RESCUED BY THE HIGHLANDER

by Preston, Rebecca

  Donal would come and visit with her soon, she knew. A man like that couldn’t let insults like hers stand — he’d feel like he had to come and tell her off sooner or later. It would be good to be well-rested for that confrontation. She wasn’t going to grovel or beg, she knew that much — Blair’s words stuck with her. And she knew that she’d done the right thing. Everyone except Donal knew that if it hadn’t been for her, all of those servants would have been killed by the wolf. And who knew what else might have happened? It might have run off into the woods before the soldiers could have hunted it down. It had looked like it was ready to run if Anna hadn’t kept it cornered or organized for the men to throw a net over it. Without her, the creature could still be out there — with the blood of a dozen innocent people on its jaws, not just the blood of a few unlucky sheep.

  Resolute in her anger, she drifted off to sleep. It was a restful enough sleep, though the spectre of the wolf stalked her through her dreams, its glowing eyes always behind her, or ready to lunge out of fireplaces or torches as she walked through the dream landscape. To her relief, there was no sign of Donal in her dreams… not as an enemy, and not as a lover. That was a relief. So far, the dreams she’d had about him had been… less than helpful for keeping a clear mind, that was for sure. She wasn’t interested in getting all distracted and confused before she confronted him about his shocking treatment of her. Well, she supposed that was one trick she could pull if all else failed… let me out of my room and I’ll take you up on your offer to bed me, she thought, grinning to herself. But no. That wasn’t going to be an option. She’d talk her way out of this trouble she was in.

  When she woke up it was late in the afternoon. She realized, to her chagrin, that she must have needed the sleep more than she thought — she’d been so deeply in dreamland that she hadn’t even heard someone come in to clear her tray, or to leave another in its place. She got muzzily to her feet and padded over to check it out. A huge bowl of soup, with two crusty bread rolls… and yet more pastries. Emily’s work again? She grinned to herself, feeling her stomach grumble. God, at this rate she was going to be the size of a house before she got out of this room. Still, the soup smelled incredible, and she’d never been able to resist a crunchy bread roll. They must have been baked fresh that morning — Anna groaned with pleasure as she bit into one. The soup was still slightly warm — the meal mustn’t have been delivered too long ago — and she set about devouring it with enthusiasm.

  She was enjoying the meal so much that she almost forgot what she was doing here… that she was a prisoner, waiting for her jailor to come to see her. So, when there was a knock on the door — far less timid and tentative than any of Emily’s knocks — it almost took her by surprise to find Donal Grant himself, glowering at her from the doorway.

  Anna swallowed her mouthful of soup, caught a little off-guard. The confrontation she was waiting for was about to begin.

  Chapter 37

  They looked at each other for a long moment. Anna wished she hadn’t been eating soup when he’d come in… it lacked a certain gravitas that she felt she needed. But at least she was seated. Being seated was a position of power. It meant she didn’t care enough for him to bother standing up to greet him. And it disguised, a little, how much shorter she was than him. After all, anyone could be short sitting in a chair. Not everyone was five foot nothing on the ground. And she was tired of looking straight up at him, jutting her chin out to keep hold of his gaze.

  He’d clearly come in with a purpose in mind — but something had stopped him in his tracks. He was staring at her bandaged arm with something very like concern on his face, mingling with the tight-jawed anger he was clearly feeling. She raised an eyebrow at him, declining to speak first. Old negotiating tactic she’d picked up in the Army. Dig out a big, deep silence and let them struggle to fill it. Gave you the upper hand.

  “Your arm.”

  “What about it?” she said coolly. Let him ask. She wasn’t going to volunteer any information until she was certain he’d decided to apologize for his shocking treatment of her.

  “It’s injured.”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “Doing your job for you,” she said idly, examining her nails — and grinned in triumph (privately, of course) at the way his back stiffened, and his cold gray eyes flared with anger.

  “So, you’re continuing to be insolent,” he said levelly. “An interesting choice, being disrespectful to the Laird of the castle you’re staying in.”

  “I’m earning my keep,” she snapped back. “Or have you forgotten so quickly that I saved a dozen of your people from being eaten by some wild animal last night?” She could feel her anger building again and forced herself to stay calm. She’d confronted enough arrogant, condescending, self-obsessed assholes in her life that one more shouldn’t make much of a difference. The only thing that made him trickier than the others was how frustratingly hot he was. Even when he was looking at her like that, full of anger and resentment for her, she still felt that undeniable, magnetic pull toward him. She wondered idly if he felt it too — if his offer to bed her whenever she felt like it still stood. A bizarre urge to test it — to offer herself to him right here, right now. She suppressed it, annoyed with the very idea… though she couldn’t help thinking that a bit of passion might make the sex even better…

  “And I saved your life when the beast almost had you,” he snarled, clearly oblivious to what she was thinking.

  Of course he was. He’d barely listened to what she’d said — why would he listen to a woman, after all? Even one who was smarter than him, more experienced than him, and more tactically gifted than him… no, he didn’t believe women could be any of those things, at least in this particular field, so he was determined to shut her out.

