Julia London 4 Book Bundle (111 page)

The condition of the Scottish livestock market was not something Arthur knew a whit about, with the single exception of knowing that sheepherding had overtaken most other agricultural pursuits. This he knew because some of the Christian Brothers’ clients had invested heavily in the future sheep markets.

They walked on in silence.

Yet something Thomas had said nagged at the back of Arthur’s mind. If
his
Fraser McKinnon had lost a herd, it would explain why payments hadn’t been made on the note. And if one assumed it took two or three years to rebuild the stock, then one might assume that payments were not made for several years. But still, the coincidence was too much—how was it possible that he should stumble upon Phillip’s land in such a bizarre manner? No, it wasn’t possible.

It simply
couldn’t
be possible.

Thomas made sure Arthur put the stone-cutting instruments away in their proper place before showing him a pump where he could wash. Only then was he allowed into the white house, as he had begun to think of it, where the mouth-watering scent of freshly baked bread greeted him. His stomach was suddenly screaming with hunger; he wearily made his way to the kitchen, smiled when May beamed at him, and shrugged when a clearly irritated Big Angus growled.

May motioned him onto the wooden bench at the table. “Thought ye’d never come in,” she said cheerfully. “Kerry went on to see about Filbert McKinnon and his toothache, but we’ve a wee bit of
cullen skink
if ye please.”

He had not the vaguest idea of what “cullen skink”
could possibly be, but responded enthusiastically, “I would like it very much,” and managed to refrain from snatching the steaming bowl clean from May’s hands.

After he devoured—in an appallingly very few minutes—what turned out to be an excellent fish soup, he could scarcely keep his eyes open, but his pride demanded he accept the pipe Big Angus handed him. He drew the smoke into his lungs, very nearly turned green, and immediately presumed he had the distinct pleasure of inhaling peat. “Fine blend,” he said, coughing.

Thomas and Angus exchanged a smile before continuing their conversation. Arthur quickly lost track; their speech was liberally sprinkled with Gaelic phrases and words that were foreign to him. As best he could tell, the two men were worried about the market value of the cattle they owned. He listened to Thomas’s droning voice, his eyelids growing heavier with each new Gaelic phrase that filtered into his consciousness, wondering when Kerry might return. The last thing he knew, Big Angus was speaking of some poor chap who had been pushed from his land by sheepherders.

He was startled by the tapping of a finger on his shoulder. Bleary-eyed, Arthur jerked his head up. Of course it was Thomas, sporting what could only be termed a twisted grin. “Best to bed with ye then, laddie. We’ve more than our fair share of work on the morrow.”

Arthur pushed himself into a sitting position, grimacing with the fire the movement caused through what seemed like all of his muscles. “I suppose we shall begin again at a suitably unreasonable hour.”

Big Angus chuckled; Thomas leaned back with a grin. “Aye, we’ll have an early start of it.”

“Splendid,”
Arthur drawled, and by some miracle, his legs actually supported his weight enough that he could move away from the table. With each step, his jaw clenched tighter—more, he knew, from the pain caused by the chuckling behind him than any ache in his limbs.

He shuffled into the narrow corridor, paused to rub
his back, at which point he noticed a thin shaft of light spilling into the hallway from the room he had been given.

Kerry.

She was still in his thoughts, playing at the corners of his mind. He moved stiffly toward the open door, where he eased his shoulder against the frame. His full weight sagged against it; with the last ounce of strength he had, he folded his arms and concentrated on the delectable sight of Kerry’s bum.

That was because she was down on all fours, her round bum in the air, her head under the bed in which he had slept the night before. As he watched, she wiggled out from underneath it, a small tin box in her hands. Sitting back on her heels, she opened the box and extracted what looked to be a stack of letters. As she unfolded the first one, she glanced furtively at the door.

Her shriek was covered only by the sound of the tin box scudding across the floor. “God in heaven, you startled me,” she gasped, thumping a fist against her breast.

“My sincerest apology. I did not realize you were …” he motioned lazily toward the bed,
“here.”

Her face colored instantly. “Oh. Aye,” she muttered, and quickly moved to gather the letters she had scattered across the pine-plank floor.

