Seduced by a Highlander (22 page)

“And why is her butterbur more precious than any of the others?”

“It helps her breathe in the winter.”

Lachlan elbowed his brother in the ribs, which Tristan deemed unfair, since Lachlan was twice John’s size, with shoulders as wide as those of any Highlander bred at Camlochlin. He was about to tell him so when he looked past the boys and saw Isobel and her youngest hellion of a brother exit the house and begin walking in his direction.

In her arms, she carried the clothes she’d promised earlier. Briefly, Tristan eyed the boots swinging from Tamas’s fingers, then returned his gaze to her. He studied
her mouth, the healthy flush about her cheeks that made her eyes appear larger, greener. It could not be true that this gloriously strong-willed lass had a breathing condition. Was it serious? Why the hell was she doing so much labor if it was?
No one else is here to do it for her,
he answered his own question, and vowed to do something about it.

When she reached him, Tristan was very pleasantly surprised to see the same smile she had worn the day he’d offered to help her with Alex.

“Truly, Mister MacGregor, ye do not have to tend to our work. We are used to—”

“Call me Tristan, please,” he said, sticking the fork into the ground and leaning on it. “And I want to help.”

“Thank ye then,” she conceded, dropping her gaze when she saw Lachlan staring at her to Tristan’s right. “Here are yer clothes.” She pushed them at him. “I replaced yer torn boots with Alex’s. They might be a bit snug, since ye are taller than he is.” She lifted her gaze to glance at her brothers and then whirled on her heel and marched toward the fields where Patrick and Cameron were working.

Tristan watched her go for a moment, then accepted the boots Tamas shoved at him. He stepped in front of him when Tamas turned to follow his sister.

“Will ye hold these fer me?” Without giving Tamas a chance to decline, Tristan handed him his shirt and breeches. He smiled at the miscreant while he turned each boot upside down and shook the rocks from them.

“I expected worse. This was disappointin’.”

Tamas smiled right back at him, dropped Tristan’s clothes on the ground, and popped his tongue out at him as he stepped on them.

In his arrogance, he didn’t see the thrust of Tristan’s foot in front of his ankles and went reeling over Tristan’s breeches to the hard ground beyond.

“D’ye wish to call a truce?” Tristan asked, coming to stand over him. “Or d’ye wish to find oot how an experienced hellion does it?”

Tamas rolled over on his back and stared up at him. “Ask me that after I put worms in yer food.”

“Verra well,” Tristan sighed, and bent to retrieve his clothes. “ ’Tis yer choice.”

Tristan made no sound as he crept along the dark wall toward Tamas’s door. He didn’t intend to hurt the boy. Not seriously, at least. Tamas was coming into manhood without the careful guidance he needed to grow with a wee bit of honor and humility.

What he was about to do to wee Tamas was for the boy’s own good, and the peace of his family in the future. Patrick seemed to possess the values his youngest brother needed to learn, but he had no time to teach the boy how to be a man. Alex had already proven that he was certainly no example of any shining traits. Cameron was too quiet, too passive to stop Tamas from becoming a menace and causing his sister misery. Tamas needed to be taught by someone who would not cease until he learned his lessons well. The lad was devious and would be tough to win; Tristan would give him that. He smiled, looking forward to the challenge.

“Where have ye been?” a voice said from the shadows. “I thought ye were not coming.”

“I always keep my word, John.” Tristan shone his grin down at his accomplice and held out his hands. “Did ye get enough?”

“Two bags,” John said, handing one to him.

Tristan had required his aid, and when he had put his plan to the lad, John leaped. John needed to do this as much as Tamas needed it done to him.

“Good. Let’s go.”

Like thieves in the shadows they stole into Tamas’s room while he slept and spread dozens of thistles that John had collected along the floor, in Tamas’s boots, his pockets, and in his bed where he slept. On his way out the door, Tristan spotted what he was looking for set lovingly on a bench atop Tamas’s trews. He snatched it up and shoved it into the pocket of his breeches.

