returned to your father,” he began, rushing the words before his tongue refused to form them, “I can perhaps find a suitable husband for you. A man of good standing who’d welcome a widowed gentlewom—”
“I do not wish a husband, either. Indeed, that is the
last
thing I desire.” She bristled, pinning him with a piercing stare, the gold flecks in her irises glinting in the firelight.
Glinting, and changing color, the startling illusion giving the impression that her eyes were of purest, liquid amber and not the disturbingly familiar jewel-green of another woman’s eyes.
Lying eyes.
Narrowing on him from his own past and chilling him, their treacherous depths prickling his nape and sending shudders down his spine. Icy shivers to mind him of old mistakes and follies and warn him to be wary.
To guard his heart and ignore the hunger
this
green-eyed minx roused in him.
The fierce urge to touch, taste, and have her.
And most disturbing of all, the absurd notion that she among all women might be different.
Chapter Six
N ot quite a sennight later, Kenneth accepted defeat.
The futility of fighting his attraction to Lady Mariota, the foolhardiness of thinking he could guard his heart.
Truth was, his store of inventive reasons for avoiding her was near depleted. Not that a single one had worked well in the first place. Indeed, no matter what task he’d sought or what corner of the castle he’d made his own, she’d found him.
Or, far more galling, he’d found himself looking for her.
And then suffered heart pangs and other unmentionable
ailments
so soon as he caught sight of her.
Even now, this gathering of his men, arranged a full ungodly hour before cockcrow, only proved the severity of his predicament. And an earnest meeting it was—called to discuss procuring cattle.
Yet rather than focus on the matter at hand, he’d barely downed his first cup of morning ale before he began scanning the shadows and peering about the torch-lit great hall, hoping to spot a flash of bright, coppery hair.
Or unexpectedly breathe in her perfume, an intoxicatingly fresh scent that always seemed to float on the air, heralding her arrival a split second before she came into view.
But this morning he only smelled ale, somewhat stale bannocks, and . . . the sharp edge of young Jamie’s nervousness.
Saints, but the lad was crowding him!
“To be sure, sir,” the youth was saying just now, his eyes bright with eagerness, “such is a well-trusted remedy. The reason my da has the finest cattle in the land.”
Kenneth frowned and reached for his ale cup, taking a moment to thrust aside any wayward thought that might make his heart hammer and his blood . . . thicken.
Young James of the Heather, tenth son of a lesser Macpherson chieftain, but most times called Jamie the Small, sat beside him at the high table, scratching Cuillin’s shaggy head, and hoping his liege laird’s darkening brow didn’t mean he’d taken offense.
Jamie’s throat went a bit dry at the possibility. He hadn’t meant to press his suit quite so urgently.
But certain aches rode him hard and encouraging the new Keeper to purchase Macpherson cattle would go a long way in raising Jamie’s worth in the eyes of a father who scarce recalled his existence.
Kenneth MacKenzie, at least, noted his presence and kept an open ear.
“Ha—what you do not say, Jamie lad,” he finally spoke, his brow clearing. “’Tis true enough I wouldn’t mind avoiding the journey to the great cattle tryst at Crieff come the spring, and I’d be even less eager to travel so far south as Falkirk if the beasts at Crieff proved lacking. But cattle kept hale through the winter? And by fairy magic?”
Jamie shifted on the trestle bench. “Begging pardon, sir, but I said my father uses an ancient Highland remedy to safeguard our cattle in the lean months. ’Tis no witchy magic, nay.”
“And what might that be?” Sir Lachlan put in, his voice level and reassuring.
Even
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