Sins of a Highland Devil: Highland Warriors Book 1

by Welfonder Sue-Ellen

  “Highland men are proud and fearless.” She looked at Earl David, but James knew her words were meant for him. “They are the hardest fighters in the land. They’re also known to let their honor” – she took a breath, her eyes sparking – “drive them to commit acts of great foolishness.”

  Her outburst brought hoots and sniggers from the crowd.

  Earl David’s appreciative gaze traveled over her. “And Highland women - how are they?”

  “We stand by our men, always.” She shot James a look of pure challenge. “Even when they’d deny they need us!”

  James held her gaze, taking some satisfaction when his stare caused her flush to deepen. He narrowed his eyes at her, hoping to make her acknowledge his triumph.

  But she jerked her gaze away and marched closer, sweeping past the prince’s guard, six tall men in well-polished armor and helmets, their long-bladed swords glinting brightly. Holding her skirts high, she stepped briskly, displaying crimson splashes on her legs, red smears that reached to her knees. The fierce sheen to her eyes showed how much it’d cost her to wade through the slaughter.

  Her braids had come undone and her hair spilled over her shoulders, tumbling to her hips. Her amber necklace shone with a brilliance that hurt his eyes and her breasts rose and fell with her agitation as she drew up before the prince.

  “I will tell you of Highland women, lord.” She’d stopped beside a fallen Berserker whose belly had been split wide and she looked down at the man for a long moment before she spoke again. “We do not sit behind palace walls, listening to minstrels strum their lutes and praise our beauty while our men are bleeding. We do not sip wine and nibble on cream pasties as we wait for word of a battle.

  “Truth is” – her voice thrummed with pride – “we’d fight alongside our men if they’d allow us. As is, we take the field after they redden the ground. We tend the wounded and comfort the dying, not that such heroes truly die.”

  She glanced again at the slain Berserker. “Or fallen become legends. We remember their valor in song and-”

  “My lady, I have seen their bravery – and yours!” Earl David looked amused. He threw a glance at his tight-lipped guardsmen. “Your champions could teach some of the men in my father’s army to fight. And you” – he turned back to her, his tone speculative – “might give our court ladies a few much needed lessons in spirit.”

  He paused, rubbing his royal chin. “Perhaps-”

  Geordie barked, cutting him off.

  “My sister is to wed soon.” Alasdair pushed to his feet, keeping his good hand resting on Geordie’s head. “She is betrothed to Lore MacShade, chief of an allied sept.”

  “I am-” Catriona clamped her lips, her eyes sparking furiously.

  “Ah, well. That is a shame.” Earl David lost interest.

  James was all ears.

  He’d never heard of a betrothal between Catriona and a MacShade chieftain. But that didn’t mean such an arrangement didn’t exist.

  The man’s name was familiar.

  And just the sound of it soured his gizzard.

  Scowling, he curled his hands around his sword belt, gripping so hard he winced. Or he would have done, if he didn’t want to show such weakness.

  But it was hard not to grimace.

  Every muscle in his body screamed and his arm blazed from having held his blade pointed at the clouds for so long. He ignored the cut above his ankle, blocking his mind to the fiery bursts of pain shooting up his leg. The warm, sticky fug of blood in his cuaran, drenching the shoe’s leather and quelling between his toes.

  Alasdair and Kendrew bore worse gashes.

  And he’d be damned if he’d be the first to attract Catriona’s professed nurturing skills. Most especially not when – and the notion scalded him - she belonged to an arse named Lore.

  Sir Walter strode into view at that moment, worsening his spleen. Several other courtiers accompanied him, each one more richly dressed than the other. Sir Walter, the most glittering of them all, held documents in his hand. Fresh red seals dangled from the parchments, the crimson wax gleaming like blood in the pale morning sun.

  “The charters, lord.” Sir Walter handed the scrolls to Earl David.

