The Seduction of Miss Amelia Bell

by Paula Quinn

“I prefer no’ to war with the MacGregors or the Grants, so if m’ niece is freed, we will take our leave withoot further quarrel.”

  “Not likely,” Luke said aloud what the rest were thinking. “He gets her back and then he tries to kill us.”

  “I don’t want to give her back.” Edmund’s confession drew their gazes. “But I can’t ask any of ye to sacrifice yourselves when our cause is just about lost. We’ve run out of time, lads. I fear if we don’t give her up, he’ll bring a battle here. I don’t want to risk her life.”

  “We’ll figure something oot, Edmund,” Malcolm told him. “We’ll take her to Camlochlin.”

  She wouldn’t want to go. Edmund didn’t tell them about Amelia’s choice. He should honor it, but how could he? It was like watching someone walk toward a cliff, someone he loved. Should he remain quiet and let her sacrifice her life, or shout for her to go the other way?

  Edmund looked at Luke. “’Tis not just her, Sarah will not let her go alone.”

  Luke cast him a baffled grin. “Why d’ye remind me as if I might actually be considering lowering that bridge and letting either of them out of our sights? We haven’t gotten what we wanted and at this point, even if we do, I still don’t want to send Sarah back.”

  “’Tis settled then.” Malcolm crumpled the note and threw it over the wall. “We’re hunkerin’ doun, lads.”

  Edmund nodded. He would speak to Amelia about her choice later. “We need to get the women up here, Chester and the other servants, as well. Disguised, the duke will believe them to be our soldiers. After they are seen, we can set them to safety again inside. Let’s bring up all our weapons from the courtyard and keep them at the ready. I’m going to need to bring Amelia to the edge. Hold a blade to her throat, put a pistol to her head. Whatever needs to be done to make the duke believe we’ll kill her.”

  Malcolm agreed it was a good plan and returned to his position. Luke moved a bit more slowly, eyeing Edmund from beneath the wreath of his dark lashes.

  “Ye think the duke will believe our wee performance?”

  “Why wouldn’t he? He doesn’t know any of us or what we’re capable of.” Edmund knew he had to make the duke believe it if they planned on getting out of Ravenglade alive.

  “I’ll get her,” he said, turning to go. “I’ll speak to her…to all of them before I bring them up. Aye?”

  Lucan nodded and pounded his upper arm. “Aye.”

  As Edmund left the battlements, he thought about what his life would have been like without these men in it. Without his kin. He loved them and he missed the ones he’d left behind. His brother, who hadn’t given up the skill of swordplay, but preferred perfecting the art of being indefinable and obscure, and discovering everyone’s secrets. Nichola, his wee sister—well, not so wee anymore, he thought, reaching the second landing and heading down to the kitchen. At ten and seven she was blossoming into a beautiful woman and he should be home seeing to her well-being.

  He stopped outside the kitchen, where the smell of burning pitch stung his nostrils, and thought of his father. Edmund missed practicing with him behind their manor house early in the morn, before the rest of Camlochlin woke. Like Malcolm’s parents, Edmund’s had chosen not to live inside the castle, preferring the intimacy of quiet mornings and warm, cozy nights over drafty halls and boisterous breakfasts. Not that they didn’t spend time inside the cavernous fortress; Edmund and his cousins played in every chamber, explored every cave, while their clan came together and shared laughter and whisky.

  He wanted to see everyone again. He wanted to make it out of this alive and go home. And he wanted to bring her with him.

  He watched Amelia step out of the kitchen. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. From the moment he first laid eyes on her, he didn’t ever want to stop looking. He wondered if his father felt the same when he saw his mother.

  Seeing him, she waved and made her way toward him.

  Here it was, all that he wanted in life. He loved Scotland and everything it had given him, but he didn’t want to die for it anymore. He wanted to live, and share it all with Amelia.

  He took her hands when she reached him and pulled her closer. “Stay with me, lass. Make a life with me. Be the mother of my bairns. I’ll give ye everything I have. I’ll do everything in my power to make ye happy. I’ll build ye yer own private garden.”

