Seduced by a Highlander Page 18

  Isobel looked up from her cup of mead when soon the crackle was all she heard. They all waited for Tristan to answer, but he said nothing, his gaze fixed on a place they could not see.

  “Did ye get into much trouble then, too?” John pressed, forcing Tristan back to them, his smile restored.

  “Hardly any. I was more like ye than like Tamas. Besides, my mother wouldna’ tolerate us swingin’ punches the way many of my cousins do.”

  “What did ye do then?” Patrick asked, putting more wood on the fire.

  “I read books and practiced my—”

  “Ye can read then?” John asked, wide-eyed. When Tristan nodded, he inched closer to him. “What kinds of books did ye read?”

  Isobel watched Tristan shift in his chair, looking uncomfortable for the first time since he had taken his usual place by the fire. “Mostly books written by Monmouth, Chaucer, Sir Thomas Malory.”

  John cast him a befuddled look. “What did they write about?”

  “Knights,” Tristan said quietly. He lifted his glance to Isobel and let it linger long enough for her to miss his attention when he returned his warm smile to John. “They wrote about chivalric behavior, courtly love, quests fer honor.”

  “Tell us one,” John pleaded, then yawned, sprawled out in his chair.

  With only a hint of reluctance, he told them a story called “The Knight’s Tale,” as he remembered it—a tale of two champions who were the embodiment of the chivalric principles of their time. John laughed at the pretty words Tristan recited about the fair maiden Emelye, whose favor the two knights sought to win. Isobel listened, captivated by the passion in his voice, the gleam in his eyes when he spoke of honor. She wondered how he could hold such values so close to his heart as a child and still have grown to manhood breaking the hearts of so many women. What part of him was real?

  “Off to bed with ye now, lads,” Patrick ordered gently an hour later, when Tristan’s tale was over. “ ’Tis late.”

  “But just—”

  “John,” Patrick said without looking up from his chess game with Cameron.

  Immediately John and Lachlan picked up their boots and marched off to bed, kissing Isobel on their way out.

  The sitting room grew as quiet as a town plagued by the death fever. Isobel could feel Tristan’s eyes on her. He was going to say something to her, and she would have to answer. She was still angry with him about Tamas, and she wanted to stay that way. It was safer for her heart. She couldn’t let herself fall for him when she’d hated his name for so long, when she didn’t know which of the two men he really was. The rogue or the hero.

  “Iso—”

  She vaulted to her feet, pricking her finger on her sewing needle. “I am going to bed also. Good night.”

  “Allow me to escort ye to yer room, then,” Tristan had the boldness to say.

  Isobel stopped, her back to him, her shoulders stiffening when he passed her and reached for the door. Oh, but he was a dauntless, determined fool. After a shocking moment passed without a single utterance from either of her brothers, she fisted her hands and stormed for the door.

  “Ye know I do not wish to speak to ye,” she paused to fire at him the instant they were alone in the hall.

  “Aye, ye’ve made that clear.”

  “Not clear enough, it seems.” She hiked her skirts up over her ankles to stay ahead of him on her way to the stairs.

  “Ye’re angry with me because of Tamas,” he said, keeping pace beside her.

  “Why ever would I be? Oh, wait, mayhap it was the ants ye put in his bed, or the mice, or the spiders. Or I could want to take out yer eye because of the whitewash ye smeared on yer face late at night so ye could frighten him witless when he opened his eyes, believing the angel of death stood at his bedside.”

  “He thinks he is fearless.”

  Isobel stopped to glare at him while he smiled at the recollection. “And ye are determined to prove to him that he is not. Ye said ye were different from yer kin, but all I see is a man taking revenge on a child.”

  She hoped to see some guilt in his eyes, perhaps a glimmer of doubt about his tactics, but he remained untouched and coolly replied, “Then close yer eyes and allow me to save his life before ye have another Alex on yer hands.”

