Duchess of Mine (14 page)

“Just ‘bout.”

She laughed again. Eventually, Duncan righted
himself and they moved on to the subject of places they’d
visited.

Rory was here to ask the lady for her company
to watch the men drill today, but now he wasn’t sure if he could go
back to train his young troops, even with the latest intelligence
that a small band of Cromwell’s army was approaching in a fortnight
or less. He wasn’t sure if he could do much of anything. It hurt
that the lady was paying so much attention to the big man who Rory
secretly resented yet admired. He didn’t know if it was his pride
that stung more or...nay, he couldn’t have fallen for the lady so
soon. Ah, but she was bonny. Clever too. He’d fancied himself with
her, leaning on her for support. Mayhap they would be friends at
first, then eventually she would be more to him, much more.

Last night he’d spent hours envisioning her
legs around him. Jesus, but those legs of hers were spectacular.
And her lips were divine. He’d dreamed of kissing her senseless.
Bah, what good were dreams? He’d always had a dream of being the
laird, but his brother obviously would have that title, what with
being the first-born son, while Rory was the second. Although he
was fifteen years his senior, John seemed strong and capable of
ruling for an eon. Besides, Rory really wanted to be a clan leader
like the days of yore—less politics and more about commanding the
troops and raising good crops. He knew he didn’t have the political
acumen his brother had, especially in light of Cromwell. The clan
needed someone with a mind that could outwit the scheming
parliamentary ruler.

John was best as laird. Rory knew that. But
he had begun to hope the lady would...what did it matter?
Obviously, she seemed to fancy the mercenary. During these insane
times, largely thanks to Cromwell and other absurd thinkers, ladies
could be with whom they wanted, not caring for titles any more, it
seemed. It made Rory unsure about his place, but then again, no one
seemed to know their place any more. Mayhap especially the
mercenary down below.

“No, no, when you were little,” Rory heard
Fleur say. “What did you want to do back then?”

Duncan shrugged. “’Tis silly.”

“I like silly.”

The huge man captured a wave of her black
hair and gently caressed it behind her ear. The rest of her raven’s
tresses were seized in a wild knot with braids seeming to bind it
together. It looked messy and so lovely. To Rory, it reminded him
of tales of the women who had lived before time was time. He
thought of the fae and of otherworldly creatures.

He thought of his heart and how he had
already begun to long for Lady Fleur. No other woman had captured
his attention like her. Well, for the last six years he’d been
dealing with aristocratic brats. Spoiled women, who knew how to
give orders to their maids, but had never worked a day in their
lives. It was disgusting to watch and to associate with. He’d
gotten to bed many of them, but he could have cared less if they’d
opened their mouths to speak. Nay, that wasn’t quite true, for he’d
yearned to have one of them talk of anything other than gossip. But
he hadn’t found a one.

That was why he realized how rare a gift Lady
Fleur was.

“I—I thought up stories when I was a lad,”
Duncan confessed to the lady. “Like the ones ye heard last night. I
used to think up stories all the time.”

The monster of a man used to tell tales to
himself? That was almost laughable, Rory thought. Not that Rory
would laugh at him, but more, he’d thought that Duncan was all
soldier, too tough to do anything other than think with his
sword.

Fleur swatted Duncan’s giant shoulder
playfully. “Then you, sir, I’m going to have to call a liar.”

Duncan narrowed his eyes.

“Last night you told me you didn’t have any
tales to tell. And you said it rather rudely too.”

Duncan nodded. “Sorry. I was bein’ an
arse.”

“Yes, you were.”

The large man smiled at that, then
reluctantly shrugged. “Aye, well, I don’t any more. Have tales to
tell. I stopped thinkin’ ‘em a long time ago.”

Then Rory’s gut wrenched as Fleur found a
lock of Duncan’s too long, harsh red hair and tucked it behind his
ear, as he’d done earlier to her. She smiled widely. “I guess we
have to change that, huh?”

“I don’ see what good that would do.”

She sighed. “Because you can’t give up on
your dreams, Duncan.”

