The Ravishing One (20 page)

“I thought they were all dead. All the McClairens,” she said. Carr had claimed with awful relish that he’d eradicated every last McClairen from Scotland. But he’d overlooked at least one.… “But, if
you
are Thomas McClairen, that means that Favor is …”

“A McClairen, too. Aye.”

“Raine knows.”

“I suppose. I don’t really know.”

Had Raine had been spared a part in Thomas McClairen’s revenge? Because he’d married Thomas’s only living relative, his young sister?

Thomas jumped to the ground and went to the horse’s head as Gordie came trotting down the steps. “Well, at least now you don’t have to waste any more thought on how to avenge your abduction. Aye, there’s a worthy revenge for a Merrick, m’love. As
soon as you return to London you can inform the authorities that Thomas McClairen is back on English soil.”

She bent a startled glance at him.
He
was wondering what revenge
she
was concocting? The fear that had been building began to fade. “You could always kill me,” she said testingly.

His face folded into disgusted lines. “I’m not Carr.”

No. He wasn’t. The rest of her fear evaporated.

He tch’ed lightly, the bitterness of his expression startling her. “But if you want your revenge, lass, you’d best hurry before your father preempts you.”

“Carr knows who you are, too?” Impossible. Carr would have had Thomas arrested years ago. There would have been no reason for Carr to spare Thomas, the virile scion of the once-proud clan Carr had set himself to destroy.

“Aye. He’s held the knowledge for years, but he won’t be holding it much longer.”

“Why?”

“Does it matter?” Thomas asked flatly.

Yes. If Thomas hadn’t brought her here as part of some scheme to hurt Carr and if Thomas was, indeed, only keeping her here until he felt James was safe from her influence, if Thomas had really meant his vow not to harm her, it could matter a great deal. To her.

But she’d no sooner recognized that essential truth than she also recognized how foolhardy it would be to reveal it to Thomas. One never placed one’s … sentiments at another’s disposal.

When she didn’t reply, Thomas tied up the horse and went round to the back of the cart. There he removed her trunk and portmanteau, tossing first one then the other at the young man staring with gape-mouthed reverence at his laird.

The youngster stood a head shorter than Thomas. His sandy hair was matted and scraggly, his breeches stained, and his shirt torn at the cuff, but his face was clean enough. At least Fia could see a smattering of freckles covering his snub nose.

“Take these upstairs, Gordie. Lady MacFarlane will be staying in the corner bedroom.”

“Aye, aye, m’lord. So Tim Gowan said when he come with Jamie’s message.” Gordie bobbed his head and with a grunt heaved the trunk to his narrow shoulders. He turned his head toward her—his laird’s as yet unexamined guest—and his eyes widened. His smile grew into a grin. There was no mistaking the admiration in it. Perhaps Gordie wasn’t as young as she’d first thought.

“Be sure ye don’t slip in that puddle of drool as ye go, Gordie,” Thomas said flatly. The boy’s cheeks flamed in response and he shuffled away with his burden.

“Leave the boy alone, Fia.”

“I have no intention of—”

“Spare me the denials. I’m warning you, Fia. The boy is just that, a boy.”

“Hardly. He’s probably near my own age,” she answered.

Thomas snorted. “Years have little to do with age when one is speaking of you, Lady MacFarlane.”

He was right, but hearing him put into words what she’d often thought herself was unexpectedly painful.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

She looked up. He’d drawn near. His face was skewed in grave, troubled lines.

“Forgive me. That was inexcusable.”

“But true?” She tried on a smile, felt it quaver, and let it dissolve.

He met her gaze squarely. “Yes.” He sounded regretful, and that hurt even more.

“No matter,” she said pertly, but when her flippancy did nothing to shake the pity from his expression, her puzzlement overcame her hurt. “You’re a strange one, Thomas. You steal me away and then apologize to me—not for the abduction but because my past precluded a childhood.”

“Someone should damn well apologize for it,” he said fiercely.

Her breath caught. His gaze met hers and she had the distinct sense that he’d meant what he’d said, even though he regretted saying it. She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, feeling awkward and uncertain, when both sensations were so foreign to her. He bewildered her. One minute the vitriol in his words was so sharp she could taste it, the next he championed her.

