The Bodyguard (10 page)

Kitt wondered at the stranger’s fine manners as she crossed to the other side of the room, dipped a cup of water into the bucket she had filled that morning, and brought it back to him. “Here. Drink your fill.”

Any pretense of fine manners disappeared once he had the water in his hands. He drank as though he had been walking in the desert for days, excess water streaming down either side of his mouth as he gulped thirstily. He emptied the cup and held it out to her with a gusty sigh. “More, please.”

“When was the last time you had something to drink?” she asked as she refilled the cup and handed it to him.

He emptied the cup a second time before he said, “Yesterday. At a cottage by the sea.”

“Is that where you live?”

“No. I … No.”

“Where are you from?”

“South of here,” he said. “A rather inhospitable place.”

Looking at his battered face, she was forced to agree. “Are you a farmer?”

“I’ve most recently been at sea.”

She focused her attention on the work at hand, dabbing at his blood-caked features and his torn knuckles with a warm, wet cloth. “I promised you breakfast,” she said. “Are you hungry?”

“A little.” He hesitated and said, “Actually, I’m famished.”

“Moira, a bowl of oatmeal, a bannock, and some tea for our guest.”

He reached for the cloth. “I can do that mysel—Ow!”

“Shh!” she said soothingly, blowing on a cut running through his eyebrow that had opened when she soaked out the sand that was ground into it. There was a knot the size of a goose egg on his forehead. One eye was merely a slit, while the other was surrounded by black-and-blue bruises. His nose was swollen so huge it was hard to tell what size it was intended to be, and if it had once been straight, it was no more. His lower lip was twice its size, and she noticed he licked at a cut on the edge that bled steadily.

“Your face looks as though you’ve been in a brawl. Did you win?” she asked.

The stranger looked at her through his one good eye, which she suddenly noticed was gray. “I’m alive to tell of it.”

“Perhaps you’d make a good bodyguard for The MacKinnon after all.”

“Bodyguard?” He sat up straight, then gasped and grabbed at his side.

She frowned. “Do you have broken ribs?”

“Only bruised, I think,” he gritted out between teeth clenched against the pain. “Why does The MacKinnon need a bodyguard?”

“Because she’s being plagued by all manner of suitors,” Moira said, setting a ceramic pot of greasy yellow salve on the table in front of him. “Like that idiot Ian
MacDougal ye chased off this morning. Ever since my darling Kitty said she’d marry the man who could win her heart, we havna had a moment’s peace around here.”

The stranger stared at Moira for a moment longer, then turned his attention to Kitt. “
You
are The MacKinnon?”

She grinned and made a quick curtsy. “Lady Katherine MacKinnon at your service, sir. And what might your name be?”

He hesitated so long, Kitt wondered if one of the knocks on his head had stolen his senses. “Your name?” she reminded him.

“Alex Wheaton.”

“Tell me about yourself, Alex Wheaton,” Kitt said as she continued her labors on his bruised face.

“There’s not much to tell.”

Kitt applied the goldenrod and valerian salve as gently as she could with her fingertips, but he hissed and jerked away at even that slight touch. She realized the wounds must be very fresh, and she put a hand on his shoulder to keep him still. “Easy. It will make all well.”

She was curious to know more about this man who Moira thought would make a good bodyguard, especially because he was being so secretive about himself. “Do you have a family, Alex?”

His gaze moved away from hers. “I dinna … dinna wish to speak of them.”

He was unhappily married, Kitt decided. Or perhaps
his wife had died. He wore no ring. Kitt realized the direction of her thoughts and brought herself up short. Surely she had not been entertaining ideas about the stranger as a prospective husband, not with an entire clan to choose from.

“What brings you here?” she asked.

“I
…
decided to do some traveling.”

“Why?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“If I’m to hire you as my bodyguard, I need to know a little bit about you.” She smiled and said, “You might be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

She felt his shoulder tense beneath her hand.

“I have no designs on your person, Lady Katherine. I’m willing to be your bodyguard and fight to keep you safe. That’s all you need to know.”

Moira cackled. “Well, lass, there’s yer
gille-coise
.”

