The Laird's Willful Lass (The Likely Lairds Book 1) Page 8

  If she lost her independence, how could she survive in the world she’d chosen to inhabit?

  “Very well, Papa, you’ve made your point,” she said with a hint of impatience and turned to her host. “It seems I owe you more thanks. You’ll soon tire of my conversation, sir, as it will be nothing but an endless stream of gratitude.”

  A faint smile. “I cannae imagine ever tiring of your conversation, signorina.”

  She cursed the heat that rose in her cheeks. “Wait until you know me better before you make such rash assertions.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  The smile hovered. Without thinking, she lifted her sketchpad and quickly turned to a clean page. To her irritation, the fleeting expression vanished before she caught it.

  “Are you thinking of painting my portrait?” the Mackinnon asked.

  The heat in her cheeks, barely conquered, rose again. “I’m just passing the time.”

  “She draws the way you and I breathe, Fergus,” Papa said. “Although most of the time, she finds landscapes of more interest than people.”

  She shot her father a repressive glance. “I’m stuck inside today.”

  Her parent responded with a speculative look that shifted from her to her host.

  The Mackinnon gave another of his grunts of amusement. “So in the absence of a hill or a river, I’ll do?”

  “Precisely,” she said, although the unwelcome truth was that she found his features irresistibly compelling.

  “I cannae imagine your noble patron will want a picture of me among his Scottish scenes.”

  “I don’t know.” She arched an eyebrow. “You have the untamed quality he asked for.”

  Wicked humor sparkled in the silvery eyes. “I’m glad you think so, lassie.”

  The fleeting expression she’d sought to depict was nowhere to be seen. Right now, he looked predatory and far too interested in her. With sudden violence, she scribbled over the few lines marking the page.

  The Mackinnon laughed again. “Och, that puts me in my place.”

  “I have no skill in portraits,” she said, closing the book even as her eye fell on her first sketch of her host.

  The Mackinnon stood. “Anyway, you need to excuse me. Signorina, would you like me to show you around the castle this afternoon? It may inspire your artistic impulses, despite the weather.”

  She was sure it would. It was her other, more carnal impulses she was worried about. On the other hand, how often did she have the chance to tour a genuine Highland castle?

  “Thank you,” she said with a docility that provoked another mocking arch of a russet eyebrow.

  The Mackinnon turned to Papa. “If you’d like it, signore, I thought perhaps your daughter and I could dine with ye in here tonight to keep you company. I imagine time will hang heavy while your leg heals.”

  “Grazie, that’s so kind,” her father said. “I’d like that beyond measure.”

  Marina cast the Mackinnon a curious glance. She’d imagined that he’d try to get her to himself again. What was his game?

  The silvery eyes were enigmatic. Diavolo, she was completely out of her depth. Which was absurd when she’d been fending off amorous overtures from ardent gentlemen since she set up as an artist. She knew the danger signals, and she knew how to defuse masculine interest. Or at least she thought she did.

  “Then I’ll leave you to rest.” He bowed to Marina. “Signorina.”

  Once the Mackinnon had gone, a charged silence fell. Marina pretended an interest in a sketch of a crofter’s cottage she’d done on the way north.

  “Daughter, look at me,” her father said in soft Italian.

  Unwillingly, Marina obeyed. “Si, Papa?”

  “He has his eye on you, that one. Be careful.”

  She gave a derisive snort and answered in the same language. “If you’re worried about the Mackinnon, why on earth are you doing your best to push us together?”

  “I’m not,” her father said. If he’d met her eyes when he spoke, she might almost believe him.

  “Anyway, even if he is interested in me, men have been interested in me before. I’ve always been able to handle them.”

  “Yes, but this time I fear you’re interested in him in return.” Her father frowned. “And we’re under his roof.”

  “He’s a fascinating man, but too much the master,” she said with utterly spurious self-confidence.

  Her father didn’t smile or make his usual teasing remarks about her going her own way. “But you always like a challenge.”