While she was pondering this and trying unsuccessfully to account for it, he came to the side of the cart
and lifted her unceremoniously from the seat. For a brief moment longer than necessary he held her before depositing her on the ground.

“Come along,” he said. Without waiting he strode around the corner of the house and up the front of steps, Fia trailing behind.

Inside the house kept the promise made by its austere exterior. Not that it wasn’t well maintained. It was. It just wasn’t very clean. Dust coated the few pieces of furniture in the entry hall and the flagstones were in dire need of sweeping. A cobweb occupied the space between the newel post and the first baluster mounting the stairway, its fat matriarch placidly spinning new spokes for her home.

“Here we are. It’s …” Thomas took a look at her face, and frowned.

“It’s dirty,” Fia said. “You’ve brought me to a dirty house in the middle of nowhere.”

It was decidedly not the right tack to take. Thomas immediately became defensive. “Well, I’m sorry if it’s not some scented bower replete with a bed of rose petals and servants in silk turbans to fan you with ostrich plumes, or whatever they do at the sort of place the poor sots you bewitch take you.”

A witch, was she? His imagination far outstripped any reality she’d ever known. Her reputed “lovers” were entirely a matter of other men’s supposition—which, in all fairness, she’d encouraged. She supposed she should be accustomed to such … such
blather
. But in truth, she’d not expected it from this particular source.

But more, she didn’t know what
to
expect from him. The uncertainty that had been born on discovering he was Thomas
McClairen
only exacerbated the situation. Was he an enemy? If so, her enemy or her father’s? Was he protector of his friend? Avenger of his family? She did not know, and thus did not know how to react, and so reacted without thought, something she almost never did.

She hitched her chin higher, looked at him haughtily down her short, straight nose, and drawled, “I’m allergic to feathers. I prefer palm fronds. But rose petals are very nice.”

It was, she knew, rather like poking a stick at a panther, and sure enough, flags of ruddy bronze scored his high cheekbones.

“There’ll be no petals here, Lady MacFarlane, and as for the place being dirty—”

“Filthy,” she sniffed, knowing the appellation to be unfair.

“Filthy
. ’Twill give you something to do during the day.”

Her hauteur vanished. “You can’t possibly be serious,” she breathed.

“Entirely,” he replied with a return of his former insouciance. “I employ no permanent staff. I don’t use the place often enough for that. Only a caretaker and his wife, who sweeps—”

“What? Once every other year?”

He ignored her.
“Sweeps
, changes the linen, and keeps the rooms aired out. I expect she can be persuaded
to cook—with enough incentive. And”—he regarded her narrowly—
“if you
don’t offend her.”

“Offend her?” Fia said. “My dear sir, I am used to servants worrying about whether they offend
me
, not vice versa.”

“Then,” he said, his voice growing louder as he went, “I suggest now is as good a time as any for you to
start
worrying, because if you try those haughty lady-of-the-manor airs on a Scotswoman, you’ll find yourself stirring your own gruel, you spoiled little witch!”

He was right. Over a decade and a half under Gunna’s less than fawning care had taught Fia the character of the Highland Scot. Particularly Scottish women. Not that she was about to give Thomas the satisfaction of acknowledging such. “Humph.”

He smiled. He couldn’t possibly take that little grunt to mean anything other than scorn—certainly it hadn’t meant she’d yielded to him one inch.

“There’re brooms in the kitchen.”

“Ah, good,” she said sweetly.

His brows rose.

“I shall conjure up a spell directly and ride back to London. We spoiled witches do that sort of thing, you know.”

He burst out laughing. She stared at him in amazement, which turned quickly to fascination. His eyes crinkled up at the corners, and the seams on either side of his wide mouth revealed those devastatingly attractive dimples again.

His smile was broad and rife with pleasure; his teeth were clean and straight. Delight filled his pale blue eyes, sparking them with silver.

Then slowly the laughter died in his throat. The room grew hushed, the air still with expectancy. With intimacy.

His brows drew together a fraction, but in puzzlement, not anger. The silver sparkle in his eyes banked to a darker luster. She could see the pulse beating at the base of his throat. Her lips trembled on the brink of opening—

“The bedroom is ready,” Gordie announced from the top of the stairs.

