Seduced by a Highlander (18 page)

“Look!” He pointed to the welts searing his skin. “And I should believe ye mean me nae harm?”

Patrick appeared at the door with John. Tamas was nowhere in sight. “Who untied him?”

“I did!” Tristan shot at him. “I’m gettin’ the hell oot of here. Is my horse still alive?” He turned to scorch Isobel with his blackest look. “Or was that him ye fed to me when ye tried to kill me?”

“What are ye talking about, MacGregor?” Patrick demanded from the door. Tristan was quick to note Cameron passing him the blade.

“I’ll be happy to tell ye, Fergusson.” He wrapped his plaid around his waist and pulled himself to his feet, clinging to the bottom post for support. “I was a fool to come here. A fool to think I could change anything. I’m goin’ home.”

“Ye cannot!” Isobel took a step into the room. Patrick stopped her. “Ye cannot leave with yer wounds still raw. The moment yer father sees them he will come after us.”

Hell, he’d had enough of listening to how terrible his father was. “Ye call my kin barbaric, Miss Fergusson, but so far, ’tis I who have been shot, not once but twice,
knocked out cold by a flying rock and God knows what else, poisoned, and attacked by an army of hornets led by an unholy hellion who makes my faither look tame! ’Tis ye who willna’ let go of the past.”

“We have put it aside,” Patrick argued. “No one tried to poison ye. I can assure ye of that.”

“He speaks of the brew,” Isobel drawled, casting Tristan a look that said he was the biggest dimwit in Scotland. “It was nothing more harmful than whisky in yer stew, MacGregor.”

Tristan stared at her for a moment, then blinked. “Ye expect me to believe that whisky did this to me?”

“Aye, it was Patrick’s own concoction, but it was a wee bit too potent to sell. It likely had an even stronger effect on ye since ye do not partake often.”

Tristan saw the shadow of a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. He wanted to strangle her. She knew perfectly well the effect drinking such a potent brew would have on him. He had thought he could trust her. He was wrong. Pity. She possessed a streak in her as wicked as her brothers’. She had no idea whom she was dealing with. None of them did.

“Now, Mister MacGregor,” she said, that mocking lilt still lacing her voice, “if ye would be so kind as to sit back down and let me tend to yer wounds—”

He laughed, draping the loose end of his plaid over his shoulder. “Ye’ll no’ be touchin’ me again, but ye can saddle my horse and bring me the rest of my clothes.” He realized his belt was also missing and leaned backward over the bed to reach for the rope. His injured leg gave out beneath him and he went down like a felled tree.

Much to the horror of the others, all huddled in the doorway, John broke free and rushed to his aid.

“John, ye fool, get back here!” Patrick commanded, lifting Tristan’s sword over his shoulder, ready to strike—or to bat something unseen out of his way.

“Och, fer hell’s sake.” From the floor, Tristan flung him an exasperated look. “Put doun my damned sword, will ye? I’m no’ goin’ to hurt the lad.”

Cameron went to him next and tucked his hands under Tristan’s arms to aid him back to the bed. The moment they sat him down, he stood up again, leaning this time, on John’s shoulder. “I’ve been abed long enough,” he said, answering the worry in Isobel’s eyes. “To appease ye, I’ll wait a few more days before returnin’ home. But unless ye intend to attempt tying me doun again, I prefer to be on my feet.”

“But yer leg—”

“My leg is healin’ nicely. ’Tis just a wee bit stiff. If ye’ll hand me back my sword, I can use it to aid my walkin’.”

“No,” Patrick said immediately. “Ye will not be getting it back. I will not have an armed MacGregor traipsing through my home.”

Tristan’s eyes darkened on him. “Verra well, a walkin’ stick then. Ye have my word no’ to bash in anyone’s skull while I recover.”

“John, get him a stick,” Isobel said, then turned to Patrick. “It is his tongue that requires our vigilance.”

Tristan flicked his gaze to hers and smiled coolly. She responded by fisting her hands at her sides and looking away.

“I do not wish to tend to him any longer,” she ground out, a bit shakily, to Tristan’s satisfaction. “If he can tend to himself, then let him.” She wheeled on her heel, slapping her long braid against Patrick’s chest, and left the doorway.

“Is she always so irritable?” Tristan asked, turning to Cameron.

Without giving him an answer, Cam left his side and followed his sister out of the room. Left alone with Patrick, Tristan sighed. “Yer kin have nothin’ to fear from me. Ye have my word. My anger has subsided.”

“I want to believe ye, but since I do not know ye, yer word means little to me.”

Feeling a little more like himself than he had in a sennight, Tristan’s mouth broke into a pleasant grin. “Ye’ll just have to get to know me then.”

Patrick looked him over, his expression tentative. He said nothing but motioned for Tristan to follow him after John returned with a long branch to help him walk.

“Fergusson,” Tristan said as they left the room, “what in blazes did ye put in that brew? I thought fer certain I was dyin’. But after the effect wears off…” He rolled his injured shoulder and smiled to himself. “… I must admit I feel stronger than I have in months.”

Patrick didn’t look too happy to hear that as he paused at the top of the stairs. “Where would ye like to go first? I have much work to do.”

“Will ye be followin’ me, then?”

“Aye,” Patrick told him with a look in his eyes that said he would not be swayed. “I will.”

Tristan’s mouth quirked at the corners. “All right, then. To the privy.”

I
n comparison to Camlochlin’s grand halls and fortified walls, the Fergussons’ manor house was just large enough to fit the seven of them in comfort. But to Tristan, it seemed larger on the inside. He wasn’t certain if it was the many clear-glassed windows spilling sunshine into every nook or something else entirely that infused the house with a feeling of warmth and intimacy. Something as small as linens on the tables and potted flowers decorating the windowsills. Such personal details were not found in a castle.

