Page 3 of The Madam’s Highlander

Perhaps he ought to have arrived armed with information. With secrets. Being a man of the Black Watch, a man trained to uncover plots of extortion, he could have uncovered information to use against Freya.

Secrets, however, once uncovered, could not easily be buried.

He hoped to appeal to Freya's decency to get what he needed. Meeting the coolness of her stare, he was having his doubts before even posing the question.

Freya settled back in her seat, which made her ample bosom push forward. How he wanted to let his gaze slide over the offering she laid out for him – to skim the creamy valleys and swells of her firm skin until his hands ached to touch.

But he did not look. He kept his eyes locked on hers. He was stronger than the weakness of the body. Disciplined, determined. He was a soldier with a purpose.

“What can I do for ye, Captain...?” She raised her brows for him to fill in his name, though he was certain she already knew it.

“Fraser. Captain Ewan Fraser,” he provided. “I have a favor to ask ye.”

She gave a bemused smile. “So ask.”

“My mother relocated some time ago into the country in the Lowlands. I'd like ye to check on her well-being for me.”

Freya smirked. “I'm no steward.” She sat forward and placed her hand on the polished surface of the desk. Her fingernails were clean and carefully rounded, like those of a lady.

“Captain Fraser, I appreciate yer patronage at Molly's. If it's an experience ye're after, ye willna find one better than what my girls can provide ye. Aside from a memorable night and a stiff drink, I'm afraid I canna offer much more than that.”

Ewan nodded carefully. “I understand what I ask is an extraordinary request.”

“Extraordinary.” She said it as if deciding if she liked the taste of it in her mouth. “And impossible.”

Aye, he should have come armed with information. “There's a reason I've asked ye specifically,” he said.

“Oh?” she curled her glossy red lips around the word.

“I hear ye go to the country often, near Callander, aye? That isna too far from where my ma is.” The muscles at her throat tensed and he rushed on before she could stop him. “I dinna know many who even venture outside of Edinburgh.” He clenched his jaw in the same stubborn set hers had settled into. “As a favor for a client who brings his men here on every visit to Edinburgh.”

The glint in her blue eyes went hard as sapphires. “How do ye know I go there?”

“One of yer girls had mentioned it to my men once.”

Spots of color showed on her cheeks beneath her freckles. A crash sounded on the other side of the door, in the other, more gilded world of sex and seduction.

Freya's eyes darted behind him to the closed door before returning her attention back to him. “Nay.”

Ewan sat forward in his seat. “Ye dinna understand, my ma is in the country. I canna be excused from my duties to see to her, and I—”

“Ye worry she might be hurt by the very men ye've sided with?” Her gaze sharpened perceptively, like the viper she'd been heralded by many a rejected man.

In that one stare, she cut into his soul and had sucked the truth from the marrow of his very core. She'd coiled around the security he'd wrapped himself in - the good name, the medals of valor, the years of loyal service - and she'd found the stink of his doubt as sure as a predator draws on the scent of blood.

Because she was right.

He questioned it all.

The Black Watch was not as it was when he joined, when his task was to mind the wilds of the Highlands, to break up disputes and prevent exploitation. Now his job was to aid the English in a battle against his own people.

And it was their blood bathing his homeland - men, women...children. His stomach rolled with what he'd stumbled upon too many times – a home razed to the ground, still smoldering with defeat, the family slaughtered where they'd been found running or hiding.

What they did to the women...

“Nay.” Freya rose abruptly from her seat. “I willna help ye.”

A woman's scream sounded in the distance followed by a man's bellow.