  “I know the price of a scandal, Papa.” Her hand clenched on the pencil. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “But I do worry. Listening to the two of you talk is like being caught between lightning strikes. I don’t want you to get burnt, cara.”

  “He said if I want to go on to Skye, he’ll give me a guide. But it means leaving you behind. You can’t travel as you are.” Reluctantly this morning, she’d admitted that the Mackinnon hadn’t exaggerated her father’s immobility over the next few weeks.

  “That fool of a coachman.”

  “Yes, well, there’s no point crying over spilt milk.” When she spoke the proverb in English, her father chuckled.

  “You and your mother, such strange things you say in your barbarous tongue. Only a fool would waste tears on a drop of lost milk.” His expression turned somber. “I always miss her, but right now, I miss her more than ever. I have a feeling you might need her guidance in time to come.”

  “I miss her, too.” Marina rose and kissed her father on the cheek. “Now stop fretting. I promise I’m in no danger. All I want you to do is lie back and get better, and all I need to do is finish my paintings for His Grace. Then we can go back to Italy and forget this country where the sun never shines. You’re getting into a state over nothing, Papa.”

  “Am I?” He didn’t smile. “I’m more worried now. When I accused you of an interest in Fergus, you failed to deny it.”

  What would be the point? “Basta, he’s handsome enough, but too inclined to order me around. I’m sure I can keep my girlish passions in check.”

  She wanted her father to smile, to treat this issue as the unimportant matter she desperately hoped it was. But he remained troubled. “Perhaps you should accept Fergus’s offer of a guide to Skye. If he lets you take a maid as well, I’m sure it will all be respectable.”

  “I don’t want to leave you, Papa, at least at this early stage. Let me see what the country is like tomorrow when I go out. If there isn’t sufficient material for my commission, I promise I’ll move on. Or I will, once I’m convinced you’re on the road to recovery.”

  But as she left the room, her father’s misgivings only worsened hers. Was she a fool to stay even one more night at Achnasheen?

  * * *

  Chapter Six

  * * *

  Signorina Lucchetti—Fergus noticed that unlike her father, she hadn’t been quick to offer the privilege of using her Christian name—swept down the main staircase to the great hall. Macushla and Brecon both barked in welcome, leaped to their feet, and loped toward her.

  “Buongiorno, amici,” she said with a smile less constrained than the ones she usually bestowed on Fergus. She paused on the landing at the turn of the stairs to give the dogs an enthusiastic greeting. She’d been at ease with them yesterday in the rain, too, he remembered.

  She liked his dogs. That was a point in her favor, as if he needed anything else to make him appreciate her.

  When she straightened and descended to the flagstoned floor, the dogs trotted at her side. She’d changed into one of her own gowns, now her luggage was out of the burn. It was another fiendishly stylish frock in a rich purple that added an ivory tinge to that smooth olive skin.

  He had to give her dressmaker credit. The gown was as modest as a nun’s habit, yet it skimmed that tall, slender body in a way that left a laddie aware of every alluring curve and line it covered.

  This laddie, anyway.

>   As she came forward, her smile took on that familiar hint of a challenge. Fergus wasn’t sure she knew she did it. It always made him want to either kiss the insolence out of her, or fling her across his shoulder and carry her up to his tower.

  Why choose? He wanted to do both.

  She gestured toward the pikes, halberds and muskets arrayed in orderly patterns on the stone walls. “This house is an armory.”

  He gave an amused grunt. “Aye, we’re always ready to fight, if the Macgillivrays or the Drummonds take a fancy to land or livestock that by rights belongs to the Mackinnons.”

  She stopped a few feet away. The gloomy day turned the great hall into a realm of shadows and mystery. The greatest mystery of all was this intriguing woman. “Even now?”

  “Aye, even now.” Although these days, the Highlands were a mostly law-abiding part of the kingdom.

  “How exciting.”

