He fell silent after that and would say no more.
FIVE
OVERNIGHTING IN LOWER PLACES THAN INNS, TAVERNS, AND HOSTELRIES
DUSK CAME, AND THE TEMPERATURE PLUNGED. Kate had no clothes appropriate for traveling in an open carriage, and her boots had been created in another life for a fashionable young wife to saunter along grassy garden paths, not over frost-rimed rock. She shut her eyes and willed herself into a light sleep, escaping the icy grip of dusk as best she could.
“Here we are.”
She came awake at once, lifting her head and peering about from under the hood. “Where? I don’t see anything,” she said, looking about for the lights that marked a village.
He pulled the horse to a halt and sprang lightly to the ground. In the gloaming, his features were obscured. He came round the side and without hesitation picked her up before she could react, set her down, and turned back to the carriage.
As her eyesight adjusted, she saw that they were standing among a cluster of crude stone shanties, their tiny windows gaping into black interiors and their doors ajar. The buildings had been abandoned.
“What is this place?” she asked.
MacNeill, busy unharnessing his gelding, shrugged. “Never had a name that I heard.” He motioned toward the nearest building. “That’ll do as good as any. Go in there.”
“In there?” She had expected to be overnighting at an inn or a stable, or at the very least, at some farm where they could purchase the use of a bed. It had never occurred to her that she would be alone at night in the middle of nowhere with Kit MacNeill. “Isn’t there a tavern or something nearby where we could stay?”
“Not for miles.”
“That’s all right. I don’t mind if it takes a bit longer. It’s a lovely night…”
His hands stilled on the harness and he turned his head, looking at her over his shoulder. She smiled tentatively.
“There’s no moon, and when I say miles, I mean miles, not a matter of another hour or two. The road is rough and going to get rougher before we crawl up onto the moors and I’ll not risk Doran’s footing to assuage your delicate sensibilities.” His tone brooked no argument. “So, Mrs. Blackburn, I suggest you pick your accommodation.”
“I see. Well, if it’s a matter of safeguarding your horse’s health, of course, we must stay,” she said with forced brightness and headed into the nearest hovel.
And it was a hovel.
The door was half off the hinges and tilted tipsily on the frame. A tattered rag curtain covered a tiny opening, and the dirt floor within was sloped toward a low flat stone hearth beneath a rude chimney. Other than a bit of broken crockery, it was empty.
What was she supposed to do? There was no furniture. She hovered indecisively near the door, miserable, cold, and frightened.
“Step aside.” She jumped at the sound of his voice so close behind her, but he affected not to notice, edging past with an armful of kindling. He dumped the wood on the hearth and reached into his jacket, pulling out a tinder box which he used to light a fire. He stood up. “I’ll get your trunk.”
“Thank you.”
He disappeared, returning within a few minutes with her luggage and the basket from the White Rose. He sat down on the edge of the hearth and fed the fire a few sticks of wood before rummaging into the basket and taking out the jug of ale.
Dear God, please do not let him get drunk. I don’t know what I’ll do if he gets drunk. She edged closer to the door, preparing to bolt. But to where?
He uncorked the jug with his teeth and spat the top onto the hearth, tipping the crock back against his forearm and lifting the opening to his lips. Then he tipped his head back and poured the beer down his throat for, what seemed to Kate, a great long while. Finally he lowered the jug, wiped his mouth against his sleeve, and held it out to her. “Here. It’ll warm you better than water, not as much as brandy.”
She didn’t want the raw ale, but the alternative, to leave it all for him, seemed unwise. Hesitantly, she accepted the jug. His eyes glittered in the dancing fire-light. “Do you have a drinking utensil of any type?”
He regarded her flatly. “Aye. It’s called a mouth. I suggest you use it.”
“I see.”
He broke off a chunk of bread, watching her as she tried to emulate his movements, but the jug was heavy, and though she tried, as he had, to brace its weight against the back of her forearm, it slipped as she hefted it, spilling ale down her bodice. “Damn!”
His brow flew up at her language. She didn’t care. She was now wet and sticky as well as cold. The road that had seemed endless to her today promised to be eternal tomorrow, she hadn’t a proper bed to sleep in, and she was alone with a tall, rough-looking Highlander who, for all she knew, had committed untold atrocities against any number of women. And worse, she was here of her own volition. She was frankly afraid, and Kate Blackburn, ever since she’d been a child, met her fear with anger. Now was no exception.
