Julia London 4 Book Bundle (102 page)

Arthur made himself comfortable near the fire, his back propped against a tree and one leg stretched in front of him, the other bent at the knee. How long he sat, he had no idea, really, but it rather surprised him to realize that he actually enjoyed the peace and tranquility of this particular wilderness, this bit of solitude. There was nothing but the sounds of the woods—the scratching of tiny paws as squirrels chased one another around the trunk of a pine tree, or the limbs of the trees creaking as they settled under the weight of the changing night air. If he were a betting man, which he was, he’d wager Phillip’s debt that before the mist grew so thick he could no longer see a sliver of moon, Mrs. McKinnon would come walking into this little nook of the clearing, having given up on her ridiculous notion of a coach.

He heard the owl again, only closer now, and got up to gather a little more wood for the fire.

The sound of her shriek ripped through the peaceful evening like a knife. Arthur reacted without thinking, yanking his gun from the holster at his side as he raced into the clearing, trying desperately to see beyond the little ring of light his fire cast. He almost missed her hurtling toward him in that black bombazine, spotting the flash of her red satchel just as she plowed into him. She threw herself at him, threw her arms tightly around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder as he fought for balance.

“Robbers!”
she shrieked into his coat.

He held her trembling frame tightly to him as he
peered into the black. “Be still, be still now. Take a breath and tell me what you saw.”

She shook her head, knocking strands of lavender-scented hair into his mouth. “Not saw.
Heard.
I
heard
them!” she gasped, and leaned back from her death grip of him just enough to peer up at him with eyes as round as blue china saucers. “A-a crackling sound … a-and a whistle of a sort! I am certain they are just on the other side of the road!”

Crackling sounds. Arthur fought a smile. “Wait,” he whispered, pressing a finger to his lips to quiet her. She literally held her breath; her mouth was not two inches from his chin. After a moment, he heard the scratch of squirrels followed by the distant hoot of an owl. Mrs. McKinnon released her breath in one long sigh, right into his shoulder.

“Was that what you heard? A pair of squirrels, Mrs. McKinnon. The woods are teeming with them.” She said nothing; her arms slid from his neck. He stooped a little, tried to see her face. In the weak light of the fire, he could see that her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted, and her face deathly pale. He took pity on her, ran his hand soothingly down her back. “Would you like to sit with me for a time?”

She nodded, stepped away, and swept the back of her hand across her cheek in a self-conscious gesture. Arthur motioned toward the fire as he returned his pistol to its holster. “I was rather confused by the sound myself until I actually saw the little beasts,” he lied.

With a meek smile, Mrs. McKinnon stooped to retrieve her satchel, then moved wearily to the small fire, sinking in a cloud of black, her satchel on her lap. For the first time since their unfortunate meeting, he noticed how tired she looked. It must have been a harrowing day for her, alone out here in the middle of nowhere as she was.

He left her for just a moment to gather some wood,
then built the blaze up before propping himself against the tree again. Mrs. McKinnon dug through her satchel, her forehead furrowed in concentration. She had lost her bonnet somewhere, and her hair, the color of midnight, gleamed in the firelight, particularly the thick strands that had come loose from the prim bun at her nape.

She actually had a very pretty face, he thought as she put the satchel aside and placed a small red bundle on her lap. Not a great beauty, but nonetheless very pleasing to the eye. Her eyes were her most stunning feature, her nose cute and pert, her full lips the color of young plums … yes, very pretty, actually. He might even go so far as to say exceptionally pretty—

“Biscuits,” she said, working the knot of the bundle free. “May—my cousin—she packed them for me.” She laughed nervously, smoothed the side of her hair with her palm. “I suppose she thought I might go starving in Dundee.”

“So you’ve come from Dundee?” he asked, mildly curious as to what sort of business would have brought Mrs. McKinnon to be stranded here.

She nodded as she untied the knot, but offered no explanation. Reaching inside the bundle, she retrieved what she called a biscuit and held it out to him.

