Healing the Highlander (14 page)

The woman marched closer, thrusting out her chin in what felt to Leah a most belligerent manner. She might have to reconsider her initial genial thoughts about this woman.

"It is," Sallie answered. "Leah, this is my husband's mother, Anabella. Anabella, my new sister, Leah."

Anabella MacPherson made a great show of circling Leah, peering down her nose like someone inspecting market goods gone bad a day or two past.

"You dinna have the look of anyone I ken," she huffed, circling one more time. "Did you bring any animals with you?"

Animals? Leah looked from Anabella to Sallie, who shrugged her shoulders as if the whole conversation had gone beyond anyone's ability to control. "Only the horse I rode in on."

"Hmmmm ..." The older woman continued to study her as if she were examining some new species of insect until at last she stepped back and folded her ha
nds at her waist. "Well, she din
na have the look of any of yer departed relatives, nor does she come with a pack of nasty beasties determined to dirty our home. This one will do, I suppose."

"Och, well, thank you for that blessing, Mother MacPherson," Sallie responded, sarcasm dripping in her tone. "I'm sure Drew will be pleased to hear he car keep her now that she's passed yer muster."

"Dinna you take that tone with me, missy." Anabella squared her shoulders, looking deeply offended. A moment later she turned her gaze back on Leah. "And where is it you come from? Who are yer people? How did you come to wed Andrew when we've none of us heard a word about you before?"

"Exactly the things I was trying to ask when you interrupted us with yer nonsense about animals and dead women."

The two women glared at each other briefly and then turned the full force of their stares on Leah.

"Well?" Sallie encouraged. "Tell us everything. How did you meet Drew? When?"

"Your brother is a good man." Not at all what the women had asked, she knew.

"We've neither of us questioned the lad's virtue. Now, speak up, lass, we've no all night to spend on this."

Anabella's rebuke left no doubt in Leah's mind that her time for avoiding conversation was at an end.

"Tell us everything," Sallie encouraged. "We're dying to hear it all."

"I hardly know where to start." Leah paused, once again struggling to find something appropriately vague to say.

"At the beginning, woman! As Sallie says, we want to hear it all."

"Are you badgering my bride, Sallie?" Drew stepped into the room, the smallest of his sister's boys in his arms, the older two trailing along behind. "Leave her be 'til she's had a wee rest, aye? Here." He handed the giggling child over to Sallie. "This, I believe, belongs to you."

Sallie took her son and placed him on his feet with a gentle shove forward toward his brothers.

"You had to ken we'd be wanting to hear all about how you met. It's no like you've said a single word about her to give us any hint before showing up here, wife in tow."

"No like you said a single word," Anabella echoed.

"I'm well aware of what I have and have no said with regard to Leah. There'll be plenty of time for yer questions later. For now, we've had a hard day's journey and would appreciate the opportunity to refresh ourselves before we have to face yer interrogation on the morrow." Drew stepped between the two women, placing a hand on each of their backs, urging them toward the door. "Besides, Ran could use yer help with Sir Moreland, I'm sure."

"Sir Moreland? We've a knight in the hall? You've brought a knight to visit?" Anabella asked, patting her hair with a fluttering hand as she hurried ahead "Ranald kens nothing about the etiquette of welcoming high-born strangers properly, Sallie. He'll be wanting our assistance, no doubt."

"That he will," Drew answered, the grin breaking over his face in total disagreement with his serious tone

"We're no done with this," his sister chided as she allowed him to push her into the hallway.

"I'm sure we're no," he agreed, shutting the door and turning to lean his back against it. "You ken now why I felt the need to warn you about my family?"

She did indeed.

"I have no idea how to answer their questions. As soon as they began to ask, I realized I don't know enough about you not to trip myself up in any story I might invent."

He shook his head as if it was of little importance. "Leave that to me. We've bigger concerns at the moment."

"Like what?" She could hardly imagine anything more pressing than the two women he'd just evicted from their chamber.

"For one thing, Moreland has asked Ran's permission to camp his men here for a while."

Not good. Not good at all.

The longer she was around Moreland, the more likely she felt it was he might discover the truth of her identity. Besides, his actions made no sense to her at all. If he were on some great quest to track down rebels, why on earth would he delay his men by staying here?

"A while," she repeated. "How long do you suppose that is,- exactly? And if he's already assured himself the men he seeks aren't here, why would he want to stay here and delay his quest?"

"I canna say for fact, but my gut tells me he's staying because of you."

"Me?" she squeaked.

That couldn't be a good thing. Drew himself admitted it was only conjecture. But if he were right...

"Why would he do that?" She asked the question, though she feared she already knew the answer.

She hadn't managed to convince him she wasn't the woman he sought.

"An excellent question, indeed. But only one of many questions I'm pondering this day." He walked past her and sat on the edge of the enormous bed, patting a spot beside him in invitation. "Perhaps you'd like to have a seat."

Without a doubt she'd like that. But she wasn't going to.

Unbidden, the memory of his lips on hers as they'd knelt next to the loch crept into her thoughts and heat flamed across her face.

Not next to him. And not on a bed. That wouldn't be proper. Not proper and certainly not prudent. Not at all. She'd already done an excellent job of proving just how little self-control she had around the man.

Instead she sank to the floor in front of the fireplace, holding out her hands as if she wanted to warm them. What she really wanted was to stop them from shaking, but since that didn't seem like something she could change at the moment she dropped them to her lap and clasped them tightly together.

"The time has come and passed for us to keep secrets from each other. I need yer honesty now, Leah."

