Chapter Five

As they rode up to the house, Archie came to meet them and take the horses. “Did Mr. Ross not find you, then?”

“No, he never did,” Etta said. “You did pass on my message?”

“Aye, he was over at the Hoggs’. I suppose something must have come up.”

“I suppose it must,” Etta agreed. In truth, she didn’t know whether she should be annoyed with Ross for ignoring her request, or grateful. For somehow, despite the releasing of unwanted memories and emotions, she couldn’t quite regret the growing intimacy between herself and Robert, and that could never have happened to such a degree if Mr. Ross had accompanied them.

“You’ll have tea?” she asked, turning toward the house. Ridiculously, she found she was holding her breath for his answer.

“Thank you, I will,” he said easily. “I’ll just have a quick word with Archie, if you don’t mind, and follow you inside.”

“Of course.” She only just managed to stop herself bestowing a huge smile upon him. Instead, she walked into the house with a careless nod, but she couldn’t prevent the warmth seeping through her. Something was happening to her, something to do with Robert Ogilvy, something she wasn’t sure she wanted. She couldn’t explain these feelings, yet she couldn’t help liking the mix of excited anticipation, comfort, gladness, fear…

“Tea, Morag, if you please,” she ordered as she handed the maid her somewhat battered hat. “In the drawing room, for three. Mr. Ogilvy will be joining us. Oh, and ask Mrs. Ross to step up when she has a moment.”

The drawing room was probably the finest room in Ardbeag House, and yet it retained an atmosphere of welcome and pleasantness that Etta liked. She’d taken to sitting here in the evenings, with the curtains open, watching the sky change color and darken over the hills while she read one of the treasures from the library. Although she could never live here, there was much to recommend it, much that she would miss. Not least, the man who walked through the door a few minutes later.

Her stupid heart gave an unseemly lurch. He shouldn’t be so handsome. He shouldn’t walk with that quick, lithe grace that made her wonder, in spite of herself, how he would move as he made love. He would be unpredictable, both tender and wild, but always intense, passionate…

Hastily, she blinked away such unknowable fantasies.

“Archie’s going to bring up a couple more men to keep an eye on the house tonight,” he said as he sat on the sofa opposite her.

“A couple more?” she pounced.

“Well, Ross and I thought it sensible to have someone watching, in case these men really are focused on this house. And now that we’ve seen one of them, and he knows we have, they may well hurry things along.”

Etta, who’d arranged a series of watches among the house servants last night, wasn’t sure she cared for his additional interference. And Mr. Ross should not be arranging things with him, but with her. However, before she could even think how to make her displeasure known, Morag and Mrs. Ross appeared with the tea.

“Won’t you join us, Mrs. Ross?” Etta said as the housekeeper made to follow Morag out of the room.

Mrs. Ross sniffed, still clearly bearing a grudge about being dismissed from tea yesterday morning. “I would not presume.”

“Oh, sit down, Mrs. Ross, I particularly wish to speak to you.”

“About what?” Mrs. Ross demanded, sitting stiffly on the edge of the chair opposite Rob.

“About this Jacobite gold.” In fact, she knew neither Mrs. Ross nor anyone else had anything useful to contribute to the legend, but she wanted her to feel useful. So, while Etta poured the tea, and they drank it, they discussed all the local rumors, each more unlikely than the last, and speculated on how these rumors could have risen to the surface once more and come to the ear of criminal elements.

When she’d finished her tea, Mrs. Ross rose in much better humor than she’d sat, and went about her housekeeping duties, leaving the drawing room door open as was only proper.

“You’re humoring her,” Rob accused.

“Well, I have sympathy for her confused place in the world. Besides, even when she’s at her most infuriating, I know she’s trying to be kind and look after me. It isn’t her fault I’m difficult.”

“I think it’s you who is kind.”

She shook her head vehemently. “I’m not, believe me.”

He set down his empty cup, rose, and closed the distance between them. She waited, silly panic mingling with anticipation. To her surprise, he crouched at her feet and took her hand.

“There is no role to play here. People will love you for who you are, without judging you.”

Surprise prevented her from snatching her hand back. She would have poured scorn on his words except she recognized a certain amount of truth in them. She liked playing the wayward, slightly fast widow, partly because it was such a relief from the humiliation of the wronged wife, a role she despised and had always refused to play, although she suspected it had stuck to her anyway.

He said gently, “There is a lot to love.”

She swallowed. “You don’t know me, Rob Ogilvy.”

“I’m beginning to.” He lowered his head and pressed a kiss on the back of her hand. “I’ve never met anyone remotely like you. You delight me.”

“I don’t need flattery,” she said with a hint of anguish because she wanted it to be true. She wanted to delight him. “I don’t need love.”

“Your kiss said otherwise.”

