A Highland Folly Page 9

  Fearfully she backed away, no longer caring that her neighbors were watching. She could not let Lucais beguile her as he had in the sheep barn. A single touch would bring forth the enchantment. If she allowed that, she feared she would be lost.

  Anice struck a hard form. The hardening of Lucais’s smile warned who stood behind her.

  “Why don’t you leave Lady Kinloch alone?” Sir Busby asked.

  “Mayhap she does not want to be left alone.” Lucais’s smile did not waver.

  “Can’t you tell when a lady doesn’t want your company, MacFarlane?” He tried to step past Anice in the narrow space between the chairs.

  Putting her hand on Sir Busby’s arm, Anice said, “Don’t argue with him! He wants to disrupt this meeting, and you’re playing right into his hands.” She looked at Lucais. “Why don’t you leave before someone gets hurt?”

  Lucais folded his arms over his chest. “I had understood this was a public meeting, open to all. No one said anything about closing it to me and my crew.”

  “Then I am saying so!” Sir Busby retorted. “Begone, before you make one of us forget we are in the pastor’s house.”

  “If you think—”

  Anice did not wait for Lucais’s threat. Enough had been said. Afraid that her words would condemn her once and for all, she knew she must end this. “Lucais, leave! Please! This is not the time or place to air your opinions.”

  Brazenly Lucais put a finger beneath her chin, tipping it up so she could not escape his intense gaze. “Only because you asked.”

  For a moment, she feared he would bring her lips to his. Then she was horrified to realize she feared even more that he would not. With a cool smile, he nodded a farewell to Sir Busby, and to Reverend Dole, who was watching, appalled. He left a rumble of angry and confused conversation in his wake.

  Anice heeded none of it. Gripping the back of the chair beside her, she tried to slow her breathing. She was sure she had not taken a single breath while Lucais’s fingertip caressed her chin. The luscious, perilous pleasure enticed her to him. This was a madness beyond imagination. She raised her head to look around the room. She recoiled before the recriminating rage aimed at her.

  Wanting to say something to calm the room, Anice knew no one would believe now that she had urged Lucais to stay away. She pushed past Sir Busby as she flung her shawl over her shoulder.

  “Are you with us?” Sir Busby called after her.

  Her steps faltered. Turning, she said, “I am with you in your fury about how Mr. McNab was treated.”

  “And about stopping the bridge from being built?”

  “My mind has not been changed on that matter.” She did not add that she was as uncertain about it as she had been from the beginning.

  She gave him no time to answer as she rushed out of the minister’s house and toward the path leading up to Ardkinloch. Staring up at the first stars poking through the night, she wished she could seek the sanctuary of the cottage on the brae tonight. She needed time to unravel the confused thoughts cluttering her head.

  “Racing away from your charming neighbors, Anice?”

  She stopped, not astonished to see Lucais sitting on a rock that gave him a good view of the village. He must have been waiting for her. “No, I am hurrying home to speak with my family.” When she started past him, he put out his hand to halt her.

  She edged around it. “How dare you!”

  He caught her arm and spun her to face him. “How dare I what, Anice? Not fight for what I believe in? I care about the road and the good it could bring to this valley.”

  “I know.” Her voice became a whisper. “I know that.” She closed her eyes. “It would be so much easier if I did not see your side of this, too.”

  “Then help me convince them, Anice.”

  “No, I cannot do that.” She raised her gaze to his shadowed eyes. “Mayhap if I had not heard what Mr. Potter said to Mr. McNab—”

  His oath startled her, for she had never heard him speak so. When he demanded that she tell him what had happened, she explained. His next curse was even more bitter. “If I did not know better, I would say Potter is the best ally the villagers could have.”

  “You should all leave Killiebige.”

  “If that’s how you feel,” he murmured as he released her, “good night, Anice.”

  “Good night?” She had been certain he would argue further.

  “’Tis clear that nothing I can say or do will change your mind to make you see sense.”