  She stared at him, her huge eyes growing even rounder, searching his. “Edmund, do ye know what ye mean to me? Do ye know that I love ye?”

  “Aye, I do.”

  “But my father—”

  “Is responsible fer his own life, Amelia. D’ye think he would want ye to be unhappy with a man who marries ye fer his own gain? If yer father loves ye, and I know he does, he wants ye to be happy with a man who would give his life fer ye.”

  When she seemed to be pondering it and said nothing else, he told her about the duke’s letter and explained that they needed to convince him that they were sincere in their convictions. At least until Darach returned with reinforcements.

  “Trust me, love.”

  When she nodded, doing as he asked without further question or quarrel, he wanted to carry her to bed and thank her properly, but that too would have to wait. “From the moment ye first looked at me,” he told her instead, “I knew my heart was lost.”

  “As did I,” she whispered back, swiping away a tear.

  Edmund smiled and kissed her, then set about to his task.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  My lords!” Edmund shouted from the lowest parapet around the gatehouse an hour later, when their time, according to Queensberry’s note, was up. “Is this who ye wait fer?” Staying behind her, he shoved Amelia forward to present her to the men fifty feet below.

  Amelia looked down. She saw her uncle and fought a wave of guilt and regret. What would he tell…her father? She saw John Bell standing off alone, to the right of the men. She should have known he would come. When she found him, pale and gaunt amid the others, she wanted to weep. Oh, what he must have gone through, worrying about her while she was happily falling in love. She felt heavy with guilt, burdened with sorrow over him. She had to speak to him. She had to let him know she was unharmed.

  “Nae, it cannot be her,” Edmund continued behind her. “Fer my first note to ye clearly stated that should the union take place, Miss Bell would die. Perhaps ye thought me insincere.”

  He drew the dull edge of his dagger against her throat. From below, her father shouted, a woman screamed.

  “My mother?” Amelia’s voice broke softly over the sudden silence. She found her below, saddled on a horse beside Walter’s. What the hell was Millicent Bell doing here?

  Amelia closed her eyes and leaned her head on Edmund, behind her. Her mother had come to see with her own eyes what trouble her daughter had gotten herself into this time so she could never let Amelia forget it. She’d let herself get kidnapped and held for ransom, putting everyone in danger. She was a fool, her mother would tell her. A shame to their family.

  “Edmund, I…” She turned to tell him she couldn’t do this. She couldn’t let her father believe she was in so much danger, ready to be killed.

  Her ankle twisted. She lost her balance and tumbled backward over the short wall. Edmund grasped her hand in time so that she didn’t fall to her death.

  She wished she had. Better death than tumbling headfirst, toes pointed heavenward, skirts over her waist, and her hand clasped to Edmund’s between her bare knees…

  Her misfortune had returned.

  Only this time she realized how much worse it was when an arrow cut the air and landed like with a sickening thud into Edmund.

  He’d held on to her. He hadn’t let her go even when the arrow pierced his shoulder. She wept while she tended to his wound. What were these men doing? How could they be so foolish as to believe they could get out of this alive? How was she going to leave him? She had to, for his sake and her father’s. Dear God, her father was here! What would happen when Darach ret
urned with more men? What if her father was killed? What if Edmund was killed? She had to stop it.

  “’Tis just a flesh wound, love. A scratch.” He took her shaky hand and kissed it. “’Twas good fortune that I caught ye and good fortune that yer father’s arrow barely hit me.”

  Dear God, it was her father’s arrow. She still couldn’t believe it. She didn’t know her father could even fire an arrow. “The sight of ye holding that dagger to my neck must have been too much fer him. I’m sorry he shot ye. He isn’t usually—” She wiped her eyes but it was no use. “If ye would have dropped me, the duke and my mother would have blamed him and…” She couldn’t think of it. “And my mother…she is here to make certain I’m returned and bring no shame to her.”

  “Why do ye care what yer mother thinks, Amelia?” Sarah stood by the doorway, arms folded across her chest, watching her friend. “She is and has always been a wretched human bein’. Ye are nae longer her responsibility. Ye’re a grown woman who has been sharin’ the bed of a Highlander and—”

  “Sarah, please,” Amelia groaned, finishing up her work on Edmund and bandaging him up.

