by Paula Quinn
Blast him, but he would not give up! “Aye, as your scarred leg can testify,” she replied tartly.
He actually threw his head back and chuckled. Kate stopped walking and gave his hand a tug. Now he stung her pride. If there was one thing she was good at, it was wielding a sword.
“Why do you laugh, Callum? Do you not think I fight well?”
“Aye, I’ll admit ye fight well, fer a lass. I saw ye fight against the McColls.”
“For a lass?” She snatched back her hand and folded her arms across her chest, drumming her fingers on her elbows. “I could beat you, Callum MacGregor.”
Humor danced across his handsome features. Even though it made Kate angry that he found her amusing, she couldn’t help but smile at the sight of his arrogant mirth.
“Let me out of this heavy plaid and meet me outside.”
“Och, nae, lass. If I injured ye, I’d never fergive myself.”
He was an overbearing ruffian, indeed. But his gentleness with her was what made her move toward him. She missed his arms around her. Blast him again for not missing it, as well. She took another step closer until their toes touched, then tilted her head to meet his gaze. His mouth was so close when he bent his head to her that she felt his breath warm against her lips. “Are you afraid of me, then, MacGregor?” she whispered against his chin and cautiously laid her hands on his chest.
She felt his body respond almost instantly. His muscles tightened. His heart accelerated. Kate rejoiced. She did affect him! It was enough to make her want to kiss him again, though in truth, she had thought of naught else since the first time he laid his mouth on hers. He lifted his arms, ready to enfold her. His breath pulled on a low, ragged groan as his hands touched her back and sank into her curls.
She stepped back, using all her will to do so. She wanted more from him than his kiss, and if she had to battle him to get it, she would. “To the yard, then. And make sure your sword is ready.”
He watched her disappear above stairs and ground his teeth at the wonderful agony hardening his loins. “Och, lass, my sword is ready. That’s no’ a problem.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
CALLUM WAS NOT A MAN to waste his time while he waited for Kate to meet him in the practice yard, and that was why Brodie found himself beneath the tip of his laird’s sword three different times in the space of two breaths. When Callum finally spotted Kate making her way to him, he waved his cousin away, stabbed the ground with his blade, and leaned on the hilt to admire her. Her skirts flared around her ankles, narrowing at her hips. The bodice she wore revealed her feminine beauty. Her hair, he noticed with a smile that darkened his eyes with desire, was still unbound, whipping across her fearless smile.
“Are you ready for me?” she called out before she reached him, then waved happily to Brodie and Angus, before accepting a lighter sword from Brodie.
“Aye.” Callum’s eyes drank in every inch of her while his lips curled into something feral. “I’m ready fer ye.”
When she faced him, he shook his head at her and stepped back. “Wait, lass, ye’ll wear some protection. Brodie, go fetch—”
Kate’s sword glittered in the sun as it descended upon Callum’s head. His reflexes were instantaneous, and, yanking his blade from the ground, he deflected the blow, paused, and sent her a stunned glare. She grinned in return and parried his next swing.
“I’d prefer it if ye wore some armor, lass,” he said and swiped his blade across her belly.
She leaped backward, easily avoiding the blow. “It hinders me. And I would prefer it if you were not so careful with me.” Slinging her sword over her head to gain more momentum, she swung left, then right, then chopped at his flanks. “I can . . .” Her sword met his in a clash of sparks. “. . . defend . . .” She sliced low at his legs. “. . . myself.”
“The lass is beatin’ his arse!” Angus roared with laughter, then yelped when Brodie cracked him broadside against his temple with the flat of his sword.
“D’ye intend to run me through, Kate?” Callum inquired with a provocative growl that sent fire down Kate’s spine.
God’s blood, she had to focus her thoughts on fighting him and not on the wickedly erotic grin on his face, the fire in his eyes. He was excited, his senses heightened. He was thoroughly enjoying himself. He looked so physically arousing, she found herself wondering what it would have been like to bed him that eve at the inn. She swung. And missed. His arm shot out and coiled around her waist. With a flick of his wrist, he spun her on her heels and hauled her back against his chest. One hand splayed across her belly, holding her close, while the other held the edge of his blade pressed to her throat. “Yer no’ concentratin’, Katie lass.”