  “Nor will I be able to change your mind to make you see sense.”

  “A stalemate.”

  She sighed and nodded, rubbing her suddenly cold hands together. “Certainly not a truce.”

  He took her hand and raised her fingers to his lips. He kissed them lightly. When they trembled, his smile broadened. “Is it possible that you and I cannot be enemies?”

  She stared at him but could not see his face to gauge his expression in the shadows. “We have never been enemies. We just do not agree on some things.”

  “But we agree on other things.” Again he pressed his lips to her hand. “We agree that this is very pleasurable.”

  “Do we agree as well that you should refrain from such forwardness?” She hoped her cold tone would hide her eager reaction to his touch.

  He laughed and kissed her cheek swiftly. “You are right, Anice. There are some things we disagree on now. Mayhap I can convince you to change your mind.”

  She stared after him as he walked down the hill. Her fingers rose to brush her cheek, which had been set ablaze by his kiss. It had been a battle of wills between them from the start, but now she must contend with her heart, which urged her into his arms.

  That was a struggle she feared she was doomed to lose.

  Eight

  Lucais stood on the crest of ridge and watched the dust rise from the work on the road. A rigid expression stiffened his lips. Brushing his hand over a lichen-embroidered boulder, he sat on it and viewed the work objectively.

  It was going well. On this side of the river, the passage along the hillside was beginning to resemble a road. Trees were being felled as men graded the steep bank. Everything was going well as the road followed the edge of the Kinloch property. Everything was going well. Now.

  He shook his head. How could he persuade Potter to consider all the ramifications of the orders his assistant gave? A week’s work had been saved only because another of the men had noticed what Potter had overlooked. If the gunpowder had been lit, it might have sent an area they needed for one of the bridge supports right into the river, changing its course and wrecking any hopes of building the bridge here.

  Potter had argued that he was being undermined by both the men who were jealous of his position and by the villagers who wanted to destroy the project. Lucais had listened, had the blasting area realigned, and then had supervised the rest of the day’s work himself, determined that the project would not come to such a humiliating end.

  Lucais tapped his fingers on the rock. Anice was willing to consider that the road and the bridge might benefit Killiebige, although she had not been able to persuade her cousins to be as sensible. Mayhap the cooler heads in the village would heed her if she suggested that they open their minds.

  “Not likely,” he grumbled as he watched the navvies smoothing the roadbed.

  Lucais wandered along the ridge, appraising, from up there, the rocks that needed to be removed. The sun burned through his thin shirt to burnish his shoulders with heat. Wafting upward from the river, the breeze twisted its unseen fingers through his hair as he wished Anice would.

  Clasping his hands behind his back, he lengthened his steps. He must forget her enticing eyes and alluring lips. She was planted firmly in Scotland. He had escaped here once, and he would not be entrapped here by her sweet touch. His obligations could be fulfilled away from the Highlands.

  In spite of himself, he glanced along the river. Could that duty be shrugged off so easily? His father
never had believed that was so, and, after seeing Anice working hard to keep Ardkinloch from falling into chaos, he was no longer certain of that.

  Nothing was going as he had planned when life had seemed so simple and straightforward. An education at Oxford, work that he enjoyed, time in Town for a few flirtations, and then a wife when he had tired of his bachelor’s fare. He had managed the first two, but then the pattern for his life had gone awry.

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” Lucais mumbled to himself. “Anice wants you to leave.”

  When he glanced down the hill, he saw two forms on the hillside. From where he stood, he could identify them with ease. He watched as Anice laughed at something her cousin Parlan Kinloch must have said.

  Lucais watched as Kinloch strode away, heading toward Killiebige. “And seeking to cause more agitation among the malcontents in the village, no doubt.” He grimaced. Talking to himself would gain him nothing but proof that he was mad. And he could not let Potter’s distrust of the Scots influence him. He knew how right and how mistaken his assistant was.

