by Paula Quinn
“I would speak with ye when ye’re done,” Sarah told her.
Amelia smiled—rather, she appeared to be bubbling over. “I would speak to ye as well.”
Sarah went to the bed and kissed Amelia’s cheek as she had almost every night since they were children. “I will be the one needin’ advice on affairs of the heart this time, sister.”
“Oh, Sarah.” Amelia offered her most tender smile. “What do I know of love?”
Sarah smiled and then shrugged her shoulders on her way out of the room. “Then mayhap we will teach each other.” She stopped at the door and turned to look at her dearest friend once again. “Lord knows ’tis a sentiment sorely lackin’ in our lives. Mayhap ’tis time fer change.”
Chapter Twenty
Darach hadn’t gotten far when his trip to Skye was abruptly ended with the appearance of ten horsemen blocking the road.
Buchanans.
He could take them all, slovenly, unfit bastards that they were. But it would slow him up and he needed to get home and fetch Isobel.
“We have an agreement of peace with yer chief,” he called out. “Let me pass before I kill every last one of ye.”
Someone laughed at his claim, provoking a tight smile to curl Darach’s mouth.
“Some of us dinna’ want peace. We want blood and we want what belongs to us. Ravenglade!”
“Well, lads, I want three women in m’ bed each night and I’d like to help in riddin’ Scotland of Buchanans once and fer all, but we dinna’ all get what we want.”
He dragged his claymore free of its scabbard and readied himself for a fight. None came. Some heinous coward knocked him out and off his horse before he had time to swing.
Hours, or mayhap days, later, Darach cracked his swollen lids open a hair to see where he was. The searing hot pain in his face and his side helped him remember.
Lying prostrate on the ground, he moved, or tried to, and groaned as the pain of his wounds overwhelmed him.
There had to have been more than ten.
His ribs were broken, hard to tell how many. His nose, as well, for he could barely breathe through it. His eyes were nearly swollen shut, but he managed to discern that he was in some kind of barn. The only source of light came through cracks in the doors and walls. It wasn’t much and Darach was grateful. Even with his broken nose, the stench of the barn threatened to overtake him.
To hell with peace. This meant war and Darach meant to see it come about even if he had to bring it himself. He tried to move again, just an inch at a time, toward the wooden doors and fresh air. Pain lanced through every inch of his body and he fought with every ounce of strength he possessed not to pass out.
The doors opened and sunshine spilled inside, momentarily blinding Darach. He was correct about the barn, unfortunately. Flies buzzed everywhere, searching out the dozens of mounds of manure left to decay in the dark. Or was it the carcass of whatever the hell died in here that they were looking for?
Someone stepped inside. Darach tried to sit up and realized that his ankles were secured to the stall. He reached, instead, for the handle of some kind of tool lying in the moldy hay and closed his fingers around it.
“Ah, the poet’s son,” said a male voice from the entrance.
Truly? Darach thought with disgust. After all the fights he’d won and all the Buchanans he’d left bleeding on the road, his distinguishing attribute was being a poet’s son? This was something he was going to have to remedy soon.
“Are ye thirsty?” the voice asked.
“Fer yer blood, aye.”
Laughter. Amused, mocking.
“I’ll tell ye what, Grant. If ye ever gain yer feet again in this lifetime, I’ll throw down my sword and let ye take a swing.”
Darach did his best to focus on the man but all he could make out was a mane of fair hair and a medium build. He coughed and thought he tasted blood.
“Ye have a deal,” Darach promised. “Only dinna’ throw doun yer sword. I wilna’ have it said that I killed an unarmed man. Nae matter what a low-born pile of shyt he may be.”
The man tossed his head back and howled with mirth. “I like yer confidence, despite it being foolish. The thing that will end up killing ye, though, is not yer bravado but that ye care about what others think of ye.” He moved closer to Darach and then crouched above his head. “Mayhap my being a low-born pile of shyt,” he said softly while he pulled the weapon from Darach’s hand, “is the reason I don’t care about crushing yer skull when ye cannot even fight back.”
