Hunting for a Highlander (Highland Brides)

by Lynsay Sands

  “It’s no’ true,” she cried the minute he eased his grip on her throat. “Ye love me.”

  Geordie smiled coldly. “I do no’ love ye, Katie. I never did. How could I love a murdering bitch who would kill a man like Simon? He was a good man, Katie. He cared about ye. He told Rory he planned to ask ye to marry him. I should have told him that ye were sneaking around trying to get back into me bed, but I did no’, and ye killed him like he was nothing.” Slamming her back against the wall, he growled, “Where is Dwyn?”

  “I did no’ kill him,” Katie cried the moment he eased his grip on her throat, and Geordie immediately tightened his hold again, cutting off her air.

  “Ye were seated before him when ye rode out, Katie. No one could have stabbed or run him through without going through ye first. Only you would have been in a position to do that, and no one would have taken four or more hours to calm a horse and return to Simon. Ye killed him. Ye went to Brodie and had him come knock me out, take me wife, and then ye had him or one o’ his men lay me over Simon’s horse so ye could ride back to Buchanan with the ridiculous story about being attacked. Now.” Geordie slammed her against the wall again. “Where’s me wife?”

  He eased his grip on her throat again, and this time she didn’t immediately try to deny what she’d done. Instead, sweet, always smiling Katie snarled, “I hope he kills the bitch.”

  Geordie’s fingers contracted around her throat almost of their own accord, and he might not have stopped this time if someone hadn’t started knocking at the door and then opened it.

  “Geordie, we know where Dwyn is.”

  Aulay’s voice made him freeze, and then he released Katie and turned to hurry across the room as she collapsed to the floor, coughing and sucking in great gasps of air.

  “Where is she?” he growled, striding out of the room.

  Aulay pulled the door closed and glanced to Rory. “Can ye guard the door and keep the lass here until I can deal with her?”

  “Aye, I’ll no’ let her out,” Rory assured him.

  Thanking him, Aulay took Geordie’s arm to urge him through his sister and Dwyn’s sisters, every one of his sisters-in-law, as well as their friends Lady MacKay and Lady Sinclair. None of their brothers or the other men were there now besides Rory, he noted distractedly, but then shifted his attention to Aulay as they started down the stairs and his brother began to speak.

  “Alick was leading a group o’ soldiers searching the border between our land and the MacGregor land when he encountered one o’ their men on patrol. He told him what was happening here and that he was looking for yer wife, who had been taken by a Lowlander named Brodie, and the MacGregor’s man told him that there’s a laird named Brodie on MacGregor land right now, that he paid MacGregor to let him camp there. Brodie claimed at the time that he was traveling home to Brodie from Arran when several o’ his men became ill from what he suspected was bad meat and they needed to bide a wee while they recovered. The MacGregor soldier said they’ve been no trouble, but then this afternoon one o’ Brodie’s men rode up to the keep with more coin and a request for the priest to come to their camp. He claimed it was to give the sick men the sacraments o’ the dying, but—”

  “Brodie must have sent his man to fetch the priest when Katie got to his camp so that he’d be there waiting when he got back with Dwyn. He’s trying to make her marry him,” Geordie said grimly as they stepped off the stairs and hurried toward the keep doors. “He does no’ ken she’s already married to me, then.”

  “Well, he did no’ ken it at the time,” Aulay agreed, and then caught his arm, drawing him to a halt as he cautioned, “But he may ken by now.”

  Geordie’s mouth tightened. “If he’s hurt her, I’m killing him.” He waited for Aulay’s nod of assent and then turned to continue to the door, only to pause again when he saw Dwyn’s father enter, spot them and move their way.

  When Geordie offered the man an abrupt nod of greeting, James Innes said, “Geordie, I ken ye think little o’ me, that ye do no’ approve o’ how I raised me Dwyn and that ye think me a selfish old bastard. But I love me daughter. All o’ me daughters,” he added, casting a glance to Una and Aileen, who had moved up beside them. Turning back to Geordie, he said, “We have to get Dwyn back, Geordie. Brodie’s no’ just a brutal bastard, he’s no’ right in the head. We need to get her back.”

