"You could have let him shoot me and saved yourself the trouble of refusing my offer for a third time," he said.

Lucy frowned. "Don't jest," she said.

"I'm not," Robert said. "Why did you help me?"

She turned to look up at him. Her gaze, clear and full of candor, searched his face. "We were on the same side," she said.

"Were we?" He felt encouraged that she thought so. Last night, in the room at the inn, they had been locked in opposition. She had run away into danger rather than wed him. Yet it seemed she did not think of him as her enemy.

He felt her shiver again. The breeze was cold down here by the water.

"Come along," he said. "We must get you to shelter and get off Cardross's land. Next time he'll be back with more than a couple of men."

Lucy unbuckled his sword belt from about her waist and handed it to him carefully. Now that the heat of battle had gone from his blood, he noticed her attire for the first time. Gone was the elegant duke's daughter in her debutante pastel colors and modestly cut gowns. She was wearing a motley collection of clothes, chiefly a striped red, white and blue cotton scarf, a pair of boy's breeches that fit her very snugly and a white blouse cut low enough across her breasts to affect both his concentration and his anatomy. It was fortunate he had not noticed earlier.

She started to fiddle with the scarf at her neck, straightening it and tucking it into the neck of the blouse. Robert, torn between admiring the blouse and the breeches, realized that he was staring. Lucy had noticed the direction of his gaze, as well.

"What?" She held the scarf tightly together, obliterating his view.

Her blue eyes fizzed with annoyance.

Robert cleared his throat. "Very patriotic," he said. Then, as she raised a haughty eyebrow: "The red, white and blue scarf."

She frowned. "This was all there was in that godforsaken inn." She turned a shoulder. "There was a mirror. I did see what I look like."

"And what do you think you look like?"

He had no complaints at all.

"Blowsy." She tucked the ends of the scarf more closely into the top of the blouse. "Like a tavern wench."

"I wouldn't do that," Robert said. "It only draws attention to your breasts."

"They got in the way when I was fighting." She looked down in disgust at her cleavage. "I was afraid they would fall out of the blouse."

"That would most certainly have stopped your cousin's clansmen in their tracks," Robert said.

"I'm not accustomed to showing so much." Suddenly she looked vulnerable. "Debutantes don't."

"I've seen more of you than that."

She flashed him another sharp look. "It doesn't help to know that, thank you."

The scarf fluttered in the breeze like a ragged flag. It's gaudy silk reminded Robert of the bindings he had used to tie her.

"How did you escape?" he asked. "I thought I had tied you firmly."

"I wriggled," Lucy said succinctly.

That did nothing to calm Robert's inflamed imagination. He could visualize her, her body restrained by the silk scarves, writhing on the bed. He picked up one of her wrists. Faint red marks showed on her white skin. He felt a complete cad.

He dropped her wrist and she rubbed the place he had held.

"You jumped from the window," he said, remembering.

"I climbed down from the roof," Lucy corrected.

"Why did you not simply take the key?"

She gave him a look as though he were mad. "And risk waking you by searching your pockets?"

"Generally I sleep like the dead, even on a wooden chair."

"Thank you," Lucy said. "I'll remember that for future reference." She looked about them. "I thought you wished to go. Are we instead to stand here waiting for Wilfred to return with an army?"

Shaking off the wayward visions of Lucy in bondage that still plagued him, Robert scooped up his sword belt, stowed the pistols, mounted Falcon and gave Lucy a hand to pull her up to sit in front of him. For once she did not argue.

"What were you doing here?" Robert looked around at the waters of the loch reflecting the cool blue of the sky.

"I wanted a bath," Lucy said shortly.

"It will be freezing in there," Robert said.

"I swam in the sea every summer when I was a child," Lucy said.

So swimming was another of her accomplishments. Robert was not surprised. Nothing Lucy could do, he thought, was likely to surprise him ever again.

As Falcon started to pick up the pace toward the road he felt her soften in his arms, as though she had at last started to relax. Some of the prickly tension seeped from her. She sighed, leaning her head back against his chest. He found it very pleasant. Her body fit into the curve of his. Her hair smelled of fresh air and apple sweetness. Some strange sensation that was not lust, but equally was not something he recognized, shifted and settled inside him and he drew her a little closer into the shield of his arms.

"What happened to the second pistol?" he asked. His lips were close to her ear. Her hair tickled them. "Did you fire it?"

