A Kiss for a Highlander (8 page)

“I do have one piece of interesting news which I hope you will impart to him. Word has filtered through to me of the Jacobite withdrawal. Skirmishes in Cumbria and the loss of Carlisle have marked their passage to Scotland. Yesterday, the prince crossed the border. It was a significant day in more ways than one. He will soon be five and twenty years of age. Will he live to see his twenty-sixth birthday, or to see English soil once more? Cumberland is determined that he will do neither.”

Martha was aware of the tension in Jack’s frame at this casual reference to his friend and hoped that Sir Clive could not sense it. It seemed he did not, and with a low bow to Rosie and a curt nod to Jack, he took his leave. Jack closed the door behind him with a decisive click.

“You did not tell me that you had such an eligible suitor, my sweet.” Martha felt a tug of pity for him as he tried to keep his voice light.

Rosie turned to show him a laughing face. “Indeed, Sir Clive
is
accounted something of a prize in these parts.”

He came over to her and held out his hands. She took them, and he pulled her to her feet, scanning her upturned face. “You can do better, Rosie.”

“Can I? I’m waiting for you to tell me how, Jack.”

Almost angrily he pulled her into his arms, pressing his cheek against the mass of her hair. Martha turned away, gazing out of the window as she blinked away a sudden rush of tears. “I cannot keep up this pretence any longer, but Rosie, I have no right to ask you to wait for me.” Jack’s words were a groan.

“You have that right if I give it to you,” Rosie said softly, a note of sadness entering her voice.

“One day I will remind you of those words. But for now—”

Martha turned back in time to see his serious expression change to one of mischief. She was about to interrupt their embrace when, quick as a flash, Jack slipped his hand into Rosie’s bodice and removed the stolen chess piece.

“Why do you try so hard to make yourself invisible?”

“I beg your pardon?” Coming, as it did, so soon after the emotionally charged scene she had witnessed between Jack and Rosie, Fraser’s question threw Martha off balance.

“You know fine well what I mean.” He was helping her to clear the table, and he now turned to face her, standing a fraction too close for comfort. “You wear these to hide the fact that you’ve got beautiful eyes.” He reached out a hand and very gently removed her glasses. “And you pin your hair so tightly to disguise the fact that you’ve got soft, pretty curls.” Heart pounding, she remained frozen as he reached behind her head and pulled out some of the pins that held her hair in place. When he tangled his hands in those very curls and began to draw her toward him, however, she speedily unfroze and started to back away.

“Don’t do that. And give me back my glasses.” She extended her hand, palm upward. Bravely, she withstood the heat of his gaze. He licked his lips. She wished he wouldn’t do that. It made her imagine how it would feel if he licked
her
lips. And that was a most unseemly way for a demure, unmarried,
invisible
lady to think.

“What if I won’t?”

“Then I won’t be able to see,” she said in what she hoped was her usual prosaic manner.

“Tell me about the reivers.”

“I can’t.” Martha hung her head.

“I hear you crying every night.” His voice was husky.

“Have you ever thought I might be crying because I have a Scotsman in my house?” She gave a shaky laugh then, when his expression didn’t change, she followed it with a sigh of resignation. He was waiting for her to speak and, surprisingly, she found herself wanting to tell him about it. It was a story she never expected to recount, and it took a moment for her to find the right words. Drawing a breath, and faltering slightly, she began. “They came in the early morning. Although he was a tenant, my father was a wealthy farmer and that meant we were always in danger. The men who worked on the farm also guarded us. On this particular day, one of the farm cats had given birth in the barn and then gone missing. I’d taken a basket to gather up the kittens and bring them up to the house. When I emerged from the barn, the sky was black and orange over the house. I knew immediately what it was. It meant that my family were all dead and our home was ablaze. One of the new men my father had taken on recently was with the reivers. He noticed me and grabbed me. He threw me down on the ground and tried to—” Her voice had been carefully neutral until then, but she gagged on the word.

“To rape you.” Fraser said it for her.

“Yes. But I had a knife. The borders are a wild place to grow up, and my father insisted that we all knew how to defend ourselves. I only had one chance, but I made it a good one. That reiver was never going to rape anyone again by the time I’d finished with him. The townspeople were on their way by then. They’d been alerted by the flames, and I could hear their shouts as they approached. But the other reivers wanted their revenge for what I’d done. The one I’d cut was their leader’s son, you see. Strangely, none of them wanted to try the same thing he had.” Her smile was lopsided, and her hand crept up to her shoulder as though feeling the scars through the cloth of her gown. “You know the rest.”

