“I can look after my own interests, thank ye very much. Good night, Artur.”
“Ye dunnae even ken what yer best interests are. How much longer do ye think ye’ll be allowed to work here? Whatever pity anyone felt over ye being left on yer own is well faded by now.”
On to threats, already. The charm and pleading hadn’t lasted long. Gabriel didn’t doubt that Fiona could stand up for herself; she did so with him constantly. But this was bullying, and he didn’t like bullying. Not in general, and definitely not here and not tonight. Not when her scent still clung to his skin. How difficult would it be to dispose of Artur Maxwell, compared against the stir his disappearance was likely to cause, anyway? That was a very large lake—loch, rather, as Fiona kept reminding him—just beyond the garden. Adding secret passages to that, and this became a rather simple exercise.
“If I’m nae mistaken, my employment’s up to the Duke of Lattimer now,” she replied. “Dunnae make me say it again. Ye’ve had a bit much to drink, and ye need to be off to bed.”
“I reckon I’ll stay here tonight, lass.”
At the sound of the door thudding and then something falling off the shelf beside the door, Gabriel reached forward to shove at the unfinished wall in front of him. He had no idea where the door release was, but he didn’t much care. Breaking through it would serve just as well to get him into the room. Dropping his clothes, he angled his shoulder forward, tensing.
“I’m nae going to apologize fer busting yer beak,” Fiona’s voice came, and he froze in mid-charge. “Ye make a stir in here and Lattimer will hear ye, ye ken. He’s just doon the hallway. Now go to bed, fer God’s sake.”
Her door closed, none too gently, just as Gabriel’s questing fingers found the latch and turned it.
The firelight seemed bright as the sun after the hidden passageway, and Fiona’s angry, upset expression was clearly visible as she turned to face him. “That man,” she muttered, and then couldn’t finish because Gabriel kissed her.
He likely shouldn’t have, given the fact that he’d come calling in a manner nearly identical to Artur’s, but he couldn’t stop himself. She’d defended herself when he’d wanted to do it for her. She’d forced one man to leave her be, while he remained. With her.
Fiona kissed him back, her fingers digging hard into his bare back. She opened her mouth to him, tangling her tongue with his. “Thank ye,” she mumbled against his mouth, pressing her body against his and making his cock throb all over again.
“For what? I didn’t do a damned thing.” Swiftly he unfastened his white soldier’s breeches and freed himself, then hiked her night rail up around her waist and lifted her onto the edge of the dressing table. With another deep kiss he buried himself in her damp, tight heat.
With a groan she wrapped her ankles around his hips and braced her arms on the table behind her. “Exactly,” she managed, flinging her head back as he rocked into her.
Gabriel didn’t know what the devil that meant, but for the moment he didn’t care. Only one thing mattered, and that was the woman splayed before him, around him. His, and not only for tonight, whether she realized it or not. Whether he knew how to accomplish that miraculous feat or not.
***
“I have no idea how you did this,” Kelgrove said, taking a brush to Gabriel’s dust-and-cobweb-covered dress uniform, “but I’m thinking you need a half-dozen spare uniforms from now on.”
Gabriel looked at his aide’s reflection in the full-length dressing mirror. “I made do with one for battle and one for parades for years, Adam.”
“Yes, and I got the shivers every time you walked into your tent and out of it again. If you’re going back to wearing your uniform here,” he went on, “and since you have the blunt, it would be pleasant if you stopped shaving years off my life and purchased additional clothes, Your Grace. Because if this is how you look after one dinner, two coats isn’t going to be enough.”
“I’ll consider it,” Gabriel conceded, far more comfortable in his battle coat than he’d been last night in his dress uniform.
It had taken some doing to rise early enough to slip out of Fiona’s room without being noticed by forty thousand servants and his unwanted guests, rumple his cot to make it look slept in, then wash and shave in the chill bowl of water on its stand so he could dress himself before Kelgrove came in at six o’clock to wake him. Fiona had left him with some new, temporary scars, and he had no intention of allowing anyone else to see them and speculate.
“Dunncraigh’s man headed up just when I did,” the sergeant offered. “Square-shaped little fellow. I think he might be a mute. He’s at least very unfriendly.”
“Noted. I won’t attempt to tell him any jokes.”
Abruptly Adam set aside the dirty coat, stood, and then sat down again. “I’ve done a fair job of assisting you, haven’t I, Your Grace? Major?”
“You’ve put up with uniform disasters that would have destroyed lesser men. Why?”
The sergeant stood again. “I’m being serious, sir.”
Gabriel turned around. Kelgrove was four or five years older than he was, raised with two older sisters and three younger brothers somewhere in Surrey, as he recalled. They didn’t chat much about things before the army, which suited him well enough. Adam liked to rage about dirty uniforms and bugs in the bread, but he’d only very rarely seen the sergeant genuinely upset. When Gabriel had staggered out of the smuggler’s fort with that mace driven halfway through his shoulder blade, yes, and when a close friend didn’t return to camp at all. But none of that had happened today that he knew of, and yet Kelgrove looked nearly in tears. “Take the burr from beneath your saddle and tell me what’s amiss, then.”
“Yesterday you told Dunncraigh and Sir Hamish that you meant to employ me as your steward. And in the next breath you said you would be returning to the Continent as soon as you could manage it. I… I am as much a soldier as you are, damn it all. And I know where I am most useful. That happens to be by your side. I hope that by now you know I do more than clean your uni—”
“Of course I do.” Gabriel cleared his throat. “When we first rode up here I thought you would do well here. As far as I knew Kieran Blackstock was the steward, threatening solicitors for no damned good reason. Nothing here is what I expected, not the least of which is the fact that my property is populated by Highlanders. There… is a division here, clan Maxwell versus everyone else and, in particular, me. I criticized Fiona yesterday because I didn’t want her clan chief or her uncle to think she was being too helpful. It was a feint.”
“A ruse.”
“Yes. A ruse.” That sounded better than admitting he’d been thinking of little more than protecting her.