"I missed." She sounded disgruntled. "Shooting has never been a skill of mine."

Robert tried not to laugh at her tone. "Well," he said, "you might not be able to shoot, but you fight extraordinarily well."

"So do you," she said, glancing at him over her shoulder, "though you don't fight by the rules."

"Where I have been, there was no such thing as a fair fight." He drew her back against him, closer still, so that their bodies touched. "I fight to win."

"I might have guessed." She smiled. For a second her cheek brushed his. "Was it very lawless, out there is the wilds of Canada?"

"Entirely," Robert said. Then, surprising himself: "I'll tell you all about it one day."

"I'd like that." She settled against him. "It must have been very hard for you to be sent away from everything you knew."

It had been intolerable. In the beginning he had not known how he would survive, mourning his brother's death, cut adrift from everything he knew, everything he loved. The chill wreathed his heart again. He had been a hotheaded young fool to challenge his grandfather's plans for him. The irony was that the old laird had been grieving too, mourning the loss of his grandson and heir. Robert could see that now. His grandfather had taken out on him all his grief and disappointment, but Robert had been too young and his feelings too raw to be able to deal with it. He had told his grandfather that he would prove his mettle elsewhere, away from Methven, and then he had boarded the first ship he had found.

He wanted to change the subject back to Lucy. He was not comfortable talking about himself. It was not something he ever did.

"I suppose your father had his daughters trained in swordplay as well as his sons?" he said. He had heard of many Highland lairds doing so, especially if their sons were as stodgy as Angus or as lazy as Lachlan.

He felt her laugh, a soft tremor against his chest. "Of course my father did not teach us how to fight," she said. "He is a scholar, not a warrior. I learned from books." She favored him with another smile. "That is why I fight by the book instead of like you, like a...a brigand."

"No one could learn to fight as well as that from books," Robert said.

Her eyelashes flickered down. "Well, we did have some practical lessons at the Highland Ladies Bluestocking Society. We hired the best swordsman in Edinburgh to teach us."

"Of course," Robert said. "Of course you did. I suppose you had lessons in between the Eastern dancing and the massage."

"A lady should always be able to defend herself," Lucy said serenely.

"What else did you learn under the Society's auspices?" Robert asked. "Just so I am prepared."

"Archery and falconry," Lucy said. "Fencing, pistol shooting. But as I said, I am not a good shot."

"Bad luck," Robert said. "Actually it is good to know there is something you do not excel at. You enjoyed the sword fight, didn't you?" he added.

He felt her surprise in the sudden jerk of her body.

"No." She sounded startled. "Fighting is not something to be enjoyed." She frowned. "It's uncivilized."

"That's what you would like to believe," Robert said, "but sword fighting can be primitive and wild and exciting. It calls to something in the blood."

He could tell that his words had disturbed her from the way that she stiffened. She sat up a little straighter, moving out of the shelter of his arms.

It was curious to Robert that she was so utterly devoid of understanding of herself. She had all the wildness of a Highlander. She simply hid it well. Her passion escaped in so many ways, though: in the sensual writings of the love letters, in the undeniable pleasure she took in the physical. Robert was willing to bet any money that she would be equally passionate making love. If her kisses were anything to go by, she would burn him down.

He shifted in the saddle. He had to stop thinking like this or the journey, already long and arduous, was going to be very uncomfortable indeed.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

BY FOUR IN the afternoon they had reached Findon, a small town on the coast. Lucy was swaying with exhaustion, aching in every limb and starving hungry, but she had tried her best to hide it from Robert. She felt nervous and on edge and very aware of him. She told herself it was simply their physical proximity, manifest in the brush of his body against hers as he rode Falcon with strength and easy grace, the hard muscle of his thighs, the protective clasp of his arms about her. Yet what she felt was more than simple awareness. She felt vulnerable, as though she had been unable to defend herself against him. Robert had seen all these things about her that she had not even suspected herself. She did not know how it was possible for him to understand her so well when no one else did.

She had never previously thought herself in the least bit wild. Alice had been the wild one, forever tumbling into trouble. Lucy had been the sensible twin, and after Alice's death that propriety had become suffocating. She had failed Alice the one time it had really mattered and to atone she had tried to turn herself into even more of a model of perfection. But the wildness that must always have been buried deep in her had still escaped. It had escaped in the writing of those shocking letters. It had escaped in the primitive fury she had felt when Wilfred had attacked her. It had escaped when she was in Robert Methven's arms.