The throaty tangle of his voice against her ear made her nipples spring to life and press against her shift. She fought the titillating effect of him behind her and rammed the hilt of her blade into his ribs.
He released her and bent over slightly, holding his side. Kate leapt away and blew a lock of hair off her cheek.
“I intend to lay you flat on your back, Devil.” She gripped her hilt in both hands and readied herself for his next assault. She countered his advance with a strike to his thigh, which he blocked almost too effortlessly. He shook his head, lowering it just a fraction to impale her with his gaze.
“And what will ye do to me when ye get me there, woman?” His voice thickened around that one word, as if to remind her that he could take her, dominate her, possess her. His lusty smile told her he wanted to do just that.
She brought her blade down hard. He leaped to the right, whirled on his boots, and whacked her backside with the flat of his blade. His grin widened when she glowered at him. He moved backward without even bothering to swing while she advanced, slicing at him viciously. “Did I say somethin’ that distracted ye again, lass?”
Kate quirked her brow at him, beginning to understand the tactic he chose to employ. The rogue would resort to anything! Devil, indeed. Well, she could be just as devious. “Aye, Callum, the thought of me atop you distracted me.” She sliced over his head, and almost took it off. “Or mayhap”—she moved forward, their blades clanging hard with each matched blow—“I would prefer you on your knees.”
She attacked. And caught him.
He touched his fingers to the blood staining his shirtsleeve, then let his smile shine on her fully. “Well done.”
“Och, Callum, forgive me!” She lowered her sword, dreadfully sorry that she’d wounded him—again. Before she had time to leap away, he was upon her, clipping the sword from her hands.
“Never show mercy to yer enemy, Katie.” His heavy voice enveloped her like smoke. He spoke so tenderly her bones near melted to the marrow.
“I have nae enemy here, my laird MacGregor.”
He reached her in one more stride, curled his arm around her waist, and lifted her off her feet into his crushing embrace. He dragged her mouth to his, claiming her with a long, hard, demanding kiss. His broad hand along her back molded her even closer to his rigid angles than she thought possible. His tongue plunged into her mouth, marauding her, stroking her in a dance so seductive she went weak against him. He pulled back from their kiss slowly, his eyes half-closed and burning. “I want ye.”
Angus and Brodie had ceased fighting and stared open-mouthed at their laird and the lass clutched in his arms. Then Angus elbowed his smaller companion and the two moved to leave them in privacy. They stopped in midstride when Maggie’s screams pierced the heated air.
Callum was the first to reach the barn. Panic coursed through him while his sister’s screams echoed through a chamber of his heart he prayed every day to forget. He spotted her crouched behind a bale of hay beside Ahern’s stall. She covered her face with her arms and did not look up even when her brother called her name. She wasn’t injured, Callum knew by her position—by her terror. She had seen blood.
Kate rushed into the barn next, with Angus and the others. Hearing them enter, Callum turned and lifted his fing
er to his lips for silence, then motioned for Angus to search the barn. Something had triggered his sister’s terror. Where the hell was Jamie?
Callum moved toward Maggie so softly his boots made no sound. When he reached her, he did not touch her but squatted before her. “Maggie, ’tis Callum,” he said, his voice riddled with love and tenderness. If she heard him, she made no show of it but sank deeper into the shadows, a low moan vying with Matilda’s honking.
Callum looked away from her only once to watch Angus hoist an unconscious Jamie out of the barn. Maggie’s dear champion appeared to have fallen from the rafters. A trickle of blood covered his face, but Angus assured them with a quiet nod that the lad was still breathing.
“’Tis all right now, lass.” Callum returned his attention to his sister. He knew she was in another place. And he knew where that place was.
“Callum?” her delicate voice touched him so profoundly it pulled a sob from the back of his throat.
He picked her up and cradled her body close to his chest, then turned and almost walked straight into Kate.
