Free Snowy Night with a Highlander by Julia London Page B

them munching away, he draped them each with horse blankets.
    Satisfied that the horses would huddle together and survive the night, Duncan returned to the wagon and fetched the pail of food Mrs. Dillingham had made for them. He also dug out a flask of whisky from beneath a sack of grain and leaned down, tucking it inside his boot.
    He had a feeling that being trapped in a small shelter with an attractive, alluring woman might make this the longest night of his life, and he was going to need every bit of help he could get.

Chapter Seven

    F iona was relieved to see Duncan when he emerged from the gray mist that was settling around them, a fur rug draped over his shoulder, the pail of food in hand. He’d been gone long enough that she’d begun to fret something had happened to him.
    But then again, she’d noticed today that things were not easy for a man with a wounded arm.
    She stepped out from beneath the tarpaulin to relieve him of the pail. He followed her underneath the cover and shrugged out from underneath the rug, letting it fall between them.
    Fiona glanced at the fur as she kneeled down and began to remove the straw Mrs. Dillingham had packed into the pail. “Only one?”
    “You’re sitting on the other,” he said as he squatted down and added more wood to the fire.
    The import of that statement slowly sank in—there was only one rug for the two of them to use to cover themselves, one rug between the two of them and nature’s icy grip.
    The idea that they’d have to share a lap rug, while entirely titillating, was also alarming. There had been that moment at the back of the wagon in which Fiona actually feared she might have kissed this Highlander had his face not been wrapped in woolen scarves.
    She was courting disaster—she might be in the Highlands with no one about to observe her ruin, but that didn’t mean she’d be any less ruined if she gave in to temptation.
    “What is it?” he asked.
    Startled, Fiona looked at him, then down at her hands. She was holding two rock-hard scones.
    “Perhaps if you put them near the fire,” he said, as if she were undecided as to what to do with them.
    She quickly put them on a rock near the fire and looked into the pail again.
    It hardly mattered that there was only one rug between them—the space was so small that she couldn’t help but lie or sit beside him in this tiny shelter. Lord God, how did she get herself into such predicaments? It very much reminded her of the time that she and Lady Gilbert had taken it upon themselves to climb up to the old ruins on the Gilbert estate. But the ruins were not where Lady Gilbert had believed them to be, and they’d become lost in a stand of aspens. It had begun to rain, and without a proper umbrella between them, the two of them had been forced to crouch together in a tiny little cave. It was so cramped that they’d become rather cross with one another. It was a fortnight before they’d patched things up.
    Fiona had learned a valuable lesson that day—in times of turmoil, people either came together or were torn apart.
    “Is something amiss?” he asked, his voice low and gruff.
    “Amiss? No, no—I was just having a look at the pail.” She pulled out a hunk of cheese wrapped in cloth. There were apples and nuts, too, in addition to the bread and ham. She handed the ham to Duncan, who speared the meat on the end of a stick and stuck it near the fire to warm it.
    They ate in silence, both of them staring out at the white landscape, huddled in their cloaks. But the cold was seeping through the hay and the fur on which they sat, making Fiona’s bones ache.
    Seated on her left, Duncan watched her hold her gloved hands out to the fire. “You are cold.”
    “I’m no’.”
    He gave her a look that said he knew better. “I can see you shivering, lass.”
    “Shivering?” She tried to laugh. “I am no’ shivering. I am . . .” Honestly, she couldn’t think of an excuse. She was shivering.
    Duncan removed