Page 13 of A Rogue in Twilight (The Whisky Rogues #2)
“You swear quite a bit. Highland gentlemen rarely curse. It is not Gaelic custom. Is it a Southron habit?”
“Pardon. It is a habit I developed among soldiers and by living a bachelor’s life. Which I do not intend to change,” he emphasized. “Do not play coy, pouting like a pretty child, swatting your eyelashes at me like that.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “What should I do, then?”
“That depends on what you want here.” He nearly barked that out.
“A gentle compromise. Just that.” Smile. Sunshine.
She was trying, in a clumsy and oddly innocent way, to manipulate and charm him. “Miss MacArthur, best say outright what you intended by coming to Struan House.”
“I came here to see your garden. That is all. But now I am here, and all this has happened... I would rather enjoy being compromised.”
His heart thundered. “Do you know what you are asking?”
“Gloriously rrruined ,” she went on, in a broad Scots burr. “That would suit! If you do not mind, that is.” She took up the whisky glass as if to sip, then turned it upside down and smiled up at him again. “It is empty.”
He stared, suspicions churning. “Ruination,” he snapped, “would lead to marriage. Both would be a mistake.”
“But we are alone here. Regardless of what happens, I am already compromised.”
“So you plotted, and not very well at that, to trap the local laird into marriage? This will not work, I assure you.”
“I did not! It only occurred to me just now.” She sat up, frowning. “Perhaps I misspoke.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“I only thought it could solve a problem for me, and perhaps for you too.”
“The only situation to solve is how to get you safely out of here and back home.”
She tilted her head, assessing him. “Something troubles you. I wonder if marriage might solve it.” She frowned slightly, sympathetically.
How the devil would she know what his grandmother’s will had specified?
He stared down at her, thoughts racing. Her damnable suggestion had merit, he suddenly saw.
He had come to Struan House to finish Lady Struan’s book, and attempt to find a woman of fairy descent to marry.
Those were the stipulations. With those fey and graceful looks, Elspeth MacArthur could fit that role.
And Sir Walter Scott, who was to judge this profoundly irritating scheme, already liked the girl.
For an instant, he was tempted. Then he dismissed it out of hand. “This is ridiculous. Compromise has one companion—marriage.”
“I know.”
“So we avoid compromise.”
“Or we marry.”
“Do you truly understand what you are proposing?” he nearly shouted.
“I think so.” She frowned, seemed to think, then nodded. “Aye.”
Temptation struck again. Pass her off as one of fairy blood, marry her, finish the damned fairy book, and return to Edinburgh. Do not be absurd, he told himself.
He could not ruin a girl and marry her for his own ends.
He lived on a level far above that. And yet such thoughts were dancing through his head.
She was irresistibly alluring, a coy and darling beauty, forthright and seductive all at once.
Something about her drew him in—luminous eyes, elusive dimples, the bow curve of her lips?
Her graceful throat, the rise of full breasts beneath that sodden gown? He glanced away.
She sat calm and smiling. His heart and body pounded, wary and yet aroused. And he was already hatching schemes in tandem with her mad suggestion.
The idea was preposterous. But the conditions of his grandmother’s will were equally preposterous. The girl was eager and all too willing.
Had she devised a trap for him—or was he about to trap her?
“Miss MacArthur.” He cleared his throat. “Neither of us are thinking clearly. I must tend to your injury. I need some bandages—the kitchen—there will be something there.” He turned, ready to bolt.
“Lord Struan.” She rose to her feet and hobbled close, and he took her arm to steady her. She was fine-boned, his hand large on her forearm. The contrast made him feel strong and protective. Needed, that was it.
She looked up and batted her eyelashes deliberately. “My lord.”
“Sand in your eyes?” he murmured.
“Sorry, is it too obvious?”
“It is.”
“I am not very good at this.”
“At what?” He was not very good at it either, whatever was happening here.
“Flirting, I suppose. Here, let me have this.” She reached up to tug on his neck cloth. “Your cravat would make a fine bandage, if you will part with it. Then you need not search.”
“Very well.” He undid the knot in the cloth, his hands brushing hers as she tried to help.
Her small fingers worked the soft knot under his hands.
He looked down, his brow and a fall of his hair brushing the top of her head.
She smelled of rain and blossoms. Just then, she looked up just as he looked down. The tips of their noses touched.
He sucked in a breath. So did she. Too vividly, he recalled wild kisses behind potted shrubberies at Holyroodhouse.
“Please,” she said, breathless.
A surge went through him, hard and sudden. “Oh. The cravat.” He drew it away.
Her hands brushed his, and the air upon his bared throat felt sensual as a caress, setting a fire in him that only willpower smothered.
“A man might feel at odds without his cravat. Do you?”
“I have a dozen such. I will fetch another.” He sounded wooden. Her touch and nearness unsettled him, whirling his usual composure off balance. He felt like stalwart iron drawn to a curving magnet.
“Sit, Miss MacArthur.” He pushed on her shoulder. She winced, sat. At least her injury was genuine, he thought, though he could not sort out if her attitude and eagerness were real or pantomime. “Let me wrap your foot.”
She lifted her injured foot to the stool and pulled up her skirts again, revealing her shapely bare foot and neatly muscled calf. His body surged uncomfortably.
The sight of her advancing bruise startled him out of a haze of desire.
Kneeling, he wrapped the cravat carefully around her foot and ankle, circling and crossing to provide snug support.
The cloth was too long, so he tore it, tying the ragged ends to fit.
He did not have a dozen cravats, but he would not admit that.
“Thank you. That does feels better.” She wiggled the bare toes peeking out. “If you did not complete your medical studies, where did you learn to do this?”
“War,” he said succinctly. “I helped where I could.”
She watched him. “Quatre Bras was a terrible ordeal.”
