Lost in Your Arms (17 page)

Men.

What was she doing here? Last night—no, the night before—they had made love as passionately as ever two lovers had. She’d marveled at his strength, been astonished by his skill, learned his body as if she’d never learned it before.

Because she had never had him before. Because now, after eight years alone and innumerable offers from too many dissolute men, she had unwittingly become a wanton. They could never go back to the way it had been before: nurse and patient, abandoned wife and estranged husband. So she had made the resolution to be serene, strong, able to withstand the storm she saw hovering on the horizon.

The trouble was, she kept thinking that somehow she could avoid the storm.

If he never remembered, she could forever let him think they were married.

But his family knew the truth and would tell him.

But if not for his family, she could live a lie.

Although, why? She didn’t love him.

But she had . . . feelings . . . for him, and she knew that when he discovered the truth, he would rage at her, or worse, stare at her with those green eyes as cold as ice.

But she wasn’t a coward. It was his mind she worried about. His brain had had shocks enough, and she feared the consequences of such a blunt and dreadful truth . . .

She
was
a coward, and with low moral character to boot, for she still wanted him. Perhaps if she just gave a hint of the truth, that hint would be the trigger that returned all his memories. Yes, perhaps just a hint . . .

Just . . . she had to remain tranquil. No more repartee, no more teasing.

He jumped off the rocks and landed at her feet. “There’s no one on the glen on either side. As long as the thugs don’t have dogs, we’ve lost them. Stand up.”

“What? Why?”

“You’re sitting on the cold ground. Let’s put a blanket under you so you don’t get a chill.”

She wanted to protest, to say it wasn’t worth the pain of rising, but he had that look on his face. The
I know what’s good for you
look. So wearily she climbed to her feet, allowed him to spread out a blanket, tumbled back down. “How many miles did we come?”

“Twelve, at least. We’re not far from the tracks now.”

“What?”

“We walked in a circle, backtracked a bit to throw them off the scent.” He flung himself flat on his back right at her feet. “Lass, will you feed us some breakfast?”

“Of course.” Pulling the stone-filled sack to her
side, she dug out the bread and cheese. “The man does the scouting, the woman does the real work.” Tranquility would have to wait for another day. A day less fraught with danger.

He rolled onto his side, propped his head up with his hand. “Scouting’s hard work. It takes years of training and expertise. Don’t forget, I’ve been leading the way, too, forging a path through the dark and the cold.”

Last night, for all his circling and backtracking, he had led the way so surely that he might have been able to see through the dungeonlike darkness. She could make out nothing, each step had been an adventure, and she had had to trust him not to walk her into a tree or drop her down a gully.

And she
had
trusted him. She had been impressed with his exploits. Now he made light of them. “I would trade places with you in a minute,” she said.

He reached for the sack. “All right.”

She hung onto the strap and glared at him.

Somehow, the balance between them had changed. She had moved into his territory, the land of hunter and hunted. She could never survive here, but MacLean had donned command like armor, and where before his life had been hers to save, now her life depended on him.

“I would lead,” she said, “but not with the way my legs ache.”

He grinned and relinquished his hold, and didn’t point out she didn’t have the foggiest idea which direction to choose.

“Besides, back at Blythe Hall you deceived me about your walking—”

He lifted his eyebrows, but didn’t deny it, the louse.

“—But I presume you’re tired now.”

“I am,” he admitted simply.

“I ought to give you the littlest piece of bread as punishment—when I think about the anguish I suffered over you taking your first step!—but I’ve cared for your body too long to jeopardize my work.” She tore off a chunk of bread, placed it on a napkin and pushed it toward him.

“You did care for my body, most assiduously. I thank you.” He smiled at her so salaciously she knew he didn’t refer to her skill at nursing.

Finding the knife, she pulled it free of its sheath. She fingered the sharp edge and smiled in return. If she could have contained her blush, it would have been the perfect threat.

“Give me that, lass, before you’re tempted to use it incorrectly.” Sitting up, he took it and the cheese.

