Seduced by a Highlander (34 page)

Spent, they remained silent for a time, kissing and smiling at each other in the darkness.

“Will we always be happy, Tristan?” she asked a little while later, wrapped in his arms.

“Aye, always.” He would make certain of it. She would grow to love him as much as she loved her brothers—even more.

“I want to believe it. But yer family…”

“Isobel, I canna’ be the man I wish to be withoot ye in my life.”

“But how can ye be that man without being loyal to yer family?”

He pulled her closer and inhaled the scent of her hair. He had indeed betrayed his kin by loving Isobel, just as Sir Tristan of old had betrayed his king by loving Iseult. Would their ending be as tragic? He wouldn’t let it. There was hope. “I told ye, my love, my kin are fergivin’. Hell, it isna’ like
ye
killed the earl.”

She moaned as if her body pained her, and Tristan gathered her closer in his arms. He hadn’t meant to take her again so soon.

“Tristan, I—”

A knock at the door stilled her words and drained the blood from her face.

“Tristan, it is Cameron. Is Isobel with ye?”

She practically clawed her way out of his arms and leaped from the bed. “Tell him ye have not seen me!” she ordered, scrambling for her kirtle.

“Aye, she is here,” Tristan called back, leaving the bed
and winking at her scathing stare. “Give me a moment or two to unbolt the door.”

Isobel’s eyes opened almost as wide as her mouth.

“I canna’ open the door like this.” He stretched out his arms to point out his nakedness, then flashed her a grin when she went crimson. He reached for his breeches and boots and watched regretfully while she hurried into her kirtle.

“Come in, Cameron,” he said, opening the door.

“Where is Tamas?” Isobel demanded when Cam entered the room alone.

Cam didn’t answer right away, and Tristan followed his gaze as it settled on his sister, still wearing his shirt beneath her wrinkled gown. “He is below stairs with Annie,” he finally said, blinking away from her and her scarlet face. “We… we have something to tell ye.”

“Aye, so do we,” Tristan said, trying to save Isobel from her mortification. “I’ve asked Isobel to be my wife and she has given her consent.”

A shadow passed over Cam’s expression before he turned and eyed his sister’s rumpled clothes again. Hell, how could Tristan explain to him that he could not wait?

“We shall find a priest as soon as we can.”

Finally, Cam smiled and drew Tristan in for a quick embrace. “This news pleases me.”

Leaving him with a pat on the back, Cam went to Isobel and hauled her in next. She was still a bit stiff and glassy-eyed when he released her with a blessing on their union.

“I have some good news of my own,” he told them, grinning wider than Tristan had ever seen him. “I have asked Annie to be my wife as well, and she has agreed.”

Instantly, Isobel’s alarm vanished into delight. After a
dozen questions, she sat her brother on the bed and began to go over the plans for his wedding feast.

“Let us celebrate this night with the inn’s finest wine,” Cam suggested, leaving the bed.

Tristan had to laugh at that. “The only way ye’ll be findin’ fine wine here is if ye make it yerself.”

“Come.” Cam motioned them both toward the door. “Annie and Tamas await us. We will drink to our happy futures.”

Finding his plaid folded in one of the bags, Tristan draped it over his bare shoulder, tied it haphazardly around his waist, and left the room behind them.

Annie Kennedy was a bonnie lass with bright green eyes and a bow-shaped mouth designed for asking an endless array of questions. The more wine she drank, the more she spoke. Twice Tristan and Cam shared a smile at her tireless chatter.

Isobel seemed to be enjoying herself, despite shifting her weight constantly in her chair. She blushed three different shades of scarlet when Annie asked her if something pained her. Tristan merely smiled into his cup, then scowled into it when its sour contents touched his lips.

“Ye do not like spirits, Mister MacGregor?” Annie asked, catching his displeasure.

“No’ particularly. I’ve seen them make men do foolish things.”

“Oh, do tell!” Annie pressed eagerly. “What kinds of things?”

“Alas, I would no’ trouble yer delicate ears with such distasteful tales.”

She giggled without a trace of a blush. “Speaking of
distasteful tales, what do ye think Andrew will say about yer betrothal to Isobel?”

“Mayhap he will challenge Tristan to a duel,” Tamas answered, a flash of enthusiasm brightening his eyes for the first time that evening.

“I never pledged my love to yer brother,” Isobel told Annie.

Tristan slipped his gaze to her. It occurred to him in that moment that she had never pledged it to him either. He scowled again and downed his wine.

“Well,” said Annie with a sly grin aimed in Tristan’s direction. “I can certainly see why not when ye had this one waiting in the wings.”

“Careful, darling,” Cameron warned playfully. “He is soon to be wed, and ye are soon to belong to me.”

Turning to face him, Annie went all weak in her seat. “And ye know how happy that makes me, my dearest. He is pretty, but my heart is yers.” She leaned into him for a kiss, whispering when she withdrew that she loved him.

Tristan called for more wine. Of course Isobel loved him. Why would she agree to marry him if she didn’t?

“I know Andrew will be pleased with
our
news,” Annie sang happily, holding up her cup for a refill when the server returned to their table. “He is quite fond of Cameron. Henry and Roger were delighted when I told them. Do ye have many siblings, Mister MacGregor? What will they think of ye wedding a Fergusson?”

Isobel stopped the server and let her pour more wine into her cup as well.

“They will come to love her as I do,” Tristan said, swigging his drink and refusing to think about Mairi and her hidden daggers.