“Or mayhap ye never want to see me fight back.” Darach forced his eyes open as wide as he could. If it was his time to die, he’d wouldn’t do it with his eyes closed.
The man laughed. “I dinna’ want to kill ye. Scotland is going to need young, fearless warriors like ye when we become subjugated to England.”
Darach rubbed his head. “What d’ye know of the union?”
“Enough to know that we’re all goin’ to lose a lot more than castles we believe, rightly so or not, are ours. I’ve spoken with yer kin Edmund MacGregor at length about our troubles. We both believe the fighting between clans is silly and needs to end.”
So this was the new chief, William Buchanan. Darach grimaced, since it hurt too much to laugh. “It seems the rest of yer kin dinna’ agree, and after this, neither do I.”
“Shame.” The man moved to a stool and took a seat. “The ones who attacked ye have been dealt with by me. Some were sons of the men killed upon yer return. That’s why they—”
“Those men lay in wait fer us to return. They deserved their deaths.”
“Ye see, Will,” came a voice out of the shadows. So unexpected was it that Darach almost leaped out of his chains. More surprising, it was a woman’s voice. “We shoulda’ just let him die.”
Darach’s eyes were still open, so he managed a decent look at the lass when she stepped into the light. A pale, round cherubic face eclipsed by mounds of tight golden curls that spread out like a blanket around her shoulders. How long had she been hiding there, watching him, before the chief arrived? He didn’t like the fact that she wanted him dead and he was helpless at present to stop her wishes from coming to pass.
“Nonsense,” William told her sternly. “The feuding has to stop, Janet. Killing him would only keep the fighting going. And the next time ye ride out with Kevin and the rest, with trouble on yer mind, ye’ll think again and return to me else I’ll shackle ye to the stalls. I’m chief now and ye’ll obey me. Understood?”
She glared at William first, then Darach, and stormed toward the doors. “I should have killed him when I had the chance.”
William followed her departure with his troubled gaze and then turned back to his prisoner.
“Is she yer wife?”
“My sister. Her betrothed was among those killed at Ravenglade.”
“My cousin…” Darach suddenly remembered Lucan and his reason for riding to Skye. He tried to sit up. “I have to get home. If Luke dies, I vow, I’ll return here and kill all of ye.”
William watched him struggle to rise and then sink back to the floor. “Ye’re in no condition to travel, Grant. I can’t let ye leave until ye’re healed up anyway. Dinna’ want yer cousins coming here to lop off our heads.” He rose to his feet and headed for the doors. “I hope yer cousin lives, but men die in battle. ’Tis why it should end.”
He stepped out into the light and closed the doors behind him, enveloping Darach in darkness once again.
Darach wasted no time. He felt around on the ground behind his head for the weapon. He found it and, grimacing with pain, swept it close to his side. He should have realized before that he didn’t have the strength to swing it over his head. He needed to escape. He needed to recover a bit in order to do that. But he would. And then he was going to kill every last one of them.
He would begin with William.
Amelia squealed with laughter, passed Sarah, and burst into Lucan’s room with Edmund and Grendel hot on her
heels. Once inside, she realized her error in trapping herself within four walls. Her gaze darted about and laughter bubbled up to the surface.
“Ah, she flees to the knight fer aid.” Edmund stopped beneath the doorway, a bit out of breath from the chase she had led him on. Grendel showed less reserve when he broke past his master’s legs and leaped for her.
She squeaked, perking Grendel’s ears, and twirled out of his path to the window.
It took a single, softly spoken command from Edmund to halt the dog’s advance and resume his authority.
“But yer champion is abed, lass.”
His deep, harmonic voice stopped her, too. She turned. Her eyes skittered to Lucan. She smiled when he winked at her and then turned to her pursuer.
“Even if he wasn’t,” Edmund continued, moving slowly toward her. “He wouldn’t stop me from what I mean to do. Would ye, Luke?”
“Nae, brother. I wouldna’ stop ye.”
Amelia cut him a wounded look, knowing it would aid her to tug on Lucan’s principles, but his eyes were already off her and on Sarah, who was entering the room with a stack of towels.
