How to Marry a Highlander

by Michele Sinclair

  He was in limbo. He could not go back to his prior life of just enjoying a woman’s body. Neither did he know how to move forward. But he was going to find a way, because he could not continue thinking about her all the time.

  Dugan sighed and wondered if she thought about him at all. Had his aithinne continued to visit the loch each week on the chance he might appear? Did she have any regrets? Did she miss him at all? Did memories of their being together haunt her like they did him? Had she already moved on to someone else? He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his face. Murt, these thoughts, they needed to end.

  Dugan took a deep breath and tried once again to find sleep. He had just closed his eyes when they shot wide open, this time from sounds. No, not sounds. Screams.

  They were screams of terror. Screams filled with agony and anguish of the most intense kind. Etched in every note. He could feel these screams, and they terrified him as to what they could mean.

  Without thought, Dugan grabbed his sword and started running toward the sound. He knocked over bowls, crushed blankets, and kicked several legs and feet, but he barely noticed. The sounds of grief were tearing at him.

  Like most soldiers who were sleeping outdoors, he did not sleep nude as was his preference when a bed was available. Tonight, he had collapsed on his blanket exhausted and was therefore still dressed, tartan, shoes, and all. But even if he were in the buff, he would have been running toward the screams that were getting louder with each step. Agony like that did not care about clothes. It could not see. It only felt, and by the tone, the pain was so deep there was no end.

  Heads were starting to emerge out of the tents, their sleep-filled expressions starting to be replaced with concern and then alarm. Dugan saw out of the corner of his eye that others were running as well. Many of the soldiers were dressed like him, ready for battle; some were only in a léine, but all of them had their swords in their hands, prepared for fight.

  All except one man. He was running in the opposite direction of the screams.

  Dugan slowed down for a second and watched the tall, thin figure. There was something about him that he recognized, but before he could figure out what it was, the man had disappeared into the night. Dugan’s instinct said to follow him, but then the intensity of the cries became worse. And they were coming from nearby.

  Dugan’s head darted around as he saw another man dash by him, heading toward the sounds. He was surprisingly spry and agile for being an old man, and Dugan recognized him as Laird MacInnes, Laurel’s grandfather and the McTiernay brothers’ godfather.

  Dugan turned to follow, catching up to the older laird. “Do you know who? Where?”

  MacInnes pointed to a tent that was set apart. “I know that scream,” he huffed. “It’s Laurel.”

  Dugan’s eyes widened and he sprinted ahead, arriving at the same time a couple other soldiers did. One of them was Loman, who, along with Seamus and several other of the elite guard kicked out of the castle, had been sleeping outside with most of the soldiers.

  Loman did not even ask. He yanked up the flap and entered, followed by Dugan, MacInnes, and a growing number of men.

  Dugan had fought bloody fights. He had been in many gruesome battles. He had killed men countless times and seen even more killed. He hated it. Loathed it. Knew sometimes it was a necessary evil, but not once had he almost physically become ill at the sight. But what he saw had him green and shaking.

  Conor, Cole’s eldest brother and chief of the entire McTiernay clan, was lying lifeless in a pool of his own blood, which was draining from a dagger that was still protruding from the middle of his chest. His head was in Laurel’s lap, and her hands were covered in blood, clutching him. She was screaming, begging him to stay with her.

  Realizing she was no longer alone, Laurel looked up, her face one of absolute terror that she was about to lose the man who was her very heart and soul. “He . . . he . . . came in. Said that Conan McTiernay could not be allowed to live. That Adanel was pledged to another. And then, then he plunged the . . . the . . .” Then she looked down and started yelling at Conor. “Don’t you dare die on me! Don’t you dare! Don’t you leave me!” she screamed once again.

  Then with a sob and a wail, she began to beg. “Please. Please. Please, Conor. Don’t leave me. I need you. I need you. Please. Please. Oh, God. Please. Please don’t take him. He’s mine.”

