Snowy Night with a Highlander (9 page)

She fell silent as he sent the horses to a trot again, their breath rising in great plumes. Duncan imagined Lady
Fiona Haines on her bench inside the wagon, bouncing along, her hands gripping the edge.

A headwind picked up, pushing the snow into neat piles alongside the road. The limbs of the pines under which they were passing were hanging low under the snow’s weight.

After another hour of traveling in wretched conditions, Duncan realized they were far from a village and even farther from Blackwood. The team was tiring, and if the snow kept falling, it wouldn’t be long before it would be too deep to pull the wagon. Duncan did not relish a night spent literally on the road.

It was dumb luck that as the horses began to labor up a hill where the trees thinned, he happened to see a cattle enclosure on the sheltered side of a large rock. And he considered it nothing short of a miracle that the enclosure held three sheaves of hay.

“Whoa, whoa,” he said, pulling back on the reins, bringing the horses to a stop once more.

When he helped Fiona out of the wagon, she only grumbled a bit when he explained their predicament and pointed to the enclosure. “We shall freeze to death,” she said.

“We will no’,” he countered.

“It will scarcely matter if we freeze, for wolves will feast on us.”

“The wolf is dead,” he patiently reminded her. “And if he were alive, he’d no’ come near a fire.”

She pressed her lips together, studying him, and nodded. “All right, then. What must we do?”

“Help me remove the tarpaulin.”

Between the two of them, they removed the tarpaulin from its frame and dragged it up the hill to the enclosure.
She helped him make a shelter of sorts. With hay on the ground and one of the lap furs to cover it, he used the rest of the hay to form a lee around the fur. On the edge of the enclosure, he scuffed a circle and kicked hay and snow away, leaving the earth bare. “Stay here,” he said to Fiona. He trooped down to the wagon again, loaded wood onto his damaged arm, then returned to the space he’d made. He made the trip to the wagon thrice more.

As Fiona watched, he built a fire, held his hand over the flame a moment, and when he was certain it would not go out, he touched the brim of his hat. “Here is wood,” he said, pointing to the little pile. “Keep the flame burning while I tend the horses.”

The snow was beginning to thin, but now the wind was blowing and he was chilled to the bone. He disengaged the horses one by one from the harness frame and led them to a stand of Scots pines, where he hobbled them together. He hung oat bags on each of them—no small feat, given their height and his useless appendage. And with the four of them munching away, he draped them each with horse blankets.

Satisfied that the horses would huddle together and survive the night, Duncan returned to the wagon and fetched the pail of food Mrs. Dillingham had made for them. He also dug out a flask of whisky from beneath a sack of grain and leaned down, tucking it inside his boot.

He had a feeling that being trapped in a small shelter with an attractive, alluring woman might make this the longest night of his life, and he was going to need every bit of help he could get.

Chapter Seven

F
iona was relieved to see Duncan when he emerged from the gray mist that was settling around them, a fur rug draped over his shoulder, the pail of food in hand. He’d been gone long enough that she’d begun to fret something had happened to him.

But then again, she’d noticed today that things were not easy for a man with a wounded arm.

She stepped out from beneath the tarpaulin to relieve him of the pail. He followed her underneath the cover and shrugged out from underneath the rug, letting it fall between them.

Fiona glanced at the fur as she kneeled down and began to remove the straw Mrs. Dillingham had packed into the pail. “Only one?”

“You’re sitting on the other,” he said as he squatted down and added more wood to the fire.

The import of that statement slowly sank in—there was only one rug for the two of them to use to cover themselves, one rug between the two of them and nature’s icy grip.

The idea that they’d have to share a lap rug, while entirely titillating, was also alarming. There had been that moment at the back of the wagon in which Fiona actually feared she might have kissed this Highlander had his face not been wrapped in woolen scarves.

She was courting disaster—she might be in the Highlands with no one about to observe her ruin, but that didn’t mean she’d be any less ruined if she gave in to temptation.

