Highland Heiress

chapter Sixteen



He was dressed in his trousers that had been cleaned and pressed, his polished boots and a plain shirt that must belong to one of the servants. It looked as if he were leaving.

But he shouldn’t even be on his feet.

“Mr. McHeath!” she cried, hurrying to him. “You shouldn’t be out of bed! Please, sit down. I’m shocked Mrs. McAlvey let you come downstairs.”

“I wanted to make sure you’re all right—and Mrs. McAlvey doesn’t know I’m not in bed.” He flushed as he gave her a little smile and she helped him to the sofa. “She’s getting me some biscuits and tea. I told her I was famished. Never mind how I’m feeling. How are you?”

“I’m all right.” Since he already knew about her father’s drinking, she could meet his steadfast gaze as she sat beside him. In spite of her shame over her father’s reaction to his presence, it was a relief not to have to prevaricate. “I think Papa’s been drinking again. He worries about me, so when he found out about the fire and that you were here…”

“He was justifiably upset that the solicitor who was helping Sir Robert to sue you has been your guest,” he said with both acceptance and resignation. “Regardless of what Dr. Campbell says, it would probably be best if I left today, if I may borrow a carriage. I can stay in the village for a night or two, and Mrs. McAlvey can come with me.”

She wanted to go with him, but of course that was impossible. Equally impossible, however, was letting him leave before the doctor said he should. “My father will get over his anger.” Eventually. “So you mustn’t even think of leaving until Dr. Campbell says you may.”

“I don’t want to make things worse for you than I already have. Your father was angry enough to shout, Moira. My presence will cause trouble for you if I stay, so I won’t.”

Toying with the cuff of the narrow sleeve of her gown, Moira looked up into his face. “If my life is troubled now, it’s not your fault. You were just the catalyst that led to revelations of things I should know. Now that I’m aware of how vindictive Robert McStuart is, I can take precautions to avoid him, and men like him, in the future. It’s also better that I discover my father’s true feelings about my plans and goals. He’s never been overjoyed by my endeavors, but I didn’t realize how much he was against the school. When he found out I planned to rebuild, he withdrew his support. If I wish to build the school again, I shall have to find the money myself—and I shall.”

Gordon had been dazzled by her beauty and impressed by her bravery the first day he met her. He’d come to respect her kindness and generosity. But never had he admired her more than when she spoke of rebuilding the school with such heartfelt resolve. “I’m so sorry, Moira,” he said softly. “I should have insisted on leaving at once.”

“And put yourself at even more risk? No, Mr. McHeath, you suffered enough. It’s not your fault Papa doesn’t approve of the school, and if anyone is responsible for the withdrawal of his support, it’s whoever set the fire. I shall simply have to solicit donations from my friends. There are many in Glasgow who will surely contribute. I shall go there immediately, and begin.”

Glasgow. On the other side of Scotland from Edinburgh. “Have you no friends in Edinburgh?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Except me,” he offered, his voice hushed. “I’d be happy to help.”

“I should have guessed you would offer,” she said. She reached up to cup his cheek, her palm warm and soft against his skin. “You’ve proven to me that there are good, decent, honorable men in the world.”

“Then your experience with Robbie hasn’t soured you on men entirely?” he asked, his mind filling with a vision of the future that had been dancing on the edge of his consciousness, yet kept firmly on the fringes.

“Not entirely,” she said, lowering her hand, her eyes downcast, her cheeks pink with a blush.

Once before he had kept his feelings to himself, only to discover that he’d been harboring hopes that should never have been allowed to develop. If that was so this time, he had to find out. “Although these are hardly the circumstances I would have wished for, I cannot remain silent any longer about…”

In spite of his determination, his voice faltered. Yet if he were wrong, it would be worse than foolish to remain in ignorance. “About what is happening between us.”

She flushed and although she didn’t speak, he found her silence encouraging. If he were completely wrong, surely she would say something. “I hope I’m not wrong and that you do feel something more than affection for me,” he ventured.

Still she remained silent, red-faced, not meeting his gaze.

His former confidence in her silent response began to ebb away, replaced by dread. Was he wrong again? Perhaps, despite her response to his kisses and embraces, she didn’t feel as he did. Maybe his confession was even…embarrassing…to her?

“I had assumed you felt somewhat more,” he said. “Apparently, I was mistaken.”

