The Knight's Temptress (Lairds of the Loch) (18 page)

Keeping his voice down, he said, “I haven’t had a chance yet to learn how you were captured, my lady. I’m wondering if perhaps Lizzie…”

She frowned, so he paused and waited, wondering if she actually distrusted him and might therefore refuse to talk to him.

Then she glanced back at the two behind them. Evidently reassured that Lizzie could not hear them, she said, “No good can come of casting blame, sir.”

“So it was her fault,” he said. “What did she do? Nay, do not frown at me. She looks worried, which is leading
me to think she is not as eager to get home as one would expect her to be.”

“That is possible, aye,” she said with a sigh.

Lina knew it would be futile to refuse to tell Sir Ian how Dougal had captured them. He would be angry if she refused, and she did not want that. Her inexplicable feelings about him befuddled her enough as it was.

Accordingly, she described what had happened, omitting her feelings from the tale and trying to make Lizzie’s actions sound ordinary. But the moment she said that Lizzie had urged her pony on ahead while the three of them were riding down the Glen Fruin trail, he said grimly, “That lass wants a good skelping.”

“Well, prithee, do not tell her so,” Lina said, trying to read his expression. “Rescuing us does not give you license to scold Lizzie or me.”

Ignoring the stricture, he said, “What the devil were you thinking to be riding away from the safety of Bannachra at all? And with just one unarmed gillie?”

She opened her mouth to tell him that Peter had worn his dirk. But it felt decidedly rash to make such a statement to an armed knight who had provided an escort of seventeen other men-at-arms as protection against enemies who would also have to be daft enough to travel on such a dark, rainy night.

“Did you want to say something?” Ian asked softly. When she shook her head, he added, “I must say, I’d never have expected you to be so reckless. Not as quick as you are to condemn others for what you merely
perceive
as recklessness.”

Raising her chin, she wished she had not when rain ran down her neck. She wiped it off as well as she could with one gloved hand before she said, “We meant to ride only as far as the loch, sir. I told you that before.”

He did not answer. So she looked at him again and could tell that he was trying not to laugh. Doubtless he had seen her wipe the rain from her neck.

Overcoming his amusement, he said, “You also told me that there could be naught amiss in such a ride. Your capture belies that statement, does it not?”

“You are the last one who should condemn anyone else’s error, sir.
Especially
when it comes to recklessness. To sneak into that tower dressed in rags and carrying peat, as you did, has to be the most reckless thing anyone has done in a long while. To do it again was just daft. Had James Mòr caught you, he’d have hanged you.”

“In troth, I don’t think so,” Ian said. “He’d more likely have viewed capturing me as just such a stroke of luck for him as capturing you and Lizzie was.”

She sighed. “Mayhap you are right. But did you think about that before you acted?” Taking his silence for his answer, she nodded. “So you were reckless then. And you were even more reckless today. I don’t blame your father for being furious with you. I’d wager he was just wishing you were a mite smaller.”

“You would lose that wager,” he said. “I will admit that he said many of the same things to me that you have. But do you honestly believe that if he had thought a beating would teach me a needed lesson or change me for the better, he would not have ordered me to submit to one? If you think that, you are wrong.”

She knew she was. Even if she were right, she had
overstepped civility by daring to suggest that she knew what Colquhoun had been thinking.

Just as the laird would order a man-at-arms flogged for disobeying his orders, he would punish his sons in like fashion if he believed they deserved it. Any man who understood fairness would, and Colquhoun’s principles were strong.

She knew, too, that had Colquhoun ordered punishment, Ian would have submitted. But the laird would not have punished him for so daring a rescue.

For years, she had rarely seen father and son together, because Ian had often been away training or fighting. But she had seen enough to know the love Colquhoun felt for his sons and the deep respect they had for him.

“He seemed almost angry enough, though,” she said.

“Do you wish I’d left you and Lizzie in that tower? Do you think he does?”

“You know I don’t,” Lina said, giving him a reproachful look. “I
could
not think such things. I am too grateful to be free again. Faith, I know I should not chide you, even if I had the right to do so. But you
are
reckless, sir, and it frightens me. Forbye, you have ignored good advice since childhood and seem to assume that you are always right and anyone who disagrees with you is wrong. Moreover, I heard enough today to guess that your father went to Dumbarton to speak for us. Why did you not trust him to treat with James Mòr?”

Ian distrusted James Mòr, not Colquhoun. Still, in the diminishing torchlight, the look Lina gave him stirred a sense of guilt, although he could not regret what he had
done. Even his father was glad that he had succeeded in freeing them.

Nevertheless, she was eyeing him as if he had behaved badly.

Thanks to the six-year difference in their ages, they had never had much in common. When the MacFarlan ladies had stayed with his family, he had been more interested in Andrena than in her little sisters, because Andrena’s love of woodlands and adventure had matched his own. Also, coming from so much younger a child, Lina’s disapproval of his behavior had annoyed him even when he’d deserved it.

