Seduced by a Highlander Read online

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tristan was dreaming about the day that Brigid MacPherson’s father caught them together and shot him in the thigh, when an aroma, finer than anything he had ever smelled before, pulled him toward consciousness. He did not drift blissfully into his final state of awareness, but was catapulted into the white-hot wakening of excruciating pain—the worst, from his head.

  Panic engulfed him when he couldn’t recall what had happened to him. He tried to sit up but was immediately hurled back by the blistering agony in his skull, and the ties that bound his wrist to the bedpost behind him.

  Isobel. His quest.

  He’d been shot with an arrow. Twice. So far, things were not going according to plan. Then again, he didn’t have a plan. He usually didn’t, and he saw the foolishness of this now more than ever. He looked at his other arm, bandaged and secured to his bare chest. Someone had removed the arrows and dressed his wounds. But what the hell had happened to his head? He tugged at the leather laces that held him captive and then quit when pain lanced through his shoulder.

  Helpless, he tried to keep his wits about him and consider his situation. It was troublesome indeed. His sword, along with his breeches, was nowhere in sight. He had two holes in him, had an agonizing headache, and was tied to a bed in the house of his kinsmen’s worst enemy. To make matters worse, he was hungry, and whatever was cooking beyond the door made his mouth water and his stomach rumble. Would the Fergussons feed him before they killed him? Then again, if they were going to kill him, wouldn’t they have done so already?

  He heard voices behind the door and closed his eyes as it opened and the ambrosial fragrance of cooked rabbit wafted through his nostrils.

  “He still sleeps.”

  “Good. Come, before Isobel discovers us.” The floor creaked and Tristan’s pulse accelerated as the two boys crossed the room. “She will skin our hides if she finds out what we are up to, Lachlan. The way she has been looking after him, ye would think she fancies him.”

  “He is a MacGregor, Tamas. Ye know how she feels about them.”

  “Aye,” the other agreed. “Besides, it is not like we are trying to kill him. We were stung by hornets and we are no worse fer it.”

  “Aye, but it hurt like bloody hell.”

  Tristan opened one eye and watched the lads hovering by the open window. He remembered the taller of the two pulling back his bowstring and shooting him in the shoulder. The other wee scoundrel had fired something else at him, and with deadly accuracy. A stone? Aye, he remembered now.

  “Spread the honey around, Lachlan,” the smaller one ordered cheerfully. “And when we are done, we will put a bit in his bed. It will draw the hornets directly to him.”

  Och, so it was to be like that, was it? Tristan opened his eyes and hooked his mouth into a rueful smirk.

  “ ’Tis a clever scheme against me, lads,” he said, startling the poor runts nearly out of their boots. “But I should warn ye, ye’ll pay fer it tenfold.”

  His threat sparked a challenging glint in the younger one’s eyes. “Is that so?” the lad mused, reaching for the leather sling at his side. “Where should I hit him this time, Lachlan? He seems to have a rather thick skull.”

  Tristan pulled on his bonds while the boy plucked a stone from his pocket. “Dinna’ do it,” he warned, cursing his hasty threat, impotent as he was at present. “I swear,” he began, nervously watching the lad drop the stone into the pouch, “If ye—” The bratling twirled the sling over his head. Son of a…!

  “Isobel!” Tristan roared, unable to do anything else.

  Immediately, the boy dropped his sling and fixed him with a vengeful stare. Tristan matched it with a dangerous glare of his own. He would take care of the runt later.

  The door burst open a moment later and a pale-faced Isobel Fergusson rushed into the room. Behind her, filling the doorframe, stood a man whose size and scowl rivaled that of any of Camlochlin’s fiercest warriors. Tristan knew that caution, mayhap more than at any other time until now, must be liberally exercised. But he could not keep his eyes from slipping to the red-haired goddess coming toward him. Or from meeting the fire in her gaze when she reached him. Hell, he’d missed her.

  “If ye are still in possession of yer wits,” she muttered, bending to examine the bandage around his head, “ye’d best call upon them now.”

  “First,” he whispered close enough to her ear to keep the others from hearing, “let us be clear on this one thing.”

