by Terry Spear
“Right.”
He touched her cheek with a gentle caress, eyeing the bruise that remained. “If you have your heart set on doing this, hurry and get dressed as Ian won’t wait for us once he’s decided to do something.”
She quickly climbed out of bed, then headed for the bathroom. “He really doesn’t expect a force of Kilpatricks and McKinleys to attack, does he?”
“As a battle-trained warrior and leader of men, he always prepares for the worst.”
She didn’t believe anyone would attack whoever retrieved the car. Not when the castle was so well defended. And not if Robert wanted to meet with her.
She quickly washed off in the shower, barely drying herself, then struggled to get into a pair of jeans and sweater, her skin still wet in places.
As if he knew her thoughts on the matter, Cearnach said, “We wouldn’t put it past them to offer a show of force. They will not like that they had to return your car here instead of you coming to them.”
She joined him in the bedroom and sat down, but before she could slip on a pair of boots, Cearnach leaned over and pulled one on for her. He wasn’t just doing so to help hurry her along. Smelling her scent, he was checking how she felt about this whole issue. He would recognize that she was both afraid and pissed.
She ruffled his hair with her hand. “I’m not worried.” She slipped her other boot on. Well, maybe a little worried. She was concerned for everyone’s safety, should her kin attack them. She was much more pissed, and she hoped that scent reigned over all else.
“You smell delicious,” he murmured, looking up at her as he crouched at her booted feet, his hands shifting to her knees, then sliding higher.
He pushed her knees apart, suggesting he wanted her again. Moving in between her legs, he cupped her face in his large hands and kissed her mouth tenderly and lovingly, his tongue darting into her mouth gently, and then hungrily as a groan escaped his lips. Liquid heat poured through every inch of her, making her instantly wet for him. He smiled, so wickedly sexy, and took another deep breath of her, his smile growing.
“You are so bad,” she said, shoving at his shoulders, but she didn’t budge him.
“What?” He feigned innocence as he rose and towered over her, pulling her to her feet.
“For making me want you so badly.”
He chuckled, grabbed her hand, and headed out the door.
His mother was on her way down the hall and quickly said, “I want to speak with Elaine.”
“Later, my lady mother.”
His mother furrowed her brows. “She can’t go out there. It’s too dangerous.”
“I will protect her.” He headed down the hall.
His mother snorted. He glanced over his shoulder at her.
“They’ll pull something. They’re pirates,” his mother warned.
“Aye, of that I’m well aware.”
When she and Cearnach left the keep and made their way across the inner bailey, she saw a small crowd of men and wolves gathered near the gates to the entrance of the bailey. She realized after they opened the wooden gates that the defenses protecting the front entrance included three portcullises with an area in between each other where invading armies could be scalded with boiling water or struck with arrows, reducing their chances of successfully entering the inner bailey. All of the portcullises were down.
She still thought that the pack’s extreme caution was unwarranted, though what did she know about Highland wolf fighting?
As soon as Ian and his brothers turned to see them approach, Ian gave her a bow of his head in greeting. Guthrie had his arms folded across his chest, his brow furrowed, and appeared very annoyed with her.
Duncan gave her a small smile.
Ian said to Cearnach, “You’ll stay with her?”
“Aye.”
So Cearnach would be forced to babysit her. “Cearnach can go.” She didn’t want him to feel obligated to stand beside her the whole time.
A few of the men chuckled. The wolves quit panting and swung their heads from looking at her to observing Ian.
“You’re my responsibility, Elaine, first and foremost.” Cearnach sounded proud of the fact.
Ian said to Duncan, “Ready?”
“Aye,” Duncan said and pulled out his sword.
“What if the men—saying that there are any out there, hiding, waiting—have guns?” Elaine whispered to Cearnach.
“Not sporting enough.” Cearnach folded his arms as he stood so close to her that his body was touching hers. She felt pleasure, warmth, and security in the intimate contact on this cold, windy, damp day.
