Page 26 of To Love a Scottish Lord (Highland Lords #4)

“A re you certain I’m not hurting you?” Mary asked, dabbing at the deepest lines on Hamish’s back.

Even though there were ingredients in the salve that might prove caustic to his scarred skin, he didn’t flinch.

She regretted the fact that she might be causing him pain, or replicating, in any way, the actions of his captors.

“I can barely feel what you’re doing.”

They sat in the middle of the courtyard on a bench that they’d moved from the kitchen. She’d persuaded him to take off his shirt, and now the sunlight revealed a tracery of lines deeper than the pattern of Shiva carved on his flesh.

“What are these?” she asked, following the lines with her fingers.

“Lash marks,” he said casually, as if he discussed the weather, or something equally mundane.

“Did they beat you, too?”

“It’s over, Mary,” he said gently, glancing over his shoulder at her. “Someone recently told me that I needn’t remember it again.”

It was annoying to have her words turned around and used as weapons.

“The sun will help you heal further,” she said, feeling a surge of protectiveness. “I wish that I were as talented as those in Inverness believe me to be,” she said, placing both hands flat on his shoulders. “If so, I would erase these marks from your body.”

“If you were indeed an angel from Inverness, I wouldn’t be able to touch you,” he said, turning and smiling at her. “I wouldn’t want to trade that pleasure for anything.”

“Not even being unscarred?”

“Does it matter so much to you, Mary?”

She shook her head, realizing it was true. The tattoos were a part of him, as much as his brown eyes or his hair.

“Why doesn’t it matter more to you?” she asked him.

“Perhaps I deserve it,” he said, a cryptic remark that he didn’t explain.

She continued rubbing in the salve. When she finished, she wiped her hands and gently blotted the excess from his skin.

“It’s a beautiful day,” she said glancing up at the clear sky. The hint of winter was back in the air, but the warmth of the sun offset the cool breeze.

“That it is,” he said. When he spoke conversationally, his voice sounded almost like a whisper. Only when he spoke louder, what might have been for another man a shout, did his voice seem to regain a normal pitch. She didn’t ask why that was, preferring ignorance in certain things between them.

She sat on the edge of the well and watched him, sitting there with his face tilted back to the sun, that small half smile playing around his lips. She knew now that he used the expression as a shield, less amusement than simply a way of hiding whatever emotion he was experiencing.

“Will you play a game of shatranj with me this evening?” she said, capping the vial and placing it back in her medicine chest resting on the edge of the well.

He glanced over at her, his gaze intent and somber.

“What wager shall we make this time?”

“Must we make one?” she asked. “Isn’t it enough to simply play for the joy of the game?”

He smiled again, his expression altering to become teasing. “I would much rather win something from you.”

“You’ll do the laundry if you lose, then.”

He laughed, surprising her.

“I agree that that’s a wager I’d prefer to win, but I have more interesting stakes in mind.”

He winked at her, a slow and taunting gesture, one that shouldn’t have escalated her heartbeat.

She carefully closed her medicine chest before moving it from the rim of the well. Once it was at her feet, she looked at him again.

“What, exactly, did you have in mind?”

“If I win, I will teach you something I learned in the Orient.”

“A healing technique?”

“If you prefer to think of it as that,” he said, smiling.

“Or is it something to do with cobras?”

He laughed.

It really was a strange occurrence, losing her breath around him.

Still, it seemed wicked to discuss such things, and even twice as decadent to do so in the bright light of the sun.

She could hear the waves lap up on the rocks, and the seabirds calling as if the sheer joy of life was too much to restrain.

She’d already betrayed herself as being a woman who was led by her impulses rather than her logic.

If not, she would have left with Brendan, been in Inverness now, congratulating herself on her fortuitous escape.

But what Hamish didn’t know was that she’d never before acted in such a fashion.

Only with him had she been so foolish. And brazen.

Instead of telling him that, she smiled back at him as he sat there, a satyr with his shirt unbuttoned and the pattern of a godless deity cavorting upon his chest.

Had he always been a man of wild wants? Someone who explored the world with a reckless disregard for what other people might say or think? Had he always done exactly as he wished and been an adventurer with a wicked gleam in his eye?

“Very well,” she heard herself say. “I accept your wager.”

He only smiled in response.

One thing she’d learned from ten years of marriage was how to gauge a man’s moods.

