by Lois Greiman
“Don’t you have something else to do?” MacTavish asked, and she realized he was talking to the giant.
“Nay, lad, not at the moment. Since it seems I’ll have to wait to torture the girl.”
She snapped her gaze from MacTavish to the man by the door. The difference between them was shocking, for surely there were never two men whose looks were more at odds. The giant was as homely as his lord was beautiful. She liked him immediately.
“What is your name?” she asked.
Both men turned toward her in unison, and she realized her mistake. Most women, even wealthy widowed women, would not assume to question a man in such a situation. Still, she had already spoken, and it was too late to draw the words back. She kept her gaze fast on the giant.
“Me Christian name be Olaf.” He said the words slowly, as if wondering why she’d asked. “Me friends…and the bastard here…” He motioned toward MacTavish. “They call me Burr.”
“You are of Swedish descent?”
“Norwegian,” he said. “Late of Kristiansund.”
She nodded, remembering traveling to that beautiful peninsula as a child, but MacTavish was scowling. Who was this giant of a man who could call the sovereign lord of Teleere a bastard and live to tell of it? Someone very foolish or very brave. Perhaps a meld of the two. It intrigued her.
“Tell me, Burr,” she said. “Are you in need of employment?”
His heavy brows rose. “What’s that?”
“I seem to have lost my guard. I but wondered if you might wish to take up that position.”
The huge man shrugged. A shadow of a grin played around the peripheral edges of his mouth. “What do you pay?”
MacTavish swore under his breath.
She didn’t glance toward him. “I will give you twice what he does.”
Burr laughed. “That won’t be difficult, lass, for he pays me nothing.”
“Ahh. Just in my price range then.”
He laughed. She smiled.
“Get the hell out of here,” MacTavish ordered.
Burr glanced at his master in some surprise. “The lady made me an offer, lad.”
“She’s not a lady.”
Burr smiled. “Better yet.”
“Go check on Peters.”
The Norseman turned his gaze on MacTavish finally, his eyes still laughing. “You worried he’s going to kill himself for disappointing you?”
“I’m afraid he’s not.”
Burr snorted, then turned back toward Tatiana. “Me apologies,” he said, and bowed at the waist. The movement was strangely graceful. “It seems I am being sent to rout wild geese.”
“Consider my offer.”
“Aye,” he agreed, and nodded. “That I will. And if the lad here gives you too much trouble…” He bowed again. “You’ve but to call.”
“And if I call, what will you do?”
He shrugged. His shoulders were the approximate size of a river barge. “I’d have to charge extra to kill him.”
“I shall bear that in mind.”
Burr chuckled as he turned to leave. The door shut solidly behind him.
She shifted her attention slowly back to MacTavish. “Loyalty is a difficult commodity to come by.”
“I don’t believe in loyalty,” he said.
“Why is that?”
“Because there are women like you.”
“You think me disloyal?”
He was still scowling. “Here,” he said, and lifted the cup to her lips again. “Drink this.”
She turned away, making a face of disgust. “It tastes like sheep dung.”
“Which begs the obvious question,” he said, but didn’t explain. “Drink it before I pour it down your throat.”
She considered arguing, but his expression changed her mind. “What is it?”
“Heather wine laced with arsenic.”
“Then I am certain you will understand why I must respectfully refuse.”
“You’re in no position to refuse anything.”
“What about Burr?”
He laughed. “You expect him to save you?”
She lifted her lips into a parody of a smile.
“From me?”
She said nothing.
“For a woman of the world you’re a poor judge of people, Megs.”
“Am I?”
“If you think Burr will set himself against me to save you.”
“So loyal is he?”
He saw the trap just a moment before it snapped shut. Indeed, he almost smiled at his misstep. “I prefer to call it force of habit.”
“He has been with you a long while?”
For a moment some unknown emotion crossed his eyes, but it was gone in an instant.
“Drink the wine,” he ordered.
“I’ve a strange aversion to poison.”
He looked tired, she realized. And older than she had first thought. “’Tis naught but herbed wine.”
“And I should trust you?”
“I don’t care if you trust me or not, but I’ll not have you swooning again.”
“Swooning!” Indignant anger bubbled up inside her. “Is that what you call it when one is struck on the head while defending herself from execrable brigands?”
“Execrable brigands!” He scoffed, perhaps at her choice of words. Nicol had once suggested that she spoke like a constipated scholar. “They were nothing but a one-armed petty thief and his dwarfed companion. If you totaled their ages, they were older than the stones of this castle.”
She drew herself up. “I am sorry if my tormentors weren’t to your liking.”
He shook his head. “’Tis a sorry day when Teleere’s premier thief can’t best a pair of doddering miscreants.”
“Again, my apologies.”
The room went silent. He had the deep penetrating gaze of a peregrine falcon, though his eyes challenged the blue of the morning sky. “So you admit your true identity?”
“I admit that you are a spineless cur.”
“You almost make me wonder why I rescued you.”
“Rescued me!” She growled the words at him, though, if she remembered correctly, ladies were not supposed to growl. Drawing a deep breath, she steadied herself. “’Twas you who tossed me into their midst. ’Twas I who distracted them with their own witless brawling.”