Fia leapt back. How had she come to be standing so close to Thomas? He was frowning in earnest now, looking as confused as she felt.

“M’lord?”

“Yes, Gordie. Thank you. Lady MacFarlane?” He gestured for her to precede him up the stairs. When they were at the top, Gordie led her to the end of a narrow hallway. He opened the last paneled door and stood back, allowing her to enter ahead of them.

She looked around without enthusiasm. The room contained a bizarre and atrociously mismatched collection of furniture. A massive oak four-poster sat squarely in the center of the room, its drab dun-colored curtains tied back at the posts, exposing an improbable red counterpane. Beside it stood a delicate cherrywood dressing table with a pedestal mirror attached, a bench carved with griffin heads before it. A pair of lime green
wingback chairs flanked a small fireplace, in which a peat fire burned.

She did not think she would be spending much of her time in here.

“I … I hope it meets with your approval, ma’am?” Gordie said shyly, twisting his hands together and shuffling, clearly embarrassed to have entered a lady’s chambers.

“My approval?” she echoed. She was about to laugh and make some snide remark about being more likely to approve a nightmare when a splash of unlikely color caught her eye. She turned. Someone had picked a small bouquet of yellow flowers and set them on the windowsill. That someone, she was sure, was Gordie.

Why, he’d probably been given the responsibility of pulling together some sort of suite of furniture for her unexpected arrival. The room was his inspiration, and now, looking at it, she realized he’d gathered together what he must suppose to be the most beautiful and rare objects in the house—regardless of whether they suited one another. In another room—and with a different seat—the dressing table would have been lovely. And the Oriental screen in the corner was a work of art.

As were those yellow flowers. She turned back, smiling warmly.

“It’s lovely. I am sure I shall be most comfortable here.”

The boy released his breath and grinned with pleasure. “I’m happy ye like it, ma’am. Jamie had one of
the lads ride here like the devil was on his trail to say as how ye was comin’ with the laird. I done what I could in what time I had.”

“If you knew I was comin’, then why’d ye point yer rifle at us?” Thomas asked in exasperation.

“Well, how’d it look if ye rode up and I
wasn’t
guardin’ the house? Ye’d think me a poor sort of man then, wouldn’t ye?” Gordie asked with impeccable logic. He turned back to Fia. “And did you see the flowers?” He pointed at the blooms.

“They’re beautiful,” she said sincerely. “No one’s ever given me their like.” Which was true. Roses and tulips she’d received by the dozens, but no one had ever given her a simple country flower.

“Cowslip they be, and the last of them at that,” Gordie said proudly. “Late this year, they were, but I remembered where I’d seen some still bloomin’, and whilst you and the laird were chattin’ I slipped out and fetched ’em. I ’spect ye were wonderin’ where I’d got to, eh?”

“Ah, yes. Yes, we were,” Fia lied, her gaze slipping to where Thomas stood, unnaturally silent and watchful. “Weren’t we?”

Whyever was he looking at her like that? She hadn’t said a blasted provocative thing to the boy and yet his expression had gone grim again.

The man really should learn to relax and laugh more often. He had a lovely laugh. And then the irony of her, Fia Merrick, criticizing another for being too somber struck her and she grinned—as it was, in
Thomas’s direction. He blinked, grimness metamorphosing into bewilderment.

“Weren’t we, milord?”

“What?” he asked, coming out of whatever trance held him. “Ah. Yes. We were wondering where you were. Now we know. Come on, Gordie. I’m sure Lady MacFarlane would like to change clothes and prepare for dinner.”

“Oh, aye, I bet she would,” Gordie agreed promptly, in his artlessness reminding her of her own unclean and doubtless fragrant state.

She looked down. The lace edge of her bodice was grimy and a smear of dirt marked her bosom. Her once crisp brocade skirts hung like limp rags from the hoops of her petticoat. These, too, were dirty, stained with what, she had no intention of considering. As for her face and hair … She was very glad she hadn’t looked into the mirror on the dressing table.

“I should like to bathe. How do I go about getting a hip bath?” she asked.

“Hip bath?” Gordie repeated uncertainly, leading Fia to suspect anew that the lad’s acquaintance with bath, hip or otherwise, was limited.