The Hunter

by Monica McCarty

  “Janet …” he warned huskily. “Keep touching me like that, and I might forget my honorable intentions and your injuries.”

  She smiled and looked up into his eyes. “Good. I’m fine, really I am. Please, I want this. I want you.”

  Just so there would be no argument, she dropped her hand a little lower, grazing her wrist over the fat tip.

  He sucked in his breath. “Jesus, Janet, you don’t fight fair.”

  A wicked smile turned her mouth. “You can be gentle, can’t you?”

  He scooped her up and carried her over to the bed. “I sure as hell hope so.”

  With her injured wrist, she needed help to remove her clothes—a duty he was most happy to help with.

  “I thought you weren’t a ‘damned handmaiden,’ ” she teased him as he unbuttoned her surcote, reminding him of a similar request she’d made in the fisherman’s hut not so long ago.

  He gave a sharp laugh. “I think I’ve changed my mind. If you intend to help me with my baths, the least I can do is help you with your clothes.”

  “Your enlightenment on parity in marriage is truly amazing,” she said dryly.

  He chuckled. “Not to mention self-serving.”

  When the last garment was removed, he stood back and looked at her for so long she started to try to cover herself with her hands. But he gently pulled them away. “Don’t,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “You are so beautiful.” He started to skim his fingers over her bare skin. “I want to touch every inch of you.”

  It seemed as if he did just that. Janet’s breath was already coming fast when he finally leaned over and slid one taut nipple into his mouth, tugging it gently and circling it with his tongue. His silky dark hair slumped over to the side, brushing against her bare skin. She slid her fingers through it, holding him to her. He scooped her breast in his palm, squeezing and plying it between his hands as he took her deeper and deeper into his mouth.

  Forgetting all about her injured ribs, she started to arch her back, moaning as the sensations started to build.

  He lifted his head. “You are making it hard to go slow.”

  “And who is to blame for that?”

  He grinned, and it made her heart catch.

  “I love seeing you smile,” she said softly. “You do not do enough of it.”

  “I haven’t had much reason. But I suspect that will change.”

  She knew it would, especially when he learned—

  He leaned over and kissed her, and whatever she’d been about to tell him was lost in the sensual haze that crashed over her with all the subtlety of a tidal wave.

  His heat, his scent, the feel of his skin rubbing against hers infused her, drowning out everything but the powerful sensations building inside.

  He held his chest over her, careful not to press against her injured ribs, but she pulled him down, wanting to feel the contact. The heat of his bare chest against hers, and the heavy, solid weight of his body on top of her.

  He’d removed the drying cloth from around his waist, and she could feel the equally solid length of his erection hot and throbbing against her belly. She pressed and circled her hips, trying to inch him closer.

  He groaned, deepening the kiss and the long strokes of his tongue until she couldn’t take it anymore. She wanted him inside her. She wanted to feel him filling her.

  Her heart was hammering, her breath was quickening, and the place between her legs was quivering with need. “Please,” she moaned.

  Lifting his head, he looked into her eyes. She could feel him positioning himself between her legs. “Tell me if it hurts,” he said tightly, his muscles clenched with restraint.

  He pressed into her. Slow and gentle. Inching. Stretching. Filling her. She gasped. Moaned. Opened around him.

  It didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt at all. It felt incredible. She felt full. Possessed. Loved.

  His eyes were dark and hot. “You feel so good.”

  “So do you,” she said huskily.

  “I love you, mo chroí.”

  She smiled, tears of happiness filling her eyes. “And I love you.”

  Slowly, his body started to move in hers in long, smooth strokes. It was overwhelming, the most beautiful thing she’d ever experienced. He claimed her body even as his eyes claimed her heart. The pleasure was every bit as intense as before, but it was deeper. It wasn’t simply the sharing of two bodies, but the sharing of two souls. He made love to her. To every part of her. Slowly, gently, and thoroughly. He was a part of her, and she never wanted to let him go.