Men lifted the first of the portcullises, which made a grinding sound all the way up.
Duncan and Ian headed toward the next one, six wolves walking beside them.
“Are the wolves still out there?” Elaine asked, her voice hushed. She hadn’t heard them in the middle of the night again.
“They might be. We don’t want to take any chances.”
The second portcullis whined as it was raised, and the men and wolves continued on their way.
Another dozen or so wolves, men, and Guthrie still stood protectively near Elaine.
The last of the portcullises was opened, and when Cearnach’s brothers and the wolves reached the final gate, Ian waited to give the order to open it.
He glanced up at the tower. Oran nodded that it was all clear. Ian said, “Open the gates.”
The gates creaked open as two men put their backs into moving them aside, the oak so heavy she imagined only muscled men could manage.
Then she saw her vehicle—undamaged. Thank God. Water droplets collected on its shiny silver surface, but the Mercedes looked the same as it had when she saw it last night; only in the daytime the scene appeared a lot less scary. A thick fog still clung to the trees surrounding the castle, and she couldn’t make out the long curving drive because of the heavy mist.
Tension was riding high as everyone in the inner bailey waited, barely breathing. She heard the swishing sound of a few swords being unsheathed to the left and right of her position as Ian and the other men and wolves headed beyond the gate and moved toward the car.
Every muscle in her body was straining with tension, and she could tell Cearnach’s were the same by the way he stiffened next to her. All eyes were on the men exposed beyond the castle walls. Several were standing on top of the wall walk, and she noticed then, they were equipped with bows and arrows. She felt she had suddenly become immersed in a Highland battle.
Ian approached the driver’s door of the vehicle, and she worried that her cousins might have planted a bomb inside. What if she had been the one to drive it into the inner bailey? They would know she wouldn’t. That one of the men would.
The wolves sniffed around the car, and she wondered if they could detect the smell of bomb-making material. Sure they could, as sensitive as their sense of smell was.
Duncan made a move to open the door. She held her breath.
He pulled the door ajar and the buzzer sounded, indicating that the keys were in the ignition. The car had been sitting in the drive all night with the keys in the ignition? Great. Someone could have stolen it. Then she rethought that scenario. The MacNeill men probably had been watching the vehicle from the wall walk all night long. If anyone had made a move to get near it, their archers could have prevented it.
Duncan jerked the passenger’s door open. Ian leaned inside. The trunk lid popped open.
Ian’s cousin Oran peered into the trunk, sword ready. “All clear,” he shouted.
So they thought her rental vehicle might be like the Trojan horse, bearing armed soldiers instead of gifts? Or in this case, her clothes and Cearnach’s?
She started to move forward now that the car was safe, but Cearnach seized her arm and glanced down at her, wearing a fearsome expression. “Wait.”
The single word was both a command and a plea. He wished to protect her above all else.
She nodded, acknowledging that he
knew the Highlanders and their tactics better than she did. Ian got into the car with Duncan and they drove in through the gates.
Guthrie said to Cearnach, “We finally broke into the man’s computer at the keep that Elaine owns.”
Expectantly, Cearnach and Elaine looked at him, waiting to hear what he’d learned.
Guthrie frowned. “Nothing. He’s lived centuries like us undoubtedly. Yet there was nothing in the keep or on his computer to say a thing about him. As if the place was a model home. Clothes in the drawers, and necessities in other drawers, food in the kitchen. Nothing personal. Not one thing. No financial statements, bills, nothing.”
“Which means?” Cearnach asked.
“He knew we’d investigate the place. Maybe that Elaine would, and he didn’t want her to know anything about him.”
Without warning, wolves snarled and growled in the woods, and then attacked.
