Brogan tried to hide his surprise at seeing her. The lass truly was a specter. He’d figured she would already be with the prince—a thought that had plagued him for nigh on the entire time they’d been apart, for he’d feared greatly for her and thought he’d made the wrong decision in not chasing after her. Every time they’d come across a burned-out cottage or misfortune in a town, he’d been afraid to find Fiona’s lifeless body.
But there she was in the flesh, looking as exhausted as he remembered. Purple smudges beneath her eyes, a bit dirtier, and just as damned beautiful. He swallowed hard, feeling desire slam into his body in a way it hadn’t done in…well, ever. She was supposed to be the thorn in his arse, the weevil he couldn’t get rid of, and yet…a sense of pleasure at seeing her made his chest swell, and his skin tingled like he was a bloody imbecile.
“Ye look like hell, Brogan Grant.” The words didn’t sting, laced with humor and accompanied by that petulant curl to her lips.
Why did she have to be so damn enticing? He ripped his gaze away from her lips and up toward her eyes sparking with merriment. “I reckon I look better than ye, lass.”
She laughed, the sound volleying from her throat to punch him in the ballocks.
Fiona glanced toward the men who’d drawn a little closer, issuing a small wave. “Good to see ye again, gentlemen.” And then she added in a tone that could only be deciphered as taunting, “Glad to see the lot of ye kept your big bad leader alive.”
A few of them chuckled until Brogan shot them a warning glare and growl.
“How did ye find us?” Sorley asked, rubbing his chin in contemplation, but Brogan assumed it was more to stifle his laughter.
“Quite by accident. Seems we are headed in the same direction.” She gestured toward the water with a wave of her long, slender fingers.
“Which direction is that?” Sorley asked when Brogan couldn’t seem to find his voice.
“Skye.” Fiona slid her glance from Sorley back to Brogan, and if he wasn’t mistaken, there was a flash of something more than mere curiosity in her gaze.
“I knew it,” Brogan said, irritated. They’d been about to cross over to Skye a sennight before and been persuaded to turn around.
“We never should have believed that damn boatman.” Sorley picked up a stick and threw it into the water for Milo.
Fiona winged a brow at their conversation. “What boatman?”
“We were going to cross over to Skye a week ago,” Sorley said.
“Was the prince no’ at Invergarry?” Her expression was shuttered.
“He’d just left.” Brogan turned away, crouching to dip his hands in the loch and splash his face. The cool water wasn’t enough of a jolt to his senses, even when he repeated the move several times. At last, he ran his hands over his wet hair and stood, using the bottom of his shirt to wipe his face. When he finished, he spied Fiona watching him, her eyes on his movements, on the small bit of skin that he’d just let show.
Good God… All the cold water in the world wasn’t going to help him. Maybe not even if it had been frozen over.
“Ah.” She ran her tongue over her lower lip and then turned away from him, watching the men who were in various stages of wiping down their horses and washing themselves from their ride. “He doesna stay in one place long, I imagine, with the dragoons searching for him. No one should.”
“Agree,” Brogan said, deciding he needed a swig of whisky to take the edge off.
“Is that…?” She cocked her head, studying the soaked hound beside Brogan who’d just come up for another toss of the stick into the water.
Brogan grunted. “Aye, the wee lad ye abandoned in the wood.”
“I was talking about the hound,” she teased.
The men laughed, but Brogan only imagined tearing her off that horse and silencing her with a kiss. “If ye were a man—” He wouldn’t desire her so much.
“Ye’ve told me many a time I’m no’, so I’m certainly no’ going to start worrying if I were.”
Her wit was too much for him.
Brogan nodded toward Milo. “Dinna concern yourself with him, the hound has found his place.” With me. And I willna abandon him.
“Him?” Her eyes twinkled with some jest he did not know the meaning of. “That’s a female hound.”
“What?” Brogan jerked his head down to look at the wee beastie holding the stick proudly between sharp teeth.
Fiona was clearly trying to keep herself from laughing as she bit her lips. “Aye, she came with ye?”
“He did.” Brogan crossed his arms over his chest. Where did she get off trying to say his hound was a lass?
“She.”
“He,” Brogan insisted.
Fiona cocked her head to the side. “What happened to his ballocks, then?”
Several of the men snorted, and as if to prove the point, the dog flopped onto its back and started pawing the air as if scratching the clouds.
Fin let out a guffaw. “Shite, she’s right.”
Brogan frowned. “I’m no’ one to judge a man by the size of his ballocks.”
“Ye didna look?” she asked with a tinkling laugh. “Because she’s no’ got any ballocks. No more than I have.”
“I didna need to look,” Brogan insisted. “He lifts his leg like a male when he pisses.”
“There is no’ anything there, my friend,” Fin said with a laugh.
Fiona chuckled. “I rubbed her belly, and she was certainly missing the requisite male…equipment.”
The men snorted.
“’Haps she likes disguising her sex, as I have in the company of brutes.” Fiona shrugged. “I wouldna blame her for it.”
Brogan grunted. “’Haps I should leave the two of ye alone to discuss brutes then.”
“Milla,” she crooned, ignoring him and reaching into her satchel to pull out a piece of jerky, then tossing it to the ginger hound who was quick to leap up and snatch the meat.
Surreptitiously he spied the back of the hound, noticing a distinct lack of anything there. Bloody hell, he couldn’t even tell a female dog from a male. How was he supposed to lead men?
Fiona climbed down from her horse, this time to rub Milla behind the ears and croon at her. The wee beastie acted as though being reunited with its long-lost mother. Was it bad that he felt jealous?
He’d been the one to take the animal in, feed it, care for it over the last two weeks after Fiona had left them both. He’d even gotten used to the feel of Milo—Milla—curling up beside him at night, found himself petting her while he contemplated their next strategy. And Fiona… Well, he didn’t want to go there.