  Finally, she could take no more. Her soft moans grew more urgent. He heard her silent plea and responded. His strokes started to lengthen. Deepen. Quicken. Become harder. She could feel his body tense under her fingertips even as hers started to break apart. She had to break apart. There was nowhere else to go.

  She cried out, the pleasure shattering over her in a slow, pulsing wave.

  “Oh, God,” he groaned, letting himself go. He came into her in a hot rush that melded with her own. It seemed to go on forever. The spasms reverberated through every inch of her, not letting go.

  It was just like before, except this time, when it did finally end, he rolled to the side, tucked her up against him, and held her as if he would never let go.

  It was a long time later when Ewen found the energy and the words to speak. He was humbled, and a little awed, by what had just happened. He’d never known it could be like that. He’d never felt closer to anyone in his life. He’d swived many women, but he’d only made love to one: the woman who would be his wife. He still couldn’t believe it.

  As if reading his mind, she asked, “How did you get Robert to agree?”

  She was cuddled against him with her cheek on his chest, playing with the spattering of dark hairs in a V at his neck, but to ask her question, she’d propped her chin on the back of her hand to gaze up at him.

  “You’d already done most of the work,” he said, running his fingers over the bare skin of her arm. “And so had my brethren.”

  Ewen still couldn’t believe they’d refused to go on any missions unless he was brought back. MacLeod had reminded Bruce that he’d given him full authority over the team. The Highland Guard fought for Bruce, but they were MacLeod’s men.

  “How did you get Walter to come to Dunstaffnage to help you plead your case?”

  “It wasn’t easy. But I made him see that I was more valuable as his man than not. I also might have given him the idea of an alternative bride.”

  Walter Stewart might be young, but he was every bit as ambitious as his kinsman James Douglas—and his kinsman Robert the Bruce, for that matter.

  She lifted a brow, intrigued. “One more impressive than a daughter of Mar?”

  He laughed at her affront. But in this case, yes. “I thought you wanted out of the betrothal, so I thought it better not to argue your finer parts,” he squeezed her bottom, “of which there are many.”

  She made a face, and then ruined the effect by laughing.

  He kissed her head and then drew her in closer. “What did you say to the king?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I just reminded him of all we’d done in his service.”

  “And?”

  “And reminded him of his own marriages.”

  “That’s it?”

  She shrugged again. “It was enough. But I came well prepared to plead my case and was confident he would see reason. Though I was not forced to use it, I had one argument that would ensure he would see things my way.”

  He looked at her skeptically. “I thought you were done being overconfident. The king was about as angry as I’ve ever seen him.”

  “Ah, but a good lawman always saves the best argument for last.”

  “And what argument is that?”

  Her eyes met his, and he felt something inside him shift even before she spoke. She put her hand over her stomach. “My menses are late.”

  He stilled. His body had sensed the import of he
r words, but it took his mind a moment to catch up. “A babe?”

  She nodded, tears glistening in her eyes. “I think so. Is … is it all right?”

  Jesus, how could she ask something like that? A hot wave of emotion crashed over him. It tightened in his chest and throat. He didn’t know what to say. He never had. But the difference with Janet was that it didn’t matter. She understood him anyway.

  But just in case, he told her again. This time with his body.

  It was better than all right. It was everything. She had given him everything. The hunter had found what he didn’t even know he’d been looking for, and he would never let her go again.

  Epilogue

  Ardlamont, Cowal, Scotland, December 1315

  Janet was going to have strong words with that little blue-eyed devil. “James! James Fynlay Lamont, come here right now!” She raced from room to room, coming to a stop when she entered the nursery and saw her husband. He stood a few feet away from her with two bundles tucked under his arms and two thin legs peeking out from behind his.

  Even after five years of marriage, her heart still hitched on seeing him, as if part of her still couldn’t believe he could be hers. Despite her feelings, however, she’d learned long ago not to let him distract her. She folded her arms across her chest and stared at him. “It’s no use trying to hide him. I can see you, James.”