Cearnach shoved Elaine behind him as a pack of at least a couple of dozen wolves raced out of the woods flanking the drive to the castle. In the inner bailey, Ian and Duncan threw open the doors to the car and hopped out. Some of the wolves went after Ian and Duncan, none getting too close to the men’s swords, while the six MacNeill wolves were fighting with those of the McKinleys’. Another dozen or more McKinley wolves ran through the gate, targeting the rest of the men in the inner bailey.
Damnation! Cearnach couldn’t protect Elaine like this. “Run to the kennels,” Cearnach shouted. “Lock yourself in.”
The kennels were much closer than the keep, if she could just reach them in time.
Guthrie and Cearnach swung their swords at two of the wolves while the others were fighting her cousins in wolf form.
Something more than wanting the treasure had stirred them to fight. Did they think Calla was staying at the castle? Was Baird going to war for her? Was the treasure worth a lot more than they had imagined, and Kilpatrick would do anything to get hold of it?
Elaine barely made it into the kennel, slamming the door behind her, as a wolf crashed into it, unable to turn away fast enough.
Cearnach pivoted to fight a wolf, glad Elaine was inside the kennel. Yet he still wished she was safely inside the keep and that he’d insisted that she stay there in the first place, even if it hurt her fiercely independent pride.
Chapter 25
The dogs in the kennel were barking so loudly that Elaine could hardly hear anything else as she slammed the kennel door, her heart pounding furiously as she quickly locked herself in.
For the briefest instant, she thought maybe Cearnach had been right. She should have stayed in the keep until they knew for sure everything was safe.
She shook her head. She couldn’t have done it. If she had to do it all over again, though, she’d have armed herself with one of Cearnach’s swords. She knew how to use one.
Secure the back door, she thought, but before she could turn to race that way and lock it, a man said in a harsh voice, “Hello, dear sweet Elaine, my mate, my darling.” Though his voice was roughened with age, it couldn’t be anyone other than Kelly Rafferty. “’Tis a treasure you were seeking, lass, when you returned to Scotland. ’Tis a treasure you have found.”
The blood drained from her face, her head becoming so light that she could barely stand. Kelly Rafferty. Him.
She turned around, afraid to see him, and saw the brute, older. He had the same leering expression as he devoured her with his green eyes. His long red hair hung around his shoulders and he was naked.
“You,” she said, gasping out the word and wondering if he was like Flynn, a ghostly visage, not real. She had to admit he looked damn real.
“Who hit you?” he said darkly, his gaze focusing on her bruised cheek as if he wanted to kill the bastard himself. He was the only one allowed to beat on her.
She reached up to touch her bruised face but stilled her hand.
He couldn’t be real. She couldn’t be mated to two wolves. She wanted to die. She probably would be dead as soon as Kelly knew she’d taken Cearnach as her mate. No, he’d want to keep her, abuse her, ensure she knew she was his property forever.
“I am the treasure you are seeking,” he said again as he moved toward her, and she realized that he must have slipped around the back of the kennels as a wolf while everyone else was a distraction. “You are mine.”
No, no, no. She hadn’t been his for centuries.
“You’re dead,” she said, her voice a whisper.
She couldn’t seem to catch her breath, to react. She’d feared and hated this man for the year they’d been together. She’d wanted to escape him, free herself from her bond to him. Every time he’d struck her, she’d wanted to fight back and kill him.
She’d known beyond a doubt, with all the passing years, that he was dead.
He had to be dead.
He smiled, the look so sinister that she knew he’d take a belt to her again, break her jaw, beat her until she barely lived. She wouldn’t let him this time. She wouldn’t let him beat her ever again.
“Why come for me now?” She backed toward the locked door, her legs wobbly from the shock of seeing him, her thoughts in turmoil as she tried to recall anything that would have clued her in that he had always been alive.
“I killed the last of my crew that had left me for dead,” he said, standing still, not drawing any closer now.
“No, no,” she said, recalling the words of one of his men who had come for her. “Your crew said that your quartermaster murdered you because you cheated him. After he killed you, they left him for dead because of what he’d done to you. He’d betrayed you. Not them.”
