Tamed by a Highlander

Author:Paula Quinn [Quinn, Paula]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, General, Contemporary, Historical, FIC027050
ISBN: 9780446552363
Publisher: Forever
Published: 2010-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-three

Mairi spent most of the dark, dreary day with the Grants, visiting Connor, and no matter how gloomy the weather, his laughter brightened the room.

She watched him when his men visited his bed and teased him about being clopped over the head and rendered helpless like that night’s supper. She watched the way he lifted his brow with a flash of unexpected humor. How he opened his mouth and tossed back his head when he laughed. She loved his face and the speed at which it changed with a dozen different emotions, all while his smile and his voice remained as languid as a summer day. She realized, quite happily and with a bit of astonishment, that he was not nearly as open and charming with the women who visited him. Och, the dimples were there—they always were—but his smiles were tempered with… boredom.

Even the queen saw in him only what he wanted her to see—a dutiful, loyal captain. Still, it did not stop Mary of Modena from innocently flirting with him. Mairi did not mind. He was growing stronger each day, more vibrant in his bed. No woman with blood in her veins could ignore even his slightest, most casual glance. Lady Elizabeth certainly could not, in spite of her seething anger over Mairi’s presence when she visited—which was often. Lady Hollingsworth practically had to be hauled out the door two long hours after she had arrived. Connor did not tease or seduce either of them but kept his smiles polite and his words brief.

“They hate that I am here with ye,” Mairi told him on the second night of the downpour. They were finally alone and now that they were, she was having a hard time remembering what she had been waiting two days to tell him. She walked around the room, touching this thing and that, trying not to look at him.

“So?” He lay there, his bedsheet riding down his bare, hard torso, one arm tossed casually behind his head like a sinful angel come to tempt her to his bed.

“So.” She picked up one of his medicinal bottles and held it to her nose. “They are angry that ye dinna’ show them more interest because I am here.”

“Mairi,” he said, hooking his mouth and forcing her gaze to the other side of the room, “I don’t show them interest when ye’re not here either.”

He made her heart flip with a few mere words. Against her will, for she didn’t want him to see how he affected her, she turned back to him. “How many times have they visited in my absence then?”

An intimate smile teased his lips and she knew she failed. Oddly, it made his victory even more alluring than the weapon that was Connor Grant’s tongue. Ah, but he wielded it like an expert against her, whether in challenge, or humor, or to utter so casually words most other men might find difficult to admit.

“Well, now that ’tis a wee bit cooler inside, ye won’t be leaving so often.

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