Looking into her eyes, finding them deeper and darker in the torchlight than they had seemed before and solemnly fixed on him… He looked away but only, he assured himself, to judge how much longer the torches would last in the rain.

The afterimage of those dusky, perceptive eyes lingered. Sakes, it burned through to his core as if to bare all he’d liefer keep hidden. She was still watching him. He could feel her gaze as if it had fingers touching him. When he could not resist looking at her again, she said, “Tell me what you are thinking.”

Feeling as if an unknown force prevented him from refusing, he said, “I do trust my father. But I knew he could not persuade James Mòr to release you before Dougal abducted you. Or did you imagine that
you
could prevent that?”

“Shhh,” she warned. “You cannot want the others to hear you.”

“Don’t quibble,” he said, lowering his voice. “Answer my question.’

“Dougal suggested marrying me,” she said bluntly.

“Blethers,” he said. “Even Dougal could not be as daft as that.”

“Well, he did say it, so he must be that daft,” she replied with careful dignity. “But I doubt that he
wants
to marry me. He said the notion was Pharlain’s.”

“Even more outrageous,” Ian muttered.

“My father would say that the notion is contemptible. Apparently, Pharlain suggested it as a way to reunite Clan Farlan.”

Ian snorted. “If Pharlain suggested it, I’ll wager he did so before Andrena married Mag. I’d also wager that he wanted Dougal to marry Andrena, not you.”

She was silent for so long that he wondered if she had mistaken his derisive snort for something other than his disbelief that Pharlain would seriously expect Andrew to accept such reasoning. Had he somehow offended her instead?

“You may be right,” she admitted soberly. “But Dougal said only that Pharlain suggested marrying one of the MacFarlan sisters. I
am
one of them, sir.”

“Aye, sure, you are. But, if I am not mistaken, as the eldest one, Dree will inherit most of whatever Andrew leaves. Moreover, Andrew means to win back his other lands, which is why he wants good-sons who are warriors, like Mag. Recall that to marry Andrena, Mag had to agree to adopt the MacFarlan name, because your father wants to ensure that MacFarlans from the true line inherit Arrochar and Tùr Meiloach when he wins back his chiefdom. Dougal must know that.”

She wrinkled her nose thoughtfully, nearly making him smile.

Usually, every inch of her was smoothly, even elegantly, groomed and garbed. One simply did not think of
the lady Lachina having wrinkles anywhere. Thinking of how smooth the rest of her body might be briefly distracted him.

“I doubt that Dougal concerns you much now,” she said at last, rather distantly. Then, in a sharper tone, she said, “What
are
you thinking, sir?”

Abruptly meeting her gaze again, he felt guilt he had not felt since boyhood surge through him at the notion that, like her older sister, she might somehow know his thoughts.

The woman was clearly dangerous. She was also, Ian decided in the same breath, too intriguing for a man to dismiss easily from his thoughts.

Lina had been trying to sort her own thoughts when she noticed that Ian was staring at her. Her simple question then had made him look guiltier than he had when she had accused him of not trusting Colquhoun to treat with James Mòr.

In truth, she knew that he must trust his father in such matters, because the laird was renowned for his skill at mediation. Moreover, she believed that Ian had rescued them not only because he thought Dougal might abduct her but because he feared leaving Lizzie alone with James Mòr and his men.

Doubtless, Ian would have had to answer to Mag had he let that happen.

Despite all of that, Ian’s reaction to learning that Dougal—or Pharlain—had suggested marriage to her required clarification. “Do you think it is impossible that Dougal might simply
want
to marry me and doesn’t care a whit about our land?”

Ian blinked, as if he had snapped out of some sort of reverie. “Nay, of course, I don’t mean that,” he said rather curtly. “Doubtless any man seeking a wife would want you. I meant only—”

“Horses coming, sir, a pair o’ them, we think,” one of the two riders carrying the torches said just then.

Immediately reining in, Ian said, “Ride up and meet them, you two. Keep your torches to throw at them if you have to draw steel.” Twisting in his saddle to look back, he said, “Alex, get those men off the trail. In this rain, ten or fifteen feet should be far enough if they can keep their beasts quiet and if those approaching us lack torches. I want our lads near enough to surprise anyone who threatens us.”

“Aye, sure,” Sir Alex replied.

“This lassie is asleep, Ian,” Rob said quietly.

Looking back, Lina saw that Lizzie not only slept but that Rob MacAulay had somehow shifted her from her horse to his own without waking her.

Sir Ian could see as much, too.

Rob added, “Do you want me off the track, too? Or shall I wake her?”

“Stay as you are,” Ian said. “We’ll count on our own lads to fend off trouble. If a larger group is following these two, we’d have heard as much by now. So the two approaching us are either mine or a pair that slipped by Dobb and the others.”

Lina doubted that any of Ian’s men would let that happen.

The darkness that had enveloped them when the torches moved on made it possible to see only his shape now. But Lina had heard confidence in his voice.