“What do we need the twine fer?” John whispered, handing over his next donation to this worthy cause.

“I’ll show ye.” Tristan knelt at the entrance and tacked both ends of the twine to the opposite doorframe, about ankle high. He took up the bags and scattered what remained of the prickly plants outside the door and then carefully shut it.

John was quick to figure out what the twine was meant to do and yanked on Tristan’s sleeve before they parted ways.

Before he spoke, Tristan leaned down and patted his shoulder. “Dinna’ fret, he wears a nightdress. The stings will be minor.”

John nodded, smiled, and then dashed away.

Tristan did not go directly to his room but swept down the stairs and into the kitchen, hungry for something to eat. He found an apple, rubbed it against his shirt, and looked out the window. Curiously, a light was coming from the barn. Who was awake at this late hour but him and John? He bit into his apple and left the kitchen. Did Patrick work in the middle of the night? he wondered as he stepped out of the manor house. He was likely the
last person Patrick wanted to see, but Tristan would offer to help him, and mayhap they could begin to sort some things out between them.

He pulled opened the barn door and entered with a resounding crunch, taking another bite of his apple. It wasn’t Patrick he startled, though, but Isobel, and seeing her stopped Tristan in his tracks. “What are ye doin’ in here?”

She turned away from him and went back to her work. Her profile against the soft glow of the lantern at her side went pensive and anxious at the same time. “It is not obvious to ye then that I am milking a goat?”

He moved closer to her. “At this hour?”

“I was not able to get to this today, and Glenny was full.” She didn’t look at him but gave the goat a gentle pat on the flank. “She does not like being full. “What are ye doing awake so late?” She spared him a brief glance while he dragged over another stool and sat down next to her.

He smiled and held up his apple, then pulled it away when Glenny swung her head around and tried to chomp it out of his fingers. “We can share it, lass. There’s nae need to be uncivilized.” He took another bite, then handed over the rest.

“Ye should not have done that.” Isobel told him, her hands busy beneath the goat’s belly. “She is going to expect food each time she sees ye now.”

“Then I will bring her some,” Tristan promised, and patted Glenny’s head.

“Then ye will have to bring it from yer own plate,” Isobel pointed out. “If ye had not noticed, we harvest most of our food here. There’s not always enough to go around, so I am sure ye will not be seeing her often.”

Until that moment, Tristan had not fully comprehended the weight of Patrick and Isobel’s responsibilities to this family. At Camlochlin there were many people to help with the daily chores, and with his brother Rob always willing to do most of them, Tristan didn’t feel all that needed. But here there was no one else to turn to, no one else to rely on to help them out of danger. If their brothers were to live, it was up to them to see it done. More than before, he was sorry his father had taken theirs.

“Then I’ll milk her and tell her exciting tales that will make her ferget aboot fruit altogether.”

Isobel blinked at him in the clandestine light and then, much to his soaring heart’s delight, smiled.

“Is there nothing or no one who can resist yer consummate charm?”

He shook his head, serious though she mocked him. “There is but one.”

Her smile went cool in an instant. “Ye think ye can win my brothers then?”

“I hope to in time,” he told her honestly. “ ’Tis the only way to gain peace between our two families.” Why would she not want him to do what he could to lessen the hatred between their kin? He didn’t know if such a feat was even possible, but he wanted to try, for her good.

“So, ye would defy yer father?”

He shrugged. “ ’Twouldna’ be the first time I did.”

She studied him for a moment, searching his eyes for something. He wished he knew what it was. “Ye told me once that ye are not like most MacGregors. Am I to believe then that ye do not seek revenge upon my family fer yer uncle’s death?”

“The man who killed my uncle died with him, Isobel.”

“And if he was still alive?”

He blinked back to Glenny, severing his darkened gaze from her. “Then mayhap, things would be different.”

Things would be different. Isobel’s lungs seared her chest. What would he do then?

“Ye should leave,” she ordered, turning back to her work. “Patrick will be angry if he finds ye here.”