“Damn, I say! How the am I to drink out of this… thing?” she demanded. “Why the devil don’t you own a cup, or is that somehow contrary to your Highlander’s code of self-abnegation? Not everything has to be a trial, you know. A few utensils wouldn’t unman you! Or un-Scot you, should you be unable to differentiate between the two!”
He unfolded with quick, lethal grace and in a single stride stood before her, looking down into her upturned face. His eyes sparked with hot-cold lights. His smile was not pleasant. Still, somehow she kept her chin up, her gaze challenging his.
“Well now, lass. I can only assure you of my manliness, unless you’d prefer a demonstration?” he purred. She flushed. His gaze slid to her mouth. It took all her restraint not to bite her lips to keep them from trembling. “As to a drinking utensil… You can drink from my mouth, if you’d like. Because that’s the only other vessel here. And I promise I won’t find it a trial.”
She gasped. Her gaze plummeted from his and scorching heat swept up her throat and covered her face.
“No?” he asked. Abruptly the lambent sensual quality disappeared from his expression. “Then get some sleep, Mrs. Blackburn,” he said flatly. “Tomorrow we have some real driving to do, and I don’t trust the weather to hold.” He turned back toward the hearth, pausing to look at her over his shoulder. “And do not bait a man unless you’re willing to pay the price of the sport.”
Yes. She would remember that. To her grave.
With trembling fingers, she unlatched the trunk, looking for something to don that would provide added warmth. There was nothing. The dresses she’d had remade from her mother’s once fashionable gowns were made of silk and muslin, as sheer and delicate as moth wings. She took a deep breath. She supposed he meant for her to sleep on the ground.
“Mrs. Blackburn.”
She looked around. MacNeill stood over his plaid, neatly folded at his feet into some semblance of a bedsheet.
“You can sleep here. I am going to see to Doran and find some more wood. If you’re wise, you’ll eat and go to sleep.”
He didn’t wait for her answer, but before he stepped out into the night he said, “You have nothing to fear from me, lass.” Then added so softly she might have imagined it, “The moon doesn’t fear the wolf’s howls. Hell. She doesn’t even know he’s howling.”
“Time to rise, Mrs. Blackburn.”
Kate rolled over and with great effort kept from moaning. She peeked out of one eye. It was still dark. “We should wait until it’s lighter,” she muttered. “Your horse’s welfare and all…”
“It’s lighter outside, and there’s a storm bearing down on us from the north. I don’t want to be on the moors when it overtakes us. We’ll start now.”
She didn’t protest. Late last night she had promised herself not to give in to any more low impulses. She was a lady. She may have momentarily forgotten that, but she wouldn’t again. She got up stiffly, noting that the embers had already been doused and her trunk already removed.
He’d let her sleep as long as possible.
“Here,” he said, handing her a short cylindrical object. “It’s a sort of mountain tea. Drink up, and we’ll eat on the road.”
She accepted it in surprise, gratefully cupping the warm metal between her cool palms. “But where did you find a vessel?”
“It’s the cap off the telescope in your trunk. I saw it when I shut the lid.” He’d actually given credence to her snappish demands? She stared at him, mystified by such unexpected gallantry.
“I wasn’t going through your things, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said wryly. “As a Scot, I’d consider it unmanly.”
“Of course not.” She flushed and was amazed by the smile that flickered across his face. She drank the bitter, hot liquid, uncertain whether he was teasing or not.
She followed him outside, tucking the empty brass cap in her pocket and climbing into the carriage without waiting for his aid. She would prove to him that she wasn’t a complete fribble of femininity.
If he was impressed, he didn’t show it. He made some adjustments to Doran’s harness and sprang into the seat beside her, picking up the reins and snapping them sharply across the gelding’s rump.
They did not eat either soon or later. Within a few miles of the abandoned village they forded a fastmoving stream. The carriage’s rear wheel caught on a rock hidden in the bottom, and the entire vehicle rose against the current, tilting sharply and threatening to spill them into the icy water. MacNeill grabbed her around the waist and pitched them both toward the rising side, shouting at Doran, who strained forward against the current and finally pulled the carriage clear.