  “We will,” Geordie assured him, clamping a reassuring hand on his shoulder briefly before moving past him to push through the keep doors. He was halfway down the steps before he bothered to glance around, and then he paused when he saw the men all gathered on horseback in the bailey. Nearly every last Buchanan warrior was mounted and waiting, but they weren’t alone. There were soldiers carrying the banners from each clan his sister and brothers belonged to, as well as the MacKays, MacLeods and Sinclairs, and of course the Inneses. They were the soldiers that had escorted his in-laws, his family members and family friends here. Combined, they easily matched the Buchanan warriors in number.

  “So this is what it means to have the Buchanans backing ye,” James Innes said with awe.

  Geordie heard him, but he had turned to his brother in question.

  It was Saidh who answered the silent query. Moving down another step until she could have put her head on his shoulder if she’d wanted, she said, “Ye did no’ think we would no’ back ye up, did ye?”

  Geordie turned to look at her, noting that the women were all lined up on the steps behind him, Aulay and James Innes.

  Smiling at him solemnly, Saidh added, “Rory and Jetta are staying behind to hold down the fort and prepare in case some healing is needed, but the rest o’ us are coming too.” Grimacing, she added, “Though we have promised to stay back and merely watch and wait to greet Dwyn when you big, strong men free her and bring her to us.”

  Geordie tried to swallow the sudden lump in his throat so he could speak, but it wasn’t moving. In the end, all he could do was nod his gratitude. Turning away then, he continued down the stairs, thinking it was good to have family. And he had the very best.

  “I’m so sorry, Lady Buchanan.”

  “What for, Father?” Dwyn asked distractedly as she felt her way blindly across the ropes binding the priest’s wrists.

  “For no’ being able to do aught while Laird Brodie beat ye,” Father Machar said on a sigh. “I did try to loose me bonds to help ye, but he trussed me up well.”

  Dwyn was silent for a minute as her split lip and every bruise on her body seemed to ache a little more at his reminding her of the beating. Ignoring her aches and pains, Dwyn turned her attention back to what she was doing, and told herself she’d got off easy. Brodie had punched her several times, in the stomach, the chest and the face. He’d also managed to rip open the top of her gown while at it. Not intentionally. He’d held her with one hand curled around and clutching the neckline as he’d punched her in the face, and the material had torn as her body was forced back under the blow.

  Dwyn looked down at it now, and had to hold back a sigh. She wasn’t falling out of the dress exactly, but it was holding her about as well as the low necklines of the dresses her sisters had altered did. This dress had been one of the new ones too, and was now, of course, ruined. Dwyn could live with that though, and considered herself lucky that the few blows and a torn dress were all she’d suffered so far. At least Brodie hadn’t tossed her out of the tent for his men to pass around and have at. She could survive a beating. She could probably survive being raped as well . . . by one man. Dwyn wasn’t too sure she’d survive being raped by one hundred of them though, emotionally or physically. She suspected something like that could kill a woman, or at least make her wish she was dead.

  Clearing her throat, she murmured, “Oh, now, there’s nothing fer you to be sorry for, Father. ’Tis Brodie who should be sorry. As ye said, ye were tied up.”

  “Aye, but the MacGregor offered to send warriors to escort me when Brodie’s man came to ask me to come to the camp. I refused. Had
I allowed the men to accompany me—”

  “They’d probably be dead by now,” she inserted on a sigh, most of her concentration on trying to unknot the ropes binding the priest’s wrists behind his back. Dwyn had managed to force her gag off by using her tongue, teeth and the priest’s back to drag it along, and then had removed the gag Brodie had tied around Father Machar’s head by using her teeth to tug the dirty cloth out of his mouth and down. While the priest had been quite flustered and embarrassed to have her sticking her tongue in his mouth to hook it under the cloth and drag it to her teeth to pull it over his bottom lip, he’d also been grateful to have the material out of his mouth. Brodie had ripped up a filthy old tunic to make the gags so that aside from the material sucking all the moisture out of their mouths, it had tasted most unpleasant.

  “Oh, I’m sure he could no’ have managed that,” Father Machar assured her. “The MacGregors are fine warriors.”

  “Aye, but no’ expecting trouble, the MacGregor probably would no’ have sent more than six or ten soldiers with ye. Brodie brought a hundred,” she pointed out.

