“I’ll take it.” His voice was a rumble of pleasure.
For a long while, the gentle splash of bathwater was the only sound in the room. Fiona’s disquiet eased as she started to enjoy having her husband at her mercy. By the time she rinsed the soap away, sensual anticipation weighted her stomach.
When he spoke, he startled her. She’d fallen into something of a trance. “Ye ken, it’s no’ all bad news.”
“It’s not?” She stood and reached for a dry towel.
“We’ll have to stay in Inverness while we arrange for the money and wait for answers from Hamish and Fergus and Allan.”
He rose from the water. The sight of over six feet of virile male, sleek and wet after his bath, filled Fiona’s vision. The languorous interest swirling in her blood sharpened to desire.
“Do you think that will take long?” she made herself ask, when what she really wanted to do was run her hands over every inch of that powerful form.
“Long enough for us to stay in one place and have a real honeymoon.”
“Oh.”
Diarmid’s smile made her heart jump like a bannock on a hot griddle. “Ye dinna like the idea?”
“I…do,” she forced out.
With a soft laugh, he plucked the towel from her hands. Seeing him in his potent glory had made her forget to pass it over. “I can see ye do.”
She licked her lips, as she noticed he liked the idea, too. Potent glory indeed.
“Let’s…let’s have dinner,” she said in a shaky voice.
“Aye,” he said on a deep rumble that vibrated in her bones. “I’m suddenly verra hungry.”
Chapter 32
“Is he there?” Fiona asked, crouching down in the bracken beside Diarmid.
“See for yourself.” Diarmid passed her the small spyglass.
She lifted the elegant little telescope to her eye. Immediately Allan Grant came into focus in the field across the burn.
She hadn’t seen Allan since he’d pursued them out of the Thistle at gunpoint. He looked older, and dressed in black as he was, he put her in mind of a funeral. Her empty stomach clenched in trepidation, and her gloved hands trembled. Even when he was a quarter of a mile away, she couldn’t shake the habit of fear.
“I can’t see Christina,” she said, ashamed of her unsteady voice.
“There’s a coach over under the trees. She’ll be in there, I suspect.”
“If he’s brought her.” Fiona swung the telescope around, until she saw the shabby closed carriage in the shade of a grove of beeches.
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“He wants his money.” He paused. “I’ll wager he’s brought his henchmen with him.”
“You said to come alone.”
“I did. But then I havenae come alone either.” At Diarmid’s shoulder was the reassuring bulk of his cousin Hamish, Laird of Glen Lyon, who owned an estate near this isolated brae. Last night, she and Diarmid had been Hamish’s guests in a lovely house she’d been too nervous to appreciate.
The meeting with Allan followed a fortnight of frantic planning, with letters flying between Inverness, Invertavey, Bancavan, Edinburgh, and Glen Lyon.
“Everything will be fine,” Hamish said in his subterranean rumble of a voice. He spoke with a crisp English accent, legacy of a London childhood.
As far as she was capable of devoting an ounce of attention to anything but the plan to retrieve Christina, she approved of Hamish. He wore his heart on his sleeve more than her husband did, but she liked that she knew where she stood with him. She also liked that he’d placed himself and his considerable resources at their disposal the moment Diarmid asked for help. It was clear that a deep bond of affection and respect united the cousins.