“I can return later if you’d like.”

“Oh no!” she practically shouted, and quickly stuffed the letters into the tin box before scrambling to her feet. She held the box closely to her side as she made an attempt to brush the dirty smudges from her knees. “I, um … forgot that I had some things in this room,” she said sheepishly, now brushing her gown with a vengeance.

“Of course. It is your house after all.”

“Aye.” She glanced nervously about the room before switching the tin box to the crook of her other arm and smiling brightly at him. “Well then. Have you eaten? May made a batch of—”

“
Cullen skink.
Yes, I had some.”

“Oh.” Her gaze dipped to her feet for a moment. “Your clothes. We’ve laundered them,” she said, nodding toward a corner.

Arthur shifted his gaze to see his clothes, laundered and pressed. Oddly enough, the sight of the waistcoat made him shudder. He actually preferred the freedom the borrowed linen shirt and trousers afforded him. “Thank you.”

“Mmm,” she said, peering up at him through thick lashes. “Well. I suppose you’d like to sleep.”

Sleep. He had wanted to yes, but gazing at her now, the thick black braid draped over one shoulder, sleep was the farthest thing from his mind. It was amazing to him that a woman could be so appealing in a bland shade of gray, her hair unadorned, her lovely face without cosmetic enhancement. Oh, but Kerry McKinnon was appealing, terribly so, and in more ways than he cared to admit.

Regardless of the fact that she was a woman as far removed from his world as anyone could possibly be.

It was, unfortunately, almost laughable that he had somehow managed to end up in this remote little glen in Scotland, charmed by this woman … a woman who now cocked her head to one side and regarded him curiously.

Arthur managed to shove away from the door. “Yes, I should sleep while I can. McKinnon has a peculiar notion about what time a man should rise around here.”

That brought a soft smile to Kerry’s lips and a glimmer of amusement to her eye. “He willna harm you, not really.”

Seeing as how he could scarcely move a limb, Arthur considered that open to debate.

“I’ll leave you, then. Sweet dreams,” she murmured, and started toward the door. As she moved to pass him, he caught a scent of lavender, and impetuously, instinctively, his arm shot out, catching her in the abdomen
before she could pass and leaning into her before she could step away, breathing in her scent. “I would sleep better with the memory of your lips on mine.”

Her fair cheeks flushed instantly; her smile deepened as she dropped her gaze to his arm around her midriff. “It is not wise.”

“But I’d like it all the same, Kerry McKinnon, and I promise, so will you.”

She laughed. “You are shameless.”

Oh, he was shameless all right—she had no idea just how shameless. He pulled her into his side, his mouth on her hair. “Completely and irrevocably shameless,” he muttered, and gently pushed her backward, out of the open doorway, so that she was standing directly in front of him.

Her arresting blue eyes were smiling up at him now, and Arthur lowered his head to hers, barely touching her lips with his, skimming the plump surface, purposefully tantalizing himself. With his hand, he gently touched her slender neck beside the thick rope of hair hanging over her shoulder, and moved his lips across hers. She sighed softly; he felt her breath in his mouth, her hand fall delicately to his waist.

He slipped one arm around her back, pulled her closer to him so that he could feel the length of her supple body against his, the swell of her breast in his chest, the slight curve of her stomach against his groin. Kerry sighed again, tilted her head backward, and Arthur deepened the kiss, devouring her like a French delicacy, tasting the valleys of her mouth. Her body arched into him, moved against him, pushed him once more past the point of a gentleman’s reason.

He struggled to stay on the surface of that kiss, fighting the drag of desire that threatened to pull him under in a vortex and very gently, very reluctantly, broke away. Kerry remained pressed against him, her eyes closed, her lips, slightly pursed, wet and lush with the remnant of his kiss, until she, too, slowly opened her eyes.

They stood for a long moment, just looking at one another, his arm securely around her. He brushed a wisp of hair from her temple, touched the contour of her cheek with one finger. There was no need for words; the desire flowing between them was well understood. And Arthur believed they could have stood there all night like that, simply gazing at one another. But with nothing more than a softly seductive smile, Kerry silently slipped from his embrace and into the corridor, still clutching the tin box, one hand smoothing the side of her hair as she moved away from him, walking, Arthur noted, a little crooked.