  He locked his hands behind his back and continued along the ridge. Pretending that Kinloch’s troublemaking bothered him foremost was futile. Even more than he wished to curtail the pranks against the road crew, he yearned to convince Anice that she wanted him to kiss more than her fingers.

  Dashed woman! She invaded every thought. So perfectly she had fit in his arms when they stood in that cramped barn. The memory of her soft curves taunted him with endless fantasies.

  When he stepped onto a narrow path, a familiar bark greeted him, but Pippy did not move from where he sat beside a stone wall. A shadow draped over the dog, and Lucais smiled wryly. He should have guessed that where he could hear the distant clang of a sheep’s bell, both the llama and the dog would be found.

  Or were they guarding Anice? They never wandered far from her.

  The first of the hirsel edged around the corner. Hirsel! It had been a long time since he had heard the Scottish term for a flock of sheep. So many memories were stirring upon his return to Scotland, things he had thought long gone after he had remade his life in England.

  Bending, Lucais patted Pippy, but the dog watched the sheep trotting obediently down a path they must have taken many times. Lucais ignored the herd, staring instead at the bend in the road. He did not have to wait long.

  Anice paused in mid-step. The sun glittered off Lucais’s dark hair and outlined the strong lines of his chest through his thin shirt. With his sleeves rolled up, she could see his brawny arms were warmly bronzed. The sun was eye-wrenchingly bright off his polished boots.

  A flutter in her stomach refused to be ignored. When her gaze met the unfettered emotions in his eyes, the soft sensation became a tempest. It soared through her, stripping her of all thought but of touching him.

  She took a step toward him and stubbed her toe on a small rock. The throb of pain freed her from the enticement he had spun without a single word. Remembering her task, she waved a bushy branch at the straggling sheep. She held the gate open until the last one entered the field. Only then did she say, “Lucais, I did not expect to see you today.”

  He smiled. “I did not expect you kept this many as in-byes.”

  She knew that “in-byes” were the sheep kept close to the barn instead of out on the hill. Did he think to impress her with his Scottish cant? She was tempted to tell him that the use of such local words would not persuade the villagers to welcome his project.

  She walked through the gate, then closed it behind her before she sat on the wall. She longed to be closer to him but knew that would be foolish. “These are the ewes and their lambs. I’m keeping them here for another week or so because I am concerned with the loose rock up by Dhùin Liath. The blasting might loosen it.”

  “Loosen that?” He swung his legs to the other side of the stone fence so he could face her. “If you knew how much gunpowder it took simply to break a few inches through these ledges, you would not worry. The castle will be rubble before this hillside budges.”

  “My thoughts exactly, but Parlan has been fretting about this.”

  His eyes narrowed when she smiled. He had become too accustomed to Potter’s dense brain and sycophantic agreeing with whatever he said. “Your cousin would be very happy to have me concentrate on things other than the road and bridge.”

  Anice’s light expression vanished. “Parlan has strong opinions.”

  “You should advise him to watch his step when he is out late at night.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “You don’t?” He laughed, but there was more sarcasm than good humor in the sound. Putting his foot on the wall next to where she was sitting, he leaned toward her.

  “I can see that you have not improved your manners,” she replied. “You still think you can order me around like one of your navvies.”

  “I don’t want to order you to do anything. Well, that may not be the truth. There are a few things I would like to suggest to you. But just now I would like to have a civilized conversation with you.”

  Anice folded her arms in front of her and glared. “Civilized? How do you expect us to have a decent conversation if you resort to insults?”

  His voice remained serene. “It should not be considered an insult to ask you to warn your cousin to be careful.”

  “You said that before.” Anice searched Lucais’s face. His hooded eyes hid everything but the intensity lowering his brows. “Will you explain?”

  “It is simple. If Parlan Kinloch has been taking late night walks, he may be wandering into trouble.”

  “You should not accuse him when you do not have any proof.” She tried to stand, but he stubbornly refused to move aside.

