The Highlander (21 page)

“Miss Lockhart.” Andrew had the oddest look on his face, a curious mix between mischief and epiphany. “My father doesna know what the book is about.”

Her eyes had widened. “What do you mean?”

“He doesna ken a lick of French.”

He was there to see the
children
every day. That was the only possible explanation for why he joined them as they read from a book he didn't understand. He'd taken the words she'd spoken in the chapel to heart. That was all.

Wasn't it?

Had the alternative not already stolen her breath, Mena would have been rendered witless by Andrew's next words. “Miss Lockhart, my father is coming this way.”

“What?” she squeaked.

Panicked, she'd scooped up little Rune and shoved her into Andrew's arms, all but tossing them through the door before turning to ascertain if they'd been caught out.

He was only a specter against the tree line, but his form was unmistakable. Ravencroft ran with surprising speed and an astonishing amount of skin bared to the autumn elements. From her far vantage, Mena couldn't tell where his burnished torso ended and his fawn trousers began.

He'd been an advancing leviathan of warm male flesh and hot Scottish blood. The closer he'd come, the more inevitable a conversation seemed to become. Considering how the last one had ended, with his mouth upon hers, Mena had known she should retreat. There was no shame in doing so, she told herself. Not when countless armies had done just that very thing upon the Demon Highlander's approach.

He was not to be trusted. And, judging by the extra beats of her heart and the tremor suffusing her at the sight of him, even so very far away, neither was she.

She couldn't help but watch for an unguarded moment as he jogged from the direction of the cove. His head wasn't down, exactly, but tilted in a way that suggested he was intent on a place straight ahead of him, the next span of ground he was about to conquer.

He hadn't seen her yet, but she could certainly see plenty of him.

The closer he came, the more detail Mena discovered. The visible ribbons of sinew and strength clinging to his heavy bones flexed and rippled with movement. The wide discs of muscle on his chest rebounded with each heavy footfall. Long legs ate up the distance between them with a flawless sense of rhythm. His hair was loose and clung to his shoulders with moisture, as though he'd been in the sea. She'd known that she should turn away, lest she be discovered gawking, but her shoes had seemed to be glued to the ground, and her eyes similarly glued to
him
. He'd saved her from a rather awkward altercation when he veered to the left at the hedges, and made his way down the west hill toward the distillery.

It was then that Mena had made a shocking discovery. The Marquess Ravencroft had, at some time in his life, been tortured. Long, horrific scars marred the otherwise smooth flesh of his back. They'd have to be rather large for her to see them from this distance. Her hand flew to her chest to contain an ache that had bloomed there.

Breathless, Mena had taken refuge in Ravencroft Keep, making certain Andrew had Rune spirited safely away, before starting her morning with the children. She'd attempted a regular day of instruction with them, but had proved utterly useless. Who had so egregiously wounded Ravencroft? Perhaps he'd been a prisoner of war at some point. Maybe he'd been tortured for information. Or whipped for insubordination. But surely, the army wasn't in the practice of whipping peers of the realm, especially those as high-ranking as a marquess.

Mena couldn't help it, a well of tenderness bloomed beneath the apprehension and suspicion she felt toward the Laird of the Mackenzie. Was the laird going to appear today, she'd wondered, full of lithe carnality and meaningful glances?

When he didn't, she couldn't tell if it was relief or disappointment that flooded her breast. But after a while, her nerves had threaded so taut that one more mispronounced French verb promised to make her snap. So she'd concocted a few vague excuses to the children, put a book in their hands, and wandered the halls of Ravencroft, grateful for a moment alone to collect the thoughts, fears, and fantasies threatening to gallop away with her.

Mena found herself at the top of the grand staircase that led to the front entry, as she closely perused the luxurious tapestries that warmed the cold stone of the castle walls. The sky outside had become an endless sheet of drab steel curtaining the sun as a storm pelted the earth with rhythmic hostility. She'd dressed in a heavy wool gray frock with tiny pearl buttons down the front. Piling her hair on top of her head in a loose chignon, she thought she'd made a perfectly macabre reflection. Half to match the weather, and half to match her mood.

