Seduced by a Highlander (25 page)

After supper, Isobel and her brothers retired to the sitting room and invited Tristan to come with them. They needed to discuss what he had done to Tamas and make certain that nothing like it occurred again while he remained here.

Isobel could tell, by the way Patrick avoided the issue for a solid hour, that he did not want to scold Tristan after what he had done for them. After all, Tamas was not seriously hurt. Still, something had to be said. Tristan had to understand that Tamas was just a babe.

When she told him so, her patience with Patrick at an end, she was stunned to find her brother on the opposite side of the camp.

“Tamas is not a babe anymore, Bel.”

“Patrick!” She gaped at him. “He is one and ten!”

“Old enough to know right from wrong.” Cameron captured Lachlan’s knight and met her gaze from across the room.

“I think he deserved thistles in his bed.” John smiled up at Tristan from the floor, where he lounged comfortably before the fire.

Isobel caught the covert wink Tristan threw him before her little brother turned to her. So then, they
were
in on this trick together. She never knew John to possess a vengeful streak. He had never fought back against Tamas. Though John was two years older, Tamas could outrun him, outwit him, and outfight him.

“And not just fer what he has done to Tristan,” he told
her now, speaking up against Tamas for the first time. “But fer what he has done to Lachlan and me.”

“John, darling, ye know yer brother loves ye.” She looked up at Tristan. “He is a bit wild, that is all. I am verra firm with him, but I will not take a stick to him as if he were a stubborn horse.”

“I would be quite disappointed if ye did,” Tristan agreed with her, then turned to Patrick. “May I speak openly?” When her brother nodded, he continued. “Tamas is young, but he’s headed toward a dangerous path. If he’s to grow into a fair and honorable man, he needs to learn humility. A wee taste of what he inflicts on others will teach him compassion.”

“Tamas is compassionate,” Isobel defended, but when she actually thought about it, she couldn’t remember a time when he had been.

“How many times have I had to stop the neighboring farmers from shooting him, Isobel?” Patrick asked her. “MacGregor is correct. Will we wait to discipline him until after he has caused permanent injury to John or Lachlan?”

“Of course not, but—”

“D’ye want to see him hanged someday fer killin’ someone?” Tristan’s voice overrode hers. “Mayhap be killed himself when he picks a fight with the wrong person?”

She stopped and closed her eyes at his words. Oh, just the thought of it…“No,” she said quietly. “But I…”

“Ye love him,” he finished for her, and smiled when she looked at him. “I know.”

Oh, it was a lethal weapon he possessed. That smile, always hovering about his mouth and brightening his eyes with confidence and optimism, as if he knew things
would always work in his favor. Was it mad that she found it so soothing despite who he was? Despite what he might do if he ever discovered who had truly killed his uncle? She had no guard against him. No matter how furious he made her or how much she feared him, his quicksilver grin relaxed her defenses. “What are ye proposing?”

“That ye trust me.”

Ah, here it was. His victory. Is this not what he had wanted from the beginning? Her friendship, so that he could win her trust?

“I’ve noe malice in my heart fer the lad,” he continued earnestly, the warm ocher hues of his eyes deepening to rich, smoky brown. “No’ even when he set hornets loose upon me did I want to cause him serious injury. He’s a boy in need of a firmer hand than yer good brother Patrick has time to provide at present.”

Isobel didn’t find it odd that her brother did not voice any objection. How could he, when Tristan had only spoken what they already knew was true, but found difficult to admit? Sweetening the truth with just a dash of honey to help it go down was all a part of his winning appeal. Isobel didn’t want to be won. She did not want to trust him and then fall victim to a cruel heart hidden by an enticing smile.
That
error would cost too much.

“Ye ask too much of me, Tristan. Of us,” she corrected, looking around at her brothers. “How can we trust a man we do not know?”

“We know he is resilient,” Lachlan interjected, smiling at Tristan and losing his bishop. “He proved that after two arrows, a rock, and a clay pot.”

“Clay pot?” Tristan asked, bringing his hand to the top of his head, as if he were just remembering.

