Sins of a Highland Devil

by Sue-Ellen Welfonder

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 Seventeen

  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 reminded 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.

  A flicker of movement caught her eye just as she reached to brush at her skirts. Glancing across the field, she spotted James’s 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 she 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 war 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.

  “You’ve done enough.” He looked back at her, his dark gaze piercing. “The swords and axes will find their way to Valhalla or God’s heaven along with thon fallen champion and the other slain men. But”—he tightened his grip on her wrists, then released her, swiftly—“I will place the weapons in any remaining hands.”

  “I don’t want your help.” Catriona narrowed her eyes, struggling to accept the futility of arguing with a towering pillar of pure and stubborn Highland male.

  She wasn’t sure she could resist.

  So she kept her chin angled, defiant. “Clan Donald women always do such honors. Your own sister is doing the same for your Cameron dead.

  “She is there, see!” Catriona glanced across the field where, although Isobel held no weapons, she still moved among her clan’s fallen. Watery sun shone on her raven-black hair, making the dark tresses shimmer. And she wore a cloak that looked much too fine and delicate for the cold. But the mantle must’ve been more substantial than it appeared, for its folds didn’t catch in the wind.

  James followed her gaze. “I see Beathag, our Cook’s wife.”

  “You don’t see—” Catriona blinked. A stout older woman was picking her way among the rocks and heather, a clutch of swords pressed against her ample hip.

  Isobel was gone.

  “I saw your sister kneeling beside a man.” Frowning, Catriona turned back to James. “She was—”

  “Isobel is tending the wounded.” James looked at her strangely. “She’s with the other women beyond yon cluster of whin and broom.” He indicated a long thicket of the yellow-blooming bushes. “They’re seeing to the men most grievously injured. Your own Blackshore laundress, Maili, is there with them.

  “You should go to them.” His eyes darkened, every hard, intensely masculine inch of him crowding her even though he hadn’t moved. “I saw you press your hand to your hip when you straightened from thon Berserker. You winced and—”

  “I did no such thing.” Catriona wouldn’t show him weakness. Not after all that had happened between them. “I’m as able to carry a few swords and axes as any woman. And”—she didn’t bother to tamp down the fury welling inside her—“there’s nothing wrong with my eyes.”

  “I ne’er said there was.” James set down the weapons he’d been holding and took a small leather-wrapped flagon from his sword belt. “Here”—he offered the flask to her—“have a sip of uisge beatha. Battles make people see odd things. Thon woman is Beathag and no one else.”

  “I can see that.” Catriona waved away the whisky. “Now. But I know what I saw before.”

  “You didn’t see my sister.” He fastened the flagon back onto his belt.

  “Perhaps not…” Catriona felt a chill. “Could be the woman was—”

  “All Cameron women save Beathag are with the wounded.” His harsh tone said more than his words. As did the sudden hard glint in his eye and the twitching muscle that leapt to life in his jaw.

  She’d seen the Castle Haven ghost again.

  And James knew it.

  But for some reason, he didn’t want to admit the lovely raven-haired spirit existed.

  He also seemed bent on ignoring their night, no matter how hotly the memory beat around them, stirring the air. She couldn’t deny the challenge sizzling between them, the storm of passion that seethed inside her whenever he was near. Since then, much of it was angry passion, but it still made her heart thunder and sent quivers of sensation all through her. A dizzy kind of madness that only worsened the longer he stood before her, so tall, dark, and irresistible.

  Which meant it was time to be rid of him.

  She glanced about as unobtrusively as she could, searching for someone—anyone, or even anything—she could use as a reason to send him on his way.

  But there was nothing.

  This corner of the field stretched empty. Nothing stirred except the autumn wind, brisk, cold, and blowing ever-thickening curtains of mist across the rock and heather. An eerie creaking sound came from a nearby copse of pines, but the noise was only branches tossing in the wind.

  If she wanted to be free of James, it fell to her to escape him.

  So she flicked at her sleeve, pretending indifference.

  Then…

  Quickly, she darted around him, but she tripped over a sword hilt. James caught her before she could slam to her knees, flashing his arm around her waist in an iron-hard grip. But before he could right her, he also lost his footing and they tumbled into a springy patch of heather.

  James landed on top of her, the long, hard weight of him pinning her to the ground. He’d tightened his arms around her as they’d toppled and he still held her fiercely, making it hard to breathe. Worse, his mouth was only a breath away from hers. And the desire in his eyes sent a jolt of pure feminine excitement racing through her.

