The Highlander Is All That (Untamed Highlanders #4)(58)

“And doona open your door to anyone.”

“Please.” It was difficult not to roll her eyes. “I have traveled before.”

“Not for a while.” Ranald glowered darkly.

“And things have changed since then,” Hamish said, tipping his bowl and spooning the last of his stew into his mouth.

“How so?”

“Since the war,” Ranald said. “So many soldiers returned wounded and broke. Many turned to highway robbery.”

Hamish nodded dourly. “And worse.”

Such talk only made her worry about Mary more. “All right. I promise. I won’t let anyone in my room.” As though she might.

When dinner was finished, Ranald escorted her to her chamber, where her bath had been prepared. He eyed it longingly but merely made sure she had everything she needed and then left.

Before he did, he waggled his finger at her and said, “Lock your door.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, affecting a salute.

He was not amused, but she hardly cared. As soon as he was gone and her door was bolted, she turned to the steaming bath and sighed.

Heaven.

*

Ranald had been right about the characters in the inn.

He grimaced as another whoop wafted up through the floorboards. The revelry downstairs was only getting wilder. At one point, a drunken buffoon had clomped up the stairs and pounded on his door, demanding entry. The idiot obviously thought this was his room.

With all the noise, and worry about Anne, and thinking about Anne, and wanting Anne, he was bursting with energy and couldn’t sleep. It was a damned waste of a bed. In oh so many ways.

It turned out to be providential, though, his inability to sleep, when the idiot kept pounding on doors until someone responded . . . and that someone screamed.

It was a female scream, which had Ranald up and out in the hall in seconds, his heart pounding with anger and fear, the hair at his nape prickling.

He’d told her not to open her door. Hadn’t he? Why had she—

Oh. It wasn’t her, but a portly matron dressed in a frilly nightgown, tussling with the drunk in the hall.

Good thing that with all his pent-up energy he was in the mood for a fight.

He launched himself at the man, yanked him away from the squalling woman, whipped him around, and sank his fist into that overblown belly. A couple more blows sent the bastard reeling and when he caught his balance, he turned tail and ran down the stairs.

Ranald watched him go with a grim smile.

And then he lurched forward as he was tackled from behind. It took a moment to realize this was not another foe, but a grateful be-frilled guest. “Oh, thank you!” she wailed. “Thank you. God only knows what might have happened if you had not intervened. You are a hero, my good sir.”

Her husband, presumably—a smallish man with thinning hair—peeked out the door.

“Herbert. Herbert. He saved me.”

Herbert, for surely that was his name, edged out, checking for the miscreant, and when he did not see him, reached out a hand to Ranald. “Thank you, sir.” And then, to his wife, “Matilda. I told you not to open the door.”

“But he was banging. How can I sleep with such banging?”

“Never open the door,” Herbert said as he shooed her back into the room. He nodded at Ranald again before he closed his door and threw the bolt.

Ranald glanced around the hall. Astonishingly, no one else had opened their door, not even to see what was going on. Either they’d slept through it—which he was certain was the case with Hamish—or they had been too afraid to.

Either way, they’d been lucky. This man had only been a confused drunk. In his experience, there were others with much darker goals lurking about country inns.

With a sigh, he turned back to his room, but before he made it, he heard the creak of a door at the end of the hall and froze. He knew whose room that was. He’d been fixated on that room all night.

Slowly he turned with a glower on his face. It was difficult maintaining his ire at the sight of Anne in her white nightgown, her hair tousled and her cheeks pink.

“I told you not to open the door,” he said on a sigh.

She lifted a delicate shoulder. He tried not to focus on the way the neckline of her gown slid down with the movement. “I wanted to see what was happening.”

“Anne—”

“I was frightened.” Her expression devastated him. Indeed, she looked genuinely upset.

He’d never seen her frightened, not by anything, and the thought of it made his chest ache. “You’re safe. I promise.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course.” He took a step toward her room, though he knew he shouldn’t. He hated the way her lip trembled. The way her eyes implored him.

Or maybe not.

“Can you stay with me for a while?” she asked, and his pulse stopped. When it started again it was with a savage throbbing he felt through his entire body. One spot in particular.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

She nibbled her lower lip, which certainly didn’t help. “Please? Just until my heart stops pounding.”

Her heart was pounding?

“I had quite a fright.”

How could he say no?

He was a gentleman, after all.

He was also a man.