Everything happened so quickly just after Amelia turned her eyes toward her best friend that she knew if she replayed it all over in her mind for the next year, she wouldn’t be able to tell the exact moment when misfortune found where she’d been hiding.
She’d already begun her step backward when Lucan vowed not to aid her. She looked toward Sarah, not for aid, but support, as one lass to another.
“Don’t move, Amelia!”
As fate, horrible witch that she was, would have it, it wasn’t Edmund’s voice, but Sarah’s that issued the command. Had it been Edmund’s, Amelia was certain she would have obeyed.
Her arse hit the window ledge, or what she later found out was Lucan’s bedpan. She knew she’d done something terrible when Sarah covered her mouth as the apparatus fell out the window. She knew it was the bedpan when Malcolm’s voice boomed through the courtyard and everyone in the room, save her and Lucan, ran every which way.
“I’d hide were I ye,” Edmund teased when she asked if he thought Malcolm would be angry with her.
She worried her lip and stepped away from the window, imagining that her victim was looking up and would see her.
“’Twas an accident.” Lucan was a bit more reassuring. “If nothing else, we’ll remind him of that.”
“Amelia.” Edmund came to her and she let him take her in his arms. “Do ye hear all that hollering, love?”
She nodded, feeling terrible for being the cause of something so vile.
“It means he’s alive and the bedpan didn’t kill him. It could have if it hit him at a certain angle. As irritating as he can sometimes be—”
“And that’s often,” Lucan interjected.
“—none of us want to see him dead. I think ye have it all wrong.” He pulled back and looked into her eyes. “I think ye bring fortune to what would have otherwise brought calamity.”
Amelia’s heart welled up with a rush of warmth and worship so strong it nearly choked her. The only way to release it was through her eyes. She smiled through it, letting him know how he affected her. Every day she spent with him made it harder to envision a day without him, so she chose not to.
He didn’t have to speak of his heart to her; she could see it in his eyes when he looked at her and in his smile when he spoke to her. He made her feel silly and sensuous and free to express both. After their first encounter in his bed a few days ago, he hadn’t taken her back, but he wanted to. He told her he did.
He also told her that once he had her, he could keep her if he liked—something about a ridiculous Highland law she’d already forgotten. The true dilemma, though, was that she wanted to be with him. She wanted him to take her, to do this “claiming” he spoke about. But how could he claim her without causing ruin to her father? How could she tell her father that she would rather be the wife of an outlawed Highland patriot than to the chancellor of Scotland? She couldn’t. She couldn’t. Dear God, he would have seizures. Her uncle would likely bring an entire army down on the MacGregors.
Edmund broke away from her when the shouting below moved into the castle. He plucked a small chunk of soap from the table and went to the open door. “Malcolm,” he called down the stairs to his cousin. “’Twas Grendel trying to look out. Apologies, brother.” He tossed him the soap when Malcolm roared his way to the top of the landing. “Go wash in the river. Amelia and I were there a short while ago to clean some garments and I saw Meg Walker just arriving with her sister Mary.”
The ruckus ended with a curt question and a mumbled oath about Grendel being a number of unmentionable things.
Amelia cast the dog a guilty look. He wagged his tail and saved the plaited rug from salvia falling from his jowls by lapping it up.
When he reappeared in the doorway, Edmund held his arms out at his sides. “Lady.” His slow grin tempted her toward utter abandon. “Where is misfortune now?”
She moved toward him and turned briefly to Lucan as she went. “I wouldn’t want ye to stop him.”
Edmund took her hand and kissed it on their way out.
Chapter Twenty-One
The countryside swept past Amelia in a burst of color and the sweet spring fragrances of heather and pine. But she closed her eyes and pressed her cheek to Edmund’s chest, preferring the feel of him while they thundered across the landscape on his stallion. He smelled like this place, with a trace of something else. Something she couldn’t define, like wind across a loch.
“How long would ye have chased me today?”
Her cheek rose and fell with his breath and she fell like one under a spell at the cadence of his husky voice reverberating in her ear.