He handled the knife skillfully, she admitted, for the slices he placed on her bread were thin and even, just the way she liked them. And because she was compelled to worry about every little thing, she worried that he’d been watching her eat and remembering her preferences. A thoughtful man would do that for his wife.

Oh, heaven save her from thoughtful men! She took her first bites of the nutty bread and tart cheese, and hastily asked, “Who’s tracking us?”

“I can’t remember, lass, but from all appearances I’d have to say they’re people who want me dead.”

Rooting about in the bag, she found dried fruit. Not just apples, but more exotic fruits. Holding them up, she said, “Look. This is wonderful!”

“Your friend Celeste had her hand in this, I see.” He
smiled at her uninhibited bliss. “When men pack, there’s nothing so fine.”

“Dear Celeste.” She bit into an apricot and sagged in enjoyment of the tart, sweet flavor.

Snagging her hand, he brought it to his mouth and took the other half of the fruit in his teeth.

He fed her. She fed him. Much too primitive. Much too seductive. And the way he was looking at her, as if he planned to lean over and kiss her . . . those deep, fabulous kisses which led to sin and sorrow. She tried to snatch her hand back. He came along. He pressed her against the boulder, hand on her shoulder, and swooped in to catch her lips with his.

The kiss was everything she feared. Blatant enticement. He didn’t force her compliance. The rat. He swept her lips with his, sweet, quick, smooth passes that made her quiver with the need to seize his hair and hold him for her kiss. The contact warmed her, made her heart hurry and her color rise. He smelled so good, like security, like husband, like love . . .

With her hand on his chest, she shoved him away and took a quivering breath. “See, this is just the type of trouble I feared.”

“Trouble?” He cocked an eyebrow. “You call that trouble?”

“It could be, if we got carried away and the knaves chasing us found us
in flagrante delicto
—”

He chuckled. “With our trousers down and our skirts up, so to say.”

“You ought to go on without me.”

“Don’t want to hang about with a man being pursued?” He sounded laconic and not at all worried.

“That’s not it at all, as you very well know. I’m holding you back. You move more quickly, more quietly than I do, you blend into the countryside, you sound like a native—”

Reaching into the sack at her side, he brought out a slice of dried apple and tranquilly examined it. “I
am
a native.”

“You could get home twice as quickly without me.”

He didn’t say anything for a very long moment, then he sighed. “Ah, the things you think of me.”

“The things I . . . what do you mean?”

He looked up, and she changed her mind about his composure. His eyes glinted, his chin jutted; he was furious. “That I am the kind of man who would abandon his wife to cold and hunger in the middle of the Scottish wilds to save his own hide. That I would go without you to my home, never knowing if you lived or died.” He held up his hand to stop her from speaking. “Maybe I was that kind of man before. I don’t remember.”

Distressed, she said, “No, not you!”

“But I know I’ll not do it now, and you can just put it out of your mind.”

“But what if I—” She swallowed.

“What if you what?”

In a rush, she asked, “What if I told you I wasn’t your wife?”

His fury didn’t roar. It arrived in a menacing whisper. “Then I’d say that two nights ago you did a damned good imitation of a wife.” He took a breath. “We’ve got a long way to go. There’s no use you attempting such tricks.”

She couldn’t believe it. She had taken courage in
hand and confessed the great deception—and he hadn’t believed her!

“You are my beloved wife, and if they captured you, they would torture you until I gave myself up.”

She hadn’t thought of that, or that they—whoever
they
were—would believe her tale as little as MacLean did. “Would you give yourself up for me?” She blinked. Where had that come from?

“What do you think, lass?”

He stared into her eyes, and she caught her breath. Stephen MacLean would have given her up and never thought about it again. Kiernan MacLean would not only give himself up for the woman he perceived as his wife but he would fight for her—and die for her, too.

The differences between them were so great that she didn’t understand how she could have ever been fooled.

Her stomach clenched as she realized how great an honor it would be to be Kiernan MacLean’s wife, and she barely fought off the temptation to claim to be his. But if he had honor, she did, too. “As deeply as I feel about the tribute you bestow on me, I must insist—”

He slashed the air with his hand. “That’s enough. How are your shoes?”

