Protected by the Scotsman (Stern Scotsmen Book 2)

by Katie Douglas

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Additional Books in the Stern Scotsmen Series

  More Stormy Night Books by Katie Douglas

  Katie Douglas Links

  Protected by the Scotsman

  By

  Katie Douglas

  Copyright © 2018 by Stormy Night Publications and Katie Douglas

  Copyright © 2018 by Stormy Night Publications and Katie Douglas

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Stormy Night Publications and Design, LLC.

  www.StormyNightPublications.com

  Douglas, Katie

  Protected by the Scotsman

  Cover Design by Korey Mae Johnson

  Images by Novel Expression and Dreamstime/Sergeychernov

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults.

  Chapter One

  Alexandria, Egypt, 1924

  Bobbie Huntingdon-Smythe had never been the sort of girl to sit at home unless she had a good book. And the only definition of a good book, as far as she was concerned, was a historical book. Actually, she preferred antiquarian writings, about ancient temples and tombs, but there weren’t enough books to go around, and she had the nagging feeling sometimes that she knew more than the authors did. After all, most of them tended to be boring middle-aged Englishmen who saw the world in a very specific way and never deviated from that viewpoint. There was some fascinating work coming out of Africa, however, and Bobbie was more than capable of conducting her own investigations while she waited for the academics to decide whether the Beaker People really did need to be defined by their tableware or not.

  While Bobbie’s enquiring mind was embroiled in a lively French history of the land to the east of Siam, on the other side of India, the rest of her was sitting in Egypt, in a rickety compartment on a train headed as far south as she could get, before she would have to decide what sort of beast of burden to buy from what sort of man, in order to get across the desert and into the location of a mysterious ancient Egyptian burial site.

  The worst thing about Egypt in the late spring was the blasted heat. There never seemed to be a breeze, even in a train that had to be traveling at over forty miles per hour. Bobbie had messed around with the windows until she was blue in the face but the air entering from outside was sweltering. Three seasons Bobbie had spent in Egypt, returning home for long enough to ensure her parents didn’t try to visit in the South of France, where she was supposed to be living the life of the idle rich with those amongst her old chums from school who were still unmarried. Given that most of the eligible men had caught it during the Great War, that was most of the girls she knew.

  The carriage door slid open, and Bobbie looked up from her book, ready to tell the lecherous conductor she had already shown him her ticket and was probably the only Englishwoman on the train, so perhaps he could stop asking her, but instead of the fat middle-aged man from Cairo, an unfamiliar fellow in a white linen suit looked through the door. He was tall, and looked like he was packing some serious muscle beneath the suit.

  “May I help you?” Bobbie asked, with an edge of ice to her voice that she always employed when strange men decided she was worth staring at.

  “Bobbie Huntingdon-Smythe?” the man asked. Bobbie closed her book with a snap and frowned. To her surprise, his voice was Scottish, but the sort of refined Scot, with the softer vowels, which implied he was well educated. She might be able to pinpoint his origin further if he said more.

  “If you’re a reporter looking to tag along on my next outing, nothing doing,” she told him firmly. It wouldn’t be the first time some hapless newspaper hack had tried to keep up with her. They meant well, but in the end they were always a liability and she had enough trouble keeping herself safe, never mind anyone else. Every trip to Egypt, one of her local assistants would meet an untimely demise. She barely kept track of their names these days. Always, she warned them not to touch the toxic paint, not to steal the canopic jars, but did they listen? Regrettably not.

  “Not a reporter, no. Is it safe to assume you are Miss Huntingdon-Smythe?” He was from Edinburgh. The accent was obvious; softer than Glasgow and clearer than anywhere further north.

  “I am,” she replied reluctantly. “Who are you, aside from a very forward man barging into my private compartment with neither an introduction nor a by-your-leave?” As always when she felt put out, Bobbie fell back on the scathing sarcasm that often caused people to compare her to the stern headmistress of her girls’ school.

  “Sean McClintock,” he replied, touching his hat. It was a cheap one. Bobbie folded her arms and glared at him over the top of her glasses, waiting for an explanation. He stepped into the compartment completely and closed the door behind him. “I’m here to take you home. Your parents are worried.”

  She dropped her book in surprise, and her mouth fell open. There was a second when she froze, but then she rallied magnificently, for she was the sort of girl who pulled herself together in a jiffy, then she threw back her head and laughed.

  “I’m completely serious, young lass. Your father asked me to bring you home, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” It was utterly preposterous.

  “You’re Scottish,” was all she could think of to say.

  “Aye. Your father was in the Boer with my father, and they’re army pals. Captain Innis McClintock was my old dad.”

  Bobbie vaguely remembered a Captain McClintock visiting for dinner parties occasionally when she was younger. And this chap radiated sincerity. With a lurching stomach, she realized he was almost certainly expecting to cart her home.

  “Well, isn’t it a rather small world?” she said brightly. “All right, we’ll get off at the next stop, and hop back home to Blighty.”

  “What’s the next stop?”

