Page 1 of Highland Fire

“Don’t run away. I’m supposed to catch you. That is the object of the game, is it not? At least, that’s what they told me.”

The voice from the shadows was coolly amused.

It was also cultured, English cultured, with that hint of arrogance the native-born Scot so detested.

The leap of alarm which had set Caitlin’s heart to thundering gradually subsided.

She recognized the voice as belonging to her grandfather’s nearest neighbor.

As was his habit before he had taken up soldiering, Iain, Lord Randal, had come to his Scottish estates for the hunting season.

On the morrow, he was due to return to his regiment.

To her certain knowledge, his gentlemen friends had arranged a surprise party in his honor up at the house.

Evidently, Lord Randal had become bored and had slipped away.

Sighing in frustration, cursing her ill luck, Caitlin turned slowly to face the man who had accosted her.

In the split second that it took her to make the turn, she made a lightning decision.

At all costs, she didn’t want this man to know her identity.

If he chose to, he could make a great deal of trouble for her.

Better by far to pass herself off as a common cotter’s lass.

Peering into the darkness, drawing the snood of her cloak forward to shield her face, she forced herself to speak calmly. “Lord Randal, what are ye doing here?”

As a delaying tactic, her riposte was hardly brilliant, but it gave her a moment or two to take stock of her position.

The contraband whiskey was no longer in her possession, having been safely delivered not five minutes before to his lordship’s deserted boathouse.

She debated confessing that she was a smuggler and decided it was too risky.

She could not be sure the whiskey was not destined for Lord Randal’s servants.

For all she knew, the Randal might take a dim view of smuggling.

Then what reasonable explanation could she offer for trespassing on his estates at an hour when all decent women were safely cloistered in their homes?

He chuckled, and something in the sound brought a flutter of unease to the pit of Caitlin’s stomach. “Lass, if you like elaborate games, I’m willing to indulge you. I think I get it. Are you supposed to be Little Red Riding Hood?”

Never having heard of Little Red Riding Hood, Caitlin was stymied.

She presumed the Randal was making reference to some drama or other which he’d taken in when last in London.

When he wasn’t off soldiering in Spain, the Randal spent a good deal of his time in London and everyone on Deeside knew why.

In that Sodom of the south, Lord Randal was in his element.

He was a sophisticate, a dandy who, if rumor was to be believed—and where Lord Randal was concerned, Caitlin accepted every scandalous tidbit as though it were gospel—fancied himself something of a ladies’ man.

With his blond good looks, he was a virile figure of a man in the English manner.

Caitlin might have forgiven him that. What she could not forgive was that Lord Randal, the hereditary chief of her own clan, largely neglected his estates in Scotland except in the hunting season.

With good reason, they called him “the English laird.” The Scottish strain in his blood was so diluted as to be almost nonexistent.

Only his name and title were Scottish. In all other respects, the Randal was an English thoroughbred to the tips of his long fingers.

Educated in England, he had vast holdings in Sussex.

Deeside was merely his playground, a masculine preserve where he passed a few weeks every other year hunting and fishing in convivial masculine company.

To the welfare of his tenants and cotters, the English laird hardly spared a thought.

Considerably fortified by her unpleasant reflections, Caitlin glared at the dark shadow which loomed over her. “I know nothing of Little Red Riding Hood,” she snapped.

“Then permit me to enlighten you. She was almost gobbled up by a big bad wolf.”

His reference to a wolf was more easily understood.

Scotland’s history was littered with men who had won that telling sobriquet—untamed, rapacious creatures who preyed on innocent victims, especially women.

The Wolf of Badenoch came instantly to mind.

Nervously transferring her wicker basket from one hand to the other she began to edge away.

He sighed theatrically. “Am I to take it that the chase is still on? Wouldn’t you rather submit gracefully? This really isn’t my style, you know. I’m too old, or perhaps my palate is too jaded for these titillating games. I prefer a more straightforward approach. You, me, bed.”

Somehow the infuriated gasp came out as a girlish titter.

Sheer nerves, of course, but the Randal wasn’t to know it.

