Conall: The 93rd Highlanders, Book Two (7 page)

Conall smiled sadly.
“I’ll be going to your wedding,” he assured him.

Munro threw his hands in
the air and ducked out of the tent.

Graeme knocked loudly on
Avril’s door. He could hear her sniffling inside, the damn door and
walls of the hut were so thin. Christ, why hadn’t Conall built her
a new one?

“
Who is it?”
she called out, trying to sound angry instead of miserable, but he
wasn’t fooled.

“
It’s me,” he
called out softly. “Graeme. I mean, Munro.”

He heard her unlocking
the door, and it opened, though he couldn’t see her. He stepped
inside and she pushed the door closed. She’d been hiding behind it.
He turned to her and she had her head down, the plaid wrapped
around her.

“
Ah, lass,”
he said sadly, and she threw herself in his arms, crying. He hadn’t
expected it, and stumbled back a step. She just wrapped her arms
around him tight, enveloping him in the plaid with her. “You poor
thing,” he said softly, running his hand over her hair. Shining
pieces of it had come out of her plaits, which she’d wrapped in a
coronet around her head. She felt slight and fragile in his arms
and he wanted to hold her in his lap and not let her go.

“
I’m not a
poor thing,” she said stubbornly, sounding all stuffed up in the
head from her crying. “I’m mad at him.”

“
Course you
are,” he told her. “You should be. Now be a good girl and marry
him.”

She shoved him away and
stared at him in horror. “Marry him? Have you gone mad? Do you know
what he comes from? A laird! His mother is a lady. My father was a
tinker and my mother a seamstress.” She shook her head. “No good
can come of such a misalliance, I tell you.”

“
So that’s
your only objection?” Graeme asked. “That he’s too above you in
station?” She nodded. Graeme swore under his breath and her eyes
grew wide. “That’s nonsensical woman’s logic. If the man wants to
marry you, he doesn’t give a damn about where you come from, you
understand?” She set her mouth in a stubborn line and refused to
agree. He tried another tack. “He’s suffering, you know. He loves
you. You’ve broken his heart. He thinks you don’t love him.” Tears
welled in her eyes and he felt like a cad. “Where’s the sense in
both of you hurting?” he asked, gently tucking a fall of hair
behind her ear. “When you could be together? Man and
wife?”

“
He only
thinks he loves me,” she blurted out. “Isn’t that always the way
for men with their first?”

Graeme was struck
speechless. He’d had no idea Conall had been an untried lad when he
went to Avril. Handsome devil that he was, Graeme had assumed he’d
been with as many women as his twin, who was notorious even here in
the Crimea for his womanizing ways. Avril looked guilty as sin as
she stared at him in dawning understanding.

“
Oh Lord,”
she breathed, “you didn’t know. Oh, God, Munro, don’t tell him I
told you. I shouldn’t even be speaking of these things with you. I
don’t know what’s wrong with me!”

“
You were his
first?” he said, his throat tight as he imagined the scenario,
Avril talking Conall through his first fuck. He knew it would be a
fantasy he’d not get over for a while.

She nodded. “And that’s
why he thinks he loves me. He thinks he has a responsibility to me
now. That he owes me something. I don’t know.” She waved her arms
around in the air. “Who knows what’s going on in that bloody
honorable head of his?”

“
You’ll marry
him,” Graeme said firmly.

“
I will not,”
Avril said just as firmly. “And neither you nor he can make
me.”

“
Then you’ll
go home,” Graeme told her. The idea suddenly came to him. He had
the means to buy her passage home. He should have done it long ago.
But Conall loved her, and he had affection for Conall, and then
he’d cared for Avril after spending time in her company. And so
he’d ignored what he’d always known, in the back of his mind, was
the truly right thing to do. “I’ll buy you passage and you’ll go
home.”

“
You’ll do no
such thing,” she said, clearly affronted. “I’m saving up my money
and I should be able to go by springtime. I’ll not be taking
charity, not even from you.”

“
What about
Conall? You’d let him buy you passage, wouldn’t you?” Graeme asked,
suddenly desperate for her to be home and safe. “He made you his
woman. He can do that.”