He had become someone she didn’t recognize—a warrior determined to protect her and defend them. She didn’t know how to convince him of the truth.

She didn’t want to convince him.

She would convince him later. Surely in these circumstances cowardice was understandable. “They’re . . . fine.”

“No blisters on your heels? The boots don’t leak?”

“They’re comfortable. MacLean—”

“Good, then. We’ll go on until midday, or until we find a likely shelter. We’ll travel morning and evening at first, then when I’m sure we’ve lost them, we’ll travel all day.” Taking her hands, he stared earnestly into her eyes. “Trust me, Enid. Together, we’ll find our way home.”

Chapter 18

“Down you go, lass.” MacLean grasped Enid about the waist, lifted her off the cart, and noted that her ribs were sticking out. In the twelve days they’d been on the road, Enid had lost too much weight, although she was still a fine-looking woman. So fine-looking, with her admirable bosom and her delicate features, that he had found it difficult to behave with any kind of discipline.

He shouldered one supply sack, handed Enid hers, and saw the farmer off with a wave of the hand and his thanks.

MacLean wanted to hold Enid in his arms and hear her moan as she had in the cottage in Suffolk. He wanted to teach her new pleasures and kiss her until they were both breathless and straining for fulfillment. He wanted all those things, and he had to content himself with holding her in his arms as they slept.

As soon as they got to his home, matters were going to change. Sooner, if he could manage it.

Taking her arm, he asked, “Shall we travel on?”

Enid looked around at this uninhabited corner of the Highlands: bleak escarpments, hills covered with gorse and heather, stands of pine forest and two narrow ruts for a road. “It’s only noon,” she said. “After such a comfortable jaunt”—she gazed pointedly after the rough-riding cart—“we should be able to go until midnight.”

“Good idea. I’m glad you thought of it.” But for all her sarcasm, he worried about her. Her complaints didn’t have the edge he’d grown used to; she was flagging. That explained why, four days ago, he’d gone out of the wilderness and to the road.

Of course, most of what Highlanders called civilization probably looked almighty raw to a woman raised in England. A few huts huddled together on the shore of a loch constituted a town, and farms were few and far between. The first day they’d paid a young buck to ride on the footman’s perch of his used English-style carriage, and gone many a mile before nightfall. The next day they’d crawled in a wagon of hay and slept most of the day. Last night they’d stumbled on a croft, a farm with a tiny garden, poor fields and a miserable hut. MacLean had bartered with the crofter to stay in their barn, and with the crofter’s wife for two plates of thick shepherd’s pie and two tankards of ale. Enid had eaten as if she’d never had such fine fare, and she had slept the sleep of the dead with a roof over her head. And today they had caught a ride with the crofter as he drove to market.

But they were nearing the west coast and the sea; MacLean caught the scent in the air and the change in the wind. More than that, he had spotted a likely track,
far off the road and to the left. A sheep path, like most of the paths they’d traveled, but unlike other paths they’d traveled he vaguely recognized it. It, and the hill it ascended. And he thought . . . he suspected it would take them where he wanted to go.

Would he recognize what was on the other side?

He stepped off the road and into a grove of trees.

Enid didn’t step with him.

Looking back at her, he said, “So let’s go, then.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a hound!”

He caught his breath. She was about to throw a feminine tizzy.

In a desperate tone, she asked, “Let’s stay somewhere with a fire and a bath. You haven’t seen anybody suspicious for days now.”

Coming back to her, he took her hand and looked into her large blue eyes with their fringe of sooty lashes. “No, I haven’t seen anyone suspicious. I’m convinced we’ve lost whoever was following us. But I don’t trust anyone from Suffolk, and I don’t trust anyone I don’t know, because mayhap they know me and are out for my blood. One night at an inn might kill us, for sure.”

She was not in the mood to be reasonable. Her bottom lip stuck out, and it trembled.