Gordon had sometimes been affable, yet she had known how to read his irritation, knew when it would subside or presage a greater anger.

She was often the brunt of his annoyance, and she accepted both his outbursts and his later apologies, understanding that she was an easier target than the customer who’d angered him, the price of gold, or a dozen other reasons.

However volatile his nature, Gordon never meant to be unkind.

Hamish MacRae had not once demonstrated or revealed any emotion at all, other than lust. Surely, how ever, he felt something other than understanding about his imprisonment and the torture he’d endured. Perhaps his true sentiments were buried too deep to surface easily.

She stood and walked to where he still sat. At her approach, he opened his eyes. When she drew near he stretched out his hand, resting it on her waist, his thumb brushing an arc beneath one breast.

Reaching out, she touched his face gently, trailing a path along his jaw. Pressing three fingers against his bottom lip, she leaned forward and whispered to him. “Hamish.” That’s all, just his name.

His smile slipped as he looked at her.

“I shouldn’t have kept you here, Mary.”

“Since it’s too late for regrets, can we disallow them?” Remorse, she discovered, couldn’t coexist side by side with joy. Her smile wouldn’t subside, and her heart felt remarkably light.

“Then I’ll have to ensure that you don’t regret your decision,” he said. A promise he sealed with a kiss.

Brendan said farewell to Micah and Hester at an inn on the outskirts of Inverness.

“If you ever need work,” he said as they parted, “go to Gilmuir and tell my brother Alisdair that I recommended you.”

“Won’t you be there, sir?” Micah asked.

“Ships are for sailing,” Brendan said with a smile. “I’m certain my crew is enjoying their unexpected holiday, but sooner or later they’re bound to be restless.”

He said goodbye and made arrangements for the horses before continuing into Inverness to fulfill his errand for Hamish.

Brendan entered the goldsmith’s shop, hearing the bell’s soft summons as he closed the door. A moment later, the apprentice appeared, wiping his hands dry on a towel. Brendan’s nose wrinkled as he smelled a foul odor, something that clung to Charles like a cloud.

“It’s a solution to purify gold,” he said, frowning at Brendan. He looked behind him as if expecting Mary to magically appear. “Where is she?”

“She remained behind,” Brendan said. He extended the letter to the other man. Charles took it without a word, breaking the seal with a snap, and scanning it quickly. He turned it over in his hands as if expecting more.

Charles Talbot was a young man with a narrow face and intense blue eyes. His eyebrows were bushy and his lips thin, giving him the appearance of a fox. Or some other feral forest creature.

“Is this all?”

The apprentice, Brendan thought, didn’t look too happy about Mary’s letter.

In fact, he looked as if he would rather take a swing at him than force a smile to his face.

The sentiment was equally shared. Brendan hadn’t liked the man when he’d first met him.

He’d been given directions by Iseabal, as well as a written introduction.

Charles had been rude and dismissive before realizing that Brendan was Alisdair MacRae’s brother.

Evidently, the apprentice’s manners were attached securely to his pocketbook.

“I’ve no other message from her if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Your brother is no better?” The effort of forcing his tone to be pleasant was taking its toll, Brendan noted. One of Talbot’s hands was clenched in a fist; the other trembled markedly as he held the letter.

“He’s not as well as I would wish,” Brendan said, which was not exactly a lie.

“What’s the nature of his ailment?”

Brendan just stared at the man, irritated that the situation was forcing him to lie. He would, but only to an outsider. He’d tell the truth to a member of the family.

“He’s been wounded,” he said, hoping the man wouldn’t press him.

“But not grievously,” Charles said. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have left him.”

“With Mary tending him, he doesn’t need me.”

“But he must be well enough and not at death’s door,” Charles insisted. “Otherwise, you would not have left him with a stranger.”

They were hardly strangers by now, a thought he wouldn’t convey to the narrow-eyed apprentice.

“I have another letter,” he said, “one for an Elspeth Grant. Could I get directions from you to her house?”

Charles held out his hand. “Give it to me and I’ll see that she gets it.”

Giving the letter to the other man would save him the trouble of delivering it to her, and allow him to travel without delay to Gilmuir. But something in Charles’s eyes made him doubt that the young woman would ever see Mary’s words.

“I’ve promised Mary I would deliver it to Elspeth personally,” he said. Another lie. “If you don’t know the way to her house, I’ll ask a passerby.”