It was what he would call a scone. With a smile, Arthur gratefully accepted her offering. “Quite nice when served with a little Devonshire cream and a bit of jam. Thank you.” He sank his teeth into the bread—and moaned with delight. In spite of being in the bundle for Lord knew how long, the scone was flaky and moist, practically melting in his mouth. “My God,” he mumbled through another bite. “Food of the gods—my compliments to your May, Mrs. McKinnon.”

She smiled then, that same brilliant flash of warmth that had captured him momentarily on the road. That smile … yes,
that
was the thing that made her exceptionally pretty.

“They are good, are they not? May makes them for Big Angus each Sunday.” Mrs. McKinnon took a small bite of her biscuit and chewed slowly.

“Angus? Is that your son, then?” Arthur asked.

She blushed, shook her head. “May’s husband, he is. I’ve no children.”

Her voice carried a hint of wistfulness. “You’ve been widowed for a long time, then,” he remarked unthinkingly.

“Eight months.”

Eight months. Hardly any time at all. Poor girl—she undoubtedly still felt the brutal sting of it. God, he
still
felt Phillip’s death, even though almost three years had passed. He glanced at the pretty widow, felt a twinge of sorrow for her. She was too young to have experienced the death of a loved one. Too pretty to have suffered the sting of it. “I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

She jerked her gaze to him, surprised. “Oh! Thank you—but my husband was ill for a very long time. He is at peace now, thankfully.”

So the poor man had suffered. Arthur wondered how she had endured it as he munched his biscuit. Lady Whitehurst had endured her husband’s long and painful death by carrying on with his groom. He mentally shook his head at that notion—for some peculiar reason, he could not believe that the woman who had shot him was as merciless as that.

They didn’t speak for a long while; he ate two biscuits to her one. When he waved off her offering of a third, she neatly bundled the remaining two and stowed them in her satchel, then readjusted herself beneath her voluminous skirts, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. From his vantage point he could see her slender waist and square shoulders. She seemed a strong, healthy woman; Arthur had to pity the man who would catch the nefarious disease that would take him from the arms of a woman like Mrs. McKinnon.

After a moment of silence, she asked, “Do you live in Scotland, then?”

Arthur snorted. “Indeed not. I’ve come to settle some business matters for a friend.”

“All this way?”

“Yes. In vicinity of Pitlochry.”

“Aye.” She nodded. “A wee bit north of here yet, but the coach passes through there, I think.”

At the very least, it brought him a small amount of satisfaction to know that at least he had been on the right road. That idiot hotel clerk. If he should ever return to Perth, he would—

“I am really very sorry that I shot you.”

Arthur started. He hadn’t realized he was rubbing his wound and shook his head. “It’s quite all right, Mrs. McKinnon. I’m quite certain the gangrene won’t set in for a day or two.”

That earned him a roll of her pretty blue eyes, which made him smile. “I am mortified, you know. I should have known just by looking at you that you were no robber!”

“And just how would you know by looking that I was not a robber?”

“
Och
, it’s obvious,” she said, flicking her wrist impertinently. “A robber would not wear clothing as fine as that, and he would surely be even filthier.”

That made Arthur look down—he
was
filthy. Yet another new experience.

“And I think they doona shave.”

He was with her—right up to the shaving part. “Not shave? Why shouldn’t a robber shave?” he asked, confused by her logic.

“Why, he needs his whiskers to mask his identity! Once he has committed his robbery, he shaves his whiskers, so that not a single person can say with certainty that it was him.”

“Aha. I had not realized that was how one went about a robbery.”

“I read it in a novel,” she blithely explained, and looked uneasily over her shoulder, peering into the mist, missing his broad smile. “I’ve heard there are highwaymen along these very roads,” she muttered. “They camp in these woods, doona you think they do?”

Arthur rather doubted a highwayman worth his pearl-handled pistols would be so foolish as to camp
this
close to a road, even if it was practically deserted. “I rather think not.”

Her hands fisted tightly in her lap. “What do you suppose happened to the Crieff coach?” she almost whispered.

“Mrs. McKinnon, you are unduly frightening yourself. The Crieff coach had probably already passed when the driver put you out. There are no highwaymen here. No one has been along this road in hours and I am quite certain a good highwayman would study the public schedules before embarking on his rounds.”

