Page 22

T his wasn’t going at all the way Hamish had imagined it would.

It had begun so promisingly, too. For all her cleverness, Catriona MacLeod was as predictable as the eastern sunrise, and the western sunset.

He’d suspected it would only be a matter of time before she crept from her bedchamber tonight and went scampering about the castle like a busy little mouse with bits of cheese hidden in every corner.

She’d proved him right.

The grandfather clock on the first-floor landing had just struck midnight when her bedchamber door had cracked open, and the tip of a curious little nose emerged.

Soon enough the rest of the lady followed, tiptoeing like a thief through the hushed castle corridors after the rest of the household had fallen asleep.

It was hardly surprising. He’d only been inside the castle walls for little more than a day, and mostly unconscious for half of that, but he’d already concluded there was no end to the number of secrets she was hiding.

And here was the proof of it.

She was accomplished at sneaking. He’d give her that. She’d been as stealthy as a Covent Garden pickpocket when she’d slipped from her bedchamber and darted up the stairs.

But not stealthy enough to evade him .

After the two younger MacLeod sisters had gone to their beds and the castle had fallen silent, he’d done some creeping of his own. It had been the easiest thing in the world to tiptoe up the stairs after her when she’d retired to her bedchamber tonight and hide himself in an adjacent corridor.

Then, it had simply been a matter of waiting.

Sure enough, she’d come sneaking out of her bedchamber like a proper thief and darted up the stairs. He’d been after her in an instant. That was the trouble with sneaking. All it took to set the whole business awry was one person waiting in the shadows to follow in your footsteps.

From there, she’d led him up to the third floor, then into the alcove to the winding staircase clinging to the walls of the turret to the uppermost floor of the castle, and into a room with a heavy, sweet scent lingering in the air.

There was a long, scarred table in the center of the cavernous space, and deep bookshelves lining the walls. It looked like a laboratory of some sort, which was curious enough, but Miss MacLeod scurried past without a glance and hurried instead to a large cabinet at the back of the room.

At least, he thought it was a cabinet until he heard the squeal of a door opening.

A secret door leading to a secret chamber? Well, of course, what else? From what he knew of Catriona MacLeod, she likely had secret chambers tucked into every corner of this godforsaken castle.

Clever of her, really. Secret chambers were excellent places to hide stolen treasure.

He’d had half a mind to follow her into her hidden lair, but she’d see him as soon as he appeared on the threshold. No, it was far better to leave her to whatever clandestine business had lured her from her bed, then catch her by surprise when she came back out.

So, he’d settled in to wait, ready for whatever came next.

Ready for her . Or so he’d thought.

But nothing could have prepared him for the sight of her when she’d emerged from her hiding place in her filmy night rail, like a vision in white floating across the floor as if she were one of the moonbeams streaming through the windows above them.

Moonbeams, for God’s sake.

A man only starting waxing poetic about moonbeams when every other sensible thought had fled his head.

But there she was, a dainty wraith haunting the top floor of the castle, her bare pink toes peeking out from under her hems and the thick locks of her hair bound in a long, loose plait that hung down to the vulnerable curve of her lower back.

He’d nearly swallowed his tongue.

It was a small mercy she hadn’t left her hair entirely unbound and spilling over her shoulders in a riotous tangle of red curls, or there was no telling how ridiculous a fool he might have made of himself, staring at her like a half-wit.

But even constrained as it was, her hair was close enough to unbound that a gentleman with a vivid imagination—a gentleman like himself, for example—had no difficulty at all mentally unraveling that plait until those silky locks flowed freely into his hands.

He’d said . . . something. Good evening, perhaps? Something of that sort.

He couldn’t quite recall it now, because his cock, troublesome organ that it was, had chosen this moment to make a nuisance of itself, and it was diverting all the blood from his brain to between his legs.

They’d exchanged a few words—something about her mother’s remedy book, and black licorice, or . . . wait, that couldn’t be right, could it? Why the devil would they have been discussing black licorice?

It was all a bit fuzzy, really.

Perhaps he hadn’t quite recovered from the poisoning, because somehow, instead of demanding answers about her father’s treasure or quizzing her about the mystery surrounding the Louis d’Or gold pieces, they’d ended up talking about gout.