Kitt had balked at the idea of having someone to protect her. She could take good care of herself. But Ian had come very close to overwhelming her this morning. She did not relish the idea of having her choices taken away by some man’s brute strength.

And it was especially important that all her choices be left open now that her father’s plan seemed to have come to naught. With the Duke of Blackthorne drowned, she was going to have to find some other way to save her people that did not involve the duke. And soon.

“I canna pay you much,” she said.

“A roof and a bed and a meal now and then will be enough.”

She eyed him again and wondered why she trusted this stranger on such short acquaintance. It was hard to judge him by his face, which was badly battered, but his ready defense of her that morning, his quiet presence, and his obvious strength had all made a good impression. Whatever his past, whatever troubles had plagued him, he was here now and he was willing to help.

“Very well, Alex Wheaton. I appoint you bodyguard for The MacKinnon. ’Tis an ancient and honorable position. Do your duty well.”

He captured her hand in his, looked deep into her eyes, and said, “I shall guard you with my life.”

Kitt felt her breath catch as he made the solemn vow. She knew what such a promise might cost him. There was at least one man who would stop at nothing to have her. Alex would earn the meager pay she had offered him. At least with a bodyguard to protect her, she had bought some time to think of another way to save her people.

She set the salve on the table and was about to put the lid back on it when Alex stopped her.

“Wait.” He took the salve and dipped a finger into it, then reached up and gently smoothed it across the bruise Ian had put on her cheek. “You have a wound of your own that needs tending.”

His fingertip was rough and not precisely clean, but she felt an ache in her throat at his thoughtful gesture.

“There,” he said, setting down the pot and wiping
the excess salve off on his trousers. He looked up at her and said, “My first duty as bodyguard completed.”

Kitt shivered, but not from the cold. He was watching her again, and she found herself trapped by his gaze, unable to move. The more certain Kitt became that she should look away, the less willing—or able—she was to do so.

“Yer breakfast, Alex,” Moira said, breaking the spell.

“Thank you, Moira.” He dug in with relish, nearly swallowing the bannock whole. He must have felt Kitt watching him because he looked up abruptly, his cheek bulging with food, and reddened. He swallowed what was in his mouth and said, “I must confess I canna remember a time when I was so hungry. I thank you and your mother for—”

“Moira isna my mother,” Kitt interrupted. “She was my nurse. My mother died birthing me.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“ ’Twas a tragedy for my father, right enough,” Kitt said. “He found his one true love late in life and lost her when I was born. And I was not a son.”

“He was blessed to have you,” Alex said in a quiet voice.

Kitt wondered what he meant. Her father had never been happy with her. She had borne the double burden all her life of having killed the only woman her father could ever love and not being the son that might have mitigated her mother’s death.

Not that she hadn’t tried to fill the role. Over the
years, Kitt had stomped out every vestige of what could be described as female behavior. No missish tears. No megrims. No eyelash-batting flirtation.

She had learned to fight with dirk and sword. She had listened as her father explained the art of raiding, preparing herself for the day she would go with him. She had hidden her knock-kneed fear that she would not measure up in battle, so he would not see it.

But however much she learned, she was still a female. She still wore a skirt and suffered her courses each month, as her body prepared itself to bear a child. Ironically, it was in being a woman—who could seduce the duke—that she had finally pleased her father. And she had failed him even in that, because the duke was dead.

Kitt had not wanted a bodyguard, because it meant once again admitting she was only a woman and needed someone stronger to protect her. She consoled herself with the knowledge that even a man needed to be shielded from those enemies devious enough to stab him in the back. And Ian certainly qualified. There was nothing wrong with having necessary weapons—like a bodyguard—at her disposal.

Kitt fought a grin as she watched her bodyguard devouring his bowl of oatmeal as though it were Mother’s Eve pudding. He was as hungry as a wolf. And he reminded her of one—wary, watchful. And mysterious. She had to admit she was intrigued by Alex Wheaton. Where had he come from? What was he doing here?

He glanced up and caught her staring.

Kitt felt a thrill—or was it a chill—run down her spine as he searched her face with the one eye that wasn’t swollen shut. She was still trying to think of some explanation for her rudeness when someone knocked on the door.

“Not another one,” Moira said with a groan.