She raised her eyes to look at him and in that instant, he knew, to the core of his heart and with the rekindling of all his self-suppressed hopes, that she hadn’t been toying with him, or leading him on. “No, Mr. McHeath, you are not mistaken,” she said. “Affection is much too weak a word for what I feel for you.”

“Not Mr. McHeath. Gordon,” he whispered, his heart soaring as he gently took her face between his hands and brought her close to kiss. Lightly, tenderly, he brushed his lips over hers as she closed her eyes and put her arms around him.

“Gordon,” she sighed before she kissed him with more fervor, angling her body closer.

Passion leaped into searing, vibrant life within him. His desire liberated, he held her in his arms, where she belonged. Where she would always belong. Where no other woman would have belonged in quite the same perfect way.

She was his equal, in intelligence, in drive, in desire. Having met her, he was completely certain he would never have been happy with a more soft-spoken, timid woman like Catriona McNare.

As if to confirm his thoughts, she parted her lips and his tongue slid between them into her warm, willing mouth. With a low, eager moan, she slid her hands up his back.

He moved to bring himself even closer, ignoring the growing pain in his side from his wound. It was healing, after all. He wouldn’t bleed again. Not now, when he had Moira in his arms. Beautiful, determined, passionate Moira.

Warm, wonderful, softly curved Moira.

His hand slowly glided up her side and around to her breast. He could feel the taut tip beneath his fingers and her growing excitement as he brushed the pad of his thumb across it, a match for his own burgeoning need. He shifted and moved her backward, until she was reclining on the sofa and he was half-atop her.

With more of their bodies closer, their kisses grew less tender and more ardent, less gentle and more passionate, as their need increased. He was hard and anxious, his body urging him to take her then and there.

She would let him, he was sure. She wanted him as much as he wanted her, his physical instincts argued. Yet another part of him, the one that was well aware of society’s rules, held him in check.

That restraining conscience grew weaker and weaker the more she held and kissed him. The more she moved and arched, as if her body was ordering him to make love with her.

And oh, how much he wanted to! Never had he wanted a woman as much as Moira.

But not like this. Not like some lascivious Casanova, without words of promise and commitment, no matter how difficult it was to stop. To move back. To look down at her flushed face, her desire-darkened eyes, her breasts rising and falling with her rapid breathing, and let go.

She sat up at once, dread in her lovely eyes. “Are you bleeding again?”

He shook his head. “No. It’s not that. This isn’t…right,” he said, the words so difficult to say, but necessary.

Her brows contracting with a frown, she straightened and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “I realize this sort of thing is highly inappropriate.”

Oh, God, he’d offended her, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. He reached out and took hold of her hand. “Moira, I’m not sorry I kissed you, here or any other time. And I want to be with you, intimately and every other way. But we have to stop, or we are going to make love right here on this sofa. As delightful as making love with you would be, I won’t take you like some lascivious Lothario, the way Robbie—”

“He didn’t.”

The words burst out of her like cannon fire as she swiftly rose. “We didn’t. Never. I’ve never behaved like this with any man. I don’t know what comes over me when I’m with you!”

She was upset, and yet she had no reason to be. Putting a hand on the back of the sofa, he hoisted himself to his feet. “I wasn’t accusing you of anything. As for what comes over you when we’re together, it’s the same thing that comes over me, because I assure you, Moira, I have never been so presumptuous in my life.”

“Presumptuous?” she repeated, and he was glad to see the spark of anger shift to a sparkle of amusement. “Is that what you call it?”

He put his arms about her waist and smiled. “I suppose I could call it brazen desire. Audacious need. Bold passion.”

She raised herself on her toes and lightly touched her lips to his. “I call it daring. Passionate. Exciting.”

“Quite the last words one expects to hear used to describe a solicitor.”

“Yet appropriate in this case.” She ran her fingertip along the bandage that covered the gash over his eye. “Mrs. McAlvey thinks you’re going to have a scar. You’ll look even more daring then. I daresay you’ll have widows flocking to your office.”

“There’s only one person I want anxious to see me,” he murmured as he bent his head to kiss her again. “The same woman who would climb on a rooftop to watch a prizefight.”

“You saw me?”

“Aye. I was quite astonished.”

“You weren’t distracted?”

“Only for a moment—and I’m not sorry a bit. However did you get up there?”

