Snowy Night with a Highlander by Julia London

Author:Julia London [London, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Pocket Star
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

A fire was roaring the next morning when Fiona awoke, and the last two scones were warming on a rock near the fire.

But Duncan was nowhere to be seen.

Fiona ate one scone, then slipped out of the shelter. She was stiff and her bones ached, but the sky above her was a glorious shade for blue. She used the snow to wash her face, gasping at the burning cold of it. When she had finished, she stood up and glanced around.

She spotted Duncan then, tending to the horses. It amazed her how fluidly he moved for a man with a useless arm. He’d learned to compensate for it, and it seemed as if there was nothing he could not do.

The sight of his face had kept her from sleeping much through the night. She’d feigned sleep when he’d returned because she’d sensed his discomfort and because she’d not been able to rid her thoughts of the burns or the pain in his eyes—God, his eyes. The pain that shone in them was so powerful that it reverberated in her. She could not imagine how he must have suffered, both physically and emotionally. Her heart had overflowed with sympathy, and then empathy, and now she wanted to assure him that it was not his scars she’d noticed, but him. And his eyes. They were expressive and deep, and last night they’d been filled with a passion that had ignited her. He was a man of few words, but with those eyes and hands and mouth, he hadn’t needed words.

Fiona realized that in spite of the impropriety and futility of it, she was very taken with this stoic man. She didn’t care that he was a tenant and she a lady; she told herself that in Scotland those things mattered less than they did in London.

There was something else, too, something that niggled at her thoughts, something vaguely familiar about this man she’d met only two days ago. In some strange way, she felt as if she’d known him quite a long time.

She watched Duncan trudging up the hill to the shelter he’d made. He stooped down, picked up big handfuls of snow, and dumped them onto the fire as she made her way through the snow to help him. “Merry Christmas!” she said cheerfully.

He barely spared her a glance. “Merry Christmas.” He was wearing the patch, had wrapped his head in the woolen scarf again, and his hat was pulled low over his eyes.

“Will we reach Blackwood today?” she asked, for the sake of conversaton.

“God willing, aye.”

“Oh, that’s marvelous news! I’m frostbitten through and through, I am. And how do you fare this morning, Mr. Duncan?”

He rose, gathering the fur they’d slept under and stuffing it under his arm. “Well.” He began to take the tarpaulin down. Fiona immediately moved to help him. “That’s no’ necessary,” he said.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but the sooner we’ve put these things away, the sooner we will be on our way.”

He eyed her warily, his gaze flicking over her.

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