Highlander Ever After: Nvengaria, Book 3

by Ashley Jennifer

Hamish quietly handed him a brush.

  “Stop laughing at me, man,” Egan growled.

  Hamish’s dark eyes twinkled. “The performance was legendary, cousin. They’ll talk of nothing else for years.”

  “Well, it didn’t do what I intended, did it? The bloody girls were still looking at me like a choice morsel in a butcher’s shop.”

  “’Twas the dancing in the garden,” Hamish offered. “A lass likes a man who can dance.”

  Egan snarled and busied himself in the bucket. He scrubbed hard as Mary’s carriage screeched and rattled through the gatehouse and came to a halt not three feet away.

  A blue satin skirt trimmed with green, and two elegant slippers halted just outside the wet circle, but they didn’t belong to Mary. Egan looked up, water dripping, at the breathtaking beauty of Zarabeth. Her face was pink from the wind, her dark curls on her forehead mussed, but she managed to be as neat as ever. Egan was a mess with his shirt open to his waist and his arms sunk to the elbows in soapy water.

  He wanted to lick his way from the pointed tips of the beaded slippers to the curls at Zarabeth’s forehead. He wanted to peel off those tidy clothes and get her all wet and soapy with him.

  Good thing his kilt hung loose or it might tent out embarrassingly. All Zarabeth had to do was stand before him, and he lost every shred of sanity.

  “Where’s Mary?” he asked her.

  Zarabeth’s dimples showed. “She stayed behind to soothe her guests.”

  “I imagine they’re hieing back to Edinburgh as fast as they can?” Egan asked hopefully.

  Zarabeth shook her head. “The young ladies are intrigued by you and have begged to stay. There is no hieing, I am afraid.”

  Egan scowled, hiding his dismay. “They like men who paint themselves blue and behave like savages, do they now?”

  Zarabeth tilted her head to study him, which made him want to haul her against him, to hell with it. “A handsome savage with wealth and a castle?” she mused. “They find you romantic.”

  “Hell.” Egan scrubbed his hands over his face, streaking the blue. “Next time I’ll ignore them completely.”

  “I should not, were I you,” Zarabeth said. “If you try, they will do anything they can think of to catch your attention. Misses Faith and Olympia have quite set themselves to snare you—if only to see which one can have you first.”

  “Good Lord. ’Twas easier to fight the French.”

  Zarabeth’s smile deepened, the hint of the mischievous hellion of her girlhood peeking through. “The marriage mart is a much more frightening battleground than any in the Peninsular War, I’d wager. I advise you to never let yourself be alone with either of them, day or night, even for a few moments. Lest they claim themselves compromised and their fathers demand you take them to the altar.”

  Egan stifled a groan. “They wouldn’t.”

  Zarabeth’s eyes glinted. “I am afraid they just might.”

  He peered at her. “Whose side are ye on, lass? Ye seemed all set with Jamie to see me wed.”

  Her blue gaze flicked from his for a moment. “You need a wife and Castle MacDonald a mistress. But I’d rather see you happy, Egan, as I would any friend.”

  “Thank God for that,” Egan said fervently. “Promise me ye’ll not leave my side when those two demons are about. I’ll protect ye from assassins and ye protect me from them.”

  Her smile returned. “A bargain. I met a few eligible ladies from genteel Scottish families on my travels, and I believe I know one or two who might be a match for you.” Zarabeth looked him up and down. “Even if you are still blue.”

  Egan wasn’t sure which rankled more—Zarabeth laughing at him or her blithe offer to find him a wife. He decided to punish her a little.

  The courtyard was clearing, the stableman leading the carriage horses to the stalls under the castle. Hamish had already gone inside as had Zarabeth’s guards, and they were relatively alone. Egan lowered his voice and leaned toward her.

  “So, lass, ye were determined to find out, were ye?”

  Zarabeth looked puzzled. “Find out what?”

  “What a Scotsman wears under his kilt.” Egan’s blood heated as a flush crept up her cheeks. “Is that why ye ogled me in the bath yesterday?”

  Zarabeth took a quick step back, laughter gone. “I was not ogling you.”

  “No? What would ye call it then?”