“You were lucky to survive,” Fraser said gently.

She looked up at him then. She felt the smile that was not a smile still trembling on her lips. “Is that what you call it? Lucky? You asked me why I make myself invisible. I do it to ensure I never have to see the look of disgust in the eyes of another. Those reivers didn’t kill me, but when they scorched my flesh so that it looks like rough cloth or crumpled, discarded parchment, they killed any chance I might have of a normal life.”

Wordlessly, Fraser handed back her spectacles, and she quickly slipped them on. They finished their chores in silence.

“I didn’t know I cried in my sleep,” Martha said eventually, keeping her head bent over the dishes she was stacking.

“Aye, ’tis woeful hard on the heart to hear it.” He started to go out of the room, but turned around again, his big frame filling the doorway. “Oh, and, crabbit one?”

“Yes?” Her voice was wary. She blinked at him, aware that her pupils were magnified even further by the thick lenses.

“You don’t see disgust in my eyes.” His smile was warm on her face and, nervously, she lowered her head again.

Chapter Eight

Christmas came and went, and Jack’s health continued to improve steadily. The festive season provided everyone with a momentary relief from their fears about what might happen if the king’s men arrived before he was well enough to set out for the border. Christmas was always a vibrant affair at Delacourt Grange, and Tom carried armfuls of greenery into the house for Rosie and Harry to use as decoration. Mrs. Glover tolerated the boughs of evergreens which invaded her precious rooms, but she drew the line at mistletoe, which—with its risqué connotations and implied encouragement of kissing games—she considered ungenteel, if not downright unholy. She fought a constant battle, in between cooking a feast fit for a small army, against its introduction by the maidservants and footmen.

On Christmas day a yule log was lit in the fireplace. The family and staff indulged in a day of celebration, gift giving and frivolity. Mr. Delacourt, generally the most abstemious of hosts, made a bowl of punch which caused Fraser, when called upon to sample a cup, to choke at its fiery effects. Harry laughed as Jack, also required to sample the brew, mopped his streaming eyes but diplomatically pronounced it very fine. Tom joined the family for dinner being, as Rosie pointed out, more a family friend than an employee. Rosie wore a gown of ruby damask silk over an underskirt of embroidered lace, and Martha donned a new dress in a deep sapphire hue trimmed with silver ribbon.

“You look vastly pretty today, Martha,” Rosie told her.

“Nonsense,” Martha said, with a look of considerable surprise at her reflection in the mirror. “I couldn’t look pretty if I tried.”

“But you do,” Rosie insisted. “I don’t know what it is—mayhap ’tis that colour suits you—but there is a bloom about you I’ve not seen before. You look very well indeed.”

The gentlemen, when they joined them, were clad in full-skirted coats and knee breeches. Jack had borrowed his garments from Mr. Delacourt, while Fraser was rather less fine in Tom’s second-best suit. That evening, Rosie played the harpsichord and they sang traditional songs. Fraser and Jack, both possessed of fine baritone voices, taught them a few Scottish ballads which they had learned as children. There was much amusement when Fraser tried to get Martha to sing. He raised his brows at Harry, who seemed to find the suggestion particularly amusing.

“Cousin Martha couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.” Harry had all the diplomacy of his twelve years.

“It’s true,” Martha said, when Fraser began to reproach the lad. “I am tone deaf.”

“I like it not when you talk ill of yourself or allow others to do so,” he told her under his breath.

Martha looked up at him, surprised to see a fiercely protective light in his eyes. “But indeed, it would be foolish of me to pretend I can sing when I cannot.”

“You know very well that’s not what I mean.”

Tom, with a skill no-one had ever suspected he possessed, took Rosie’s place and played a few country dances on his fiddle. Jack held out his hand to Rosie who, blushing slightly, allowed him to lead her around the room while Mr. Delacourt looked in approbation from a punch-induced haze. Rosie’s cheeks were becomingly pink, her eyes shining and lips parted.

“Will ye dance with me, lass?” Fraser turned to Martha.

“Oh, no, I don’t dance.” She shook her head determinedly.

He quirked an eyebrow at her but did not persist. Which was what she wanted, after all. So why did she feel so disappointed?

Later, Tom returned to his own quarters above the stables, and Mr. Delacourt, drowsy from the effects of overindulgence, followed Harry upstairs to bed. It was with some consternation that Martha noticed Rosie slip out of the room and Jack follow her.

“Dance with me now.” Fraser held out his hand to her.

“I must go after Rosie…”

“She will be safe with Lord Jack. You need not fear for her while she is with him. He is an honourable man. Dance with me.”

