Page 53 of Somewhere Along The Way (Mackinnon #3)

Chapter Sixteen

She broke a water jug over his head.

Only minutes before, Annabella made her way down to the well, carrying an empty clay jug that Ailie had thrust into her hands and instructed her to fill with water.

The well at Seaforth had its own little house, a miniature cottage built over the well site.

But inside it was nothing like a cottage.

Cold, dark, and dank, it was a creepy place at best. Stepping into the shadowy interior, she was greeted by the musty odor of age and damp wood.

Cobwebs stretched across the rafters, and she was certain there were bats there as well.

Finding the place creeping with things that crawled, she filled the jug quickly, anxious to be on her way.

She was uneasy about being this far away from the main house. Only that morning Ailie had called her a “superstitious goosecap” for being in such a worry about the ghost stories she had insisted upon hearing until the dawn had cast its first light.

Ross, having seen her go in, decided to wait for her on a bench beneath a tree adjacent to the path she had just used.

In a hurry to return to the cottage, she was looking at the pathway.

She didn’t notice there was anyone sitting beside it—the bench was partially concealed by dense shrubbery.

As she passed, Ross, thinking she had seen him and was simply ignoring him, said, “Take one more step and I’ll take more than some of your time. ”

About the same time Ross spoke, Annabella noticed a great hulking mass rising from the shadows of a nearby bush. She let out a shriek of surprise and turned. Terrified, and not recognizing his voice, she brought the clay jug down over his head just as he was rising to his feet.

With rivulets of water running down the creases of surprise that lined his face, Ross couldn’t think of anything to say except, “If this is the way you greet an old friend, I feel sorry for your enemies.”

“Oh!” cried Bella, recognizing the cherished, watery features of the man she had just done her best to render unconscious. “The devil take you, Ross Mackinnon! I didn’t know it was you.”

“I don’t know if I should be happy or just plain relieved. Does that mean you’re glad to see me?”

She ignored that. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you.”

“I’m not sure if I understand all of this.

My mother brought me here to get me away from you, and now you have come.

My uncle hides me away and now you are here.

” Still confused, she looked at him and said, “Why are you really here? How did you find me? Were you looking for me? Just me? Truly? I don’t believe you. ”

She had such a wonderful way of speaking that seemed to be exactly the way he imagined her thought processes to work—something he found as utterly charming as he found her. He must tell her that one day.

However, he had more important things to say to her just now.

When he looked down at the lithe, dark-haired lass in the shimmering gray gown that seemed to have been spun from moonbeams, he lost his train of thought and stared intently at the rapt expression, the beautifully shining eyes that gazed at him with such trust. Ross felt both his anger and irritation vanish like air bubbles rising to the top of water… pop…pop…pop.

“Never mind why I’m here,” he said at last. “I need to dry my head a bit before my hair freezes to my head. Strange summer weather they have here. I don’t suppose you have something inside your cozy little abode that I could use, do you?”

She couldn’t help feeling a little suspicious about now. “I might.”

He was taken aback by her quick retort, but instead of a spark of anger, he felt a grin tugging at his mouth. She was getting to be a saucy little thing. He wondered just how saucy she could be.

“Let me tell you something, beauty. You just did your dead-level best to bash my brains out, along with dumping a gallon of ice-cold water over me. Now, my clothes are wet and freezing and sticking to my hide. My head is so cold it’s slowing down all rational thought—which, it may interest you to know, is precisely where the last thread of reluctance to throttling you is located.

In other words, if you don’t make a little bit of an effort to right the wrong you’ve done, I may forget I’m a gentleman and you’re a lady and do something that would make more than your eyelashes flutter. Do I make myself clear?”

Apparently he made himself a little too clear.

It had been his intention only to test her a little, to see just how much spunk she could show, but he saw immediately he had overplayed his hand a bit.

Although she seemed to be trying mightily to show her disregard and, yes, even defiance, she wasn’t holding up too well, for her lips were pale and drawn, the lower one quivering as if the herald of tears.

But Annabella was as proud as she was easily intimidated, and she wasn’t going to cry if she had to bite holes in her lip to keep from doing it.