  “I did not mean to look. I was only—” She broke off as Egan gave her a knowing grin.

  “Ye meant to, lass. I saw ye plain as plain.” He leaned closer, pleased she was so flustered. “Tell me, did ye like what ye saw?”

  Egan tracked the swallow down Zarabeth’s throat, and then she looked up at him, her eyes deeply blue. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I liked it very much.”

  Something twisted in Egan’s gut. He’d expected her to blush and stammer, or to loftily tell him he was conceited and march away. He hadn’t expected a quiet declaration or the need in her eyes when she said it.

  Egan touched her face. Her skin was satin-soft, her blush warm under his fingertips. Her lashes lowered until they curled against her skin, but she did not move away.

  My Zarabeth. Always mine.

  A dribble of blue painty water trickled from his finger across her cheek. Zarabeth abruptly stepped back, swiping the droplet away with her glove. Without looking at him, she swung around and hurried into the castle, scrubbing away the evidence of his touch.

  * * *

  Not long after Zarabeth had gone to bed that night, she was wrenched out of a dream—of Egan trickling blue paint all over her naked body—by a commotion on the stairs.

  She sat up to listen but sound was muffled by the thick door. She sensed frenzied thoughts—anger and fear from many people. Something had happened.

  Zarabeth threw on a dressing gown, shoved her feet into slippers, and opened her door.

  Every Highlander in the house had collected on the stairs: Angus, Hamish, Dougal, Jamie, and Egan. With them was Adam Ross, dressed for riding and looking grim. Mr. Templeton, father of the silly Olympia, stood below him, his face wan.

  Zarabeth’s two footmen joined the fray, along with Baron Valentin, awake and dressed. Zarabeth slipped out the door and nearly staggered under the weight of distress in the hall. She stilled herself, drew a breath, and with effort closed her shields between herself and the others.

  Gemma hurried around the Highlanders to Zarabeth. “Miss Templeton’s gone missing,” she told her. “Adam and Mr. Templeton have just brought the news. The lads are forming a search.”

  Olympia Templeton, a young woman with hair as dark as Zarabeth’s own …

  Zarabeth’s blood chilled, and she looked down at Egan. He met her gaze and gave her a slight shake of his head.

  From Mr. Templeton’s garbled explanation and Adam’s more lucid one, Zarabeth learned that Olympia had gone walking in Adam’s garden alone this evening after she and Faith had quarreled over which of them Egan had liked better. Olympia hadn’t returned by dark. Mrs. Templeton had assumed she was in her room sulking, but when she did not appear at supper, Mrs. Templeton had become alarmed. Olympia never missed a meal, sulks or no.

  A search of the house and gardens had ensued. Faith had found Olympia’s bonnet lying crushed in the grass at the end of the garden and had gone into hysterics, believing Olympia abducted by Romany. Adam suggested that he and her father journey to Castle MacDonald on the off chance Olympia had somehow made her way there.

  She had not. Egan had roused his cousins and nephews and Baron Valentin to make a thorough search of the castle and grounds. They had all just returned with nothing to report.

  “I’ll fetch men from the village,” Egan said. His broad Scots faded somewhat as he assumed the role of commander. “We’ll divide the surrounding area into sections and have a party go over each. We will discover what’s become of her.”

  Mr. Templeton looked slightly less panicky now that Egan had taken over, but Zarabeth noted Egan had not pro
mised they’d find her alive.

  Egan directed everyone to the Great Hall and told Angus to fetch maps, then climbed the stairs toward Zarabeth as the men began to move.

  “Dress yourself,” Egan said to Zarabeth. “Ye’ll come with me.”

  Zarabeth’s eyes widened. “Is that not dangerous?” She was itching to join the search but trying to be prudent.

  “Very dangerous. That’s why I want ye with me where I can watch ye with both eyes. I don’t want ye out of my sight.”

  Zarabeth opened her mouth to argue, but Egan’s glare shut it again. “Very well,” she said so meekly that the glare turned suspicious.

  “I’m coming too,” Gemma announced. She held up her hand as both Egan and Angus, below, started to protest. “And ye needn’t shout at me, lads—I’m going and that’s final. When ye find that poor girl, she’ll need looking after. Or a good spanking, and I’m the one as can deliver both.”

