Upon that thought, she heard a rapping and lifted her head from her sewing. “What was that?”
“A flapping board in the loft,” Aggie answered, turning from the window at last. “Did I not say I heard it the other night? Either that, or a ghost.” Aggie paused, eyes wide. “You do not suppose the ghost of your husband would come here?”
Jeannie almost snorted in derision, but could not quite. Something about life in this place of mist and lamenting skies encouraged a belief in the mystical.
As if to prove her words, she heard the knocking again.
“That is someone at the door.” She laid her sewing aside, got up, and hurried across the combined kitchen and sitting room to the door. Rowan Cottage, though comfortable enough, felt small as a doll’s house after her father’s quarters in Dumfries. Confined inside, she and Aggie tended to bounce off each other and chaff unbearably. She could scarcely imagine how they would survive winter—given Finnan MacAllister let them stay that long.
She swung the door wide and lost all the breath in her lungs. Finnan MacAllister stood there precisely as if her thoughts had summoned him.
Ah, and did the man spend all his time soaking wet? She had to admit the look flattered him, and at least this time he was fully clothed in a kilt over rough leggings, a leather jacket, and his plaid up over his head against the rain. All now shed water, sopping.
From beneath the edge of the red tartan his tawny eyes gleamed and reached for hers. Alarm, primal and powerful, speared through her. She reacted immediately and attempted to shut the door in his face.
He moved before she could, splayed his fingers on the oak panel beside her head. Shocked, Jeannie stared at the long brown digits of his right hand, tattooed all round with the figures of twining snakes. Or were they dragons? Before she could decide, he spoke.
“Good day to you, Mistress MacWherter.”
“It is most plainly not a good day.” She struggled to shift the door, but it might have been braced by rock for all her success. Heavens, but the man possessed formidable strength!
He smiled, and wicked light invaded the tawny eyes. Jeannie promptly lost all the breath in her body once again.
“Still, Mistress MacWherter, I have walked all the way down the glen. Will you not invite me in out of the rain?”
Jeannie clung to the door latch, caught by that smile the way a salmon might be pierced by a gaff. Her heart beat hot blood into her face. As soon invite him in as a marauding wolf.
“Why did you walk all the way down the glen, Laird MacAllister?”
“To call on you, of course.”
Jeannie lifted her chin. “Correct me if I am mistaken, but when we parted yesterday afternoon, it was not on terms that might encourage a social visit.”
“That is precisely why I am here.” He donned a look of remorse, as unconvincing as the afore-imagined wolf playing at being a lamb. “I have come to apologize, Mistress MacWherter, having realized too late how very rudely I behaved. Indeed, it tortured me all the night long.”
Yes, and Jeannie had thought of him all night, as well, relived the shock of seeing him lying in the water, and recalled the sight he made emerging. She had been teased by the question of whether, before he snagged the plaid and covered himself, she had seen a tattoo even on that appendage most private to him.
“Apology accepted,” she said and tried once more to shut the door.
The muscles of his arm flexed and kept it open. “Och, Mistress MacWherter, but I ha’ barely begun to beg your pardon.”
Why did his voice, lilting and musical, make something suggestive of that statement? Jeannie had a sudden image of him on his knees, aroused and begging.
She fought for breath. “Does this mean you will call off your demand that we vacate this house?”
“For the sake of mercy let me in from the wet, and we will discuss it.”
Against every instinct, Jeannie stepped aside. She heard an abrupt movement in the doorway of the parlor—of course, Aggie had listened to all.
“Come warm yourself beside the fire,” she told MacAllister.
He padded behind her, as soundless as the wolf she envisioned. Just inside the main room she met Aggie’s wide eyes.
“Make us some tea, please, Aggie. And perhaps find a cloth so our guest may dry himself.”
For once Aggie moved to obey without a word. MacAllister stepped further into the room, which looked smaller for his presence. It also looked bare and shabby. Jeannie had been able to bring so few things from the south. A single candle burned beside the bench where she had been sewing, the brown dress tossed down in a tumble. The fire smoldered on the hearth; the room felt dreary and chill.
Finnan MacAllister’s gaze swept the place, and she wondered what he saw: a haven? A room of little comfort?
