of their problems. Her gaze trailed tellingly over his ragged hair, torn shirt, and scuffed boots.
He returned her regard with hard, sardonic eyes. “Had I realized that the situation was so dire—”
“Mr. MacNeill,” she said, “I would not be here, in this place tonight, if I did not consider my situation ‘dire.’ Few opportunities have come our way these past years. I cannot afford to delay in acting on any that do.
“By spring the marquis’s sorrow will have subsided, practicality will have returned, and my heroic efforts to return his brother’s things to him will no longer seem so impressive. Or worthy of reward.”
“You are a calculating creature. Tell me, is that, too, a characteristic of the…better classes?”
“I am whatever circumstances demand,” she said. How could he understand? He had health and strength and no obligations—except this one that he was desperate to fulfill. “Right now circumstances demand action. I must trust to the innkeeper’s judgment and find a driver. I have no choice.”
“Yes, you do,” he said. “I will take you.”
“No!” The word erupted from her lips.
His lips twisted. “What’s wrong, Mrs. Blackburn? Don’t you trust me?”
“No.”
He laughed without bitterness. “Wise, but unnecessary. I won’t hurt you. Having little, I value what little I own: my word and my honor and my independence. The first I can keep because I have the skills and strength to do so, the second, because I have the will to do so, and the third, because I am tied to no man or woman except those to whom I am indebted. And among that very small number, your family is preeminent.”
She searched his harsh countenance, her thoughts awhirl. She wasn’t a fool. He was possibly her only real chance of getting to Castle Parnell. She had no desire to brave the road with some stranger, especially under the conditions MacNeill had so succinctly outlined. But he frightened her. Instinctively, she knew he could cause her great harm, and she trusted those instincts. “No.”
His hand tightened into a fist. She shrank back involuntarily, thinking of the anger she’d seen him unleash upon Dougal and his cohorts. With a low curse, MacNeill stepped away from her.
“Maybe you are right,” he said harshly. “God knows. You may be right.”
Then, as she watched in amazement, he dropped to one knee and lowered his head, crossing his forearm over his chest, his fist clenched above his heart. The guttering candlelight glinted in his dark red-gold hair.
“Katherine Blackburn, I vow to serve you. I pledge my arm and my sword, my breath and my blood to that service.” His voice vibrated with intensity. “Whatever you ask, I will do; whatever you require, I will provide. By God’s will alone, and no man’s, I do faithfully pledge.”
He raised his face to hers. “Pretty words, are they not? And ones I’d die before I betrayed.”
His last words were so low, Kate wasn’t certain she had heard right. But he was speaking again, his pale eyes glittering. “This is my country. I know these mountains and these rivers. I know where to find shelter and where there is none. I can tell the wind’s caprice from her savagery, and I know paths that will lead us to your destination without taking us into harm’s way.”
“I told you once that I would wait for however long it was necessary to discharge my vow. I have waited a long time. Faithfully. You can free me of the burden of my obligation and travel safely to Clyth. Let me do this .”
She flushed, amazed by the fervor in his voice. Three years ago he had surprised candor from her. Now, she heard an echo of that candor in his voice. This was madness, but surely the alternative—to trust her care to a complete stranger—was madder still.
“Yes.”
“I’ll get my things.” He rose with liquid grace, his attitude once again cool. His passionate pledge might never have been uttered. “We leave at first light.”
THREE
ACKNOWLEDGING ONE’S NEW CIRCUMSTANCES
SHE WAS AFRAID OF HIM. In spite of her bravado, she hadn’t been able to hide the flinch of apprehension, the start of anxiety whenever he’d moved.
Kit MacNeill strode across the dark yard, heedless of the sting of the icy rain or the wind whipping his hair. He had done what he’d been asked. After nearly two years in India, three weeks ago he’d stepped ashore at Bristol and promptly contacted the London solicitor to whom the abbot would relay any messages. He hadn’t expected any news. He’d been frankly amazed when the rose had arrived at his boardinghouse, shriveled and small but still golden.
The message that came with it asked him to safeguard Kate Blackburn’s trip to northern Scotland, relating the route she was to take and warning him that she would bitterly resent interference, so much so that the sender—had it been Charlotte? The signature was blurred—had begged him to let Kate believe that their meeting was happenstance. He had, of course, done as instructed. He had no choice. He had made a vow.
But that hadn’t kept him from resenting this interference in his life and the time wasted squiring a young beauty to her next potential husband’s home. He had a purpose in returning to England after so many years, and now that purpose was being delayed.
He’d spent three years trying to forget that he’d once had “brothers,” a surrogate family whom he had loved and trusted and to whom he’d been fiercely loyal. He’d spent the same three years trying to forget the past. He hadn’t. He couldn’t. There would be only one way he could move forward, by finding the man—possibly one of those self-same brothers— who’d betrayed him to an almost certain death in a French prison. But now…His pale gaze swung toward the dark inn. First there was Kate Blackburn.
So, she was frightened of him. Good. A frightened woman was more likely to do as she was bid. And that would expedite this little sojourn. He always did what best served his purpose.