They dropped with a splash that sent their basket of food tumbling into the water, upending as it spun into the current. Only the fact that MacNeill’s saddle and her trunk had been strapped to the back had saved them from a similar fate. Not that that proved much comfort hours later as Kate sat huddled on the hard plank seat, her raw chin burrowed in the folds of the cape, her arms wrapped tightly beneath, her stomach growling insistently.
Near noon, they crested a low hill that marked the entrance to the high, desolate landscape of the moors. The wind howled down upon them like a beast that had been lying in wait. The phaeton shook and rocked with every blast of wind, snatching the breath from Kate’s lungs. Icy fingers stabbed through her cloak, and the air frosted in her nostril. She clenched her teeth together to keep them from chattering.
She could not remember ever being so cold.
She squinted through the buffeting winds. Dull mustard-colored gorse and dank green bracken shifted and whirled, undulating across the endless horizon. A thin, ox-blood colored line of clouds separated the earth from a gunmetal gray sky. The storm that had assailed them two nights ago had regrouped for another attack.
The thought of being out here when it broke sent Kate’s spirits plummeting. She didn’t say anything to MacNeill, though. What was there to say? There was nothing to do but drive until they reached the other side of this emptiness. Complaints would be useless, or worse, received with scorn. He seemed impervious to the cold, as if the elements had long ago ceased to affect him.
She needed only to endure. And at that, she’d had nearly three years of practice.
SIX
FASHION OR HEALTH? A CHOICE IMPOSED BY ECONOMIC NECESSITY
KATE SLUMPED AGAINST KIT and didn’t jerk away. That alone told him something was wrong. The girl—for all her widowhood implied, there was something heart-achingly young about her—was nothing if not proper.
He pulled Doran to a halt, and she drooped forward and would have pitched to the floor if he hadn’t caught her. He pulled her onto his lap, looking down at her face. Her eyelids were as white as alabaster, tinged with blue, and her lips were colorless. She’d fainted.
“Mrs. Blackburn!”
He shook her gently, and her eyelids fluttered open. “Have we made it across? Is it over?”
“Not yet.” Damn. They still had hours to go before making it out of the moors. He scanned the horizon, looking for a familiar landmark. A thin, freezing rain had begun to fall, driven sideways by a blasting wind. The tattered hood was no protection. He was her only protection. He gathered her nearer, looking about. There had to be something that would offer shelter: A croft, even an outcropping of stone, any place—
He saw it then, some distance away, like a ghost ship adrift in an uncharted sea of mist. His heart thundered in recognition. He hadn’t realized they were so close to the castle.
He snapped the reins over Doran’s back, pulling the carriage around and heading south. It looked to be about a mile away.
A mile, give or take a lifetime.
“Whose is it, do you think?” Dand asked, his dark eyes narrowed thoughtfully on the hulking ruin.
“Was,” Ramsey said, shrugging in disdain. “Whose ever it was, it belongs to the moor now.”
“I heard Father Abbot say it belonged to one of the lairds that fought in the Forty-five,” Douglas said. “A great warrior chief.”
“A greater fool if he fought against the throne at Culloden Moor,” Ramsey said.
“All great warriors are fools,” Dand answered.
The Castle. Kit had never heard it referred to by any other name. None of them had. Its ragged outline rose starkly against the sky like an artist’s rendition of a witch’s tower. Most castles sat atop rocky plateaus or cliffs; some squatted in thick forest or at the branching of a river. For whatever reason, hubris or folly, the builder of this castle had decided to make the moors the castle’s guardian.
Kit pulled Doran to a halt before the huge gap that had once held massive doors, conscious only of Kate’s light, chill body in his arm and the need to warm her. He lifted her carefully and climbed the stairs into the castle. He carried her down the long empty corridor, heedless of the wind muttering in the exposed rafters, his boot heels muffled by the rotting leaves of more than fifty autumns that carpeted the cracked and heaving floor.
“Where are we?” Kate murmured. Her eyes were still closed, but a frown marked twin lines between her brows.
“Rest.”
At the end of the hall, he descended a short flight of stairs, emerging into a subterranean kitchen where, high in an exterior corner, a smoke hole allowed in the afternoon’s pallid light. The chimneys in the other rooms had long since been clogged with debris. This would be the only place a fire could burn safely.
