Beloved Highlander

“Oh, I will,” she said at last, in the same cold voice she had arrived with. “Don’t worry, Captain, I will!”

Meg went upstairs again to her sanctuary. There was plenty to do. It was she who ran the estate now, and she was meticulous in her notes and bookwork. Throughout the long afternoon she worked. Sometimes the voices from outside disturbed her, but mostly she managed to block them out. Once, when she happened to glance out of the window, she saw that Gregor had stripped off his shirt, leaving just his kilt slung low on his hips. Most of the other men had done the same, the sweat shining on their bodies, their chests heaving with effort.

But it was Gregor who drew her gaze.

He was just a man, she told herself crossly. And not even the man she had dreamed of, the boy artist she had half fallen in love with. He was a stranger. Why did she find him so fascinating? Why did she want to stroke his skin and gaze into his eyes like some lovesick wee lassie? She was a grown woman, alert to the ways of men, aware that her attractiveness was in her inheritance rather than her face and figure and what she had to say. She accepted that…or she had.

Why did she now wish it all different?

Outside the window, Gregor captured a young lad who had run in front of a man with a sword, putting himself in danger. He swung the young boy up onto his hip, holding the child while he issued more orders.

It was the strangest thing….

Meg felt so dizzy she had to sit down. She knew what she was thinking, but she hardly dared admit it to herself. If Gregor Grant was hers, then they could have a child together. A child to grow up and run free in Glen Dhui, just as he had done. But this child would never be sent away, would never be outcast, as Gregor was. It…they would live here, happily, forever.

She groaned and put her face down onto her books, uncaring if she got ink on her cheek. She was mad. Gregor Grant would not want her, he would have too much pride to sell himself for Glen Dhui.

Wouldn’t he?

Chapter 14

Alison Forbes had laid out the meal in the upstairs dining room. The heavy rectangular table glowed with a sheen that reflected a great many years of polishing. It was set with the usual pewter, some more valuable silver, and even glassware, rarely seen in the Highlands. Lighted candelabra fluttered in the draft from the open window; the air brought with it the rush of the burn and the rustle of the yew leaves. Portraits, shadowy and faintly menacing, glowered from the walls, Jacobite Grants mingling with Mackintoshes as if they would never have been deadly enemies in life.

The irony was not lost upon Meg as she entered the room in her green silk gown, nor the awkwardness of the situation. Gregor Grant was there already, waiting, a glass of claret in his hand. He turned to face her, his expression giving away little, his well-worn but elegant clothing doing nothing to disguise what he was.

Meg had had plenty of time during the long afternoon to take stock of her reactions to him, and to tamp them down. The cool smile she presented him with, as he politely drew out her chair, was exactly as she had planned it. Distant and untouched.

“A productive afternoon, Captain?” she asked him, as she sat down.

He paused, leaning over her chair, so that she had to look up into his face. It put her in an exposed and vulnerable position, and suddenly her confident mask wavered. His gaze wandered down, lingering on her lips, down the arch of her throat, pausing on a curl of hair that lay against her shoulder, to the soft swell of her breasts above the neckline of her gown. There was no gauze scarf tonight, but the décolletage was modest enough—Meg would never have worn it otherwise. Yet, the way he looked…as if the silk was transparent, or torn. As if she were entirely naked before him.

She should have felt angry, and in a way she did, but her feelings were more confused than that, more complex. The way he looked at her stirred a response deep inside her, something that shivered and resonated. Meg tingled all over. If he were to bend a little lower, his lips would be close enough to…to…Just as she thought she was about to reach up to him, wind her arms about his neck and draw him down to her, doubt engulfed her.

He was a stranger, a man she hardly knew, and a man she was paying to be here! He had no right to be looking at her as if he were about to gobble her up.

Meg opened her mouth to voice her protest, but just then his gaze locked with hers. “We made some headway,” he said quietly, in answer to her question.

Meg forced the fluttering in her stomach to subside through sheer effort of will, making her face impassive.

“They are pleased that you are back in Glen Dhui, whatever your true reason.”

He laughed abruptly. “Thank you…I think.”

“It wasn’t a compliment, Captain,” she replied sharply.

He let it go, merely smiling and moving to his own chair at her right side. Relieved by his retreat, Meg took a breath, and helped herself to hare soup. For a time they were quiet, with only the sounds from beyond the window to disturb them and the occasional mournful cry of a curlew out in the darkness. Their silence might even have been companionable, thought Meg, if there wasn’t this over-stretched tension between them.

Anticipation.

As if something were about to happen, and she didn’t know whether she wanted it to, or not.

“I noticed you have the American potato in your garden.” He poured them each a glass of wine. “They are rare enough in England, but this far north…Was it the general’s idea to grow them?”

Meg looked up, surprised by the change of subject. “No, it was mine. Major Litchfield spoke of them to me, and I had some sent north to me here, because I was interested and it seemed they might be helpful to the people. They do seem to grow well in our soil. Do you know much about the potato, Captain Grant?”

“Only that one eats the root rather than the leaves. I have tasted them, though.”

“They are an exotic—or so they are treated. A few of the great houses grow them in their gardens as a curiosity, and although they do not have much taste, they fill the stomach. It is my belief that they will help to feed the people here, something to fall back on when the oat crop fails, or there is famine. As you know, there is always the fear of famine in the Highlands. I have been trying to persuade some of our tenants to grow them in their kaleyards, though they are resistant to change. But I have hopes of changing their minds—I have managed to bring them to the point of growing carrots and turnips, so why not potatoes?”