Desiring The Highlander

by Michele Sinclair

  “So, McTiernay, you’ve made it quite clear you did not wish me to come with you. You had the chance to leave me behind and yet you didn’t. You could even now drop me off and be on your way. I assure you I won’t return to my sister’s home. The baron would never know.”

  “If I were going to ‘leave you behind’ as you put it, I would have done so.”

  Ellenor chewed on his answer and realized his reason for getting her was not complicated, but simple. He had been sent to get her, and that was what he had done. Why she had been pretending to be mad or why Ainsley had desired her immediate departure mattered nothing to the overgrown beast. She would be sitting exactly where she was even if she had been mentally unbalanced.

  “What about…” Ellenor choked out, grabbing Cole’s leine as his horse suddenly slowed its gait. “Hey, Scot! Make up your mind! Either keep me alive or take me back, but don’t kill me on this monster of yours!”

  She let go of his shirt and Cole flicked his tongue out across his lips, smothering an instinctive smile. Any other woman would have undoubtedly required saving. Then again, they wouldn’t have been sitting backward perched on his mount’s neck. But not this Englishwoman. Her reflexes were immediate and accurate. Her snipe didn’t come from fear; it came from lack of control.

  Ellenor Howell was just as disturbed by him as he was by her.

  The woman had practically probed him with her eyes a few minutes ago, and he sensed she glimpsed something…something he didn’t want her or anyone else to see. So, he had teased her, and her comeback, while innocent, had revived emotions he had long ago suppressed.

  Indifference, Cole whispered to himself. That was the only way he was going to survive the next few days. “Steud is not a monster. He’s a horse. And you would not have been in danger if you had been sitting properly and not jumping around all the time.”

  Ignoring his comment, Ellenor asked, “Did you say Steud?”

  “Aye.”

  Ellenor muffled a laugh but could not keep from rolling her eyes. What kind of man named his horse…horse? “Why did you slow down? I thought you were in a rush to get back to your precious Scotland.”

  “I was.”

  “But then…” Ellenor halted in midsentence as she answered her own question. They had just crested Windy Gyle. England was now behind them. “Well,” she began with a huff, “I suppose you are pleased with yourself, Scot, but I could care less where we are just as long as it’s not Durchent Hall.”

  “Then we are finally of accord, babag.”

  “We are most certainly not in accord, Elmer. My hands are tied. I am incredibly uncomfortable and I am finding it harder and harder to remain atop your monstrous horse.”

  “I suggest you try harder,” Cole returned, refusing to react to her latest nickname for him.

  Ellenor’s jaw dropped open. The man was actually smiling. Not a large one that spanned from cheek to cheek, but the sides of his face were definitely crinkling and Ellenor was positive it qualified as a grin for the hulking brute. Probably a large one.

  Laugh while you can, Scot, for it will be I who will be laughing last, Ellenor vowed. “I have tried,” she replied with mocking innocence. “But I can no longer sit as I am, and sitting facing the front without support is also painful. That leaves only one choice. You.”

  “What do you mean me?” Cole shouted, unaware his voice had risen several levels.

  “Simply that I shall have to rest against you,” Ellenor replied calmly, knowing how bad she stank. And then taking a deep breath, Ellenor gripped his tunic, turned back around to face the front, and commenced to wiggle even farther back into the seat. When she was done snuggling against him, her whole backside was touching him from his shoulders down to his groin. Then, she sucked in her breath and waited.

  For well over a year, she had successfully avoided being in the presence of a man, let alone touching one. Now, suddenly, she was practically lying in the arms of one that radiated more primitive masculinity than any man she had ever met. And instead of screaming and clawing her way to safety, her instinct was to get even closer.

  She felt no abhorrence, no repulsion. The taste of bile and the uncontrollable need to flee did not invade her every sense. There was only an unfamiliar desire to touch him and discover if the rest of his body was just as hard and solid.