  People began to move around Dugan in an effort to get to Laurel and Conor. With so many of the visiting ladies being in varying stages of pregnancy, multiple midwives were around, and some were well versed in a variety of medicines. Dugan stepped back out of the tent to give them room and looked in the direction the disappearing figure had gone. He had been heading north, away from camp and in the opposite direction of McTiernay Castle. He had not been seeking help. He had been running away.

  Dugan looked back at the tent. It was now full of people. He could still hear Laurel crying. Someone was saying they were going to take out the knife and to be prepared. Dugan just stared at the opening, his mind churning. Why would anyone stab Conor? How had they even found him in this sea of tents? His eyes narrowed as he studied the entrance. It was decorated with flowers because it was not Conor’s tent . . . it was Conan’s. It had been intended for today’s bride and groom.

  Dugan’s thoughts began to race. “Conan had to die,” Laurel had said. Conor had not been the intended victim. He had simply been stabbed by a man who had been seeking to end his younger brother Conan’s life.

  Gasps were coming from inside the tent, and Laurel’s cries renewed. People were shouting, but Dugan was blocking out all the sounds. He started to move in the direction where he had seen the figure running. Why was he familiar? Dugan stopped. The man was not familiar. He had never seen him before.... It was the hair he recognized. It was flame red—the same color as hers.

  Dugan closed his eyes and gripped his sword, disbelieving his conclusions but knowing they were right. Last fall, soon after Dugan had discovered the truth about his aithinne, Conan had been attacked by two men. One he had killed, the other had gotten away. Conan had not recognized either man, but he had been able to describe the one that escaped—red hair, tall, and very thin. The exact description of the man Dugan had just seen running away.

  “Adanel,” Laurel had said. “Adanel was pledged to another.” Until now, he had not known her name. Soon, she would know his. For after tonight, there was no place she, her brother, or her father could escape.

  He was coming for them. And when he arrived, he was going to be lethal.

  The Mackbaythes would pay with their lives for what they did to Conor.

  * * *

  Dugan studied the scraggly, reed-like figure just below him as he stopped to rest and get a drink. The sun was setting, and Dugan would need to make his move before his quarry started moving again. The soon-to-be-dead man looked nervous and kept glancing back to see if there was any sign that he was being followed, but the fool failed to ever once look up.

  For the past two hours, the man had been working his way through a mountainous section of the south edge of the Torridon mountains, and Dugan had taken advantage of the terrain to follow him.

  Conor’s attacker was wearing a Mackbaythe plaid, and as he suspected, the color of his hair definitely indicated he was related to Adanel. Younger brother, Dugan guessed. He knew very little about the Mackbaythes, only that there was a son and a daughter who had inherited the red hair of their MacLeod mother. And if Adanel was the daughter, the man he was tracking had to be the son. He was no longer a boy, but his frame had yet to fill out into a man’s, which made it hard to tell just how old he was. But he was definitely younger than Adanel.

  The man went to his horse and, to Dugan’s surprise, he started to whistle a happy tune as he freed the saddle and placed it on the ground. The gloichd was going to make camp. Only a fool would stop so soon after committing murder.

  The only reason Dugan was alone on this trek was because he had ordered it so. If he h
ad not, McTiernay allies and soldiers would have been up this way, chasing down every possible lead, including the tracks Mackbaythe left behind. And while the unusually thin man had moved surprisingly fast, his tracks had been easy to follow. Dugan had caught up to him by the afternoon despite his having an almost two hours’ head start.

  When Dugan had put all the pieces together, guilt had plagued him. Instinct said that his relationship with Adanel was related to the attack. Perhaps it was retaliation for spurning Adanel, maybe it was something else, but what happened was because of him and therefore, Dugan refused to let anyone else lay chase. They could hunt down any other leads, but Dugan knew the young Mackbaythe had been the one to stab Conor. He also knew that the McTiernay brothers would want to deliver their revenge personally. Dugan intended to see that that happened.

  “I will take care of Adanel and her brother—” Dugan had told Donald as he prepped his horse to ride north.