“As long as it took to catch ye.”
She chuckled and ran her fingers over his corded belly. “My answer would not have changed. I cannot wed ye.”
“It would have changed after I took ye back to my bed.”
She lifted her head off him and poked him in the side.
“Ye’re quite arrogant about yer skills.”
“Nae, but ye would never be disappointed. Still, ’tis not about that. ’Tis because once ye consent to my body, the rest of ye is mine, too, if I so wish it to be. I told ye that.”
She laughed. Honestly, he couldn’t truly have such barbaric notions about marriage and look the way he did, or charm her senseless the way he had from the moment she first opened her eyes on him.
“’Tis all the truth.”
“According to whom?” Her laughter relaxed into a smile. She almost wished it was the truth and Edmund would decide to have her for himself. This fantasy they were living was wonderful indeed, but soon it would all come crashing in.
“According to Highland law.”
She rested her head on him again and closed her eyes to think about it for a moment to make certain she had it right. According to his laws, if she let him make love to her, she might as well be consenting to marriage.
“Then as I told ye this morning before ye gave chase, I shall resist ye until ye return me to Queensberry.”
He turned slowly and eyed her over his shoulder. She did her best not to laugh. “Admirable,” he drawled, surprising her.
He slowed their horse to a halt, slipped out of the saddle, and reached for her. “I want ye, Amelia,” he told her while she slid into his waiting arms, down his hard body. “I want to explore every delectable inch of ye and set yer nerves aflame.” He kissed her face, her mouth, and breathed fire into her, confirming his promise. She went weak in his embrace and victory sparked his eyes like lightning across the night sky. “I want to teach ye how to take me.” He bent her over his arm and pressed his lips to her bosom. “I want to make ye wet and hot and ready with a few strokes of my tongue and the tight head of my desire.” He grazed his teeth down her throat and slipped his hand under her skirts. She was wet and hot already, groaning like a siren at the mastery of his fingers. There was
little left he needed to do to make her ready. “I won’t hurt ye but I intend to make ye scream often.”
The velvet tone of his voice down her spine and the way he petted and played with her made her want to scream now.
“Cease!”
He stopped almost immediately, pulling back his hand and setting her upright. He didn’t look angry, but his eyes seemed to be cut from steel, as did the rest of him, she thought when he stepped away from her and she looked down. “I’m trying my hardest”—he took another step back and held his fingers to his nose and closed his eyes, lost for a moment in her scent—“to continue to give a damn about yer answer.”
She chased him when he walked away. “That isn’t true! I don’t believe fer a moment that ye would take me against my will. Or trick me into belonging to ye. Banns must be read. We would need a priest.”
He shook his head. “Banns are public announcements of a forthcoming wedding at a church. Many priests won’t marry MacGregors as part of the proscription. So there is no church. No mass. When we want to unite, we only need consent. There are no banns and there need not be a priest, but ’tis all very binding.”
“In what era?”
“This one. On Skye.”
“Skye is barbaric then.”
He took her hand and whistled for Grendel and his horse, then led them all toward a grove of giant trees beside a waterfall. Amelia gasped at the beauty and the raw power of it—and of the man beside her, the soft breeze stirring his golden waves around his face.
“Skye is barbaric…” he said, staring at the woodland scene before him, “…and beautiful. I was a wee lad when I first saw it. I thought ’twas the Eden my mother taught me about from the Holy Book. But I knew ’twasn’t. ’Twas too brutal, too inhospitable.” He turned to her and smiled, wrenching her heart from its place. “But I loved it there from the instant I stepped foot off the ferry.”
They sat on a sun-warmed rocky ledge and watched Grendel chase a small animal around a tree stump. They laughed about getting married, both admitting that it was impossible but pleasant to imagine. They were quiet for a bit, enjoying the day, but their words, though she laughed with him at them, weighed heavily on her. She was falling in love with him. She could no longer deny it. She truly wanted the things he jested so easily about. Oh, but her father had done too much to ensure her future—his and her mother’s future.