Her gaze snagged on an imposing oil canvas located above the middle of the grand stairway. It was as tall as her and maybe ten times as wide. This one depicted a great battle, with a large and ferocious Mackenzie war chieftain leading a cadre of kilt-clad Highlanders into battle against the English. Their claymores brandished high, and their hair flying wildly about them, they looked awe-inspiring and inescapable. The battle of Culloden, perhaps? However had such fierce men been defeated?

She pictured the marquess rushing into ancient battles, a dark figure of retribution and prowess, incomparably fearsome because of his unrivaled strength and magnificent form. His fathomless black eyes would flash with rage in the heat of battle, and his thick ebony hair would gather riotously about his face as he vanquished his enemies in bloody and mortal combat.

Spellbound by the beauty of the illustration in this particular painting, she reached out trembling fingers and brushed them against the vicious rendering of the ancient chieftain.

He'd been painted with a heavy hand, all square angles and dark, rough strokes. Almost the exact image of the current Laird Mackenzie. The same fire. The same ferocity.

The same untamed beauty.

Mena realized, as she allowed her fingertips to absorb the insignificant striations in the paint, that a wicked part of her regretted not allowing the marquess a deeper kiss.

No other man had beckoned to her fingertips like the physical marvel that was Liam Mackenzie. She wondered, if she'd wrapped her arms around him, would she have felt the scars on his back through his shirt? Would he have shared with her another intimacy of his past, adding a thread to the cord of complex emotion he'd begun to weave?

Lord, he held all of the fascinating curiosity and thrilling peril of a lightning storm. Of course he'd garnered a mythical sort of reputation because myths were how the common man struggled to explicate someone so extraordinary.

She'd been a willing captive of his hands, of his lips. He'd cupped her face with utter tenderness, but it was her own desire, her own curious temptation, that had kept her a prisoner of the moment.

Because his hard mouth had been softer against hers than she'd imagined. And, Lord help her, but she'd imagined it happening again. More than once. Nothing her fanciful mind could have invented came close to the illicit and primitive heat that she hadn't been able to rid herself of for two blasted days.

The disquieting warmth kept her awake more than anything else. A slow burn that would begin just below her belly and spread lower and out until her limbs smoldered and squirmed with needs she couldn't begin to contemplate.

That she shouldn't even
consider
. She had too many secrets. Secrets that would salt the ground, preventing anything from growing between them. Because even though she'd never return to her husband, she
was
a married woman, and would do well to remember it.

What had happened between them could never happen again. The consequences of such an entanglement were simply too disastrous.

But, oh, did she want to—

“English!”

Mena snatched her hand away from the painting with a guilty start at the pleased exclamation that echoed right next to her. She would have lost her balance and toppled down the stairs if a pair of strong hands hadn't reached out to steady her.

Moss-green eyes smiled down from the alarmingly handsome features of Gavin St. James. He stood two steps above her, and Mena couldn't imagine how he'd gotten so close without her noting his presence.

She couldn't have been
that
entranced with the painting, could she? No, her distraction had nothing at all to do with the canvas, said a hateful inner voice, and everything to do with the laird who owned it.

“I told ye I'd be seeing ye again, English,” the Highlander purred in his silky brogue. “And let me tell ye, it's a thorough pleasure to have saved yer life.”

“You did no such thing,” Mena argued, though she couldn't hide the answering smile he elicited.

“Ye'd have toppled hide over head down the stairs had I not caught ye,” he bragged.

“Yes, but 'twas you who crept up on me in the first place and startled me half to death. That was very wicked of you,” she scolded.

“I wasna creeping. It was ye who was lost in yer thoughts.” He chuckled, his eyes glimmering with impish delight as he glanced at the painting. “That isna to say I'm not a wicked man.”

“Of that, I have no doubt.” She laughed. “Not that it isn't a genuine pleasure to meet you again, Mr. St. James, but might I inquire as to what you are doing here dressed to the nines?”

His expression turned sheepish as he brushed at the cravat of his fine suit. “A wee bit of distillery business is all. I just returned from London with some good news for the marquess.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “Though it'd take a bleeding miracle to coax a compliment from the old goat, if ye ask me.”

