A Very Highland Holiday - Kathryn Le Veque Page 0,61
came to a halt next to Fiona, pretending to warm his hands at the fire. His heart thumped with Fiona’s nearness, the fire nothing to the slow heat that churned through his body.
It had been so long since he’d seen her, touched her, simply enjoyed her presence. He’d dreamed of her, the image of her face, her smile keeping him from the very bottom of despair.
“What are ye doing here, lass?” Stuart asked in a quiet voice.
“What are you?” Fiona’s answer came as quietly. She rested her mug on her lap. “You’re alive, I see.”
“Aye. Barely.”
“What happened to ye?”
“A guest of his majesty.” Stuart shrugged, trying to maintain the stance of a servant who mooched along after Gair and Padruig. “Then France.”
Fiona’s eyes widened slightly. She had the loveliest eyes, green like jade in sunlight, which set off her very dark hair. He saw her realization that he’d been a prisoner—and she’d never know all of that horror if Stuart could help it. Escaped by the skin of his teeth—and with the help of the Mackenzie brothers—over the Channel to France. He’d rested and recovered there, but he’d soon longed to be back in Scotland, and so had hunted up the expert smugglers Gair and Padruig, and hired them to provide him passage.
“Ye should have stayed.” Fiona’s voice was barely above a whisper.
Did she mean in Paris or prison? Stuart let the corner of his mouth pull into a half smile. “Missing home.”
“Home isn’t safe.”
“Is it safe for you?” Stuart countered.
He saw the flinch Fiona tried to hide, though Una didn’t bother to smother her scowl. Not much older than Fiona, Una had the flaxen hair of a Viking and the demeanor to match. She guarded Fiona like a lioness. For that, Stuart would forgive her scowls.
“Safe enough,” Fiona said. “The soldiers don’t always stop a woman.”
“More fool they.” The greatest fault the Hanoverians had was to underestimate Scotswomen. The English kept their own women so sheltered and subdued they assumed their northern neighbors did the same. “I thought ye’d be on a ship heading across the seas.” Without your waste of a brother, he finished silently.
“Broc is ill,” Fiona said, the gleam in her eyes telling Stuart she knew what he was thinking. “He never recovered after his injury at Falkirk.”
“Does he still claim it was me who shot him?” Stuart allowed the smile to form.
Broc Macdonald, who’d stubbornly thrown in his lot with King Geordie, had suffered a leg wound at the Battle of Falkirk and had been carried, wailing, from the field. So Stuart had been told. He hadn’t witnessed the injury.
“Yes.” Fiona’s own smile flashed then vanished. “Though I told him ye couldn’t have.”
“Loyal woman.”
“’Tisn’t loyalty. I know the truth.”
Stuart barely heard her. Fiona’s smile transcended her drab garments, shawl, and the faded cap she wore under a broad-brimmed hat. The ensemble made her look like an ordinary farm woman, instead of the laird’s sister she was. Her beauty was like a breath of air in this musty place, returning the memory of her laughter, her quick wit, her sparkling eyes.
He recalled dancing with her in her brother’s house not long before Prince Teàrlach marched on Edinburgh, her warm hand in his, her lithe grace as they moved in the patterns of the reel.
He recalled her red lips that neared his as they turned, hand in hand, then moved tantalizingly out of reach. The kiss on the terrace after that, when he’d wrapped his plaid around her and warmed them both.
“Still,” Stuart made himself say, “kind of ye to put in a word for me.”
“You didn’t shoot him because you were keeping Duncan Mackenzie alive.” Fiona’s sudden frown almost matched Una’s in severity. She hadn’t liked Duncan’s recklessness and had feared he’d be Stuart’s death. Duncan had perished on Culloden Moor, the poor bastard. He’d had all the arrogance but not the quick thinking of his younger brothers.
“For my sins.” Stuart leaned closer, returning to the pretense of warming his hands. “But what are ye doing here, lass? In the middle of nowhere the day before Christmas Eve?”
Fiona glanced behind Stuart and folded her lips. Hmm. She didn’t want to say in front of anyone who might hear. He saw none but Highlanders in the room, but one couldn’t be certain which way any man’s loyalty lay.
If she were any other lady, Stuart would shrug and not pursue it. But this was Fiona Macdonald, and she never did anything not worth learning about. He’d have the