Chapter 10 #3
But his eyes burned into hers, holding her gaze the entire time. Jeannie’s pulse raced, her heart pounded in her too-tight chest through every agonizing minute, feeling as if she was seated on the edge of a precipice. When it was over, she was sure she was more exhausted than he was.
Mairghread assured her that the ball would not kill him—and as long as fever did not set in, he would recover well enough. Jeannie shuddered at the thought of fever. Now that the initial shock and anger of seeing him had faded, she didn’t want him dead, just gone.
After cleansing the wound with water and giving Jeannie a piece of linen with which to hold against the bleeding, Mairghread left for a few minutes to retrieve some herbs and salves from her storeroom near the kitchens.
Jeannie kept her gaze focused on the wound, but was deeply conscious of being alone with him. Of the uncomfortable silence broken only by the even sound of his breath and the erratic beat of her heart that not even her strong will could tame.
“Why didn’t you turn me in?” His voice was flat, emotionless.
She schooled her features in a similar fashion, giving no hint to the turmoil unleashed by his question. By him.
Why indeed when he could do her such harm? She didn’t know. Every minute he was here increased the risk of discovery of her secret. And there was her family to consider. Duncan’s reemergence would not bode well for either the Gordons or the Grants.
But when the time came to speak against him, it seemed as if every instinct in her body had revolted.
Perhaps she wasn’t as hard-hearted and vengeful as she’d like to think.
But she suspected her reasons went deeper than that.
She’d had so many questions after he’d left: Why did he not try to defend himself, why had he been so quick to damn her, why did he leave without saying good-bye?
Why did he wait ten years to come back? Questions that needed answering.
Maybe then she could finally put the past behind her and have a chance at finding happiness.
She’d failed her husband, never being able to give him the love he so selflessly gave her; she would not do that to another man.
But she could hardly tell that to Duncan. He was watching her closely—too closely—his gaze hard and unrelenting. Just like the man himself. This stranger who could still make her feel like she was jumping out of her skin with one deep, penetrating gaze. Fool.
She gave him a hard look. “I assure you my motives were purely selfish and had nothing to do with any fond memories or sentimentality toward you.” He had no reaction, not that she expected him to.
If she’d ever harbored a girlish fantasy that he’d longed for her, that one day he would realize how he’d wronged her, it had fizzled that first moment she’d looked into his eyes.
He was not here to fall at her feet and beg forgiveness.
He was here because he wanted something.
She gave him a pointed look. “What do you want from me?”
“Information. Access.”
Her skin prickled with alarm. “Nothing would be gained by resurrecting events that are better left in the past.”
Anger glinted in his hard blue eyes. That was one thing that hadn’t changed. His eyes were still a startling deep blue—a striking contrast to his black hair. She’d always thought him the most handsome man she’d ever seen. That hadn’t changed either.
“Easy to say when it’s not your name that has been blackened and dragged through the mud for the past ten years. What of justice? Would that not be served?” His gaze narrowed at her accusingly. “What you mean is that it’s better for you and your family if the treachery done that day is forgotten.”
Heat flared in her cheeks, but she met his gaze defiantly.
“Yes, that is exactly what I mean.” He was right.
Trouble was the last thing her clan needed right now; their situation was precarious enough.
With her father-in-law, the Marquis of Huntly, excommunicated and imprisoned in Stirling Castle for once again failing to convince the Kirk that he no longer adhered to the Popish faith, the name of Gordon was not exactly a welcome one at court.
Nor did Jeannie want to bring trouble for her brother John, the new Laird of Freuchie, by reminding the Earl of Argyll of her father’s treachery at Glenlivet.
The king may have forgiven her father his trespasses, but Argyll never had—not even her father’s death two years ago had cleansed his sin.
Duncan’s sudden return would open up all the old hatred.
Her eyes locked on Duncan’s. “Please, just leave it be.”
But her pleas had never had any effect on him.
She would never forget the last time she’d seen him.
The humiliation was imprinted on her mind.
When she’d clung to him like a lovesick fool, begging him to believe her, and he’d coldly—heartlessly—pushed her away and never looked back.
He had the same hard, unyielding look in his eyes then as he did now.
And she felt the same foolish urge to break through.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” he said, his face a mask of steely determination.
Dread washed over her, knowing that he would not be swayed. He’d set a course and nothing would get in his way—no matter who he hurt along the way. Certainly not her. If she’d ever meant anything to him that day was long past.
She stared at him, searching in vain for an opening, but there was not a weak bone in his body.
Even laying in bed wounded, having lost a good amount of blood, he still managed to reign supreme—his authority and raw physical strength undeniable.
The promise he’d shown as a youth had been more than fulfilled.
If only it were just physical, but his strength permeated his character as well. And once he was resolved, he was immoveable. Trying to break through to him would be like trying to throw herself through a stone wall.
Only once had she changed his mind, she thought, recalling the night at the alehouse. But then her seduction had been unconscious, not cold and calculated, were she tempted, which she wasn’t, to use that particular tool in her depleted arsenal to stop him.
And in the end, even her body hadn’t been enough. He’d left her anyway.
The healer’s prompt return prevented further discussion and Duncan was grateful for the reprieve.
