The Highlander (6 page)

If he'd have been himself, he'd have ripped the door off its hinges and yanked her to attention, taking her to task for her insolence.

He should do it now, lest his men think him weak.

Then again, perhaps not, lest his men think him brutal.

He never knew anymore. These Mackenzie were farmers, not soldiers, and the regulations that had regimented his life didn't apply here at Ravencroft.

More's the pity
.

When their eyes had met, he'd felt the earth shift beneath him in a way he'd never experienced before. Not with the unstable feeling of a peat bog or slick silt beneath his boots, but exactly the opposite. As if the land might alter and align to please the cosmos, clicking into place with prophetic finality.

Something about the bruised look glowing from the softness of her vibrant green irises, the only thing about her he could see with any clarity, seemed to have stolen his wits from him.

It was bloody unsettling. Infuriating, even.

He jiggled the handle of the carriage door. “Open up, lass,” he hissed through his teeth.

The infernal woman shook her head demurely, her lips quivering behind the heavy veil she wore. Leaning up, she unlatched the small half-window used for ventilation above the larger window and spoke through it in a perfect, cultured British accent.

“I'd rather not, thank you.”

Liam's knuckles cracked as he tightened his fist.

“I think we've frightened the wee lassie,” Liam's steward, Russell Mackenzie, said in their native Gaelic. “We look a sight after the day we've had.”

Liam glanced at his soot-laden steward, then down at his soiled and drenched clothing. “Och, aye,” he agreed. Then turned back to the woman. “If ye'll come with us, we'll take ye to Ravencroft Keep and get ye out of the storm. We can send for yer things once ye're safe.”

She glanced nervously at the men surrounding the carriage, and Liam thought he caught sight of a wound or a split in her lip when she turned her head. He couldn't be certain. He couldn't see inside as well as he wanted to. And Lord, it irritated him how badly he desired to uncover the rest of her features and perceive if they were as striking as her lovely eyes.

“I do appreciate your kind offer, sir, but I'll wait for someone from the Ravencroft household to collect me. They should be along
any
moment.”

That elicited a rumble of amusement from his clansmen.

It occurred to Liam that he couldn't remember the last time he'd been thanked so often in one conversation. Or denied.

“That'd be us, lassie.” Thomas Campbell, a bear of a man, gestured to Liam. “And this here be the marquess, himself, isna that right, Laird?”

“Aye.” Liam nodded, expecting her to open the door now that that had been cleared up.

Instead of the deference he anticipated, one skeptical brow dropped over her right eye as she took in his appearance. “I think not.”

The laughter came louder this time, and Liam set his teeth. “I am Liam Mackenzie, Marquess Ravencroft, laird and thane of the Mackenzie of Wester Ross.”

Her tongue snaked out to test what he now knew to be a split in her lip as she seemed to work a problem out beneath that troubled brow.

Liam shifted restlessly, testing the strength of the latch as her eyes brightened with an idea.

“Do you happen to have any proof of your lordship or nobility?” she suggested, blinking pleased, expectant eyes at him as though she'd offered some sort of foolproof plan. “A signet ring, perhaps, or a seal of—”

“The fact that I havena torn this carriage apart with my bare hands is proof enough of my nobility,” he growled through lips drawn tight over his teeth. “Now open the
bloody
door.”

“I'm sorry, but no.” She shut the window.

His men's chuckles came to an abrupt stop when he whirled to glare at them. Facing her again, he knocked on the window this time, careful not to break it, and she opened it as primly as any English valet.

“Is there something else?” she queried.

“Aye!” Russell Mackenzie hooted before Liam had a chance to finish his intake of breath. “How do ye
know
he's
not
the Mackenzie laird?”

Liam would have growled in kind at Russell, but he had to admit it was a good question.

“Because the marquess is the father of two children nearly grown and lately from a decades-long career in the army. By now he's got to be a retired older man, not this … this … strapping sort of…” The lady flicked those long lashes at him in another nervous gesture before finishing. “Not
him
.”