  “What, fer goodness sake?” Her friend stopped and came forward. “Ye could be carrying his babe. Ye could—”

  “Ye don’t think I know that?” Amelia ignored Edmund when he turned to smile at her. “How selfish of us to bring a babe into this.”

  “Nae, Amelia,” Edmund said firmly, rising to his feet and turning to take her in his arms. “Don’t think that way. A babe between us will be a blessing, safe and sound and happy in Camlochlin.” He kissed her and smiled against her mouth. “I need to get back to the battlements and show yer uncle that I’m not harmed. We will speak of this some more later, aye?”

  She nodded, not really wanting to speak of anything at all anymore. She wasn’t going back to Camlochlin with him and oh how it shattered her wretched heart. She wanted a life with him more than anything. But too much was at stake. Even if her father wasn’t involved, her uncle would never let Edmund take her. If she was with child…Oh, saints help her, if she was with child hell would rain down on Queensberry House.

  “Sarah,” she told her friend after he left. “When I think of never seeing him again, never hearing him speak my name again, it makes my heart, nae, my soul, feel like ’tis dying.”

  “Ye don’t have to leave him, dearest,” her friend said gently. “Ye can have the life ye want. The life ye’ve always dreamed about. We can stay together, too, Amelia.” Sarah took her hands. “I want to go to Skye with Luke…with ye.”

  Amelia closed her eyes. “My uncle will never let him live. Does no one understand that?”

  “Amelia…”

  But Amelia held up her palm when Sarah would have interrupted her. “I likened him to David. I flirted with him and let him captivate me, despite being promised to another. And now I’ve let myself fall in love with him and others will suffer fer it.”

  “Ye cannot live yer life fer yer father,” Sarah insisted. “He wants ye to be happy and ye’re happy with Edmund.”

  She couldn’t tell Sarah her plans. Her friend would try to stop her. “I am,” she agreed instead. And she was. She was happier than she had ever been before in her life. “But I hate that my mother thinks me a fool. I hate that after everything else, I almost fell to my death in front of her.”

  “Yer mother is a miserable hag who would likely benefit from a stiff cock up her—”

  “Sarah!”

  “Well, ’tis the truth.”

  “Not one that I wish to hear!”

  “All right then.” Sarah smiled and moved in to kiss her cheek. “I’m going to change into men’s clothing and then I’m going to the battlements. Ye’re to remain here.”

  “Nae.” Amelia stood up. “I’m perfectly capable of going up there and not falling.”

  Sarah passed her a doubtful look.

  “We need it to appear as if we have more numbers than we do,” Amelia reminded her. “Every head is important. I’m coming.”

  But Sarah wouldn’t let her have her way. “I love ye, gel, and I’m not goin’ to watch ye tumble over a wall twice as high as the one ye nearly fell from the first time. I know how ye get when yer mother is about. Ye’re stayin’ here. Ye’re going to stay here and decide once and fer all which path ye will choose fer yer life. A path with Edmund and happiness, and at the rate ye both frolic in bed, a dozen bairns.” She smiled when Amelia blushed to her roots. “Or a life with the chancellor, who is verra’ much like yer mother when it comes to the less privileged. Not to mention that dead woman ye told me about. He will likely beat ye and make ye do all sorts of perverse sexual things. We will lose each other. More important, ye will lose yer happiness and everything else ye hold dear.”

  Her words brought tears to Amelia’s eyes. She wiped them, opened her mouth, and then shut it again. Sarah was right. She would lose it all if she left Edmund. But she would lose much if she remained with him. She would lose her father and if her uncle attacked, she would likely lose Edmund. She had to find a way to return to her father and put an end to any further fighting.

  She looked down and sniffed at Grendel at her feet. She sank to the floor next to him and closed her arms around his neck. “What I am to do, dear friend? I love yer father, but I love mine, too.” She sighed and kissed his scruffy cheek. “Ye’ll help me, won’t ye?”

  He lapped her face once and then resumed his panting.

  “Ugh!” She wiped her face and stared at his disinterested profile while he kept his eyes on the door.

