And those eyes…they were pinned to him, unblinking and filled with curiosity. She was appraising him openly, unabashedly, taking in his naked chest, his legs encased in leather breeches, and then landing on his manhood. It twitched at the attention, not that he blamed it; he too was enjoying this woman’s heated gaze far more than he should.
Who is she?
“Who are ye?” Briar demanded from beside him, her voice shrill.
Blinking, Thorn realized what a fool he must look like, barging into the great hall only to stop dead and stare at the newcomer.
The woman shrugged, her braid sliding off her shoulder to swing behind her. As long as it was, he had no doubt the very tip of it would brush against her arse. And she was wearing black leather breeches, her long legs practically naked—the leather being as tight as it was. He could make out the bones in her knees, for Christ sake!
One of the men, Brandon, stepped forward, wiping at a bit of dried blood on his lips.
“Tell me what happened, Brandon—and be quick about it. It looks like you lot have had a night of it.”
“We were preparin’ tae head out on the last patrol o’ the night, when we heard a woman, screamin’. O’ course we went tae see what was the matter, and we came upon this lass—eight men ’round her, threatenin’ tae kill her, but nae a’fore they used her.”
Shocked, Thorn’s gaze snapped to the woman, and something made him pause.
She didn’t look like someone who’d just been saved from the clutches of eight rapists. The woman was standing straight, her shoulders back, her head tipped to the side, watching him silently. There wasn’t a single mark on her either, at least none that he could see.
“And you saved her?” Thorn asked, dragging his attention back to Brandon.
His face bloomed red. “Aye,” he answered, his head nodding vigorously. Comically. As though he didn’t know what to do with it.
“And they were not MacDougal’s men?” The men all shook their heads.
“And you, who are you?” he finally asked her, the woman who had stolen his breath.
She took a step forward, and that was when he noticed a sword, strapped to her side, and her hand gripping the handle with white knuckles.
So, she was both armed and not as unaffected as she let on.
“Who are you?” she asked, a blazing red eyebrow arching upward.
Briar hissed. “How dare ye speak tae our laird in such a manner—”
Thorn lifted a hand to silence her, and she bit back whatever else she was about to spew.
“’Tis fine. I understand how…frightened and uncertain she must be. After all, she was nearly violated. ’Tis good you men were there to save her…”
His gaze scouring the woman’s expression, he noticed something flashing over her face—but it was gone in an instant.
“I am Dubhach MacPherson, Laird of Gleneden, and this is my home,” he answered, spreading his arms wide. Her eyes missed nothing, trailing over the bulges of muscles in his arms, over his shoulders, and finally back to his face. She smirked, her lush lips quirking at the sides.
His body tightened at the sight.
What is it about this woman? She was a complete stranger, a puzzle, and she hadn’t answered the damn question.
“Now, tell me who you are, and how you came to be on my land in the dead of night where you could be set upon by blackguards?”
“You may call me Red,” she answered, her voice a husky and supple sound that immediately caressed his manhood. “And I must…thank your men for rescuing me.” She raised her hands to just under her chin, and she batted her eyelashes. “Oh, I cannot imagine what would have happened if these strapping men had not come to save me.”
The men—all five of them—blushed, ducking their heads as if to hide their expressions.
What was really going on? If she’d been attacked, the men wouldn’t be the only ones with bloody lips and the tell-tale signs of bruising on their cheeks and eyes.
Crossing his arms over his chest, he commanded, “You five, rouse Marcus, have him tend your wounds.” The men almost collided with one another in their rush to leave.
A strangled snort sounded from Garrick, who’d been watching the scene with wide eyes. He too knew something was amiss.
And I will uncover the truth.
Chapter Six
“Red, was it? Will you please follow me?” He raised an arm, pointing to the door leading to the corridor, that led to his personal study. It was a large room, lined with thick tapestries, hunting trophies, and portraits of his ancestors. It had belonged to his father, not more than four years ago, but in that time, he hadn’t changed anything, hadn’t put his own touch on the room.
Because it would always be his father’s, even though he was the laird now. It still felt wrong to touch something that had belonged to a man he’d admired and adored, a man whose passing had torn the heart out of every single MacPherson.
I can only hope to be a quarter the leader my father was.
As Thorn walked, he didn’t need to look behind him to know that the woman was following him; he could feel her, like a fire burning into him with every step.
Pushing through the study door, he strode to the desk then turned to watch as she entered behind him. When she did, he noticed—unhappily—that his betrothed had followed him as well. Before he could tell her to leave, she closed the door behind her, the haughty lift of her chin telling him that she believed it was her place to follow him, and no doubt shutting the door in Garrick’s face.
Knowing Garrick, the man would gladly leave them to their business. Still it bothered him that the woman, who was not yet his wife, had acted with such authority.
Red—if that was her name at all—glided across the floor, her movements agile, smooth, almost elegant, and she plopped herself down in the chair.
Behind the desk.
Thorn knew he should feel anger at her obvious disregard for his dominion, but he couldn’t. There was a tightness in his chest when he looked at her, a spark of light, a flickering of interest.