“You set them to quarreling?”
“I thought it preferable to rape.”
For a moment she thought he would respond, but he remained as he was. “Drink the wine,” he said instead.
“No.”
“Drink it,” he ordered, “or I swear, Pikeshead will look as rosy as an afternoon jaunt in the park.”
She wanted nothing more than to resist him, but his eyes were deadly earnest, and she was no fool.
The wine tasted like yesterday’s death. She drank it in one long draught, shuddering at the end, but forcing herself to glare up at him.
“Where else do you hurt?”
“What?”
“Besides your head.” He said the words as if she were daft. “Where else are you injured?”
“Why? Do you keep a list? So many a day to reach your quota?”
“Dammit, woman! I’m surprised he didn’t kill you, too.”
Her stomach twisted. “You said he was only a petty thief.”
MacTavish scowled. “Is that what he told you?”
“We didn’t have a great deal of time to converse. What with his companion wanting to rape me and the woman in the next cell—”
“Christ! I’m talking about Wheaton.”
She blinked, trying to assimilate this new information. “Whom did he kill?”
A muscle jumped in his jaw, and he drew a deep breath through his nose as if trying to steady his nerves.
“Where else are you hurt?”
“If you’re so concerned for my well-being, you could have me see a physician.”
“Hoping to escape, Megs?”
“Hoping to stay alive
regardless of your cruelty.”
“Perhaps you want me to check your well-being for myself?” he asked.
She glared at him. “Touch me again, and I shall not need Burr’s help to dismember you.”
“You threaten me again?”
“Nay.” She raised her chin. He touched a finger to its center. She jerked away. “I tell the truth.”
His eyes laughed at her. His mouth remained absolutely immobile. “So you would kill me.” He dropped his hand to hers. Lifting it, he turned it over. “With this hand?”
She nodded. Regal pride was all she had just now, but it had stood her in good stead in the past.
Bending slightly, he kissed the center of her palm. Hot feelings shot through her like a flaming arrow, beginning at the point of the caress and streaking madly up her arm and off in a thousand sizzling directions.
“’Tis a soft little hand, for one who uses a threat so boldly,” he said, and pushed her sleeve up her arm. The simple cotton fabric had a rent near the elbow. He ignored it. “And a frail arm,” he added and kissed the veins that throbbed rhythmically in her wrist.
Her body jerked at the unaccustomed contact. “Cease,” she commanded.
He raised his gaze to hers as if worried. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
She sharpened her scowl. Her heart was beating overtime, and her breath was coming fast. Faster even than when he had threatened her. “Unhand me or you shall surely rue the day.”
“Rue the day.” He smiled at that. “You speak very well, for a murderous thief,” he said, and kissed the bend of her elbow.
“Desist, MacTavish, or you shall regret your actions.”
“I have many regrets,” he said, and when he raised his gaze to hers, it seemed almost that she could see them there, shadowed by a veil of bravado, but still visible. “I doubt if touching you will be amongst the worst of them.”
She stared into his eyes, trying to read his thoughts, trying to discern the regrets, but in that moment he grinned, laughing at her attempts. She yanked at her hand, but it was an exercise in futility, for he held it fast.
“Release me,” she breathed.
He smiled. “I only wish to make certain you are unhurt.”
“Then mayhap you should not have thrown me into prison with a pair of degenerate rapists.”
Something snapped in his eyes again. “Surely you’ve been in worse places.”
His hand was easing up her arm toward her shoulder.
“Let go of me.”
“Does that hurt?” He squeezed her upper arm gently. She scowled.
“You are making a horrible mistake.”
He skimmed his hand over her shoulder. “All is well here?”
“You do not know who you are dealing with, MacTavish.”
Turning his hand slightly, he brushed his knuckles along her collarbone. “I believe you said your name was Linnet Mulrooney.”
“Mulgrave,” she corrected, but his knuckles were inching downward, sapping her strength. They skimmed as slow as sunrise over her bodice, not detouring an inch as they slipped over her nipple.
“Nothing amiss there?”
She stilled a shiver. “Let me go now, and I’ll not seek retribution.”
He smiled. Something knotted in her gut. “Tell me, lass, who would do the retributing?” he asked and laying his hand flat, pressed it gently down her ribs.
“Retributing is not a proper word.”
His smile remained. No, she did not care about a man’s looks, but his smile did unfathomable things to her insides.
“How would you seek revenge, wee Megs?”
“I have friends.”
“Any not wanted for murder and rape?”
“You are not the one to speak of rape,” she said.
His eyes darkened, but finally he nodded. “You’re right. I am surely not above a little rape. Still, I should have known better than to send such a fragile thing into a den of…” He paused. A muscle jumped in his jaw. “…miscreants.”
“Miscreants. ’Tis a pitiably weak word for the beasts I endured.” His hand skimmed over her hip and onto her thigh.
“He who wastes not, wants not. I’m saving my best words.”