Exhaling a long breath, he turned into the room and looked at the bed.

He wished for all the world that morning would go ahead and come, as there would be no sleep for him tonight.

Not after that kiss.

T
HE MEN WERE
already gone by the time Kerry roused herself the next morning from a sleep made fitful by dreams—rather erotic dreams—of Arthur Christian.

Dreams that awakened a living, breathing beast within her that craved his touch, made her feel pleasingly faint when she recalled the feel of his hands and his lips on her skin, and made her imagine the many different ways and places those hands could touch her again.

Such thoughts were intensely distracting, and Kerry spent the morning weeding the floundering little kitchen garden so that she would not have to endure May’s questioning looks, tackling a thick tangle of vines that could hang a grown man and plants of such strange appearance that she was almost afraid to touch them.
When had the garden become so overgrown?

The work did little to soothe her fever.

As she yanked and pulled at the stubborn weeds, her mind wandered from her increasing anxiety about the glen, to torrid thoughts of Arthur, images of him holding himself above her in the throes of lovemaking that made her flush hot. What sort of woman had she become that she could dream of such blatantly carnal activities, and worse,
feel
them as she worked in her garden? She had
not thought of lovemaking since long before her husband had died, and quite honestly, she could scarcely remember what it was like to be held by a man.
But Arthur … 
Arthur evoked something in her she had never really known existed, something that yearned for the feel of a man deep inside her.

Kerry suddenly sat back on her heels, shocked by the indecency of her thoughts, and pressed her dirty hands against her face to douse the burn in her cheeks. Was this what she had become, a wanton, thinking such indecent, lewd … 
delicious
thoughts?

Aye, they
were
delicious thoughts; thoughts that warmed her all over and made her belly tingle in that queer way she had not known in so many long years. Moving thoughts that banished all else from her mind, refusing entry even to a wee bit of common sense. Fluid thoughts that melted her, made her feel strangely pretty, made her want to look at him again and again,
touch
him.

Everywhere.

Embarrassed, Kerry impulsively shoved her hands into the black dirt, digging for the root ball of one large, purple-stalked plant. She should be concentrating on the problems at hand, not commending herself to hell.

And Lord, her problems needed all of her undivided attention now.

Reluctantly, and with more than a little difficulty, she forced herself to review her predicament again as she had a thousand times or more, searching for answers. Not that anything had changed, oh no—she had read the letters again last night, hoping in vain that perhaps she had misinterpreted something in Mr. Regis’s letter. But she hadn’t misinterpreted a bloody thing—Mr. Regis was nothing if not precise—they were to be evicted, and every day that passed was one more day she had lost in finding a solution.

Yet she felt an overwhelming and increasing determination to survive this catastrophe. Her journey to Dundee and back had awakened a staggering and
surprising belief in herself. For the first time in her life, she thought herself capable of existing without a husband, or a mother, or a father. She had always thought of herself as her mother’s unfortunate daughter, or her husband’s wife and caregiver. Even when Fraser’s ability to oversee their modest holdings had left him, and she oversaw the old McKinnon clan holdings, she still believed
he
was the one who provided for them all.

It had taken that extraordinary journey from Dundee to show her that she, Kerry McKinnon, was a survivor. She could survive without Fraser, without Lord Moncrieffe, without even Thomas. She was capable of shaping her destiny, capable of surviving the worst. And by God, she intended to survive this threat to her hearth, even though she hadn’t the slightest notion how to stop what was happening. She only knew that she would not lose everything and be sent to the certain hell that awaited her in Glasgow. She would die first!

Kerry’s shoulders sagged; her hands fell away from the purple plant.

Exactly who did she think she fooled with such bravado? What, did she think a pot of gold would suddenly appear and chase all her troubles away? This morning, after she had read the letters again, she had taken the old bonnet in which she kept the household funds, turned the lining inside out, and dumped the contents on the threadbare counterpane of her bed. And as she very carefully counted what she had, twice and three times to be very sure, she had realized that there wasn’t enough there to even get them through the summer, much less into the autumn months.