“Oh, do go on with you.” Mena suppressed a nervous laugh, scandalized by his audacity.

“I gather no introductions are necessary.” Ravencroft's cavernous voice could have turned the lush Highlands into a brittle desert.

Blood deserted Mena's extremities as she noted that Gavin St. James still held her arm above the elbow from when he'd reached to steady her. She pulled away from him, reaching for the solidity of the stone banister to hold her up as her suddenly trembling legs no longer seemed to feel the need to fulfill their occupation.

The marquess stood at the top of the staircase, legs splayed and arms folded over his wide chest as he glared down at them both in contemptuous condemnation. Though he was dressed in an impeccable suit, his ebony hair combed back into a tight queue, he appeared as stark and sinister as ever. Mena found herself concerned over the integrity of his suit, as his tense muscles strained the seams.

Now she knew what beauty lay beneath, and had to look away.

“Ye're actually mistaken, Liam, as yer lovely governess and I have shared a previous … encounter, but have yet to be formally introduced.” He winked at Mena, who considered hurling herself down the stairs rather than glancing up to see the withering glare Ravencroft surely focused on them both.

Who was this man to address a marquess in so informal a manner? And why did he insist on making playful insinuations about their previous “encounter” in the woods? She'd nearly been sacked over the whole ordeal.

Gavin didn't give her a chance to recover from her astonishment before he took her hand again and bowed theatrically low over it. “Allow me to introduce myself, English, as Lord Gavin St. James, Earl of Thorne and half brother to the
most illustrious
Marquess of Ravencroft, Laird Liam Mackenzie of Wester Ross.”

He pressed his lips to her hand, but Mena hardly felt it as she could have sworn she actually heard a growl rumble from the top of the stairs.

Snatching her hand back, she winced at the perceptive glance the earl gave her from behind amber lashes.

“Brother?” She wagged an incensed finger at the smirking Lord Thorne. “You cad! You led me to believe you were nothing more than the foreman at the distillery.”

“I beg yer pardon, English, but I didna lie to ye.” He flashed her a devastatingly handsome smile, and Mena found herself forgiving him instantly, not that she'd been that angry in the first place. “I spoke the truth when I said I was the distillery foreman. Had ye inquired about me, ye would have learned that I'm part owner and the rest.” Thorne shrugged, his eyes glinting with mirth. “I admit to being a wee bit wounded that ye didna.”

“It was, nevertheless, a falsehood by omission, Thorne.” Ravencroft censured him as he descended the stairs, his glare jumping back and forth between the two of them, narrowed with suspicion.

Mena actually retreated down a step, inwardly cringing at his undeniable position on the particular subject of omission.

Brothers,
she marveled. Though she supposed she could see the resemblance now that they stood close to one another. As far as she could discern, their height was similar, though Ravencroft was undoubtedly the larger of the two. Like Dorian Blackwell, Liam was swarthy, where Gavin's hair shone even more lambent than before, now that it wasn't darkened by sea water.

Something electric crackled in the air between the men, charging it with such masculine tension, she could scarcely breathe.

Blessedly, the half-hour-to-dinner bell reverberated through the waves of aggression rolling off the brothers, and Mena blessed the chef and his compulsive timeliness.

Perceptibly pulling an air of geniality about him like a cloak, Lord Thorne turned once again to Mena. “Will I be seeing ye at dinner, English?”

“I—I suppose,” Mena answered, glancing uncertainly to her employer.

“In my house, you will address her as Miss Lockhart, as is appropriate,” the marquess ordered. “And I
never
invite ye to dinner.”

“And yet I always stay to dine.” Gavin flashed his brother another of his roguish smiles. “Come now, Liam, ye wouldna deprive my niece and nephew of my charming company, would ye? Now if ye'll excuse me, I'm going to see what culinary delights that French genius of yers has in store for me tonight.” Turning on his heel, he jogged down the stairs, and strode in the direction of the kitchens. Not a retreat, per se, but a strategic withdrawal, in Mena's opinion.