  “If you are right, that is not for you to do. Cole is going to want to be the one exacting revenge for his brother,” Donald had told him brusquely, his brown eyes dark with fury. Cole’s commander had been at the castle and was still reeling from the news. The McTiernay brothers were convening even as they spoke, and the whole hillside was awake with activity even though the sun was not to rise for several more hours. “He will demand to come with you.”

  “It won’t be just Cole wanting revenge. It will be all of them and they shall have it. Let Cole know that they will soon have the mastermind behind this attack, and he is going to walk right into their hands,” Dugan sneered, tightening the cinch on his saddle. “And if I am wrong, I will get you word right away, but Donald . . .” He waited until the large commander lifted his chin to look him in the eye. “I’m not wrong.”

  “Then take someone with you so you can send back word.”

  “They will only slow me down, and I am going to do this my way. I was played the fool by them once, Donald. I brought this here. I did not do so knowingly, but I was the one who spurned Mackbaythe’s daughter, and this is the result. I will see this through, and I vow to give the McTiernays their revenge. I need you to trust me to do this.”

  Donald pressed his lips together. After weeks of enduring Dugan’s surly attitude the previous summer, he and Jaime confronted their friend, demanding an explanation. Dugan had refused to go into details, but he had trusted them enough to say that Mackbaythe’s daughter had nearly played him for a fool. That relationship, what happened to Conan in the fall, and tonight’s attack all reeked of a Mackbaythe plot.

  Donald finally gave Dugan a single nod. “I will explain to the others and make sure they understand. We will continue to look for other possibilities, but I doubt we will find any other tracks but the ones you are following.”

  “One week,” Dugan said, sliding his foot into the stirrup and hauling himself up onto his mount. “Tell our allies to send for more troops. No one likes the Mackbaythes, but they have ties to both the MacCoinniches and the MacLeods. If either clan feels their interests are in jeopardy, they may decide to join him.”

  “Let them,” Donald snickered. “It will change nothing.”

  * * *

  Dugan leaned back against the waist-high boulder and waited for Eògan Mackbaythe to wake. The man was even scrawnier up close, and it had made it more difficult tying him to the tree. He had not cooperated and flopped around so viciously trying to get out of Dugan’s grasp that Eògan had hit his own head against the trunk and knocked himself out.

  Dugan sighed. Only one more day until they reached Mackbaythe lands. Then Eògan would learn that all of his fighting had been for naught.

  It had been easy to catch the man, and Eògan had surrendered almost immediately, begging for his life. At first, he pretended to know nothing about the attack, but after being tied up and draped across the back of Dugan’s horse for half a day, Eògan admitted his crimes. Then he had gone on a verbal rampage about who he was, who his father was, and the painful death awaiting Dugan in the near future once his father learned how he was being treated. When that got no response, Eògan had tried screaming, which had quickly gotten him gagged.

  A low moan reached Dugan’s ears. Seeing Eògan was starting to look around, Dugan tossed him a chunk of cooked fox. He had been fortunate to find and kill the wily animal rather quickly when he had gone in search of food. The fox had not been large, but the meat it provided was enough to feed two men for the night.

  Large brown eyes the exact same shade as Adanel’s stared at the piece of meat. Eògan began to squirm once more, testing the knots on his wrists and ignoring the food. Dugan shrugged and continued eating. He had tied Eògan in a way that gave him just enough maneuverability to feed himself, because Dugan knew he was not going to do it. The man would starve before that happened, but it sounded like he was going to whine a lot before he did.

  Eògan began twisting back and forth in frustration. The rope securing him went around a very large oak tree. Each end was tied to a wrist. If he stretched his left hand out, it pulled his right arm back, but it gave him just enough slack to lean down and pick up the leg bone with the tips of his fingers. Rather than eating, however, Eògan was attempting to wear down the rope. “You do that,” Dugan warned, “then you make keeping you alive more trouble than it’s worth.”

  Eògan stopped immediately. Fear filled his eyes. “You won’t kill me.”

  “Aye, I would, and if you won’t eat that meat, then I will,” Dugan said, gesturing toward the fox right next to Eògan’s thigh. It was soiled, but Dugan had eaten plenty of filthy meals during war. Dirt didn’t kill men. Starvation did.

