Page 50 of Sinful Scottish Laird
“I’ll take my leave,” Cailean muttered.
Daisy didn’t try to dissuade him. “At least let me see you out.” She held out her arm as if to show him the way to the door.
Her stride was brisk; she said nothing as they walked through the lodge to the front drive. When they reached the portico, she paused, turned to him and put her hand to his arm. “You didn’t tell me you knew him,” she said, her voice accusatory.
“I donna know him. I know of him.”
“You drew aknifeon him!”
“Before he put his sword through my gut, Daisy.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded. “I toldyouthe truth. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Diah,I didna expect to ever encounter the man face-to-face, aye? I didna see a reason to distress you. Why is he here?”
“Itoldyou,” she said, clearly annoyed with him.
“No, I meanhere.Do you no’ think it a wee bit strange that he would take the risk of coming into the Highlands, where he might assume he has enemies?”
“No!” She pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know,” she said. “How can I possibly know? I’ve only just been reacquainted with him, Cailean.”
He sighed and ran his hand over the top of his head. This was not his concern. He ought to be happy that she had found someone to marry, someone she could accept. He ought to go, be happy he was leaving with his throat intact. But he felt only the air shattering around him like a thin sheet of ice, falling into nothing. This...affair? Friendship? It had come to its inevitable end. He started to move, but he paused and glanced at her, at the pear-green eyes, the shine gone from them at the moment. “Donna make a hasty decision, aye?” he said softly. “Heed me—there is something peculiar about his appearance.”
“Don’t advise me,” she said, throwing her hand up. “Don’t tell me what I should do.”
He said nothing. So many things were flitting through his head that he couldn’t actually grasp any coherent thought, except one—he did not want to leave her with Spivey.
They stood in awkward silence a moment, lost in their own thoughts. Daisy clasped her hands before her, and she kept her head down, as if she were truly interested in the pebble she was toeing about.
What was he to do? Whisk her away from Spivey? And then what—return her to England to find someone just as... English? And a noose waiting for him?What alternative for her was there? He couldn’t put it to rights, and his presence had made it worse.
Cailean had let this go too far between them, had allowed himself to delve too deeply into their acquaintance. He groaned—the time had come for him to leave it be. A swell of disappointment, tasting of bitter dismay, rose to the back of his throat.
He touched her face, his fingers lingering, forcing her to look up at him. Her eyes swam with regret that he couldn’t make sense of. Did she regret him? Spivey? The unfortunate altercation on the terrace? “Be happy, Daisy,” he said. “Now and forevermore.”
She pressed her lips together. He dropped his hand and turned away from her, walking briskly across the drive, headed for the path through the woods that would take him to Arrandale.
As he stepped into the shadows of the wooded path, he realized that as the trees had swallowed the sunlight, so would her departure swallow the bit of sunshine over Auchenard. And in its place, a dark cloud would hang.
* * *
THEREWASAsmall fishing hamlet on the road to Balhaire, and on the edge of that hamlet was a cottage in the forest where every man in the Highlands knew he might slake his thirst. To the outside world, the women who inhabited that cottage were sisters, drawn together by some familial tragedy.
They were not sisters, but no matter, their stories were a mystery to Cailean. They lived on a patch of land with a wee bit of livestock and a robust garden. They were hardy women, too, all of them big-boned and strong, accustomed to the sort of Highlanders who came down from the hills to call on them.
Against his better judgment, Cailean stopped there on his way to Balhaire. He felt in desperate need of a distraction—anything to take his mind from Daisy. He’d been at odds with himself for two days now, since Captain Spivey had come to Auchenard. Cailean’s imagination had gotten the best of him, holding him captive and torturing him with unwanted images of Daisy in that bloody wooden box of a potting shed with her one and only true love.
They were images that could be tamped down with hard work and determination.
In those moments Cailean managed a small victory over those thoughts, his own desires rushed to the forefront of his mind. He found himself remembering the moment she’d found her release, the feel of her fingers digging quite painfully into his shoulders. She was with him in every moment of the day. Her mouth, ripe and wet from his kiss, accompanied him to fish in the mornings. Her hair, braided and fragrant, filled his nostrils as he cleaned a hare.
Everything he did to try to ignore her only made the images of her grow and bloom and press against his flesh and bones, reminding him of just how bloody long it had been since he’d been in the company of a woman.
Cailean had finally determined he had to do something or lose his fool mind, if it hadn’t been lost already. He commanded Fabienne to wait and strode into the cottage in the woods, prepared to release the demons from his body.
Unfortunately, he knew the moment he stepped across the threshold into the low-ceilinged room with the smell of burned peat and unwashed man permeating the air, and the women flocking around him, cooing over his physique, that he would find no relief here. Not for this fever.
One of them lifted her skirts so that he could plainly see her sturdy legs and the dark patch between them. Another cupped her breasts with her hands and bit her lower lip.
