The Bodyguard by Joan Johnston

turned to face Moira, the old woman gasped. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
    She stared at him with a trembling hand held over her heart. “I knew she liked ye,” Moira said. “I didna realize she trusted ye so much.”
    She looked almost frightened, and Alex felt himself becoming frightened at the thought the old woman might keel over at any moment. “What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
    “She gave ye his things,” the old woman said in awed disbelief. “His plaid and his dirk and his belt.”
    “Whose things?” Alex said, anxious because the crone seemed to regard the clothing as something special.
    “Those things she brought for ye to wear …” she said in a reverent voice. “They belonged to her father.”

Chapter 7
    Kitt had offered her father’s clothes to Alex because it was all she had that she thought might fit him. But she was unprepared for the sight of him actually standing in her father’s shoes.
    Unlike her father, Alex was fair-haired, which had only become apparent after he bathed, and gray-eyed—Moira had put an herbal compress on his black eye, which had reduced the swelling so she could more easily make out their color. But his confident bearing reminded her of her father when he had still been a young and powerful leader of his clan.
    Alex looked like a laird should look, his back ramrod straight, his shoulders squared impressively, his chin lifted in a pose that might have seemed arrogant except she knew he was a simple man who had become her bodyguard to keep his belly full and a roof over his head.
    “I thank you for the clothes,” he said as he stood inthe doorway to the cottage, tugging on the plaid. “Moira said they belonged to your father.”
    “Yes.” She swallowed past the sudden constriction in her throat and crossed to help him adjust the plaid beneath the belt. “Yes, they did.”
    “Perhaps I shouldna—”
    “He would have wanted you to have the use of them,” she said, cutting off any further discussion of the subject. “Let’s go.”
    “Where are we going?” he asked, his eyes following her around the room as she made preparations to leave.
    “I have visits to make to my people, to see how they’re faring.”
To admonish them not to poach on the duke’s domain, no matter how great the temptation
. Her lips thinned before she added, “And to leave food.”
    He frowned. “There’s hunger here? I walked the road and the ground seemed fertile.”
    “It is.” She had mended her torn blouse while he was bathing and now arranged a woolen plaid around her shoulders against the chilly wind. She froze as he lifted her hair, which she had left down, out from under the shawl and let it fall over her shoulders.
    “ ’Tis beautiful,” he murmured as his fingers brushed the length of it. “Silky as … I cannot think of anything to compare it with.”
    Kitt shivered as his fingers brushed the length of it. “You shouldna be noticing such things,” she said, stepping away from him.
    His lips flattened, but he gave her a deferential nod. “Aye, my lady.”
    She picked up the basket Moira had filled with foodstuffs, but he took it away from her and settled it on his arm. Because it would have been silly to argue that she could carry it herself, she let him have it.
    Kitt set out at a brisk pace for Patrick Simpson’s cottage, worried that he might have ignored her advice, wondering how she could persuade him of the folly of poaching on the duke’s land. She was grateful for Alex’s silence at first. She had a great deal to contemplate, not the least of which was her meeting next week with the Earl of Carlisle. He had been in the neighborhood for a year and had completely ignored her. Why the sudden interest in her now?
    As the minutes passed, Kitt became distracted by the large shadow her bodyguard cast, which led her to examine the corded sinew in the forearm that was curved around the heavy basket he carried, his large hands, and his long, lean