  Licking her lips, Ellenor tried to ignore the confusing messages her own body was sending her, but it was impossible. A hypnotizing warmth seeped through his tunic and her gown and into her skin. His powerful chest was huge, and with each step his horse took, she could feel his muscles move to keep both him and her atop the animal’s back. The Scot could overpower her anytime he wanted to, but instead of feeling caged in by his strength, she felt protected by it.

  Cole was anything but unmoved by her new attempt at freedom. He knew she was not trying to use her femininity to induce him to loosen her bonds, more likely the opposite. The woman had been hoping her odor would make her nearness unbearable. And while she didn’t smell good, it was far from repulsive. His men had stunk worse than she ever could, even if she continued to abstain from bathing for another month. Moreover, he was not about to concede to her latest challenge.

  Pushing her back upright, he grunted, “I suggest you try harder to find another position.”

  “And if I cannot?”

  “Then I will find one for you…starting with across the back end of my horse.”

  A sudden shower of angry sparks flashed from Ellenor’s eyes. She whirled around to face him and almost fell. He caught her, but she shrugged him off. “You wouldn’t dare, Scot.”

  “Oh, I certainly would.”

  There it was again! That damn grin. Except it was a little larger this time. The intolerable beast was laughing at her. Maybe not out loud, but the man probably didn’t know how to. His awkward grin was practically guffawing at her and all from the possibility of her lying prone across the ass of his mount.

  “Don’t you have any compassion?” she wailed.

  Blue eyes dropped to hers and any warmth shining in them just a moment ago had been sniffed out by that single question. They darkened considerably until only cold navy stones remained. His face was once again void of emotion. “No.”

  Ellenor swallowed. His voice had been low, even, and full of disdain. His antipathy toward her had all of the sudden become personal, but she had no idea why. She had done nothing to him. “You…really hate me, don’t you?”

  Cole broke free from their locked gaze and concentrated again on the jagged trail. “I despise all who are English,” he said simply.

  “I didn’t say the English. I said me.”

  She waited for him to say something, to explain, to tell her she was wrong, but his mouth was set in a grim line, indicating he had said enough. “That’s it? That is all you have to say?”

  More silence.

  “You insufferable oaf. You don’t even know me! At least my reasons for detesting you are based on personal interaction,” Ellenor hissed, waving her bound wrists in the air so that he could not mistake her meaning.

  Cole bristled. He didn’t want to admit she intrigued him and that in some odd way he respected her determination to control her fate, despite the way she went about it. He hated the English, and every word she spoke aloud proved her ancestry. Honor demanded that he despise her and so he did. Everyone had accepted his position long ago, and until today, no one had questioned the intelligence of his stance. If he hadn’t explained his reasoning for his blanket hatred of the English to his own family and clan, he certainly wouldn’t explain himself to her. Besides, she was wrong. His grounds for disliking her were personal.

  “Do your reasons for disliking me include reeking?” Cole shot back. “Trust me, mine do.”

  Clenching and unclenching her bound hands, Ellenor fought the rising need to strike him and said through gritted teeth, “I stink because I have not been able to bathe.”

  “Nay. You stink because you chose not to bat
he.”

  Denial was pointless. The man was infuriatingly right. People had begged her to wash herself, but she had adamantly refused. Precious isolation had been hard to attain and being offensive had allowed her to keep it. Acting out of control was difficult to do for prolonged periods, but smelling foul, while uncomfortable, was easy to accomplish and even easier to maintain. Not to mention that the more she stank, the more everyone left her alone.

  Unfortunately, that was no longer the case.

  It appeared she had company, whether she liked it or not. Better yet, it was not her stench that would keep his hands off her, it was who she was—an Englishwoman. If she had to be in a man’s arms, there were no safer ones than this Highlander’s.

  “And I suppose you are going to make me take one,” Ellenor remarked, waiting for his order to bathe the second they made camp. And she would. One of her most favorite things in the world was a bath. It mattered not where—a tub, a river, a lake—she just loved the feel of water against her skin. Nothing was better.

