Highlander of Mine (10 page)

“She’s sick, aye. I ken.” It pained him to admit as much out loud, and that was when he realized how dreadfully skilled he’d been at not admitting things to himself. He patted her hand, because he knew Fleur was trying to comfort him, but he feared for his mother too.

“I think”—she wrapped her hand more firmly around his— “I can take care of her, make her life comfortable and maybe even fun. I think I’m here to make up for what I didn’t do for my Na.”

That made sense, and honestly it did him good to think that she was here to help him do what he thought he was botching horribly. Mayhap Fleur was here for his ma, but he would learn from her. He didn’t want his mother to die and think he was an ungrateful son. God, the thought tore him to pieces.

He reached an arm around Fleur’s shoulders, pulling her even closer. He’d hoped in the process he’d feel something more akin to brotherly toward her. But he didn’t. Her scent tormented him, and he wanted to kiss her neck. He wanted to lay her down and mayhap roll on her and . . .

Jesus, he needed to feel something more amiable concerning her. Something friendly, but not too close. After all, she was a gift from the fae, and going to leave at any moment. It would be futile to spend his time and energy on a woman he couldn’t have.

That little pearl of insight bit him right on the arse. Not that long ago, it wouldn’t have bothered him to expend a little time on a woman he’d never see again. In fact, he’d preferred it that way.

Duncan scanned Fleur’s sweet face, unable to help himself as his stare focused a wee bit more on her lips. Aye, Fleur had positively left her mark on him if he already worried about her leaving, worried that it would hurt when she did.

Chapter 11

F
leur and Duncan were right where Mrs. Cameron had guessed they might be, a few rods from her house yet protected from view by a small hill covered with heather. Rory spied them sitting as if the sun was out just for them, smiling at each other. Duncan sat with his legs bent before him, but the lady rested with her legs angled to the side, letting her black skirt hide her long limbs, except for a peep of her colorful moccasins.

They were talking. Talking! Damnation. The huge mercenary wasn’t supposed to open his mouth with words. He was supposed to be a brute who would mumble and grunt and disgrace himself to the lady.

The wind carried much of their conversation to him.

“Truly?” Duncan said while smiling down at Lady Fleur. “How’d ye take the dirk from the lad?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t really think he’d use it, but it pissed me off, er, I got mad that he’d even try. I reacted before I thought through what I was doing, and” —she snapped her fingers— “like that I had his little knife.”

Duncan grimaced and leaned away from the lady. “Beggin’ ye pardon, but ye never call a man’s, even if he is still a lad,
sgian dubh
little.”

“The knife is a skain doo?”

“Aye.”

“And I can’t call it little?”

Duncan shook his head reproachfully as the lady silently chuckled. The huge man broke out in a smile of his own and leaned closer to her once more.

“But”—her smile turned wicked— “what if it is...small?”

Duncan slapped a hand over his heart and fell over backwards, making the lady giggle loudly.

Lord, the double entendre was killing Rory. He felt it stab through his innards, his head ached. Especially so as the lady leaned over Duncan, a few of her long black strands seeming to reach down for the mercenary when she asked, “Did I kill you?”

“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.

“What? Tell me what you were going to say.”

He sighed, but then relented. “’Tis hard to believe. Ye’re from another time. What’s it like?”

She scooted a little closer, turning her folded legs toward him, holding onto a shin with her hand. “Some of my time is so similar to yours. I mean, here, right here, reminds me of my home, where I grew up. I—I don’t live in my hometown anymore.”

“Ye moved away from it?”

“Yes.”

“Do ye like where ye live now?”

She thought about Ithaca, New York, how it had a presence like a small town. It was a lush green thanks to the constant humidity, and outside the city, waterfalls dotted the land in sparkling rainbow colors. But because of the universities and its obvious closeness to New York City, there was a sense of urban to it Fleur wasn’t sure she did like. However, her small home was a little ways from Ithaca, where trees grew inches from each other, and a fox came and visited her every day in the spring and summer. One year the fox brought her babies close by when Fleur had left cheese out for the little family.

