Snowy Night with a Highlander (6 page)

Brian and one of the lasses stumbled out of the room,
coughing. Duncan had rushed to help them, but Brian had waved him off, urging him to save himself, they were all out.

But they weren’t all out. As servants rushed past them toward the fire, and Duncan and his guests gathered in the front lawn, he realized Devon was missing. Brian and Richard could not say where he was. Duncan had felt a surge of sickening panic unlike anything he’d ever felt in his life, and had run back into the burning wing.

Cold, hard fear was a sobering agent; he clearly remembered yanking his shirttail from his trousers and holding the tail over his mouth and nose. He remembered how intense the heat was from the blaze in the salon—the furniture, the draperies, the carpet, all in flames. He pushed past the brave souls who were trying desperately to beat the fire into submission, ignored their cries to come back, and entered the room.

The smoke was so intense that he’d dropped to his knees. But still Duncan had crawled, searching for his friend, desperate to find him.

He never found Devon. A moment after he entered the room, a piece of drapery and its apparatus had come tumbling down in a fiery blaze. His shoulder and arm and a sliver of his face were badly burned. His servants had pulled him out of the fire and rolled him on the carpet to extinguish the fire on his body. Duncan remembered only that; the rest of it, including the rapidity with which the fire spread, destroying the western wing of what had been a grand estate, he did not recall.

The charred remains still stood—Duncan had not yet found the will or energy to repair it. The shell stood as a silent but constant reminder of all that he’d lost.

Devon’s remains were found a few days later—or rather, the soles of his boots and a gold ring were found
in the salon. He’d fallen so far into his cups he’d passed into oblivion, and his absence had gone unnoticed by his equally inebriated friends.

The cause of the fire was never discovered, but no one needed to suggest it was a drunken mishap that had sparked it. Most around Blackwood blamed Duncan and his libertine ways for it. So did Duncan.

He spent weeks in a painful fog, and it was months before he could manage the physical pain. He suspected it would be years before he could manage the emotional pain of it. To make matters worse, people who had once flocked to him were repulsed by his burns and disgusted by the unnecessary death of his friend. Duncan had gone from king of Highland society to pariah.

Yet he could scarcely complain—after all, his life had been rather shallow before the fire. He’d lived from one moment to the next without regard for anyone but himself.

And while he still dreamed of himself as a whole man, with a functioning arm and an unmarked face, he nonetheless felt himself a profoundly changed man. He kept to himself these days, using Cameron as a front man to do his business so that he did not repulse anyone with his unsightly appearance. He did not enjoy the genteel company of women as he once had, but then again, he had come to regret his cavalier treatment of them and everyone else in his life when he’d had a life to speak of.

He regretted so many things.

Duncan shifted beneath the coats and rugs and closed his eyes, methodically stretching the fingers of his scarred hand as far as he could, then closing them again, over and over as he did every night, hoping that somehow some use would come back to the gnarled fingers.

Chapter Five

F
iona was awakened by the smell of cooked ham. Mrs. Dillingham was at the long table in the kitchen cutting thick slices of bread when Fiona came down from her attic bedroom. At her elbow was a pail.

“Good morrow, milady!” she said cheerfully, “I hope you slept with the angels.”

“I did. Thank you.”

“ ’Twas me pleasure, it was. Eat, eat!” she exclaimed, gesturing to the feast that graced the table. “I’ve made your breakfast.”

Grateful, Fiona sat. As she ate, Mrs. Dillingham stood at the table and put the slices of bread, ham, and other items wrapped in paper into a pail. When she’d filled it with what seemed like enough food to feed an army, she picked up a handful of straw and began to stuff that in the pail, too.

“You must hurry on, then, for your man is anxious to be on his way,” Mrs. Dillingham said. “He says he feels snow coming, and you’ve still a way to go to Blackwood.” She smiled at Fiona as she stuffed more hay into the pail. “He wouldna even have a bite, if you can believe it, but
I’m no stranger to stubborn men, no I’m no’. I insisted he take some food along.”

