Chapter 17 #2
Hailey was putting things away in the galley. She gave Madelyn a look of understanding, then turned back to her work. Madelyn took another breath, put on her happy face, and went to sit back down across from Patrick. She buckled up, then braved a look at him. He looked concerned.
“All right?”
“Never better.”
“Liar,” he said with a smile. “Try again.”
She sighed. “Overwhelmed. Unsure.”
“Unsettled.”
“Exactly.”
“That makes two of us.”
It took her a minute to realize he’d said it in French. She looked at him in surprise. “Where’d you learn that?”
“At university,” Conal supplied.
She looked at Patrick narrowly. “You told Bentley you were homeschooled.”
“I was. For a while.”
“Patrick tends to leave out details,” Conal said dryly. “I don’t suppose he told you he’s a third-degree black—”
“Conal,” Patrick warned.
“Belt?” Conal finished without hesitation. “Or that he speaks several languages?”
“Or that I can juggle three eggs at a time, raw ones,” Patrick added. “Conal, old man, shut up before I begin to blush.”
Madelyn looked at Patrick. “No,” she answered, “he hasn’t told me any of that. He’s infuriatingly reluctant to divulge important details. I can’t get anything interesting out of him about his growing-up years. Just that he was poor, reckless, and cold most of the time.”
“It’s accurate,” Patrick said.
“But incomplete.”
“The precise details are boring,” Patrick said. “Oh, look, there’s London. We’ll be landing soon.” He looked at Conal. “Perhaps we should see to our business. Any details for me about what I’m to be doing or must I guess?”
Conal dug out a briefcase and opened it. He pulled out a folder and handed it to Patrick. Madelyn stared out the window and looked at the view below. She wasn’t sniffling anymore, which she considered a good sign. She supposed her eyes would get back to normal as well. But her heart?
Patrick eased his boots around one of her feet and held on. She looked down at her feet, then up at him. He looked at her from under his eyebrows and flashed her a conspiratorial smile before he looked back down at his papers.
She clutched her hands together. She was far too close to getting lost in the lush forest that was Patrick MacLeod’s heart. It wasn’t a place she was at all sure she wanted to wander in.
Oh, who was she kidding? She was already there.
And the way out was a plane at Heathrow.
A plane she was beginning to wish she would never have to take.
Her life back in the States was beginning to look less and less attractive.
Jumping back into the rat race with a million other rats was sounding more miserable by the moment.
Trying to claw her way up the Barracuda’s corporate ladder was sounding about as exciting as cleaning out rat cages for the rest of her life.
Unfortunately, there was no guaranteeing Patrick had any feelings for her.
He started to rub the back of her calf with the toe of his boot.
Then again, maybe she should reserve judgment for a while.
The plane began to land, Patrick finished his reading, and Hailey strapped herself into her seat. Madelyn looked at Conal to find him watching her. Gone was the look of assessment. In its place was another kind of expression, one she couldn’t quite identify, but it was definitely much friendlier.
“Any final questions?” she croaked.
He smiled. “Nary a one. You pass the test.”
“Why? Because I went and bawled in your bathroom?”
He laughed. “No, my girl, not because of that. Because you have a tender heart.”
“I don’t. I’m a cold, calculating career woman whose sole goal in life is to bring the chauvinistic members of my former law firm to their knees.”
Or at least she thought that was her goal.
Once the plane landed, Patrick handed Conal back his papers, then took Madelyn’s hand and led her out into the rain. He collected their small bit of luggage and looked at her. “We’ll dump the old man at the gate. I’m not hauling his gear as well.”
Conal pulled her hand through the crook of his arm. “Young Patrick will survive. Let’s find ourselves somewhere to eat.”
She agreed with resignation. She was obviously doomed to be in the company of men who needed to eat often. Well, at least these two were paying for it. It was a very nice change from Bentley.
She spared a brief thought for him. Was he still in the UK or had he gone back to the States to wreak havoc on some other poor unsuspecting girl with stars in her eyes and no brain cells in her head? At least she’d learned her lesson. She would be so much wiser the next time.
Was she being wise this time?
She hoped so. It was hard to tell when she was in the middle of it.
Patrick paused at the gate long enough to hand Conal his bag, sling both his and Madelyn’s over his shoulder, and take her hand.
“Food,” he said, “a place to stay, then maybe a tourist attraction or two before it gets too late. I’ll need to take a look around later this evening, but I’ll see you safely at the hotel first.”
She closed her eyes very briefly and savored the feeling of his hand around hers and the pleasure of walking by his side and feeling as if there was something connecting them together.
Maybe she should start keeping track of these kinds of moments, so she would have something to look back on when she was home, slogging through cases and wishing she were back in this very spot, holding hands with this very man.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Fine.” She nodded quickly. “Perfect.”
It was a lie, but she supposed there might be times where lying to oneself might be the only way to keep from losing it. The truth in her heart would have to be faced.
But later, when she was alone.
For now, she would hold Patrick MacLeod’s hand and enjoy it.
It was quite a bit later that they finally made their way back to the small but apparently quite upscale hotel Patrick had taken for them near Buckingham Palace.
They’d had dinner, parted company with Conal, and walked along the front of the Queen’s modest home.
