The Hunter Read online

  He shrugged without apology. “It was unintentional. You were taking too long.”

  “Is that supposed to be an excuse?”

  “If you wish it to be.”

  Janet fumed at him.

  “You’ve nothing to worry about,” he said. “You don’t have anything I haven’t seen hundreds of times.”

  If he was trying to make her feel better, he’d failed. Her eyes widened with outrage. “Hundreds of times?”

  He shrugged, and for some reason the careless indifference infuriated her all the more. She shouldn’t care how many women he’d been with or whether he thought her unremarkable in comparison, but hearing him so blandly state it rankled.

  “How nice to know that you have such a breadth of comparison to call upon.”

  “You didn’t answer my question. How did you get the scars? And before you think about telling me what you told the soldiers today, I know they aren’t from a whip and hair shirt.”

  “Have you ‘hundreds’ of scar comparisons as well?”

  He grinned; obviously her irritation amused him. “More.”

  “You’ve been fighting the war for some years, then?”

  “Aye. Now tell me about the scars.”

  Janet pursed her mouth. He was just like Duncan. She’d never been able to distract him either. He’d been positively intractable when it had come to questioning her about some perceived issue or problem. If only Ewen Lamont reminded her of her brother in other ways. But the feelings Ewen aroused in her were definitely un-brotherly.

  As it seemed he would not be turned from his course without an answer, she decided to tell him the truth. Well, part of it, anyway. “I was on a bridge when it was struck by lightning. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but there was a fire, and some of the wood splintered and ended up in my back. The sisters did their best to remove them, but some were buried deeply.”

  He held her gaze as if he knew there was more that she wasn’t saying. But that was all she intended to tell him. How she ended up on the bridge was none of his business.

  “So that’s why you didn’t wish to cross. When did this happen?”

  It was her turn to shrug. “Some time ago.” Hoping to put an end to the subject, she added, “I do not like to talk about it.”

  “The scars are no cause for shame. They are a mark of your strength. You survived.”

  She bristled. “I know that. It is not the scars that cause me pain, but the memories they bring.”

  This time, he took the hint and changed the subject—though unfortunately, this one was no better than the last. “You have an unusual accent. Where are you from?”

  She hoped he hadn’t seen the slight stiffening of her shoulders, but she’d already learned that little escaped him. “My father was a merchant,” she said, staying with the same story she told the innkeeper. “We moved around quite a bit.”

  “And that is why you speak so many languages?”

  “Yes.” But it hadn’t been easy. She’d always been horrible with languages. Deciding that they’d talked about her long enough, she asked, “And what about you? I have not met many Highlanders who speak such fluent French who aren’t noblemen—” She stopped, blushing.

  “And you have figured out that I do not qualify?”

  “I did not mean to offend you.”

  “You didn’t. I was fostered with a local nobleman and had some tutoring. Languages come easily for me.” She made a face, and he laughed. “I take it that it is not the same for you?”

  She shook her head. “Latin was the worst.”

  The words were out before she could take them back. She hoped he wouldn’t notice, but, of course, he did.

  “I would have thought with Italian being so closely related, it would have been easy.”

  “For most people it is,” she said. She feigned a yawn. “If you don’t mind, I think I should like to go to bed. I’m very tired.”

  And talking to him was dangerous. It was easy to forget herself, in more ways than one. For a few moments, she’d forgotten that she was a nun—or planned to be soon—that they should remain strangers, and that they were alone in this room. For a few minutes, she’d felt as comfortable with him as if they were truly man and wife. For a few minutes, the intimacy had seemed … natural.

  But suddenly being alone with him felt awkward again. She was deeply conscious of him as a man. And as much as she wanted to pretend that she was a nun, her body seemed to know differently. Being alone with a too-tall, too-handsome, too-virile warrior made her feel very feminine and very aware of that femininity in a way that she never had been before.

  She pulled the plaid around her shoulders more tightly, even though the room suddenly felt too warm. It was the room, wasn’t it? But that didn’t explain the heat in places she had never felt warm before. Warning beacons seemed to flare all around her. She needed to get away from him.

  He must have picked up on the charge in the atmosphere as well, because he suddenly seemed very eager to leave. “If you give me your clothes, I will take them down to the innkeeper to hang by the fire. You don’t need to leave the candle burning for me; I will be able to find the floor when I return.”

  She bit her lip, wanting to ask how long he’d be but not wanting to make him suspicious. Because she had no intention of being here when he woke up.

  With his father’s penchant for drink, Ewen wasn’t much for whisky, but at times he could appreciate the dulling effects of the fiery brew. The last time he’d drunk too much was after one of his friends and fellow Highland Guardsmen, William Gordon, was killed in an explosion in Galloway. Before that, it had been when he and MacLean had finally made it to safety after surviving the slaughter that had befallen Bruce’s men at Loch Ryan at the hands of the MacDowells. Eighteen galleys, and only two had survived.

  But tonight, it wasn’t the pain of losing friends that had driven him to drink, but another kind of pain—the lustful kind. Knowing that he’d lie awake all night hard as a rock if he didn’t do something, he spent a good hour draining a flagon of very peaty whisky, trying to cool his heated blood. He was tempted when an alternative method of dulling his lust presented itself in the form of a comely barmaid, but the whisky must have already been having an effect, as her flirtatious grazes and bold glances didn’t get the barest rise out of him.

  By the time he returned to the room, he was good and relaxed, and the source of his trouble was fast asleep and bundled up safely out of eyesight under the blankets. He threw his plaid on the floor, barely noticing how hard it was before passing out in a whisky-induced haze.

  But the drink didn’t penetrate his sleep. He dreamed of her. Hot, restless dreams of high, round breasts and a curvy bottom. He imagined touching her, cupping her, running his hands over every naked inch of baby-soft flesh. His body was hot, his blood rushing, his nose filled with her soft scent. The sensations were so strong, they tore him from his sleep. Or at least he thought they had. But when he opened his eyes, his hand was wrapped around her wrist and she was looming over him, her eyes wide with shock.

  Then he knew he had to be dreaming because he could feel the soft stroke of her hands on his hair and hear the soft, soothing tones of her voice as she filled his dreams with the lulling sounds of song. He felt his body relax. Felt the tension that had been teeming through his limbs release under the gentle, calming strokes. It was nice. He’d never had a mother to put him to bed when he was young, but he suspected it would have been something like this. The last thing he remembered before she left was the soft brush of her lips on his cheek.

  He woke to a cold room and the first rays of dawn streaming through the cracks in the shutters. Though weak, the sunlight sent shards of pain piercing through his drink-thickened head like daggers. He closed his eyes, listening instead to the peaceful sounds of … silence. Absolute silence.

  His eyes snapped open again. Ignoring the pain, his gaze went to the woman sleeping on the bed. Or the woman who should be sleeping on the bed