It was unlike anything he’d felt before, and he wanted to know more. To feel more of this—whatever it was.
Briar stalked toward Red, her face hard and her cheeks pink with displeasure. She stopped just in front of Red who was leaning back in the chair, staring at Thorn, her gaze never leaving his face. Never in his life had he been the subject of such intense study before, and he couldn’t say he didn’t like it.
Sneering down at Red, Briar huffed. “Ye had better start explainin’ whatever it is that really happened. And what sort of woman wears men’s breeches? ’Tis unseemly!” she snapped.
“Briar,” Thorn barked, his patience with the woman growing thinner by the moment. “I believe it is late and you should be retiring for the evening.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but he pierced her with a look that told her to keep her mouth shut and do what she was told.
Her expression softening in a flash, she sauntered up to Thorn, throwing her arms around his neck and planting a kiss on his lips. He wasn’t a fool; he knew she was claiming him in front of the newcomer. And it irked him more than it should.
“I will be waitin’ for ye, husband,” she purred as she pulled away to throw one last glare over her shoulder at Red, before hurrying from the room.
The door slammed behind her, the sound echoing throughout the chamber.
And finally, they were alone. Thorn regarded the woman behind his desk silently, watching as the flickering fire in the hearth cast brightness and shadow over her face. And what a stunning face it was. Her cheekbones were high but finely made, and her dark eyes were the shape of almonds, rimmed with dark red lashes that fanned whenever she blinked. Which wasn’t often.
She was unsettling.
He drew himself to his full height, noticing that, once again, her gaze followed his movements, seeming to devour him, bite by bite.
“Now,” he began, leaning down to plant his hands
on the top of his desk. “Why don’t you tell me what really happened?”
Her eyes danced in response, and she pursed her lips, drawing the plumper bottom lip into her mouth where she bit it. He nearly groaned, the need to do the same to her lips rising quickly and hotly.
“I do not know what you mean, my lord. I was rescued from a most terrible fate,” she answered, her face lighting up with barely hidden mirth.
He snorted. “Why do I not believe that?”
She shrugged. “How am I to know? I am not you.”
He was both frustrated and entertained by the wench, and that was new to him. Usually, when dealing with impertinent women, he’d order them to leave, or put their mouths to better use elsewhere. At that thought, an image of her tempting mouth wrapped around his girth made his manhood press against his breeches.
Damn!
“You mean to continue deceiving me, woman? You carry a sword, you wear men’s breeches, and you do not speak as a Scottish lass…” If he hadn’t been so shaken by the sight of her, he would have immediately recognized her accent as Welsh. It was an accent he’d heard for most of his life, having spent his majority with the Owains.
She gave a lopsided grin. “Neither do you, my lord,” she remarked, the emphasis on my lord.
“What is a Welshwoman doing in Kinloch Rannoch—” It hit him then. She is here to play me false, to claim that she is my long-lost betrothed. She is just like the others.
Immediately, his interest in her dimmed. She was just another opportunist, looking to scheme her way into his bed, and into his clan.
“You can stop with the pretense, wench,” he said, his voice hard. “If you had not noticed, I am already promised to wed. Your scheme has come a week too late.”
As with the other women he’d denied, he expected her to jump up, affronted, then fall to her knees, beginning him to give her a chance to prove herself.
But she didn’t do that. She remained where she was, in his chair, her hands on her lap, her gaze on his face.
“You are right,” she confessed. “I have schemed.”
His triumph at her confession was paltry, not nearly as fulfilling as he’d wanted.
Pushing away from his desk, he crossed his arms. Again, noticing her noticing him.
“You admit it, then, your wish to seduce me into your bed, then beg me to pledge my troth?” Why was he pushing this? Why was his blood thickening in his veins, and why was he enjoying the feeling of the strange and heady tension growing between them?
“Seduce you?” She snorted. “If I meant to do that, I would have been bent over this desk the moment we walked through the door—your betrothed could have watched.”
His heart thudding, he nearly shook his head to clear out the cobwebs, for certain, he didn’t just hear what he thought he heard.
“Who are you?” he asked, his voice a deep whispered awe.
She grinned at him, her straight white teeth flashing, making her beauty all the more brilliant. All the more breathtaking.
“I am Rose Rees,” she answered, her tone tinkling with unspent laughter.
“Rees?” He knew that name. One didn’t live in Wales without hearing that name whispered in the darkened corners of taverns, or in well-lit meetings with nobles frustrated by their missing goods. “You are a pirate, then?” he sneered.
She giggled—giggled—before standing and extending her hand in a gesture probably meant to appease.
He glared down at it.
“You want to know the truth, my lord,” she offered, coming around the desk to stand before him, her head tipped up to meet his gaze with her unrepentant and fearless eyes.
Oh, this should be interesting, indeed.
Chapter Seven
Rose fought the urge to reach out and pet the large, gorgeous man before her. Damn, but he was the perfect mix of muscles, lithe grace, and masculine beauty. He looked like one of the marble statues her cousin Lucian had brought back after a smuggling run to Athens.