  Anna sighed. She’d been so looking forward to this fight — to giving this man a piece of her mind, the tongue-lashing of a lifetime, sending him packing with his tail between his legs. But now that he was here before her, ready to be destroyed, all she felt for him was pity. He was the one who was going to miss out on all the brilliant things women could bring to his life, to his leadership. He was the one who was going to go through life only seeing contributions from half the species. She just felt tired, all of a sudden, all the anger draining out of her. He seemed to sense it — looked a little unsure of himself.

  “If that’s what you need to think to make yourself feel better, Donal, you be my guest,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. “I’ve got better things to think about.”

  “I did save your life,” he objected, sounding offended. “I slayed the beast.”

  “Yeah, man, you did great.” She sat heavily on the bed. “Really impressive. Whatever would we have done without you.”

  “You don’t mean that,” he said plaintively, sounding for all the world like a child who nobody would play with.

  “No, Donal, I don’t. But you’ve made it very clear that you don’t respect me as a warrior, even when I gave you concrete evidence of my skills. What’s left to talk about?”

  He seemed to get hold of himself. “Your punishment, for one. You will be confined to the castle. I may allow you to leave your room after a few days and continue about your duties assisting the servants.” His eyes flickered a little, a disgruntled expression flashing across his face. “All twelve of them have come to me on separate occasions, telling me I should release you. They’re clearly very fond of you. So, for morale, I will allow you to rejoin them.” He hesitated. “After your arm has healed. And you have been confined to your room for a while, so that you may reflect on your actions.”

  “You’re treating me like a prisoner because I saved some lives,” she pointed out, her anger — cold now — beginning to build. “Because I did your job for you. Because I saved the lives you neglected.”

  “You endangered yourself,” Donal snapped, his eyes burning. “You could’ve been killed. If that creature had caught you, I —” He broke off.
>
  Interesting. What had he been about to say?

  “And we would all have been killed if I hadn’t acted,” Anna pointed out, deciding to ignore the little hiccup. Maybe he was interested in her, romantically. Maybe his concern had been a little personal — maybe he’d been worried about losing her for personal reasons. And if so, so what? It was still rude, still condescending to treat her like she couldn’t handle herself when she’d told him — and more to the point, shown him — that she could. The little warm spot in her chest at the idea didn’t mean anything. God, feelings were so goddamn stupid.

  “You can’t just risk your life like that.”

  “What life?” she demanded, gesturing around the room. “I don’t have much of a life to risk, stuck in this little room, do I? My life was fighting, and you’ve told me I can’t do that because of my gender. So, tell me, exactly what am I supposed to be living for?”

  “Let’s talk later,” Donal said, his teeth gritted, two points of color high on his cheeks making it clear that he was only just hanging onto his self-control. “When you’re less hysterical.”

  She snorted. “I’m not the one digging holes in my own hands, buddy,” she pointed out, nodding at his clenched fists. He unclenched them with a noise of frustration — she could imagine the crescent-shaped indentations in the skin there. She used to get them all the time — before she got a whole lot better at keeping anger out of her body.

  “Three days. At least. Then we’ll see if you’re ready to agree not to go endangering yourself at the first opportunity,” he said, his eyes narrowed.

  “Three days? What am I supposed to do for three days?”

  “I’ll send Maeve to visit with you. Perhaps she can bring you some embroidery.”

  He slammed the door harder than he needed to on his way out, and Anna flopped backwards on her bed, grinding her teeth furiously. That had gotten her — she’d kept her cool for most of their little confrontation, but the little jab about embroidery, that had gotten her well and truly furious. And now she knew she was trapped in the room for such a long duration… God, what was she going to do? Gnash her teeth and plot revenge, mostly, she thought with a dour expression. But how much time could she kill doing that? She was going to lose her goddamn mind. And she was going to gain weight, she thought irritably, stuffing one of the leftover pastries from breakfast into her mouth. Well, good. What was the point of staying in shape when she wasn’t allowed to fight? Maybe she’d just gorge herself on delicious Scottish food until she was too big to get out of the doorway, even if they did remove the guard from the door.

  The pastry — and that ridiculous mental image — did help to soothe her nerves a little. She even felt a momentary glimpse of regret. Maybe she should have been nicer to Donal… played the regretful woman card, batted her eyes a little. She knew by now that he was at least a little attracted to her — that would have made him easy to manipulate. She could have gotten her freedom if she’d really worked at it. But the idea of crawling to him — of caving to his idea of what a woman was — was galling. No, if she was ever going to be on good terms with the Laird again, it was going to be on her terms, not his. He was going to recognize that she was a fierce warrior in her own right, he was going to apologize for all his shitty sexism and make an earnest statement of his intent to change, and then he was going to release her from this stupid little room. And have a sword made for her, especially, by the best blacksmith in the neighborhood. Whoever that may be. She wasn’t fussy.