But it was Porcupine Fleur thought of. Ithaca resembled the Highlands in appearance more than her rough and tumble hometown, but in the sense of community and the close-knit feeling her home radiated, so too did the Highlands.

“I like Ithaca. It’s beautiful. But I miss Porcupine, my hometown until I was fourteen.”

“Fourteen? That’s when I wanted to leave Durness, have some kind of tutelage. But I waited until I was nearer seven and ten.”

Fleur thought Duncan might be impressed with her being plucked and taken to Texas when she had been a young teenager. But she hadn’t been impressive. She’d been depressed and lonely. “Yes. A teacher of mine called some people, because in school—oh, where I come from all the children have to go to school. Anyway, in school I did really well in math and science.”

“Aye, ye like numbers, ye think in numbers. I wish I did. That sounds intriguin’.”

She giggled. “Are you trying to be nice to me? I’m a freak.”

“Nay.” Duncan furrowed his red brows, then pointed a shaking finger at her. “Don’ say that about yerself. I’ll out yell ye for sure.”

She chuckled again, but then looked down while she shook her head.

He gave a hefty sigh then. “Ye think in numbers, which is good in my mind. I think in...Oh, Jesus, I’m goin’ to say it. I think in words.”

“Most people do.”

He shook his head. “Look at me. Tell me ye don’ see a man who is part beast, too much brawn for my own good, aye? So when people look at me, and see me with my sword that makes sense, ye ken? But the words I think with...the words . . .”

“Tell me about the words you think with.”

He huffed for a moment, seeming to need the extra air. But when he spoke, he sounded so calm. “Cinnamon whirls ‘round my mind. Ye hair reminds me of cinnamon. ‘Tis such a tempting spice, it is. Smells so innocent and sweet, and ye tresses are so dark, but in this light they glow red. Like cinnamon. If ye eat too much, ‘tis hot in yer mouth. It sits there then invades yer blood, makin’ ye boil inside out. But it feels so good, the heat, the sweet, the combination.”

Granted, Fleur had been attracted to Duncan from the very beginning. He’d stood so still after he’d dipped in the bay, letting the water wick off his huge muscular body. She’d loved the way his red hair had deepened, become dark curling rubies with droplets falling from them. And she’d wanted him. She’d wanted to pounce on him.

But right then, after he’d told her about how he thought in poems, poems created with beautiful words and desire, her skin sizzled, her breasts ached and the apex of her legs flooded with need. It was almost impossible not to attack him.

With the fire and the honeyed moon as their light and guide, he shook his head. “Anyway, ye were tellin’ me that ye left at the tender age of fourteen?”

She nodded absentmindedly. It was difficult to go back to conversation though. Words were difficult to come by. Ultimately, she knew she would get a hold of herself and talk again, but for a moment all she felt was a throbbing for him. It came in twos. Like a heartbeat, her ache for him.

She told him of living in Texas, of learning biology in college, graduate school, her PhD. He sat smiling at her.

“Ye are a smart one.”

“So are you.”

He shook his head.

“Why don’t you think of stories anymore? Your usage of words...it’s so beautiful.”

He looked down at the fire, then threw a few more logs onto it. “My stepfather, Albert, he heard me tell a tale once at the Green Cat, where ye told yer fine tale. Ye made up a good story with that one.”

She shook her head. “That wasn’t something I made up. It’s an old story, maybe a few thousand years old. It’s not at all mine.”

“Still, ye told it well.”

“And you’re once again avoiding answering me.”

He chuckled but then lost his grin when he started talking. “I told a tale when I was about eleven. I’d been tellin’ ‘em for a bit by then. Gettin’ requests to keep tellin’ ‘em too. So I made up this story of a boy who was part dragon and had the dreaded quest to save his village, but the dragon in him wanted to eat the village people.”