“Aye. Everyone else thinks so too, I reckon.” Slowly she opened the quartet of buttons closing the flap of his buckskins. “And that’s nae even considering the two of us traveling alone in a coach. I’m scandalized, ye ken.” She freed him, then sent a single fingernail trailing lightly across his balls and then down the length of his cock.
Groaning, he shoved her hand aside, yanked her gown up around her waist, and lifted her over his throbbing member. “If I hadn’t lost the ability to speak just now,” he returned, half closing his eyes as she lowered herself tightly around him and then started bouncing, “I’d say you… ah… were more wanton than scandalized.”
“Fer a man withoot speech,” she returned breathlessly, nibbling at his ear, “ye talk too much.”
He thrust up into her, meeting her downward strokes with a grunt. Again and again, deep and fast, until she gasped his name and collapsed, spasming, around him. Gabriel splayed his hands around her bared hips and hammered against her twice more, then spilled himself hard inside her. “Fiona,” he breathed, shuddering.
The coach’s cushions would have to be restuffed after the two-day drive back from Inverness, given the abuse the poor things had taken. He rested his head back against the seat, closing his eyes as his breathing and heartbeat slowed, and very aware of the warm, vibrant woman panting against his shoulder and still straddling his hips.
“How do you say ‘I love you’ in Gaelic?” he asked, lowering his face into her dark, sweet-scented hair.
“I think ye just said it in every language,leannan,” she returned, laughter in her rich brogue.
“Very amusing, Fiona. Tell me.”
She sighed deliciously.“Tha gaol agam ort,”she said.
He repeated it to her. “Tha gaol agam ort.Aye?”
“Aye.” Stretching, she put her hands against the seat back on either side of his head and kissed him again. “Ye’re a quick study. Aboot a great many things. Niall Garretson’s likely to begin weeping when ye show him the plans ye drew up fer the mill.”
“Weeping with approval, I hope. It’s a mill that’ll never fall in a siege, at least.” As he took another glance out the window, he straightened. “Christ,” he cursed, and lifted her off his lap.
“What?” she demanded, twisting hurriedly to follow his gaze and shoving her dress back down around her legs. “Lattimer hasn’t collapsed, has…” She trailed off. “Oh. Oh, my goodness.”
People lined the road ahead. A great many people, in both livery and farm attire. With another curse he refastened his trousers before the coach drew close enough for any of them to see in through the open windows. “Am I about to be burned at the stake?” he asked, knocking on the coach’s roof.
“I’ve nae idea,” she returned, busy stuffing her breasts back inside her gown and fastening her pelisse over the lovelies.
The coach rolled to a halt a few feet short of where the young footman, Hugh, stood on one side of the snow-covered road, Ailios Eylar’s daughter Eppie opposite him. Gabriel opened the door and hopped to the ground, then turned around to take Fiona around the waist and lift her down, as well.
“Hugh? What’s wrong?” he asked, buttoning his caped greatcoat against the chill before he took Fiona’s hand to help steady her as they walked to the beginning of the parallel lines of tenants and staff that continued all the way up the drive to Lattimer’s front doors. At least the old place still stood, dark and impressive beneath the overcast sky.
The footman bowed at the waist, then straightened again. “There’s nae a thing wrong, Yer Grace,” he said, his voice wavering just a little. Nervous? What was the lad nervous about? They’d just spent three weeks making statements and exposing Dunncraigh’s misdeeds, resolving what he’d hoped was the last of Lattimer’s troubles. And now before he’d even stepped through the door something else seemed to be rearing its head.
“Hugh, I ken I dunnae need to tell ye,” Fiona took up, “but everyone’s ootside. And it’s snowing. What’s amiss?”
“They put me here on purpose,” Hugh said, “and told me what to tell ye. We didnae know what was afoot when Yer Grace and Miss Fiona and Ian rode off to Inverness. But Fleming’s been reading us the newspapers and yer letters, and now we know. He told us what the Maxwell did, and how he turned Ian and the others against their own.” He squared his shoulders. “So we’re here to tell ye that we’re nae clan Maxwell, any longer. Some of us are named Maxwell, but Dunncraigh’s nae our chief.”
“Ye dunnae have to do that,” Fiona burst out, her expression shocked. “I’m the one who’s made him angry. There’s nae need fer ye—”
“There is,” Eppie said, unexpectedly from behind them, the first time Gabriel had ever heard her speak. “We all talked aboot it. Some of us wanted to send a letter to Dunncraigh and tell him what we thought. Some others, though, said he wouldnae care, and that we’d be asking fer trouble where he’d be happier just to keep ignoring us. But we all decided; withoot Miss Fiona we’d all have been in fer it a long time ago. And Miss Fiona chose ye, Yer Grace.”
“I’m supposed to tell it, Eppie,” Hugh broke in. “Miss Fiona chose ye, Yer Grace, so we reckoned that’s good enough fer us.”
Gabriel frowned, not quite certain what was going on. “Thank you, but what—”
“Ye’re the Duke of Lattimer,” Hugh interrupted, clearly warming to the topic. “But only the Sassenachs call this place Lattimer. So in London ye can be the Duke of Lattimer. But here, if ye dunnae object, Yer Grace, ye’re Laird MacKittrick.”
It wasn’t even a title. It hadn’t been since the Crown had taken away the land from the last, curse-prone, Scottish lord who’d resided here. Beside him Fiona had tears in her eyes, and she nodded at him emphatically. She’d chosen him, they said. Without her, he would have been back on the Continent by now, and he likely would have sold Lattimer to Dunncraigh without a second thought. It had been a burden. Now, though, and so swiftly it still stunned him, this place, this woman, had become his life.
“I would be honored,” he said, raising his voice so they could hear him down the line. “It doesn’t seem right, though, for me to take credit when we all know who truly deserves this. As you said, without Fiona, all of us—including myself—would be in much worse shape.”
Turning around to face her, he sank onto one knee, taking both her hands in his. The collective gasp of the gathered onlookers clouded the air with fog. It likely wasn’t fair, for him to do this with all these witnesses, but in this circumstance he was much more interested in getting what he wanted than in being fair.
“Get up, Gabriel,” she hissed, her cheeks growing pale.
“I can’t be Laird MacKittrick without a Lady MacKittrick,” he said, looking up at her. And this, this moment, worried him more than any fight on any battlefield. This moment didn’t rely on his own skill. It relied on someone else’s heart. Every minute since he’d arrived in the Highlands, though, had been about facing his own worries and doing things he would previously have thought impossible. “And a duke needs a duchess. You are the heart of this land, Fiona, and I can’t ask for any more for your kin and for me. I love you with every ounce of my soldier’s heart, and everything else you’ve enabled me to become.Tha gaol agam ort,” he went on, hoping he hadn’t mangled it. “Will you marry me?”
For a handful of hard beats of his heart she stood there, staring down at him while tears ran down her face. Then she launched herself against his chest, pushing him backward into the snow and kissing him as cold wet went down his neck. Laughing, he threw his arms around her, holding her close.
“You didn’t give me an answer,” he said when he could breathe again, as their newly formed clan gathered around them making their own sounds of congratulations and delight.
“Aye!” she yelled, and her kin cheered. “Aye,” she repeated more quietly, touching her forehead to his. “I love ye something fierce, Gabriel Forrester. Ye’re nae what I expected, and I cannae imagine tomorrow withoot ye beside me.”
He smiled, lifting his head to kiss her again. “You don’t have to. The MacKittrick curse doesn’t stand a chance against us, my lass.”
“Nae,” she returned, grinning down at his face. “It doesnae.”
