Chapter 17
Duncan didn’t look at her, but took a few strides toward Dougall.
“A warrior must learn to use any weapon at his disposal. But the first weapon of choice to a Highlander will always be his sword.” He took a pistol out of his belt and handed it to Dougall.
“Take it.” Jeannie opened her mouth to object, but he cut her off. “Don’t worry, it’s not loaded.”
Dougall practically tore it from his hands. Duncan stepped back a few paces. “Try to shoot me.”
The boy looked at him uncertainly before lifting the pistol and pointing it right at his chest. Duncan moved with the speed of lightning.
Before Dougall could cock the gun, he’d reached over his shoulder, pulled the two-handed great sword from its scabbard, and landed a blow on Dougall’s arm hard enough to make him drop the gun.
Dougall made a sound of pain and held his upper arm where the blow had landed. Jeannie leaped to her feet, but her son’s expression of horror checked her and kept her from running to him. He wasn’t hurt and didn’t need his mother treating him like a bairn, especially in front of another warrior.
Dougall reached down, picked up the pistol, and handed it back to Duncan. “How’d you do that? I’ve never seen anyone move so fast.”
“Practice,” Duncan said, returning the weapon to the belt at his waist. “Hours and hours of practice. Even if you had managed to get the shot off with a gun you have only one chance. My sword will be faster than your ability to reload every time. The Highland sword is a noble weapon, a part of our history. A symbol of our past, passed on through each generation.”
Dougall was listening to him with ill-concealed awe, no doubt having heard the speculation of Duncan’s true identity. Jeannie just wanted to bury her head in her hands and cry at the look of rapt adulation on his face.
The thought of what might have been tore her apart.
The bitterness she’d held for so long resurfaced for a moment before she tamped it down.
Blaming Duncan would not help, and one look at the two of them together told her that his lack of trust in her had cost him far more than her broken heart.
Being part of Dougall’s childhood could never be replaced.
For one moment she wanted to tell him. But she knew she could not take the chance. He would insist on claiming his son and Dougall would be the one to suffer for both their mistakes.
Duncan placed the blade flat in his hands and held it out for Dougall to examine.
The enormous sword had to be at least a few inches taller than her son.
“This belonged to my father and before that his father—passed down from father to son all the way back to my ancestor who fought alongside King Robert the Bruce at the great Battle of Bannockburn. It’s stained with the blood of freedom.
” There was a deep, reverent tone in his voice that Jeannie had never heard before.
Dougall stared up at him, eyes wide with awe, hesitating.
“Go ahead,” Duncan said with a smile. “You can touch it.”
Dougall traced his finger over the bone carving. “What are these designs? It looks like a spider web.”
“It is,” Duncan said, but didn’t elaborate. “Maybe one day, I’ll tell you about it. Would you care to hold it?”
Would a wolf like a juicy leg of lamb?
Dougall didn’t need to be asked twice. He reached out and grasped the horn handle in his small hands.
When Duncan released it, the tip of the blade dropped almost to the ground before Dougall managed to get it under control.
He tried to swing it around, but it was clear that the sword was too big for him.
His cheeks mottled with color. “I hope my ancestors weren’t quite so tall. ”
He meant it as a joke, but Duncan must have discerned the embarrassment behind the comment. “How old are you?”
Jeannie sucked in her breath so sharply, she was glad Duncan was focused on her son. “I was nine last Michaelmas.”
Only when Duncan nodded did she exhale. “I was smaller than the other boys at that age, too,” he said.
Her moment of relief vanished in the immediate jump of her pulse. There was no reason for him to make the connection. Her son had her features and the dark auburn hair of—
His uncle. Dear God, why had she never noticed before? Dougall had the same color hair as Jamie Campbell. She felt the panic closing around her and forced herself to breathe evenly. There was no reason for him to suspect, she kept telling herself.
Then why was her heart racing as if she’d just run a marathon?
“You were?” Dougall asked, his eyes narrowing skeptically.
Jeannie didn’t blame him. She found it hard to picture Duncan as anything less than the rocky mountain of a man he was now herself.
“Aye. It made me work harder to prove myself. Find your strength here first,” he pointed to his head, “and you will know how to use the other when it comes. There are other advantages to being small.”