  Cole chuckled against her shoulder blades and Ellenor felt something inside her deflate. A bath was not in her near future.

  “You obviously enjoy your stench, mùrla. Why should I stop any English from being what they are?”

  Ellenor had had enough of his name-calling. First, it was a filthy female and now he was referencing her horribly matted head of hair. Despite the oaf’s belief otherwise, she did not like to reek. Her odor even offended herself, and since it was no longer necessary, she had no intentions of staying that way. Squaring her jaw, she announced, “I shall bathe when we stop.”

  “Not tonight.”

  Ellenor stiffened at the casually issued challenge. “And why not tonight? I have decided to bathe, and I will, Scot. You have no idea how stubborn I can be when I have decided upon something.”

  “Aye, I have an idea.” Cole couldn’t help admiring her spirit. He had no idea what hell she had endured to cause her to walk the path of feigned madness and stench, but the woman was a survivor and she had not become one by succumbing to anyone’s decrees.

  “Then you concede?” she said with a hint of smile.

  “That depends.”

  “On…” she pressed. The man’s short answers were infuriating. If only her sister and Ainsley had spoken so little, isolation would not have been so appealing.

  “On how you enjoy your baths.”

  Ellenor realized the man would continue with his vague comments until she really did go mad. He expected her to press for explanations, and maybe most women would have, but she was not most women. It was time he learned that fact.

  Throwing back her head, Ellenor let out a peal of laughter. “You make no sense, Scot. Maybe it is you who is mad, not I.”

  “I make sense, and stop calling me a Scot.”

  “Why? That’s what you are.”

  “My home is the Highlands.”

  “So, you are still a Scot.”

  “I am a Highlander,” Cole replied evenly. If the woman was intentionally trying to provoke him, she was surprisingly effective. She was not only impossible to ignore, she seemed to read him and his reactions in a way very few could.

  Ellenor clucked her tongue. “Last I heard, the Highlands were a part of Scotland. Therefore, you are a Scot.”

  Cole’s jaw clenched. He forced it to relax. “You and your sister share the same father and therefore the same blood. I am as close to a Scot as you are to your sister.”

  Ellenor sat mum. This Highlander had never even met her sister, but he had made his point. She and Gilda were far different people, and always had been.

  “I need to know, are you or are you not going to unbind me when we camp?”

  “I am not.”

  The answer was so short and final it almost made her give up trying. Almost. “And just why not? What is it that you hope to achieve by perpetuating my irritability?”

  “You are not mad, woman, but you are obviously not above acting like you are,” Cole began, surprised by his willingness to explain himself. “I am not in the mood to be scratched, or bitten, or kicked in an attempt at freedom.”

  Ellenor couldn’t deny having the impulse to do just what he feared, but she doubted she would have acted on it. She was desperate, but not stupid. She didn’t want to assault him. She just wanted to leave. “What if I promise to behave?”

  “You will be freed only when I am assured that you will not flee.”

  “Damn,” she muttered, uncaring if he heard her or not. “Just who are you? Why do you care if I run off? I am nothing but a burden to you, I stink, and most of all, you hate me.”

  Her comment rattled Cole. He didn’t hate her. Fact was he admired her. And surprisingly, she had not felt like a burden. It wasn’t often someone held his interest, but this lass did. He found himself anxiously awaiting her next ploy. And her eyes…gold flecks swam in the deepest green he had ever seen. Each time he peered into them, he got lost. But if she ever knew any of that, he would lose all control, over her and himself. “I am the man who has been charged to escort you north. That is all you need to know.”

  “No, it is not! I need to know where I am going, who you are, and where you are taking me.”

  “These questions will be answered in time.”

  “Maybe in your time, Scot, not mine.”

  “Aye, I’m glad we understand each other, babag.”