He knelt and eased Kate down, spread his plaid on the floor, and shifted her atop it before tucking the wool blanket about her. He straightened. “I’ll build a fire.”
Her eyes flickered open. “Thank you.”
She would probably have thanked the devil for opening the gates of hell for her. Aristocrats. Such bloody good manners. Except for last night when fear had unleashed an unexpected and impressive temper from her.
He searched the room for something with which to make a fire and gathered up what bits he could find.
“What is this place?” he heard Kate ask.
“An old rubble pile. Once was a castle.”
“How did you know it was here?”
“I came here when I was a boy. We used to sneak out of the dormitory and spend the night and be back by matins.”
“Matins? You were at a monastery?”
“An abbey. St. Bride’s.”
“You trained to be a monk?” Even weak as her voice was, he could hear her amazement.
“No.”
“Oh.” She suddenly pushed herself up on her elbows. “If you could come here as a boy, this abbey must be nearby then,” she said.
He struck a spark into a pile of shavings. “Two hours as the crow flies, but Doran is no crow. It would take us five hours or more following the roads, and the storm has come in full now. We can’t go until the weather breaks.”
“Oh.”
He blew on the little ember, and the kindling burst into flame. Quickly, he fed the fire until he had a proper blaze going, then he returned to where Kate lay. Her eyes had fallen shut while he’d tended the fire, and thinking she’d fallen asleep, he reached down to take the damp cloak from around her.
As soon as he touched her, her eyes snapped open and she bolted upright, scuttling backward on her heels as her hands clutched the cloak.
“I assure you, I am not going to ravage you.” He sat back on his heels. “Not only is it unmanly, and thus un-Scotslike, it’s too bloody cold.”
That won an unwilling smile from her.
She wouldn’t have looked so comforted had she known it for the lie it was. She had no idea how appealing she looked, lying on his pooled plaid, her hair a witchy tumble about her face, her eyes dark and apprehensive. He was the worst sort of dog, panting after a woman who could barely hold her head up. But he did.
“Your cloak is wet,” he said gruffly, holding out his hand. “Take it off, and I’ll hang it near the fire.”
Her gaze fixed on his face, she untied the laces at her throat. The cape slipped from her shoulder. When he saw her dress, he swore under his breath. She had on the same thin cotton gown she’d worn yesterday. No wonder she was freezing.
Without waiting for her permission he pulled off his jacket and wrapped it around her. She didn’t protest, and that sent unfamiliar ripples of alarm racing through him. How could he have failed to notice she wasn’t dressed for such a journey as they’d undertaken?
Easily. He’d assumed she would be well insulated because she was traveling in Scotland in November. He hadn’t considered that, never having traveled in Scotland in November, she would not know what was required. But being a lady, she had dressed to travel in the style in which a lady travels.
“Why would anyone risk her health for fashion’s sake, when—”
“I hate to contradict you, MacNeill!” Kate interrupted with a faint but triumphant smile. “But my gown isn’t a fashionable choice; It’s my only choice.”
“Don’t smile at me,” he said roughly. “Do you not understand? I may have killed you with my ignorance!”
Her eyes rounded in surprise and then softened, dealing a far more telling blow to him than her scorn or accusation ever could have done. “Well, if this is the afterlife, MacNeill, there’s a priest in York who has a fair bit of explaining to do. Don’t look like that. I just need to warm up a bit and—” She broke off, coloring so that Kit knew she had been about to request something to eat. There was nothing. Not yet.
He straightened. “I’m going to see to Doran and then have a look about. There used to be rabbits aplenty on the moors.” He didn’t tell her that the rabbits, being far more sensible than their two-legged counterparts, burrowed deep during storms. But he would do everything in his power to find some food.
“Oh.”
“You’ll be fine here.”
“I know.”
“The hearth is deep enough that no sparks will fly out, and I’ll be back before the embers die. You rest.”
“Of course.
If he stayed longer, he wouldn’t leave, and she needed food, fresh water at the least. He looked down at her. She’d shut her eyes and was already mostly asleep. She would be fine here. No one came to the castle. No one ever had.
He found Doran where he’d left him, fidgeting nervously in his traces as the wind buffeted the carriage from side to side. He unhitched and hobbled him, leading him to the ruined side of the castle where a creek overflowed its banks, and let him go.
Then, after loading and priming his rifle, he headed out into the storm.