Seduced by a Highlander (4 page)

He smiled to himself as he rose from the bench. She was an innocent, and the thought of seducing her made his nerve endings burn with thrill of such a challenge.

But hell, she called him gallant. No one had called him that, or anything even close to it, in ten years. She spoke about shining armor, and it stirred memories he’d locked away in a place he’d never thought to visit again. He didn’t want to go there now. Whatever he had wanted to become when he was a lad was destroyed the day he fought with Alex Fergusson.

He set his gaze toward the Banqueting House, where supper was likely being served right now. His kin would be sitting at their guest table laughing over warm mead or ale, mayhap retelling an old battle story or discussing the news that their cousin Angus had brought them yesterday about Tristan’s brother Rob saving a nun from a burning abbey. He didn’t want to go there either. For while he could wield a sword as well as any warriors of Camlochlin, he had no desire to fit in with his kin’s Highland code of pride, arrogance, and vengeance. He preferred disarming a man—or a woman—with his wit rather than with his blade. It was a distinction that, sometimes to his deep regret, set him apart from his father, a distinction he had perfected nonetheless, until there was no favor he could not win, no opinion of him he could not alter—if he had a mind to do so.

For a moment, he stood alone in the twilight, caught
between the two worlds he had rejected. His thoughts returned to the lass… Iseult… and the way she had smiled up at him when he offered her his aid. He could have stayed in that moment forever. But she was wrong about him. He should have told her the truth and made her believe him. He was a thoughtless rogue who only wanted to bed her and then leave her before she formed an attachment.

Or worse, before he did.

Finally deciding which way to go, he turned on his heel and was about to leave Whitehall through the west gate when a dulcet voice called his name.

He turned and saw Lady Pricilla Hollingsworth, a dark-haired beauty who had caught his eye when he first arrived at the palace.

“I missed you in the Banqueting House,” she said, hurrying toward him. “Are you alone?”

His eyes roved over her parted lips and then lower, to the swell of her powdery white bosoms tightly confined in her low-cut gown.

“Fortunately, no’ anymore.” Slowly, he raised his gaze to hers and smiled.

“Lovely.” Her mouth curled with the same decadence that shone in his. “Let’s go for a walk, shall we?” Without waiting for his reply, she looped her arm through his. “Lady Hartley told me that you are a Highlander. I’ve heard many titillating tales about Highland men.”

“No’ more titillatin’ than the tales I’ve heard aboot English ladies, I’m certain.”

She giggled, exaggerating the shiver he apparently sent down her spine. “Oh, I do adore that lilt to your speech. It is both savage and graceful together. Much like your appearance.”

Damn, she was eager. This one needed no pretty words
but desired something a wee bit more feral in nature. As he had claimed earlier, aiding lasses was what he did best.

“Dinna’ let my ruffled attire fool ye, lady. What lies beneath is purely animal.”

“Why, Mister MacGregor!” She threw her hand to her chest in feigned offense. “I am a lady!”

It occurred to him when her hand sprang away from her milky cleavage that she might go a step further in her game of cat and mouse and actually slap his face. Instead, she pressed her delicate palms to his chest and pushed him deeper into the shadows.

“But please”—she purred hot breath up the column of his throat—“do not let that stop you.”

Closing his arms around her middle, he hauled her hips against his and whispered over her lips before he kissed her. “I wouldna’ think of it.”

“Pricilla!” A man’s shout cut through the air like an arrow.

“Hell,” Tristan swore, letting her go.

“It is my husband!”

He cut her an irritated scowl as he went to meet justice. “Ye didna’ tell me ye were married.”

“You did not ask me.”

True. He hadn’t.

“My good Lord Hollingsworth. I—”

He ducked when the beefy statesman pulled a sword from its sheath with surprising dexterity and slashed it across Tristan’s throat.

“There is nae need fer that,” he said, avoiding another jab to his guts. “Put doun yer sword and let’s discuss this like—”

Hell, that one was close. Speaking his brand of sense into the enraged fellow’s head clearly wasn’t going to
work. He would have accepted a punch to the jaw as his penance for kissing the man’s wife, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to die for it.

The fourth swipe whistled over Tristan’s head an instant before his fist landed on Hollingsworth’s fleshy cheek. An uppercut to the chin next wobbled the nobleman’s knees and gave Tristan an instant to snatch his weapon from his loosened grip.

He tossed the sword over the gate and into the street beyond, then turned angrily to Lady Hollingsworth’s husband. “If ye ever raise a sword to me again, I will kill ye with it. Look to yerself fer the cause of yer wife’s indiscretion and no’ to me or the next man ye find her with.”

He stormed back toward the gate entrance, swung open its heavy door, and disappeared down King’s Street, leaving Hollingsworth’s sword where he’d thrown it. He passed a dozen women hanging about the shadows, offering him pleasures beyond his expectations. He stopped for none of them. He wanted no company, no needy fingers clutching at his clothes, no pleas to return when he knew he wouldn’t. Tonight, he didn’t want to be reminded of what he had become.

Tristan glanced up at the afternoon sky, then gave the stone sundial a curious look. How the hell did anyone tell the time of day by looking at an arrow on a slab of rock? An even better question was what in blazes was he doing here waiting for a lass with a freckled nose and the sound of music in her laughter? He’d thought about her all night, and by the time he fell into his bed he was quite perturbed with her for not leaving him alone. But this morning, he had wanted to see her again.

Unfortunately, one of the disadvantages to a palace
with fifteen hundred rooms was that people were difficult to find. He was glad they had planned where to meet the night before.