"Honesty?" Her voice cracked on the word, giving her away as surely as if she'd had a giant neon liar tattooed on her forehead.

"I ken what you are," he said, his voice little more than a rough whisper, his eyes boring into her as if he could read the secrets in her soul.

How had he figured out she was the runaway Moreland hunted? If he turned her over to the knight now, all would be lost. She'd have failed the MacQuarries when they needed her the most. Please not now. Not when she was so close to reaching the people who would help her. Could help her. Might help her.

Might toss her out on her butt.

The doubts zinged around inside her head like that little orb of metal in the pinball machines she used to love, each new thought stoking her panic.

"It's not what you think."

"No? Then best you tell me what it is I should think, eh?" He got up off the bed and walked to where she sat, dropping down at her side, facing her, his body so close she could feel the heat rolling off his skin.

Or was that simply the fire behind her?

She couldn't be sure of that any more than she could drag her eyes from his.

"Okay. You're right. No more secrets. I admit it. I'm the one Moreland is hunting for. But it's not as though my family wanted me to marry. I told you about my uncle coming back from England and taking over my grandparents' home, tossing my grandfather into the tower under lock and guard." She stopped to take a breath, puzzled by his look of confusion. "My grandparents support my decision not to wed. It's Richard who arranged this marriage to seal some alliance with Lord Moreland. He wants me out of the way because my grandfather intended that I should be heir to MacQuarrie Keep, not him."

Confusion hardened into anger on Drew's face and she fought the need to put distance between the two of them. What had he expected her to tell him? He'd said he already knew.

"I dinna care about Moreland or the lord he serves. That yer the one he seeks was no really in question to me from the moment he described his quest and spoke of yer matching the description of the woman he sought. From the way he watches yer every move, I've little doubt that he suspects you to be the one he's after, as well. I'm thinking that's why he's arranged to stay on here. No." He leaned closer, his voice taking on the same intensity reflected in his eyes as he continued. "I want yer honesty about this." He turned his arm toward her, pulling the torn cloth from the spot on his bicep that had borne the cut of the blackthorn hours earlier.

The cut that even now stung her own flesh.

"Oh, crapola."

How could she have allowed this to happen in the first place? She was always so careful never to touch any wound, never to lay her hands on any person with an illness or an injury. Always.

Not always. Proof of that confronted her now.

When his lips had touched hers, strong and warm, she'd lost the ability to clearly think of anything. She

hadn't even tried to think . . . just allowed herself to be swallowed up by the feel of him. It was a feeling so all-consuming, so completely foreign to her, she had nothing for comparison.

"That wasn't supposed to happen." Even to her ears her words sounded ridiculously lame.

"I'm sure it wasn't. But it did. My skin is as unmarked as the day I was born. How? How did you do it?"

He was so close. Her heart raced and it felt as though she couldn't pull enough air into her lungs to feed her body the oxygen she needed.

"I don't know how. It's like a curse I can't control." To her horror, her throat tightened and her eyes prickled with the threat of oncoming tears. She held her breath, opening her eyes as wide as possible but the urge was too strong to deny.

It was so ridiculous to allow him to get to her like this. There was no reason for it. No reason at all. So what if he'd seen something she couldn't explain.

Wouldn't explain.

Because explaining would require that she admit to the horrible creature that lurked in her ancestry and that felt too much like defeat after all these years of striving to be nothing more than a regular Mortal. After all she'd gone through, all she'd done to deny her heritage, this was beyond unfair.

She closed her eyes and dropped her head, hoping to hide the tears that filled her eyes.

But he was having none of it.

With a finger under her chin, he gently lifted her face, looking directly into her eyes.

"No tears, dearling. Dinna do this. I dinna mean for you to weep." He lifted his hands to cup her face, gently wiping one escaping tear from her cheek. "I want only yer honesty."

Dearling. The endearment gripped her heart, squeezing, building the pressure behind her eyes. What on earth was wrong with her? It meant nothing. It was just a word. Likely he'd simply gotten so used to their charade that he didn't even realize what he'd called her.

Her breath hitched in her chest, forcing a hated little hiccup of a sob out against her will.

"Ah, for the love of all the saints," he grumbled, crushing her to his chest, awkwardly patting her back as the unwelcome noises continued to bubble up unbidden.

"I don't do this," she hiccupped into his shoulder, too far gone to stop herself now. "I don't ever do this. Everything has just been so horrible. That hateful Dick showing up and Grandpa Hugh out in the tower, cold and sick and maybe dying, and that awful boat and then thinking I was going to die in that stupid river and then Moreland and, and I'm so tired and my legs hurt and, and ..." She stopped, trying to catch her breath, fighting to stop the sobs before they consumed her completely.

He murmured to her, soft, unintelligible words of comfort, his fingers combing through her hair as he held her close.

She had been absolutely honest when she'd told those two women that he was a good man. A kind man.

And that kindness pushed her completely over the edge. Her emotions demanded their release, and, as

though a dam were bursting in her soul, she utterly, completely surrendered herself to the tears.

What had he done? Leah lay against him, so delicate, so defenseless in his arms, her body shaking with great heaving sobs.

Her despair completely his responsibility.

When he'd made his way up to their room, his nephews playing and laughing at his feet, he'd thought only to confront her with what had happened at the loch this afternoon. In her hands lay the gift, the magic he'd scoured the land in search of all these years. He wanted to know only how she'd managed to heal his wound. More to the point, he wanted to know if she could heal the rest of his body.