“If the emerging pattern I’m detecting is consistent, Thomas Annesley will surely follow the very man who apprehended him into the wilds of the Highlands. I will not make the mistake of leavinganyoneon that godforsaken mountain alive this time, I assure you.” He reached out and stroked the man’s wet head above the cage around his face and then raised the pelican in his hand and clicked the metal arms together gaily as he peered in the man’s held-open mouth.
“Ah, only twelve more to go,” he said, gesturing toward the small pile of teeth lying in the metal bowl near the man’s head.
The servant gave an odd, gurgling cry in the back of his throat.
“All right, then. If you can wait no longer,” Hargrave said with an indulgent smile.
Chapter 7
Finley heard Lachlan Blair’s return to the farm early the next morning, but she sat at the table in the main room for the better part of an hour, staring at the plate of oatcakes she’d made, waiting for him to knock at the door so that she could bid him to enter with a smug look firmly in place. He’d been miserable all night, she just knew it.
But the knock never came. And by the time the dawn had grown enough to illumine the small, high-set windows, Finley knew it was only a matter of time before her parents and the rest of the town returned. She couldn’t put off her chores any longer; Da would check on the animals first thing, and he would learn of Finley’s failure directly from Lachlan Blair. Murdoch might be with him as well.
That is, unless Lachlan Blair had done nothing more than retrieve his horse. He may have met her kin on the road back to Town Blair.
Finley pushed back her chair with a screech and stood, snatching the plate and mug from the tabletop with a glare. She marched out the door and up the hill around the front of the longhouse, along the stone wall and toward the barn, where she heard the rhythmic ring of a hammer on metal. She paused in her march, blowing out a shallow breath of relief; at least she wouldn’t be humiliated by her family encountering her new husband as he fled from her. But now she seriously considered assisting him in wearing the breakfast she carried. Finley charged forward, her spirit renewed.
She found him in the narrow center aisle of the barn, his feet braced apart as he lifted the hammer in his right hand high above his head. In his left hand, he held a hinge against her da’s old, misshapen anvil.
He was wearing no shirt, and his skin glistened from whatever efforts he’d been about that morning, his long hair pulled back once more into the queue he’d worn that day in the wood. The sight of him so scantily clothed caused Finley to rock to a halt, her skirts swinging about her ankles like a bell about the clapper of her legs.
He caught sight of her and paused his actions, standing straight and dropping his arm. “Good morning,” he said in a guarded tone. “This hinge was bent. Caused the paddock gate to drag. Thought I’d knock it out.”
“A ram kicked it,” she offered lamely. “Da hasn’t had time to take the gate apart.”
He looked to the dishes in her hands. “Are those for me?”
“Aye,” Finley said stiffly with a little lift of her chin. His stomach was rippled, his waist nearly as narrow as hers.
“About time,” he said, tossing the hinge and the hammer atop the anvil with a clatter and moving toward her.
“You could have come inside and got them yourself.”
He took the plate and mug from her and then walked to the little milking stool against the wall, where he lowered himself into a seat. “And have a cleaver thrown at my head as soon as I opened the door?” He shook his head and then took a sip of the warmed milk before nestling it into the midst of a little pile of straw and picking up a bannock and stuffing half of it into his mouth.
Finley had thought of a score of things to say to Lachlan Blair while she’d been alone this morning: rules for living at the farm, his responsibilities. How he could and could not interact with her. But she could not call one of them to mind as she watched the man sitting on her father’s milking stool in his smooth skin. She’d never seen a man shaped like him before. His muscles dense and exaggerated, his chest and shoulders seeming as wide as the barn aisle itself.
He looked up at her and swallowed, licked his lips. “Did you make these?”
Finley nodded.
“They’re good,” he said, stuffing another into his mouth.
“You sound surprised.”
“I didn’t take you for a woman who cared overmuch for wifely duties, the way you shirked marriage so.”
“I didn’t shirk marriage,” she argued.
He paused in midchew, looking up at her.
“Sure, I objected to being married off for the sake of having a hireling,” she said, and couldn’t help her glance over his naked torso, “but I am beginning to see how that could have its advantages.”
He laughed, as if surprised, bringing the back of one wrist to his mouth to keep his breakfast contained. He swallowed, his eyes still smiling. “Is that all I need do to give you a civil tongue? Go about with me shirt off?”
Finley felt a reluctant if slightly embarrassed smile play about her own mouth. “I didna want to marry you, Blair, this I canna deny. And the thought of sharing the place my da’s broke his back for his entire life with someone so full of himself doesna please me. But I willna argue with you about your shirt.”
His grin was back—the one she remembered so vividly, the one she’d recalled in the nights after their meeting—and it brought a measure of relief to her, like an unclenching of a fist.