  A little blond head peeked out from behind Ewen’s legs. She didn’t buy the innocent look on his face for one moment. “Hand it over, Jamie.”

  “Hand what over, Mother?”

  “The letter you took from my desk.” She bent down to the little boy’s level, trying to keep her stern expression in the face of a very wobbly lower lip. “It’s a very important letter, Jamie. I need it back for the king.”

  He made a face, reached into his boot, and pulled out the now crumpled piece of parchment. “I don’t care about the stupid ol’ king. I don’t want you to work anymore today. I want you to come play with me.”

  The mulish, disgruntled look on his face so resembled his father’s, she had to look up at Ewen. He just shrugged. “Don’t look at me.”

  Janet sighed and drew her four-year-old son onto her lap. Would it ever get any easier? She tried to balance the work she did for the king as his “advisor” and de facto, if not exactly publicly acknowledged, lawman, but there were days—like today—when inevitably that balance tipped.

  Now that the war had been won with England, Robert was anxious to have Scotland accepted as an independent kingdom, and she’d been hard at work preparing their arguments for the carefully worded letters that would be sent to the French king and pope, to whom they were also appealing to have the excommunication lifted that had been placed on Robert since he stabbed John “The Red” Comyn at Greyfriar’s Church four years ago. The Latin she’d once despaired of had come in handy.

  “I thought you were going to play ball outside with Da today?” she said softly, stroking his head.

  “We did. But then they got in the way. They always get in the way.”

  Janet tried not to smile and looked at the squirming two-year-old girls tucked under their father’s arms. Unlike Jamie, they had dark hair like Ewen’s. “What did they do this time?” she asked her son.

  “Mary threw the ball in the loch, and then Issy started to cry. I hate when she cries.”

  Me, too, Janet thought, and she does an awful lot of it. She gazed up at Ewen for help.

  “I’m trying,” he said. “But as you can see, I have my hands full. He slipped away from me.”

  “I seem to recall someone saying this would be easy.”

  “I was expecting one, not two,” he said. “I think it’s time for me to go back to war.”

  “The war is over.”

  “Don’t remind me,” he said with an exaggerated roll of the eyes. “I think I hear Stewart calling me.”

  “Walter can wait,” Janet said. “Besides, he has a new bride to think of.” She still couldn’t believe that the noblewoman whose hand had appeased him was that of her niece Marjory Bruce—Robert and Isabella’s daughter. Marjory had been held in England for almost eight years, but had been released last year after the Battle of Bannockburn. “For whatever a man sows, he will also reap,” she reminded her husband.

  He grinned wickedly. “The sowing was fun, it’s just the reaping I’m not so sure about.” He belied his words, however, by tickling and kissing the two little cherubs in his arms until they were wild with laughter.

  “We were just coming to find you,” Ewen said when the girls had finally collapsed on the bed with exhaustion. “If you have a minute, there is something I want to show you.”

  She looked up at him. After almost five years of marriage, she was attuned to every note in his voice—and she’d heard the thick emotion. “Is it done?” she asked breathily.

  Their eyes met, and he nodded.

  Wordlessly, she let him take her hand as he led her and their three children outside the old tower house.

  “Don’t look yet,” he said, when she tried to glance up at the nearby hill.

  Finally, he stopped. “All right, turn around.”

  Janet sucked in her breath. The bright late-afternoon sun glistened off the freshly hewn stone, making the castle shimmer and shine like a newly minted jewel. It had four towers, one at each corner, encircled by a formidable wall. It was an impressive fortress by any standard, but that was not what made it important.

  She slid her hand into that of the man who had turned her adventurous life as a courier into another kind of adventure. One of laughter and love and joy. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “She would have loved it.”

  He looked at her and nodded, the emotion too much for him to speak. He’d finished his mother’s castle, and with it, he could at last be at peace with his past. For generations to come, the Lamonts of Ardlamont would fill this castle with love and laughter, giving his mother and father the legacy they deserved.