Without wavering, Rose allowed the man to continue his perusal of her person. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t been doing the same to him since he stormed into the great hall, his heaving chest bare, and his glorious face a hard mask of anger.
Ooo, she liked ’em angry, especially in bed. The angrier the sex, the more passionate, the more pleasurable.
She nearly shuddered at the thought of bedding the man before her.
I will…but not yet. Not until I get what I need from him. Then, she could climb him like a mast and furl his sails.
Then again…her memory of the pouty-faced harridan who’d accompanied her lord made Rose inwardly cringe. Nay. Despite what she’d said earlier about his betrothed watching, she wasn’t one to dally with another woman’s goods. She’d seen what sort of chaos that could create; her grandfather Ioan having dallied with many a married woman after his own wife ran away from him, and then having to fend off those cuckolded husbands at the point of his sword.
Sighing, Rose dropped her smile, knowing that trying to entice the man would only cause problems she didn’t want to deal with on top of everything else.
“Dubhach…what does it mean?” she asked, trying to fill the heavy air with words of little meaning.
“Thorny.” His answer was clipped, as though he didn’t want to discuss it.
“Hell you say?” she said, gaping at him. “Is that a jest?”
He shook his head, a slight smile on his face. “Nay, ’tis a theme. I am Thorn, named in honor of the family crest.”
The family crest with the rose that wound around the thorn. Damn. The symbolism was heavy with the MacPhersons, and the fact that her name was Rose absolutely did not make her heart stutter.
Must find out about this locket. That was her prime objective. That, and getting something to eat. She hadn’t had meat in days, and her belly was screaming for a shot of whiskey.
“Can I trouble you for a bite to eat…my lord, and perhaps some dry clothes?” she asked, her tone softer, docile, a tone her cousins would gawp at in horror.
The man, Dubhach, narrowed his eyes at her, scouring her expression for signs of something. Deception perhaps. She’d already told him she’d tell him all about her scheme, and it certainly wasn’t whatever scheme he thought she was running. Who played at being someone’s betrothed? It seemed like inviting a whole ocean of agony wedded to a lifetime of rotting boredom.
He sighed, his broad shoulders lifting and then falling, as if he were adjusting an invisible weight, then he turned and strode to the door. His long legs were thick with muscles that his leather breeches caressed as she would have…if he weren’t betrothed.
She was a woman of some honor, after all.
Opening the door, he murmured to someone on the other side, before closing the door firmly and striding back toward her. She remained where she was by his imposing desk, her arms crossed over her chest. Unthinkingly, she reached up to finger the locket that was usually there, only to find it gone. Immediately she remembered that she’d removed it, secreting it in a hidden pocket at the back of her breeches. She was traveling into a land she didn’t know, and so she didn’t trust that anyone who saw it would act favorably toward her.
According to the MacGuilliam brothers, the crest belonged to a powerful and old Scottish clan, but Rose didn’t know what that meant. Would that make her enemies with whoever she encountered, simply because she wore a MacPherson crest around her neck? Nay, it was safer to hide it. At least until she knew more.
So, find out more, her thoughts prodded her.
The laird of the castle pointed to a set of chairs beside the hearth. “Let us sit, converse, while we wait for Garrick to return.”
“And if you cannot find fit to call me Dubhach, you may call me my laird, MacPherson, or Thorn.”
Thorn. And Rose. She wanted to throw back her head and laugh at that.
“Thorn it is, then,” she replied, grinning at him.
Following his lead, Rose walked to the chairs an
d took the one facing the door. One could never be too careful, especially when surrounded by threat on all sides.
Thorn eased himself into the other chair, crossing his ankle over his knee. His gaze bore into her, and she let him look. She wasn’t shy, and she knew he would only ever see what she wanted him to see. She hadn’t spent years perfecting her unaffected expression for it to fail now.
Leaning back, she waited for him to speak, to ask the questions she knew were burning a hole in his head.
Finally, he inquired, “What really happened with those men?”
“I met them, not far from here, and asked them to help me find my way to Kinloch Rannoch,” she answered simply.
He arched a black brow, his dark whiskey-colored eyes flickering with interest.
“No attack? No near rape?”
She shook her head, “Aye and nay.”
His brows furrowed. “’Tis late and I find myself weary of this encounter; can you not speak plainly?”
Suddenly, something akin to guilt pricked at her. She’d felt it before, just not often.
“I came upon your men as they chattered around their fire like a cackling of hens. I asked them to show me the way to Kinloch Rannoch, and they seemed unwilling to provide me with the help I needed. So…I offered them a wager.”
“Wager for what?”
She dipped her face to hide the flush of pleasure that rose into her cheeks at the memory.
“I wagered that they couldn’t best me, and if, by some chance they could, I would give them my horse.”
His beautiful lips cocked up on the side.
“And if you won?”
She shrugged. “They would escort me to where I needed to go, and I would swear to never tell a soul that they had their bollocks removed by a mere woman.”
Thorn threw his head back and laughed, the taut ropes of his neck flexing most deliciously. She groaned, the urge to lick him there nearly toppling her from her chair.
The Rebellious Red Page 4