  She looked down at him, their breath mixing together while his eyes fell to the swell of her bosoms.

  “I dinna’ like bein’ tied down.” His dimple flashed as his gaze found hers again. “Unless ’tis by my own suggestion.”

  “MacGregor.” The giant at the door halted any further words between them. Tristan looked at him, his smile cooling. “I am Patrick Fergusson, but then, guessing by the name ye called out, ye already know where ye are.”

  “Aye.” Tristan attempted a nod, then closed his eyes as pain lanced through his head. “I know where I am.”

  “Is this where ye meant to find yerself?” Isobel’s brother continued without mercy. “Or did ye take a wrong turn?”

  Tristan opened his eyes slowly. “In truth,” he admitted, knowing the sharp, contemplative eyes staring back at him would see through any meager deception. “I am no’ lost.”

  Patrick’s gaze cut to Isobel for an instant while he took a step forward, finally entering the room. “Ye seem well enough to answer a few of my questions, MacGregor. So let us begin. Why did ye take a liberty not granted to ye and use my sister’s Christian name?”

  Without the slightest alteration in his breath, Tristan slanted a look to the lads still standing by the window. “Because ’tisn’t yer name they’re afraid of.”

  The dark stare Patrick gave the boys convinced Tristan that they were either too slow-witted to fear their older brother or Isobel’s temper was far worse than he’d imagined.

  “What did ye two do?” Isobel demanded, commanding the boys’ attention. “And why are ye even in here?”

  “It was all Tamas’s doing,” the larger boy responded, giving up the younger without a fight.

  “Well?” Isobel fisted her hands on her hips. Everyone in the room, including Tristan, looked at Tamas, waiting for his answer.

  “Fine.” The boy gave in with a defiant tilt of his chin. “I smeared honey on the windowpane to draw the hornets.”

  Isobel squeaked out a tight little gasp and marched toward the window. When she saw that he had told the truth, she whirled around and slapped her apron against her thigh. “Ye will be cleaning that… after ye clean the barn tonight!”

  Tamas nodded and flung Tristan his foulest look.

  “What else did ye do?” she continued, still glaring at the boy.

  “Nothing else,” he replied, dipping his gaze to the floor.

  Watching him, Tristan noted Tamas’s fingers tucking away his sling beneath his belt.

  “Mister MacGregor?” Isobel’s voice was just as stern when she snapped Tristan’s attention back to her. “What else did he do that made ye call out?”

  “Nothing else,” Tristan repeated mildly, meeting Tamas’s gaze across the room. He would repay the boy for his pounding head when he was out of this blasted bed. For now, it was between them. He would not turn him in as easily as his brother had.

  “So then, MacGregor,” Patrick said, doing little to mask his humor. “Ye sought the aid of a lass because ye are afraid of insects?”

  “Hornets, aye.” Tristan managed a smile back at him while Isobel ushered the boys to the door. “They dinna’ sting just once, ye know.”

  Before he left, Tamas turned and set his curious gaze on him one last time. Tristan winked, but the lad’s expression remained unreadable as the door closed in front of him.

  When they were alone, Patrick folded his arms across his broad chest and studied Tristan long enough to make another man squirm. Tristan was careful to move
as little as possible, as everything from his toes to the top of his head ached.

  “My next question.”

  Like his sister, this man wasted little time on the false formality of the day. He was direct and to the point—attributes Tristan favored, despite Patrick’s resemblance to his younger brother Alex.

  “What purpose d’ye have in coming here?”

  From the door, Isobel shielded a nervous look Tristan’s way.

  He didn’t like the way she worried every time he spoke to one of her brothers. What did she think he would tell them? That they had shared a kiss and some forbidden smiles? Knowing what it would cost her, he would not admit that while their kin were still enemies.

  “I came here to bring word to Miss Fergusson about her brother Alex.” His gaze followed her when she moved around Patrick to return to the end of the bed. “When my kin left England, he was well.”

  He thought he saw relief softening her features—mayhap even the trace of a smile. He saw no reason to tell her that he had no idea how Alex fared with Colin and Mairi alone at Whitehall to do as they pleased.