He held her now, reins in one hand, the other clasped possessively about her waist. It felt strange and disturbing but also treacherously good.

She distracted herself by looking about at the neat, respectable houses, the streets swept clean and the smartly painted shop fronts. The place looked a great deal better cared for than the Cardross estates. There was a stone jetty where boats bobbed at anchor and the fishing nets were drying in the sun. The air was sharp and keen and scented with the tang of fish and salt.

"This is very pretty," Lucy said. "Who owns the land hereabouts?"

"I do," Robert said. "I own this sweep of the coast and out there-" He gestured to the hazy blue of the sea. "I own Golden Isle."

He reined in and for a moment sat staring at the scatter of dark islands on the horizon. There was something in his eyes: pride, yes, but something else Lucy could not read or understand, something darker. She thought for a moment that he might say something else, but instead he turned the horse abruptly down a cobbled side street, where the afternoon shadows cooled the air, and clattered through an arched gateway and into an inn yard.

Their arrival caused a degree of flurry. The landlord, a fair florid man in his mid-fifties, immediately came running, wiping his hands on the large striped apron about his waist.

"My lord!"

"McLain." Robert swung down from the saddle and held out his hand. "How is business?"

"Business is good, my lord," the man stuttered, "but I had no idea you were to visit... You sent no word-"

"Rest easy." Robert reassured him with a quick clap on the shoulder. "It was a sudden change of plan."

He lifted Lucy down from the saddle and set her on her feet. "May I introduce my betrothed, Lady Lucy MacMorlan?" he said. His voice was suddenly cool and formal, the warmth of greeting drained from it. "We have had a difficult journey and require a couple of rooms and some hot water to wash and food, of course..."

The landlord's mouth fell open. He stared at Lucy, realized he was staring, shut his mouth with a snap and bowed deeply. "Welcome, my lady!" He shot Robert another glance. "Betrothed, you say, my lord?"

Lucy tried not to laugh. She could imagine how she must look, travel sore and dusty, dressed in boy's trews and a harlot's blouse. Small blame to the landlord if he thought the laird had brought his mistress to visit rather than his future wife.

"A sudden engagement," Robert said smoothly with a quick look at Lucy that warned her not to contradict him. "You are the first to know."

The landlord turned to the gaping scullions. "Fetch my wife to conduct Lady Lucy to a room!" He clapped his hands sharply. "Now! Run!"

He led them inside. Lucy was so tired and saddle sore that she could feel her legs trembling, but she forced herself to walk steadily and smile at the staring servants. There was the most delicious smell of roasting meat, and her stomach rumbled longingly. She wanted to dash down the passage to the kitchens and fall on it, no matter how unbecoming that might be to the daughter of a duke. That really would convince the landlord that she was a slattern.

McLain bowed them into the dark-paneled parlor and murmured something about fetching refreshments. As soon as the door had closed behind him, Robert turned to her.

"You'll understand," he said formally, "that I had no choice other than to introduce you as my betrothed. Not if I did not wish to show you dishonor in front of my people."

Lucy did understand, but she did not see why she should let him get away with such high-handed behavior.

"I see," she said coolly.

Immediately the formality dropped from him and he grinned. "No need to take that frozen tone with me, my lady. I had no intention of accepting a third refusal."

"I am aware of that too," Lucy said. This would be no convenient betrothal, made to save face and broken off when it had served its purpose. It was far too late for that now. She would be wedded-and bedded. She felt the smothering panic rising in her throat and forced it back down again.

Robert's eyes searched her face for a moment. She could feel his gaze on her for all that she kept her eyes stubbornly averted from his, and then he took her by surprise, leaning forward to give her a brief, hard kiss she felt all the way down to the tips of her toes.

"We'll talk about it over dinner," he said.

"Shall we?" Lucy said, refusing to yield.

His smile widened. "Aye, we shall. And until then-" he was pulling the engraved signet ring from his finger "-you should have a betrothal ring, I think."

The ring was warm from his body and felt heavy and solid as he slid it onto Lucy's finger. It was far too big and she instinctively closed her fingers about it to hold it in place.

"I'll buy you something prettier." His voice was soft.

"I like it very well." She cleared her throat. She felt odd, as though he had finally claimed her, as though his protection enveloped her. "It feels strong and unyielding, like you."