  “Go to him then.” She stood up and fell back into the settee. “And kiss him fer me.”

  She buried her face in Grendel’s fur and wept when he returned to her and leaped onto the settee and into her lap.

  Darach’s good fortune put him in an especially pleasant mood on his way back to Ravenglade just a pair of hours after he’d left it. That had to be why he hadn’t choked the breath out of Janet Buchanan yet. He had met up with William and his sister on their way to Ravenglade in answer to Edward’s invitation yesterday. When Darach explained that the Duke of Queensberry and his entire garrison had arrived to take the castle and claim it back for the throne, William agreed to follow him back.

  “Nae, wait fer me here,” Darach had told him. “I’ll return in a day or two with plenty of men at my back.”

  “Yer kin could be dead by then,” William argued. “We’ll go now. I’ll send my most trusted men to gather the other clans.”

  That was when he told Darach about the tunnels. Hell, there were tunnels! The Buchanans had started digging them shortly after Darach’s grandparents left Ravenglade. They’d had a damned long time to dig!

  “That’s how we got inside the other night,” William had admitted. “The bridge was left down but we would be foolish to walk through the front doors of our enemy.”

  Bastard was right, and clever too. Tunnels! They could all fight about it later. Right now he had a way to get his cousins out without discovery. He wanted to shout with thankfulness. He loved a good fight as much as any other Highlander. But four against two hundred was hopeless, even for Grants and MacGregors. And William was correct. While Darach was out recruiting aid, his kin could die.

  He was going to get them all out alive. It would have been one of the most perfect days of his life if Janet hadn’t insisted on coming with them. He wasn’t unsure if she could take care of herself if they came across a stray solider or two when they got closer to the castle. He’d seen her quick reflexes. He might have enjoyed her company, since her smile lingered in his thoughts when he woke up this morn. But so far, she had done nothing but argue with her brother and admonish him for telling Darach their grand secret.

  “So yer plan,” she asked William now, “is to get the rest of them out and then return fer our men and attack from behind?”

  “That’s correct, Janet,” her brother drawled, beseeching the heavens. “I’ve already explained it. The duke’s men will not be expec
ting any opposition from behind them.”

  “Hmmm, aye, I remember ye mentioning that already. What I’m still unclear about is why?” She shouted the last word and finally managed to anger Darach.

  “Now that ye got that oot of yer system, can we have a moment or two of peace from yer viperous tongue?”

  Janet narrowed her eyes on him and forced a tight smile. “I’ll be silent. But first I want to know why we don’t just let them kill ye all. Ravenglade would be ours.”

  “Aye, right after ye took down the army a hundred feet away.”

  “Why should we fight fer ye?” she asked him hotly. “If we are to be nothing but servants to the Grants, why the hell should we fight fer Ravenglade?”

  “Fer the last time, ye willna’ be servants.” Darach shot her a dark look, then remembered why he was at this task in the first place. It may have been Edmund whose passion for it gave life to their cause, but Darach believed in it, too.

  “Ravenglade is only the first thing they will take. The duke and the men with him wish to sell us all fer a price. And though noblemen like Queensberry and the chancellor will be collectin’ the gold, ’tis us who will truly have to pay. Our country is aboot to be taken over by the English. They’ll make decisions aboot our taxes, our duties and responsibilities to the throne, which will never likely see another Scottish king. Our land will be taken from us, especially if we own anything of value on it.”

  “We’re with ye, Grant,” William promised and cast his sister a chastising look. “They’ll be no more talk of it.”

  Janet’s cool glance caught Darach’s, and damn him if it didn’t make him smile. She was saucy, and he did like his lasses saucy. She wasn’t the first lass he’d desired, but she was the first lass he wanted to bed and toss over the nearest cliff.

  “What d’ye care about the laws here anyway? ’Tis not like yer kin obey them.”

  He could have ignored her—pretended he didn’t hear her. She had mumbled her retort, after all. “What laws d’ye mean?” he asked, turning to look at her. “The ones that prohibit the name of a clan from bein’ used or spoken? The ones that ferbid my kin from fightin’ back, even if they are innocent?”