Snowy Night with a Highlander (10 page)

She did not recognize the moment she slipped into a whisky-induced sleep.

*   *   *

Fiona wasn’t the only one feeling the effects of whisky and a sexual attraction. Duncan had to walk about in the frigid snow just to get her out from under his skin. When he returned with another armload of wood, Fiona was lying on her side next to the fire, snoring lightly.

He could not help but smile. As she’d talked this evening—her face flushed from the whisky, her eyes sparkling with her many memories—he’d pictured her in the finest salons of London, a young and elegant woman from the Scottish Highlands who knew more about horse gambling than social maneuvering, but whom he rather imagined had a natural talent for it. He guessed she was admired in London.

He admired her for it. When he’d been whole, moving in even limited society had not been easy for him. He never clearly understood what was expected of him; it seemed men wanted him to be bold and aloof, women wanted him to be kind and solicitous. And they all wanted something from him.

It required a lot of courage for Fiona to have gone off to London without knowing what awaited her, and quite a lot of courage to have remained and negotiated her way through court society all these years. Duncan liked her honesty and envied her ability to see her place in the world. She seemed to harbor no illusions about who or what she was, and seemed to take everyone she met at face value, without regard for their social standing.

That she had attempted to befriend him, believing him a driver, made her all the more captivating to him.

Duncan went down on his haunches beside her, and in the light of the fire he watched her sleeping for a moment. She was pretty. Not beautiful, but certainly pretty.
She had the look of a Scot, a freshness he’d seen only in Highland women. More important, Fiona was real—there wasn’t the slightest bit of artifice about her. She was refreshingly different from the debutantes he’d once known. They’d all been trained from the cradle to be serene and delicate and demure. Fiona was serene but in a natural way. And she wasn’t particularly delicate or demure, a fact that made him chuckle quietly.

He stoked the fire, removed his hat and eye patch, then eased himself down next to her, very gingerly lifting the fur rug and sliding underneath it beside her. There was nothing to be done for it—if they were to survive this night, they’d need to huddle together for warmth, just like the horses.

He propped his good arm behind his head and looked out over the fire. The snow had passed and bright starlight was reflected off the snow. The air was completely still; it would be bitterly cold tonight. But on the morrow—Christmas Day—they’d be able to travel. They
had
to travel—he did not have enough grain to see the horses past another day, nor was there any food left but a pair of scones for the two of them.

It would be a long, hard day, and Duncan closed his eyes, wanting to sleep—and to dream. To dream of himself with his old face and a pair of working arms.

He slept badly, the cold seeping too quickly into his bones and settling there. He was awakened at some point in the night by Fiona’s trembling. She was making a strange noise that he realized was the sound of her teeth chattering. He reacted without thought, sitting up to stir the embers and put more wood on the fire, then easing down and moving closer to Fiona, pulling the fur up
to her chin. He then slid his arm around her abdomen, drawing her into his chest.

For several peaceful moments they lay there, the warmth of their bodies seeping into his joints. But then Fiona stirred.

Duncan did not move or speak. He did not want to be sent back across the gap of cold earth that had been between them. But Fiona grabbed his hand and pried it from her middle. He began to move away, but she suddenly rolled onto her back and held his hand and removed his glove. She was, he sheepishly realized, awake.

“Have you had your palm read by a seer?” she asked softly.

He shook his head.

A slow smile curved her lips as she idly traced a fingertip down the length of his palm. “
I
have. The Prince of Wales was quite entertained by the art and invited a seer to Carlton House to read the palms of all of his friends.”

“You are a friend to the Prince of Wales?”

“Oh no. But Lady Gilbert is. Or rather, Lady Gilbert’s husband.
This
line,” she said, tracing slowly from his forefinger to the bottom of his palm, “represents the path of your life. I am no expert, sir, but by the look of it, you shall have a long one.”

“Shall I indeed?”

“You seem skeptical.”

He smiled wryly. “Perhaps a wee bit.”

“Mr. Duncan, you must have faith in your hand.” She tapped her finger against his palm. “This line speaks to your intelligence,” she said, running the tip of her glove across his palm. “I am fairly certain it is this one. But this,” she said, wrapping her fingers around his forefinger
and drawing another line across his palm, “indicates your heart.” She studied it a moment by the firelight. “There is a small break here, do you see? A broken heart, no doubt. Oh, but look! The line is renewed and goes on for quite a length! It means you have survived the heartache and will be strong again.”

“Certain of that, are you?” he scoffed.

“No, no’ at all,” she said. She turned her head and looked up at him, looked directly at his damaged eye. “But I am hopeful, for your sake.”

That tiny profession of hope was his undoing. Duncan could not resist her—she was the one person who did not look at him with horror or disdain. Her
joie de vivre
was infectious, her hope uplifting. And her body, curving in all the right places, as soft as butter, smelling of rosewater, was too much for the man in him. He could not endure another moment in her company and not touch her.

He put his fingers to her chin and turned her face completely to him. Her eyes were glimmering; he could feel something rising up in him, something human, something pleasing and agreeable. Her skin, her smile, her eyes beckoned, and he slowly, deliberately touched his lips to hers, unmindful of the consequences, caring for nothing but the feel of a woman in his arms.

She kissed him back.

Her mouth set him aflame, firing his blood from an internal hearth that had been cold for far too long. He slipped his tongue between her lips, and Fiona pressed against him, her body touching the length of his, inch by excruciatingly pleasurable inch.

The sensation was overwhelming to a man starved for affection. He roughly pulled her to him, wrapping her in
a tight one-armed embrace. He’d kissed many women in his life, but never in this way, not with such torrid need, and never so dangerously close to losing all capacity for reason. He rolled her onto her back and came over her, slipping his hand to her breast, filling his hand with the soft pliancy of it.

