Page 34 of To Love a Scottish Lord (Highland Lords #4)

M ary smiled at Hamish, the firelight adding a golden hue to her skin and a sparkle to her eyes.

Hamish continued to whittle a long branch. Earlier that afternoon, he’d soaked it in a bucket of well water until it was supple. He’d already stripped the bark from it, and was now sharpening the point.

“What’s the stick for?” she asked.

“To spear the fish I caught this morning,” he said. Reaching over, he threaded the stick through the brace of fish, and then placed them in the fire.

Her curiosity evidently piqued, she watched him with interest while he prepared their dinner.

“The kitchen fire is larger,” she said.

He glanced at her. “You’re right, but I like the tower. It’s big enough for our needs.”

“Are you sure I can’t help?”

“It’s only fair that I do the cooking for one night, at least. I didn’t mean for you to wait on me like a servant, Mary. Consider it a reward for doing the laundry.”

“But you lit the fire, carried the kettle, and emptied the buckets.” The look in her eyes dared him to argue with her.

His smile was a gentle acknowledgment of her words.

“You never told me you knew how to cook.”

“There have been many times in my life when I’ve had to eat,” he said with a smile, “and there hasn’t been a cook around to make me a meal. My mother wanted all of us to be self-sufficient, so she taught us enough of the rudiments that we’d never starve.”

“How many MacRaes are there?” she asked.

“There are five brothers in all.”

“Are any of them like you?”

He smiled at the thought of any of his brothers being compared to another. “We’re all ourselves. My brother Alisdair is the oldest, and then James. Then me, followed by Brendan.”

“Who’s the youngest?”

“Douglas.”

“I know Alisdair and Iseabal,” she said, surprising him. “Gordon did several commissions for them in the last five years. But I’ve never met James.”

“He doesn’t live at Gilmuir,” Hamish said. “Instead, he’s chosen a little village called Ayleshire to make his home. He’s become a farmer, something that surprises all of us.”

“And Douglas?”

“Douglas was in school in France. Brendan told me that our father called him home. Douglas had evidently become fascinated with Paris, but my parents deemed it too unsafe with the political climate.”

She nodded. “The demand for national elections for the Estates-General,” she said, startling him with her knowledge.

“You shouldn’t look so surprised, Hamish.”

“I don’t know many women who are so conversant with political unrest.”

“Then you’ll have to expand your circle of female acquaintances,” she said. “There are many of us interested in what’s happening on the continent, for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which is the price of gold.”

He grinned at her, pleased with this sign of her practicality.

It wasn’t the romance of rebellion that interested Mary as much as the commerce of it.

In that, she was a woman after his own heart.

The events of the day weighed heavily on a sea captain’s mind.

It became increasingly difficult to make a living trading between countries if they were forever at war.

Neutral ships were often trapped in the middle of quarrelling nations.

“How long has it been since you’ve seen your family?”

“Years,” he said. Talking about his family brought them vividly to mind. He’d not, in all the time in India, missed them as much as he did right at this moment. He wondered why that was, and then glanced at Mary again, thinking that she had something to do with it.

In India, he’d tried not to hate his imprisonment or his captors. He couldn’t afford to be angry because any strong emotion stripped him of the energy he needed to live. After a while, he found himself almost adrift in nothingness, a kind of fog that was, perhaps, one of the reasons he’d survived.

With Mary’s arrival, however, the numbness had begun to wear off. He’d begun to feel every emotion, those he’d expected and even a few that surprised him.

He turned the fish over, concentrating on his task.

“What is it, Hamish?” She stood and walked toward him.

He knew she was near the instant before she put her hand on his shoulder, being attuned to her in a way that he had never before been with anyone.

“Sometimes,” she said softly, “you simply go away. Your eyes get a faraway cast to them, and I know you’re thinking of India. One day, the memories will cease, and you’ll only think back on that time with pride.”

“Pride?” Amusement raced through him at her words. “What do I have to be proud of?”

“Surviving.”

“I traded too much for it,” he said. “I’ve given up parts of my soul in order to keep my body alive.”

