A Very Highland Holiday - Kathryn Le Veque Page 0,43
to a proprietress like that.”
Gordie leaned even closer, forcing her to bend over backward to escape him, which caused her to bump into Priestly. “I’d rather you were beneath me.”
“I beg your pardon!” she huffed. She’d been heckled before, but not so publicly. Nor so rudely.
“Really, Gordie, don’t be vulgar; we’re sharing a room in this shitehole, there’s not privacy at all.”
Gordie’s suggestive expression caused the gorge in Vanessa’s stomach to rise into her throat. “We can share other things. We’ve done it before.” He raked her with a glare miraculously overflowing with both disdain and desire. “Woman like her will let you put it anywhere you like.”
Before he even finished his last word, her entire bowl of stew lurched from the table and was heaved into his face, the scalding gravy latching onto his skin.
A shrill scream erupted from him as he clawed at himself, trying to wipe it off.
Vanessa’s hands were still clenched at her sides. She’d never even reached for the bowl.
She looked across the bar at Bess in time to see that the whisky bottle she’d retrieved was snatched from Bess’s hands and smashed over Priestly’s head. The jagged neck hung in the air as if brandished by an invisible hand, ready to plunge into the man’s throat.
“Sweet Christ in heaven.” Bess crossed herself and made a few other signs against evil as well.
It was her ghost. Even though she couldn’t see him, there was no denying it.
“John,” Vanessa gasped into the empty air next to the floating bottle. “Johnathan, don’t.”
The bottle dropped.
Priestly turned on her. “You putrid slag! You’re worth no more than a—”
His entire body flew back as if it had crumpled. He landed on the table by the fireplace, splintering it and scattering half a dozen drunk and slightly dozing Douglasses.
The highlanders launched into action, leading with their fists, assuming, no doubt, they’d nearly missed a tavern brawl.
Gordie managed to wipe mutton out of his eyes in time to catch a fist to the jaw, dropping him to the floor immediately.
Vanessa whirled to Bess, who wiped her hands on her apron and reached beneath the bar. “Go back to yer room, dearie. I’ll restore order here.” When she extracted a plank the size of an oar, Vanessa quickly retreated. She passed Balthazar on her way, grinning and rolling up his sleeves as if eager to join the fray.
Picking up her skirts, she ran to her room, dove inside, then shut and locked the door behind her.
Her skin burning with humiliation, she went to the window and threw it open, letting the cold air steal her breath in a welcome blast.
Johnathan appeared, his color heightened and sharpened as his entire form slammed into the room like a mountain of muscle and wrath. “Those bog-faced sons of a whore! Were I myself, I’d wrench his arm from his socket and beat him to death with it, and then I’d decapitate his friend just so I could piss into the empty cavity where his spine used to be.”
“Please, calm down.” Vanessa let out a few shaken puffs into the blizzard, pressing her freezing hands to her burning cheeks as the storm pricked her with crystals of ice.
She could stand it no longer than a few seconds, so she wrestled the window closed and latched it.
John paced the length of the bed next to her, his fists white with unspent rage. “Are all gentlemen in this age such smarmy, weak-limbed dandies? Makes one wonder how many cousins had to fornicate to produce such a slithering strop of a rubbish heap and call it a man. I have a few regrets in my life, and my afterlife, but not slicing him open with that bottle is going straight to the top.”
Even as she pressed her forehead to the cool windowpane, she fought a sad little smile at his vehemence. “Yes, well, none of that was necessary, but thank you all the same.”
“He called you a slag!” John roared.
“It doesn’t matter,” she whispered, her breath spreading in an opaque circle in front of her.
Even though his motions made no noise, she could sense that he stopped pacing. “Doesn’t. Matter?” he said with a great deal of emphasis on all the T’s.
She closed her eyes. “I’ve been called that and worse. I’m used to it.”
“How is that bloody possible?” he thundered. “You’re…well you’re—”
“I’m ruined,” she said gently, finally gathering the strength to turn around.
She had expected to see him be incredulous, but not his head cocked to the side in