  Sir Walter then turned to the three chieftains. “Sirs” - he nodded, curtly - “King Robert sends his felicitations. With due regard for his Queen’s sensibilities, having witnessed such an affray, he’s ordered an immediate departure from the glen. The charters grant you each-”

  “We do not require parchments.” James strode up to him, speaking into his face. “The land is ours, whatever. Our ancestors won it by sword centuries ago and we retook it this day with our blood.”

  “You will accept the charters, and gladly.” Sir Walter eyed him contemptuously. “The rules stated that the glen would be awarded to the clan of the last man standing at the end of the trial. You-”

  “We’re all standing – as you see!” James glared at him. “Blood was spilled, much blood.” He swept out his arm, indicating the field, then toward Alasdair’s limp left arm and Kendrew’s bloodied kilt.

  He didn’t mention the gash above his ankle, knowing the bastard had seen. “It is enough, more than that!”

  “So the King agreed.” Sir Walter spoke the words as if they choked him. “And so” – he nodded at Earl David, who stepped forward with the parchments – “he’s shown you the grace of granting each of you the title to your own portion of the glen. From this day onward, the lands are yours, lest you break his peace by returning to-”

  Kendrew roared, thrusting between them. “The battle was for the whole of the glen, no’ pieces of it!”

  “Lady Edina’s grant held all the land.” Alasdair stayed with Geordie, but his words were harsh, ringing. “The glen was ne’er meant to be divided.”

  Sir Walter shrugged. “Then perhaps you wish to fight on?” There was malice in his words, a hint a triumph. “Earl David can act in his father’s stead, burning two of the charters in favor of the remaining champion.”

  “I will do nothing the like.” Earl David turned to James, pressing one of the scrolls into his hands. “They are all champions, I say! They shall hold their lands as ever they’ve done before this day. My father has decided the matter. So long as no unrest….”

  James gripped the scroll, knowing he’d burn it as soon as he returned to his hall. He barely heard the rest of the prince’s oh-so-convivial words, though he did catch Kendrew’s mutterings and Alasdair’s cold silence as they, too, had the parchments foisted upon them.

  Frowning, he tightened his fingers even more, feeling the charter’s heavy wax seal pressing into his palm.

  His fury would surely melt it, or so he hoped.

  He turned his head to look at Catriona, half expecting her to whip up her skirts and grab her lady’s dagger, using its lethal blade to slash the charters to shreds.

  But she no longer stood beside the fallen Berserker.

  She’d gone out onto the field and was moving about among the slain, an armful of bloodied swords and axes clutched against her side.

  James heart split when he saw.

  Sir Walter sneered. “Look there, lord!” He grabbed Earl David’s arm, pointing. “If the chiefs will fight no more, their women are game. See her gathering arms-”

  “Thon lady isn’t collecting steel for a fight.” Kendrew glowered at Sir Walter. “She’s-”

  “She’s picking up weapons to place them in the hands of the fallen.” James glared at Kendrew, annoyed that he’d dared to speak for Catriona. “It’s a courtesy to the slain, allowing them to die in honor if they’d lost their sword as they fell.”

  “Or their ax.” Kendrew snarled at James.

  “That, too, aye.” James kept his eye on Catriona, watching her until she disappeared behind a particularly high mound of bodies.

  Then he turned on his heel and strode away, the prince’s excited exclamations about heroic Highland women grating on his ears.

  But he’d barely push
ed through the worst of the milling crowd of spectators when he stopped short. Something lurched in his chest and relief swept him, swift and hot.

  He went taut, also recognizing a damnably frightening burst of elation.

  He remembered where he’d heard of Lore.

  The bastard didn’t exist.

  He was the scale-backed, claw-handed monster in a tale told to children of the glen when they misbehaved. A once-bonny laird whose every dark deed made him uglier until he turned into a shade, a night-beast so horrible he couldn’t bear to glimpse himself and so only roamed in darkness.

  Have a care, laddie, mothers would warn, lest you wish to turn as ugly as Lore.

  James tipped back his head and stared up at the heavens, stifling a grin because this field of the dead was no place for smiles.

  But he couldn’t stop the gladness spearing him.

  Catriona wasn’t betrothed.

  And – his lips did twitch a bit then – Alasdair was one clever bastard.

