Chapter Four

Well, so this was Jeannie Robertson—Jeannie MacWherter now, to give the she-devil her due. Geordie had married the wench fairly, even if he had lived to regret it. Finnan told himself he should have expected her to be this beautiful. Geordie was not the man to give his heart easily. Beneath all his muscle and bluster, Geordie had cherished a vision of the perfect woman, carried many years.

Finnan stood on the bank of the pool with the warm sun striking his back and regarded the woman with distaste. As young mercenaries, he and Geordie had fought their way across most of Scotland, seducing whatever women crossed their paths. But that was just coupling, an act as basic as enjoying a flagon of ale. Through it all Geordie always saved a part of himself because Geordie believed in the real thing: love.

How many nights—or days—had Finnan and Geordie, lying beneath the high, distant stars or huddled in the rain, talked about someday?

Someday, for Finnan, had always meant coming home and regaining possession of this sacred place, taking it from the grasping fingers of his enemies. He’d done that, and the glen possessed his heart.

For Geordie, someday had always centered around a woman—the perfect woman. “We’ll have a home, Finn, a real home, and I won’t have to go wandering any more. She won’t want me to go wandering because she’ll miss me so. She will be beautiful, warm, and true—and she’ll love only me.”

Geordie believed he had found that woman when he met Jeannie Robertson. Finnan still remembered the words scrawled on the paper in Geordie’s difficult hand.

She is everything I ever imagined, everything a man could want, sweet, kind, beautiful, and with a good head on her shoulders. She looks like an angel, with golden hair and eyes so blue I cannot think straight when I gaze into them.

Aye, and she did look like an angel, Finnan admitted, glaring at her now—the treacherous wench. Treacherous she must be, for that had been only the first of Geordie’s letters, penned before she took his heart into her hands and shredded it.

But how dare she appear so innocent? The curve of her cheek, which he longed to touch, was sweet and rounded as that of a child; those blue eyes looked guileless, and the same deep shade as the sky over her head. Her body, well-curved also, pulled at him from beneath her plain clothing with a promise equal parts chastity and seduction. He ached to strip that drab brown dress from her, just to see what lay beneath.

Had she, indeed, been a housemaid, he might well have had his way with her. He shuddered, an involuntary reaction.

“Did you no’ receive my letter?” he demanded. “The one bidding you leave Rowan cottage?”

“I did.”

“Then why are you still here?” He added viciously, “You are not wanted.”

She licked her lip nervously, calling up a lie, no doubt. Against Finnan’s will, his gaze followed the motion of her tongue.

“As Geordie’s widow, I have a right to occupy his home.”

Finnan experienced a flash of rage. “The home I kept for him, not you.”

“As his wife…”

Finnan let her get no farther. “Aye, you made damn sure of that, did you not? Buttoned it up all legal.”

“Mr. MacAllister, I am not quite sure why you have formed such a hard opinion of me.”

“Geordie was my brother-in-arms. Have you any idea what that means?”

“Certainly.” She raised that delectably rounded chin. “It indicates a close bond.”

“Bond? We were more than bonded. We were brothers beneath the skin. I would have done anything to defend him.” He added with a flash, “I would still.”

“Admirable.” Her chin jerked up still further. “Then where were you when he needed you in Dumfries?”

“Eh?” Did the bitch seek to chastise him? “Aye, I would have done well to be there and keep him from your grasp.”

“Think what you will, Master MacAllister.”

“Laird MacAllister.”

“What?”

“’Tis what I am, and what you will call me. I worked hard, suffered and bled, to claim this glen, and it is mine, every leaf and stone of it.”

“Oh?” Mockery invaded those seemingly sweet blue eyes. “Is it hard work, then, terrorizing a helpless old woman?”

“If you are speaking of Lady Avrie, there is naught helpless about that old cailloch.”

“She is eighty years old.”

“And she bred a nest of vipers more terrible than she. I have already dealt with her son. Her grandsons have taken fright and run away.”

Jeannie Robertson—MacWherter—sneered at him. “Most honorable.”

“How dare you toss that word at me?” She, who had schemed over a man’s most vulnerable possession, his heart.

“I am surprised you know its meaning. We have heard of you since coming here, Laird MacAllister. It seems there is little to which you will not stoop for your own gain.”

He smiled viciously. “You had better believe it. Now will you take warning and vacate Rowan Cottage?”

“I will not.”

“Then run on your way, Mistress MacWherter. But I warn you—best to watch your back.”

****

Jeannie, calling hard on her dignity, walked away from Finnan MacAllister, trembling in every limb and willing herself not to let him see how badly her knees wobbled beneath her. The vile bully! Did he think he could threaten and verbally bludgeon her into leaving the only home she and Aggie had?

Oh, why had she walked so far, and why lingered? Why peered into the peaty-brown pool at the place where he lay? She should have kept to her own patch of ground.

What made him want her gone from here so very badly? She pondered the question even as she trod the path home beside the sparkling burn, in the warm sunshine, past Avrie house with its grim, gray walls, buttoned tight. Why did he despise her so? Her mind worried the question the way a terrier worried a rat. He did not even know her, save as the wife of his friend.

And, for that matter, why had he not been there for Geordie, if their ties remained as close as he claimed? In Dumfries, Geordie had no one but Jeannie’s father and, later, Jeannie herself. Had Laird MacAllister any idea how far his friend had fallen? Did he know how Geordie died?

Well, and he certainly did not seem the man to sit calmly and listen to her explanations. She saw again the flash of rage in those unusual eyes of his that turned them from warm to terrifying. A wild, unstable, and admittedly attractive creature he seemed—undoubtedly every bit as wicked as everyone said. Did he have the right to toss her and Aggie out of the cottage? If so, where would they go in all the wide world?

Disquiet speared through her, and her knees trembled harder. What would she tell Aggie? And how to fight this man, with all his confidence? It seemed the only thing he detested more than Jeannie might be the Avries. Could she seek to band together with them in order to defy him? But the Dowager Lady Avrie was just an old woman, and sick at that.

Yet the Avries might have the wherewithal to hire a lawyer, as Jeannie did not. She resolved to speak with Lady Avrie soon. It seemed her only option.

What had her father always said about highlanders? Angus Robertson, lowland bred and born, had decried his countrymen to the north as undisciplined. “Scratch a highlander, Daughter, and you will find a savage. They might play at being civilized, but do not ever believe it. They sit up there in those mountains and brood about old wrongs while sharpening their swords and dreaming of spilling blood. As for righteousness—their kirk is whatever land they can hold, and the only place they consider holy.”

Jeannie stopped in her trek—or, were she honest, flight—and gazed about herself at the glen. Who could blame a man for believing all this beauty revealed the hand of God as truly as stone pillars and stained glass? Especially a man like Finnan MacAllister, who chose to lie naked in the water and then arose like some hero in an ancient legend.

She saw again the way he moved, and the tattoos that coursed over that body rippling with muscle. Another shiver traced its way up her spine, long and slow—this time caused not by fear but by longing.