Being with Jeannie again after all these years set off a multitude of conflicting feelings firing inside him.
In his mind he might have relegated her to an unfortunate mistake in his past, but he wasn’t as immune to her as he wanted to be.
He hadn’t breathed the entire time she’d had her hands on him as she’d removed his clothes. Not just because he was steeling himself against reacting to her touch, but because at the very first whiff of her delicate scent he’d felt like he was jumping out of his damned skin.
And the feathery brush of her fingers … a woman’s hands hadn’t provoked such an intense reaction in him in years. His mouth fell in a grim line. Ten years to be precise.
He was not unused to women casting admiring glances in his direction.
But when her eyes had fixed on his bare chest, widened in feminine appreciation, and then gone a little soft and hazy, it had done something to him altogether different.
His body had reacted to a look as if she’d stroked his cock with her tongue.
He’d gone as hard as a damned spike, blinded by a flash of lust so strong it had shocked the hell out of him.
He thought he’d lost the capacity to feel like that.
He’d forgotten how desire could drown everything else in its black hold.
But he was no longer a callow lad ruled by lust. Whatever power she might wield in that seductive body of hers, it was no match for his iron-clad will.
If he’d needed a reminder of her treachery it had come quickly.
Please, just leave it be. She didn’t care about right or wrong, about seeing his name cleared.
She didn’t want him disturbing the life she’d built on a bed of treachery.
Why it disappointed him that her loyalty to her family still outweighed any justice on his behalf, he didn’t know.
But he’d come back for one reason only—to prove his innocence.
And nothing—certainly not the woman who’d been at the heart of his downfall—would stand in his way.
The healer, a tiny old woman whose wrinkled hands possessed surprising strength and dexterity, finished her ministrations, smearing a thick pungent salve over the wound and then binding it with a clean swathe of linen. For just having been shot, he felt remarkably well.
She left him a posset to drink, which he politely declined, and bade him to rest. He thanked her, and she left. He thought Jeannie was going to join her, but she reached the doorway, hesitated, and then turned back to him.
“Why did you come here, Duncan? Why me, why now?”
“It was time.” That was the simple answer. The truth was far more complicated. His sister Lizzie’s note about the death of Francis Gordon and rumors of Jeannie’s remarriage—possibly to Colin—had sparked an urgency he didn’t want to examine.
“That’s it?” she asked incredulously. “That’s all the explanation I’m to receive after all this time?” Her eyes locked on his, piercing. “You left me without even the courtesy of a fare-thee-well. Not one word for ten years and now you suddenly decide it’s time to return?”
The sudden outpouring of emotion surprised him as much as it seemed to her.
His brow furrowed. It almost sounded as if she’d cared, as if he’d hurt her unconscionably and not the other way around.
She wasn’t acting guilty, she was acting wronged.
You left me. The accusation echoed inside him.
He’d heard the pain in her voice and knew its source.
But his leaving was nothing like her mother—he had a reason. She’d betrayed him.
The flash of anger was as fierce as it was unexpected. “What the hell did you expect me to say? Thank you for fucking me so well—both literally and figuratively.”
She flinched at the crudity as if he’d struck her. He’d never spoken to her like that. The look she gave him was filled with emotion so intense he couldn’t even begin to probe its shadowed depths. But it gave him the first prickle of unease.
He took a deep breath. How did she do this to him? In the spate of a little over an hour, she’d managed to pry away years of steel layers to the raw underbelly. With all the subtlety of a nail under his fingertip.
His anger raged, but he tamped it down—an eye on his mission. He was here to prove his innocence not rehash past betrayals. “I said good-bye,” he said. “What more was there to say?”
“Quite a bit, if you’d given me the chance,” she said softly. “But you were so quick to judge me guilty.”
“Then help me find the truth,” he challenged. “Tell me what you know.”
Their eyes met and held. For a moment he thought she was tempted, but in the end she shook her head. “I can’t.”
His face darkened. A small part of him had always wondered whether he’d been wrong. But her silence condemned her. “You mean you won’t.”
She shrugged at the truth, then studied him.
“Ten years is a long time. You’ve made a life for yourself—satisfied your ambition.
” She motioned to his armor. “Accumulated wealth and earned infamy. I can barely walk past the barracks without hearing about some exploit of the ‘Black Highlander’ and his men. You have everything you’ve always wanted.
Why come back, reopen old wounds, and take the chance that you might lose it all again? ”
She’d heard of him. The knowledge pleased him more than it should. Aye, he’d satisfied his ambition. At one time he’d thought that was all he wanted. “What is wealth or reputation without freedom, and there is no freedom in exile. The Highlands are my home. And here I’ll live … or die.”
She held his gaze for a long pause—as if she understood—then turned and left him alone.
Alone. He was used to it that way—even preferred it—but being alone wasn’t the same thing as loneliness. Seeing Jeannie again was a painful reminder of the difference.
Duncan had achieved everything he’d set out to do and more, but it had not come without a cost. He’d never been tempted to marry, to have a family—not since Jeannie—believing his life had no room for domesticity. And there had never been a woman who could make him think otherwise.
He breathed through the sudden ache in his chest that had nothing to do with his wound, wondering at the life he might have had had things been different. Had they not ended up on the opposite side of a war.