  “Oh, aye, well, that may ha’e been a problem,” he agreed with what sounded like a frown in his voice. He fell silent briefly as Dwyn continued tugging at the cord at his wrists, and then said, “Might I ask? Why is Laird Brodie so determined to marry ye?”

  Dwyn smiled faintly. Why, indeed, she thought grimly, but said, “He wants me family home and its property. We border Brodie, ye see, and if he can force me to marry him, he plans to join the two properties and make it all Brodie . . . with him as laird, o’ course.”

  “Oh, I see,” he said with an “aha” sound to his voice. “Aye, it makes much more sense now.”

  Dwyn stopped working briefly, quite sure she’d just been insulted. Although she doubted the man even realized he’d just insinuated that Brodie’s desire to marry her couldn’t possibly have been just for her person, whereas greed made more sense. Shaking her head, she went back to work.

  “Well, I shall have to explain to him that God frowns on greed,” Father Machar said now. “Perhaps I could even read him a passage from the Bible on it. Luke 12:15 would be good.” His voice dropped to a theatrical boom, and he quoted, “Then he said to them, ‘Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in an abundance of his possessions.’ Or,” he said, sounding excited, “perhaps Corinthians 6:10. ‘Nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.’” He barely finished that before he was exclaiming, “Oh! Or I could quote—”

  “Father?” Dwyn interrupted gently.

  “Aye, lass?” Father Machar asked.

  “Ye may want to no’ lecture or quote to Laird Brodie. I fear the man is quite mad and like to hurt ye if ye do,” she pointed out.

  “Oh, nay. Surely not?” he said, the excitement replaced with concern. “Greed may seem like madness, but—”

  “He’s tied up a priest,” Dwyn pointed out dryly. “And he’s kidnapped and tied me up as well, and that besides wounding me husband terribly and trying to rape me to force me to marry him ere I came to Buchanan. And the man talks to—”

  “Rape? Really?” Father Machar interrupted.

  Dwyn couldn’t tell if it was titillation she was hearing in his voice, or not. Telling herself of course it wasn’t, she said, “Aye. Fortunately, me dogs attacked him and drove him off.”

  “Ah,” he said wisely, and then suggested, “Have ye considered that was God’s vengeance? Punishment for his evil ways?”

  “I somehow do no’ think God would make me dogs bite off the end o’ a man’s pillicock, Father,” she said dryly.

  “Oh, dear,” he muttered with dismay. “Nay, I canno’ see him doing that either.” He fell silent briefly, and then in an obvious attempt to turn the subject said with feigned cheer, “So ye’re married to Geordie Buchanan?”

  “Aye, Father,” Dwyn murmured, tugging a bit of cord through another and hoping she was moving it the right way and wasn’t simply knotting him up more.

  “The Buchanans are fine men,” Father Machar assured her. “Good warriors too.”

  “Their sister, Saidh, is lovely as well,” Dwyn pointed out, a little annoyed on the woman’s behalf that she hadn’t been included.

  “Oh?” he asked with interest. “And yet Father MacKenna found her most trying.”

  “Who is Father MacKenna?” Dwyn asked.

  “Father Archibald’s predecessor,” he explained. “He was the Buchanan priest for years.”

  “Oh.” She tugged on another cord, but when it didn’t budge at all, moved on to test the next.

  “Aye, and Father MacKenna said Saidh could no’ simply accept his teachings, but had to question everything,” Father Machar explained as if that were the worst thing in the world a woman could do.

  “Is asking questions no’ how we learn?” Dwyn asked distractedly.

  “Oh, aye, and ’tis even encouraged so long as ye’re no’ questioning the church.”

  “I see,” she said dryly. “What happened to Father MacKenna?”

  “Well, it would seem he met with foul play some years ago. He just disappeared quite suddenly,” Father Machar told her with a shudder that suggested he was imagining something of that ilk happening to himself.

  Considering he was tied up at present and at the mercy of a madman, Dwyn thought that imagining it wasn’t really necessary and the shudder was justified. To distract him, she asked, “Is it possible that was God’s judgment on Father MacKenna for speaking so unkindly o’ a good, kind woman like Saidh?”

