Untamed (16 page)

Grief for him stole over her like a sickness, bringing tears to her eyes, images of him filling her mind. The Ranger chained to the bed and delirious with pain and fever. The Ranger holding a lock of her hair to his nose, inhaling her scent. The Ranger laughing over Monsieur Rousseau’s writings.

Even the most savage man can tell a beautiful woman when he sees her.

Yesterday she’d seen just how savage he could be. Still weak and in chains, he’d found a way to protect her, moving so fast despite his shackles that he’d taken Lieutenant Rillieux completely unawares. At his full strength and unfettered, he would make a terrifying adversary. But he was no mindless barbarian, and she found it strange to think she now felt more at ease with him than with Lieutenant Rillieux, who’d served as her father’s right-hand man.

A knock came at the door.

Thérèse, the cook’s daughter, had come from the cookhouse to take this morning’s breakfast tray.

Amalie didn’t turn to face the kitchen maid, but continued to gaze out the window. “You may take the tray. Tell Cook I was not hungry.”

“Then perhaps you will have a hearty appetite for dinner,” Bourlamaque’s deep voice answered.

She whirled about and gave a little curtsy, painfully aware that she was wearing only her chemise, a blush burning its way into her cheeks. “Forgive me, monsieur. I mistook—”

He dismissed her apology with a wave of his hand. “Please, Amalie, do not distress yourself. I can see you are still upset. In fact, that is why I have come. I wanted to let you know that I have confined Lieutenant Rillieux to quarters for the time being. If he touches you again in any way that is improper, he shall be flogged.”

Amalie did not know what to say. “I…I thank you for your care of me, monsieur.”

He reached out, took her chin between his fingers, and tilted her head to the side, his gaze dropping to the scratches on her neck. “We must arrange to transport you back to Trois Rivières at our first opportunity. I know you do not desire to return to the abbey, but Fort Carillon is no place for a beautiful young woman. I shall do my best to find you a husband once the war has ended—unless, of course, you decide to take vows.”

“Bien, monsieur.”
She barely managed a whisper in response. She couldn’t imagine living in the abbey again, every moment of her day controlled by others. And yet she knew she could not remain in the fort.

“Now dress for dinner. We have a guest.”

“A guest?”

He smiled. “I think you will be pleased.”

She did not feel like meeting anyone, but she did not say this. “What of the Ranger, monsieur? Might I ask—?”

But Bourlamaque had already gone.

For a moment Amalie stared at the closed door.

A guest?

She couldn’t recall any visitors arriving at the fort. Then again, she’d been confined to her room since yesterday morning. Wondering who it might be, she combed her hair and braided a long white ribbon into it. Then she struggled into her stays and slipped on one of the sack gowns her father had ordered sewn for her last spring. Lavender with ivory lace, it was the last gift he had given to her.

Glancing in the looking glass only long enough to be certain that nothing was out of place, she walked out of her room and down the stairs, hoping to find a few minutes before or after the midday meal to speak privately with her guardian about Monsieur MacKinnon. Perhaps she could press him to consider her idea and help him find a way to appease her mother’s people. Or perhaps she could speak with Père François and seek his help in this matter.

She walked down the hall to the dining room, thinking through what she would say to Bourlamaque, her gaze falling upon the back of a tall and well-dressed gentleman who stood beside her guardian, a glass of wine in his hand. He was much taller than Bourlamaque and broader of shoulder, seeming to fill the space, his long dark hair drawn back with a ribbon that matched the shade of his dark brown frock coat. Then he turned toward her, and Amalie felt her footsteps falter…and…stop.

It was Monsieur MacKinnon.

Clean-shaven, bathed, and dressed in lace and velvet, he was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen, his smooth face astonishingly handsome, the hollows in his cheeks seeming more pronounced, his cheekbones higher, his eyes piercingly blue. Standing upright, he seemed to tower over her.

Feeling light-headed, she took a step toward him.
“M-monsieur MacKinnon?”

“M
iss Chauvenet.” Morgan willed himself to speak, his tongue near to tied, unable to take his gaze from her.

She looked as fresh as springtime, her dark hair hanging in a braid as thick as his fist beyond her hips, her eyes wide with surprise. Then her gaze moved over him, and he knew a moment of utter mortification.

She’s thinkin’ you look like a peacock, laddie.