“Let’s get her to bed,” he whispered, holding Maggie closer. He closed his eyes and kissed the top of Maggie’s head, then left the barn.
Chapter Twenty-Three
KATE LEANED against the doorframe of Maggie’s chambers in silence. As she watched Callum bend to place his sister inside her tent, Kate’s heart broke so completely for both of them that it numbed her. She felt the tears burning behind her eyes, but she was careful to hold them in check, for fear they would never stop falling. Her kin had done this—her own grandfather. When Callum rose to his feet, he turned and looked away from Kate’s sorrow-filled gaze. He did not want pity. Kate knew it, but it was all she felt at that moment . . . besides the certain knowledge that she had fallen in love with the Devil MacGregor.
“She’s asleep,” Callum told her and ran his hand through his hair. “Hopefully she will sleep through the night.”
“What happened to her today?” Kate asked when he turned to go to the window. “Please. Speak to me about it. What frightened her so, Callum?”
He looked out, remaining silent until Kate thought he would not tell her. Or he could not bring himself to. Then, with a muffled groan that seemed to wilt his broad shoulders, he finally spoke. “She is afraid of blood. It covered her, smothered her . . .” He turned to look at the tent again and swallowed back a well of emotions Kate feared he might never release. “Ye would think she’d abhor the confines of such a wee place, but it comforts her.” Slowly, he faced Kate, ready to tell her what he had wished, had prayed to forget since the day they had escaped six years ago. “Liam Campbell kept my sister in a cage suspended just a stone’s throw away from me.” He forced himself to go on even though the horror on Kate’s face clearly made him want to cease. “At first, I thought she would go mad. She was just a babe. Imagine what it must have been like cramped in a prison an inch larger than yer crumpled body.” He ran his palm over the soft leather of Maggie’s haven, his voice a loving whisper. “Argyll’s men used to come and drag her oot and stretch her until she screamed from the agony of it.” His haunted gaze found Kate’s again. “I had to kill them, Kate,” he said, moving toward her. “I butchered them. I killed them all with my sister clingin’ to my back. I could no’ stop, even knowin’ what I forced her to witness.”
“I understand,” Kate told him softly, barely able to breathe. She suspected he was asking for her absolution. She gave it.
He took her hand and sat on the bed, pulling her down gently to sit beside him. “Nae, lass, ye dinna understand. D’ye know what she saw? ’Twas ugly, Kate. So ugly she makes herself ferget. But sometimes . . .” he paused, looking like he could not go on. “Sometimes she awakens from her dreams and she remembers.”
It was then that Kate saw in his eyes the thing that plagued him, that had utterly destroyed him. It was not the years of horror spent in a dungeon but guilt and self-reproach at what his sister had watched him do to escape it that twisted his features and dulled his eyes to a lifeless blue. “My sister would rather go back to the cage than to that one day and the blood I poured upon her. Yer uncle is right to call me a devil.”
Kate walked along the shoreline, letting the frothy surf soak her feet. She barely felt the water chilling her flesh. Her thoughts were fixed on the dark, foreboding fortress before her, and on the man inside.
Callum MacGregor had survived the abyss of hell. He saved his sister from it, but what he had to become in the process near brought Kate to her knees.
Her tears fell heavy into the waves rolling beneath her feet. She could not weep this way in front of Callum, for his shoulders already carried enough, so she had left him and wept with unabashed abandon until the sun dipped below the loch. He had killed the men of her grandfather’s garrison in a massacre that had made him a legend, and he believed it cost him the only thing he’d ever had the chance to love. His sister.
But Maggie did love him. Dear God, if Robert had saved her from such a cruel existence, Kate never would consider him anything less than the bravest of men. Maggie had many evils from her past with which to live, but Kate was certain that Callum was not among them.
Chapter Twenty-Four
CALLUM WAS NOT in Maggie’s room when Kate returned. Aileen sat by the bed, working a small piece of embroidery by the light of a single candle. She looked up when she heard Kate enter.