She shook her head. “I’m
not his anymore, am I? He’s through with me, and no, I wouldn’t be
accepting his charity either.”

Graeme pulled off his cap
and slapped it against his thigh in irritation. “Damn it, woman, do
you have to be so stubborn?”

“
It’s all I
know how to be,” she said with her nose in the air, as proud as any
lady he’d ever seen.

Avril’s heart was beating
fiercely. She’d acted outrageously tonight with Munro, throwing
herself in his arms and crying on his shoulder and speaking of her
and Conall’s carnal relations so casually. He must think her a
strumpet or worse. And now him offering her money. She gathered the
tattered ends of her self-control and wrapped it tight around her
with the plaid. The plaid Conall and Munro had found for her. Tears
gathered in her eyes again.

“
Ah, I’m
sorry for calling you stubborn,” Munro said, making a face. “Don’t
cry again.”

“
I’m not
crying over that, you fool,” she snapped and then covered her mouth
with her hand. Munro laughed.

“
Good to see
you haven’t lost all your fire,” he said affectionately.

She sniffed disdainfully.
“I haven’t lost a bit,” she said, trying to convince herself as
well as him.

Munro looked around and
set his cap down on her rickety shelves. He picked up the teapot
and peered inside and she winced. “It’s cold,” she told him. “I’ll
make fresh.”

He held the teapot out of
her reach. “No, I’ll make more,” he told her. “Sit yourself down.
You’ve had a day of it, haven’t you?”

She didn’t take offense.
“Indeed I have,” she agreed, sitting wearily on her little stool.
“Turned away hungry lads tonight too, and I sure feel guilty for
it.”

“
Never you
mind,” Munro said, dumping the cold tea on the ground outside her
door. He shut the door firmly and glared at it for a moment before
turning back and filling the pot with fresh water from the bucket
she had near the stove. He fed the fire and she felt the heat where
she was. She hadn’t realized how cold she’d let the hut become.
Munro whistled under his breath as he fixed the kettle.

Avril watched him,
enjoying the sight of a man doing for her. Conall had done the same
a time or two. Munro was a handsome devil, though different than
Conall. He was so tall that another inch would have him stooping in
the hut. He was rugged, though he’d said his father was a
professor. He looked as though he slept in the hills rolled in his
plaid without a thought for the city or civilization. His dark hair
shone like a raven’s wing in the light of the stove fire. His eyes
looked black and wicked in the same glow. He didn’t wear a beard
like Conall, just some side whiskers and a mustache as dark as his
hair. She could see stubble on his chin.

“
Are you
growing a beard, then?” she asked. He looked surprised for a
moment.

“
No,” he
said, rubbing his hand over his chin. “I just haven’t shaved. I
need a strop, my razor’s dull.” He peered at her in the dim light.
“Do you think I should grow a beard?” he asked.

“
I don’t
know,” she said, a little breathless from the way he was watching
her. “It’s not my place to say.”

“
I’d like to
know what you think,” he said softly. “Tell me. Would you like me
in a beard?” She nodded, biting her lip. “Then I’ll grow a beard,”
he said, and he turned back to her tea.

Conall watched Avril’s
hut from behind the tent just across from it, although still a good
twenty-five yards away at least. He’d seen Munro go inside, and he
hadn’t come back out yet. He checked his pocket watch. Over thirty
minutes in there. He couldn’t hear them from here. If he were
closer he might be able to hear what they were saying. Or doing.
Avril made these little sounds in the back of her throat when she
was being pleasured. Conall would recognize those, though it had
been weeks since he’d heard it.

He sat down, knees bent,
arms on his knees, close enough that he could peer around the
corner of the tent. He felt like a fool doing it, but he couldn’t
make himself go. It wasn’t jealousy so much as—ah, hell, he wasn’t
sure what it was. Munro was a big man. He’d dwarf his Avril. She’d
have to stand on a stool to kiss the man. And in bed, well, she’d
have to be on top or she’d be staring at his belly
button.