Something Liam had thought long dead rose from the ever-still, ever-dark place within him. Some strange pride belonging to adolescents and young bucks during mating season. At forty, he'd never expected to experience it again. He fended off overt sexual advances regularly, from beautiful women. Younger women. But this veiled lass's insinuation of virility nearly had him flushing like an untried whelp.

Goddammit, was this going to become an issue?

“Coax her out of there, Liam,” Russell urged, again in Gaelic, though his voice still conveyed amusement. “It's colder than a witch's tits in a brass corset out here.”

Liam took a bracing breath. “What would it take to get ye to Ravencroft Keep?” he asked as though speaking to a simple child.

“Well…” She hesitated, glancing at each of his men, then back to him. “Since you asked, I would pay you, of course, if I could prevail upon you … gentlemen … to perhaps secure the wheel?”

All four mounted Mackenzies and two Campbells exploded into booming spasms of mirth, which drew a frown from the woman. Even Liam had to bite his lip to repress a smile, and he didn't miss how his new governess watched the movement with an arrested expression.

“That's what it takes, does it?” Thomas Campbell chortled whilst wringing the rain from his cap.

“Just slip the wheel back onto the carriage and off ye go!” Russell laughed hard enough to startle his horse into a prance.

“As a matter of fact,
yes,
” she huffed.

Highlanders were a jolly lot, but it had been a long time since he'd heard his men laugh quite so heartily. They jibed him in their native tongue.

Ye should send her back. She's not too bright.

Maybe ye could keep her as a mistress, instead, she's entertaining as well as pretty.

Bemused, Liam squinted at her indistinguishable expression through her veil. She did seem rather young judging by her voice and what little of her features he could make out. He wondered why Farah Blackwell had selected her, specifically, to send for the position. Had he not been clear enough in his specifications?

The lass waited with a long-suffering air for the joviality to die before she spoke again. “Do forgive me, sirs, if I'm mistaken, but I inspected the wheel a little earlier, before it started to rain, and it seemed to me a simple fix if you could use your cumulative strength.”

“Well, lassie,
do
educate us on how simple it would be.” Russell wiped either a raindrop or a tear of mirth from his ruddy cheek. “We just pop the wheel back on the axle and hold it with what, a prayer?”

Now it was she who smiled. “Well … no.” She dragged the word in a protracted manner then pointed out of the window with a long, elegant finger. “Upon assessment, you'll find the wheel and axle both in excellent repair. If you gentlemen would look to that two-parted hub there, its principal features are these two linchpins.” She rose on her knees to slide her arm out of the window and point downward toward the problem. “They've both been sheared at the top here, you see, which is why the wheel came loose.”

Every Highlander, including Liam, stared at her for a full silent minute, all traces of mockery vanished. Partly because of what she said, and partly because her body was now pressed against the larger window of the carriage.

Even through her dyed burgundy wool dress, every man could see she had the figure a lusty Highlander dreamed about at night. She should have looked ridiculous, arm and eyes half out a tiny window. But Liam burned with shame, and quite a few other confusing emotions, when he found himself as slack-jawed as the rest of his men.

Christ, were those breasts real, or were they the creations of some newfangled English contraption?

In that moment, he'd have given his eye to find out. And just as abruptly, he wanted to burn the eyes out of every man who ogled her.

“Well,” he snarled at them. “Check the bloody wheel.”

It was Russell who dismounted and jogged close to inspect her assessment. “I'll be buggered if she isna right,” he muttered to Liam, who stood wondering how in the hell a young gentlewoman, one with breasts like that, would know about carriage mechanics.

“But, lass, we've no linchpin lying around out here on the Bealach na Bà.” Russell looked to her as though she might come up with a magical answer for that, too.

“Now that we know the problem,” Liam said very evenly, “I would ask ye to again consider riding with me the scant five miles to Ravencroft Keep.” His reasons for wanting her on his horse had become much more opaque, but mostly he wanted her away from that fucking window and the wide, lusty gazes of his men.