“I told you—I used to climb in my father’s warehouses. I wanted to watch, but of course a lady shouldn’t, so…”

“So you found a way, despite society’s conventions.”

“The way I disobey society’s conventions when I’m with you,” she said with a disarming smile.

How could he resist? He had to bring her back into the circle of his arms. He had to kiss her again and was leaning down to do so when Mrs. McAlvey charged into the room.

“What on earth?!” the nurse cried as they jumped apart like guilty children caught stealing cake. “Tea and scones my right hind foot!”

Mrs. McAlvey came to a halt and waggled her finger. “I trusted you, Mr. McHeath, but when I go back upstairs, what do I find? Or not find? You’re down here! I thought you’d have more sense! If that wound’s opened again, I’ve a good mind to let you bleed to death!”

In spite of her annoyance and just condemnation for disobeying orders, Gordon was only a little embarrassed; he was much too happy to learn that Moira cared for him to be dismayed. Moira blushed, but otherwise didn’t look any more contrite.

He reached under his shirt and felt his bandage. “Dry as a bone, Mrs. McAlvey, so no need to fuss,” he said, although the wound was sore. “I did want some tea and scones, but I was feeling so well that I—”

“Thought you knew better than the doctor and me?” Her hands on her hips, she turned to address Moira. “If he didn’t have more sense, you should have, my lady. You should have sent him back upstairs at once.”

“I’m sorry,” she replied, managing to sound remorseful in spite of the happiness lurking in her eyes and the corners of her mouth.

How much he wanted to kiss her there! And on the tip of her delightful nose. And the soft lobes of her ears. The curve of her cheek.

The curve of her breast…

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you—the pair of you!” Mrs. McAlvey declared as she took hold of Gordon’s arm as if he were an escaped convict. “Now back to bed, you stupid man, before I send to the doctor for something that’ll make you sleep for a week.”

“Yes, Mrs. McAlvey. I’ll do whatever you say, Mrs. McAlvey.”

“You should,” Moira agreed, “since you have to stay a few more days.”

“Yes, my lady,” he said, looking back at her over his shoulder, and giving her a saucy wink that was so unsolicitor-like, she had to laugh as she sat on the sofa and covered her warm cheeks with her hands.

In an instant, everything had changed. There was still her conflict with her father, and her school to be rebuilt, but knowing Gordon cared so much for her made her feel that the worst was over.

She would reconcile with her father. She would rebuild her school. She would have Gordon, and all would be well.



Even the dog was miserable as master and beast huddled in the narrow cave.

“How’s he goin’ t’ know where t’ find us?” Charlie grumbled as he stroked the head of his dog. “We’re nowhere near the meeting place.”

“We’re closer than you think,” Red replied as he crawled forward on his belly to look into the band of trees that covered the slope. They were about five miles from Dunbrachie, where the ground was more uneven and the river in more of a valley. He could see parts of it through the trees and the slight drizzle that added to their discomfort. “He himself told me where t’ go if I thought we had t’ hide better.”

“That other place was warmer. At least there was straw.”

“Aye, but we couldn’t stay there. Not after that dolt fell and killed himself.”

“Then why’d we go t’ all the trouble to move him? I thought we done that so we could stay where we was.”

“Too close for comfort.” Red shivered and muttered a sailor’s curse. “By God, he’s going to have to pay for keeping us waiting in this hole like worms.”

Charlie scratched one of the fleabites on his arm. “If he comes at all. It’s been too long, I tells ya. He ain’t comin’ a’tall. We been cheated. We done what he said, put our necks in the noose and all for naught.”

Red glared at him over his shoulder. “Shut yer gob.”

Charlie’s dog rose, growling.

With a triumphant grunt, Red raised himself on his elbows, then scrambled up on his hands and knees. “Here he comes! I told you he’d come!”

Red moved back from the opening and sat on his haunches, satisfaction on his face. “I told you!”

“Is he by himself?”

“Aye.” Red rose, standing as straight as he could beneath the overhang.

“What if he ain’t? I say let him come up here, not us go down where we’ll be seen.”

Red hesitated for the briefest of moments before shaking his head. “He won’t be able to make it up the slope,” he said as he went to the entrance and started to climb out.

“Stupid git,” Charlie muttered. “Go on, Dan,” he ordered his dog, who leaped eagerly out of the cave.

Charlie followed more slowly, his gaze sweeping over the slope, the bushes, the rocky riverbank and the scattered, stunted trees.