“We have no music,” she said, searching wildly for another excuse.

“We don’t need it,” he replied, drawing her close.

This was a very different dance to the light country dances in which Jack and Rosie had indulged. Fraser demanded eye contact throughout. Martha’s high colour and deeper breathing owed nothing to the physical activity and everything to his nearness. As he drew her tantalisingly close and then whirled her away as the convention of the dance dictated, she wanted to cry out with longing. She finally understood what Mrs. Glover meant when she said that dancing was the devil’s way of getting a maiden to misbehave. For the first time in her life, Martha actually
wanted
to misbehave. Desperate to ensure Fraser couldn’t sense her emotions, she arched her back, straining her body away from him.

“Stop it,” he said, with a frown, placing his hand in the small of her back and drawing her into deeper contact with his body. “This dance is meant to bring us together. And, yes—” a wicked smile lit the depths of his eyes, “—you are not mistaken. You
can
feel how hard I am. It means I am enjoying dancing with you, Martha Wantage.”

He danced her out into the hall and paused under the chandelier. Martha, still recovering from the shock of his last words, threw him an enquiring glance, and he pointed up to where a solitary sprig of mistletoe nestled amid the greenery above their heads.

“How on earth did you manage to smuggle that past Mrs. Glover?”

“She knows all about it,” Fraser informed her with a hint of smugness. “I have her blessing.”

The blaze of passion as she looked up into his eyes was so unexpected that, for a second, she wondered if her knees would hold her. She no longer had time to wonder anything. Fraser slid one hand around her waist and the other to the back of her neck. This close, his hazel eyes were mesmerizing, and she wasn’t sure if it was his heart or her own that thundered in her ears. She gripped the ruffles at the front of Fraser’s shirt tightly.

His breath stroked her cheek. “I have you, lass. I won’t let you fall.”

He kissed her. Momentarily, his lips were unexpectedly soft. Then his mouth was hard and demanding against hers, and his tongue swept inside, caressing and exploring her mouth. Martha rose onto the tips of her toes. Following her instincts, she pressed her body closer to Fraser’s. Her eyes widened as she felt the contrasting hardness of his body against the soft curves of her own. There was a primeval rightness about the feeling. It seemed natural to try to cleave ever nearer to him, as though parts of their bodies were actually made to fit together. Gradually she began to enjoy the new sensations, surrendering herself to them until they became quite intoxicating. A corresponding fizz of pleasure entered her bloodstream, and her whole body started to tingle.

So this was why people liked kissing! It was something she’d occasionally wondered about, almost as a disinterested bystander. After all, she had never, until now, imagined it would happen to her. She had been quite unable to imagine why there would be anything appealing about having another person’s mouth on her own. The thought of allowing another person to put his tongue inside her mouth had been something she found quite alarming. Now, shyly, Martha used her own tongue to explore Fraser’s mouth in return. He tasted of the wine they had drunk and of spices. He tasted delicious. Instantly, he tangled his hand in her hair, turning her head to the angle he wanted, deepening the kiss to bittersweet intensity. The tingling in her body increased and seemed to become more concentrated at a specific, exhilarating point. Here she was—Miss Martha Wantage, spinster of this parish—standing beneath the mistletoe, in the arms of a man she had known less than a month, with her tongue in his mouth and a wanton pulse beating between her legs. The mistletoe was certainly unleashing its mischief on this maiden’s behaviour.

That was when her knees did give way. But Fraser was true to his word and he didn’t let her fall.

The new year, 1746, arrived, and the unspoken knowledge that Jack and Fraser must soon leave hung heavy over them all. Tom joked that it wasn’t just Miss Rosie who had fallen in love. Their Jacobite guests had cast a spell over the whole household.

“That’s true,” Harry agreed. “Even Martha seems happier these days.”

Sometimes she thought she must have imagined that kiss on Christmas night. Fraser never referred to it, and the odd half-comfortable, half-wary lifestyle they had developed continued as before. But once or twice, when he thought she was unaware of his gaze, she caught him looking at her. And, because light in his eyes was the same one she had seen just as his lips descended on hers, she knew he was remembering too. The knowledge made her shiver.

Why me?
She longed to ask him that question. If she listened to Mrs. Glover, she would believe it was because all men were devils who were unable to control their base desires. Was that it? She knew that Fraser had joined the prince when he first landed in Scotland back in July. Was Fraser simply missing a woman’s touch so much that the nearest one—no matter how unattractive—would do? That was unfair. Fraser wasn’t the barbarian she had first thought him. And it wasn’t just her raging emotions that told her that. After her initial mistake about his literacy, she had learned that he was an intelligent, cultured man who patiently continued to help Harry with his Latin studies. He could also converse with Cousin Henry on equal terms about English and Scots history and offer an argument as reasoned as any of Jack’s in support of the Jacobite cause.