“He is more patient than I would be if someone else’s
brother did half the things to me that Tamas has done to him,” Cam joined in, in a quiet tone, and then explained to Lachlan where his move had gone wrong.

“And lest we ferget,” Tristan told them all, as if they could ever forget such a thing, “I was raised high in the mountains with the Devil MacGregor fer my father. It has made my mettle sturdy enough to manage whatever Tamas throws at me.”

“Speaking of whatever Tamas throws at ye”—once again, it was Cameron who spoke, looking up briefly from beneath his shield of dark lashes—“one of us should collect his sling.”

Tristan grinned and then reached into a pocket in his breeches and held up Tamas’s prized weapon. “I already have it.”

Her brothers laughed, even Cam, and watching them made Isobel smile, too, despite the growing fear that Tristan MacGregor had done what he said he would do.

He had won her brothers. All except one.

The next few days proved to be as taxing for Isobel as they were for poor Tamas. Aye, her youngest brother was confined to a bed that had mysteriously become home to a family of field mice. It was true that his small feet were still too sore to run from the menagerie of terrors Tristan had rained down upon him. It tore her heart to shreds knowing the helpless babe suffered under their eldest brother’s approval, but the screaming and crashing of furniture above her head was seriously beginning to rile her.

At night, when Tristan dined with them after a day of torturing Tamas and training the rest of her brothers to fight, she slammed his food down in front of him and ate,
sharing with him neither a look nor a word. She didn’t like Tristan’s Highland tactics, whether they were good for Tamas or not. Tamas was her responsibility. All her brothers were, and she wasn’t ready to give that up, especially not to a MacGregor. She barely listened to him during the family’s nightly chats in the sitting room—with Tristan usually doing most of the talking.

Besides the Kennedys, they had few visitors from whom to hear tales they hadn’t already heard at least a dozen times before. It was only natural for the boys to be beguiled by this rogue’s adventures. He’d led a… frolicsome life. Aye, that was the best way to describe it. Finding himself in dangerous circumstances more times than Isobel cared to count while she sewed—and mostly due to women—he’d always escaped unscathed. That did not mean he hadn’t been shot with an arrow, stabbed with a dagger, and hit with a fist a time or two, but as the carefree timbre of Tristan’s voice attested while he captivated his audience, his good humor recovered quickly, at least until the next time he found himself staring down the end of someone’s sword.

“What did ye do as a boy?” John asked him one night while he warmed his feet beside the crackling hearth fire.

Isobel looked up from her cup of mead when soon the crackle was all she heard. They all waited for Tristan to answer, but he said nothing, his gaze fixed on a place they could not see.

“Did ye get into much trouble then, too?” John pressed, forcing Tristan back to them, his smile restored.

“Hardly any. I was more like ye than like Tamas. Besides, my mother wouldna’ tolerate us swingin’ punches the way many of my cousins do.”

“What did ye do then?” Patrick asked, putting more wood on the fire.

“I read books and practiced my—”

“Ye can read then?” John asked, wide-eyed. When Tristan nodded, he inched closer to him. “What kinds of books did ye read?”

Isobel watched Tristan shift in his chair, looking uncomfortable for the first time since he had taken his usual place by the fire. “Mostly books written by Monmouth, Chaucer, Sir Thomas Malory.”

John cast him a befuddled look. “What did they write about?”

“Knights,” Tristan said quietly. He lifted his glance to Isobel and let it linger long enough for her to miss his attention when he returned his warm smile to John. “They wrote about chivalric behavior, courtly love, quests fer honor.”

“Tell us one,” John pleaded, then yawned, sprawled out in his chair.

With only a hint of reluctance, he told them a story called “The Knight’s Tale,” as he remembered it—a tale of two champions who were the embodiment of the chivalric principles of their time. John laughed at the pretty words Tristan recited about the fair maiden Emelye, whose favor the two knights sought to win. Isobel listened, captivated by the passion in his voice, the gleam in his eyes when he spoke of honor. She wondered how he could hold such values so close to his heart as a child and still have grown to manhood breaking the hearts of so many women. What part of him was real?