“Like what?”
“I can show you if you’d like.”
No! Jeannie thought with barely concealed horror.
“When?” Dougall asked, unable to hide his eagerness. He broke into a wide smile, the dimple in his cheek an exact mirror of the man standing before him. They looked nothing alike, but the signs were there if you looked close enough. She prayed no one did.
Duncan chuckled. “You’d best check with Jam”—he stopped to correct himself—“the captain first.”
“I’ll do it right now,” Dougall said and ran off toward the keep. Jeannie opened her mouth to stop him, but snapped it shut again, deciding to let her son go. The way Duncan was looking at him made her uneasy. He couldn’t guess. But saying it over and over did not stop the panic from eating at her.
In Dougall’s eagerness, he’d neglected to return the bow and arrows he’d been practicing with to the armory. Jeannie walked toward them, but Duncan cut her off. “You don’t want me around your son, why?”
The suspicion in his voice chilled her blood. He was too damned observant. She forced her gaze to his, holding it steady and unflinching. No reaction. No emotion. “What good can come of it?” she said brusquely. “In a few days you will go your way and I will go mine. It is better that way.”
“A clean break, is that it?”
There was a dark edge to his voice that made the hair on her arms stand up straight.
Jeannie didn’t think of herself as a coward, but her first instinct was to turn and run.
That dangerous energy she’d sensed in him on their journey was right there, just under the surface, threatening to break free.
His fingers wrapped around her wrist and brought her toward him. “Do you really think that is possible, Jeannie?”
She wrenched her arm away. “Yes.” It had to be. But her heart called her a liar. And he knew it.
Just leave me alone! She picked up the bow and quiver and marched toward the armory. The small wooden building was cold and dark and smelled of damp. After replacing the weapons, she turned to leave, but Duncan blocked the door, his tall, well-muscled physique an imposing silhouette.
“I’m not finished.”
It had been a mistake to turn her back on him, to let him corner her. She didn’t trust herself. His being close like this always made her unable to think straight.
He closed the door behind him, making the room feel even smaller.
The musty air of the armory darkened with his masculine scent and the cool air heated with the fire crackling between them.
Thin rays of light streamed through the spaces between the wooden planks, providing barely enough light to see.
But she could feel him; her senses honed on everything about him.
Every inch of his tall, muscled frame. Every strand of silky black hair.
Every thin line etched around his mouth.
He was using his size—his masculinity—against her, as if challenging her to ignore the desire taut between them. She wouldn’t let him intimidate her. But she felt a flash of sympathy for the men he’d faced on the battlefield.
“Well, I am,” Jeannie said, trying to push past him. But he wouldn’t let her go, catching her to him, their bodies brushing against one another, yet to her it felt as if she’d just caught fire. “There is nothing more to say.” Her voice shook, her nerves fluttering wildly.
“I think there is much more to say.” The deep brogue of his voice seeped into her bones. His jaw was pulled taut and his piercing blue eyes seemed to tear away her secrets as he stared down into her face.
Her heart thudded with premonition. She sensed his curiosity about Dougall and knew she had to distract him.
Or maybe that was just her excuse for what she did next.
She did the only thing she could think of when he surrounded her like this. When her body hummed with sensation. When she looked up at his mouth and her body flooded with desire.
She kissed him. Not a chaste touch of the lips, but a full meeting of mouth and body. The rope holding them apart snapped and all the passion building between them over the past weeks exploded into fierce, drowning need.
They tore at one another, trying to get closer, trying to douse the flames that threatened to incinerate them both.
His heat enveloped her. His maleness. The seductive power of his rock-hard body. There was something primitively satisfying about a big, strong man taking you in his arms.
It felt too good. Too right. She wanted to cry out with the perfection of it. This was what she’d been missing, this was what had haunted her for all those years.
His mouth moved over hers, hungrily, passionately. Every touch a brand.
He groaned, opening her lips with his, devouring her with his mouth, with bold thrusts of his tongue, with his hand as he cupped her bottom and brought her against him. His erection rose hard between them, the thick steel column nudged erotically between her legs.
She felt his size. His power.