Leading her into the trees, he asked reasonably, “How would we pay for it?”

“With the funds you brought.”

Distracted by the growing sense of familiarity, he told her, “The funds are growing low, and they’re for an emergency.”

“I
stink.
How’s that for an emergency?”

“I can’t smell you,” he assured her as they cleared
the trees. With one glance around to see that they were unobserved, he hurried her across the fields.

“That’s because you stink, too.” She sounded stiff and surly.

He examined her with the care of a lady’s maid. Mud stiffened the hem of her cape up past her knees. Her sojourn under an overturned wagon had permanently warped her bonnet. She washed her face every morning, but invariably when they stopped she would collapse right where they stood, so dirt perpetually streaked her complexion. Her blue eyes were bright, her color good, she’d grown strong and even more beautiful with the exercise, but she’d come to think the trip would never end.

Such an attitude could lead to a careless disregard for her own safety. He couldn’t have that.

As they struck the trail, she sighed dramatically and pointed behind her. “The inns are back that way.”

He glanced around. He did know this place. He didn’t know why, but he recognized the rocky outcrops, the steep incline at the top, the way the wind slapped their faces when they came over the top, the slow drop on the other side . . . and the way the path twisted and turned as it ascended yet another hill.

If he was right . . . if he remembered correctly . . . he could find her a bath. A bath and a soft bed and a willing husband, although she didn’t wish for the last item. “I’ll take you somewhere better than an inn,” he said.

Although she trusted him to guide her, she didn’t trust him with her love. She hadn’t said so, but he couldn’t forget that madness she had spouted the first
day on the road—
I’m not your wife.
She could wish all she wanted, but saying the words would not make it so, and he intended to illustrate to her exactly how married they were. At first opportunity, he would turn his whole attention to Enid. He would make an opportunity, and he would by God discover why she pulled back from him when he asked about their past, why she had the look of a trapped rabbit when he discussed their future.

He moved swiftly along, on the watch as always, but also playing games with himself as he walked. Just over this ridge, he would see a waterfall off to his left. A weathered stone fence ran along the path up to the tree line. The green leafy branches of an orchard swayed in the glen below.

He was correct every time. They were getting close. He knew it in his bones. Soon he would be among his own family, and when that happened . . . oh, when that happened, he would be a whole man again, with memories and a mother and a sister . . . he would know his enemies, and he would exorcise them.

“There.” Standing below the ridgeline, he pointed. “Can you see that?”

She shoved the brim of her bonnet away from her face. “There’s a hollow.”

“It’s better than it looks.”

She was so weary she didn’t ask him how he knew.

A good thing, for he didn’t know how he knew. He slid down the path just ahead of her, helping her with his hand beneath her elbow.

They swerved onto another, smaller track, nothing more than a rapidly descending impression in the grass. They threaded their way through a stack of boulders
higher than his head, and abruptly they were there, in a little sun-warmed hollow surrounded by mountains.

He could almost remember running down here as a boy and visiting . . . someone. Someone old.

But he couldn’t see her face . . .

Her
face. It was a woman. She lived here alone in her little hut with a cow and a few chickens. She had a small orchard, protected from the worst of winter’s blasts by towering granite boulders, where she grew plums and apples, and a garden where she grew vegetables. Ah, the most delectable spinach he’d ever eaten.

She was gone, whoever she was, and the animals had gone with her. All was neglected now. The stone house looked bereft, its shutters closed tight, the door latched from the outside, and no smoke coming from the chimney. Yet he experienced a sense that here he was safe.

He
was
remembering.

He almost dreaded to hear what Enid would say about the place; after all, she had lived with a lady in London, and with him at Blythe Hall, and the cottage at Blythe Hall was ten times the size of this shack.

But Enid gave a sigh of pleasure. “It’s exquisite.”

“Your standards have slipped.”

“No, it really is a little piece of perfection. It’s just . . . it’s nice.” She lifted her face to the sun. “It smells like apples, and it’s warm here. I can hear the wind blowing over the top, but here we’re protected.”