He dipped his head down, working the clasp of her cloak with his teeth, then pressing his lips to the warm skin at her throat. Fiona sighed with pleasure and swallowed; he could feel the contraction under his lips.

It drove him absolutely mad with desire.

He slipped his hand beneath her cloak and undid the buttons of her traveling coat, one by one, pushing fabric aside until his hand touched silken flesh.

A wave of prurient desire engulfed him, and Duncan helplessly buried his face in the curve of her neck where the scarf had fallen away. When his hand found her bare breast beneath layers of wool, she gasped softly and arched into his palm.

He could feel his heart beating.
His heart, his heart!
It wasn’t dead, it was very much alive. “
Fiona,
” he whispered, and pressed his lips to the skin of her neck, then to the hollow of her throat, and the mound of her breast.

She did nothing to stop him—her hands were on his shoulders, her fingers scraping down his back, and up to his chest. She was panting lightly, and in something of a lust-filled daze, Duncan cupped her face with his hand and lifted himself in order to seek her mouth with his, filling her once more with his kiss.

Fiona sighed into his mouth and began to move against him in a way only a woman could move, slow and sultry. He sucked and nibbled on her lips and her tongue,
feeling pent-up need thrumming through him, swelling into every vein, every muscle, and flooding him with emotions he’d not felt in a very long time. He wanted her with a desperation that left him breathless; he needed—desperately needed—to be inside her, to feel her body hot and wet around him.

As if to answer his silent wish, her leg rose up on one side of him as he teethed a rigid nipple. Duncan caught her ankle and slid his hand up her calf, beneath her cloak and skirt, over thick woolen stockings, to the bare flesh of her inner thigh, to the warm, damp apex of her legs—

Fiona suddenly surged up, cupping his face in her hands, and in doing so, pushing the scarf from his head. She must have felt his puckered skin of his cheek and neck, because she suddenly reared back and looked at him, her eyes widening with shock.

Duncan panicked at the thought of what she was seeing, and everything in him crashed in that moment. He felt a searing twist of his heart.

“Dear God,” she whispered as she stared at his face.

He knew what she saw: a left eye tugged down by the burned skin of his cheek, a misshapen ear. There was scarring on his neck and shoulder that she couldn’t see, but was just as bad. He expected her complete revulsion and tried to pull away, but Fiona held his head in her hands, and remarkably, she touched her fingers to his putrid skin.

Duncan jerked back so suddenly that she toppled to her side. He quickly returned his scarf to its rightful place, and his suddenly lifeless heart to its lockbox. He felt awkward and exposed, did not know what to say, what to do. He was accustomed to the shock, but this time he was not
prepared. He’d been so unguarded and lost in the moment.

He occupied his hands and his sight with tending the fire.

“Duncan . . . I beg your pardon.”

He shook his head. It was he who should be begging her forgiveness.

“I was surprised.”

Repulsed, she meant.

“It must have been quite painful.”

He pushed the stick around the fire, stirring the embers, desperately seeking his voice. He finally managed to speak, but he was unable to look at her. “Do please forgive me. I have overstepped my bounds. Excuse me. I should see to the horses.”

He tossed the stick in the fire and stood, walking out of the shelter. He could not bear to see revulsion in her eyes, or far worse, her pity. Moreover, he realized she’d seen his face fully and did not recognize him yet. Was he so changed? Had the fire taken all his recognizable features from him? Perhaps he should admit now who he was, he thought bitterly, and explain that her wish to see him brought down had been fulfilled.

He did not return to the shelter until the bitter cold had left his extremities numb, his thoughts dull.

Thankfully, Fiona was sleeping. Duncan stoked the fire once more, then took a seat next to her, propped himself against the hay, and stared into the fire, unable to sleep.

Chapter Eight

A
fire was roaring the next morning when Fiona awoke, and the last two scones were warming on a rock near the fire.

But Duncan was nowhere to be seen.

Fiona ate one scone, then slipped out of the shelter. She was stiff and her bones ached, but the sky above her was a glorious shade for blue. She used the snow to wash her face, gasping at the burning cold of it. When she had finished, she stood up and glanced around.

She spotted Duncan then, tending to the horses. It amazed her how fluidly he moved for a man with a useless arm. He’d learned to compensate for it, and it seemed as if there was nothing he could not do.

The sight of his face had kept her from sleeping much through the night. She’d feigned sleep when he’d returned because she’d sensed his discomfort and because she’d not been able to rid her thoughts of the burns or the pain in his eyes—God, his
eyes
. The pain that shone in them was so powerful that it reverberated in her. She could not imagine how he must have suffered, both physically and
emotionally. Her heart had overflowed with sympathy, and then empathy, and now she wanted to assure him that it was not his scars she’d noticed, but
him
. And his eyes. They were expressive and deep, and last night they’d been filled with a passion that had ignited her. He was a man of few words, but with those eyes and hands and mouth, he hadn’t needed words.

Fiona realized that in spite of the impropriety and futility of it, she was very taken with this stoic man. She didn’t care that he was a tenant and she a lady; she told herself that in Scotland those things mattered less than they did in London.

There was something else, too, something that niggled at her thoughts, something vaguely familiar about this man she’d met only two days ago. In some strange way, she felt as if she’d known him quite a long time.

She watched Duncan trudging up the hill to the shelter he’d made. He stooped down, picked up big handfuls of snow, and dumped them onto the fire as she made her way through the snow to help him. “Merry Christmas!” she said cheerfully.