Heat Of The Knight. Jackie Ivie

a visitor?”

      “Because Duncan’s standing behind you, waving his arms and speaking of it. Has been for some time. You dinna’ hear him. You dinna’ hear much, I’m for thinking. Your mind’s elsewhere. Has been for some time. Strange.”

      Langston turned his head. It was true. A clansman was at the steps; a dry clansman. “Well?” he asked the man.

      “It appears the woman is arriving. She’s on the drive.”

      “What woman?” His heart might have lurched. Langston’s voice stumbled as he felt something so foreign he had to consciously command his body not to betray it. That was stranger than anything Etheridge mentioned.

      “The one you write your notes to.”

      Langston’s eyes widened then. He couldn’t prevent it. “Here?” he asked. “Now?”

      “Aye.” Now Duncan was grinning, too.

      “How much time do I have?” He was looking down at the mess of sweat-soaked shirt, wet plaide, and mud-covered boots.

      “Little. We sent a coach.”

      “What?”

      He couldn’t break into a run until he got through the standing water. He knew they all watched. He would have, too. He was supposed to be an emotionless, demonic, Black Monteith. Etheridge didn’t wait to show his reaction, though. He was laughing.

      She was still standing as the coach slowed before it reached her. Then it passed by to find a spot to turn about and return for her. It could also have been because whoever was in it wanted a look at her. The coach stopped directly in front of her, making a looming shadow that reached to the toes of her scuffed and used boots. Lisle watched as the coachman secured his reins. There was also a groomsman at the rear of it. He stepped down to walk over and open the door for her, and lower a row of three steps into place.

      “We’ve come to fetch you,” he informed her, holding out one of his white-gloved hands in order to assist her in.

      Lisle gulped. She had too much sweat on her hands to touch his gloves. She stood there, undecided, and watched as he smiled at her.

      “It’s all right, lass. We’ve been expecting you.”

      They had? That was almost enough to send her marching right back down the perfectly groomed road and back to poverty. Almost.

      She took his hand and allowed him to help her enter the coach that contained two opposing newly padded leather seats, a small shelf on the far side, white satin to line the sides and top and windows, and nothing else. Lisle settled onto a seat and watched as he put the ladder back into place beneath the flooring and shut her in. There was no turning back now, and her heartbeat wasn’t loud enough to dull anything.

      It was loud, though. And it wasn’t dimming the entire two minutes that the ride took. It was actually getting louder, pulsing through her, and making everything else feel weak and shaky. She was going into purgatory, the devil’s spawn was awaiting her, and there wasn’t anyone there to help her, or guide her, or even hold her hand. Lisle was afraid her bottom lip was trembling.

      The drawbridge closed behind them. She couldn’t hear it; she had to sense it by the loss of light as they went into his courtyard. Her mouth filled with spittle that she was too frightened to swallow, and then when she did, her ears popped with the released pressure.

      She only hoped she didn’t burst into tears.

      The coach stopped with a rocking motion the coachman had probably needed many years to perfect. Lisle watched the empty seat in front of her with unseeing eyes, pushed another swallow down her throat, and grimaced at the heavy, hard feeling of the ball of fear she was harboring.

      She told herself she was being stupid. There was nothing to be frightened over. She was simply going to ask him what he wanted from the MacHughs, and then she was going to bargain for the best price for it, and then she was going to take her leave. She wasn’t going to give him the time to create a reaction of any kind within her.

      The door was opened, showing her a sun-kissed inner keep that made her gasp. The rocks used to construct his keep were nearly a story high each, and constructed vertically, so they looked like they were thrusting up from the ground into the sky, before being molded to another rock that appeared to do the same. And they were marbled-looking, giving the castle walls veins of gold and amber and brown and white, and making it look like there wasn’t any amount of money that would have made such beauty.

      “His Lordship is awaiting you in his study, Mistress.”

      She thought the servant waiting for her was different from the groomsman that had assisted her in, but she wasn’t certain of it. She hadn’t paid him enough attention, and this one was wearing gloves, too.

      Then she saw the three doormen, all wearing Highland attire. There was no stopping her jaw. It dropped, completely and mortifyingly. Imprisonment and confiscation by the Crown was the penalty for a Highlander in a kilt, and Monteith was begging for that very thing. She didn’t think it possible that he was that stupid. But he had to be, or he wasn’t afraid of the penalty because he was immune from it.

      Her upper lip lifted in a sneer, and some of the hard ball in her throat dissipated with it. He was immune. How right she’d been about him! He was in league with the devil, all right, but the devil was the Sassenach. Every Scot knew that. Lisle no longer felt any fright and she smoothed her hands down the silken-feeling fabric of her traveling gown, not even caring if the motion caused more snags than it had earned with use.

      She was a true Scot. She was born a Dugall. She’d married a MacHugh laird. She could still look herself in any mirror on any wall in any castle, Jacobite or not, perfectly maintained or not.

      The mirror he had in his front foyer meant this was an excellent time and place to put that to the test, and Lisle looked at herself, seeing for the first time the yellowish purple of her left eye, which still wasn’t as fully open as the other one. Then she was looking at how her cheeks looked like she’d just come in from a run about the moors, because of the agitation. It surely wasn’t due to anything like a blush.

      She swallowed, and wondered how she was supposed to keep from looking like she was blushing. Rice powder would have worked, but if she’d had anything the MacHughs thought contained something like rice, she’d have probably found a way to make it edible by now. Lisle smiled at the thought, and watched as it made her look her age, for a change.

      The expression instantly turned into a frown. She couldn’t afford to look like a girl of eighteen and a half. She was here as the matriarch of the MacHugh clan, on business, and the entire family’s fortunes could very well turn on what transpired in the next few minutes. There wasn’t any place in that plan for being a young girl.

      She untied the ribbon at her chin and removed the bonnet that had kept the worst of the sun from paining her eye. Then she patted strands that had escaped her bun, frowning further at that. Her hair wouldn’t ever behave, and she’d used the last of her lavender softening soap on it, hiding it at the loch since the girls would have been in a dander over how she’d kept it from them.

      “If you’ll follow me?”

      Lisle jumped at the voice. The woman who owned it didn’t show any response, pleasant or unpleasant, to Lisle’s reaction—no smile, no commiseration, no sympathy, nothing. She didn’t look interested at all. Lisle kept her head high and her gaze straight ahead as she passed hall after hall, doorway after doorway, showing rooms of luxury and size, and full of so much furniture it looked impossible to move about in most of them.

      The woman took a right turn halfway down the main hall; then she took another right, and then a left. Lisle’s eyes widened with each turn, and after yet another left, she was in danger of getting disoriented to the point she’d need help finding her way back out.

      Contrary to the clutter he looked to have filled most of the rooms with, the halls were free and clear, large and with a high ceiling span that made it feel like she was in