“I’ll see who it is.” Kitt opened the door to find a youth she didn’t recognize. She felt a presence at her shoulder and realized Alex had left the table—hungry as he was—to stand beside her.

“Who is it?” he said.

The boy’s eyes rounded. “Alex! Is that you?”

“Laddie!” Alex exclaimed. “How did you find me?”

“I’ve come with a message for The MacKinnon,” the youth said, holding up a parchment with an embossed wax seal. “From the Earl of Carlisle himself.”

“I’ll take that,” Kitt said.

The boy drew back the parchment and held it clutched against his narrow chest. “ ’Tis for The MacKinnon.”

“You’ve found her, Laddie,” Alex said. “Lady Katherine is The MacKinnon.”

“Well. Ye’ve landed on yer feet,” Mick said with a grin, as he handed over the letter to her.

“You two know each other?” Kitt asked, her eyes narrowing suspiciously as she looked from the boy in ill-fitting clothes to the stranger in equally ill-fitting clothes she had hired to protect her.

Alex realized that Michael O’Malley would spoil everything if he revealed that Alex Wheaton had been an Englishman yesterday. He couldn’t imagine that The MacKinnon would be much pleased by the fact she’d hired one of the enemy to defend her against her clansmen.

“This is Laddie,” he said before Mick could answer. “We grew up on neighboring farms.”

He saw Mick’s eyebrows shoot nearly to his hairline and then the slight nod as the boy acknowledged his clanker. “Would you mind if I have a word with the boy?” he said to his new employer.

“Go ahead.”

As Kitt crossed inside to the table and sat down to read, Alex quickly ushered Mick outside, far enough away from the front door that they wouldn’t be overheard. “I need a favor, Laddie,” he began.

“What is it,
neighbor
?” Mick asked. “Nothing havey-cavey, I hope. I’ve just gotten myself a plum bit of employment, and I’m not anxious to lose it.”

“I need you to keep my charade as an Englishman a secret from Lady Katherine.”

The boy’s mouth cocked up on one side mischievously. “Oh. Is that all?”

“ ’Tis important, Laddie,” Alex said in his best imitation of a Scots accent.

“Sure, Alex. I understand. Ye wouldna want the lady thinking ye’re crazy.”

“I dinna care if she thinks I’m an idiot, so long as
she doesna know I’m English. By the way, how did you find employment with an earl?”

“I thought ye might go to Blackthorne Hall, so I went there myself. Ye never know with the Quality,” he said sheepishly. “Sometimes they’re a little dicked in the nob. Ye could have been … someone.

“Anyway, I went to the kitchen door to ask for food and to see if you were there, and Cook was wailing that the Duke of Blackthorne was dead, drowned in the sea. ’Twas sheer luck that the earl saw me there as he was leaving the Hall. He asked me if I wanted work and here I am.”

Alex had heard nothing after Laddie said,
“The Duke of Blackthorne was dead, drowned in the sea.”
His heart began to beat faster. Had he been with the duke? Was that how he had ended up in the sea as well?

“How did the duke drown?” he asked.

“The earl told me the duke’s ship went down in a storm off the coast. Everyone drowned except three sailors, who lived to tell the tale.”

Three sailors and me?
Alex wondered. Something more than a storm had wreaked havoc on that ship, he’d wager. Otherwise he would not be so battered. Otherwise his hands would not have been bound.

“What happened to the three sailors?” Alex asked.

“The earl didna think much of them,” Mick said. “He said the ‘stupid louts’—his words, not mine—went back to the London docks where they came from.”

Alex frowned. Should he try to follow them to
London? Perhaps they knew who he was. Or perhaps they were the ones who had tried to kill him. He would be better off investigating his identity here, he decided, where he had at least one friend in Michael O’Malley. And where he had a roof over his head and food in his belly.

“What does the Earl of Carlisle want with Lady Katherine?” he asked Mick.

“He did a lot of muttering while he was writing, but the long and short of it is, I think he means to woo her, wed her, and bed her.”

Alex’s jaw dropped. “What?”

Mick pulled Alex close so he could whisper, “The earl kept me standing by his side while he wrote his letter. I couldna help but read it.”

“You can read?” Alex asked.