He was tugging at her skirts, lifting them up her leg, baring her shins, her knees. She stared at the progress, then raised an imperious brow. She could do so, she knew, without a single wrinkle showing in her forehead. Nicol had dubbed it the ice princess glare. “If you hope to frighten me, MacTavish, you will be sorely disappointed, for I fear I’ve endured far worse than you.”
“I’m flattered,” he said, and, wrapping his hands around her ankle, eased them up her leg. “But nay, sweet Megs, I don’t mean to frighten you.”
She held her breath as his fingers squeezed up her knee.
“Any pain there?”
“What is your intent?”
He smiled. “You may be a murderous thief, Megs, but you are a bonny murderous thief, and I am currently without a mistress.”
She felt her body go momentarily numb, and though she ordered herself to remain still, to withstand his ministrations, she could not. Instead, she jerked her knees up to her chest, slapping her skirts down below her feet as she did so.
“I will never lie with you!” she hissed.
He watched her in silence, like a spider might watch its slowly suffocating prey. “To me or with me?” he asked.
She glared, and he laughed.
“It will not be so hideous,” he assured her. “You may even enjoy it.” He reached for her again, but she scrunched against the rowan wood head of the garish bed, trying to control her breathing, to keep her expression impassive.
“This I can promise you.” She raised her chin. “I shall never enjoy it. Not with you, MacTavish.”
“Not like you did with Wheaton.”
She stared, her mind churning madly in her head.
A muscle ticked near his mouth. “Tell me what magic Wheaton possesses then, lass. Perhaps I can learn from his expertise and pleasure you against all odds.”
She sat frozen in place. His eyes smoldered with anger, but when he lowered his gaze to her breasts, there was a new light in their depths.
“Tell me, Megs, do you cherish him so very much? Or do you give him all because of fear?”
“Let me go.” Her voice sounded deceptively calm, though her heart was thundering like wild horses in her chest, and her breath came hard.
“So that you can return to him?” He shook his head. “I think I’ll keep you here, and maybe, if he cares half so much for you as you for him…” Leaning forward, he pressed a kiss to her throat. Feelings sparked like summer lightning, branching away on frayed electrical currents. “Maybe he will come for you.”
“MacTavish.” Her voice wavered now. “Do not be a fool.” He kissed her again, in the hollow of her throat. She swallowed hard. Did a man’s touch always elicit such feelings? “Save yourself.”
“From Wheaton?”
“From me.”
He straightened slightly. They were inches apart, his gaze absolutely steady on hers. Her limbs felt weak, but she was in a tight spot. It couldn’t be the effects of his nearness.
“There are many things I should save myself from, wee lass,” he breathed, and skimmed a finger along the edge of her collarbone. “But I don’t think I care to save myself from you,” he said, and bent to kiss her neck.
She jerked away and skittered off the bed. “Then you are a fool.”
He descended the mattress and stalked after her, his strides smooth. He resembled nothing more than a tawny cat, sleek, confident, undeterred.
“Tell me, Megs, are you worried what Wheaton will do if he learns you’ve been in my bed?”
She was nearing the door. Perhaps if she could make it through, Burr would be there and maybe…
But in that moment MacTavish leapt. She shrieked and darted, but he caught her by the arm and spun her about. They were chest to chest, thigh to thigh. She could feel
the tight expanse of his body against hers, and there, in the middle of his being, the hard evidence of his desire was impossible to mistake. Even the highest-born lady knew something of men.
Fear choked her. She pushed on his chest. “Nay.” The word was weak, pathetic, her strength the same.
“You must pay your debts,” he said. “Here or in the dungeon. Surely one night in my bed would be preferable to a lifetime in Pikeshead.”
“You’re making a mistake.”
“Hoary disagrees,” he said, and, bending his head, kissed the high flesh of her breast.
She gasped. He smiled. The door flew open.
“My lord!”
Her gaze darted across the room. A stranger stood there. He was immaculately dressed in dark waistcoat and tight pantaloons. He was as thin as a spindle and as small as an elf.
MacTavish didn’t turn, didn’t loosen his grip, but he spoke, nevertheless. “Sir Albert,” he said. His tone was weary.
“My lord,” he said again, his tone tight with disapproval, “tell me ’tis not so.”
She felt his grip loosen the slightest degree. He turned with a scowl. “I thought you were in Paris.”
“I have returned, and just in the nick of time, it seems.” He lisped slightly, and his lined face was pinched.
“That’d be yer opinion.”
“That would be your opinion,” Albert corrected, tight-lipped. “If it cannot be said correctly, it should not be said at all.”
“What do you want, Bert?”
The little man drew himself even straighter. His height barely exceeded her own. “You cannot keep this”—his gaze skimmed her—“woman…” She had felt a host of emotions emanating toward her throughout the years—jealousy, avarice, hope. But never had she felt such utter disdain. “…in your chambers.”
“Aye,” MacTavish disagreed, but he had released her entirely now. “I can.”
She wouldn’t have thought the little man’s back could possibly get straighter. “Then pray, what is my purpose here?”
“I’ve wondered that meself.” MacTavish’s language was deteriorating by the minute. A strange thing.
“How will it look if word of this becomes loosed?”
She could almost feel MacTavish sigh. “How will what look?”