  Aye, this lassie would have fitted right in, back in the wild old days. He pictured Marina Lucchetti standing on the battlements at Achnasheen and defying an invading army. Last night at dinner, he hadn’t missed her interest in his dramatic stories about the clan.

  “Come away, and I’ll show ye the rest of the castle.”

  It was a struggle not to touch her as they wandered in and out of the ground floor rooms, and when he took her down to the vast, vaulted kitchens, designed for the era when the entire clan dined with the laird every day. His guest’s curiosity about his home matched his servants’ interest in her. As he climbed the stairs from the kitchen behind Signorina Lucchetti, his shoulder blades tingled with the knowledge that Jenny and Kirsty watched avidly from below.

  He had enough distractions, without worrying about what his clansmen were saying about his beautiful guest. Under the purple dress, the signorina’s slim hips swayed with each step. How could a man look anywhere else when, as she mounted the stairs, the material slid to outline the luscious roundness of her buttocks. His hands curled at his sides as he fought the impulse to haul those curves hard into his body.

  Self-derisive amusement quirked his lips as he imagined her reaction if he did that. She’d likely punch him in the nose. Or lower.

  Which didn’t stop a man from wanting her.

  This was an odd attraction, unprecedented in his experience. It was a wee bit like holding a lit firecracker in his hand and waiting for the explosion. Not peaceful, but without doubt, exciting.

  She turned her head and caught his expression. “What are you thinking, Mackinnon?” she asked in a dark tone. “And whatever it is, stop.”

  She was also the one lassie in creation who gave him orders. He had no intention of obeying, but the novelty had its charms.

  “Och, you’re no fun, Marina Lucchetti,” he said with a tragic air, following her back into the great hall.

  “I’m pleased to hear it.” Her eyes narrowed on him as the dogs settled contentedly at her feet. Traitors. “Girls who are no fun live long and respectable lives and die in their beds.”

  “Aye, that’s true. But perhaps when they die, they wish they’d visited a few other beds in the meantime.”

  “Mackinnon…” she said in warning.

  He widened his eyes in mock innocence. “I’m only trying to entertain you with a wee bit of flirtation.”

  She wasn’t impressed, he could see. “The tour is entertainment enough. May we go upstairs?”

  His heart crashed against his ribs, although he knew the question was innocent. Och, what he’d give to carry her up to his tower room and keep her there. By God, she’d find entertainment aplenty, if he had any say in it.

  Behave yourself, Fergus.

  She wasn’t ready to fall into his arms. Although if he wasn’t mistaken—and he rarely was—she was interested. She mightn’t want to find him attractive, but he hadn’t missed the sparkle in her eyes or the color on those haughty cheekbones when she bandied words with him.

  Aye, she was interested, all right, if far from reconciled to the idea.

  “It’s a pity it’s such dreich weather. You’ll love the view from the battlements.”

  “Perhaps you can show me when the weather improves.”

  That cheered him up. Despite her concession last night, he feared she still might move on to Skye at the first chance. “That’s a promise.”

  “Do you have a portrait of Fair Mhaire?”

  “Aye.”

  While it was too soon to ask his visitor to share his bed—hell, she hadn’t agreed to stay past the next few days—he’d be damned if he put off touching her any longer. He stepped forward and took her arm.

  By now, after touching her so many times, he should be used to the immediate shock of heat. A blast of desire tightened his gut and set his heart galloping. The force of his need seared away good sense and left yearning in its place.

  The signorina started at the contact. Surprise, or did she share the same powerful reaction?

  Too soon. Too soon. But by the devil, before long, he’d sweep her into his arms and kiss her until she couldn’t see straight.

  Fergus swallowed and battled to sound like a civilized man. No lassie had ever had him in such a lather, and he hadn’t even kissed her yet. God help him when he did. “Let’s go and visit my great-great grandmother.”

  * * *

  As they climbed the wide staircase, the Mackinnon told her more about the castle’s history. Marina didn’t hear a word. She was too conscious of that strong, capable hand curled around her arm above her elbow. The rainy day was cold, once they moved away from the fires blazing in the castle’s hearths. Marina hardly noticed the chill. With her host so close, Marina felt like she was burning up.

