Hero in the Highlands (17 page)

Her cheeks heated, damn it all. Maddening, arrogant Sassanach. Didn't he know the difference between her doing her duty, and creating more, unnecessary problems for her—his—tenants? And why did some stupid, unreasonable part of her like the way he looked at her as if he wanted to eat her? With a growl at her own reaction as much as at his unexpected high-handedness, she turned on her heel and stalked through the doorway. “Insufferable,” she muttered.

Steel clamped down on her shoulder and wrenched her around. Off balance, Fiona struck out with her fist, only to have her wrist caught by the same steel grip. Her nose came up against the middle of Lattimer's chest as he dragged her up against him.

“What the devil are ye—”

“Let me make something clear,” he said in a low voice, the sound sinking into her with a swirl of ice and fire. “I'm not a man to be trifled with. Nor am I an idiot. A few weeks ago I was fighting Frenchmen in Spain. I had no idea that I had a duke for a great-uncle once removed, or that I was his only heir. But I was, and here I am. Lattimer is both my property and my responsibility. It now has my protection, and my attention. I will see to it that it's running properly, and I don't particularly care if some neighboring landowner thinks he has a say in what I do.”

Fiona lifted her chin. He might loom over her, but she bloody well wasn't afraid of him. “I can see it has yer attention, Lattimer. We dunnae require that, or yer protection, or yer stomping aboot bellowing orders. We didnae have the old duke's attention fer two decades, and ye can see all the walls still standing. Ye—”

“Stop talking.”

Oh, that was enough of that
. “I willnae! Just because ye dunnae want to hear someaught doesnae mean it isnae true.”

Light gray eyes narrowed. “And you are annoyingly defiant for a woman who stole her brother's job.”

“I didnae steal it!” she retorted. “Kieran … was here one day, and the next he wasnae. Nae letter, nae good-bye, nae clothes taken from his wardrobe. His horse came back withoot him. And aye, we searched for him, too. He either fell into a bog and drowned, or he abandoned me. I prefer to believe the former. But either way, I inherited this position. I didnae steal a damned thing.”

“And I inherited
this
position. I didn't steal it from you, or anyone else. Don't assume, though, that I have no interest here, or that I have nothing to offer, simply because I'm unexpected.”

“Well, that's very clever,” she snapped, and jabbed a finger into his hard chest. “I'm supposed to see that we're alike now, aye? I'll tell ye straight, Sassenach. Ye and I arenae anything alike. And ye can stop kiss—”

His mouth lowered over hers, hard and hot and tasting of strong American coffee. Hunger, want, lust—she could taste those, too, feel them in the way his mouth molded against hers. Fiona put her hands on his shoulders, pretending that if she kept her fingers clenched into fists it didn't count as holding on to him. She was angry with him, after all, even if this didn't feel as much like anger as it did mutual need. The heat of him surrounded her, making her want to lean up along his chest and put her hands on his bare skin. God, he was so … male, sure of himself, confident that she felt attracted to him, and every time he kissed her she wanted … Blast it, she didn't know what she wanted any longer. But it had everything to do with him.

Abruptly he lifted her off her feet, backed her a half-dozen steps, and set her down again. “If you won't answer my questions, you force me to find another way to proceed. Consider that, Fiona.” A heartbeat later the library door closed in her face.

Fiona stood there in the middle of the hallway. She wouldn't have been at all surprised to find her mouth hanging open.
Well
. He'd certainly shut her up, if that had truly been his intention. Arrogant Sassenach soldier, now she couldn't decide if she wanted to throw herself on him again, or punch him in the nose.

At least no one else had seen them groping each other. Fiona couldn't imagine any excuse clever enough to explain why she'd permitted a Sassenach to kiss her, much less why she'd halfway thrown her arms around him. And why she continued to stand there gawping like a beached fish.