“What is it?” he asked.

Startled, Fiona looked at him, then down at her hands. She was holding two rock-hard scones.

“Perhaps if you put them near the fire,” he said, as if she were undecided as to what to do with them.

She quickly put them on a rock near the fire and looked into the pail again.

It hardly mattered that there was only one rug between them—the space was so small that she couldn’t help but lie or sit beside him in this tiny shelter. Lord God, how did she get herself into such predicaments? It very much reminded her of the time that she and Lady Gilbert had taken it upon themselves to climb up to the old ruins on the Gilbert estate. But the ruins were not where Lady Gilbert had believed them to be, and they’d become lost in a stand of aspens. It had begun to rain, and without a proper umbrella between them, the two of them had been forced to crouch together in a tiny little cave. It was so cramped that they’d become rather cross with one another. It was a fortnight before they’d patched things up.

Fiona had learned a valuable lesson that day—in times of turmoil, people either came together or were torn apart.

“Is something amiss?” he asked, his voice low and gruff.

“Amiss? No, no—I was just having a look at the pail.” She pulled out a hunk of cheese wrapped in cloth. There were apples and nuts, too, in addition to the bread and ham. She handed the ham to Duncan, who speared the meat on the end of a stick and stuck it near the fire to warm it.

They ate in silence, both of them staring out at the white landscape, huddled in their cloaks. But the cold was seeping through the hay and the fur on which they sat, making Fiona’s bones ache.

Seated on her left, Duncan watched her hold her gloved hands out to the fire. “You are cold.”

“I’m no’.”

He gave her a look that said he knew better. “I can
see
you shivering, lass.”

“Shivering?”
She tried to laugh. “I am no’
shivering.
I am . . .” Honestly, she couldn’t think of an excuse. She was shivering.

Duncan removed his hat. He had sandy brown hair, streaked gold by the sun. With his gaze on the fire, he unwrapped a scarf from his face, leaving a second one wrapped around his lower face and neck. He returned the hat to his head and pulled it down low. “Here,” he said, handing the scarf to her. It was dry, protected by his collar and hat from the snow. “Put it around your neck and ears.”

“I could no’ possibly,” she protested.

“Put it on,” he commanded her. “You’ll catch your death.”

She did not want to take his scarf, but she was freezing.
She quickly removed her damp bonnet and tossed it aside. She wrapped the scarf around her head and neck. It smelled of him—a spicy, musky scent that stirred her blood. A violent shiver caught her by surprise, and this one had nothing to do with cold.

“Better?” he asked.

She nodded. “Thank you.”

He reached for his boot and retrieved a flask. Fiona watched him open it and take a long draft from it. Then he handed it to her. “Drink.”

“What is it?”

“Scotch whisky.”

“Oh no, I shouldna—”

He turned and looked at her with a gaze warmly limpid in the firelight. “
Drink
, my lady,” he insisted low. “It will take the chill from your bones.”

That suggestion persuaded her far too easily; she gingerly drank from the flask. The liquor burned so badly it made her eyes water. Fiona blinked to clear her vision. She felt a little strange in the gut, but she did indeed feel warmer.

Duncan smiled a little lopsidedly when she took another, longer drink and handed it back to him. He took a sip, then passed it to her again, as if they were a pair of sailors sharing a bit of gin on a moonlit deck.

“May I ask you a personal question?” she asked after taking another sip and dragging the back of her hand across her mouth.

He did not respond, which she took as tacit agreement.

“What happened to your arm?”

He shifted slightly, as if the question made him uncomfortable. “An accident.”

It was obviously the result of an accident. Fiona tapped him on the arm with the flask and handed it to him. But before she let go of it, she said, “There are many types of accidents . . . carriage accidents, hunting accidents . . .”

“It was a fire,” he said stiffly. “Now may I ask you a personal question?”

Fiona smiled. She was beginning to feel very warm and airy, open to all examination. “Please ask me—but I assure you, I’ve no’ omitted a single detail of my life today.”