  “I have seen all the damage done to my camp. Tools broken, barrels overturned, foodstuffs dragged through the dirt.”

  “And you blame Parlan?”

  “Would you rather I blame your beau Sir Busby?”

  “Beau? Lucais, I do not know where you get your odd ideas.”

  “Mayhap from seeing you all soft around him when you act as if you could catch the plague from my touch.” When a flush abruptly darkened his tan, he turned and walked away.

  She stared after him in amazement, knowing he had not meant to give voice to that opinion. She should be furious at him. How had he come to this conclusion? She had barely said a score of words to Sir Busby since the meeting at Reverend Dole’s house.

  She called, “Lucais, wait!”

  She was unsure if he would stop, but he paused and looked at her. Rising, she walked slowly to where he stood. Pippy followed, a low growl in his throat. Did the dog sense an anger in Lucais that she was missing? Searching his face, she recalled how her third stepfather, Boris, had become florid with rage. She looked up into Lucais’s eyes. He was not furious, just sorry that he had spoken the words that could not be unsaid, the words that revealed too clearly the craving both of them fought to ignore. Yet, each time their gazes met, the truth was visible.

  “Do you really believe Parlan is involved in the damage to the road camp?” she asked.

  His brows lowered. “Tell him and your good friend Sir Busby not to get involved in night sport that can cause real trouble.”

  “Lucais, I told you that Sir Busby and I are not—” When he grinned, she wished she had let him walk away.

  A finger under her chin tipped her face up toward his. Undisguised passion burned in his dark eyes. He was not jealous of just Sir Busby, but of any man who might touch her as he longed to do.

  As she longed for him to do.

  “Anice,” he said, his voice still taut, “you and Sir Busby are good friends. Are you his ally as well?”

  “You think,” she whispered, too shocked to speak more loudly, “that I have been part of the pranks against the road crews?” A low growl came from Pippy, but she paid the dog no attention. She pulled away from Lucais. “You are as much of a leatherhead as whoever has been causing the trouble.
I give up trying to disabuse you of your assumptions.”

  “Anice, discuss this with your cousin and the baronet.” He caught her shoulders but did not pull her to him. “Think with your head instead of with your heart. You must soothe the tempers around Killiebige before they erupt.”

  “Me?” She laughed, but the sound was hollow. “You were the one who disrupted the meeting at Reverend Dole’s house.”

  “Before they could vote on what it was rumored they would do.”

  “Rumored? What rumor?”

  Lucais’s strong hands gently framed her face. “Sweet innocent, I know you care about keeping the beauty of the Abhainn an Uruisg unspoiled by the bridge. But you don’t know what Parlan Kinloch and Sir Busby and their comrades have been discussing over a few pints. They brag about how they will run the road crew out of the valley. You know what that would mean.”

  “That the bridge would be delayed?” Jerking away, she put her hand on Pippy’s head as the dog whined again, low and deep in his throat.

  “No, ’tis more than that.” His face was as hard as the stones in the wall. “Haven’t you heard of the disaster on the Dee near Potarch? The lumbermen there threatened to crash logs into the supports of the bridge being built, and they were fined hundreds of pounds. Who could afford such fines in Killiebige?”

  “Why do you care?”

  His hands slipped along her shoulders as his voice became softer. “Anice, I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  Closing her eyes, she savored his fingers brushing her cheeks. A luscious fire burned through her. Suddenly she gasped and pulled away as Pippy’s growl became a sharp bark. Whirling, she saw sheep pouring through the gate that now was open.

  “Bonito!” she cried. “Pippy, get the sheep.” She rushed to help the dog shoo the sheep back into the pen. Hearing another shout, she saw Lucais waving his hands to herd the sheep toward her.

  She started laughing at his wild antics to contain the sheep that were trying to flee up the hill. “Thank you,” she said as he shoved the last bleating sheep back through the gate and shut it with a clang.