Smoothing her skirt, she marched for the stairs. Lattimer could bloody well threaten whatever he wished, because she had other things to see to. Actual things that benefited the estate and its tenants. Well, mostly they benefited the tenants, but if nothing else broke or went missing this year he'd see some profit, too. Hopefully. She hadn't managed that for any of the past four years, what with the sheep thefts and the grain sacks getting wet, and the grinding stone in the mill cracking. Aye, she could blame it on the curse, but there was no column for curse-caused misfortune in the ledger books. Only for profit and loss. And Lattimer Castle had seen increasing numbers in the loss column for years.

“Miss Fiona,” Fleming the butler said, as she descended to the foyer, “Niall Garretson at the mill says the new grindstone won't turn. I didnae understand it all, but the runner stone's too flat, or someaught.”

She swore under her breath. Having the blasted thing shipped from Derbyshire had cost a fortune. If it hadn't been carved correctly, it could take another week to pull it off and regrind it—if Tormod the blacksmith had the tools for the job. “I'll ride doon and take a look,” she said aloud.

“Blasted MacKittrick curse,” Fleming grunted, crossing his fingers. At least he didn't spit over his shoulder; she frowned on that when they were inside the house. “The laird might've settled fer cursing the English, and nae the property where his own kin were settled.”

“Aye,” she returned absently, still trying to brush Gabriel Forrester from her mind. “Have someone keep a watch over the duke while I'm away.” She walked outside, then paused on the front gravel walk. “And dunnae tell him where I've gone. The last thing I need is fer His Grace to be crushed by a millstone.”

Hamish had been correct about one thing—even if Lattimer avoided death, his mere presence in the Highlands was distracting enough to cause them all trouble. Her, especially. Because however loudly she denied it, she
had
been flirting with him. And not only was she still counting their kisses, she looked forward to them.

*   *   *

“Your paper, Your Grace,” Kelgrove said, slipping back into the library with a short stack of what looked like stationery. “Though I do assume you know you have a plentitude of pages at your elbow there.”

“Yes, I know. I wanted to get rid of you.”

“As I thought.”

Gabriel closed the damned ledger again before he could have a seizure from trying to figure it out. “What did you overhear?”

“The Duke of Dunncraigh wants Sir Hamish to remarry, evidently into a very wealthy family, and His Grace has been notified that you're here and will likely come by for a visit, something they don't expect you to enjoy.” Kelgrove ticked off the points with his fingers. “One mention of the thievery, and there seems to be a clash of wills between the two of them.”

That last bit didn't surprise him in the least. The woman could drive a saint to drink—and he was no damned saint. She could also make a saint at least consider some sinning, because he doubted any man dead or alive wouldn't have some carnal thoughts in the face of those flashing dark eyes, the curve of those lips, and the way she seemed to burn from the inside out. He imagined not even an infamous Highlands winter could stand against her.

He hadn't been able to do so. Whatever excuse he gave, whatever strategy he pretended to be following, the fact remained that he thought of little but her face, her mouth, her voice, her curves, from the moment he opened his eyes in the morning to beyond when he closed them at night. He would do more than kiss her, despite the way she seemed determined to thwart his every move—and despite the fact that he'd overheard her kissing someone else just a few days ago. All of which made him a madman, he supposed.

“Do you have any idea what all this means for you, Your Grace?”

Gabriel shook himself. There was a larger game afoot here than what he meant to do with Fiona Blackstock. “Beyond the obvious point that none of the Scots want me here? I'm not certain.” He straightened, moving to the window where a glorious afternoon waited beyond. “I do know that I'll see it all straightened out before I depart.”

The sergeant nodded. “If I may suggest something?”

“Of course. That's why you're here.” Any interest Kelgrove took in Lattimer Castle was a good thing, considering.

“The chit. Miss Blackstock. I know you said she has her uses, but aside from the fact that no one hired her, her … stubbornness and lack of cooperation is doing nothing but hindering you. In short, however much information she has about the estate and its people, you can find those things elsewhere.”

Just a few days ago the woman had tried to send him to sink into a bog, for the devil's sake. One where her own brother had apparently drowned. And he was not letting her get away from him. Not even if that proved counter to his own campaign here. “I'll sack her once I find out what it is she's keeping from me,” he returned aloud. “She's a game piece, and I don't think I can put this puzzle together without her.”