“I’m to call Callum when she awakens,” the handmaiden advised her, laying the embroidery in her lap. “Mayhap ’twould be wise if she did not see ye when she . . .” Her voice faded as she set her eyes on the tent. “Ye are a Campbell, after all.”
Kate squared her shoulders and crossed the room to stand in front of her. “I will not leave. Whether you like it or not, I care for her.”
Aileen peered at her through narrowed eyes, and Kate braced herself for the contempt bequeathed to her because of her name.
“Ye wield a sword right fine, ye do,” Aileen complimented instead. “Even Graham is impressed with ye.”
“My brother taught me.” Kate began to smile, but then her eyes opened wide. “Oh, heavens, I did not clean Callum’s wound!”
“Aye, everyone’s talkin’ aboot how ye clipped the laird.” Aileen’s deep blue eyes fair glimmered in the soft firelight of the chambers. “Would ye teach me to fight like that?”
“Of course, but it was not my intention to hurt him, I assure you.” Kate began looking around the room for what she would need to tend to Callum. She found a small basin of water and a strip of cloth beside Maggie’s bed. “But I should tend to him. Aileen, please send him to me posthaste.”
“Aye, m’lady.” Aileen gathered her things, offered Kate a swift curtsey, then headed for the door.
When Aileen left the room, Kate crossed the rushes and crouched before the tent. She peeked inside. The wee lass was sound asleep, snoring, in fact. Kate gently removed a piece of straw from Maggie’s hair and sighed. “Bless you, sweeting.”
She waited for Callum, growing more apprehensive as the moments passed. Why did she send for him, she asked herself, dipping the cloth into the bowl. He had probably cleaned the wound himself. Why did she tell Aileen to make haste? God help her, she loved him. She lifted her hands to her throat. Loving him would most likely get her killed . . . or branded. Nae, Robert would never allow it. But what in damnation would become of her? Callum didn’t love her. She was going back to Glen Orchy, or to Kildun. Once her uncle was dead she would never see Callum again. Her use to him would be over. She remembered his kisses and patted her flushed cheek with her wet hand. Callum MacGregor was passionate in his hatred—and his kisses. Her gaze drifted over the bed, and she quivered. She wrung the cloth until it was almost dry again. “God’s breath, he makes me feel feverish.”
“I hope the ‘he’ ye refer to is me, lass.”
Kate whirled around, nearly knocking over the bowl of water. Callum stood in the doorway, blocking out the light from the hall. When he step
ped inside he wore a smile that was becoming as familiar to her as his fearsome scowls, and even more mesmerizing. He closed the door behind him, coiling Kate’s nerves into a springy mess. “Ye sent fer me?” he asked when she didn’t answer his first query.
“I . . . I remembered your wound and meant to clean it.”
His eyes fell to her trembling hands when she plunged them in the water again and snatched the cloth. She held it up, dripping water down her elbow. “See?”
He raised one dark brow and nodded, then crossed the room. Kate watched him check on his sister as she had. When he turned to face her, his expression unguarded and achingly tender, Kate saw the victory in this battle. She wanted it. She would have it.
“Where d’ye want me?”
“Closer.” She let her heart speak for her.
“Careful, woman,” he warned, his voice a deep-throated rasp. “Ye tempt me to throw ye on that bed and kiss ye until ye faint in my arms.”
“I fear,” she said, casting all she had left to win him to the battle winds, “if you do not kiss me, I will faint that much faster.”
He was already moving toward her, helpless to resist. Cupping her face in his hands, he tilted her head upward. He gazed deep into her eyes, laying bare the tortured remnants of his heart while he swept his thumb over the delicate curve of her lower lip, parting her lips to receive him. He covered her mouth with his, caressing her, breathing her, consuming her, surrendering to her.
Kate opened her mouth to take him fully, clutching his plaid in both hands as his kiss deepened with barely checked desire. His arms closed around her, enfolding her in his protection, his strength, his desire. Here was what she longed for, to be here with him, just like this, cherished and treasured.
“I love you,” she whispered when he pulled back slowly, searing her nerves with his hungry gaze. “I cannot stop myself, no matter what our names are. No matter who protests it.”
