Uttering a cry, she danced backward to elude him, then spun around and ran. She was surprisingly quick on her feet. He didn't stop to wonder what foolishness came over him. He gave chase through the courtyard, pausing only to scoop up a handful of snow which he lobbed at her.

She squealed when the snow rained over her neck and shoulders. The direct hit slowed her as she swiped at the worst of it. She bent down to snatch up more ammunition, but he caught her before she could throw it, tumbling her down into a snowdrift.

She squirmed and. fought for freedom, laughing all the while. And to his astonishment, he chuckled along with her. They rolled in the snow like children until he caught her flailing arms and their mock battle altered to carnal awareness.

He looked at her.

She looked at him.

Her bosom heaved from the exertion of their play. Their breaths mingled like fog in the frosty air. Her cloak was twisted around them, lashing him to the softness of legs and hips and breasts. He lay nestled in the cradle of her thighs.

She had ceased laughing. A womanly warmth curved her lips, and her gaze dipped to his mouth. She desired him, he knew it with fierce exultation. A small adjustment of their clothing and he could be inside her…

He could let himself be ensorcelled by an Englishwoman.

The thought chilled his hot blood, and he threw him-self off her. He abhorred her brand of femininity. It was an invitation to trouble.

She sat up, too, brushing the snow from her cloak. “Alexander?" she said hesitantly. "Why do you dislike me so?"

"I dinna dislike you." His answer came swiftly, automatically.

"You do. You're kind to Gillie and Abbott, but you would as soon have left me stranded in the coach. Whenever I come near you, you draw away."

"We fornicated last night. I dinna recall drawing away."

She flinched at his crudeness, but kept Her eyes on him. "I'm not speaking of physical closeness* but the closeness of friends. I wondered… do you fear being hurt again?"

Her words riveted him. "Again?"

"Your bedchamber with all the pretty furnishings… and then that abandoned dining table"-she bit her lip- "well, if you lost your wife, it's understandable that you'd feel reluctant to be close to another woman."

Her wrongful assumption hit him like a blow. He shot to his feet. "I've never been wed. So you can keep your foolish sympathy."

He marched away, but her footsteps pattered behind him. "Was it a clan war, then?" she asked. "If your people were called to battle in the midst of a meal-"

"There was no war," he snapped over his shoulder.

"Then what?" she persisted. "Please, I don't mean to pry-"

"Then dinna ask prying questions."

"But we have only this one day together. I want to know how to reach you. I want to understand why you despise me."

In the shadow of the tower, Alex wheeled around to face her. Lady Helen stopped, too, still in the sunshine, snow clinging to her crimson cloak from their mock tussle and bits of ice sparkling in her sunlit hair. Even now, he felt a dangerous softening inside him. Damn her, he-had to make her see. He had to show her once and for. all that he had no use for a female of her ilk.

"I despise you because you're an Englishwoman. Because this is all a game to ladies like you. You want to play with your Scotsman before you go running back to the comforts of the city, just as my mother did."

"Your mother was English?"

"Aye." The admission tasted sour in his mouth. He did not wish to probe the chilling emptiness in his chest. But this pesky female provoked him beyond endurance. "She came here, all agog at the romantic notion of marrying the laird of the MacBruts. But one hard winter in the Highlands was enough for her. On the evening of their first wedding anniversary, my father planned a big celebration here at the castle. When he went to fetch her for the party, he found the note saying she'd gone, that she couldna bear the hardships any longer. So she'd fled like a coward back to London."

Lady Helen pressed a gloved hand to her cheek. "You must have been just a baby."

"A bairn only a few months old."

"Did she never come back to see you?" A hurting, black well opened in him. "Aye, once when I was a lad of eight. She brought me presents, trying to buy my affections, then left again after a week, never to return." Despising the old ache of pain, he slammed a lid over the memory. " 'Tis a blessing the bitch died a few years later, though my father never stopped bemoaning her loss. 'Twas he who ordered the castle left forever as it was when she lived here."

"Did she never write to you?"

"Nary a once. And my poor besotted father kept hoping nil the day he died. He couldna believe his pretty wife liked the frivolous amusements of the city better than her own husband and son."

