Sins of a Highland Devil

by Sue-Ellen Welfonder

  His comment brought hoots and sniggers from the others.

  Catriona drew up her knees, sitting as straight as she could against the rock. She also lifted her chin, icing them with her frostiest stare.

  “Goat droppings,” she repeated, not recognizing any of them.

  And if she chanced a guess, she’d say they were broken men. Outcasts who belonged to no clan and who were sworn only to roam the hills, living as they could and making trouble as it pleased them.

  Most wore a motley assortment of plaids—she recognized the MacNaughton colors—though two were clad in mail. All were Highland, a truth that offended her almost more than being abducted in the first place. Well armed, they also bristled with swords, dirks, and war axes. Shields and helmets hung from their horses’ saddles, as if they knew they wouldn’t need the like against a mere woman.

  But they had bound her hands. The scratchy piece of rope rubbed and burned her skin, and she was sure her wrists would soon bleed.

  Until moments ago, her greatest ordeal had been suffering the rancid cloth they’d shoved into her mouth. And they’d kept her wrapped so tight in the damp, smelly cloak they’d thrown over her that she’d nearly suffocated.

  Now, after hours of what seemed like hard, fast riding, they’d finally halted. The same man who’d hurled her across her tormentor’s saddle hauled her down with equal roughness, whipping the foul-reeking cloak off of her before her feet had even touched the ground.

  Or so it’d seemed.

  But—she wasn’t about to let on—they’d made a grave mistake when they removed her gag.

  Words could do as much damage as a sword if wielded with skill. So she settled herself against the rock, biding her time, assessing her options.

  They’d paused in a birch wood, choked with bracken and large, moss-covered stones. Their horses grazed beside a nearby burn, and they must have believed they’d ridden far enough away from Blackshore to call a rest, for two of the men had thrown an old plaid on the ground and were setting out a repast of bannocks, cheese, and ale.

  Catriona watched them closely, then focused on a huge, red-bearded man with a powerfully broad chest and arms so thickly muscled he looked like he could uproot trees with a flick of his fingers.

  There was a tinge of dullness to the man’s eyes. A slight slackening at his jaw, hinting that his wits weren’t all too sharp.

  So she took a deep, nerve-steeling breath and lifted her voice. “Sniveling cowards,” she taunted, “hiding beneath an upturned boat and then leaping out of the shadows to throw a bit rag over a woman’s head, rather than draw swords on men who can fight you.”

  “For cowards, we’ve plucked a ripe prize.” One of them grinned, then bit into a chunk of cheese that looked older than time.

  The others ogled her, the glints in their eyes turning lecherous.

  Her worst tormentor—the cloak-and-gag bastard—only scowled. But when he took a whetstone from a pouch at his belt and used it to sharpen a wicked-looking dirk, his eyes not leaving hers, she did know true fear.

  He had implied, after all, that they might cut out her tongue.

  Hoping they meant to ransom her rather than slice her to bits, she tore her gaze from him and speared the others with the haughtiest glare she could summon.

  “My brother will slit your gizzards.” She kept her chin raised, trying desperately to twist her hands from the bonds behind her back. “James Cameron is with him. When they come for me, he’ll do more than that. He’ll empty you so this wood runs with your blood.”

  “He may do.” The dirk-sharpener didn’t sound concerned. “Unless Erc”—he glanced at the dull-eyed giant—“breaks his sword before he can try.”

  Catriona’s breath snagged, her stomach tightening as a sick dread chilled her. They wouldn’t speak a name if they thought to release her.

  And Erc—she knew the name meant “battle boar”—looked more than able to have done with her, likely with the greatest pleasure. Meanness rolled off him, and she could almost see his fingers twitching in eagerness. He was clearly a man who knew only brute strength and violence, killing gladly at a word from his leader.

  But he wasn’t going to touch her.

  None of them would if she could get her hands on one of their weapons.

  Hoping to try, she swallowed her pride and assumed a pained expression. “Sure of yourselves as you are, perhaps you’ll give me a few moments to myself?” She glanced at the nearest birches, squirming a bit to make her point. “It’s been hours since you took me, and…”

  She didn’t need to finish, for the frowns the men exchanged showed they understood.