  “Oh, nay,” he said at once, but then asked with interest, “Do ye think so? He always was rather unkind to me. Perhaps he was being punished for that instead.”

  Dwyn blinked at the suggestion, and then stiffened when Brodie pushed through the tent flap.

  “I’ve found the solution,” the big man announced with satisfaction as he straightened inside the tent.

  Dwyn eyed him warily, but said nothing, afraid it would simply draw his attention to the fact that their gags were off. Something he didn’t appear to have noticed yet.

  It was Father Machar who asked pleasantly, “Oh? And what is that?”

  “Oh, I canno’ be telling you that, Father. Ye’d be scandalized,” Brodie announced, and then ordered, “Close yer ears and do no’ listen.”

  Dwyn glanced over her shoulder at Father Machar, wondering how Brodie expected him to do that. She suspected the priest was wondering the same thing, but after a moment he turned his head away from Brodie, giving him the back of his head so that the priest now stared at the tent wall beside them.

  Much to her amazement, Brodie grunted with approval at that and then turned his gaze to Dwyn and proceeded as if he thought Father Machar really couldn’t hear him. “I’m going to kill Geordie Buchanan.”

  Dwyn’s head jerked back slightly, but she kept her voice calm when she said, “The Buchanans would hunt ye to hell and back.”

  “Only if they ken I killed him,” he responded with amusement.

  “They would ken,” she said firmly.

  “But could they prove it?” Brodie asked silkily. “If his death looks an accident, they may suspect, but Aulay Buchanan is known to be a fair man. If he has no proof, he’ll no’ act against me.”

  Dwyn frowned, very much afraid he was right. She’d seen that fairness in regard to Lady Catriona and Lady Sasha. He and Geordie had suspected they were behind the attacks, but hadn’t sent them away until they needed the rooms because there was no proof. Mind you, it turned out Aulay had been right to do that. The attacks hadn’t been by the two ladies at all, but by Katie. Dwyn still found that rather dismaying news. She’d smiled and chatted with the maid, never knowing how close she stood to a killer and someone who meant her so much harm.

  “Me plan is really very clever,” Brodie announced, drawing her attention back to him. “I’ll send three men separately to Buchanan. One will stay in the
woods by the loch Geordie seems to enjoy so much, awaiting an opportunity to drown him and make it appear accidental. Another will camp in the woods on the edge o’ the village, and watch for an opportunity to knock him from his horse should he come or go. He’ll then make it appear he was thrown from his horse and broke his neck. And the last man will offer his services as a soldier and move right into Buchanan. If they take him on, which I’m sure they will since I’ve no doubt their men are so stretched right now with their search fer you they could use more help, he can await any possibility to kill him there—breaking his neck and throwing him down the stairs when no one is about so it looks accidental, bumping into him in the training field so he is skewered on his opponent’s sword while practicing with the men, a fire in the stables while he is in there.” He beamed. “The possibilities are endless.”

  Brodie turned suddenly as if listening to someone, and then frowned and nodded. Starting to pace the length of the tent, he said, “Aye. O’ course ye’re right. Finding an opportunity to cause a death that might look accidental could take a while, and we canno’ live out here in a tent forever.”

  She felt Father Machar move behind her and glanced over her shoulder to see that he was staring at Brodie with confusion.

  “Aye, dove, again ye’re right. It very well might be better to poison the food at Buchanan, or the water, with something that could appear to be the result o’ bad meat, or something o’ that ilk. But what?” he asked, and then scowled irritably. “What do ye mean ye do no’ ken? Why suggest it if ye’ve no idea what to use to do it?”

  “Who is he talking to?” Father Machar whispered with bewilderment.

  “I think his dead wife,” Dwyn whispered back. That was what she’d concluded the last time he’d started talking to someone who wasn’t there. It was while he’d been trying to rape her. Apparently, his wife had been giving him pointers, or urging him on anyway. It was the only reason he hadn’t managed the task before her dogs had got to them and attacked. He’d stopped briefly to shout at the empty sky overhead, telling someone that she’d always been a bloody nag, which was why he’d never managed to plant a bairn in her belly. He’d then bellowed out that if she’d been more pleasant to be around, he never would have choked her to death. He’d started foaming at the mouth at that point too. The man was mad.