He smiled and picked up her hand, kissed it with a flourish. “Call me anything you wish—and call me anytime you need a rogue, a rascal, or an Englishman.” The jaunty repartee fell flat when she looked at him with reproof, curled her icy fingertips against his. He felt her tremble slightly, wanted to turn her palm up, kiss it, work his way up her wrist. He glanced at the spot where her pulse hammered under her skin. He could see the hilt of a dirk strapped to her arm under her sleeve. She’d come to supper armed.
Against him? Had he given her reason to fear him, to think . . . ?
He let her go.
Perhaps Fia had warned her again, told her to guard herself, that he was a faithless charmer, a rake. Faithless . . . he’d lived like a monk for ten months, not wanting anyone else. The rumors had him bedding a dozen women—two or three at a time in the more ribald tales. None of them were true. He treated every lass like a duchess, every man with respect. Had they bothered to notice that?
Nay, he was naught but a Sassenach, disgraced, disowned, alone, and not worthy of a woman like Gillian MacLeod, the fine daughter of a Highland laird.
He’d left home six years ago, sent by his father to make his own way in the world. He’d sailed away, looking for adventure. He’d found it, by God, but it had cost him dearly. Very dearly. And that butcher’s bill had in turn cost him everything else he ever had, or was. Now he was little more than a soldier for hire, paid by Alsadair Og Sinclair to do a job, and he had been given the duty of seeing the chief’s sister-in-law safe to Edinburgh. He had more sense, more dignity, than to steal kisses from a woman who was bound to another man. Her dirk wouldn’t be necessary.
He looked at Gillian coolly as he rose and hoped that Sir Douglas MacKinnon would appreciate the hidden passions that simmered below her demure surface. Even now, from just a touch of his hand, her eyes were bright as stars, and her cheeks were rose pink. Shewaspassionate—he knew that.
She would be a handful in her marriage bed.
He winced at the thought. He needed a breath of air, a cold swim, a long walk, or something hard to punch. “I shall see you in the morning, Mistress MacLeod.”
“Gillian,” she reminded him, her voice rough edged with emotion.
He shook his head. “Nay, I think Mistress MacLeod is safer, don’t you? It sounds untouchable, inviolable, and that is how you shall stay.” He bowed. “Your servant, mistress. Good night. We leave at dawn.”
He left the hall without a backward glance.