“How very kind of you.”

“A big man like that canna work and see after you on an empty belly, can he, now?”

Apparently, she’d not be traveling on an empty belly, either. The food was delicious; Fiona ate until she was quite stuffed.

Mrs. Dillingham tested the heft of the pail. “There we are,” she said, apparently satisfied with her work, and as Fiona stood, she handed the pail to her. “Here you are, milady. A bit of food for your journey.”

“For me?” Fiona asked, surprised. “How very kind, Mrs. Dillingham. Thank you. I’ve some coins in my portmanteau—”

“No, no, your man has paid for it.”

“He did?” she said, startled.

“He was right generous when it came to your lodging, milady. Said I was to take proper care of you.” She smiled. “Take it, then, and Godspeed.”

Fiona took it. And when she walked outside the little cottage into a gray day, her man, as Mrs. Dillingham had put it, was standing at the fence, waiting for her. “Good day, sir!” Mrs. Dillingham called out to him. He nodded in response.

Fiona walked across the yard to him, her portmanteau in one hand, the pail of food in the other. “Good morning,” she said.

He hardly spared her a glance as he took the portmanteau from her hand and placed it carefully onto his bad hand. “Morning,” he responded as he took the pail from her. “Shall we?”

“Yes.” She turned and waved to Mrs. Dillingham, then
followed Mr. Duncan up the road. Mr. Duncan kept his gaze on the road, but Fiona looked curiously at him. “Mrs. Dillingham said you paid for my keep.”

“Aye.”

“Why?” she asked. “I can pay my way,” she said, her eyes narrowing suspiciously.

“We’ll settle at the end of the journey.”

“Will we indeed? You are quite free with your commands, Mr. Duncan. Funny, I did no’ think you looked like a Duncan when first we met, but now I think I am beginning to see it.”

That earned her a curious glance. “Pardon?”

“I did no’ think a Duncan should be quite as tall as you,” she said, eyeing his torso.
Or as broad.
“Or as taciturn,” she said. “I thought a Duncan would be a bit of a prattler. A rooster.”

“
Rooster?
”

“Mmm,” she said, looking at him studiously. “
Rooster
. You have a bit of it in you.”

His gaze took her in, from the top of her hood to her hem, before he opened the gate on the wagon. For the first time since they had begun this journey—which seemed many days ago instead of only one—he really looked at her, his gaze lingering a little too long on her figure, and then rising slowly again to her eyes.

The
way
he looked at her was alarmingly arousing. Her heart began to beat a little wildly, the pace picking up as he leaned toward her. For one moment of sheer insanity, Fiona thought he meant to kiss her.

But he handed the pail of food to her. “So that you willna perish,” he added unnecessarily.

Surprisingly disappointed, Fiona smiled coyly and took
the pail from him, sliding it onto the back of the wagon. Mr. Duncan leaned down, cupping his good hand, and once again, she put her foot into it and allowed him to push her up as if she were nothing more than the pail of food. He watched her move to the front of the wagon—the brazier was full and warm, she noted—then put her portmanteau just inside the wagon’s gate. He closed the gate, then paused to look at her again. She thought he would speak; but without a word, he disappeared. A moment later, the wagon dipped to one side as he climbed up on the bench. A moment or two after that, the wagon lurched forward.

Fiona tried to keep her thoughts from the mysterious Mr. Duncan, but it was an exercise in futility. This was what she deserved from playing so many bawdy parlor games in London and flirting outrageously. But it was different here. Given the difference in their stations, a flirtation would lead him to think her a lady bird.

So Fiona amused herself for a time by counting the various crates and sacks and bundles surrounding her. When she tired of that, she thought of Sherri, hoping that she’d walked miles and miles before Mr. Ridley found her, but then began to fret that Mr. Ridley hadn’t found her, and that Sherri was wandering about the countryside, the potential victim of any number of predators.

After a time, she tried to lie on the bench, but every bump in the road required her to catch herself from falling.