A sinister light glowed in his eyes. “My quartermaster? So they thought to make you feel they were justified in killing Terrance? He’d punished them for infractions on the ship, and the men wanted him dead also. They quickly turned on both of us, knowing that if one lived, the survivor would make them pay for their traitorous deeds. Which I did anyway. I never cheated my quartermaster out of his fair share of the treasure. He was worth his weight in gold to me.”
Despite his apparent fondness for Terrance, Rafferty was a cold-blooded murderer, a pirate, a thief, a demon. So were his men. Cutthroats, every last one of them.
The only good she’d seen in Rafferty was that he’d loved his father, as much as he could love anyone. The drunken, whoring man had drowned himself accidentally after going on a drinking binge while Rafferty was away at sea. It was the only time she’d ever seen Kelly’s eyes moisten with tears. Yet he’d quickly hidden his feelings behind a mask of indifference, swearing that his father’s love of whisky had been his undoing.
“I hired men to watch you for years. Ever wonder why all those beta wolves who’d expressed an interest in you suddenly just… vanished?” he said, breaking into her thoughts, his tone cold and imperious.
Her stomach fell. He was crazed with vengeance and willing to murder.
“You… killed my suitors,” she whispered, barely able to get the words out. “You were dead,” she said again. “Your men told me so. You never returned to dispute their claim.”
Innocent. The men who had courted her had been innocent of any crime. She’d never suspected they’d been murdered. Just disappeared from her life. She’d always believed they had chickened out, been afraid to take up with an alpha.
She clenched her teeth and narrowed her eyes. He’d murdered them.
She knew—even if he hadn’t come clean with her when she’d asked him before—that he had killed her parents. “You… murdered… my… parents.”
“Lass,” he said, coaxing her to see him for what he truly was. “You cannot still believe that. I never harmed your parents. I was there to pick up the pieces of your shattered life after they had that unfortunate carriage accident.”
Unfortunate. Her thoughts were whirling around and around as if in a tidal pool, threatening to drown her. He’d had so much control over her life once her parents died. What if her uncles had survived?
He
r mouth dropped open. How had Lord Whittington known to arrest her uncles? Who had told him they would be arriving at port?
She’d always suspected that someone they’d stolen from had recognized them when they disembarked from the ship. What if Lord Whittington had prior warning instead? What if Rafferty had known all along where her uncles were going? And had planned to murder them to ensure they didn’t get in the way of him mating with her?
Rafferty had been furious when her uncles said they were taking her with them instead of allowing him to marry her right away. But why not have a ship accost them at sea?
Because she would have known it was Rafferty’s ship, his men, his plan. He had already set the wheels in motion to destroy her uncles in another way.
He would have known where they were going. She could see him planning this from the start. He could have sent word ahead to let Lord Whittington know her uncles were arriving in St. Andrews on an approximate date.
“You knew about my uncles. That they were hanged,” she said.
“Aye, of course. When I caught up with you, you were beside yourself with grief. Though you would not share with me what had happened, I learned soon enough what had become of them.” He shrugged. “They met their fate as so many of our kind do.”
“You had nothing to do with it?”
He didn’t even attempt to hide the wicked way his lip curled up. He stretched his hands out in appeasement and sighed. “They knew not to take you with them. I warned them.”
“You murdering bastard. You would have had them killed anyway, whether I had joined them or not.”
He sighed and changed the subject. “I’ve been here all along. You are my mate and now we are finally together again. You cannot have another. I encouraged Robert Kilpatrick to entice you to come to Scotland to find the Hawthorn treasure—’tis me, lass.” He looked demonically pleased with himself.
“You… you paid him?” Her cousin was even in on this? He had known she was still mated?
“Aye. Only he disappointed me. He stranded you with one of the MacNeill brothers. You cannot know how infuriated that made me. By the time he learned that you were his cousin, the same one he was to bring to me, it was already too late.”