“Do they look like ye?” Annie asked. When Cameron rolled his eyes heavenward, she hastened to explain that she only wanted to know for the benefit of her sister, Alice. “Remember, she is twenty and two and still unwed. It is difficult to find a husband these days.”

Tristan refused to look at Isobel to see her reaction. Of course that wasn’t why she had said aye to his proposal. She could have had a husband in Andrew Kennedy if that was all she wanted.

“Rob and Mairi resemble my faither.”

“And ye? D’ye take after yer mother, then?”

“My uncle, actually. I could have been his son.” Tristan didn’t realize his tone had taken on a hollow sound until Isobel reached for his hand beneath the table. He turned to smile at her, but a stinging poke to his shoulder stopped him. He turned and looked up at a tall, bearded stranger clutching a tankard in his beefy fist.

“What have we here?” The stranger grinned, exposing a missing tooth in the front of his mouth—a sure sign of a man who liked to fight.

Damnation, Tristan was not in the right frame of mind for this. When he noted the four—or were there five—men of equal height and build snaking around the table, he mumbled an oath through his clenched jaw.

“A Highlander in the Golden Hillocks!” The ruffian eyed Tristan’s plaid and shook his head with pity. “Ye have a pair of bollocks sitting here drinking our wine.”

“I must warn ye,” Tristan said, trying to clear his head of the wine’s effect and failing, “if ye claim ownership to this piss, it only proves that Covenanters lack good taste as well as good judgment.”

Annie giggled behind her hand and then gasped when the stranger hauled Tristan to his feet.

“Ye’re a brave, if not foolish, bastard to insult me in my own town,
Catholic
.”

The inn spun in a circle from his brisk ascent upward, but Tristan hooked his mouth into a grin that warned the others to back off. “I’m pleased ye think so. Ye’ll be doubly impressed when I set ye on yer back in the rushes if ye dinna’ release me.”

The stranger swung. Tristan ducked, swayed on his feet for a moment, and then drove the heel of his palm into the man’s chin in an upward, bone-crunching motion. The ruffian went down as Tristan had promised he would, crushing a chair beneath him. The inn came alive with shouts and chairs being pushed aside. Tristan turned to see one of the brute’s friends rushing for his table. He shoved Isobel and Annie out of the way and shouted to Cameron, “Behind ye!”

Cameron blocked a punch to his jaw with his left arm and sent the man reeling into the table behind them with his right fist. Tristan took a moment to smile. The lad had learned his lessons well. His satisfaction was halted by a blow to his chin.

“Ye knocked Willy out cold, ye son of a pig!” Unconscious Willy’s third companion readied himself for another strike while Tristan regained his balance.

“I dinna’ have to do the same to ye,” Tristan offered, wiping a trickle of blood from his mouth. “There is still time fer ye to withdraw.”

The man’s eyes went red. His furious fist whipped past Tristan’s nose, missing by inches when Tristan took a step back. He came forward just as quickly and delivered a tight, crisp punch into his opponent’s belly, followed by a hard cuff to the jaw.

That wasn’t so bad, Tristan thought, straightening
his plaid and watching Willy’s friend crumple to the floor beside him. Cameron had finished off his opponent neatly and efficiently, and Tamas… What the hell was the lad doing standing on the table with the leg of a chair clutched in his fists?

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. Tristan turned and looked up—and further up still. Och, hell, he thought, as a fist, big enough to block out everything behind it, flew toward his face—there were five.

The last he saw before he slumped to the ground was Tamas swinging the chair leg around like a sword. He remembered nothing else as splinters of wood flew, and the brute who’d struck fell like a tree on top of him.

T
ristan opened his eyes and smiled at Isobel’s face hovering over his. “Good morn, my sunshine.”

She smiled back and dabbed a cloth to his lip. He flinched. “It is evening,” she told him softly. “Ye have been out fer a quarter of an hour. Cam carried ye to the bed. He is returning Annie to her room and will come back shortly. He is worried sick over ye.”

Ah, the brawl below stairs. It came back to Tristan slowly. Why the hell had he drunk wine? It slowed his reflexes and his wits. “Are ye worried fer me, as well?”

She shook her head and brought her cloth to his brow. “Ye have been hit before—many times, if those tales ye told were true.”

“They were,” Tristan assured her, growing a bit agitated over the fact that she wasn’t even worried about him. “But that doesna’ mean I canna’ be seriously injured by a giant’s hammerin’ fist.”

“Tristan, ye are sulking.” She leaned back to dip her rag into a bowl of water and cast him an infuriatingly
mocking pout. “Did that terrible man injure ye more than ye wish to say?”

Tristan grinned at her, but it wasn’t a happy look. “Even if he took a blade to my throat, it wouldna’ slice as sharply as yer tongue.”

He was certain he heard the tinkle of her laughter, but Cam’s voice from the door distracted him.

“Ye are awake!” He cut a hasty path to the bed with Tamas hot on his heels. “I was growing alarmed when ye did not come to straightaway.”

“Did ye no’ see the size of the oaf who struck me, then?” Tristan answered incredulously.

“He was not so hard to put down.” They all looked at Tamas with a mixture of fresh admiration and worry.

“Come.” Isobel left her place beside him and shooed her brothers toward the door. “Let him rest. He will need his wits about him tomorrow when we meet with the merchants.” She bent to kiss him good night, and then hovered over him a moment longer. “I would have beaten the brute over the head with Tamas’s chair if he had dared aim anything at ye but his fist.”

Tristan grinned at her as she stepped away, ignoring the pain of his split lip.

“I will be along in a moment,” Cam told her. “I wish to have a word with Tristan.”

Isobel nodded and took Tamas by the hand to leave.