“Did you no’ settle on a matrimonial match in London?”

Except perhaps
that
detail. Of all the things she thought he might ask, that was not among them. Fortunately, the whisky had done quite a lot to soothe any feathers before they could be ruffled, and she laughed at his audacity as she took the flask from his hand and sipped again.

“No,” she said with a cock of her head, smiling at him. “It would seem I am a wee bit of a problem in that regard.”

One brow rose high. “How so?”

“Well . . . ” she said breezily, “I have a fortune . . . but it is no’ a great fortune by London standards. And I’m no’ what one would call handsome.”

Duncan snorted. “You are a very handsome woman.”

The compliment, so tersely and adamantly spoken, thrilled her. “You are very kind, but I am well aware of my shortcomings.”

“You’ve no shortcomings,” he said gruffly. “If someone has allowed you to believe it, they are a bloody fool.”

She grinned. “Lord, dare I believe my own ears? The Buchanan man flatters me!”

“It is no’ flattery. I am a man, madam. I know a handsome woman when I’ve laid eyes on her.” He snatched the
flask from her hand and tossed his head back, taking a long draft.

Fiona’s grin broadened. “Then perhaps it is my cheerful countenance that serves me so poorly,” she gaily suggested. “Lady Gilbert swears that I am no’ as circumspect in social situations as I ought to be, all for one small mistake I made. One teeny, tiny mistake,” she said, holding up her finger and thumb just a breath apart to show him how tiny.

“Aye?” He seemed interested as he handed her the flask. “What mistake, then?”

Fiona snorted. “On my word, when Señor Castellano inquired directly of me if I thought Miss Fitzgerald would be a good match for him, I answered truthfully! I said that Miss Fitzgerald seemed particularly fond of Lord Randolph, and that I rather doubted she’d seriously entertain the advances of a Spaniard. I said it only because I thought it would be kinder to disabuse him of his false hope than to encourage him further. Was I so wrong, then?” she asked rhetorically before taking a drink from the flask. “Unfortunately, I was no’ privy to the fact that Lord Randolph had
his
eye on Lady Penelope Washburn, who is a very close friend of Miss Fitzgerald, but Señor Castellano was, and when Señor Castellano informed Miss Fitzgerald—and everyone else in jolly old England, for that matter—Miss Fitzgerald discovered for the first time that her dear friend Lady Washburn had no’ turned away Lord Randolph’s attentions as she’d promised she had, and . . . and it was a rather big to-do,” she said with a dismissive flick of her wrist.

She glanced at Duncan. He was smiling again. “Oh no, no, no,” she warned him as she casually settled back
against the hay, feeling remarkably warm for the first time that day. “You’ve no right to laugh. You were no’ there, you did no’ witness my dilemma.”

“Any other mistakes?” he asked, clearly amused.

“
Nooo
,” she drawled. “I am no’ entirely hopeless. Only one or two.” She shrugged. “A bit of horse gambling and what no’, that’s all. How was I to know proper English ladies donna gamble?” She lifted the flask to her lips, drank liberally. But when she lowered it again, Duncan took it from her hand.

At Fiona’s look of surprise, he said, “Another drink, and you may very well float off into the snow.” He sipped once more and stuffed the flask in his boot. “I’ll just check on the horses. You should try and get some sleep, for the morrow will be a rather long day.”

“I’m too cold to sleep,” she complained, and tightened the scarf he’d given her around her head.

With a wry smile, Duncan stood and pulled the fur over her before moving to the edge of their shelter. He paused and glanced back at her, taking all of her in—
all
of her—from her head to her toes. When he lifted his gaze to her eyes once more before going out, she found his expression to be entirely provocative.

In fact, his lustful look had made her flesh heat in a most enticing way. Fiona meant to wait for him to return, but he was gone awhile, and the fire was lovely, the thick fur rug even lovelier, and when she laid on her side and pillowed her face on her hands, it was only to be nearer the fire.