Diarmid had learned early to mistrust feminine beauty. Beauty demanded too much of both its possessor and the men who vied to acquire it. His mother Ida had wielded her beauty like a weapon, laying waste to everyone in the vicinity. His mother’s beauty had cursed his father’s existence.
Even when he’d been too young to probe the causes, Diarmid had sensed the misery poisoning the air in this house. By the time his mother ran off to Jamaica with her last lover, to die in Kingston from some tropical fever, he knew where to place the blame. He watched how his father’s frustrated yearning for his lovely wife blighted his life—and the life of his son.
He’d also seen how not even death and dishonor broke his mother’s evil hold on her husband’s soul. Love had weakened his father, led him to forgive every infidelity. The previous laird would have forgiven this last adventure, too, if only Ida had come back to him. Her death left George Mactavish a shell of a man. He faded from life slowly but inexorab
ly, to die five years later, when Diarmid was twenty.
Aye, beauty was a curse to a woman and to any man unlucky enough to fall under its spell. But och, for all that, it was a powerful pleasure to behold. He raised the candle to see his mermaid more clearly. The elegant features. The skin like new cream.
Even knowing her loveliness was a cruel trick of heredity, he couldn’t help staring. Nor could he stifle the rise of masculine hunger, even if he had no intention of acting on it. He was only human, after all, and the good Lord had created young men to admire a bonny face.
The girl made a sound of distress in her sleep, and the fine brows contracted in a frown as she turned away from the light. Diarmid bit back another sigh—he needed to remember that she was too pretty for him—and set the candle on the nightstand. He settled back in the armchair and fished a small volume of Robbie Burns’s poetry from his pocket.
The lassie could sleep in peace. He knew better than most what it would cost him if he tried to place any claim on her.
***
“No…”
The soft, choked word disturbed Diarmid’s restless doze. Sitting up in the chair, he muffled a groan. He was a tall man, and he’d fallen asleep at an awkward angle. His neck ached like blazes. As he raised a hand to rub the painful area, he bent forward to check the girl.
“No, not that, please.”
Some nightmare gripped her. She probably relived the shipwreck. She’d been restless for a while, he could see. The quilt had slid to the floor, and the sheets were tugged loose from the base of the bed and twisted about her legs.
For a guilty, sizzling moment, he stared down at her as lust sank its claws into him. He tried to tell himself that she needed his help and that was all that brought them together. But leaning over her in this quiet room while she shifted against the crumpled sheets, he was blazingly conscious that she was a woman and he was a man.
His avid eyes devoured the slender—too slender—body stretched out before him. The white flannel nightdress billowed around her, far too big, but full of wicked tricks to trap a man’s attention. Her wriggling pulled the material tight over the perfect roundness of one breast and revealed the jut of a distended nipple. The nightdress hiked up to reveal long white legs. Every drop of moisture dried from Diarmid’s mouth, when he realized she wasn’t wearing drawers.
Self-disgust slammed into him. He stood and turned away from temptation. Bruises and abrasions marked those sprawled legs, proof of what she’d been through. He was sick to his gut that he slavered over a helpless woman who needed his care. Worse, a woman he was convinced was a liar.
He curled one hand around the bedpost until his knuckles shone white. Behind him, the girl released another soft whimper of distress, but he hardly heard her through the blood drumming in his ears. His breath rasped on the still air.
It took far too long to leash the beast inside him, but gradually he came back to himself. By God, it was time he visited Edinburgh again. He kept his slate clean here at Invertavey, where he was laird and where his behavior set a pattern for his tenants and servants. But in the capital, he was just another rich, unattached young man seeking amusement.
How long was it since he and his last mistress had parted company? Six months? No, more.
With displeasure, he counted out the time. He and Sally had separated amicably just after Christmas, around the time his cousin Elspeth had married Brody Girvan. No wonder he was randy as an old goat. Diarmid was far from a rake—Brody was the lad who had been a devil for the ladies, until he fell under Elspeth’s spell—but he was a healthy male with physical needs.
Needs that hadn’t particularly bothered him until he rescued the duplicitous siren sleeping behind him. Just now, he refused to consider the implications of that fact.
He sucked in a breath and feeling more in charge of himself, he faced the bed. The girl had shifted to lie flat on her back, hands flung up on either side of her ruffled head. Her skin was so white and fine, he could see the network of blue veins running up her forearms under a mottled pattern of bruising. Another frown tightened her features, and he watched the hands on those fragile wrists close into fists.
Thoroughly ashamed of his lewd impulses, he approached the bed and tugged the nightdress down over those spectacular legs. He straightened the covers as well as he could without waking her. He pulled the quilt up, although with the fire, the room wasn’t cold.
Only once she was safely tucked in did he feel able to look into her face. To find he hadn’t been careful enough. Dazed blue eyes stared up at him.
Again he was struck with their beauty—and with the dread that turned them brilliant in the candlelight.
“Ye have nothing to fear, lassie,” he said softly and knew himself a hypocrite when he spoke the words. Perhaps she recognized that, too, because the tension in her face didn’t ease. He went on in a low soothing voice, in case she was confused to wake up in a strange place. “You’re safe in Invertavey House. I’m Diarmid Mactavish, the laird here.”
Her gaze clung to his face, as though she sifted his words for any hint of a threat. “I…I remember.”
“Ye do?” Startled, he straightened. “What’s your name?”
With obvious difficulty, she pushed herself up against the pillows. Every small movement made her wince. She might be lying about most things, but the physical toll the wreck had taken on her was no masquerade. Her suffering made him feel even more of a sick bastard for that flash of powerful lust when he’d stared at her sleeping.
“Oh, I don’t remember that,” she said, dismissing the idea as if it hardly mattered. She brushed tendrils of fine silver-blond hair back from her face. Her nightmare hadn’t been kind to her once tidy plait. “But I remember you finding me on the beach and bringing me here. There was a woman…”