  But none of them spoke.

  “Please.” The word galled her. “One of you can go with me if you’re afraid I’ll steal a horse and ride away. It’s no matter to me.”

  It was, but modesty wasn’t important now.

  Not that it would come to it if her ploy worked.

  “I really must…” She tried to sound desperate.

  “Ach, let her go.” The man eating the ancient cheese made an abrupt gesture at the others. “Her whines are hurting my ears.”

  Her main tormentor looked annoyed but jerked a nod at the giant. “Erc—take her into the trees. But dinnae lay a hand on her. I’ll have her fresh for myself afore any o’ you get a taste of her.”

  Erc stalked toward her then, his cold, expressionless face more frightening than if he’d scowled. But when he reached to haul her to her feet, Catriona summoned all her courage and leaned away from him.

  “I’ll need my hands, if you please.” She twisted round on her knees, showing them her back, the tightly bound wrists that would make her wish so awkward. “You can bind me again when I’m done.”

  She glanced over her shoulder, seeing Erc look to the others. Her heart pounded, the racing of her pulse so thunderous, she prayed they wouldn’t hear.

  No one gave any sign, much to her relief.

  Then one of the older men, a grim-faced man who hadn’t yet said much, spat on the ground. “Cut her free.” His tone was as hard as his face. “Bind her again when she’s done.”

  Erc grunted and took a dirk from his belt. Stepping closer, he leaned down to slice the rope. But the instant the bind fell away, she thrust her hand into a slit in her skirts, seizing her own dagger and wheeling round to sweep the blade right across his ankles.

  “Whore!” Erc roared, and blood sprayed, but even as he jerked, Catriona lunged. With all her strength, she drove her lady’s dirk upward, plunging the blade deep into the meaty flesh between his legs.

  “Yeeeeeeow!” Erc screamed, reeling crazily as blood poured from his groin. Howling, he fell to one knee and then toppled to the ground, curling into a tight ball, a steaming pool of red spreading around him.

  Catriona didn’t waste a blink. Darting forward, she ignored her bloodied lady’s dagger—its hilt thrusting obscenely from his privates—and snatched Erc’s war ax. She gripped the long shaft at its middle, unprepared for its weight. But nerves gave her strength, and she whirled to face the others, swinging the ax left and right, her gaze never leaving her captors’ shocked faces.

  “Don’t think I can’t use this.” She’d never held an ax in her life. But her blood was pumping, giving her courage. “Come near me and I’ll not just stick you”—she flashed a glance at the writhing, whimpering Erc—“I’ll chop off that piece you hold dearest and stuff it down your throat!”

  It was the wrong threat to make.

  Barks of laughter, hoots, and guffaws met her challenge.

  Her boldness didn’t frighten—it amused.

  “Oh—ho! A Valkyrie!” The man with the cheese feigned astonishment. Then he started toward her, drawing his sword as he came.

  “Try and take this”—he whipped the blade free, slapping its broad side against his palm—“and I’ll give you a much better ramming than you gave Erc, by God!”

  Catriona’s first tormentor snarled at him. “Sheath your steel, she’s mine.�
� He knocked the cheese-eater aside, his own blade already flashing in his hand. Grinning, he strolled in Catriona’s direction, clearly not worried about her skills with an ax.

  He’d almost reached her when the thunder of fast-approaching horses came from the wood, the pounding of hooves accompanied by men’s angry shouts and jeers.

  “Hell—” The man stared, his eyes flying wide. Then he turned to run, bolting for the far side of the clearing just as James, Alasdair, and others galloped out of the trees, each man couching his sword like a spear.

  “Aye, it’s hell for you!” James kicked his horse forward, spurring after the man to skewer him before he’d run more than a few frantic paces.

  “James!” Catriona reeled, her tormentor’s death cry echoing in her ears, shrill and terrible. Screaming, lathered horses and screeching steel filled her vision, the ground shaking beneath the fury of so many racing hooves. She stood frozen, dizzy as the earth tilted and the trees and rocks spun crazily, blurring everything.

  Hell’s gates crashed open, trapping her in a tide of whirling, red-tinged madness. Her skewered tormentor stared at her from where he’d fallen, his face a mask of terror, his grin no more.