Patrick escorted him to the kitchen after he insisted on watching his meal being prepared. “Poison or brew,” he told Isobel’s brother, “I never want to feel the torment I felt upon waking from my death sleep again.”

And it was partially true. The other part was that the heavenly aroma of roasting fowl and freshly baked bread filling the house tempted him to risk it.

Isobel looked up from chopping a clump of herbs and blew a bronze tendril away from her cheek. “Yer meals will be ready shortly. Patrick, why do ye not show Mister
MacGregor to the stable so he can see that his horse was not part of what he left on the floor above stairs.”

Tristan felt the barb pierce his flesh along with the other dozen inflicted by hornets. He smiled, remembering one of the reasons he came here.

“I’ll no’ be leavin’, Miss Fergusson; I want to watch ye.”

Her chopping knife missed her fingertips by a hair. Her eyes darted to Patrick.

“Fergive me if I dinna’ trust ye alone with my food.”

She breathed an almost audible sigh of relief and shrugged her shoulders at him. “As I told ye at Whitehall, ye will never gain mine.”

“Aye, I remember,” Tristan replied, doing his part to convince Patrick that she had not betrayed her kin’s cause in his absence. “And now I understand the hatred between us better.”

She stopped chopping and looked at him while he picked a small jar off one of the many shelves lining the kitchen walls and uncorked it.

“So, ye admit ye hate me then? Ye hate us?” she added, remembering that they were not alone.

Tristan looked up from sniffing the contents of the jar and offered her a polite smile. “ ’Tis as ye told me in England, we are enemies. I wish ’twas no’ so, but ye have helped me to accept it.”

“Good. I am happy to have helped.” She didn’t look happy about it. In fact, she looked like she wanted to fling her knife at him.

They both turned to Patrick when he began to pace in front of the doorway. “Where is Cam? I do not have the time to sit idly while ye both haggle over a dead cause. I must finish curing the grass for hay. Lachlan!” he called
into the next room when the front door opened. “Bring Cam in here to guard our guest.” He glanced at Tristan with a rueful quirk of his mouth. “Forgive me if I do not trust ye alone and unbound with my sister.”

“Of course.” Tristan accepted the check with a slight bow and a swift glance at the alluring curve of Isobel’s backside as she moved toward the trivet. Patrick would be a fool if he trusted any man alone with her—and flicking his gaze back to Isobel’s eldest brother, Tristan already knew Patrick was no fool. As for the rest of them, so far the odds were not stacked in their favor.

“Ye keep many herbs.”

“Say again?” Patrick turned to him briefly, then realized to whom Tristan was speaking and went back to waiting for Cameron.

“Ye’re a healer,” Tristan continued, keeping his eyes on Isobel as she finally turned from her work.

“I thought that was quite obvious already.” She gave him a good looking over while she wiped her hands in her apron. “Ye are up and about, are ye not?”

“I am,” he agreed, stretching out his arms and grinning down at himself. When he lifted his gaze to her, she lifted hers from the same view. “Ye have my thanks fer puttin’ me back together so well.”

She looked as if she might blush, but the flash of fire in her eyes proved that it was her temper coloring her cheeks and not some coy trick to enchant him. “I had no choice. I was not about to let one of ye die on our land.”

Tristan knew he should feel spurned by her resolve to reject him, but he couldn’t help wondering if she, too, felt the crackle in the air around them. It made his skin feel raw, his blood, hot.

He had to win her.

Cameron appeared at the door and switched places with Patrick. He acknowledged Isobel beneath a cascade of cinnamon lashes but turned away from Tristan’s greeting.

Resolved once again to his original cause, Tristan knew he had to win them all.

Well, mayhap not all, he corrected a short time later when supper was ready and Tamas sauntered into the kitchen to have his plate filled.

After exchanging their darkest glances, the runt looked to where Tristan was pointing to the welts on his chest and shrugged. “Ye are fortunate to have been on the top landing, else ye might have found a boar in yer bed when ye awoke.”

“And ye’re fortunate that I’ve a merciful heart,” Tristan countered, a bit taken aback by the boy’s blunt boldness. “Else ye might find poison oak in yers.”

Tamas narrowed his eyes on him as if he were trying to decide if Tristan was jesting or not.

Someone snickered beside him, and Tristan turned to look down at the lad who had fetched his walking stick. John, he was called. Upon closer inspection, Tristan noticed the shadow of a knot on his forehead about the same size as the one he himself sported.

Tristan winked at him. “There are a number of ways to make a younger brother pay fer his foolishness.”

John’s smile was less hesitant than that of any of his siblings. “D’ye have one of yer own then?”

“I do,” Tristan told him. “He gave me this in practice.” He held out his forearm for John to see the thin scar that began at his elbow and ended halfway to his wrist.

“What did ye do to him fer it?”

“Mister MacGregor!” Isobel scolded before Tristan
could reply. “Retaliation might be a part of yer upbringing, but we do not encourage it in this house.”

Tristan looked up from John’s wide eyes and set his gaze directly on hers. As much as he delighted in her determination to hate him, it was time she admitted to a basic truth. “Then ye might consider settin’ a better example yerself, Miss Fergusson.”

Her eyes blazed, her lips went taut, and her hands twisted at her apron until Tristan was certain he heard it tear. He couldn’t help smiling, watching her struggle to form a rebuttal. It was difficult to deny that they were not so different.

“Here.” She shoved a plate under his nose and nearly lost his interest when the heavenly aroma of his supper filled his lungs. “Ye can eat outdoors,” she told him as he opened his eyes. “I kept ye alive. I do not have to tolerate yer company.”