There.
That at least sounded logical. As for whether he meant it or not, he could figure that out at a time when his subordinate wasn't eyeing him with cautious curiosity.

Movement outside the window caught his attention, and he stepped closer to see the tail end of a large, red cow wandering up the carriage drive below. “See if you can decipher anything else,” he said, and headed for the door. “She wouldn't have handed these over if she had a choice.”

One of his five hundred footmen stood in the foyer as he arrived downstairs. “Yer Grace,” he squeaked, bowing, and held out a greatcoat. Gabriel turned around, and the servant helped him put it on.

“What's your name?”

The boy's Adam's apple bobbed up and down. “Diarmid, Yer Grace.”

“Diarmid. Thank you.”

“I … Ye're welcome, Yer Grace.”

Gabriel stepped outside into the cool, fresh air of a Highlands summer afternoon. He took a deep breath, trying to clear the clutter of his thoughts, and turned up the side of the house.

The shaggy beast had one horn that turned up while the other angled down, giving her a comic, tragic visage. Apparently the farmer Brian Maxwell wasn't having any better luck keeping track of her today than he had when she'd wandered into that damned mudhole.

“Hello, Cow,” he drawled, moving between her and the tall ferns bordering the estate's formal gardens. Of course Fiona had been jesting about her name, but he didn't have a better one to call her, so Cow would have to do. “Let's find you some hay, shall we?”

The cow stopped, lowering her head to nibble at the long grass to one side of the drive. Hoping he hadn't miscalculated the animal's willfulness and that he wasn't about to make himself look foolish in front of a household that already thought him the devil, Gabriel pulled up a large handful of the sweet grass and waved it under the bovine's nose.

“This way, Cow,” he said, and stepped sideways.

The beast stood where she was for a moment, eyeing him through long, red strands of fur hanging over her face, then swiped across her nose with her tongue and swung around to face him. Evidently the possibility of fresh hay outweighed the colorful enticements of the garden.

He half expected Fiona to come charging into view and chastise him for coddling or some such nonsense, but he and the beastie made their way slowly to the stable without incident. “Oscar,” he called, “have one of your lads see to the animal here.”

A handful of his eighty stable boys trotted into view and herded Cow into a pen. Gabriel dropped the grass he'd picked and waited for the head groom to appear. “Well caught, Yer Grace,” Oscar Ritchie drawled. “That blasted cow's a menace to every garden in the valley.”

“Send for Brian Maxwell, if you would,” Gabriel returned. “If the man can't manage a cow or two, I can find him employment cutting peat or drying seaweed.”

Those were the two most menial tasks that came to his mind, and he wasn't surprised to see the groom's amusement flatten. “Aye, Yer Grace. I'll send a lad to fetch him fer ye.”

This endeavor had been idiotic, now that he considered it. In his position he couldn't afford to look foolish, and the reward for keeping a single cow out of the garden when the locals were likely accustomed to the nuisance couldn't possibly have been worth the risk.

At least it had succeeded, and Fiona Blackstock hadn't charged out to reprimand him in front of everyone. Which made him wonder where, precisely, Fiona might be. After all, his first thought when he'd seen the cow had been to show his would-be steward that he could manage the beast without having to resort to jumping into the mud, allowing the garden to be devoured, or shooting it. A half-witted, pride-driven tactical error of the sort he thought he had outgrown within six months of putting on his first uniform. The kind of mistake that in his world could get both him and his men killed.

“Have you seen Miss Blackstock?” he asked Oscar, as the groomsman ordered one of the stable boys to deliver a pitchfork of hay to Cow.

“She rode off with Ian Maxwell some twenty minutes ago,” the groom returned. “Shall I fetch her fer ye, Yer Grace?”

“No. Have her see me when she returns.” So she hadn't intended to show him the whisky factory today, after all. If she'd been gone for twenty minutes, she'd left within two of his shutting the library door on her. That, at least, hadn't been a mistake. And it had been for her sake as much as his. He liked her, enjoyed her, but he didn't trust her. And while he couldn't stop himself from kissing her, he could remind himself that he wasn't the only man she'd kissed this week.