As much as it ached to hear Lady Fleur use
the mercenary’s Christian name, it made Rory stop and think.
You
can’t give up on your dreams
, floated through his head. He
liked the sentiment. It felt good and resonated in his bones.
Mayhap the lady might fancy the large Duncan a little, but last
night it had seemed she’d fancied him too. The lady perhaps
struggled with her affections. Well, Rory would be all too happy to
help her set them straight.

Duncan was a vagabond. A rich one, but still
he was a wanderer. Rory could offer the lady stability. But more
than that, Rory knew he could offer the lady a life where she would
be respected and respectable. What could Duncan offer her? He chose
to be a nobody.

Aye, the lady was right in her advice to
Duncan. It was guidance Rory would take to heart. He would make the
lady his, prove himself to her. For with her, he could think about
the future of the MacKay lands, how to make it grow and prosper.
With her he knew he could dream.

Chapter 12

F
leur ventured outside in the dead of
the night, feeling restless. Already three days here,
and...and...it felt like home. That just couldn’t be. Maybe it was
because Helen had been so accommodating and funny—telling hilarious
stories of when Duncan was a
wee bairn
. It made Fleur’s day
watching him blush from some of the accounts. Maybe it was because
there was an established a daily routine already. Fleur knew the
studies, how primates acclimated to different environments due to
routines. In the morning and early afternoon she and Helen watched
Duncan and Rory train the recruits; the late afternoons were with
Jamie and his harmless gang, stealing apples from orchards and
laughing so hard she would sometimes cry; and then she’d have
nightly suppers with Duncan, Rory, and Helen. Rory would eventually
take his leave. Helen would shuffle to her room to slumber. And
tonight, Fleur couldn’t sleep to save her life.

Finding a small fire pit just outside the
back garden, she began to construct kindling atop each other. Fire
building had been a trick she’d easily recalled from her childhood.
It was something Na and her uncles had taught her. Finding a flint
rock and long knife close by, she took a huge breath then struck
the knife against the rock. It took several efforts, since she’d
never used nor ever been shown how to use a flint rock, but finally
she created a whirlwind of sparks, somehow landing in the tinder
and catching fire.

“Ye did good.”

Fleur squeaked, jumping with the knife
outstretched, but Duncan caught her hand and softly pushed the
threat aside with a giant smile, as the brown plaid she’d worn to
shield her from the chilly night fluttered to the ground.

“Fast little Valkyrie, aren’t ye?”

“You scared the crap out of me.”

His red brows drew up, and he looked like he
was trying to stifle a laugh.

“Seriously, you scared me. Feel my heart.
It’s beating like...I don’t even know what.”

The smile on his face vanished when he gazed
at her chest. She wasn’t exactly descent, at least by this
century’s standards. But how could a woman wear a corset or that
awful kirtle all day and not tear her hair out? So she was in a
white shift. Not one of the more translucent ones she now had
thanks to Helen. This chemise was petal soft with silver-white
embroidered roses all around the hemlines.

Duncan swallowed. Hard.

Oh, she liked that.

Throwing the knife down, blade
thunking
into the ground, she found his hand, placing it
over her heart even as she knew she was stretching boundaries. But
she just couldn’t seem to help herself.

“See? Feel my heart?”

He nodded.

His hand was a lot bigger than she’d thought
and swallowed almost half her chest. His pinky finger was
dangerously close to her nipple, and she knew he felt the swell of
her breast. His face tensed, his eyes growing even darker than
forest green.

She needed to stop torturing the man, but it
was so much fun. However, it was turning a bit punishing for her
too, what with her sexual desire augmenting and nothing to do about
it.

“And that’s why you can’t scare me. My heart
does that.”

He opened his mouth, looking like he was
going to say something—maybe something a little naughty. But he
took a sip of a breath and lowered to his haunches helping her fire
grow.

They pieced together the sticks and logs over
the flames. He’d peek at her, shyly smiling. God, she really liked
how sweet he was. Gentle. Something about him made her feel as if
she was...home. Only, like nothing she knew before. But she wanted
to.