  “Get off me!” She squirmed, trying to wriggle out from beneath him.

  But he only shot to his knees, straddling her with his powerful thighs, his hands braced on either side of her shoulders, caging her.

  “Destiny, sweet, is everything. And”—he leaned down, bringing his face even closer to hers than before—“it seems my fate is to be plagued by you!”

  Then he slanted his mouth across hers, stifling any protest she might’ve made with a hard, rough kiss that was fierce, hot, and much more savage than their kiss in the stair tower. He swept one hand behind her neck, cupping her head with his strong fingers as he deepened the kiss, plunging his tongue between her lips to dance with hers as waves of pleasure began washing through her.

  Her entire body tingled, arching against him as she slid her arms around his shoulders, clinging to him. She plunged her hands into his hair, tangling her fingers in the thick, silky strands.

  “Ahhh…” Feeling dizzy, she let her tongue twirl and caress his, again and again, needing more. The taste and scent of him filled her senses, the heady thrill of his kiss blotting everything except the feel of powerful hard-muscled body pressed so intimately close to hers, the magic of his kiss, so impossibly seductive.

  Then—just when she was sure the world had ended, leaving them alone in bliss—he broke away, leaping to his feet as if he’d been jabbed with a red-hot poker.

  He threw his plaid back over his shoulder and shoved both hands through his hair. Hands that shook slightly, Catriona saw with much satisfaction.

  She also heard voices—men’s Lowland accents—and, following James’s gaze, she saw Earl David, Sir Walter, and their guardsmen walking among the fallen, coming slowly in their direction.

  “I’m sorry, lass, after the night of the bath, I’d sworn no’ to come near you again.” James glanced toward the approaching men, then back to her. “To be sure, I’d no’ willfully cause you shame.”

  He reached to help her to her feet. “You bring out the worst in me.”

  “Plagues will do that!” Catriona ignored his outstretched hand and scrambled up on her own, brushing furiously at her skirts.

  Then, before he could stop her, she snatched up the discarded swords and axes and strode away, leaving him to stand beside the crushed clump of heather.

  He might think he’d just salvaged her honor.

  But she knew the truth.

  He thought she was a plague.

  And that was a great shame. Because
now, more than ever, she knew he was the only man she’d ever want. Worst of all, she was pretty sure she’d fallen in love with him. And, she knew, her chances of happiness with James Cameron were about as good as if she were betrothed to Lore MacShade.

  She kicked a pebble as she marched along.

  Just now, she’d almost prefer Lore.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Hours later, at the Cameron end of the field, Catriona stepped beneath the shelter of two large sailcloths stretched across staked poles and was sure she’d entered the anteroom of hell.

  “Dear saints.” She paused just inside the door flap, pressing a hand to her breast.

  The makeshift infirmary was worse than she’d dared to imagine.

  Moans, groans, and worse sounds filled the air. Wounded men, the source of the terrible noises, lay on plaids and pallets. Women tended them, many looking almost as spent and ragged as the injured men. A light rain pattered on the sailcloth roof, and gusting mist blew in through the tent’s opening flap each time someone hurried in or out, which appeared to happen often.

  And because daylight was fading, scores of wax and tallow candles burned everywhere, casting a flickering reddish-orange glow on the shelter’s linen walls. The flames from braziers and the fires beneath three steaming cauldrons added to the hellish scene, though the acrid woodsmoke from the kettle fires helped chase the stench of blood.

  “Dinnae think to smear your owl droppings on me!” Kendrew’s deep voice came from one of the pallets. “I’ll slit you belly to gullet if you dare. I’ve ne’er laid a hand to a woman, so you’ll be the first.”

  Turning, Catriona saw him at once. Purple-faced with outrage, he lay on a plaid, a folded wolf’s pelt bolstering his burly shoulders. He’d pushed up on his elbows to glower at the stout woman kneeling over him. Her strong-looking hands held a small wooden bowl, the object of Kendrew’s upset.

  Catriona recognized the woman as Beathag, the Cook’s wife from Castle Haven.

  “ ’Tis gannet tallow and crushed elder leaves, naught else.” Beathag’s voice came as calm as Kendrew’s was angry. “Even you must know that solan goose fat soothes wounded flesh.” She dipped her fingers into the bowl, reaching to smooth the ointment onto Kendrew’s stomach. “The crumbled elder leaves will do the rest, healing your cut before—”