Not why she’d sneaked from her bedchamber tonight, and not whatever it was she’d been doing in that secret chamber of hers, but gout , for God’s sake.

She didn’t seem to find anything amiss in it, however.

Indeed, the more she talked, the more animated she became, her face lighting up like a sunrise.

Soon enough she was telling him all about milk thistle, ginger root, and alfalfa, and lamenting the lack of sunshine in western Scotland that prevented her from growing proper hibiscus root, which she claimed was meant to work wonders on gout.

And here they were, back to the gout again.

She was delivering a treatise on the various cures for gout, and he . . . well, damned if he wasn’t hanging on her every word. Somehow, with every syllable that fell from her lips, it became more difficult for him to tear his gaze away from her.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. He’d only asked about her plants and medicines in the hope she’d become distracted enough that a secret or two would find its way from her clever, witchy brain to her lips.

He wasn’t supposed to find her conversation interesting. He didn’t even know what Wood Betony was , for God’s sake.

He was meant to be charming her , not the other way around.

What good was it being a charming marquess, if he couldn’t flirt her secrets out of her? But alas, somewhere between the black licorice extract and the venomous spider bites, he’d forgotten all about the treasure and fallen under her spell.

How could this have happened?

He’d never had any interest in wound treatment or inflamed joints before, but her rapt expression as she spoke, the bright light in her green eyes as she went on about Hart’s Tongue and Lemon Balm, and the graceful movement of her slender arms and dainty hands as she elaborated on some point or another . . .

He couldn’t look away from her.

“. . . Devil’s Claw is an effective treatment as well, but alas, Harpagophytum procumbens only grows in dry, desert-like conditions and can’t be grown in Scotland. It’s part of the sesame family, you know, my lord, and . . .”

He watched her, his throat as dry as the South African desert where—apparently— Harpagophytum procumbens thrived in the heat.

The chit was downright enchanting, damn her.

He mustn’t let her make him forget that for all her sparkling green eyes and the fetching locks of hair curling around her face, Catriona MacLeod was a liar.

She might deny it all she liked, but her father’s treasure was here, locked up somewhere inside this castle, maybe even in the very next room, on the other side of the double doors she’d just crept through.

Right, then. It was time to take control of the situation. He was a marquess, for pity’s sake, a sophisticated gentleman with a wealth of worldly knowledge at his fingertips, and she was a wee scrap of a girl hardly out of pinafores, who’d likely never set foot outside of Dunvegan.

She was no match for him, no matter how fetching she was.

It wasn’t as if he’d never encountered a distracting lady before.

Catriona MacLeod would hardly be the first he’d charmed into revealing her secrets.

It was a simple enough matter, after all.

A few smiles, a subtle compliment here and there, and an occasional admiring glance should be enough to loosen Miss MacLeod’s tongue.

That is, her tongue was loose already. She was currently expounding on the merits of Salix alba , or White Willow, but it was past time to ease her back to the matter at hand.

The treasure. The bloody treasure.

He hadn’t traveled all the way from London to Dunvegan to learn about gout, or White Willow, or the various remedies for spider bites. He wasn’t opening an apothecary’s shop, for God’s sake. He was stealing a treasure back from the thief who’d stolen it from him.

How hard could it be to coax Miss MacLeod into giving away a few tidbits of information? He was bloody delightful, damn it. The trick was not to come at the thing too abruptly, or to say anything unpleasant that would startle her into awareness.

He opened his mouth, an elegant bit of flattery about the depth of her knowledge regarding the intricacies of gout at the edge of his lips.

“Which of your potions did you poison me with, Miss MacLeod?”

What the devil? How had that slipped out? Poison wasn’t pleasant .

She’d been chattering happily about tree bark and Burdock root, but as soon as the word poison fell from his lips, she went silent, her shoulders hunching as if she were trying to disappear into herself.

The strangest thing happened then.

Inexplicably, without warning, his heart sank right down to his toes.

It was like watching a candle being snuffed out, the bright, warm glow vanishing with a careless pinch of his fingers.

Why had he brought up the poison? Yes, he wanted to know the truth about what had happened in the woods, but there was no place for the truth in a flirtation.