“I did not kiss you,” she said with dignity, although she flushed all over at the flooding memory of his embrace. “You kissed me.”

He smiled. “There were two of us in those kisses. I’ve never known such sweetness.”

There should have been a witty riposte to that, something to lighten the sudden tension, but it eluded her.

“Don’t say such things to me,” she whispered, touching a strand of his tangled hair because she couldn’t help it. “I only want honesty. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“I’ve only ever been honest with you.” He reached up to her nape and she gasped at his touch. Her heart seemed to soar as he drew nearer and kissed her.

Her fingers curled around his wrist, though whether to keep him or to stop him, she wasn’t sure. In any case, it felt so sweet, so curiously right, that she opened to him almost at once. And this time she quite consciously kissed him back, because she wanted to, because it was tender, and meltingly sensual. She loved the feel of his lips, so hot and firm and sure, and the delicacy of his exploring tongue. Her fingers slid upward from his wrist over his muscled arm and shoulder to his neck, tangling in his soft hair.

Very slowly, very reluctantly, she let him break the kiss.

“I ask nothing of you, Henrietta,” he whispered. “Except that you don’t run from this. Give it a chance.”

“What is this?” she wondered, almost brokenly.

His lips quirked. “Wonderful,” he said, and took back her mouth.

He was right. Nothing and no one had ever felt like this and she, who’d so desperately sought experience of life’s delights, would be a fool to let this slip through her fingers.

She touched his rough cheek, caressed the corner of his mouth. Her heart thundered with the enormity of what she was about to offer, to enter into.

“Will you stay?” she whispered against his lips.

He stilled. His eyes opened into hers. Slowly, his lips stretched into a smile before they kissed her again. “I won’t stay.”

It was like a bucket of cold water. Only no water could ever have hurt her as his words did. She jerked back—or, at least, she tried to, but his arms went around her, holding her to his chest.

“I won’t stay,” he repeated. “But I will come back. Tonight, if you’ll let me.”

“You won’t get in,” she said, breathless but determinedly flippant. “The house will be locked up like a fortress, with an army of guards.”

“Oh, I’ll get in,” he promised, rising to his feet and drawing her with him. She thrilled to his words and the strength of his body as he pressed her to him. There was another kiss, overtly sensual and passionate and just a little wilder than his previous embraces, a taste, surely, of the delicious night to come. “Discreetly,” he added with a quick grin as he finally released her. “So, don’t hit me with the damned poker.”

***

Rob felt as though he were flying as he rode from Ardbeag House back to Lochgarron. He’d never felt such intense happiness, and it wasn’t just the prospect of a night with her, or even the possibility of more nights, or that she would give in to forever and be persuaded to marry him. It was just being with her, of watching the laughter and sadness play across her face, hearing her voice, seeing her kindness, beginning to understand her. On some level, he’d sensed all this when her beautiful eyes had first captured him at the ball, the rest was only confirmation and detail. But it was all joy.

His previous passages with women had been based on lust and somewhat careless affection, for his first duty had always been to Lochgarron and his people. Only recently had he reached a position from which he could even think of marriage, and that was at least partly due to his small investment in the Duke of Roxburgh’s shipping ventures. He’d envisioned a marriage of mutual respect and affection—after all, he was likely to have known the girl for most of his life—that would bring moderate advantage to each partner. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined feeling like this, and certainly never so suddenly. But he knew that Henrietta was necessary to him, that his happiness depended on her. And more than this, he knew that hers depended on him.

And so, he rode the familiar paths while his heart sang with possibility. She might not yet be won, but he was winning.

First, though, he had to keep her safe. And that involved winkling out her misguided burglars, which he had every intention of doing before he went back to her.

Having galloped almost to his front door, he threw himself off the stallion. “Niall!”

By the time he’d loosened the girths, the servant was hurrying over from the stables. “See to him, Niall, will you? And then send your brothers over to Ardbeag to help Mr. Ross. And saddle Emperor and the two ponies for me,” he hurled over his shoulder as he hurried into the house.

“Angus!” he yelled, thundering up the stairs to his bedchamber where he began to pull off his boots. When his all-purpose house servant appeared, he said, “Fetch me Alastair and James.” His coat and shirt landed on the floor with his boots as he reached for his work clothes. “Quickly!”

It was as he thundered downstairs again that one of Archie’s boys arrived with a note from Mrs. Ross. Her husband had still not come home and her inquiries had discovered that no one had seen him since the morning. Understandably worried, she wanted Rob to search the boundary between Ardbeag and Lochgarron, in case he’d met with some accident there.

Rob suspected quite a different kind of accident. He suspected Ross had run into the burglars while riding to join Henrietta and himself.