She had decided, in that short time, that she far preferred the wilds of Scotland to the bustle of London.
It was impossible to calculate the number of people who had lived in London since the time of its inception.
Just walking over the same places that she was certain hundreds of thousands of people had walked before her was enough to give her a headache.
He squeezed her hand. “What do you think of London?”
She shivered. “Too much. Too scary. I’ve seen some very frightening people since we’ve been here, and we’ve only been here a few hours.”
“And we’re in a fairly thug-free bit of town,” he said with a smile. “Safe. Very few muggings.”
Or so he thought, apparently.
They were walking peacefully through the park, hand-in-hand, dodging drips from the leaves above one moment; they were surrounded by four men of indeterminate origin but clear purpose the next.
“Money, keys, coat,” said one man. “In that order.”
Madelyn watched as Patrick pulled out his keys. They weren’t his car keys, she knew that much because she’d watched him stow those on the plane. He tossed those to the leader.
“Closest to the surface,” Patrick said easily. “What did you say you wanted next, mate?”
“Money,” the same man said. “All of it. The lady’s purse as well.”
“She has no purse,” Patrick said. “Believe it or not, lad, it was stolen last week.”
A pair of the men laughed.
It was a rather unfriendly sound, on the whole.
“I don’t believe it,” said one of the men, moving closer to them. “I believe I’ll be seein’ for meself.”
Madelyn found herself landing rather forcefully on the grass, and by the time she realized it was Patrick to shove her there, two of the men were unconscious on the ground.
She watched in complete astonishment as Patrick finished number three in like manner with a pair of moves, a slap and a kick that left him groaning on the pathway as well. Patrick looked at the leader.
“Have a gun?” he asked politely.
The man cursed him thoroughly and reached into his jacket.
Apparently that was enough for Patrick. Before the man could pull out whatever weapon he was carrying, Patrick had sent him sprawling. He knelt down, wrenched the man’s arm behind him, and removed from his apparently quite numb fingers a very wicked-looking knife.
“I daresay you don’t,” Patrick said, tossing the knife onto the ground. He jerked the man’s arm up and back. There was a substantial cracking sound, the man yelped, then slumped down quite peacefully onto his face. Patrick dusted off his hands and reached over to pull her to her feet.
“Off we go,” he said politely. “Quick, before the bobbies show up and we’re forced to spend the night in the police station, answering their endless questions.”
Madelyn was, quite simply, quite speechless.
She made tracks with a man who had incapacitated four other men without any effort at all.
She was silent until they’d trotted out of the park, down the street, and into the door of their hotel.
Patrick led her up the stairs and stopped in front of her room.
“Have you anything in mind for tomorrow?”
She gaped at him. “I just saw you take out four men your size, and you’re asking me what I want to go see tomorrow?”
“Aye.”
“You’re . . .” She hardly knew what to say to him. “I can’t believe you.”
“Is that praise or condemnation?” he asked without any inflection to his voice at all.
She stared at him for a moment or two in silence, weighing his words and trying to decide what he was leaving unsaid. Was he used to being condemned for what he’d just done? Did his brother not care for it? Had his wife not cared for it?
Did it really matter what either of them thought?
She decided it didn’t. She had her own opinions and it was probably best he hear them right off. She looked up at him seriously. “If I were an important person, I wouldn’t leave home without you to protect me.”
He smiled, a wry pursing of his lips that was utterly charming. “You are an important person and I am at your disposal, whenever you need me.”
“Thank heavens.”
He laughed softly. He took her key, opened her door, then made her a little bow. “My lady’s chamber awaits,” he said. He squeezed her hand, hesitated, then stood back a little to let her pass. “I’m next door if you need me.”
“Thank you.”
He didn’t move.
She hesitated as well. She wasn’t sure what a moment of this kind—the kind when you were saying good night to a man who had just saved you from a mugging or worse—demanded, but she was fairly sure it wasn’t a handshake.
She put her arms around him, hugged him tightly, then leaned up to kiss him.
“You are amazing,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
He cleared his throat.“’Twas nothing.”
“It was something and I’m grateful for it.” She stood for a moment in his arms, then pulled back reluctantly. “I imagine we should call it a night.”
“There is much to see on the morrow,” he agreed.
She nodded, went inside, looked at him again, then smiled and closed the door.
Then she turned and leaned back against it.
The man looked perfectly civilized in his worn jeans, expensive wool sweater, and black leather jacket, but she had seen a side to him that night up close, the side that his swordplay had hinted at.
There was a very uncivilized, very dangerous, very uncontrollable side to the man and she wondered how it was that only she saw it.
She pitied the men who thought to cross him.
She wondered if she should exercise the same caution, then, even more briefly, she dismissed the thought. There hadn’t been a moment that she’d ever felt anything but safe with him.
And safe because of him.
Enemies to slay
. . .
It sounded like the kind of thing a person would have done hundreds of years ago in the Highlands, something when times were not so civilized.
She shook her head, pushed away from the door, and went to find her toothbrush and Jane’s flannel jammies she was still borrowing. She’d been almost mugged, but Patrick had protected her.
She wondered why he hadn’t done the same thing to Bentley.
Maybe Bentley hadn’t been worth the trouble.
She couldn’t help but agree.