With lace cuffs, silk stockings and drawers, and shoes with shiny brass buckles, he
did
look like a bloody peacock or, worse, like someone that whoreson Wentworth would invite to his supper table. The shoes were not so supple as the moccasins he was accustomed to wearing and pinched his toes. The lace seemed to get caught in everything, the silk sliding over his skin in a troubling way, as if he were wearing women’s undergarments.

Bourlamaque had been true to his word. No sooner had Morgan agreed to join him than he was freed from his shackles and brought in secret back to the hospital, where the bed he’d been chained to for so many days was waiting for him, clean and much softer than any bed of straw. He’d slept like a dead man, then awoken to find breakfast and a hot bath laid out for him. It had been heaven to bathe again, to scrub fever and filth from his body, to wash and comb his hair, to shave the whiskers from his face. And yet every moment of comfort reminded him of the new and dangerous game he played.

Morgan had become a spy.

No sooner had he finished bathing than Bourlamaque’s personal tailor had arrived to measure him and had announced that nothing in their store of uniforms would fit Morgan. In the end, Bourlamaque had decided it might offend the soldiers to put Morgan in a French uniform before he had proved his loyalty, and so he’d ordered his tailor to dress Morgan as a nobleman.

“He is the grandson of one of Scotland’s most loyal chieftains,” he’d told the confused tailor in French.

But no Highland laird would be caught dead in such frippery. Besides, Morgan had come of age on the frontier, not in his grandfather’s halls on Skye. What he wouldn’t give for a butter-soft pair of buckskin breeches, a shirt of homespun, and fur-lined moccasins. Thank God in heaven his brothers couldn’t see him. They would laugh until their sides split.

But there was no hint of mockery in Amalie’s eyes as she gazed up at him. Instead, relief and happiness were written upon her face as clearly as words on a page. And Morgan felt an almost irresistible urge to duck down and kiss her.

“I…I am pleased to see you looking so well, monsieur,” she said after a moment, a faint blush staining her cheeks.

He bowed, took her hand, raised it to his lips. “If I look well, miss, ’tis only a testament to your skills as a healer and your guardian’s generosity.”

He heard Bourlamaque’s low chuckle of approval, then Bourlamaque spoke in French. “Did I not say you would be pleased, Amalie?”

Amalie looked up at her guardian, gratitude in her eyes. “
Si, monsieur. Et je vous en remercie.” Yes, and I am grateful to you.

Morgan kept his face expressionless, knowing that to give himself away would spell catastrophe. No one must know that he spoke the French tongue—not if he was to survive this little game and escape. “Bourlamaque has explained to me that this was your doin’. I am deeply in your debt, lass. I owe you my life. If there is ough’ I can do, you need but ask.”

The blush in her cheeks deepened. “You are welcome, monsieur.”

From behind him came the sound of the front door opening and men’s voices speaking in hushed French.

“I cannot believe we are made to suffer through this! Dining with this barbarian after all he and his men have done to France? Disgraceful!”

“Bourlamaque has lost his mind to grant the bastard his freedom! The Abenaki are outraged. I heard they’re talking of taking the Ranger by force.”

Taking in this bit of information, Morgan watched Amalie’s smile turn to a look of worry, her gaze shifting to Bourlamaque, who glanced nervously at Morgan, as if to see whether he’d understood and was offended.

Then Bourlamaque frowned, his gaze shifting to the men in the hallway beyond. “Amalie, would you please guide our guest to the table while I greet my officers.”

But Morgan knew it wasn’t a greeting they’d receive. And, indeed, while Amalie led him to the table, he could hear Bourlamaque’s angrily whispered chastisement.

“
Oui,
he is a barbarian, but he is also the grandson of a Scottish lord allied with our king, a Catholic, and a skilled warrior! We stand to gain much from him. You
will
treat him with respect!”

“Bien, monsieur,”
they answered almost in unison.

So they expected a barbarian, did they?

Morgan would hate to disappoint them.

“I
’ve no doubt Cumberland and his men would have run my brother Iain through had my grandfather not offered himself up instead. He wasna given the chance to fight, but was instead stripped of his sword and taken to a British prison barge to rot. As his heir, my father was exiled from Scotland, his holdings on the Isle of Skye and all that we owned forfeit to the Crown.”

“And that is how you came to be in America?” Amalie asked, watching as Monsieur MacKinnon struggled to keep peas upon his fork.