  Lore MacShade, indeed.

  James let out a long breath. Then he shoved both hands through his hair. He shouldn’t care at all that Catriona was free. And even if he wasn’t worried about turning into a shade, he wouldn’t be surprised if lightning struck him for lusting after Catriona now, this hour.

  But he did.

  He couldn’t put her from his mind.

  The taste and touch of her haunted him. He burned to hold her in his arms again, quenching his need for her, making her his.

  His chest tightened, cutting off his breath. He had but one choice if he wished to keep his honor.

  He’d have to stay away from her. Because – the sad truth was - if he touched her again, he wasn’t letting her go.

  God help him.

  Chapter 17

  Lore MacShade.

  The dread name echoed ominously in Catriona’s mind as she knelt beside yet another fallen Mackintosh. But it wasn’t the scaly-backed, foul-reeking Lore that plagued her. He was a bairn’s nightmare demon and nothing else. Any other time, she would’ve spun her own tale about Lore as soon as the name sprang from Alasdair’s tongue. She’d have faced the prince without a single eye blink, claiming her love and devotion to her future husband.

  How excited she was by her pending marriage to such a paragon.

  She would thank Alasdair for saving her from an invitation to court.

  A proposal that – she shuddered – would have surely been made with the sole purpose of seeing her land in Earl David’s bed. More like, she would’ve found herself in a royal dungeon, for she’d have sooner sliced off the prince’s pride before she’d have let him touch her.

  She’d almost favor Lore.

  But just now, as she knelt on the wet and reddened grass, surrounded by horror, the monster’s name minded her more of the sad transformation of this ever magnificent stretch of the glen than any childhood demon. As many swords, shields, dirks, arrows, and war axes covered the ground as rocks and heather, the sweet earth drenched with blood and the air reeking to the clouds.

  Dark, lowering clouds racing in from the west, bringing wind, and looking ready to send cold, icy rain spitting down onto the glen any moment. Catriona glanced up at them now, glad for their angry, roiling faces. A clean blue sky would’ve seemed an insult this day, considering.

  Too many men lay unmoving on the field.

  It served for the heavens to be angry.

  She was livid, too. Her fury boiled so hotly that she barely noticed the increasing wind, or how the chill bit through her clothes, icing her skin. She did feel the spirit of the slain Berserker who lay sprawled so ignobly before her. The warrior’s soul surely hovered near, looking on as she placed her armful of weapons on the ground and selected a suitable Norse ax to place in the man’s empty hand, restoring his honor and dignity.

  Someone had done grim work to him, but she could tell he’d been a good-looking man. Tall and well-built, he had a curling beard, and eyes the color of a summer sky. Peering down at him, Catriona was also fairly sure he was one of the men who’d stood so insolently in Kendrew’s hall at Castle Nought, watching her and Alasdair as if he burned to sharpen his ax blade on their bones.

  Had the day gone differently, he might have danced on Alasdair’s corpse. James would’ve been such a prize, the Berserker might’ve beheaded and quartered him, putting each piece on a pole along Castle Nought’s stony ramparts. This man had been that ferocious, she knew.

  Now….

  She bit her lip, steeling herself. Then she pried open the man’s bloodied fingers and placed one of the huge Norse war axes in his hand, carefully closing his fist around the red-smeared haft. She then swept her hand down from his forehead and shut his eyes.

  “Good feasting in Valhalla.” She gave him the farewell she knew he would’ve wished and pushed to her feet, pressing a weary hand to her hip. Her back ached from the weight of the weapons and the cold numbed her fingers.

  A hot bath when she returned to Blackshore would soothe her pains. And how she wished the steaming water would also undo the horrors of the day.

  Yet that was impossible, so she took a deep breath and prepared to move on.

  But a flicker of movement caught her eye just as she reached to brush at her skirts. Glancing across the field, she spotted James’ sister Isobel bending over a fallen Cameron. Many Camerons lay in that spot, near to a blood-splashed thicket of whin and broom, but Catriona hesitated to go there, not wanting to risk running into James if he went to pay his respects to his slain kin.

