That they had not been interrupted, most of all.
But Dair was chief, and she was a laird’s daughter. She understood responsibility. She tied her stays closed with shaking fingers, pulled her gown on. What she had done this day was the opposite of responsible, perhaps, but she did not regret it. A cloud coasted across the sun, and the wind rose to ruffle the grasses.
She picked up the basket with a sigh. Perhaps she did have one regret. She wanted more, all the pleasures, all the mysteries. Yet now, both the sky and the events of the day had darkened. She looked around her, wondered if Dair was right, that danger truly did lurk behind every tree and rock at Carraig Brigh. The wind moaned, and she shivered, but she did not believe in curses.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
There was a storm coming. The wind buffeted the castle, rattled the shutters. Distant thunder rolled over the ocean, striding over thrashing waves to reach land.
Dair paced the floor of his chamber. Logan said he’d been out hunting. He’d stopped at Lulach’s cott for a drink of water and to offer the shepherd one of the rabbits he’d caught. When Logan’s eye fell on the black clothing in a corner of the hut, bloody and rumpled, Lulach had attacked him with a knife. Logan had killed him, taken revenge for Padraig and the others. The clan was hailing the lad as a hero.
Still, there was something not quite right in Dair’s opinion. There wasn’t a single wound on Lulach’s chest, but there were marks on his body against witchcraft. Logan offered no explanation for those. The shepherd had reason to be angry, but he kept to himself, lived apart. He wasn’t the type to join a mob—and killing the chief made no sense, when Dair was to blame for Daniel’s death . . . He shut his eyes. Rumors of witchcraft and curses had been spreading through the clan like plague since the chief’s death. The Sinclairs wanted someone to blame. Dair wanted the men responsible for his father’s death as much as anyone—more—but he wanted thereasonfor the attack. If he didn’t find the real culprits soon, his folk would turn on each other.
Time was running out. He looked again at the letter that had arrived that afternoon, a summons from Lord Queensbury, the queen’s commissioner, that he could not ignore. It had been agreed that an Anglo-Scottish commission, including the chief of the Sinclairs, was to gather to negotiate terms for the Treaty of Union, which would join Scotland and England under one government. As Padraig’s heir and the new chief, Dair would have to go, and soon. He had a scant handful of days to catch his father’s killers and lay fear and superstition to rest.
He’d decided to leave Will Sinclair in charge in his absence, since he’d decided to send Fia and her sister home, with Angus and John to escort them. He couldn’t spare more men than that.
It was best that she left. If she didn’t, he’d finish what had been interrupted. If he persisted in kisses and almost-sex, he’d ruin her, break her heart. Shewouldregret it, and he couldn’t bear that.
He was shaking with desire, just thinking of her lying in his arms in the heather, her face flushed with pleasure. He crossed to the washbowl to splash water on his face, though what he really needed was a long swim in an ice-cold loch. He met his reflection in the mirror. He’d forgotten to cover it again after the first time he kissed Fia, here, in this room. Lightning flashed, lit up his scars, his damaged nose, the mad, haunted look. They’d fade in time, become less frightening, but he’d never grow used to it. How could Fia bear it, being debauched by a beast like him? He could imagine the horror in Donal MacLeod’s eyes when he heard that Dair had bedded his daughter—not because he’d done the deed, but because the MacLeod would be forced to insist on a wedding, and Fia would be tied to a scarred madman for life. Dair was grateful that Angus had interrupted things when he had that afternoon. It might have been disaster otherwise.
Or heaven.
A boom of thunder shook the room, and the wind thrust the shutters wide open, and they flapped in the gale like a portent of doom. They fought Dair’s efforts to close them, drove the rain into his face like needles, and flouted the will of the new chief of the Sinclairs of Carraig Brigh.
CHAPTER FORTY
Fia couldn’t sleep. Not while her body buzzed with desire. Outside, a storm raged with all the power, the passion, and the raw need she felt inside.
She rose, pulled a gown over her nightdress, and told herself to be sensible, to go back to bed—her own bed . . .
She looked at her sister, fast asleep despite the thunder, and told herself this was madness, that she should not, must not, open the door and leave this room.
Then she was rushing along the corridor, her heart pounding with trepidation and desire, terrified she’d meet someone coming the other way, be forced to explain herself. She couldn’t. She’d never felt like this before. Her skirts rustled loudly around her ankles, and a crash of thunder made her cry out, cling to the wall in surprise. She put a hand to her breast, felt her heart pounding under her palm.
Fia glanced back once more. In that direction were the room she shared with Meggie, sanity, and good sense, and she’d been sensible, dutiful, and good all her life . . .
She turned and rushed on toward her heart’s desire.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Dair opened the door.
Fia stood on the threshold, breathless, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed. His arousal was instant, fierce, and urgent. He stared at her, not daring to speak, or think, or hope. She slipped past him, darted into the room, and turned to face him as he stood frozen in the open doorway.
He dug his nails into the wooden panel, tried to find the fortitude to send her away. But he didn’t. Couldn’t. She was breathless, her hair loose, her gown half laced with no stays beneath, no barriers this time . . .
“I want—” She swallowed. “I want to finish what we started. There’s more, and I want that, your body inside mine, your pleasure.”
Dair shut his eyes. The scent of her filled the room, and the memory of her body, the taste of her mouth, filled his mind. She surrounded him, enveloped him in desire, pure and thick and sweet. He closed the door, threw the bolt.
He stared into the golden pools of her heavy-lidded eyes, and her emotions easy to read. “Have you bewitched me after all?” he asked softly, drowning in honey.
She put her arms around his waist, laid her cheek against his chest. “I want this, Dair. All of it.” She looked up at him, slid her hands over the soft linen of his shirt, caressed the hard muscles beneath, and he watched desire flare in her eyes. It was his undoing. He took her mouth, plundered it, kissed her hard, with all the desperation and confusion he felt. She didn’t melt. She opened her mouth to his, met him kiss for kiss.
She reached down to caress his cock through his kilt, but he caught her hand. “No,” he managed to mutter.
“No?”