Her expression actually brightened. “There's really no need.” She then addressed Russell, his round, freckled face, ruddy cheeks, and perpetually jolly expression obviously more favorable. “Mightn't you borrow a linchpin from one of the other wheels, as they all have two? That should hold for a scant five miles without incident and then more extensive repairs can be made at the keep.” At least she pulled her arm back into the carriage with her, which angled her body away from the window.

Liam wasn't quite sure if he should thank God or curse Him.

Russell considered her words. “We'd need something to secure it with.” He rubbed at his russet beard with a thoughtful hand, then winked at her. “Braw as we are, we canna work a linchpin with our bare fingers.”

“I've my tool bag.” Thomas Campbell's son, Kevin, dismounted and reached into his saddlebags, extracting a leather case.

Liam held up a hand. “It would be easier to deliver ye to Ravencroft and then repair this without the extra weight,” he said through clenched teeth.

She gasped, and every married man made a noise of either warning or panic.

“I meant of the bloody trunks lashed to the top of the carriage!” His famously short temper was fraying rapidly. Liam gestured to his horse, Magnus, and held his hand out to her as though the carriage walls didn't separate them. “Please, lass.”

She regarded his outstretched palm for an indecisive moment with such intensity that Liam glanced down at it to see what the bloody issue was. He found nothing but his hand. Callused, square, and unsightly scarred, but nothing extraordinary, except perhaps the size, but there was fuck-all he could do about that.

They weren't like the hands of any marquess she'd have met before. They both knew it.

“I can't … I'm afraid.”

Liam regarded her for another tense moment as no one moved whilst waiting for his say-so. He'd at first thought her words had been
I can't, I'm afraid
. An expression of polite regret. But upon closer scrutiny, he didn't wonder if the meaning was entirely different. An admission.

I can't. I'm afraid.

Somehow, the ball of frustration in his chest released only slightly. Though something else took its place. Maybe a bit of disappointment? He'd seen that look before in a woman's eyes, the innate suspicion mixed with placating caution. His mother had worn that look around his father.

He glanced back down at his hands. Could she somehow see the blood that stained them? Could she sense the cruelty bred into his black soul? Did she know the vile and unholy urges that, even now, coursed through the very fibers of his muscle?

She was right to fear him.

“All right, lads.” Liam inhaled a weary breath and took post by the axle to lift the heaviest part whilst someone affixed the wheel back in place. “Let's get this over with.”

He felt her gaze on him as they lifted the carriage and patched it. He couldn't figure out why he was so full of this awareness, but something about her watching him grunt and strain and sweat was damnably erotic.

He didn't allow himself to look at her, though, even when the deed was done. Instead, he swung onto Magnus's back and kicked him into a gallop, leaving one of the others to drive the coach back to Ravencroft.

He needed a bath and a change. If she wanted a proper marquess, she was about to meet one.

 

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

The rain painted the red sandstone of Ravencroft Keep a deep, melancholy shade. Mena loved it immediately, as the roof was, as her father would have said, rather crowded. She counted fourteen turrets and four towers as the carriage trundled over an ancient stone bridge arching above an emerald loch.

Renaissance architecture from the early seventeenth century overlaid defensive ramparts and the original tower that must have dated all the way back to Robert the Bruce. The windows were large and airy for such an imposing stone structure, she supposed, to optimize the view and the occasional sunlight over the sparkling sea beneath the cliffs below. She'd only begun to count the chimneys when they pulled past the fountain around the circular drive and thereby lost sight of the roof.

She'd known the keep would be large, as it was a castle, after all. But this estate had to boast at least a hundred rooms, perhaps more.

Mena took another moment to close her eyes and silently send a whisper of gratitude to the Blackwells for arranging this new life for her. Here might be that isolated place at the end of a lane where she could exist in quietude and seclusion. Just as she'd imagined at Belle Glen.