  It’d been bad enough tolerating him in front of the odious prince.

  The instant their eyes had met, she’d felt a sudden fierce rush of need and had almost forgotten to hasten to her brother, so great had been her sweeping relief to see James standing and whole. Uninjured save an ugly gash in his lower leg – a wound she hoped Isobel had already treated.

  She’d have offered to do so herself – there and then, before the prince and all onlookers - if he hadn’t scalded her with such a glare.

  So she’d simply scowled back at him, hoping the heat of her stare roasted him to the bone.

  He deserved no better.

  Still….

  She scrunched her eyes, scanning the far side of the field to see if he was anywhere near his sister. But no one moved there except Isobel. Catriona watched the other woman lean closer to her fallen kinsman, angling her dark head close to his. Likely, she was murmuring soft words of comfort in the dying man’s ear.

  If Isobel saw her looking, she gave no indication.

  Not that Catriona wished to distract her. Isobel and other women, surely, would be performing the same grisly task as she’d been doing. Though she did intend to cross the field and join the Cameron women later.

  If they needed her.

  And once she’d seen to all the men who begged attention here, where most of the dead seemed to be MacDonalds and Mackintoshes.

  Knowing there were still numerous empty hands awaiting her, she took a deep, back-strengthening breath. Then she bent to retrieve the swords and axes she’d left on the ground beside the Berserker, and froze.

  The weapons were gone.

  “Dear saints!” Eyes rounding, she stared at the flattened patch of grass where the heavy swords and axes had lain. They had been there.

  Straightening, she swung about – and saw the missing weapons at once. James stood frowning at her, the five-foot-long blades and huge axes tucked lightly beneath his arm. He held them as if they weighed nothing. And the sight annoyed her beyond reason.

  Catriona lifted her chin, bristling. “I didn’t hear you coming.”

  “You weren’t meant to.” He stepped closer and her pulse leapt because she was sure he meant to kiss her. Instead, he only caught her chin, tilting her face up to his. “If I couldn’t move soundlessly, even when carrying weapons” – he shifted the swords and axes, without any discernible rattling – “I would’ve been dead years ago.”

  “So you thought I might�
��ve attacked you?” Too late, she remembered how she’d used her lady’s dirk to slash his hand in the wood.

  He leaned toward her, so near that his breath warmed her cheek. “These swords and axes” – he kept their sharp blades away from her – “are honed to kill. If you’d heard my approach, you might’ve grabbed one carelessly, hurting yourself in the by-doing.”

  “I know how to handle a weapon.”

  He gave her a look. “A wee blade a mouse could use to cut cheese.”

  So he was thinking of the morning in the wood.

  She wondered if he knew their wild trek across the glen haunted her. That she’d dreamed about how closely he’d held her clutched to his side. And how she’d sometimes waken in the night, feeling all warm, tingly and aching, wishing she were once again in his arms.

  That she burned to lie with him on the ice….

  If he shared any such yearnings, she couldn’t tell.

  His face could’ve been granite and his grip on her chin was firm. Nothing at all that could be even halfway mistaken for a caress. His touch was cold, but the contact still flooded her with a rush of desire.

  Furious, she tried to ignore the awareness crackling between them. “Even a wee blade can do much damage if used skillfully. A thrust in the eye, or….”

  She let her gaze drift downward, meaningfully.

  When he frowned, caught off guard that she’d look there, she jerked free.

  “Those are mine.” She reached for the weapons, but he captured her hands easily, clamping his strong fingers around her wrists in an iron-hard one-handed grip.

  “They are no man’s.” He pulled her close, so near her breasts pressed into the solid wall of his plaid-covered chest. “These swords and axes have done the work for which they were crafted. They’ve earned their rest, just like the men who wielded them.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” She felt a shiver slip along her nerves. His heart thundered against her, the intimacy scalding. She swallowed, heat flaming her face, pooling low in her belly. “I need the arms to-”

  “I know what you were doing.” His gaze flicked to the dead Berserker, the war ax now resting in the man’s clenched and bloodied fist.