As he gazed at her, he realized how very much their circumstances had changed. Enid was delicate and unused to physical challenges, yet she displayed as much
pluck as any Scotswoman. She climbed hills and complained, slid down muddy paths and complained, hid in a hollow for two hours and uttered not a single word.

He could depend on her. More than that, he adored her.

“Why are you looking at me that way?” She dabbed at her face in obscure feminine alarm. “I’ve tanned, haven’t I?”

He chuckled. “A few freckles, and charming they are. Come and look at the best.”

Leading Enid along a short path that wove between slabs of stone, he followed the sound of trickling water and found a man-made basin, just big enough to wash dishes in. A bit of a stream dribbled off a rock into the clear, shallow, sandy pool, and another dribbled out and down to be lost around the bend. A sense of pride swelled in him as if this place was his, and a secret not to be shared with any but his heart of hearts.

“Oh, it’s beautiful! It’s clean! I could take a—”

“—Bath.” He untied her bonnet, loosened her cloak.

She hugged her collar close as if she feared his intentions.

As she should. He’d said it before; women were much more impressed with cleanliness than men. He wouldn’t have cared if they waited until they got to Mull to bathe, but she did. “It’s warm now, but the mountains will obscure the light long before sunset in the rest of the land, so I had better dust out the cottage and start a fire. If you want a bath, you’d best move swiftly.”

Still she stared at him.

“If you don’t care, you can help me clean the hut.”

She tossed the cloak aside, sat down on a rock and pulled off her mud-caked boots. She might be modest, but above all she was practical.

Whistling, he went to the hut and opened the door to the dark little hovel. He heard the skittering of mice, smelled the mustiness of long disuse, and the faint, lingering scent of a cow once in residence. Going to the windows, he opened the shutters and let the light and air in.

Wood was stacked by the fireplace. A shiny bucket rested beside the door. The bed was strung with ropes and covered in canvas, and at the foot blankets were wrapped in a linen envelope to keep off the dust.

He glanced about. The hut must be on some great man’s land for it to be so well maintained.

Was this MacLean land? Did the laird of the MacLeans demand this place be maintained for the lonely wayfarer who wandered the hills? Justice, then, that he should find shelter here on his trek to the familial home.

MacLean took off his greatcoat and his jacket, and rolled up his sleeves. Taking the broom, he brushed the cobwebs out of the corners, then carefully swept the dirt floor. With a dry rag, he wiped off the table and the bench. He made up the fire, ready to be lit. Taking the blankets outside, he shook them hard, then carried them back and placed them on the bed. He picked up the bucket, but paused to look back at the place.

Everything was just as he remembered it. Clean. Dry. Cozy.

His.

He closed his eyes, and he saw her. The old woman with the dried apple face and the dark brown mole on her chin. “Coom anytime, lad. Th’ place is yers.”

Memories were claiming him.

He walked back to the stream without stealth, giving Enid a chance to scramble behind a boulder if she wished to—and, more’s the shame, he supposed she would wish to.

But when he came around the corner, he stopped short. There she sat, cross-legged in the pool, eyes closed, wearing an expression of bliss—and absolutely nothing else. Her arms were graceful, her nipples softly blooming. She looked as fresh as a blushing rosebud. The clear water came to her waist, and between her strong, muscled legs, she was pink and glorious in her openness.

He must have made a stifled sound, for her eyes sprang open.

She had drifted off; he could see it in the sleepy droop of her eyelids, in the way she scrambled to comprehend the circumstances.

He didn’t care. He dropped the bucket and started toward her.

She rose to her feet like Aphrodite rising from the waves.

Springing at her, he caught her around the waist as she turned to run.

“No!” she shouted. “We can’t. I’m not . . . I’m not . . .”

“I don’t give a damn what you think. You’re mine.” Lifting her out of the water, he carried her to a low slab of sun-warmed rock. Gently he tumbled her down on
her back, her hips at the edge, her feet dangling off. The perfect position.

With one knee between her legs, he struggled with his fly.

“You planned this!” She tried to roll away.