He looked up, startled, silent. He had not told her that.
“The Royal Highlanders,” she said then. “The Black Watch. They were so brave, held their own, the day before Waterloo. But they lost so many men when the French came at them, where they held ground there.”
His hands grew still on her foot. “How did you know?”
“I heard there was a battle where the Scots held the day. But sometimes I see things in my mind like a dream, and I saw this just now for you. And I heard the name. Cot—cat—Quatre Bras. You were there.”
“Someone told you that.”
“The knowing told me.”
“Knowing?” He met her direct silvery gaze. “Miss MacArthur, do not play me for a fool. What a cruel scheme, to pretend to have a vision about my past.”
“I have no scheme. I saw it just now.” She leaned forward. He leaned back, tensing up. “I saw you on a battlefield, in a kilt and a red coat. Blood on your leg. I heard ‘Quatre Bras.’ I did not know until just now that you were there.”
He tugged fiercely at the torn ends of the neckcloth, simmering with anger.
“You tried to save him!” She closed her eyes. Her cheeks went pale. “There was a flash of steel, like a blow. A horseman. A soldier jumped the line and was shot down. You were trapped—your leg—under the horse. You were injured, you could not save him. He called your name—Jamie, he said—”
“Enough!” He stood. “That nitwit Philip Rankin told you this!” He was livid. Anger burned clean through him, a ring of fire.
He preferred calm passions, the love for an excellent library collection, or a case of rock specimens neatly labeled, or for thoughts and theories expressed on the written page. Safe, solid, reliable passions. Not this muddy emotional tumult.
“No one told me. I swear I saw it in my mind.”
“You could easily assume I was part of a Highland regiment, and the Black Watch is a good guess. Very good, Miss MacArthur.” He clapped three times.
“But if you want me to believe you are capable of Highland divination, you need a better explanation than ‘the knowing.’ Is this what you did to Sir Walter Scott at the royal reception?”
She sat up swiftly, yanking her skirts over her feet. He saw tears glint in her eyes. An actress of some skill? He frowned.
“You are the cruel one, sir. Sometimes when I touch someone, or they touch me, I just suddenly know something about them. I see pictures in my mind. And sometimes I speak too quickly and say more than I should.”
“Far more, and you damned well know it.”
“I beg your pardon.” She stood. “Who was he, the friend you lost? A kinsman?”
“You are the one with the blasted Sight, you tell me,” he snapped.
“Your chief,” she said quickly. “Chief of your clan.”
“First you accost Sir Walter Scott with this nonsense, and then you feign a desire to be compromised. Now this. Stop this scheming now. It is done.” He bowed stiffly. “Rest here, Miss MacArthur. When the weather improves, I will take you home.”
She stood, hopping, fists clenched, and faced him. “For a man raised in the Highlands, I thought you would understand about the Sight.”
“Who told you I was raised in the Highlands?”
“ You told me at the ladies’ assembly. I thought you would understand Da Shealladh , the Second Sight.
But I was mistaken. Do not bother to take me home.
I will go. Now.” She snatched up her damp plaid and her woeful bonnet, grabbed her boots and stocking, and limped, clearly fuming, toward the door.
James stood back, arms folded. Anger fell away as he watched her.
Amusement trickled through him, and he was suddenly not so convinced she was a schemer.
He was wary of minxes with an eye to a man’s fortune, having courted the princess of them all, Charlotte Sinclair.
She was Lady Rankin’s marriage choice for him, and he had fallen for her charms, being a vulnerable soldier returned home.
Too soon he saw her manipulative, ambitious, haughty nature.
He had not proposed nor would he, though she expected it.
Elspeth MacArthur was not cut of the same cloth, but he was confused. She lacked guile, yet she had some scheme in mind, and she was damnably alluring.
But he would not be played for a fool. “Miss MacArthur, please sit down. I am not throwing you out.”
“You need not. I am throwing myself out.” She hopped about, trying to push her bandaged foot into its boot.
“The man killed beside me at Quatre Bras,” he said, “was my cousin. He was chief of Clan MacCarran.”
She looked up in silence, hands stilled on her boot.
“Someone might have told you that, though. As for my wound, it is bloody obvious I require a cane. So I will not credit your intuition entirely. But stay, Miss MacArthur. I will not be responsible for further injury to you.”
She watched him. “Trout,” she said.
“What?” He straightened, frowned.
“Trout. And…pudding?” She wrinkled her nose.
“Puddin’—” Startled, he spoke quickly. “My cousin loved desserts when we were boys at school. The lads teased him mercilessly. He was a bit of a pudge then. Puddin’, they called him.”
“And trout?”
“Enough. I will fetch tea.” He went to the door.
“Lord Struan,” she called. “I am sorry.”
In the corridor, he shoved a hand through his hair. Trout! No one knew about that but his siblings, who would not have told a stranger.
How did Elspeth MacArthur know? Was there some other scheme at hand here?
The only other person who knew some of this was his cousin, Lord Eldin, who had also been at Quatre Bras.
He might be low enough to tell a local girl about the devastation James had endured if he had it in mind to ruin the new Lord Struan.
But he could not credit that guileless girl with that much plotting. He could not piece it all together.
Trout had been his boyhood name for Archie MacCarran the day he fell into a stream while fishing with James and William. He emerged with a trout jumping about in his trews, and the boys had collapsed with laughter. James had laughed about it with Archie again only the day before his cousin’s death.
Elspeth MacArthur could not have known that.
Sight or none, ruination or none, if he stayed alone much longer with his pretty visitor, marriage might indeed be his obligation. Finding a fairy bride, ridiculous as that was, did not compare to this real predicament.
He had wanted a dull and ordinary life, but risk had found him once again.
Tea, he reminded himself. That was ordinary enough. He headed for the kitchen.