  “MacGregor,” Patrick said, raising a doubtful eyebrow. “Ye expect me to believe that ye traveled all the way from England just to tell my sister that?”

  “From Skye, actually,” Tristan corrected. “She was quite distressed about leaving him at Whitehall with my kin. I gave her my word that while I was there, no harm would come to him.”

  It wasn’t a complete falsehood. He simply saw no reason to speak of his quest and ignite a Fergusson’s wrath against him by thinking him a liar while he was helpless to fight back.

  Patrick’s smile was rapier thin as he sized Tristan up from foot to crown. “I see. So I am to believe ye are a man of honor, then?”

  Tristan did not take offense at Patrick’s jeering tone, for he already knew he was anything but honorable. Instead, he found himself wondering if the qualities Isobel had seen in him when they first met, she had learned from this man. His mood lightened considerably. Mayhap Patrick would understand why he had come here. Although being here and settling his gaze on his bonnie Iseult again made Tristan question his true motives.

  “In truth,” he admitted, “I am not what ye suggest. But I am workin’ on it. In the meantime, ye may believe what ye like. But I would ask ye to keep such an assumption to yerself, lest my reputation suffer an enormous blow.”

  Isobel rolled her eyes heavenward and went back to the window. Patrick stared at him for a moment, as if coming to some conclusion in his mind, and as Tristan’s smile widened, so did his.

  In the hour that followed, Tristan discovered that Patrick was not half as arrogant as Alex. His questions, and he asked many, seemingly without concern for Tristan’s throbbing head and stinging limbs, all centered on one thing, the safety of his family. He warned, without any boastful clamor, that if Tristan had come to his home to bring harm to his kin in any way, Patrick would kill him and bury his body behind the barn.

  “My intentions,” Tristan finally confessed, “are to bring an end to the hatred between our kin.”

  Patrick looked across the room at his sister. “Why?” But when Tristan began to answer, he cut him off, turning to him once again. “We do not need yer aid, MacGregor. We simply want to be left alone.”

  He turned to leave and motioned for Isobel to come with him. Tristan cursed under his breath. Patrick didn’t believe him. Why would he? Why would a MacGregor want to end a feud and not ask for something in return—like his sister? Hell, any man with a brain in his head would suspect a more treacherous secret motive. Now, Patrick would keep them apart.

  “Miss Fergusson.”

  She stopped and turned slowly to look at him.

  “D’ye no’ have a concoction fer the pain? Mayhap just have one of yer brothers hit me in the head with something to put me oot?”

  She went to him, deep concern marring her brow. “Is it that bad?”

  “Aye.” He hushed his voice when she came nearer to feel him for fever. “If I canna’ see ye again until I am well enough to leave, I would rather sleep through my recovery.”

  “Oh, Lord,” she drawled, pulling away from him. “D’ye never cease?”

  He smiled and awakened a thousand butterflies in her belly.

  “I will make him something to drink,” Isobel told her brother at the door as she stepped past him.

  “Cam will feed it to him,” Patrick called out, letting her know.

  “I will feed it to him,” Isobel called back, ending the argument.

  Tristan took a moment to enjoy the sway of her hips as she strode down the hall and turned for the stairs. “Fergusson,” he called out when Patrick began to pull the door closed. “Might we have a word aboot releasin’ my arm?”

  The door slammed shut.

  Hell.

  Chapter Fifteen

  What d’ye think of him?”

  Isobel paused on her way back to the kitchen and looked down at what was left of Tristan’s elixir. She hadn’t expected Patrick to ask her such a question about their guest. She figured he knew perfectly well what she thought of him.

  “He is a MacGregor.” She looked across the hall to where her brother stood taking a rest from his work of cleaning the hearth. “What I think of him would soil the walls around us, should I utter it.”

  Patrick leaned on the hilt of his shovel, his features relaxed and unreadable in the dim light. “How d’ye manage to remember who he is, when fer even a hairsbreadth of time, he made me ferget?”

  Isobel felt her spine stiffen. Always the logical brother, Patrick sorted things out in his mind with the precision of a battle-hardened warrior. She’d always had to be on her toes to keep up with him.

  “Ye would do best not to ferget. Now leave yer work and wash up fer supper.” She turned to leave, but he stopped her yet again.