  Hand in hand, with their children around them, Ewen led her into the keep, and into their future.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Although the “wild” epitaph is my addition, Fynlay Lamont was the head of the Ardlamont branch of the Lamonts during this period. His exact date of death is not known, but it was sometime before 1315. He did indeed have a son named Ewen. Very little is known about the Ardlamont branch of the clan, including from whom they were descended, but it is said that they were vassals of Stewart and “may have fought in Bruce’s bodyguard at Bannockburn” (see clsna.us/). It’s references like this that make me start to believe my own fiction!

  The Chief of Lamont at the time, Sir John, supported the MacDougalls against Bruce. As a result the Lamonts, who had been the dominant clan in Cowal in the thirteenth century, saw their fortunes decline, with much of their land going to—surprise!—the Campbells. The resulting feud between the Lamonts and Campbells would last for hundreds of years; as readers of Highland Warrior might recall.

  Wild Fynlay’s abduction of his chief’s bride is my fictional explanation for the apparent ill will between the two branches of the clan. Ewen is said to have been killed years later by his relatives and the MacDougalls for his loyalty to Bruce.

  Serendipitously, in my research I came across an undated charter from between 1309 and 1325 by John de Menteith (the betrayer of Wallace who later supported his kinsman Bruce) to Ewen for some land in return for the “service of one bowman in the common army of the King of Scotland” that was witnessed by none other than Arthur Campbell (The Ranger). (See “An Inventory of Lamont Papers” at archive.org.) I love when things like that happen.

  The name of Ewen’s wife has not been recorded, but he had a son named James, which, as it doesn’t seem to be a popular Lamont name at the time, could conceivably be in honor of the Ardlamont’s vassal lord, Sir James Stewart.

  As I mentioned in the Author’s Note of The Recruit, Mary of Mar was alternatively referred to as Mary, Marjory, and Margaret, and as there seem to
be some inconsistencies in some of her references, it gave me the idea of having Mary be two people. Thus “Janet,” her twin sister, was born.

  I knew from the outset of writing the Highland Guard series that I wanted one of the books to emphasize the importance of the church to Bruce’s ultimately successful bid for the crown. When I came across a reference in the Calendar of Documents (basically a compilation of primary source documents from the period) to an alleged foiled plot to capture Bruce at a peace negotiation, I knew this was a perfect mission for my “nun” heroine and what I dubbed the couriers of the cloth.

  There were actually two peace negotiations held over the winter of 1310–1311. The first was at Selkirk on December 17 (my birthday!), with Sir Robert Clifford and Sir Robert fitz Pain. The second was to be in Melrose in January, with the earls of Cornwall and Gloucester, but Bruce supposedly was warned of treachery and failed to show up. In the interest of my story timeline, I decided to combine the two parleys into one.

  This is how one innocuous reference in a letter can inspire a story. From the Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland, Volume III, 1307–1357, page 39, an anonymous letter to the king dated February 19:

  As to other news—when he was in the North, Sir Robert de Clifford and Sir Robert fitz Pain had by the K.’s leave been at Selkirk 8 days before Christmas, to speak with Robert de Brus, and since then the Earls of Gloucester and Cornwall were to have parleyed with him at a place near Melros, but it was said he had been warned by some he would be taken, and therefore departed, so they have had no parley.

  Note also how Bruce is referred to as simply “Robert de Brus,” not Sir Robert or the Earl of Carrick (titles he enjoyed before the “usurping” of the crown) and certainly not “King Robert.”

  I must admit, as a former lawyer, the character who can talk her way out of anything is particularly close to my heart. When I found out the name Lamont derived from the Norse for “lawman,” I knew exactly what Janet was going to have to do with her skills. Alas, I had to make her a legal “advisor,” as I wasn’t able to find any evidence of female lawyers in this period. Even an advisor is anachronistic, but I like to think Janet would have made it work. The letter she alludes to in the epilogue is a precursor to one of the most famous documents in Scottish history, the Declaration of Arbroath of 1320, the letter to the pope that confirms Scotland as an independent nation.