  His companions scrambled, tearing off in all directions, stumbling over rocks, and screaming like women. James and Alasdair rode them down, slashing with swords or swiping axes in deadly, hissing arcs. More MacDonald horsemen burst from the wood, one banking a long spear, which he used to make short work of the cheese-eater.

  Only the tall, hard-faced man who’d ordered Erc to cut her wrist-binds stood firm, whipping his sword from side to side and even knocking the blade from the hand of one of the MacDonald horsemen.

  Seeing him, James slewed his horse around, forcing the beast through the seething chaos until he reached the man. “Your name,” he demanded, swinging down from his saddle, his own steel pointing at the man. “Now, if you’d no’ have me carve it out of you.”

  The man spat in answer.

  “He has no tongue!” James glanced at Alasdair, who, still mounted, had ridden near to watch. As were the other MacDonalds, for the steely-eyed sword-wielder was the only one of Catriona’s captors yet on his feet. The others lay dead or dying, a menace no longer.

  “Perhaps”—James spun fast, swinging his blade in a hissing arc that sliced through the man’s sword arm before he could parry—“he’ll find it now!”

  And the man did, howling as he staggered backward, clutching his severed wrist to his chest, blood streaming through his fingers.

  “Ah, so he does speak.” James strode after him, prodding the man with the tip of his reddened blade. “Your name, man. And dinnae tell me it’s MacNaughton.” He flicked the edge of the man’s blood-drenched plaid. “For I know this tartan isn’t your own.”

  The man didn’t answer, bending nearly double over his bleeding wrist.

  “They’ve stolen more than MacNaughton plaids.” One of the MacDonalds came forward to fling a bulging leather pouch at James’s feet.

  A score of plaids quelled from the bag’s opening, spreading across the ground in a tangle of color. Cameron plaids, Mackenzie, Macpherson, and even a few Campbell tartans blended together, proving their thievery.

  As did a spill of silver coins, a bronze torque, two gem-encrusted chalices, a candleholder studded with almost as many jewels as the wine cups, and—James’s eyes narrowed—even a battered golden crucifix.

  James and Alasdair exchanged a look.

  “Kill him now!” another of Alasdair’s men growled. Others shouted agreement and started forward, each man reaching for his sword.

  “They came to rape and plunder.” A burly, heavy-bearded man put all the men’s thoughts to words. “No matter this one’s name, his life is forfeit!”

  “That one was called Erc.” Using both hands, Catriona pointed her ax—she couldn’t seem to unclench her fingers from the haft—at the fearsome giant now sprawled some yards away, her lady’s dagger still raging from his groin. “That’s the only name I—”

  “You stay where you are!” James flashed a look at her when she started forward. Anger blazed in his eyes, scorching her. “No’ one step closer, I warn you. We’ll speak when I have you alone.”

  To her surprise, none of her kinsmen challenged him for his boldness.

  Alasdair hadn’t seemed to hear, his own fierce gaze on the tall, stern-faced man who’d straightened again. The man was beginning to sway, weaving as he lurched from one foot to the other, trying to hold his balance.

  “You have two choices.” James snarled the words at him. “Die quickly, one sword strike and you’re in hell. Or”—he whipped his sword again, letting the blade flash past the man’s throat, missing his neck by a breath—“we kill you slowly, and we’ll do it in ways so vile you’ll remember the agony for all eternity.

  “So-o-o.” He leveled his sword at the man’s belly. “Your name.”

  “Farlan.” He glared at James, his tone surly.

  James glowered back. “Farlan who?”

  The man clamped his mouth, his face stony.

  James’s gaze flickered to the smelly cloak Catriona’s tormentor had thrown over her head on Blackshore’s boat strand. It lay discarded on the ground, near her captors’ fretting horses.

  When he turned back to Farlan, he gave him a look that would’ve jellied most men’s knees. “Have you been skulking about the glen in a dark cloak?” Scorn tightened his voice. “Shooting unmarked arrows at men and”—he glanced at Alasdair—“jabbing holes in MacDonald galleys?”

  Farlan said nothing.