  “It is a simple enough query, Bel. Will ye not answer it?”

  She had no choice now, lest he think she was hiding something. Which she most certainly was not. “Mayhap,” she told him with a paltry shrug and continued toward the kitchen, “I am stronger than ye.”

  “In this instance,” he countered meaningfully, “let’s pray that ye are.”

  She did pray. Oh, how she prayed. Still, every time she was near Tristan, she feared she might grant him the smile he was after. She wasn’t certain which of his many weapons he wielded the best. The rakish twinkle of his dimple that made her belly flip, or the symphony of words that played across his lips that could make any foolish woman’s heart dance.

  Her breath shortened at the memory of what he’d asked her while she fed him his elixir.

  “Are ye glad to see me, Isobel?”

  “Glad to see ye alive. Ye are a fool fer coming here just to tell me about Alex. Though I suspect it was another reason entirely that led ye here.”

  “Then ye’re no’ just ravishin’, but clever, as well.”

  His slow, sexy smile kindled a fire below her belly, heating her body all the way to her cheeks. If she hadn’t spent the last ten years hating his kin, or if she believed that he simply meant to make her one more of his conquests, she might be tempted to play along with his game of cat and mouse. She would take much enjoyment in watching him flounder at her rejection. But she knew the true motive behind his flowery words. He was arrogant enough in his prowess to admit that one existed. He was too dangerous. There was too much at stake to regard him as anything but her worst enemy. She would stay away from his room and let her brothers tend to him. She smiled. Aye, he deserved that much.

  “Lachlan!” she called out, bending to the trivet and stirring the thick rabbit stew simmering in the pot above the fire. “Bring MacGregor his supper.”

  Pushing back his chair where he sat waiting to eat, Lachlan lumbered into the kitchen and watched her dip her ladle into the pot. “But how will he eat? Should I untie his wrist?”

  “No, ye will have to feed him.”

  Following behind his older brother, bowl
in hand, Tamas chuckled at Lachlan’s feeble protests.

  “And ye can go with him,” Isobel said, pointing her ladle at Tamas. “Clean that window before he is attacked by hornets.”

  For a moment, Tamas stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. “But my supper will be cold by the time I get to eat it! I will close the shutters fer now. Nothing will—Patrick!” He swung around when Patrick entered the kitchen. “Why should that MacGregor enjoy a hot meal while my belly goes empty? So what if he gets stung a few times? It will make a man of him!”

  “Did it make a man of ye when ye were stung, then?” Patrick asked while Isobel filled his bowl.

  “I am not the one who screamed out fer a maid before they even attacked me.”

  Patrick smiled but didn’t give in. “Do as ye’re told before ye—”

  Tristan’s pleasant but somewhat apprehensive voice rang out from behind the door of his room, interrupting them.

  “If any one of ye can hear me oot there, there’s an urgent matter concernin’ my bladder that needs attention.”

  Tamas’s wide eyes went all the rounder and the color drained from his freckled face as he looked up to find both Isobel and Patrick staring at him. “I will do anything but that. Untie him, I beg ye.”

  To this, Patrick agreed, and headed off first to see to the task. Isobel handed Lachlan a bowl filled with steaming stew and watched him reluctantly follow behind.

  “Why d’ye like him?” Tamas asked her, accepting the rags she offered him.

  She would have laughed right in her little brother’s face if she hadn’t asked herself the same question a dozen times since she met the Highland rogue. “Why d’ye ask me such a ridiculous question?” She gave him a slap with her apron. “Ye are getting more like Patrick each day.” She gave him a gentle shove and sent him on his way.

  She finished filling her brothers’ bowls and carried each one to the dining table. During each trip she noticed her hands shaking more. Damn him. She looked up the stairs, wringing her hands through her apron. She’d thought she was rid of Tristan MacGregor. She was learning to live with his face always appearing in her thoughts, but living with him… living with him… one floor above her, lying in a bed half naked and at her mercy—well, it was just too much. His presence filled the house and saturated her senses with a crackling bolt of awareness that made her reel. What had he already done to her that showed itself so blatantly that two of her own brothers would question her feelings for him?