He moved in closer. Though the darkness was so comprehensive little could be discerned, she knew that he was smiling.

And she discerned something else. He had been drinking.

For the first time since he had stumbled upon her, Caitlin began to experience real fear.

“Come here, little girl,” he said.

His voice had taken on a different color. He was either as drunk as a lord, decided Caitlin, or falling asleep on his feet. “Why should I?” She stalled, girding herself for flight.

Dark or no dark, she saw the hand reaching for her and instinctively batted it away. “Don’t touch me!”

There was a moment of silence; then he said in an altered tone, “I can almost believe that you mean it. But no. You must be one of Madame Rosa’s girls, else why would you be playing hide-and-seek with me? Take off your cloak. I want to see what I’ve paid for.”

When she lashed out at him, he laughed and captured her easily in his arms. With one flick of his wrist, he sent her basket flying. “I’ve caught you, fair and square,” he said. “Now it’s time to pay your forfeit.”

He seized the hood of her cloak, preventing her from averting her head.

His kiss was subtle, so subtle that Caitlin parted her lips without volition.

The gentleness, where she had anticipated raw, masculine aggression, eased her panic.

When the kiss was over, she had every confidence that she could persuade him to release her.

Lord Randal was a rake, but to her knowledge, no one had ever accused him of rape.

She held herself stiffly, waiting for him to be done with her.

When his lips left hers, she drew in a shuddering gulp of air.

Her mind hadn’t been idle. She’d decided to tell him that she knew nothing of Madame Rosa and her girls.

She was simply a country lass whom he had surprised when she was on her way to a tryst with her lover.

Her thoughts backtracked. Madame Rosa and her girls? She didn’t like the sound of that.

Murmuring, “Sweet, so sweet,” he took her lips again, cutting off her feeble protests.

His hands slipped to her shoulders, then splayed out across her back, pressing her close to him.

When they descended to cup her buttocks and lift her against his bulging groin, she let out a small, infuriated yelp.

“You’re good. I’ll give you that,” he murmured, nipping at her earlobe.

“I could almost believe this is real and not something bought and paid for. Forgive me, sweeting—that was crass. I’m not complaining.

It’s just…” His voice trailed to an unintelligible whisper as his kiss became more erotic, more demanding, and much too skillful for Caitlin’s comfort.

In some small corner of her mind, she dispassionately allowed that the Randal was a master of seduction.

The thought was not one she could hold. Distracted by the plethora of physical sensations which threatened to overwhelm her, she was going to faint.

Her head was spinning; her knees were giving way; she was so hot, she might have been coming down with a fever.

She couldn’t help moving restlessly against him.

Summoning her wavering control, she raised one hand to push weakly against his shoulder. Capturing it, he brought it to his lips, kissing it passionately on the open palm.

“Tell me your name. I want to know your name.”

She had to think before she answered him. “Why?”

He laughed softly. “Because, I want to warn the others off. As long as you are here, you belong to me and no other. You’re different. I can’t explain it. And since my friends have generously agreed that I am to pay the shot, I’m allowing myself first pick.”

Everything was beginning to come together in her mind with horrifying clarity—Madame Rosa and her girls; the game of hide-and-seek; something bought and paid for. Even his reference to Little Red Riding Hood was becoming excruciatingly clear—a scarlet woman or her name wasn’t Caitlin Randal.

The irony of her situation was almost laughable.

If this were happening in broad daylight, Lord Randal would never mistake her for a scarlet woman.

He wouldn’t give her a second look. There was nothing about her to attract the notice of a man of his voluptuous tastes—and much that would repel him.

She was a confirmed spinster with no pretension to style or beauty.

For a fleeting moment, she wished it were otherwise before she dismissed that thought as unworthy of her.

She balled her hand into a fist, but before she could strike out at him, the night erupted with the sounds of revelry. Half-clothed squealing nymphs, pursued by an equal number of bellowing, drunken satyrs bearing lanterns and torches in their hands, came charging into the copse in wild abandon.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Lord Randal, hands on hips, turned to face the unruly mob.