“Aye.” He frowned as the peas rolled back onto his plate. Though some might have mocked him for his lack of sophistication, she found it charming. “I was a stripling lad of thirteen. Iain was fifteen, and Connor but twelve.”

To his right, Lieutenant Fouchet and Lieutenant Durand were no longer exchanging smirks, as they’d done when he’d picked up his bowl to sip his soup. They were as caught up in his story as she was.

“Then your father is rightful heir to the MacKinnon titles and lands?” Lieutenant Fouchet asked, not seeming to notice the Ranger’s faux pas.

Monsieur MacKinnon resorted to jabbing at his peas with the tongs of his fork, clearly unaware that many would consider his manners vulgar. “My father died four winters past, my mother several years afore him. She never grew accustomed to this land. The frontier is hard on the lasses.”

As he spoke those last words, his gaze brushed over Amalie.

“Such a sad tale!” As she watched, she saw him as the young man he must have been, left without parents on the frontier. She knew how it felt to be alone. “It must have been hard to lose so much so young—your home, your possessions, your family.”

He met her gaze, and something tickled in her belly. “Aye, it was, but no worse than what other loyal Highland clans suffered.”

“So that is how you came to be such a skilled frontiersman,” Lieutenant Durand offered. “You were forced to survive on your own.”

The Ranger shook his head, then set his fork aside and herded peas into his soupspoon with his thumb. “My brothers and I were adopted into the
Muchquauh
, the Bear Clan, of the Muhheconneok people. As Iain tells it, the old grannies got so tired of us eatin’ their food that they decided to make us part of their clan so they could quit treatin’ us like guests and send us out to fish and hunt. Our father taught us to wield a sword, but it was the Muhheconneok who taught us to survive.”

He popped the spoonful of buttery peas in his mouth and chewed with relish.

“The Duke of Cumberland,” Bourlamaque said, a thoughtful look on his face. “Is he not the son of King George?”

Monsieur MacKinnon nodded, a hard look on his handsome face. “Aye, he is, and a bastard if e’er there was one. Pardon my tongue, miss.”

“Is Lord Wentworth not the grandson of King George?” Bourlamaque asked.

“Aye, he is. We call him ‘the wee German princeling.’ ”

“Surely not to his face!” Lieutenant Fouchet gaped at the Ranger in disbelief.

“Och, aye, to his face—and worse besides.” Monsieur MacKinnon grinned as if such insubordination were nothing more than an amusement.

Fouchet and Durand laughed and raised their glasses in tribute.

But Bourlamaque pressed on, clearly driving toward a point. “Then Cumberland, who so wounded your family, is Wentworth’s…”

“Uncle,” Monsieur MacKinnon finished, sharing a knowing look with Bourlamaque and breaking off a piece of bread with his hands. “Aye.”

And Amalie understood. Monsieur MacKinnon and his brothers had suffered all of these insults—the loss of their inheritance, their home, and their freedom—at the hand of the same English family.

“Does he not punish you when you speak disrespectfully to him?” She set her fork aside, too full to eat more.

Monsieur MacKinnon grinned. “He doesna dare. He kens only too well that our men are loyal to us, and no’ to him. The Muhheconneok fight beside us and would leave Fort Edward at once should he anger them by harming one of us. Force us to fight he might, but he doesna hold all the power.”

“And now he finds himself deprived of your service.” Bourlamaque smiled and raised his glass. “
Vive la liberté
. To liberty.”

The Ranger raised his glass, his lips curving in a breathtaking smile. “Liberty.”

B
ourlamaque turned toward Morgan, two crystal snifters of cognac in hand. He offered one to Morgan, then gestured to the chair that sat beside his writing table. “Please sit, Major.”

Morgan accepted the glass, then strode over to an ornate chair like the ones he’d seen in Wentworth’s study and sat, knowing that the time had come to hold up his part of the agreement. He swirled the glass beneath his nostrils, inhaled, then sipped. It wasn’t good Scottish whiskey, but it would do.

He let his gaze travel over the room. A dozen or so leather-bound books sat on a shelf, gold letters on their spines. Another shelf held scrolled maps and charts. An elegant rapier hung on one wall. On the other hung a painting of a woman. Was she perhaps Bourlamaque’s wife? Young, bewigged, wearing an elaborate pink gown, she smiled at the viewer, a small dog in her lap, her slender fingers caressing its white coat.