Page 6

“Not anymore.” She began to shake, hatred sparking along every nerve. A man with a castle, insisting that her cottage couldn’t be what she’d made it. A home.

She’d send him straight to hell if she could. Where no doubt he’d find a fully-staffed palace waiting, on its own little island. While common Scotswomen like her flailed in the lake of fire.

Her nose burned with tears.

“I swept it,” she said. “I scrubbed it. I filled the mattress with heather and straw, and nailed together the table, and brought in the chair. I say that it’s a cottage, and that’s what matters. I sleep in it, sheep free, so you can shove your records up your arse.”

“Isobel.” His eyes had darkened several shades. “I wasn’t trying to . . .”

“Let go.” She rocked backwards, and the tree limb groaned.

He dragged her closer. His scent was flooding her, heady and hot. Both of her hands flattened on his chest. The air seemed to crackle, and then the crackle became a crack. Loud. Unmistakable.

The branch fell away from their feet.

2

James hit the ground, and Isobel hit him. Air exploded from his lungs, too much and too quickly for him to shape it into oaths.

The ones running through his mind were Elizabethan in their vulgarity.

What a bleeding, toad-spotted dunghill of a week.

Bad enough he’d suffered painful disillusionment, the meaning of the Pemberton name—drilled into him since birth—gone up in flames, and so too, his respect for his sire.

He’d also failed to pilot his balloon from Edinburgh to Selchskerrie. He should be setting down now on Castle Lyon’s great lawn, striking the lion’s head knocker on the door, confronting his father with his own hollow words.

A Pemberton keeps his vows.

Instead, he’d crashed into a tree on the Isle of Dearnrigg and confronted its most provoking resident.

Who chose that moment to pinch his nose.

“Christ!” He hadn’t realized his eyes were closed. They were suddenly wide open, and watering.

“Yer alive.” Isobel sounded agnostic about the revelation. Her face hovered, close enough for her breath to stroke his cheek. And yes, those would be her—surprisingly full—breasts warming his chest. His senses rioted.

He didn’t want to know how Isobel MacKinnon felt on top of him, or beneath him, or in any other position that involved any part of her body flush to any part of his.

He’d lost his already rattled wits when he’d seen her through the branches. That is, when he’d seen her seeing him. Unshod, unclad, unhorsed—so to speak—by his own semi-flaccid balloon.

So what had he done?

Puffed out his chest. Bragged about his cock.

She was an insufferable hoyden, it was true. That didn’t excuse caddish behavior.

“I’m alive,” he confirmed, grimly. For the past three years, he’d tried to risk his life every day, as though endangering himself increased Arthur’s chances of survival. But death kept no balance sheet. He could tumble out of curricles, balloons, trees . . . His foolery offered no protection to his brother, staring down the barrels of French guns on the Continent.

“I’m alive,” he said again, and his look must have turned baleful, because two vertical lines appeared between Isobel’s brows.

“Aye,” she said. “Landed on the bannocks.” The odd statement caused him to bend an arm and touch the grass around his head. His fingers brushed folds of cloth. He lay on her discarded apron, lumpy with hard Scottish biscuits.

He rolled his head from side to side and felt a crunch, the biscuits not his skull.

“I’d have preferred a sponge cake.”

“You would,” she retorted. “Next time I hope you brain yourself on a tree root.”