Then why did he keep seeing her image, pale and stricken, as she’d watched the brawl? So what? She’d glimpsed a world where when people were hit, they bled. His world. Imagine her terror if she’d known some of the things he’d seen—or even done—in the last three years. A soldier’s life was not pretty.
True, she wasn’tall shock and fear. She had courage. His lips curved in an unwilling smile as he recalled her attempt to cow him. She’d glared down that straight little nose of hers like some haughty goddess condemned to a mortal frame, still acting as if she lived in York’s most fashionable and exclusive neighborhood and could, with a withering glance, send her inferiors on their way.
Well, in York, inferior he might be. But not here.
But neither was she. True, she’d come down a fair step, yet it hadn’t appreciably eroded her self-assurance, as if she had been born better than the rest of the world and nothing could erase her knowledge of that fact. Damn, but looking at her one could believe that her poise, the hauteur still flashing in her eyes, even the tilt of her chin, was indeed something that needed to be bred into a person. Her superiority was as much a part of her as the devil was part of him. Or so the monks had claimed. Which meant, quite simply, that no one could stand further from him than Kate Blackburn.
Too bad that knowledge didn’t keep his body from tensing under the lash of desire.
He slipped into the dark stables and found the stall housing his gelding, Doran. Hauling his ruined shirt over his head, he pulled off the wad of wool he’d pressed over the nick Dougal’s companion had opened in his side. He tossed it aside. She hadn’t seen that, thank God, or he might still be up in her room enduring an even more intimate touch.
He opened his leather satchel and withdrew one of his two remaining shirts, donned it, and settled down, his back to the stall door. From here he could see her lighted window. He would not sleep, because he had sworn to protect her, and nothing would keep him from fulfilling that pledge.
A dark shape crossed the lighted pane in her room. Kate.
He disdained the acceleration of his pulse, but he did not deny it; he’d had enough hairshirts to last a lifetime. Instead, he allowed her image to bloom unhindered in his mind’s eye, to study in reverie what he hadn’t permitted himself in actuality.
Time had pared away her dewy youth, revealing the strong yet delicate bones of a narrow face that angled more than curved. Mauve smudges rode beneath eyes as fine and dark as onyx. Only her mouth, plush and wounded, vulnerable and ripe, remained completely familiar. And why not? He’d mused on those soft, sweet lips through many a night and in many a terrible place.
He moved silently to the stable door, lifting his face to the icy rain, cooling the heated progress of his thoughts.
“I never seen a man so braw,” a feminine voice purred.
Kit looked over his shoulder at the girl standing in the far doorway. He’d scented her before he’d seen her, all earth and musk and want.
“They’re all talking aboot it. Aboot how ye caught up that dark lady and took her up the stairs to her room. They thought ye and her were”—she paused, grinning lasciviously—“keeping the night alive.”
“They were wrong.”
“I know.” She sidled closer and wet her lips with her tongue. “I dinna ken yer plaid. Where is it from?”
“Nowhere.”
She smiled pertly. “Where do you come from then? Somewhere far away, I’ll warrant.”
“What do you want, lass?” But he already knew: a few hours of forgetfulness or a coin to purchase liquor or just a night of excitement with a savage-looking Scot to alleviate boredom. The camp followers and even some of the officers’ wives had wanted the same thing. At night, in the dark, lines separating gentleman and commoner, peer and pauper, blurred. Want was want.
The girl had laughed at his question but didn’t answer it. “I seen yer kind now and agin, come down from the mountains. Half tame they be. Like you.” Her gaze slid appreciatively up his frame. “Mostly they go south and that’s the end of them. But sometimes, I seen ’em heading back to the mountains after the world’s hurt them some and pleasured them some. Then what happens to them, I’d like to know? Not fit fer this world anymore, but neither fit for the one they run from.”
“What, indeed?” he murmured.
“Ye speak a good sight better than any of them that I ever heard, I’ll grant, but even educated-sounding ye can’t hide what you are.”
“And what is that?”
“A Highlander,” she said, as if surprised he needed to ask. “An uncivilized”—she sashayed closer—“homeless”—she wet her lips again—“two-fisted blackguard.”
She rose on her tiptoes and swept her tongue up his throat to the cleft in his chin. “And that is just the sort of man I’ve a yen fer.”
When he did not react, her smile thinned. “Yer not in here wanting her?” she asked disbelievingly, jerking her head toward the tavern. “Yer wastin’ yer time. She’s above ye. Yer howlin’ at the moon.”
“I’m yer sort. I know how to please a man like you in ways a lady like that couldn’t even think up.”
He barely heard her; his gaze kept straying to Kate’s window. “Oh?”
She settled her arms about his neck and nipped his shoulder. He closed his eyes, and at once saw a fall of shimmering dark hair, irises as black as a tarn at midnight, and a soft, full mouth. His eyes snapped open. He’d lost his bleeding mind.
“Go back to the tavern.” He unclasped the girl’s arms, and she glared up at him.
“Yer a fool, turning down what’s offered free. Why?” she demanded,
He answered with a twisted smile, “It would appear I’m not done howling yet.”