  “Cairo. It’s in about two days.” She suppressed a giggle as he groaned. “Come now, how long have you been tagging after me? Another two days isn’t going to kill you.”

  “If I didn’t ken better I’d suspect you planned this,” he muttered.

  “And if I didn’t know better, I’d suspect you were one of the Boat Race crowd, playing a jape on me.” She raised an eyebrow sternly, inwardly hoping this was just a practical joke.

  “Boat Race crowd?”

  “You know, the chaps who only seem to pop up on the day of the annual Oxford and Cambridge boat race, but then, suddenly, they’re everywhere, and playing such raucous jests as stealing policeman’s helmets and selling stock options in Prussia.” She remembered one young man in particular, Henry, who had been captivating. When he’d asked her to marry him, she’d accepted on the spot. But then he’d revealed it was all just a practical joke. Well, anyway, she’d been a good sport about it and moved on. It wouldn’t do any good to make a fuss.

  “Look here, you know this is no place for an unescorted young lady,” Sean said gently.

  Bobbie glared at him, then tutted.

  “You should be at home with your family, perhaps even thinking about your future prospects.” Whether he meant well or not, Bobbie felt patronized, which made her l
ose her patience.

  “How very dare you.” She jumped to her feet and began berating him with the history book. Instead of flinching and retreating like most men, he grabbed her around the waist and held her at arms’ length. And his arms were longer than hers. Her grip on the book slipped and she cursed at him in French, Latin, and Greek.

  “My mother was not a lady of loose morals, and I’ll ask you to kindly refrain from saying it again,” he told her firmly. “Now, will you stop attacking me or do I need to spank you?”

  “I’m not a child,” she retorted petulantly.

  “Then stop acting like one.”

  “You started it,” Bobbie snapped. Perhaps she wasn’t feeling as sporting about the whole thing as she could have been. Her future prospects were rather a sore spot though, since there was a continental shortage of suitable men across the entire upper class. The ones left were almost all lacking a sense of adventure; many of them hadn’t even gone to war.

  By contrast, Bobbie had tried to sign up to join the army at one point. Cutting her hair short, she had dressed as a boy and put on a deep voice. It hadn’t convinced the dour matron in charge of the medical exams for new recruits, and Bobbie was sent packing pretty sharpish. Any man hoping to take her on would have to be at least as adventurous as she was, or they would never keep up with her, which reduced the pool to precisely nobody.

  “I bet you claimed to be an invalid to get out of signing up!” she accused.

  His gaze darkened and she knew she’d hit a nerve. “When you assume, you make an ass out of yourself,” he said coldly. “I went to war. I came back. Some men did, you know.”

  She glared at the man who thought he could take her home to wait for a husband. The whole time, she was still trying to break loose from his vice-like grip. She tried to stamp on his foot for good measure.

  “That does it.” He easily manhandled her to one of the compartment’s seats, and then he turned her over his knee and flipped her skirt back. Immediately, she tried to wriggle free. She knew he’d found something unexpected when he sighed.

  “A gun? Really? Young lass, these are not toys,” he lectured her. For some reason, his voice seemed to reach inside her and do strange things to her organs. A fluttering began in her stomach that had nothing to do with being on a train.

  “Have you seen where we are? We’re in Egypt. I had to make it through Italy to even get here. Do you know how Italian men behave when they meet an unaccompanied woman? It’s my lookout if I want a bit of extra protection. Anyway, I’m twenty-four. So desist in calling me young.” She stopped wriggling because it got in the way of thinking through how to get out of this awkward situation.

  “You’ve got me. You don’t need any other protection,” he replied.

  She snorted in derision. “Fat lot of good you’ll be if you balk at the sight of a revolver.” In her whole life, she didn’t think she’d ever met anyone so cocky but so completely ill-equipped to follow through.

  He slipped the gun from her garter and placed it on the small table near the window.

  “This is a pea-shooter compared to the guns I’m used to. But you could still hurt someone with that thing.” His voice was so condescending that she wanted to tip cod liver oil on his head.

  “That’s rather the point,” she retorted. Perhaps if she brought her elbow down between his legs… but when she tried to move, her arm jammed into his thigh instead, and then he firmly grasped her wrists and pinned them to the small of her back.

  “You know, you really are something, lass.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” she challenged, then abruptly stopped trying to argue as he peeled her skirt back farther, revealing her underwear.

  “I’m going to redden your bottom, then I hope you’ll be more compliant from now on.” His voice had a hint of weariness in it. Bobbie wasn’t sure how he was fed up of her already, but apparently that was the case. It wasn’t like she’d asked him to follow her to Egypt and ‘protect’ her from anything.

  His fingers moved down the waistband of her combinations and she widened her eyes as he slid them down, baring her bottom. Anyone looking into the train compartment could see her exposed skin, and she flushed furiously.

  “How dare you?” she protested. “I mean, giving a girl what-for is one thing, but doing it on the bare is completely uncalled for!”