Tristan’s gaze dipped to her fingers closing around the goat’s dangling teats, squeezing up and down, up and down until his own body grew tight with the desire to feel her hands on him the same way. “I am willing to risk it.”

She sighed and threw back her head. “I am not! I do not know what ye want or what ye are doing here. What has happened between our families can never be repaired, Tristan.”

“Ye’re wrong,” he told her. “My parents are a MacGregor and a Campbell. Their love ended a feud between their clans that had lasted three hundred years. I dinna’ think—”

“Love?” she cut him off with a chuckle. “Are ye trying to make me fall in love with ye then?”

“Nae,” he said, feeling slightly insulted by her humor. “I—”

“With ye? A notorious rogue known to break the heart of every woman he toys with? How many of them have ye loved?”

“None, but I am no’ tryin’—”

“Precisely. I know what ye are and I—”

“—to make ye fall in love with me. The last thing—”

“—will not succumb to yer skilled seduction, only to—”

“—I want is a lass tryin’ to make me her husband.”

“—want ye more when ye leave.”

They both stopped talking over each other at the same time, leaving the air between them sizzling. This time, Tristan knew she felt it. Her eyes gleamed from the challenge of going head to head with him. The creamy roundness of her bosom swelled at the quick, short breaths she drew in and out from between her parted lips. Hell, he wanted to kiss her, to take her right here, right now in the hay.

“I think ye should lea—”

Curling his ankle around the leg of her stool, he dragged her, still sitting on it, between his knees. He took no mercy at her startled gasp, but cushioned her face in his palms and bent to kiss her. Her lips were as soft as he remembered, her breath, warm and mingled with fear. He held her gently and took her mouth with a slow, seductive urgency that made him groan against her teeth. He didn’t think it odd that she didn’t pull away. He intended to make her too weak to stand with the tender, hungry glide of his tongue. Curling his fingers around her nape, he deepened their kiss, molding his mouth to hers to taste her intoxicating sweetness more fully, breathe her in more completely. He knew by the tightness of his breeches and the pounding of his heart that he needed to stop before it became any harder to do so.

He withdrew slowly, gazing deep into her eyes and hoping she wouldn’t slap his loose tooth out of his mouth. “Fergive me,” he whispered along her jaw. “Ye are difficult to resist.”

She stared at him through heavy, hooded lids, the residue of their passionate kiss fading from her eyes as she blinked. She said nothing to him, though it was clear by the way her fingers began to twist her skirts that she wanted to say or do something. Finally, she did. She
stood up, offered him a charitable smile, and then kicked his stool out from beneath his arse.

“Fortunately, Mister MacGregor,” she huffed, bending to retrieve her bucket of milk, “resisting
ye
is not difficult at all.” She stormed away, sloshing milk this way and that.

Tristan listened to her leave the barn and rose up off his elbows. “So I’m back to bein’ Mister MacGregor, am I?” He righted the fallen stool first and when he was back on his feet, gave Glenny a rueful look. “Restraint, I’m sorry to say, isna’ one of my best virtues, but I’m workin’ on it.”

Isobel closed the barn door behind her and leaned against it, one hand clutched to her chest. She needed a moment to breathe, to regain her strength and clear her head. Panic engulfed her momentarily when she discovered the last would be impossible. Heaven help her, but the man knew how to kiss! He knew how to make her burn in places she’d rarely had time to think about in the past. She closed her eyes, remembering the longing in his smoldering gaze when he dipped his mouth to hers, and that gaze had grown hotter still when he released her, his passion insatiable and barely restrained. His kisses were not enough. He wanted to bed her. She had tasted it on his tongue, fevered male desire that made her skin hot and her nerve endings tingle. How could she clear her head when it was filled with lurid images of Tristan MacGregor’s hard, naked body poised above her, ready to take her, resolved to pursue his victory? How could she continue to push him away when every smile, every heated look he cast her way brought her closer to defeat?