Snowy Night with a Highlander by Julia London

as a vise yet surprisingly gentle.
    Fiona’s body was tingling all over. She stepped away, drew a quick but steadying breath, and glanced over her shoulder at him. Duncan’s startling gaze was filled with the look of a man’s hunger, a look of gnawing desire—Fiona knew it, because regrettably, she was feeling it, too.
    A warm flush filled her cheeks, yet she pulled her cloak around her and adjusted her hood. “The air will do me good,” she said, apropos of nothing but a suddenly pressingneed to fill the silence that seemed to crackle around them. She did not look at him, did not give him the chance to argue, and began walking to the front of the wagon.
    Fortunately, there was a wooden step to help the driver up, of which Fiona availed herself. She settled on the driver’s bench, looking straight ahead, waiting for Duncan to ask her to come down, to go back into the little cave.
    She heard nothing. She looked up at the trees towering above them and the stone gray sky, breathing in the heavy scent of pine. When she at last risked a look at him, she discovered he wasn’t even there. But he appeared a moment later with a pair of furs tucked up beneath his bad arm. He pulled them out and tossed them up onto the bench. Fiona quickly moved them, spreading them over her lap while Duncan lifted himself gracefully onto the bench.
    He did not look at her; he picked up the reins and wrapped them around his bad hand, then reached across himself to release the brake. With a whistle and a hitch of the reins, he sent the horses to trotting once more.
    Fiona could not help but smile to herself. She’d put herself in a terribly shocking situation. Look at her, a woman who dined at the queen’s table, riding on a wagon’s bench with a servant or tenant of some sort! She could imagine herself relating this tale to the royal princesses, who would be all agog as they tried to imagine riding in a wagon in the company of a man they did not know.
    Especially a man as enigmatic as Duncan. She stole a glance at him; he kept his gaze to the road. His eye creased in the corner with his squint; his jaw was square and strong. He had the growth of a beard that showed above his scarf that made him look even wilder than she imagined him to be. None of the gentlemen in Londonlooked like this. None of them had so much as a curl out of place. None of them could handle a team of four with one hand, or catch her in one arm and hold her so effortlessly. . . .
    Stop. This was insanity.
    “Do you think we might reach Blackwood today?” she asked in an effort to make idle conversation that would take her mind from him.
    “Aye.”
    She spread her hands on her lap and looked at her fur-lined gloves, a gift from her aunt. “It seems a wee bit colder here than in London,” she remarked. “I didna remember it being quite so cold as this.”
    He said nothing.
    “Are you no’ cold, sir?”
    “No.”
    “Then your cloak must be a fine one indeed. Mine is lined with fur, yet still I feel a chill. When I was a girl, I never felt the chill. Then again, I was quite active, always out-of-doors, engaged in games with my brother. My father was of a mind that physical exercise was good for the body’s humors.” She looked at him for a response.
    He kept his gaze on the road.
    “What of you? Were you an active lad, then?”
    He gave her a look that clearly indicated he found her prattle tiresome.
    So did she, truthfully. But she had to talk. If she didn’t speak, she would dwell on the closeness of his deliciously masculine body, eyes the color of tea leaves, and unspeakable things. “Perhaps you were put to work at an early age,” she suggested. “Our housekeeper had three sons who worked alongside her. I shall never forget the sight of Ianstanding on his brother’s shoulders to light the candles in the chandelier, as steady as you please.”
    Duncan turned his head and seemed to be looking at the trees as they passed them.
    “I was always rather fond