  She spun on her heel, not wanting to hear his logic, and reached for the banister. His arm curling around her waist stopped her. His warm breath against her nape sapped her of her anger and sent titillating fissures to the pit of her belly. He had told her that he admired her will to hate him, but she did not hate him. When had she stopped? She wasn’t even truly angry with him about his treatment of Tamas. She knew now, locked in his arms, that she had stayed away from him because she was afraid of what he had the power to make her do… if she allowed it.

  “When will ye begin to trust me, Isobel?”

  “Never.”

  He turned her in his arms, keeping her body pressed close to his. She arched her back, afraid of his closeness and how it made her want to cast her caution to the four winds. He followed, bending over her, his eyes searching hers with a desperation that tore her defenses to shreds and made her blood burn.

  “Verra well then, but shun me nae more. I would rather hear ye revile me all day long than pretend I dinna’ exist.”

  Dear God, was it her own heart or his thrashing against her chest? How could a savage speak so eloquently and with such humility? How could he mean her harm when he’d protected her from every threat beginning with Alex at Whitehall? He wasn’t like his kin. He couldn’t be.

  When he lowered his face to hers, Isobel closed her eyes, giving in to the exhilarating memory of his kisses.

  He traced his lips over the hollow of her throat, inhaling her as intimately as any lover had the right to do. She trembled in his arms as her defenses fell away and her mouth sought his with a desperate need of her own. With one hand splayed across the small of her back and the other cradling her nape, he licked his way up her throat. Was this her writhing in a MacGregor’s arms? She didn’t care. She cupped his face in her hands, tunneled her fingers through his hair, tugging him closer. Their lips collided with a mutual moan of delight. Isobel opened to his plunging tongue and surprised him with a lick of her own. She might doubt many things about him, but his skill at kissing was not one of them.

  Just when she decided to allow herself to fully enjoy this moment, the door to the sitting room opened. She leaped away from Tristan’s embrace, but he snatched her hand and pulled her into the dark kitchen.

  They listened, their hearts beating hard against each other’s chest, while Patrick and Cameron spoke softly to each other on their way up the stairs.

  “Walk with me ootside.” Tristan’s breath fell over her cheek in the shadows even before her brothers disappeared.

  She shook her head, too aware of the thrill he presented every time they were together not to be wary of it.

  “I… I am betrothed.” Oh, she hated speaking it aloud. “We should not be alone.”

  “We’re alone right now.” The laughter in his voice as he pulled her toward the front door tempted her to follow wherever he led her. “Ye have my vow to be a perfect gentleman.”

  Did she dare trust him, even in this small thing? She smiled and followed him out of the house.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  They walked together beneath the gentle radiance of the full moon. Neither of them spoke for a little while, stilled by the beauty of the earth and the heavens bathed in silver, and the awkward comfort of their entwined fingers.

  Tristan’s gaze slid to Isobel beside him. He missed arguing with her, smiling at her and seeing her smile back. She had put him through hell these last few days, and he understood why, but that hadn’t made her disregard any easier to bear. She wasn’t angry with him anymore though, about Tamas, or about his kissing her again. Hell, she’d kissed him back this time, and he would be damned if her mouth wasn’t just as hungry for him as his was for her. Looking at her, he wondered
if he would be damned anyway for touching her, for pulling those delightful little groans from her mouth that gave him hope of finally winning her favor. He didn’t intend to remain here with her. He was fond of her, more so than any lass before her. He wanted to prove to her that he was not the barbarian she had called him and his kin in England. He wanted to repair the damage he’d caused in her life and mayhap regain some honor in his. He didn’t want to love her. He didn’t know if he even could. What purpose would it serve to love a lass who belonged to another? If he loved her, losing her would tear away what remained of his heart.

  But how was he going to keep his word and not touch her when the sight of her, the taste of her drove him mad with desire for more?

  “Ye never told me if the uncle who taught ye his favored tales was Robert Campbell.”

  Tristan blinked his gaze away from her when she looked at him, unprepared for the topic she presented. “Aye, ’twas him.”

  “I ask ye,” she went on softly, “because ye said ye would show me who ye are and I want to know. I need to know. Was it his stories ye loved so much, or him?”

