Payton gazed at the sprinkle of freckles across her nose, the slender taper of her fingers. Mared sighed again and wiggled her fingers indicating he should give her the neckcloth. He abruptly reached up and caught that hand with the wiggling fingers in his larger one. “Patience, lass,” he said quietly. “Ye must learn patience.” He rose from his seat, her hand still in his.
She looked at her hand in his and smiled impertinently. “I am indeed impatient—impatient for sleep, that is, a very deep slumber—which I am assured I shall have, given the amount of toil I’ve been forced to endure here, and in spite of the deplorable state of the housekeeper’s mattress. But a deep slumber will bring the morrow, and then I shall have only three hundred sixty-five days left in yer employ.”
With a wry smile, Payton raised her hand, which he still held, and pressed his palm against hers, lacing his fingers between hers, one by one. “Rest assured ye’re no’ alone in wanting the three hundred and sixty-five days to be done.”
She gasped with surprise and smiled so broadly that it dimpled her cheeks. “’Tis a miracle! At long last we might agree on something, aye?”
But Payton did not respond. He was captivated by her green eyes, the sparkle that he’d wanted to destroy, the eyes that had moved him as he’d lain with Finella.
“’Tis rather odd, sir, how ye go about handing over yer clothing for laundering.”
There was something about that brash smile of hers that sent a tiny bolt of desire to his groin, and Payton once again felt like a monumental fool. He’d meant to punish her, to make her feel the indignant pain she’d heaped on him. But it seemed he was the only one to be humiliated, the only one to think of the kiss they’d shared that day high in the hills that had lingered with him for so long afterward.
Aye, he was a bloody fool, for he continued heedlessly to touch her ear and her neck with his free hand. Her cheeks filled with a blush, and she instantly dipped her head away from his hand.
Payton dropped his hand from her neck, yet he still held the other one tightly in his. “Ach, Mared,” he said quietly, letting go any pretense. “Ye’ve tormented me since we were bairns, aye?”
She snorted lightly. “I believe it was ye who tormented me, milord.”
“’Tis obvious I have tormented ye somehow, in some way, for ye’ve made it quite clear ye’d no’ have me, were I the last man in Scotland.”
“I never said so!” she protested with a tiny tilt of her chin. “If ye were the last man in Scotland, I’d have cause to reconsider…even if ye were a Douglas.”
He chuckled softly and shifted his gaze to the ripe lips he desperately wanted to kiss, feeling strongly now the powerful current of desire that had been so blatantly lacking earlier. “Reconsider now, leannan,” he said softly. “Think of the pleasures we might explore together under this roof.”
Her lips parted slightly; he could see the leap of her pulse in the base of her throat.
“Let go the past,” he urged her, lifting her hand and tenderly kissing the back of it. “Donna put yerself through this.”
Her eyes suddenly flashed with an angry glint. “It wasna I who put me here!” she sharply reminded him, yanking her hand free of his. “It is ye who put me here, with no more thought than if ye’d penned one of yer sheep!”
Her rebuke annoyed him—he abruptly turned away from Mared, shoved both hands through his hair and roared to the ceiling, “Diah, but ye bloody well vex me!”
“The feeling is entirely mutual, so I would suggest that as ye are no’ the last man in Scotland, ye give me leave to tend yer blasted clothing!”
“Aye, go, get out,” he said sternly, waving a hand at the door. “I’d just as soon no’ lay eyes on ye!”
“I’ll bloody well go,” Mared snapped and grabbed the tail of his neckcloth and yanked it hard from around his neck before whirling around and striding to the door.
“Hold there!” he bellowed. “Ye will take yer leave of me properly! I’ve warned ye, Miss Lockhart, I willna abide yer insolence in this house!”
She grabbed the door handle and yanked it open. “I will do the best I can to satisfy my family’s debt, sir, but if ye donna care for my service, then by all means, as laird and master of this house, ye should dismiss me from yer employ at once!” And with that, she stormed through his door without bothering to close it, so he could hear her marching down the corridor, away from him.
“Bloody rotten hell,” Payton muttered and glared at the fire. But when he heard her on the stairs, running down, running away from him, he swiped up his port glass and hurled it with all his might at the hearth and watched it shatter into a thousand little pieces.
It was ironic, he thought, infuriated, that he should feel exactly like that goddam port glass. Somehow, that wretched woman could, with a single word, shatter him into a thousand pieces.
Twelve