Fiona finally sat up. This was really not to be borne. There were only the two of them, separated by a thin sheet of tarpaulin. Why should they pretend not to be in one another’s company? Because she was a lady and he was a— Honestly, she wasn’t precisely certain what he was, other than a very virile man, but he was a man who
was a stranger to her. It wasn’t as if the rules of society had to be obeyed on this road or really beyond Edinburgh. They were two people traveling through a landscape so vast and remote that it was possible to believe they were the only two people in all the world.

Fiona twisted on her seat and looked at the tarpaulin, pulled taut over the wire frame. She leaned forward, saw where the tarpaulin was attached to the wagon, and gave it a pull. “Stop,” she said, her voice barely audible above the creaking and moaning of the wagon and its wheels. “Stop!” The wagon pitched along. “
Stop!”
she cried, and hit the tarpaulin with the flat of her palm. “
Stop, stop, stop!”

The wagon lurched to a sudden halt, propelling her into the tarpaulin and back again, then tilting to one side as Mr. Duncan climbed off the bench. Fiona had scarcely turned herself around on her little bench when he appeared at the back of the wagon, looking at her through the opening as if he expected her to be bleeding. When he saw that she wasn’t hurt, the expression in his eyes melted into impatience.

“I canna’ abide riding in the bed of the wagon all day,” she said in response to his question before he could ask it. “I should like a proper airing.”

“An
airing?
” he echoed incredulously.

“Aye, an airing! Is it really too much to ask?” she demanded as she made her way forward. She tripped on the corner of a bag of grain and quickly righted herself. “It’s dangerous in here!”

“Mi Diah,
” he cursed softly.

It had been some years since Fiona had heard Gaelic spoken, and it made her pulse leap a bit—there was nothing that brought her back to Scotland and home faster
than the language of the Highlands. She’d grown up with Gaelic spoken around her, particularly by her father, who insisted she and Jack learn how to read and write it along with the languages of society and court, English and French, which they spoke every day.

Duncan’s speaking a bit of Gaelic now drew her to him like a magnet; she paused, looking down at him. “There are only the two of us, Mr. Duncan, and it seems rather pointless to continue on in complete silence, does it no’? I, for one, would prefer some company.” Even if he was the most taciturn man she’d ever met.

He sighed as if he was vexed beyond endurance—but he held up his hand to help her down.

Fiona smiled triumphantly, slipped her hand into his, and felt his thick fingers close tightly around hers. She slid one foot off the end of the wagon, looking for the undercarriage. But her foot missed it and she slipped; Duncan let go of her hand and caught her around the waist. Her fall was stopped by his unmovable body. He held her there, his eyes piercing hers. After a moment, he allowed her to slide, very slowly, down the length of him to her feet.

The contact was brief, but the effect was entirely intoxicating. This man was as hard-bodied and big as a tree, his grip as firm as a vise yet surprisingly gentle.

Fiona’s body was tingling all over. She stepped away, drew a quick but steadying breath, and glanced over her shoulder at him. Duncan’s startling gaze was filled with the look of a man’s hunger, a look of gnawing desire—Fiona knew it, because regrettably, she was feeling it, too.

A warm flush filled her cheeks, yet she pulled her cloak around her and adjusted her hood. “The air will do me good,” she said, apropos of nothing but a suddenly pressing
need to fill the silence that seemed to crackle around them. She did not look at him, did not give him the chance to argue, and began walking to the front of the wagon.

Fortunately, there was a wooden step to help the driver up, of which Fiona availed herself. She settled on the driver’s bench, looking straight ahead, waiting for Duncan to ask her to come down, to go back into the little cave.

She heard nothing. She looked up at the trees towering above them and the stone gray sky, breathing in the heavy scent of pine. When she at last risked a look at him, she discovered he wasn’t even there. But he appeared a moment later with a pair of furs tucked up beneath his bad arm. He pulled them out and tossed them up onto the bench. Fiona quickly moved them, spreading them over her lap while Duncan lifted himself gracefully onto the bench.