At the thought of Avril
and Munro copulating, Conall’s prick stiffened. He reached under
his kilt and readjusted it. But for once he didn’t make himself
stop thinking about it. He’d admit now he’d thought about it a lot.
Even when he was with Avril alone, he’d imagined what it would be
like if Munro were with them. Perhaps it marked him as a pervert or
some such, but as it was only in his mind he didn’t think it
mattered. He wondered if Munro’s prick was as big as the rest of
him. Probably. Christ, he’d like to see Avril fuck that.

He choked and had a
coughing fit at the thought. He tried to muffle it in his fist.
What the hell was he thinking? What kind of man imagined his woman
fucking another man and got a hard cock at the thought? He was a
pervert. Maybe Avril had known and that was why she didn’t love
him. Had he done something when they were fucking that let her know
he was wrong in the head? He laid his forehead down on his crossed
arms and sighed.

“
Well, what’s
wrong now?” Ham asked impatiently from behind him. “First you get
shot, and then I hear you’ve walked away from Mrs. Scott, and now
Tommy Thompson comes to tell me you’re sneaking about behind his
tent and crying in the dark. Jesus Christ, boy, do we have to send
you home to Mum?”

“
You ought
to,” he mumbled without raising his head. “I’m sick in the head and
no good to anyone.”

“
Ah, Christ.
It’s worse than I thought. You’re just feeling sorry for yourself.”
Ham heaved a sigh as he sat down next to Conall and peered around
him and the corner of the tent. “Are you spying on her?”

“
Yes,” Conall
said defiantly. “Her and Munro.”

“
Munro, is
it?” Ham asked with a delighted chuckle. “Well it’s about time the
man got some. He was doing a damn good imitation of a monk.” He
slapped Conall on the back. “Sorry it had to be your woman he’s
riding.”

Conall remembered how
close Ham was to Finn and his new wife back in Scutari. He was
probably used to having to listen to a man’s troubles about women.
He’d always been the one brother you could talk to. He didn’t make
fun like Brodie or scold and cuss like Dougie. Nor was he too busy
like their eldest brother Rowan or too young like Bram, the
youngest brother, who had both stayed behind in
Scotland.

“
That’s just
it,” he confided in a guilty whisper. “I’m not sorry at
all.”

Ham went very still next
to him. “No? So you’re not in love with her.”

“
Of course
I’m in love with her,” Conall said indignantly. “Do you think I’d
have taken up with her if I wasn’t?”

“
Many men
would have,” Ham said with a shrug.

Conall punched him in the
arm. “Well, I’m not many men. I’m your brother. You’re supposed to
be thinking the best of me, not the worst.”

“
If you love
her,” Ham said patiently, “then why doesn’t the thought of Munro
fucking her bother you?”

Conall bit his lip,
afraid he’d already said too much. “Well, he’s a good man, isn’t
he?” he said, avoiding the real answer. Or maybe it was the real
answer. Maybe he was reading too much into his overactive
prick.

“
Mmm, he is,”
Ham agreed. “But that’s not why it doesn’t bother you.”

“
It isn’t?”
Conall asked, worry making him frown at Avril’s hut. A picture of
Munro thrusting above Avril, both of them panting and sweaty and
fucking hard flashed into his head and he nearly groaned at the
lust that slammed through him. “No,” he admitted quietly, “it
isn’t.”

“
I thought it
would bother me, you know, the idea of Finn on Edith without me,”
Ham mused. “But it keeps me warm at night and my prick hard.” He
grinned at Conall. “I guess we both got that in our blood,
eh?”

Conall’s jaw dropped open
as he stared at Ham. “You mean you’ve fucked Finn’s wife?” he asked
incredulously. “Does Finn know?”

Ham laughed. “Oh, Finn
knows. He was there for it.”

Conall’s face flamed
red-hot in embarrassment. He wasn’t sure if it was because of Ham’s
words, or the revelation of his dirty secret. “Oh,” was all he
said, turning to stare at Avril’s hut again, afraid to meet Ham’s
eyes.