"I'm so sorry," Helen said, her gaze steady on him. But you're wrong to assume that all Englishwomen are like your mother."

He scorned the false compassion softening her face. Shi did not understand. She was blind to her own shortcomings, starry-eyed and wrapped in fantasy. "The Enlish try to steal all things Scottish. You wear our plaids and visit our mountains and pretend they're yours. You play here a while, then you scuttle on back to your own civilized world."

Helen shook her head. "I'm not averse to hardship. In my travels, I've encountered far more inhospitable circumstances than a broken coach and a ruined castle." She looked him up and down. "Not to mention a Scotsman with a beastly disposition."

Her flippant rationalizations incensed Alex. He didn't care if she was weak or strong, cowardly or brave. He only wanted her out of his life.

But that might already be impossible.

Taking a step toward her, he voiced his darkest fear. "There's one thing you didna consider when you came to me last night. I could have planted a bairn in you."

For a moment, the only sound was the drip-drip of melting snow. Then she inhaled softly. "A baby? I didn't think…"

He couldn't tell by her breathy tone if she feared the notion. But he feared it. He stepped forward and impatiently gripped her arms. "When did you last bleed?"

She ducked her head and spoke to his chest. "I hardly think that concerns you-"

"Dinna play the blushing maiden. A woman is fertile midway between her bleeding times." He didn't tell her how he knew that. The less she learned about him, the better.

"My… time ended three days ago."

Relief poured through him. He let go of her and stepped back. "Praise God for that."

She stood with her arms crossed over her middle in an oddly protective gesture. "I feel foolish for not considering the possibility."

"Then dinna make the same mistake when next you seek out a lover."

Before Helen could speak, he strode away, a tall angry man who despised her. Without a backward glance, he disappeared inside the gray stone tower.

He did not want her sympathy; he'd made that abundantly clear. Yet her heart ached for the lonely, hurt boy hidden inside the scornful man. How she yearned to take him into her arms and comfort him, to show him that not all women were so callous as to abandon their husbands and children.

M'lord danced in front of her. She picked him up, brushing off his snow-covered paws and hugging him, her cheek to his velvety ears. The possibility of being pregnant, however remote, frightened and amazed her all at once. She imagined cuddling a baby, feeding him at her breast, and a strange softness came over her, an emotion she denied. Certainly she did not wish to bear a bastard. She would never want to see her son or daughter suffer the censure of society. How lucky that the timing was wrong.

How very, very lucky.

Lost in thought, Helen walked slowly back to the keep. There was a sense of freedom in knowing their lovemaking would not bear fruit. She would stay out of Alex's path for the remainder of the day. She would give him time to get over his anger. And tonight?

A shiver of longing rippled through her. What would happen tonight?

Chapter Five

With a sense of relief, Alex shut the door to the bedchamber. He had passed the day in a frenzy of chores around the castle, carting piles of rubbish from the towers and sorting through the rusted weaponry in the armory. He had avoided the keep, preferring the frigid outbuildings to facing Helen.

Lady Helen, he contemptuously thought. A pampered aristocrat accustomed to being waited on hand and foot. He would not act like her adoring lapdog.

By evening, however, hunger proved a stronger foe than one small female. He stalked into the great hall, led by an enticing aroma. In an iron pot bubbled an appetizing stew made with the last of the ham, and though Helen took credit for it, he doubted her ability to cook. Dinner must have been Miss Gilbert's doing.

Helen appeared to have cheerfully accepted the end to their relationship. She did not flirt with him, though every now and then he intercepted a thoughtful glance from her. To his chagrin, even her coolness aroused him. It made her intriguing, untouchable, mysterious.

During dinner, she had shown far more regard for Abbott and Miss Gilbert, drawing out stories, from their childhoods, listening as if they were treasured companions rather than hired help. Only once did she address Alex, turning her big blue eyes on him. "Will the roads be clear by tomorrow?" "Aye," he'd replied gruffly. "We'll depart come morning.

For several heartbeats, her gaze had held his, and he'd felt the wild urge to seize her in his arms and carry her upstairs, to push up her skirts and find heaven again. Then Abbott had engaged him in a discussion of the vagaries of Scottish weather, and the moment of madness passed.