  Anna sighed heavily, rolling over on the bed. She could fantasize and dream all she wanted… the fact was that she was as good as imprisoned here, and Donal was too much of a stick in the mud to let her out. The only option was either to outwait him — and she had a suspicion that he was too stubborn a man for that tactic to be particularly effective, not unless she wanted to wait until she was as old as Maeve — or it was to talk someone else into helping her. Brendan had seemed sympathetic… maybe she could get hold of him, find a way of talking him into convincing Donal to listen to her? Men like him were always more likely to listen to other men than they were to listen to women, unfortunate as that was. But how was she going to meet with Brendan? She was stuck in this room for the rest of her life, wasn’t she?

  Maeve would have some good advice, she counseled herself. After all, she knew Donal better than anyone, being his adoptive mother. And Donal had said he’d send her to visit. Maybe she could offer some special insight into the best thing to do.

  Anna hoped she could, anyway. Because if Maeve couldn’t help her, she wasn’t sure who could.

  Chapter 38

  The time dragged on for an eternity with nobody to talk to. It could only have been an hour or two, when she actually thought about it, but given that she had absolutely nothing to do… and that she’d been brought up in a time of near-instant and near-continuous entertainment wherever she went… it was torture. She was beginning to see why solitary confinement made people so miserable, why it was such an effective disciplinary tool. In the Army, she’d always thought longingly of solitary confinement… she was always surrounded by such loud sweaty men and she always just wanted a break from them. Now she knew that solitary may have been nice, but confinement certainly wasn’t. She even stepped out into the hallway to try to talk to the guard, so desperate was she for something to take her time up other than her own restless, angry thoughts.

  It was a new guard. Again. Why did they swap so regularly? It seemed like a pretty easy shift, how much time could you really need off from it? But then Anna realized — it wasn’t that the work was hard. It was that they were bored. Frustration rose in her chest again. If the work was too boring even for the guards outside her room to stay for long, how the hell did Donal justify keeping her stuck in here like this? After all, she may have (in his view) broken the rules, but she was still a human being, not some animal to be trained.

  But maybe he didn’t see it that way. Maybe he’d been raised with all that toxic imagery of women being wild horses who had to be tamed, broken before they became submissive, docile little pets. Anger began to build in her chest again, cold and resolute. She wasn’t a horse, she wasn’t a pet, she was Anna Clarke, and she’d throw herself from the battlements before she let some man turn her into a tool to be used as he saw fit. If she was going to be a tool, she was going to be a weapon, not a sewing needle or a frying pan. She noticed he hadn’t minded her helping out on domestic chores without his approval. Of course, that was fine with him. There was just as much of a chance of her getting hurt trying to lug laundry around, or help out in the kitchen — she could’ve burned herself, or twisted an ankle on the hillside, who knows what could have happened? But those injuries, those were fine. Injuries gained in battle? Well, that just wasn’t a woman’s place.

  She wondered how many women he’d known to die in childbirth. Then a worried pang of guilt struck her at that thought. He hadn’t ever told her what happened to his parents — but she knew that he’d been raised by Maeve and the old Laird. Was it possible his mother had passed away in childbirth? She made a mental note that even if she got furious with him, she wouldn’t bring up childbirth. After all, he probably considered it a woman’s duty to bear children, despite that being one of the most dangerous things a person could do to their body, and the leading cause of death for women for centuries. But did he consider childbearing women to be strong, powerful warriors? Some cultures did … but somehow, Anna didn’t think Donal was among those forward-thinking people.

  She had to get him out of her head. She was going to go insane if she kept thinking about how wrong and stupid he was, all the things she should have told him, savage lines that would have put him in his place. Nothing she could say would put him in his place. It was becoming clear that she’d literally have to fight him before he would recognize her power… and even then, she was doubtful it would manage to achieve what she wanted it to achieve. Maybe, though. It would certainly get them closer than they were. But how co
uld she fight him if he wouldn’t even let her out of this room? Would it be fists, or swords? She was decent at martial arts, but there was something very tempting about taking him on with a sword. One of the wooden ones she’d seen men training with, perhaps.

  None of this did any good, though. She tidied her room mercilessly, made the bed as neatly as she had in basic training, cleaned off the table, found a broom in the corner and swept the stone floors. The whole process was made more irritating by the fact that she knew Donal would approve of her doing domestic labor. And that was the worst part — she liked domestic labor! She loved cleaning — there was something about a clean house that just made her feel complete. It had nothing to do with gender, though, and it wasn’t something she was inherently, intuitively good at. As a teenager, she’d been as much of a slob as her brother had — more, even. Cleanliness was something she’d learned, something the Army had helped drill into her and her realization that she liked a tidy space had cemented. It had nothing to do with her gender — but confirmation bias meant that if Donal caught her cleaning, his suspicions about women in general would be confirmed. It was maddening.

  Still, it felt nicer to have a tidy room… especially when a tap on the door came a few minutes later, and Maeve slipped in through the door after having a brief and gentle chat with the guard on the door. She seemed to know everything about everyone in the castle — she’d been enquiring about this guard’s health. He’d had a nasty fall and torn the skin off his hands at some point, it seemed, and she was wondering how well it was healing. Anna couldn’t help but feel resentful about that, even though she knew it was childish. She was the one who was really hurt. She had a big bite taken out of her by a fairy wolf, and it was her captor who was getting the attention? Unfair.