She smiled with such relief that a curious shiver coursed right down Arthur’s spine, landing in the pit of his belly. “Of course, you are right.” She smiled again, but he noticed her hands were still fisted tightly in her lap. “I’ve read about England,” she said, clearly changing the subject. “In school, I knew a lass who hailed from Carlisle.”

“Carlisle. Near the lakes,” he remarked, and taking her cue, launched into a rambling description of England beginning with the peaceful Lake District where the Sutherlands had their ancestral seat, to the rolling landscape of the moors where he had a small country house. Somehow, his remark upon that led to a mention of the stark beauty of the white cliffs at Dover, and then the magic of the forests in the Cotswalds.

Somewhere in the middle of his rambling, she shifted so that she was facing him, her funny little boots peeking out from beneath her gown. Arthur realized he actually had quite a lot to say—no one had ever really inquired about him or his home.

Mrs. McKinnon was either very good at listening or was as truly fascinated as she seemed. With the exception of the occasional nervous glance over her shoulder, she seemed to hang on his every word. He watched the light dance in her clear blue eyes as he spoke and realized, at some point in the conversation, that it was refreshing to sit with a woman who did not ask him about women’s fashions, or what the latest rumor was among the
ton
, or what a pair of perfectly matched geldings might bring. Any one of a dozen questions Portia or any lady among the
ton
might have asked. Mrs. McKinnon asked about the English people, what they did to provide their living, where they were schooled, their hopes, their loves, their passions and fears.

“I beg your forgiveness, Mrs. McKinnon. I have put you quite to sleep,” he said after a while and withdrew his pocket watch. The late hour astounded him—he had not felt the time pass.

“Oh no!” she exclaimed, adamantly shaking her head. “It’s fascinating! I’ve not had the good fortune to travel beyond my home. I like hearing about England. It sounds so heavenly a place.” She covered her yawn with her hand.

“Thank you, but I think we have quite exhausted the subject for one evening.” He pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll build the fire,” he said, and walked into the forest to gather more wood.

When he returned a quarter of an hour later, Mrs. McKinnon was lying on her side, her hands pillowed beneath her cheek, fast asleep. She looked much younger in her sleep, he noticed, in spite of the dark smudges beneath her eyes. Arthur shrugged out of his coat and carefully draped it over her.

He turned his attention to the fire, and when he had kindled the flames, he glanced again at Mrs. McKinnon. What was the woman doing out here, alone? What had happened in her life? He moved to sit at the base of the tree next to her as he pondered that. He drifted to sleep,
slipping easily into a dream in which Phillip appeared behind a tree, just beyond Arthur’s grasp. But when he moved to catch him, he vanished, and Arthur struggled to remember if he had gone left or right, never really certain of where Phillip had come from or gone to.

The next thing he knew, he was waking in a dreamy state of arousal that strained against his buckskins. He forced his eyes open, noticed he was lying down, on his back, next to the dead fire. But he was not cold, because, as his mind slowly began to comprehend, Mrs. McKinnon—wrapped in his coat—was practically sprawled across him, her steady breath on his ear, her arm slung across his chest, and—merciful God—one leg hiked up and pressed against his groin.

I
T WAS BAD
enough to have shot him. Worse to have gone running into his arms at the sound of a few forest creatures, but to awake practically on top of him—
oh!

Kerry had almost killed herself getting off him, her arms and legs flailing as if she was being attacked by a horde of angry bees. She stumbled clumsily to her feet, at which point she had been completely unhinged by that wicked grin of his and had promptly tripped, just narrowly missing a headlong pitch into the grass. Her embarrassment only worsened as she tried to shove her skirts down—which wasn’t exactly easy, seeing as she had managed to twist her crinolines into something of a mishmash. Then she realized her hair was falling all around her shoulders in one glorified tangled mess of curls.
Christ God!

It did not help, not at all, that he just pushed himself up to his elbow and said in his wonderfully rich, silky smooth voice, “And top of the morning to you, too, Sunshine.” Like a cat, he came gracefully to his feet, shook his fingers through golden brown hair that seemed one thick wave, then stretched his arms out wide and yawned. “Rather anxious to begin the walk to Perth, are
we?” he asked over his shoulder as he strolled casually into the woods.