She dropped to his side on her knees, her hands on his arm.

“You mustn’t say that, Hamish.”

The look on her face was one of stricken horror, and he realized that she didn’t hear the hints in his voice, had heard only the resignation in his tone. He hadn’t truly wished to die. If he had, he wouldn’t have done what he did.

He turned and grabbed a platter, putting the fish on it before setting it on the table. Then he stood and pulled her into his embrace, feeling her breath against his bare throat.

“Shall we make an agreement between us?” he said. “That we never talk of India again? It will be as if it never happened. Let’s just say I was on an extended voyage.”

“And the marks on your body were made by Chinese concubines,” she said. He felt her smile against his skin and laughed.

“What would you know about Chinese concubines?”

“I have ears,” she said, pulling back and smiling at him. “Inverness has its share of travelers.”

“One of your patients?”

She raised one eyebrow at him. “I can assure you that all of my patients are proper citizens of Inverness.” She looked away and then back at him, her cheeks deepening in color. “Not that you aren’t as well, Hamish.”

He grinned at her. “I think we can agree that I’m not.”

“But, then, neither am I.”

He wanted to ask her why she’d stayed with him. Lust had been at the base of his request. He’d wanted her to remain because he was hungry for a woman. He hadn’t expected to like her, to be able to laugh with her. Nor had he known any woman quite like her, a confession that he didn’t make aloud.

He bent and kissed her lightly.

“Have you always acted with scrupulous care and decency, Mary?” he asked, setting aside caution. “Is there nothing you’ve done which shames you?”

She looked at him and smiled. A dangerous woman, one of grace, charm, and infinite allure, someone who made him wish that he could alter his past. “Of course I have. I’m no saint. These days should have taught you that much.”

“Have you ever committed an act that sickens you?”

She shook her head slowly from side to side.

But he noticed that she didn’t recoil from the question.

He shouldn’t test her. He’d asked her to stay because he’d wanted the comfort of her body.

Yet now he discovered he wanted the absolution of her spirit, or at least for her to understand why he’d acted the way he had.

He’d known that it was unlikely that anyone would ever truly comprehend what he’d done. Perhaps that’s why he’d taken himself off from other people, isolating himself like a leper. In a sense, he felt diseased. How he craved three simple words: You are forgiven.

Absolution might never come to him.

“We should eat,” he said, drawing back, turning to pull out a chair for her.

“It looks delicious,” she said, glancing at him curiously but not questioning his sudden foul mood.

“It will do,” he responded, hearing the curtness of his own reply and not ameliorating it.

Anger suddenly suffused him, an emotion of protection.

Over the past months, he’d grown increasingly self-reliant, a creature that lived within its habitat and needed only itself to survive.

But he discovered that he needed her, and that realization didn’t sit well at all.

She said nothing, watching his face with a curiously guarded expression.

As if she knew that his anger wasn’t directed inward, as it should have been, but at her.

He was enraged by every decent individual he knew, even the members of his family.

His brothers would have died rather than do what he did in the desert.

Each of them would have clung to his principles, his honor, and his decency.

Instead, Hamish had chosen life, trading any hope of his peace of mind or a clear conscience for it.

He’d wanted to breathe, to feel his heart beat, to know that years stretched out before him in some quasi-guaranteed span.

He’d wanted to plan for his future, to father a child, feel himself age.

He had wanted to see the faces of those beloved to him, to count the sunsets, to hunt once again, simple wishes that had kept him going even when it would have been easier to quit.

Too many times he’d wanted to simply lie down in the sand and let the sun scorch him to death.

But he’d carried on, one plodding foot after another.

With all the memories still left to him, and even with this enduring legacy of guilt, he knew he’d make the same choice again.

Suddenly, he didn’t want to eat or talk. He wanted forgetfulness, the kind he could find only in the pleasure of Mary’s abandon. His conscience would be silenced only when he was kissing her. He reached for her without apology, needing her in a way that was suddenly desperate and selfish.

She came, hands outstretched, resting on his shoulders, her smile understanding and so softly serene that it was almost his undoing.