  He’d asked her to trust him. First, he knew he must trust her.

  “He was the men in his stories, Isobel. He lived his life the way every man should.”

  She closed her eyes, shielding him from the pain and regret he saw there. “Then I am sorry he is gone from this world.”

  He smiled at her moonlit face. “As am I.”

  “I do not wish to bring him up and cause ye sorrow.”

  He stopped and, turning to her, he lifted his fingers to a bronze tendril sweeping across her cheek in the cool night air. She opened her eyes again and looked into his.

  “His memory doesna’ cause me sorrow. I have hardly spoken of him to anyone in many years, and that has caused me greater pain.”

  Her gaze on him softened and suspended his breath. “I would like to hear of him, then,” she told him, covering his hand with hers.

  “Verra well,” he replied, turning his hand around hers and bringing it to his lips. “I shall tell ye.” Curling his fingers through hers, he let their hands drop between them as they began walking again. “I dinna’ know why he favored me. My brother Rob carries his name, not I. Mayhap ’twas because he wanted me to live up to the name I had been given.” He smiled softly to himself, surprised at how easily the words spilled off his tongue. “He invited me to spend my summer months with him and his wife at Campbell Keep, and there he trained me to be like him. That became my home.”

  “He became a father to ye,” she said, recalling the words he’d first used to describe the earl to her. “Was yer true father so terrible, then?”

  Tristan knew she probably didn’t want to hear anything good about the man who had killed her father, but he wanted her to understand that he was not spawned from some bloodthirsty monster who killed without provocation. “My faither was no’ terrible at all. He never treated any of his bairns poorly. He is simply cut from another mold. He, along with the rest of my kin, had to fight in order to protect what was rightfully theirs. My faither became what was necessary to keep his name alive.”

  She was quiet for a time while they walked together toward the hills and the tree line beyond, and then, as if she knew exactly who he was, she turned to him and asked, “How did a gallant little boy fit in with men who knew only battle and bloodshed?”

  “I never belonged in Camlochlin,” Tristan admitted quietly. “And after my uncle died it felt like there was nae more place fer me in the world. After he died, I stopped carin’ if I ever found my place again.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I loved him and what he taught me more than anything I have ever loved in my life…”

  … There are many moments in a man’s life when the choices he makes will decide his destiny.

  “… And in a moment of anger, an instant of allowin’ my prideful MacGregor blood to rule me, I destroyed it all. So I turned my back on my uncle’s code and on my faither’s.”

  When they came to the trees, she stopped and turned to him. “How did ye destroy it?”

  He studied the shape of her, lithe and very feminine against a backdrop of stars. His body trembled for an instant, racked with desire to sweep her into his arms, tell her everything she wanted to know, and then kiss her until she believed him. He didn’t want to fall in love with her, but any man who didn’t was a fool.

  “I fought with Alex.”

  Tears spilled down her face, and through the haze of milky moonlight her eyes shone like twin seas. He wanted to plunge deep inside them, cleanse himself in the cool spring of renewal only she could offer. “Ye blame yerself fer his death then? Tristan, tell me please if ye have come here to avenge it. I understand now what he meant to ye…”

  His heart wrenched at the fear in her voice. He lifted his hand to cleanse her of her tears. When she pulled away, he moved toward her, unable to keep away another instant.

  “Isobel, ’tis because of what he meant to me that I didna’ avenge him.”

  “I am sorry my father took him from ye. He… he had been drinking that night. I did not know what he meant to do. I was a child. We all were.”

  She didn’t want him to blame himself, and for now, he would do as she asked. “Aye, we were innocent children.” He cupped her face in his hands and dipped his mouth to hers.

  “Yes,” she breathed across his lips.

  She closed her eyes and parted her lips, smashing to bits his resolve to remain gallant. Slipping one hand behind her thick tresses and the other down her back, he gathered her in and captured her sweet breath with a kiss.

