The Seduction Of Elliot McBride(31)
Author: Jennifer Ashley

He moved confidently, and Juliana realized she should worry that Elliot wouldn’t know the way back. But she didn’t worry. He’d studied the plans, he’d previously explored the tunnels, and people in India had hired him for this very sort of thing—to explore, to discover things, to find the way for others.

This Elliot exuded capable, quiet competence. The broken, wild-eyed man who’d looked at her a few moments ago and confessed he’d gone to Edinburgh to break up her wedding had gone.

Elliot led her across the smooth stone floor to the higher end of the slope, the sound of water to their left. The draft Juliana had felt before strengthened, the breath of air refreshing after the dank warmth of the tunnels.

Elliot walked her unerringly to a hole to the outside world. The opening, at Elliot’s head height, was covered with thick brush, bushes having grown right over it. Elliot blew out the candle in his lantern, handed the lantern to Juliana, and reached through the hole to break away branches.

He easily tore off many of the thinner pieces of the brush, but the trunks of two bushes had spread themselves across the hole. Climbing out this way would be possible but a scratchy, tight fit.

Elliot took both lanterns back from Juliana, blew out the candle in hers as well, and tossed the lanterns through the hole to the earth outside. He boosted himself a little way out of the hole then half climbed, half lifted himself over the remainder of the bushes. The spindly branches caught on his kilt and lifted it high over his hips as he worked his way through.

“Elliot,” Juliana said in a small voice. “You know you are wearing nothing under that.”

His taut thighs and strong bu**ocks worked to lift Elliot out of the hole before his entire body disappeared. Juliana stepped worriedly to the opening just as Elliot looked back inside at her, his smile full of sin.

“I’m a Scotsman,” he said.

Still flashing the wicked grin, he cleared more branches from the hole and reached for her.

Juliana clung to him as she kicked and wriggled her way out, Mahindar’s shirt now torn and stained with dirt.

The hole opened onto the sheer side of a hill. Elliot leaned against the almost vertical slope and helped Juliana find footholds, tussocks of grass that wouldn’t slip under her feet.

They’d emerged to a treeless heath that was filled with rocks and bushes like those which had grown over the hole. The slope on which they stood ran steeply down to the rushing river below—one misstep could plunge her into it.

Elliot was not about to let her go. He held Juliana with immovable strength as he guided her along their makeshift path, until they came to a true path that had been cut into the side of the hill. The sound of sheep bleating in the distance indicated what this path was likely for.

Elliot settled Juliana against a large boulder that might once have been a standing stone, her feet on firm ground, then he climbed back up the hill. Juliana watched him cover the hole, replacing the branches and smoothing the earth.

He retrieved the lanterns he’d tossed out and made his way back down to her, walking sure-footedly along the ridge to the path, never a misstep. He might have been walking on a wide, paved road for all Elliot noticed.

He returned to Juliana’s boulder and leaned on it next to her. “This valley would have been a good place for the McGregors to come to evade the McPhersons,” he said. “The McGregors could have crossed the river and hidden in the meadows beyond without anyone realizing.”

“But then they’d have abandoned the castle to the rival clan,” Juliana said, following his gaze across river. “Do you think any of McGregor’s wild ancestors would have done that?”

“No, but they’d have sent away the women and the wee ones. The families could have lived off the land in that valley a long time, in the warm months.”

Juliana took in the beauty of the scene, the river rushing below them—the same one that had frightened Nandita so when they’d clattered over the bridge. Mr. McGregor and Hamish both claimed that the river teemed with fish, and in the folds of the valley, the McGregor women and children of old would have found berries and other sustenance. In peaceful times, they’d have explored the valley that rolled between the hills, and would have known exactly where to hide when battle came.

“I’ll wager there are bushes plump with berries down there now,” Juliana said, her mouth starting to water. “How about it, Elliot? Shall we bring back a bucketful and teach Mahindar how to make raspberry fool?”

“We don’t have a bucket.”

Juliana lifted the white shirt and made a bowl of it. “I used to do this with my pinafore when I was a girl at my father’s manor house. I’d bring home plenty of bright red berries, half of which I ate on the way. Drove my governess wild.”

Elliot didn’t look at her, but a faint smile crossed his face. “The Juliana I knew always had her pinafore neat and clean. Never a hair out of place, following all the rules.”

“That was the Juliana I showed to company. When I was alone in the woods, I was a bit more lackadaisical. No one to see me, you see.”

“I wasn’t company. I was the unruly brother of your friend.”

“Perhaps, but when Ainsley paid a call, or I called on her, things had to be done properly. She laughed at my insistence on etiquette, but she played along.”

“The fact that you convinced Ainsley to do anything by the rules is a bloody miracle,” Elliot said, with the fondness of an older brother for a harum-scarum sister.

“I remember she rather enjoyed raiding the pantry when we were at school. I thought her audacious, but she never minded sharing the spoils. But she turned out all right, didn’t she? Happily married now, with a child of her own and another on the way.”

“I want children.”

Elliot’s blunt statement made her stop. The sun was descending behind the hills to their right, casting shadows over the river below. Elliot looked down the hill at the roiling water, bracing himself on the boulder. The sun slanted from the jagged mountain to sharpen his face and outline his body in a faint glow.

When he looked at Juliana again, the liquid light brushed the fine net of scars that ran from his temple into his hair. “Many children,” he said.

“I see.” Juliana’s heart thumped. “Is that why you rushed to Edinburgh to stop my wedding and steal the bride?”

“No, to take you away from that twit, Barclay. Lucky for him, he’d eloped, so I didn’t have to kill him.”