There were other times when Martha felt him regarding her with a very different expression. An oblique, brooding, almost sullen look would cross his face. At those times, she could swear he dwelt on the old divisions and hatreds between them. It crossed her mind now and then that he might still be seeking revenge for that kiss in the cellar. The kiss of hate. She knew that, by her action, she had cut him to the very core of his being.

If wishes could undo that foolish, impulsive kiss, it would never have been. But, sadly, no amount of regrets from Martha could turn back the clock. Was Fraser drawing her into a web of attraction so strong so that she would betray her feelings for him, only to have him laugh in her face? She recalled how he too had trembled as their lips met when they stood under the mistletoe. If vengeance was his motive, he was a very good actor. Hard on the heels of that thought came another, more shocking one. If all he wanted her for was retribution, did she care? Whatever was happening here in this quiet, unremarkable corner of Derbyshire, it was something that shy, frightened Martha Wantage had never thought to experience. Fraser would be gone soon. This few weeks of madness was something she wouldn’t have missed for all the world.

The six soldiers approached Delacourt Grange from across the fields so that their arrival was not seen by anyone in the house. Fortunately, Joseph the groom, who was feeding the horses, spied the splash of colour of their red coats against the winter landscape. He was able to warn the household, and Jack had time to hide himself away in the attic. Martha was with Mr. Delacourt when he received Captain Overton in his study. He offered the youthful soldier wine and enquired courteously about the reason for the visit. The young man was patently embarrassed at his errand.

Captain Overton bowed low. “Your pardon, sir. We have been given information that a dangerous fugitive, a Jacobite lord, no less, has taken refuge in your home.”

“Dear me,” Mr. Delacourt remarked in his mild way. “Have you seen this person, Martha? Where do you suppose he could be hiding?” He looked around the room distractedly, as though expecting to see the rebel lurking behind the bookcase or under the desk.

The captain, obviously feeling that he had been sent on a fool’s errand, cleared his throat. “I would like to speak to a man named Jack who, I believe, has been staying with you recently?”

“Ah, you are referring to a kinsman of mine, Jack Brown, who was travelling in the area when he became unwell. He spent a few weeks here recovering from his malaise. Sadly, you have missed him. He left yesterday and has now resumed his travels.” Mr. Delacourt frowned in confusion, and Martha had to admire his acting skills. “Do you think he might know the whereabouts of the fugitive you seek?”

Captain Overton sighed and sipped his wine. “Our information was that this man was not a relative of yours. That he was, in fact, the high-ranking Jacobite we seek. The one who was injured in the skirmish at Swarkestone Bridge.”

“Not a relative of mine? Why, I have known Jack Brown since he was in his cradle.” Mr. Delacourt’s feigned confusion deepened. “I had thought that the prince turned back before the king’s troops arrived at the bridge?”

“That is correct, sir, but there was some fierce fighting at Swarkestone. Apparently one of the advance guard of rebels sent by the prince to hold the bridge was injured with a shot to the shoulder. Quite an important member of the Jacobite forces and a friend of the prince himself, no less. We have reason to believe the injured man is none other than Lord St. Anton.” He watched Mr. Delacourt carefully to see how this impressive piece of information was received.

“So this man is not only high ranking, he is in possession of abnormal powers as well?” Mr. Delacourt appeared mildly amused at the thought. “To have sustained a mortal injury, but to have escaped from your men, then travelled thus far and persuaded complete strangers to hide him would imply something other than mere humanity. Would you not agree, Martha dear?”

“It would certainly seem so, Cousin Henry.”

Their words appeared to echo Captain Overton’s own thoughts on the matter. The captain was a meticulous young man, however, and it was clear that he wanted to be able to assure his superiors that he had done a thorough job. He rose and bowed to both Mr. Delacourt and Martha, thanking them for their time.

“We will be checking the surrounding area, including your stables, barns and farmland, before we leave the area, sir.”

Assuring himself that the soldiers had indeed left the house, Mr. Delacourt set about finding out where his son was. He had a nasty vision of Harry trying to help his new friend Fraser’s cause by attempting to rout the soldiers with his wooden sword. Martha wasted no time in dashing down to the old dower house to check that Tom had made sure Fraser was safely hidden away.