***

There was only one place Henrietta’s burglars were likely to be hiding, given where she’d seen one of them and the fact that he hadn’t so much as glimpsed anyone on the hill afterwards. They’d found the caves.

“If you’d just waited until dark, we could have gone the direct route unseen,” Alastair complained.

Rob only grunted. He couldn’t allow himself to think about Henrietta now.

James muttered, “Well I, for one, would as soon not climb up there in the dark.”

The climb was bad enough in the rain, which had chosen to favor them with a deluge in the early evening and now showed no signs of letting up beyond an annoying drizzle. The soft ground was muddy, the rock slippery, but they’d climbed up here so often as children that the years seemed to fall away.

The clouds had created an early dusk by the time they reached the narrow ledge that led to the cave entrance almost directly behind the waterfall. Rob strained in vain to hear any sounds over the water’s roar. With his finger to his lips, he edged around the increasingly narrow ledge to the cave entrance, half hidden by the boulders he and his friends had put there seventeen years ago. Bracken grew close by and spread its fronds over the opening, completing the entrance’s disguise.

Inside the cave would be dark. Rob unslung the bag from his shoulder and quietly took out a lantern. The others huddled closer while he lit it and replaced the cover. Then Alastair removed a club from the bundle on his own back, and, as planned, Rob and James preceded him to the mouth of the cave.

Rob paused by the bracken, listening intently. He could hear no movement, no voices above the roar of the water. With any luck, the miscreants were asleep and they could make a quick capture and get this over with. And then, then…

Mind on the first task, fool, he warned himself. Raising one hand to signal his intentions, he leapt into the cave, James at his heels. Alastair would wait at the entrance and club anyone who tried to escape.

The bobbing lantern illuminated sloping stone walls. Then, to the left, the air seemed to rush, giving him an instant’s warning before a figure fell on him from above. A pair of boots slammed into his shoulder, knocking him to the ground. He dropped the lantern, which miraculously landed upright, and rolled with the force, hoping thus to escape his attacker.

James yelled, but Rob couldn’t tell if his old friend was in trouble for his attacker’s full weight landed on him, all but knocking the breath from him. Somehow, he managed to heave himself over, flipping his opponent under him, and raised his fist to knock the man cold.

Someone lifted the lantern high and Rob stared down at a gagged face that was instantly familiar.

“Ross?” he gasped.

“There’s no one else here,” James reported, swinging the lantern around the cave in an efficient sweep, while Rob wrenched the gag and its binding from Ross’s mouth.

Ross gasped in air and tried to speak.

“Ally, bring us some water,” Rob shouted, throwing his weight off the older man and crouching to untie his bound hands and feet. “Christ, that was some attack with no free limbs,” he said admiringly.

“I hoped they’d come back,” Ross said hoarsely, snatched the flask from Alastair and drank greedily. “I hauled myself onto that ledge to take them by surprise. I never expected it to be you. Sorry… Christ,” he added irritably when he lowered the water flask. “Have you nothing stronger?”

“Not much wrong with him,” James said.

“I don’t know.” Rob peered at the estate manager. “He looks a bit roughed up to me. You’ve got a cut lip, Ross, and a few bruises into the bargain.”

“I have,” Ross admitted, swapping the water for Rob’s smaller flask of whisky. “I saw you riding up to the waterfall with Lady Derwent, and rode over to meet you. They took me by surprise on the path, around this side, so you’d no hope of seeing. I couldn’t even shout.”

“Sorry, Ross, I should have known. We never even realized you were missing until Mrs. Ross sent over from Ardbeag.”

Abruptly, Ross tried to rise, until Rob held him down with a hand on his shoulder. “Just take a few moments to recover,” he advised.

“We haven’t got a few moments.” Ross shook off his hand. “They’ve gone to Ardbeag House with the intention of forcing Lady Derwent to give up the gold.”

Rob’s heart lurched painfully, as if crashing downward into his stomach. “What?”

“They tried to get it out of me. When telling them the gold was only legend didn’t work, I played the idiot servant who knew nothing—which turned out to be exactly the wrong thing to do because they imagine only Herself knows.”

“But she’s never been here in her life before! Her husband was never here that I recall, and his father only came once or twice in his life.”

“I told them that, but they didn’t believe me,” Ross said grimly, holding onto Rob’s bruised shoulder as he hauled himself to his feet. “They thought I was just protecting her. We’ve got to go, Rob.”

Rob, already striding for the cave mouth, had no quarrel with that. “When did they leave here?”

“Shortly after they watched you and Lady Derwent ride for home.”

“Which gives them a few hours start. But still, they shouldn’t get near the house. I sent three good men over to help your people keep a watch.”

He wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince. He didn’t like that he’d seen no sign of them on the journey here. And he really didn’t like the thought that all Henrietta’s protectors could be out looking for Ross instead of keeping to their posts.