  Furious at lacking the power to retake control of her life, Ellenor sat in silence as Cole weaved in and out of the forest. The hills had grown steep again, and the sight of fresh water was disappearing along with the sun. The ground was slippery with mud, and Ellenor suspected they would be stopping at the next decent spot to camp. And when they did, bound or not, she intended to escape.

  Thinking about how she would traverse these hills on foot, Ellenor was unprepared when the horse stumbled slightly on the slick ground. She almost fell when firm hands instantly grabbed her arms, dragging her back to safety. She had been deep in thought unaware of what had happened or who was holding her. A cold sweat enveloped her as memories of a man’s hands holding her down filled her mind.

  “Are you all right, lass?” Cole asked, concern lacing his question. He had never seen a human being turn so pale so fast. It was as if all the blood had drained out of her.

  Ellenor blinked. “What…? What did you say?”

  Cole shook his hands. Ellenor looked down and realized she had a white-knuckled grip upon them. “I won’t let you fall,” Cole said softly, hoping to allay her fears.

  Ellenor stared at his fingers. They were long and large and rough with calluses. The power and strength of his hands were unmistakable, and at any time, he could have wrenched them from her grasp. Instead, he was waiting patiently for her to let them go.

  She eased her grip, but didn’t fully release it. She looked up and found his eyes searching hers. They were the deepest, most intense hue she had ever seen. Darker than the sky. Clearer than the sea. A woman could get lost in eyes like his if she let her guard down. They seemed to reflect understanding. He didn’t know why she needed to be the one to let go, but he recognized her pain. It was the kindest thing anyone had done for her in a long time.

  And for a moment, Ellenor almost reconsidered running away.

  Cole threw the leg bone of the rabbit he had been chewing on into the fire. He offered to do the same for Ellenor, but she opted to glare at him and toss the bone in herself. Shrugging, he stood and announced, “I’m going to scout the area and will return shortly.” Then he paused and added in Gaelic, “And if our aoigh decides she no longer wants our company…” He paused, looked back and gave her his half grin. “Then let her go.”

  A minute later, he was gone. Ellenor sat in shocked silence, wondering if she could have misunderstood…but she doubted it. After her father died, she had stopped venturing into town alone, ending her secret lessons in the Gaelic language. However, before that, the old Scottish smithy had told her that, with the exception of Laure
l Cordell, she was the finest student he ever had. She had similar compliments from the abbess who had taught her how to read and speak French and Italian. She had a mind for languages and found them easy to digest and learn, but never did she dream she would actually have a need for one of them in her lifetime. Tonight, the once-useless talent had both calmed and inflamed her fears.

  Since they stopped to make camp, the three Highlanders had chatted intermittently in their language about various topics. Most of them uninteresting—horses, the flat terrain, and the painfully slow pace they had been forced to endure. Ellenor had almost given away the fact that she could understand their speech by making a sarcastic comment, but held her tongue just in time. And the price for her silence had paid off.

  She had learned the name of her captor—Cole. He was the third of seven siblings and they were headed to the home of his eldest brother and laird of their Highland clan. The brother was married, and by the sporadic comments—quite happily. However, nothing in the conversation explained why his brother had ordered Cole to go south and bring her safely back to him.

  Ellenor could only surmise two reasons. She was to be married, which was unlikely, but possible. The thought of building alliances with an English baron might appeal to some. The other reason was labor, but even that was a stretch. Why go to so much effort to punish a single Englishwoman whom you don’t even know?

  “Do you think she will try and run?” The question came from one called Jaime Ruadh—or Jaime the Red, which was appropriate for his wild hair was an incredible shade of bright crimson.

  His friend, Donald, shrugged and stoked the fire. “Hope so.”

  “You’re just sore about earlier,” Jaime chided. He was still gnawing on the rest of the rabbit so his words were slurred and half-articulated.

  “More like pissed. All I did was try and keep the wench from falling.”

  “She was just scared of you.”

  “I don’t care if she thought I was the devil,” Donald retorted, adjusting himself once again. “You don’t kick a man that hard…there…especially when he has to sit in the saddle all day.”