  “Quiet. You don’t get to choose what happens here. I decide how this happens, and I want to see your lovely skin turn pink as I teach you how to behave.” His voice didn’t help matters, and Bobbie felt a spark of excitement run through her, even as she wanted him to stop.

  “This is undignified,” she grumbled.

  “That’s rather the point. Perhaps you’ll think twice about how to behave next time,” Sean growled.

  Bobbie sighed. If only do-gooders would leave her alone to her pursuits, she wouldn’t be any trouble to anyone. Why he had thought it was worth the effort to come all the way out here only to take her home, she had no idea. Perhaps his father owed her father money. That was the most likely explanation. It had taken her two weeks of travel to get this far around the world; his journey must have been similar.

  Dragging her thoughts back to her current predicament, his hand landed on her bottom much harder than she had expected, and the sound was like a pistol shot at the beginning of a race. She steeled herself, resolved not to show him how much it hurt, but beneath her cool exterior, her left cheek stung like the dickens. He quickly inflicted the same on the right cheek and then set about her at a steady pace, viciously swatting her tail with his broad palm, but Bobbie knew the drill.

  She was an old girl from an exclusive boarding school and her bottom had regularly been endangered for a variety of reasons, all of which seemed fool-proof at the time of concoction. Some girls were always accidentally falling into trouble, but Bobbie was completely incorrigible and had deliberately gotten up to all sorts of mischief with her friends. If she couldn’t remain stoic for a licking, her name wasn’t Bobbie Huntingdon-Smythe.

  A hand was a new experience, however, and the man wielding it was certainly no sap, regardless of his opinion about guns. He seemed to make it last so much longer than a caning ever did, and while, with the cane, the danger of crying out was only usually immediately after the stick had landed, with a hand spanking it was constant. Soon, she was breathing heavily and squeezing her fists tightly to try and deal with the burning, but his hand kept coming.

  “I say,” she began, forcing her voice to sound fine. “I’m sorry I hit you with the book.”

  He paused.

  “And what else?” he asked.

  She thought for a moment, then added, “And for calling your mother the daughter of an unwashed Visigoth.”

  “And what else?” His voice was stirring something inside her, and combined with the pain from the spanking, she was struggling to concentrate.

  She paused. “That’s all, isn’t it?”

  “What about your elbow?”

  “Oh, no, you completely deserved that.” She didn’t even hesitate in making her feelings known.

  He resumed spanking her in a rapid-fire movement that left her gasping for breath and clawing at the floor of the train compartment.

  “All right! All right! I give!”

  “And what else?” he prompted.

  “And… for trying to elbow you in the trousers.” She tried to be earnest but really, she did think he had it coming. After all, he seemed to think he ought to stop her from travelling the world in search of interesting ancient sites, and that simply wasn’t reasonable. Who cared if she was a girl? She could wrangle the past as well as any man. She didn’t need protecting.

  “I’m not convinced you’ve learned your lesson. Stand beside the window and hold your skirt up,” he told her.

  Bobbie stared at him. “Are you serious?”

  “I never joke about such things. You’d do well to remember that. Now do as you’re told.”

  She shook her h
ead adamantly. “I shan’t expose myself for your merriment. I thought you were here to protect me. Nobody else on this train is trying to make me do anything untoward, so if you truly want to keep me safe, leave my compartment before I throw you out!” she retorted hotly.

  “I won’t do anything. Yet. But you’re going to do it,” he told her.

  She shook her head again. “Why would I?”

  “Because I dare you to.” His eyes flashed as he spoke. Bobbie’s face grew hot as she realized she was cornered. He’d got her number good and proper. She pursed her lips so hard that she was quickly making a face like she’d been sucking a lemon. Bobbie trudged to the corner with an air of dejection, then lifted her skirt up.

  “That was jolly unsporting of you, to dare me to do it,” she told him.

  “I had a theory that you were the sort of girl who would do anything for a dare,” he explained. “And it seems that I was right.”

  She looked over her shoulder and narrowed her eyes. “You’re looking,” she accused.

  “I never said I wouldn’t admire the view.” He had a strange expression on his face, and Bobbie almost thought he was amused and trying to hide it, but what on earth was funny about spanking someone and making them stand in a corner like this?

  Her bottom was radiating heat and she felt peevish but somehow she was failing to stay as stoic about this as she might have done. Perhaps if she’d been expecting it… but no one had chastised her bottom since she finished upper sixth and anyway it hadn’t factored into her plans for today to meet someone who had taken it upon himself to be her unwanted bodyguard.

  Bobbie made up her mind on the spot: she was going to have to give him the slip as soon as possible. She began concocting a plan.

  * * *

  The moment the old train arrived in Cairo, Bobbie hopped off and disappeared into the crowd. She knew he would catch up with her soon if she remained in the city, but she had no intention of being a sitting duck. No, she would be the sort of duck who took to water. Hurrying through the narrow, winding streets of Egypt’s capital, Bobbie clutched her carpet bag and wondered who the cheeky Scotsman thought he was, chasing after her all the way here.