Hoping to ease her fears and get her in his arms as soon as possible, Ross felt he could show her his feelings much more easily than he could tell her, so he smiled as he reached for her, wet and freezing though he was.

But the smile was too weak and came too quickly on the heels of his harshly spoken words.

She gave him a glance stuffed full of sharp little daggers, then shoved him away, stepped lightly around him, and dashed for the cottage.

She slammed the heavy oaken door but didn’t push the bolt hard enough to secure it. Ross, only seconds behind her, broke through the door just as she reached the fireplace. Turning to face him, she did her best not to cower as he looked at her and asked lazily, “Searching for more water?”

Annabella thought she detected a trace of humor in his voice, although the dark-haired giant didn’t offer her any encouragement with that stare of his.

He took a step closer. “Let’s back up a bit here and see if we can’t sort all of this out,” he said.

“I am up for an early morning ride when I see the cause of too many sleepless nights running through the woods as if the devil were after her. I dismount and approach, seeing she is occupied. Being the gentleman I am, I patiently wait for her, but she ignores me when she comes out. I speak to her at last. The next thing I know a pot comes smashing down over my head and gives me a baptism with water as frigid as the look in your beautiful eyes.”

He looked down at her, at her face, her throat, her breasts. “What are you doing here, lovely Annabella—and more important, what are you doing sequestered here in this cottage instead of the big house?”

She glanced at the glowing coals in the fire and turned away to add another log as she said, ever so casually, “It amazes me how some people can show such a blatant disregard for another’s privacy. It should be obvious I came here to be alone.”

“Look at me when you talk,” he said and was rewarded with a scornful glance. “Only you weren’t alone. Who was the other girl?”

Annabella paled, but she had already decided it was best to tell him the truth about everything. She was confident that he would find it out for himself by hook or by crook. “Ailie,” she said.

“And who is Ailie?” he asked. “A maid? A newfound friend? Or a long-lost sister?”

“Cousin,” she replied. “One of recent acquaintance.”

“Barra Mackenzie’s get?”

She nodded. “His youngest daughter.”

“Who or what is Barra Mackenzie to you? And if you say your uncle, so help me I will throttle you…or stuff your mouth with sugar plums.”

“But he is my uncle—by marriage. He’s married to my mother’s sister, Una.”

“My, my, there’s no end to the surprises.” Then as abruptly as he had steered the conversation in this direction, he shifted it. “Why did you leave that day without so much as a goodbye?”

Once again, the truth seemed the best approach, for it occurred to her that the truth was probably always the first and only choice around such a man.

Annabella stiffened her backbone and tilted her chin up, forcing herself to establish eye contact with him.

His words, she saw immediately, were far harsher and more demanding than the gentleness, the near-caress she saw in the bottomless blue depth of his eyes.

There was a fine-edged anger that lingered in him today, something she had not seen since that day when he came storming into the room to confront his grandfather about the kilt.

But no matter how she saw him—good-humored, angry, preoccupied—there was always a whisper of gentleness about him, a feeling that no matter how much she challenged him, no matter how angry he became, he would never be completely out of control.

She knew also that she would suffer no bruising consequences at this man’s hands, that no matter where things ended up, he would always hold a certain amount of respect for her, if only for the fact that she was a woman and something he obviously had been taught, or learned on his own, to respect.

It was one more round of confidence to the shy budding of courage in a heart that she had always thought chicken to the core.

The sweet, stinging awareness of it cut like salt in an open wound.

“My mother saw us in the garden. She felt it best to bring me here to stay with my aunt and uncle until my father returned from Edinburgh and decided what should be done with me.”

“And has he returned?”

“Yes. Come and gone.”

“Without you, I see.”

“Without me.”

“Why? What would make him leave you here?”

She went on to explain her father’s decision to leave her here until the wedding. She did not mention her conversation with her Uncle Barra.

“Bastard,” he said. “It’s inhuman enough to betroth his own daughter to a man like Huntly without treating her with such disregard.” His look was hard. “For the love of God. He may be your father, but the man is a bastard, through and through.”