“Off to bed with ye now, lads,” Patrick ordered gently an hour later, when Tristan’s tale was over. “ ’Tis late.”

“But just—”

“John,” Patrick said without looking up from his chess game with Cameron.

Immediately John and Lachlan picked up their boots and marched off to bed, kissing Isobel on their way out.

The sitting room grew as quiet as a town plagued by the death fever. Isobel could feel Tristan’s eyes on her. He was going to say something to her, and she would have to answer. She was still angry with him about Tamas, and she wanted to stay that way. It was safer for her heart. She couldn’t let herself fall for him when she’d hated his name for so long, when she didn’t know which of the two men he really was. The rogue or the hero.

“Iso—”

She vaulted to her feet, pricking her finger on her sewing needle. “I am going to bed also. Good night.”

“Allow me to escort ye to yer room, then,” Tristan had the boldness to say.

Isobel stopped, her back to him, her shoulders stiffening when he passed her and reached for the door. Oh, but he was a dauntless, determined fool. After a shocking moment passed without a single utterance from either of her brothers, she fisted her hands and stormed for the door.

“Ye know I do not wish to speak to ye,” she paused to fire at him the instant they were alone in the hall.

“Aye, ye’ve made that clear.”

“Not clear enough, it seems.” She hiked her skirts up over her ankles to stay ahead of him on her way to the stairs.

“Ye’re angry with me because of Tamas,” he said, keeping pace beside her.

“Why ever would I be? Oh, wait, mayhap it was the ants ye put in his bed, or the mice, or the spiders. Or I
could want to take out yer eye because of the whitewash ye smeared on yer face late at night so ye could frighten him witless when he opened his eyes, believing the angel of death stood at his bedside.”

“He thinks he is fearless.”

Isobel stopped to glare at him while he smiled at the recollection. “And ye are determined to prove to him that he is not. Ye said ye were different from yer kin, but all I see is a man taking revenge on a child.”

She hoped to see some guilt in his eyes, perhaps a glimmer of doubt about his tactics, but he remained untouched and coolly replied, “Then close yer eyes and allow me to save his life before ye have another Alex on yer hands.”

She spun on her heel, not wanting to hear his logic, and reached for the banister. His arm curling around her waist stopped her. His warm breath against her nape sapped her of her anger and sent titillating fissures to the pit of her belly. He had told her that he admired her will to hate him, but she did not hate him. When had she stopped? She wasn’t even truly angry with him about his treatment of Tamas. She knew now, locked in his arms, that she had stayed away from him because she was afraid of what he had the power to make her do… if she allowed it.

“When will ye begin to trust me, Isobel?”

“Never.”

He turned her in his arms, keeping her body pressed close to his. She arched her back, afraid of his closeness and how it made her want to cast her caution to the four winds. He followed, bending over her, his eyes searching hers with a desperation that tore her defenses to shreds and made her blood burn.

“Verra well then, but shun me nae more. I would rather hear ye revile me all day long than pretend I dinna’ exist.”

Dear God, was it her own heart or his thrashing against her chest? How could a savage speak so eloquently and with such humility? How could he mean her harm when he’d protected her from every threat beginning with Alex at Whitehall? He wasn’t like his kin. He couldn’t be.

When he lowered his face to hers, Isobel closed her eyes, giving in to the exhilarating memory of his kisses.

He traced his lips over the hollow of her throat, inhaling her as intimately as any lover had the right to do. She trembled in his arms as her defenses fell away and her mouth sought his with a desperate need of her own. With one hand splayed across the small of her back and the other cradling her nape, he licked his way up her throat. Was this her writhing in a MacGregor’s arms? She didn’t care. She cupped his face in her hands, tunneled her fingers through his hair, tugging him closer. Their lips collided with a mutual moan of delight. Isobel opened to his plunging tongue and surprised him with a lick of her own. She might doubt many things about him, but his skill at kissing was not one of them.