Page 23 of Highland Fire

Caitlin knew who was knocking on her door before she had even opened it. Her hound, which ought to have greeted the intrusion with fangs bared and hackles up, was thrashing the floor with her tail and panting like a broken-down bellows.

“I know you are in there, Caitlin. Please, open the door.”

Her hand was on the bolt, but instinct held her motionless.

“One of my gloves must be on the floor. I thought I had it in my pocket.” He rattled the locked door. “May I have it?”

The leather glove was down the side of the chair on which he had been sitting. Berating herself as all kinds of a fanciful fool, she unlocked the door.

“Thank you,” he said as she handed him the glove, “and I have something of a particular nature I wish to say to you.” Before she could prevent it she was swept inside and forced into a chair. Bocain was soon dealt with. Then Rand shut the door.

Moistening her lips, Caitlin said, “About Dirk Gordon…”

“I don’t wish to think about that young jackanapes,” said Rand.

Good. Neither did Caitlin. She watched him curiously as he took a few paces around the small room.

Suddenly coming to a halt in front of her, he said abruptly, “What do you know about The Fair Maid?”

Plenty, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. Choosing her words with care, as though she were charting a course through a treacherous Highland bog, she said cautiously, “I know that Dirk quarreled with you and that later you almost drowned trying to save him.”

That part had been the most harrowing few minutes of one of the worst nights Caitlin had ever lived through.

By giving the alarm after throwing her bonnet and plaid in the river, she had hoped to create a diversion so that she could slip away unseen.

The Randal’s precipitous action had stunned her.

Her first thought had been that it was his relentless quest for revenge which had driven him to such lengths.

But as she had observed it all, transfixed from the river bank, it came to her that he was desperately trying to save the boy.

She had been on the point of giving herself up when he was dragged, on the point of exhaustion, from the treacherous waters.

Just thinking about it made her go weak at the knees. Tears stood on her lashes, and her voice cracked. “What you did was a very fine thing. The boy did not deserve…”

He stopped her words with the brush of his thumb on her lips. “I don’t wish to speak about the boy.” Holding her gaze steady, very gently, very seriously he said, “What else do you know about that night?”

A picture flashed into her mind of Lord Randal and Nellie, the buxom wench whose bed he had shared, and her tears miraculously dried. Though she preserved a prim silence, the answer he was seeking could be read clearly on her face.

His lips quirked. “News travels fast,” he said, and absorbed her faintly reproachful expression. “I understand I gained quite a reputation for myself when I was last in Deeside?”

His sudden swing from recent events to past history confused her. “Beg pardon?”

“Last year, when I came into Deeside for the hunting season.” He waited a moment, then went on. “I believe I gained quite a reputation for myself.”

Her chin lifted and the melting softness in her eyes hardened into ice. “Now why should you think so?”

“I was a soldier on furlough,” he pointed out, “as were most of my companions. So, we shocked a few sensibilities. Perhaps there was the odd party which was a trifle on the wild side. I make no apology for it. I was a bachelor and need answer to no one for my conduct.”

“In Deeside, we call a spade a spade.” Her voice had risen by an octave. “Those were not parties. Those were orgies.”

She was about to speak, then checked herself. A quick look up at him and caution gave way to a burning desire to wipe that aggravating twinkle from his eyes. “Naked nymphs pursued by drunken satyrs through the woods is hardly a party,” she said indignantly.

“Oh, that party. Yes, I remember it fondly. Your cousin, Fiona, has been carrying tales, I presume?”

She looked at him blankly.

“She was there. Ah, I see from your face that the fair Fiona has been keeping secrets from you. Why don’t you ask her about it?”

It took a moment or two for Caitlin to grasp that Lord Randal was under the misapprehension that it was her cousin he had caught trespassing on his estates on his last night of furlough.

Forcing her blushes to recede, she said in an odd little voice, “Fiona tells me everything.” When she glanced up at him, his eyes were sparkling.

“I discovered something the other night at The Fair Maid,” he said. “I discovered that my carousing days are over.”

When she made no reply to this, he said in a more serious vein, “Don’t tease your mind about the past. In the first place, my reputation is exaggerated.

