“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.