  She’d been a fool to think that a tour of the castle was an innocuous way to pass the afternoon. It turned out that any time she spent with this handsome Scot threatened her defenses.

  Nor did it help that whenever she looked into that striking face, she saw sexual interest mirrored back. The flaring attraction was reluctant on her part, but she couldn’t seem to do anything to stifle it.

  She resented her agitation. Not just because she’d never imagined any man could rival her obsession with her art, but also because her focus on the Mackinnon stopped her appreciating her surroundings as they deserved. The castle was fascinating, or at least it should be, like something out of a legend.

  Her attention only really became engaged—inevitably, she supposed—when they entered a long corridor leading between the north and east towers.

  “You have a gallery,” she said in pleasure.

  “Aye. This is where we keep the family portraits. Ye want to see Fair Mhaire.”

  “I do,” she said, although she stopped in front of a pair of primitive panels from the sixteenth century that were much too early to feature the kidnapped heroine.

  A man wearing black velvet and fur stood beside a desk that held a thick leather-bound bible. A woman in a black silk farthingale and a white ruff clutched a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. The baby’s face looked shriveled and ancient as it stared out of the painting.

  “Those two always look like dolls to me. So stiff and formal.”

  The portraits were of no great quality, although the artist had done a fair job depicting the luxurious clothing. The sitters’ features, however, conveyed little animation. As the Mackinnon said, they looked like wooden mannequins, particularly that grotesque baby.

  “It was the fashion to paint them like that,” she said, wandering down the wall and noting the way fashions changed through the ages. She paused in front of a painting of a woman wearing a dark blue gown with an elaborate lace collar. If she’d added up the generations right, this was the picture she was looking for. “Is this Mhaire?”

  “Aye, that’s her. She doesnae look like she led such an adventurous life, does she?”

  This artist had been even more ham-fisted than the earlier one. The woman’s features showed no personality at all. Generic blonde was the best description Marina could come up with. �
��What a pity.”

  “You cannae tell she was as beautiful as her reputation says, although the family legend is that my great-great grandfather fell in love with her the moment he saw her.”

  “I wonder how much actual kidnapping was involved.”

  The Mackinnon gave a grunt of laughter. “For the sake of Drummond pride, we’ve always agreed that she was stolen away.” He gestured to the next painting, depicting a tall, lean man with marked brows and a mane of gray-streaked ebony hair. “This is her husband, Black Dougal Mackinnon.”

  Black Dougal’s portrait had a little more life than Fair Mhaire’s. Not much.

  “He was a handsome man, although he doesn’t look much like you.” Except perhaps for the commanding nose and haughty expression.

  “Most Mackinnons have red hair and gray eyes. He was one of the few exceptions.”

  The varied quality of the portraits couldn’t hide the way good looks ran through the line. Good looks, and a certain arrogance of bearing that she knew too well from her dealings with the current laird.

  Marina paused in front of a pair of paintings that, in terms of artistic merit, were by far the best in the collection. The man was another long, lean Mackinnon and had a look of the laird she knew. His hair was powdered to a soft gray and tied back with a black silk ribbon in the mode of last century. The woman was soft and blonde and looked like she’d never had an opinion to call her own. Wearing a loose white gown that emphasized her voluptuous bosom, she reclined in a brocade chair.

  “Your parents?”

  “Aye.”

  “Is your mother alive?” She’d been a pretty woman.

  “No, she passed away five years ago. She and my father met in Edinburgh, and he paid Allan Ramsay to commemorate their betrothal with these portraits. They were among the last paintings he finished.”

  “I’ve never heard of him, but he’s a marvelous artist. See how he’s captured their personalities with a few brushstrokes. Is this what they were like?”

  “He’s caught my father’s devil-may-care attitude. My father died in an accident at a race in Inverness. He was riding a horse that was reputed to be unbreakable.”