  Chapter 7

  Danger in the Heather

  “You believe someone kidnapped her, mistaking her for me,” Zarabeth said to Egan.

  She was bundled against the cold and huddled in the saddle with Egan, whose heat enfolded her from behind, but a sharp wind swept down from the mountains, icy with snow. Winter came early in the Highlands. If someone had abducted foolish Olympia, Zarabeth hoped they were keeping the girl warm.

  Egan’s rock-solid arms wrapped around Zarabeth, his broad hands holding the reins steady. “I never said so,” he rumbled.

  “You didn’t have to. It is what I believe too. If she wore enough wraps and the abductors saw only the color of her hair, they might have assumed she was me. Men hired here in Scotland might not know me by sight.”

  “Which is exactly why ye are riding wi’ me,” Egan said. “I don’t want ye straying two steps from me while ye are in my care.”

  “Then I’ll likely see more of you in the bath.”

  She meant to say it under her breath, but Egan heard. His arms tightened. “’Tis nae a laughing matter. I’ll keep ye safe if I have to shackle myself to ye. I’ll not face Prince Damien or your father and tell them I let ye come t’harm because of modesty.”

  Zarabeth shivered, and not only from cold. “I am certain we can come to some arrangement.”

  “Aye.”

  Egan said nothing more, but Zarabeth wondered if he’d thought about the other side of the problem—if she had to stay glued to him he would likely see her in her bath.

  Proper Zarabeth of Nvengaria, daughter of Prince Olaf, wife of a duke, should be shocked by such a thought. But the idea of Egan leaning against her doorframe while she bathed, perhaps entering the room to trickle water down her back, made her hot all over. Her woolen mantle suddenly seemed too warm.

  The howl of a beast in the distance slapped her back to reality. The moon soared out of a break in the clouds, gilding the land silver white.

  “Ye should tell him not to make noise like that,” Egan said in her ear.

  Zarabeth started, then realized of course Egan would have guessed Baron Valentin was logosh. Valentin had not joined the riders but had slipped away alone.

  “I think he cannot help it,” she said.

  “If he’s found something, he ought to shout Over here! Not cry out like a beastie. Logosh give me the willies.”

  “I will tell him you think so,” Zarabeth said, trying to make her voice light. “And Grand Duke Alexander.”

  “You are amusing, lass,” Egan rumbled.

  “Should we go to him?” Zarabeth asked, her worries high in spite of their banter. “He might have something to report.”

  “’Tis a bit trackless out here. If we wander off in the dark we may miss him.”

  Zarabeth knew she could find Valentin, and probably Olympia, by casting for their thoughts. She’d never revealed her ability to Egan, worried about distancing him further from her, but they had a bigger concern now than Egan discovering her secret. She’d simply have to make him trust her.

  “Of course we won’t get lost,” she said, trying to sound confident. “Valentin would not call out if he didn’t think we had a safe way to reach him.”

  Egan gazed off into the moonlit distance. “’Tis too dangerous. We’ll go around.”

  “It might be too late then.” Zarabeth felt panic welling in her as she sensed Valentin’s worry heighten. “I know Valentin. He wouldn’t guide me wrong.”

  Egan hesitated a long moment, his sharp gaze focused on her. Then he nodded. “I hope you’re right, lass.” He swung his horse toward the noise, and Hamish, riding with Gemma, followed. Egan shouted at the other riders to continue their planned search pattern while he took a new path.

  Zarabeth opened her mind. She felt the mass of riders fanning out northward behind them while Egan and Hamish angled due east. She heard loud and clear the riders’ distress for Olympia and thoughts on how cold it was, and their nervousness about the strange animal howling among the hills. She even sensed the horses’ fear of the beast overlaying annoyance that they’d been dragged out of their warm stables.

  Valentin’s mind was sharp, like blue-white light. He’d shifted into a wolf, and his thoughts were more animal than human— the joy of stalking prey and the hot, metallic taste of blood.

  There was also another thought in his head, stronger than the others. Protect.

  Near him, almost masked by Valentin’s presence, she found the panic of a young woman.

  “That way,” Zarabeth said, pointing to the left.

  Egan didn’t turn the horse. “How do ye know?”