  James contemplated him, his silence deadly.

  “You’re a brave man.” He finally stepped back, taking a few test swings with his sword. “Daring, or”—he ran his thumb slowly along the blade’s edge, drawing a bead of red—“you’re a fool.”

  “I’m no fool.” Farlan found his voice.

  “You thought to steal my sister and live?” Alasdair dismounted then and strode over to James, his expression fierce. He glanced at Catriona, a muscle jerking in his jaw. “No man touches—”

  “We meant her no ill.” Farlan jerked a glance at Catriona. “We’re broken men. We needed coin and thought to ransom her, no more. Ask her, she will tell you.”

  Catriona started to deny it—they’d meant to kill her, she knew—but even as James and Alasdair turned to glance at her, Farlan rushed toward Alasdair, using his good hand to yank a dirk from his belt.

  Raising the dagger, he lunged fast, aiming for Alasdair’s back.

  “Hah!” James whipped around so quickly, Catriona saw only a flash of steel and plaid. Alasdair spun about nearly as fast, but it was James’s blade that sliced into Farlan’s side, nearly cleaving him in two. “That trick is older than the hills, my friend.”

  James scowled at Farlan as the man twitched in the bracken, then went still. “Every beardless squire knows to watch for a feint.”

  “He was aiming at you, lord.” One of Alasdair’s men stepped forward and spat on Farlan’s body. “It’s been long since a MacDonald chief was cut down by a dagger in the back.” The man glanced at James and then nodded tersely. “I ne’er thought I’d praise a Cameron, but I thank God this one is so quick with his steel.”

  Bending, the man snatched up one of the stolen plaids, handing it to James, who took it and began wiping the blood from his sword with a fold of tartan.

  “Dinnae think I did it for you.” James glanced at Alasdair, then flung down the soiled plaid and strode over to Catriona. “Truth is”—he sheathed his sword—“I cannae bide a woman’s sorrow, and I know your sister would fill the glen with her keening if you died.”

  Alasdair grinned. “That may be, though I’m thinking you had other reasons, by God! Something I once said to you in Blackshore’s bailey, eh? Could it be you mean to hold me to those words?”

  “What words?” Catriona shot a gaze from her brother to James, then back again. She had a good idea what was meant—a possibility that flooded her with j
oy—when James’s arm went about her and he pulled her close. He held her clutched tighter to his side than the day he’d caught her in his wood and dragged her across the glen.

  And with all the passion of their night on the ice floes, but there was something else, too.

  A fierce possessiveness—a sense of claiming—that made her mouth go dry and set her heart to knocking wildly against her ribs.

  There could be only one reason he’d reached for her now, especially here before Alasdair and all their gawping, drop-jawed kinsmen.

  When those men started to grin, not looking at all angry at James’s seizing her, her pulse really began to race.

  “I’m waiting to hear about the words?” She clutched his arm, hoping she’d guessed right.

  “They were words I’ll mind him he said, aye.” James pulled her closer, his arm about her waist as firm as banded iron. “Something about offering me your hand in marriage, it was. Were I of different blood.”

  The world dipped beneath Catriona’s feet. Everything around her spun away except the promise she’d just heard, the hope that set her soul soaring.

  She’d wanted to provoke him into seducing her again.

  This was so much better.

  She tilted her face up so that she could see his eyes, but he was looking at Alasdair, his dark gaze piercing. Her own eyes were beginning to burn, badly. And her heart knocked wildly against her ribs.

  “So-o-o, MacDonald!” James’s voice rang with challenge. “Are you a man of your word, or nae? I’ll no’ be minding you that I’ve saved your neck twice now. That alone should sway you, my blood be damned.

  “And”—he reached into his plaid, withdrawing the amber necklace—“I’ve returned a MacDonald heirloom. ’Tis a great treasure, I hear. So wondrous, I vow, that I’m of a mind to demand something of even more value before I relinquish it to you.”

  Catriona’s vision blurred. “Dear saints…” She could hardly speak past the hot thickness in her throat. But she did peer up at James, needing the truth. “I do think you must mean me?”

  “Hah!” Alasdair threw back his head and laughed. “You see what a bold minx you’re getting.”