Below him Red lumbered down the slope like a bear, heading toward the well-dressed fellow waiting near a spruce that likely wouldn’t last another winter. The man appeared to be alone, but there could be other men hidden nearby, with guns and ropes to bind them. Then it would be prison and the hangman’s noose.

Maybe he should cut and run right now. Let Red be caught and imprisoned.

But what if the man was alone and intending to pay? He had less than a shilling in his pocket, and no food at all.

Hungry, uncertain, wishing he’d stayed in Glasgow, Charlie watched as Red approached the nobleman. He saw his confederate’s shoulders relax, and then the nobleman brought out a purse.

He’d brought the payment after all.

Whistling for Dan, wanting to keep his dog beside him because it could still be a trap, Charlie hurried down the slope.

But when he got there, the earl was still holding tight to the money, his voice raised in anger.

“All you were supposed to do was frighten my daughter and burn down the building,” the old man snarled. “You weren’t supposed to hurt anyone. I wanted to prevent violence, not cause it!”

“It wasn’t our fault that fella came along when he did,” Red protested. “And what else should we have done? Let him walk away? Told ’im you were payin’ for the job?”

“If it was already alight, you should have fled.”

“It wasn’t yet, and he’d seen us. And we ain’t been paid. We weren’t going anywhere without our money, so it’s your fault we had to kill ’em. If you paid us before like I asked—”

“I never pay in full for a job until it’s completed to my satisfaction,” the earl retorted. “And you didn’t kill him, you oaf. He’s alive and in my house at this very moment.”

Charlie and Red both stared at him. “Wha’?” Red muttered. “He ain’t dead? But I stabbed him.”

“Not deeply enough, apparently, and he can identify you, so I suggest you take this money and go far away— America would probably be best. Nobody cares who goes there,” the earl growled as he finally shoved the leather purse into Red’s hand.

Scowling, Red weighed the pouch in his hand. “There ain’t enough here for both of us to sail for America. And you kept us here when we could ha’ been well away. More risk for us, more it’ll cost ya—another fifty pound or so.”

“Are you daft?” the earl demanded.

“No, my lord. We’re willin’ to go far away if you’re willin’ to pay. O’ course, if you’re not, we could always ask your pretty daughter for more. Don’t you think she’d pay us, Charlie, rather than have everybody in Dunbrachie know what her father done?”

Blanching, the earl drew a pistol from his greatcoat. “I could shoot you down like rabid dogs and all I’d have to say is that you tried to rob me.”

Charlie glanced at his dog, sitting obediently at his side. All he had to do was whisper a word and Dan would attack, as ferocious as a lion.

“If you attempt to talk to my daughter—if she so much as sees you from a distance—you’ll be sorry. If you’re caught, you’ll hang. And if you try to involve me, there’s not a soul in Scotland who’ll believe your word over mine. After all, why would I want to destroy my own daughter’s school?”

“Maybe your daughter isn’t as stupid as you think,” Red replied. “Might be she’ll believe us. After all, why else would we come to this godforsaken place? Not for the sport of it, that’s for sure. And she’s heard of the Three Feathers in Glasgow, ain’t she? If we say that’s where we met you, she’ll believe it, won’t she? Ain’t she had to send servants to drag you out o’ there often enough?”

Charlie kept his eyes on the earl. He’d worked with mute beasts long enough to recognize a silent human reaction, and the man hesitated a moment too long before saying, “You can make all the accusations you like. My daughter will never believe you.”

Whatever he said, the earl had doubts about his daughter’s trust in him.

They had him. They had him good. “I’m thinkin’ we ought to get more than fifty,” Charlie said. “After all, we’ll hang if we’re caught, whether we got a hundred pounds or twenty. Might as well get a hundred. We can go back to that empty barn at the edge of your grounds, my lord. That’s convenient for ya, ain’t it?”

“I don’t have a hundred pounds in ready money!” the earl protested.

“But you can get it,” Charlie amiably replied. “And you’d better, or your daughter’ll be finding out just what kind o’ man her pa is.”

“How?” he charged, panic in his voice. “You wouldn’t dare show your face in Dunbrachie!”

“Your house ain’t in Dunbrachie, and there ain’t a lock in Scotland Charlie here can’t pick,” Red noted with a smirk. “If we want to pay a little visit during the night, we can. And, by God, we will.”