“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.”