  They met at the tree line, beneath the stars and the slow-waning moon, every night for a full week. They spoke about their pasts and the dreams that had pushed them to go on during their most difficult days. Isobel told him her worst fears and her deepest hopes for her brothers’ futures—things she had never shared with a single soul before him, not even Patrick. Of course, she did not tell him everything, but during their nightly visits she began to trust that his coming to her home had nothing to do with his uncle. At least not in the way she had feared.

  After their first walk together had ended in Tamas’s room, she had even completely forgiven Tristan for his treatment of the youngest Fergusson.

  He’d taken her to the edge of Tamas’s bed, where they sat together waiting for the dawn. She listened in silence while he admitted to her brother that he had taken Tamas’s missing sling, and that in order for Tamas to regain it, he would have to earn it. She remained as still as Tristan when her brother began to wail at her, and then when he flung his small feet over the side of the bed. Tristan had reached him first when he stumbled on his weakened legs, and she watched, her wary heart softening, while he took his time helping Tamas walk around the room.

  She was certain that at least some of her brothers were aware of her and Tristan’s secret meetings, but none of them objected, despite her being betrothed. Like her, they seemed to have forgotten all about Andrew Kennedy.

  Until, as unexpectedly as a summer rain, he and Annie arrived at their door.

  Isobel could have smashed her heaviest pot over Patrick’s head when she saw them stepping into her dining room. The moment Andrew’s eyes met hers, she knew she could never marry him. He smiled at her, glad enough to see her there in the kitchen doorway, but his eyes lacked the luster and the spark that Tristan’s possessed when he entered a room and saw her in it.

  “I hope we are not imposing,” Andrew said, more to Patrick than to her.

  “Do not fret, Andrew,” Isobel said, wiping her hands on her apron. “We will all simply eat less so that ye can dine with us.”

  “Ye see?” Annie slapped her brother’s shoulder. “I told ye it was poor manners to arrive uninvited and unannounced.”

  “The reason we did,” Andrew hastily explained, “is that auld Edward the Tanner came by our land two days ago and told us that he met a man on the road a while back who asked him
where to find the Fergussons. I grew concerned. Tanner said he was a Highlander.”

  “Yes, he”—Patrick began, but then stopped again when Tristan appeared in the doorway—“is most certainly a Highlander. Tristan, this is Andrew Kennedy, Isobel’s betrothed, and his sister, Annie.”

  “Isobel’s betrothed!” The resounding crunch of Tristan’s teeth biting into his apple behind her made Isobel cringe. “How fortunate fer ye.”

  Andrew nodded and reached out his hand as if she were in some terrible danger from which he meant to deliver her. Annie said nothing. She simply gaped at Tristan until Isobel wanted to slap her.

  “Andrew.” Isobel narrowed her eyes on him. “Ye were concerned fer our safety, so ye brought yer sister along?”

  “Och, but she’s a clever, intuitive wee wife to be, is she no’, Kennedy?” Tristan said proudly and then stepped around her when he spotted Tamas making his slow way down the stairs from his room. “God smiles doun upon ye.”

  Annie’s large, dreamy eyes followed him, dipping to his clingy breeches as he passed her. “He does not look like a Highlander,” she said with a little sigh. Isobel cursed his plaid and the fact that he rarely wore it, preferring to don his more English attire.

  Andrew’s cool gaze lingered on him as well. “Should I have brought a troop of my kinsmen for one man?”

  “If he meant to harm us,” John pointed out, already seated in the chair at the table. “It would not have been enough.”

  “Oh?” Andrew arched a doubtful brow while he studied Tristan helping Tamas down the last step. “And exactly what kind of threat would he pose without a sword at his belt?”

  Oh, Lord. Isobel shook her head at the ceiling and smacked her thigh. It was going to be a difficult evening. Andrew was clearly riled by Tristan’s presence. Then again, what man wouldn’t feel inferior in the same room with him? And while Tristan’s amicable smile never wavered, she knew him enough to know that it was not genuine. Before another challenge was offered that Tristan might be tempted to answer, she shooed Andrew to the table.