  “I just do.”

  He continued riding silently for a moment, then called back to Hamish to change course with him.

  They found Olympia huddled in a cleft of rock above the river, where it rushed over boulders and plunged out of sight into a black gorge. Zarabeth thought she spied a flash of fur and blue eyes in Egan’s lantern light, then it was gone. She wasn’t the only one who had secrets to hide.

  Hamish thundered up behind them, playing his lantern over the scene. “Have ye got her?”

  Egan swung from the saddle and lifted Zarabeth down with him.

  “The poor mite, is she there?” Gemma called. She was gentleness itself as she went to the terrified Olympia. The girl looked up, her white face plastered with mud, tears tracking the dirt. She flung her arms around Gemma’s neck and sobbed against her.

  * * *

  Olympia’s story, when they at last got something coherent from her, was simple. She’d tired herself walking in Adam’s garden and must have fallen asleep—“After all, it is quite a long walk,” she declared defiantly. The next thing she knew, it was dark and a man had seized her. Another man bound her hands and tied a cloth over her mouth, then she was dragged down the hill and thrown across a saddle on the back of a tall horse.

  The men had ridden with her for miles before they’d met another man with a gruff voice who’d rudely pulled Olympia’s head up by her hair to examine her face. The new man had shouted at the others in such broad Scots Olympia hadn’t understood what he said. He’d taken her from the horse and dropped her to the ground, then rode off with the others, still shouting at them.

  Olympia explained all this while tucked up in bed at Ross Hall, with her mother hovering anxiously, a horde of maids attending her, and Faith looking a bit envious. Egan and Adam, the only two men Mrs. Templeton had allowed into the room besides her father, listened somberly to her tale.

  Olympia could not describe the men who’d abducted her or the one who’d left her in the rocks. It had been too dark, she’d been hanging upside down on the horse, and she’d been crying.

  “By ‘broad Scots’ she might have meant Glaswegian,” Egan said once he and Adam were downstairs in Adam’s drawing room.

  “Aye,” Hamish agreed. “They swallow every consonant known to man. Can never bloody understand wha’ they’re sayin’.”

  “Is she all right?” Zarabeth asked.

  Her blue eyes held concern. She was beaut
iful, sitting against the curled end of a scroll-backed sofa, firelight brushing her dark hair with soft gold. Her expression also held guilt.

  “’Twas not your fault,” Egan told her quickly.

  “She was taken because of me.” Zarabeth’s brows were drawn together.

  “No, it is my fault,” Mary cried. “I brought those girls here. We should have done this in Edinburgh, where things are civilized.”

  “Then it might have been Zarabeth snatched,” Egan said. “And I wager she’d not have been turned loose so easily.”

  “They’re after only me.” Zarabeth met Egan’s gaze without dread or terror. She was simply stating a fact. “They’re not interested in hurting anyone else, which means they believe they are men of honor, doing an honorable deed.”

  “Which makes them all the more dangerous,” Egan said. “God save us from fanatics.”

  * * *

  Because it was nearly sunrise, Adam gave them all breakfast, before Egan and his family rode home with Zarabeth in the light of day. Mary stayed behind to tend to the Edinburgh guests. Egan left her apologizing to them, hearing her say that kidnapping was quite unusual in the Highlands.

  “Mebbe in this day and age it is,” Egan said as they rode out, Zarabeth once again on the saddle before him. “But only two hundred or so years ago we were happily stealing women from clan to clan, forcing reconciliation through marriage. Not that it worked for long.”

  “The ladies, they objected?” Zarabeth asked, a knowing gleam in her eye.

  “Oh, most strongly. Sometimes they carved up their new husband with the man’s own claymore and fled back home.”

  Zarabeth gave him a skeptical look. “Is that true? Or one of your Mad Highlander stories?”

  Egan chuckled. “It could be true. But to be safe, we won’t let Gemma near a claymore.”

  * * *

  They returned to the castle to endure a midday feast that Mrs. Williams had cooked up, never mind their already filling breakfast at Adam’s home. The fallen beam had been cleared from the Great Hall and the table moved, but the gaping hole in the plaster remained, reminding Egan of the many repairs the castle needed.