“I was about three or four, and I remember my
Uncle Steve telling me how to look for wood that would mesh well
together for a fire,” she said, amazed she was telling him personal
information. Usually guarded and uncomfortable, she’d never talk
about herself. But Duncan was unlike any man she’d ever known
before. He felt damned good to be around, and she had often found
herself craving his company in these last three days.

The blaze illuminated his red hair on his
face and head, making him look like a fire god. For a moment, she
couldn’t breath. So handsome, so handsome, so handsome, she
thought, with the bright firelight, glittering stars, and innocent
moon revealing him to look more a deity than merely a man.

Somehow, she continued talking. “You know,
like the crooked logs match with the roughly chopped timber, and
the two incongruent logs seem to burn hotter when together. And
back then, it suddenly occurred to me that it was as beautiful as
adding numbers. It was as lovely as six plus six equaling twelve,
twelve plus twelve equaling twenty-four, twenty-four plus
twenty-four equaling forty-eight, and so on. Forever and ever.
Unless I subtracted them. Numbers were just like the flames that I
could control by making them bigger or smaller depending on the
addition or subtraction, or in the case of fire, the kinds of logs
I would put on it.”

Duncan cracked a wide grin, but Fleur didn’t
know how to read it.

“I sound like an arithmetic nerd, er, fool,
don’t I?”

He laughed and shook his head. “Nay, ye sound
incredibly brilliant, was all I was thinkin’. I wasn’t addin’ when
I was three. I doubt I did much of it until...Jesus, well, later in
my life. I’m thinkin’ I’m the fool here.”

“No! I—my brain—I always think in numbers. I
like the number three and try to make everything about it.
Sometimes I even say things three times. Although it’s not
compulsive or anything. Still, I’m weird.”

“No, ye aren’t.”

“Yes, I think—”

“I think I can out yell ye, Fleur, so before
it gets to that, just agree with me that ye aren’t weird.”

“Is that how you win your confrontations? Out
yelling people?”

He shook his head. The fire was getting too
warm. She sat close to the fence a few feet away from the flames.
Then she patted next to her hip. Almost tentatively he approached,
but when he did settle next to her, he leaned against a fence pole,
his arm just kissing hers.

“Nay, I—come to think upon it, I haven’t been
in a confrontation in a while.”

“You’re a mercenary.”

He chuckled. “Those aren’t
my
confrontations.”

She smiled, liking his witty mind. “So what
do you do in
your
confrontations then?”

Glancing up to the diamonds in the onyx sky,
Duncan shrugged. “I don’ think I’ve been in one since I was a lad.
We had a scrap. I fought with Billy MacDougal until we both had
bloody noses.”

“What did you fight about?”

“Lord, I don’ remember.”

But the way he was trying to hide a smile
told her otherwise. “Liar. You remember.”

He chuckled again. “Ye got a keen mind.
Perceptive.”

She giggled. “I think a blind man could see
you were lying. That smile of yours gives everything away. You’re
right. You are a bad liar.”

“Aye.” He kept grinning.

“But you still haven’t told me what the fight
was about.”

He gurgled an odd noise as he fought back
another laugh. “All right. I’ll tell. It was about a lass.”

“Of course.” She tried to combat her own
mirth, like him. “Was she pretty?”

Duncan looked at the fire and threw some
sticks into it, she thought, to do something with his hands.

“Now that I really don’ remember, but she
must have been, aye? For me to fight over her. ‘Twas my first
heartache though, for the lass chose Billy over me, though I’d
clearly won the fight.”

Fleur shook her head. “Silly girl.”

The next night they’d met again in the dark,
swallowed by the silence of the nocturnal happenings, engulfed with
shy smiles—routines were good. This time Duncan had started the
fire and had placed a large amount of wood close by. The previous
night they’d had to part because they’d run out of fuel for their
flames. Now, they had the opportunity to talk for several hours.
Fleur grinned widely.

After they sat together against the fence, a
tiny bit closer to each other than last night, Duncan said, “Yer
time—” He cleared his throat. “Tell me more about what ye do...in
yer time.”

“It’s odd to say that, huh?”

“Aye. I—” He stopped himself and looked to
the flames, appearing to bite at his lips.