“Greetings, Sir Tristan.”

He didn’t hear her come up behind him and smiled despite himself at what she called him. He turned to her and gathered her hand in his. He was surprised and a bit moved to find calluses there. “Lady Iseult.” He dipped his head and swept a kiss across her knuckles. “Were yer brothers worried aboot ye yesterday as ye feared?”

She shook her head, and he watched the way the sun played over the rich reds and deep golds of her hair. “Their attentions were otherwise engaged by two French ladies who spent the evening giggling at words I’m sure they did not understand.”

“They say love needs no words.” Tristan crooked his arm and was surprised by the catch of his breath when the warmth of her hand touched him. “I say the right words are true love’s adornment.”

“Ye know much about true love then?” she asked him, with humor dancing across the vivid green of her eyes.

“I know nothin’ of it,” he admitted, leading her away from the crowded lawns. He thought of Lord and Lady Hollingsworth. “But it doesna’ take a supremely intelligent man to know that the lady he loves enjoys it when he tells her that all he has is hers. His body, his mind, his heart. That she is the master of it all.”

“Yes,” she agreed, moving a little closer to him. “I would think that would be verra nice to hear. But how do ye know the secret of what women want when so many others do not?”

“Sir Gawain,” he replied, happy that he had remembered the tale last night. “He gave his word to marry the
old crone, Dame Ragnell, after she provided King Arthur with the answer to that eternal question and saved his life.”

“Did he keep his word?”

“Of course he did,” Tristan told her. “He was…” He paused, feeling oddly shaken by what he was about to say and the old sentiments it dragged to the surface. “He was a man of honor.” Quickly, he changed the path of their conversation.

“D’ye have a man waitin’ fer ye at home, fair Iseult? A husband, mayhap?” This time, he would ask first.

“No.” She laughed softly. “There is no one who would grant me mastery over his heart.”

“Fools then.”

They looked at each other and smiled. She, seeming to see beyond his flippant resolve and touching a place he’d guarded for ten years. He, seeing a woman, mayhap the only woman capable of tearing away his defenses. He looked away, needing them to survive happily in the world he was born to.

“I saw him last eve in the Banqueting House.”

“Who?” he asked, turning to her once again. He wanted to kiss her—to prove to himself that he could and still remain untouched.

“The devil who killed my father. I have never forgotten his face. When I saw him, I could not stand to look at him overlong.”

“Ye saw him commit the deed then?” Tristan asked, his heart breaking a little for her. He had seen the man he loved lying dead on the ground. It was not a thing one was likely to ever forget.

“I watched from my window as he stabbed my father through the heart with his blade.”

Hell. He stopped walking and reached his fingers to her cheek as if to wipe away the tears he imagined she had shed that terrible day. “Ye didna’ tell me why this beast murdered yer father.”

Her eyes closed for an instant at his tender touch. “He believed my father killed the Earl of Argyll during a raid.”

Tristan’s hand froze, along with his heart.

“The earl was their kin,” she went on mercilessly. “The Devil MacGregor’s brother-in-law, I was told. If he was anything like his barbaric relatives, he deserved his death.”

Nae! Tristan’s mind fought to reject what he was hearing. This lovely, spirited lass who had made him think on things he had forced himself to forget could not be Archibald Fergusson’s daughter! She had not just told him that his uncle deserved his death! Dropping his hand to his side, he backed away from her. He wanted to damn her kin to Hades, but how could he when his uncle’s death was his fault? She was wrong about Robert Campbell, but he was too angry about her accusation to tell her, too stunned to do anything but stare at her.

“I must go.”

“What?” She looked surprised and reached out for him. He moved away from her hand. “What is the matter?”

He should tell her who he was, that everything terrible in her life was his doing. But he didn’t have the heart, or the courage, to do so. “I just recalled that I promised my sister I would show her the king’s theater. Good day to ye.” He left without another word and without looking back. She was a Fergusson, and for her own safety, he would forget he had ever met her.

A
nd to the right just a bit, you will see the Apotheosis of Charles I.”

Tristan glanced up at the Banqueting House’s painted ceiling where Henry de Vere, son of the Earl of Oxford, directed Mairi’s view. Tristan felt a wee bit sorry for his sister, forced by seating arrangement to give the English nobleman her attention throughout eight courses. Tristan didn’t care a whit about the aggrandizement of dead kings—or live ones, for that matter. But listening to the man’s mindless drivel took his mind off Archie Fergusson’s daughter.

He’d intended to put her out of his mind forever, but for the past six hours since he had left her, she had remained constantly present in his thoughts. Why? Why her? He had never had any trouble in the past forgetting a lass the moment he left her. Even the ones he’d bedded never plagued him the way Miss Fergusson did. Her delicate smiles, the calluses on her hands, all her damned talk about gallantry and her difficult home life that made him want to charge into it and rescue her from it all.

What the hell had he been thinking?

He was no knight plucked from the books his mother and uncle used to read to him. He’d given up ever trying to be one, and even if he hadn’t, how could he save Iseult from the hatred of his own kin? For while he did not blame her father for what had happened, the rest of the MacGregors did.

“And that is the Union of England and Scotland,” Oxford droned on, pointing upward and to the left.

Tristan downed his wine and motioned for a server to bring more. It was going to be a long night with this dullard sitting between him and his sister. Briefly, he thought of escaping to Lady Eleanor Hartley’s table. He could delight for a bit in her lovely breasts, but she was about as sharp as the edge of a bedsheet. Before he could stop it, his gaze swept the crowded Hall seeking another face. One without powder and without guile.