  Hatred churned in every facet of Eògan’s face, but after a couple of minutes, he reached down and picked up the leg bone. Within minutes, he had devoured it. Dugan then threw him a leather bag of water. Immediately, Eògan took the waterskin and, using his teeth, pulled out the plug and drank until the bag was empty. He then leaned back against the tree and looked around. The moon was out and the firelight was casting shadows everywhere, but Dugan was still surprised when Eògan sat up as if he saw something he recognized.

  “We are heading north, not south.”

  “Aye.”

  Eògan’s brows furrowed, and he again studied his surroundings, verifying where they were, which was obviously not where he expected to be. “We are almost to Mackbaythe lands.”

  “Aye.”

  “I thought you would have brought me back to the McTiernays.”

  “Then you thought wrong.” Eògan’s life would have ended bringing him to the McTiernay brothers, but the act of killing him would have served little purpose. And in cases of revenge, death needed to serve a purpose. Dugan learned that from the McTiernays, and that was the primary reason behind Donald letting him go.

  “Whoever you are, you better let me go or you are a dead man,” Eògan once again declared.

  Dugan snorted and picked up the last of the cooked meat. Eògan truly believed that despite being the one tied to a tree. The man was either stupid or a fool. Probably both. “I doubt it.”

  “When my father learns of what you are doing to me, he is going to be angry and will get enormous pleasure taking his anger out on you in very cruel and painful ways.”

  Dugan shrugged. “He’s welcome to try.”

  Eògan’s breathing became more rapid and shallow. Dugan could see that his nonchalant response scared him. Most feared Laird Mackbaythe and for good reason. The man was evil. Those who did not were usually colder and even more immoral.

  “You’re Cole McTiernay’s man. I’ve seen you riding along the borders a couple of times.” Dugan nodded, confirming the guess. Eògan cackled, relief flooding through him. His father would make mincemeat of this McTiernay just like he did anyone who defied him. “I never would have guessed a high and mighty McTiernay commander would be anything like me.”

  Dugan finished gnawing on the leg and threw the bone into the fire.

  “Does Cole McTiernay realize he ha
s a traitor in his midst? Do his brothers believe it was you who attacked them?” Eògan pressed when Dugan did not respond to his barb. “Maybe you are running from your own death and think to use me to get my father to offer you refuge?”

  Dugan shifted his weight and leaned back against the boulder. He learned long ago that the best way to get a man to talk was to pretend to be uninterested in anything they had to say.

  “Or is this some scheme to infiltrate my clan? Because if it is, you will fail. My father will never accept a McTiernay. He will carve you into bits. The only chance you have is to let me go. If you do, I’ll save your life in return.”

  “I don’t believe you have that kind of power,” Dugan said with a yawn, and then closed his eyes, pretending to relax.

  “I do, but only if you let me go now,” Eògan shouted. “Because if my father catches you, nothing you say or do is going to convince him to let you live. He hates McTiernays. He hates them so much he ordered me to kill their precious Conan.”

  “Conan’s not dead,” Dugan stated. Keeping his eyes closed, he listened as Eògan continued to squirm.

  “My blade in his chest says otherwise.”

  “It was in a chest. Just not Conan’s.”

  There was a long pause as Eògan digested that information. “Then who did I stab?”

  Dugan opened his eyes and then moved to stand up. He went to check on his horse and get his plaid and saddle. He set the saddle down and laid the blanket out in front of it, close to the fire.

  “Who did I kill?” Eògan’s voice was an octave higher and full of panic.

  Dugan went behind the tree and wedged two chunks of wood between the trunk and the rope, removing any slack and preventing any movement that might fray it. Then, he went back over to the fire and stretched out on the plaid, getting ready to settle for the night.

  “Tell me!”

  Dugan closed his eyes and took deep breaths, focusing on the sounds of the wood crackling in the fire. The last thing he heard was Eògan screeching, “Who did I kill?”