Good grief, I’ve been fighting a war for the last number of years.

There’s been little enough time to indulge in skirt-chasing.

In the second place, it really isn’t any of your business.

What’s done is done. Only the future need concern you. ”

His words were greeted by dumbfounded silence.

Inwardly, Caitlin was retracing the path of their conversation from its inception, trying to discover why they seemed to be talking at cross-purposes.

When she came out of the maze, she sucked in her breath and emitted a shocked gasp. The man was flirting with her.

Caitlin was no novice to the ways of gentlemen.

Her mother had been her first tutor. Latterly, since she had taken up smuggling, she had received an education that few young women of her tender years could hope to possess.

It was all done inadvertently, of course.

It was shocking. It was also salutary. When ladies thought of flirting, they thought of hand-holding and stolen kisses and long, soulful looks.

When men thought of flirting, they thought of bed.

She’d learned that from the Randal the first time she had met him.

It came to her then that he had left his glove behind on purpose. She became excruciatingly aware of something else—the bed in the next room.

She moved quickly, darting away from him to stand by her hound. So that there could be no misunderstanding between them, she said pointedly, “I don’t usually entertain strange gentlemen when I am alone. Daroch doesn’t count. We have known each other since we were infants.”

“Now that relieves my mind excessively; otherwise I might be forced to call him out.”

Because he didn’t want to frighten her, he closed the space between them slowly, in as casual a manner as he could manage. “Do I seem strange to you?” he asked whimsically. “That’s not how you seem to me.”

She moistened her lips. He didn’t seem strange to her, but that was because David had talked endlessly about Rand. She knew more about him than he would wish her to know; more, perhaps, that was wise for her to know.

“No. Don’t look like that. I would never do anything to hurt you. Look, give me your hand. I want to prove something to you, all right?”

For a long moment, she gazed at his open palm as though he were offering her a snake. “Give me your hand,” he said sharply, and Caitlin automatically obeyed.

With great concentration, he slid his fingers between hers, separating them, fitting their palms together till not even a shadow could have slipped between them. “Tell me what you feel,” he said softly.

She was unnerved by the contact. For long minutes, she stared at their joined hands in a kind of dumb stupor.

Biting down on her lip, tearing her eyes away, she lifted them to meet his.

“What is it?” she asked hoarsely, sounding afraid and confused and desperately unsure of herself. “What’s happening to me?”

“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. I can hardly believe it myself.”

Rand had been raised from the cradle to cherish females, even the naughty ones.

Chivalry was part of his code. It was so ingrained, he never had to think about it.

But there was something more at work here, something deeper, something stronger.

This girl aroused all the softer emotions in him.

These were not new to him, but he had never experienced them with such shattering intensity.

It wasn’t pity, Rand told himself. Having learned something of her circumstances, he applauded the pride that stiffened her spine. It was sheer bravado, of course, and that touched him, too. Though she would never admit it, she was as defenseless as a newborn lamb.

“Your bones are so delicate. You are so small…so fragile. I want only to protect you.”

He wanted so much more than that. He wanted to make everything up to her. He wanted to lavish her with fine clothes and jewels, to place her in a setting where nothing ugly was allowed to exist, where nothing could ever hurt her again.

It was absurd. He hardly knew the girl. Then why did he feel that he had known her all his life?

The laugh he let out was not quite steady. “I don’t believe I’m feeling this,” he said. “Everything I thought I knew about relations between the sexes seems like so much hot air.”

So much for Nellie, Rand was thinking, and all those beautiful high flyers with their practiced art.

So much for the agreeable connection he had formed with Lady Margaret in the last year.

This unawakened girl was lethal, a dangerous specimen, the confirmed bachelor’s worst nightmare.

There was no defense against her. A beautiful woman could always be replaced with another beauty.

Passion was easily come by. This girl’s appeal went beyond anything that could be explained.

It wasn’t general but particular. A hundred other men, a thousand, could have come upon her and walked away unscathed. Not he.

His eyes locked on hers, compelling her to willingness, and his hands splayed out, leisurely exploring the safe places on her body.