A frown was firmly in place as he leaned forward to place the gentlest of kisses on her lips. “Reasonably so … if I am not tested too far.”
Detecting the first true hint of menace in his voice, Catherine proceeded with care to relate the events as they had happened, from Laughlan MacKintosh’s urgent warning, to her confrontation with the prince, to the shock and surprise of Jeffrey Peters’s treachery.
“It did not feel anything like I expected it to feel,” she said, indicating the wound in her arm. “It was more like someone had punched me very hard. But then I felt something warm and wet running down my arm and I knew I had been shot, and … and I guess I fainted.”
She sounded so miserable admitting it, Alex had to refrain from smiling and assuring her it was probably only her delicate condition that prompted such a mortifying lapse in her constitution. No sooner had he finished the thought in his mind, however, when it caused a very real constriction in his gut.
“The baby is fine,” she said quickly, seeing the unnerving shadow flicker in his eyes again. “Lady Anne sent for a doctor at once—and if you think you aged ten years running up the stairs, poor Damien aged fifty carrying me down the mountain. But I am assured that everything is fine. Absolutely fine. And if you do not believe me, here—” She took his hand and held it over the roundness of her belly. “Let your son tell you himself.”
Catherine had been aware of the small, butterfly tremors for several weeks now, and she had been thrilled to the verge of tears when the doctor had explained the cause. She was not sure if Alex could feel it; it was enough just to see the startled, awed look on his face as he tried.
“The doctor also said I was not to exert myself too soon,” she added, sinking back into the nest of cushions. “He said I was lucky the bullet did not do more damage than it did, but it will still be some time before I can move my arm without … without a great deal of pain.”
She looked sincere enough for him to believe she still suffered some discomfort, but far too plaintive for him not to smile. “I have no doubt Archibald will be eager to supervise your recovery. And if it is pampering you want, madam, you will likely have more than you can tolerate at Achnacarry.”
“You want rid of me that badly, do you?”
“I don’t want rid of you at all—God knows to what heights you will aspire the next time I leave you alone for any length of time. But the plain truth of it is, with the prince’s army in Inverness, Cumberland has no choice now but to come after us, and I do not want you anywhere near here when it happens.”
“When it happens, my lord husband,” she said, drawing him forward, “I will leave only too willingly, you may be sure. Until then, however, can we not find some better way to spend our time together other than arguing?”
Her breath was soft and warm against his skin, her tongue sweet and seductive as it flitted between his lips.
“I thought you were in dire pain?” he murmured.
“I am,” she agreed, lifting the edge of the blanket. “But it is not the dire pain in my shoulder that needs tending the most right now.”
Struan MacSorley lingered at the main house only long enough to complete his personal duties and assure himself the Camshroinaich Dubh would not be requiring a bodyguard for the rest of the day and evening.
Back in camp he nodded, smiled, and exchanged greetings and news with those who rushed forward to meet him, all the while searching the crowds and campfires for a familiar shock of bright red hair. As soon as he could break away, he left his pony in the able hands of one of the young gillies and strode purposefully toward the tent he shared with his wife. The ache was urgent and pounding in his loins as he neared the low-slung canvas tent; his need was so great, he could almost taste the sweetness of her flesh on his tongue.
“Wife!” he roared, throwing back the flap of the canvas door. “By the Christ lass, have ye no’ heard—”
He stopped, his grin temporarily held in abayence when he found the tent empty. There were signs she had been there recently—clothes strewn into the corners, a dirty mug beside the bed of crushed leaves and quilts, the tantalizing, musky scent of her skin.
A quick search into the neighboring supply wagon deepened the frown of impatience, and he planted his hands on his hips, scowling up at the brooding silence of the forest.
“A hell O’ a time tae go f’ae a pee,” he muttered under his breath. He paced to the edge of the camp, then back again, stopping when he heard a good-natured jibe behind him.
“Ahhh! Mac-a-Sorley! You look-a like you lose something!”
Struan cursed and turned, laughing heartily when he saw Count Giovanni Fanducci, his peacock-blue tricorn perched askew over the side of his head, being practically dragged under cover of canvas. His clothes were already half undone, his satin breeches were loosened, and the grasping pink hand of Ringle-Eyed Rita was lewdly enticing him to leave go of the tent pole and join her inside.
“You wish-a to make the wager again, Signore Struan? Not how much whisky this-a time, but how much nectar?”
Ringle-Eyed Rita, her name derived from an affliction that sent her eyes rolling in opposite directions whenever she was caught in the throes of ecstasy, saved Struan the necessity of giving an answer. A second hand was thrust out of the door and into the satin breeches and, with a squawk that sounded like it had come from the throat of a dying chicken, the count buckled forward and lost his grip on the wood support.
Struan, his loins tingling anew, set off in a thundering stride toward the edge of the forest. He prowled first along the common paths that led to the stream, then spread the search wider to include several smaller arteries. He was contemplating firing an angry shot or two into the gloomy silence to flush Lauren out from wherever she was tending her private needs when he thought he saw a bold splash of crimson high above on the slope.
“What the devil is she doin’ up there?” he wondered aloud.
Not waiting for ghostly voices to provide any answers, he veered off the path and started climbing, moving stealthily, and still with some degree of good humor, as he envisioned the look on her face when he sprang up out of the bushes.
After a hundred yards or so, he unstrapped the heavy, clanking broadsword from around his waist, leaving it by a tree stump with the two pistols he wore slung on leather thongs around his neck. Fifty yards farther up he tossed his blue wool bonnet onto a juniper bush and divested himself of the thick and cumbersome leather jerkin he wore.
He halted again after a few more minutes of climbing, a slow, dark frown replacing his smile when he realized she was not alone. There was a man with her—an old man to judge by the way he was bent over and leaning heavily against a thick, gnarled stick of oak. They were perhaps another hundred yards away, moving in the opposite direction, and Struan dropped all pretense of gamesmanship as he straightened to his full height and shouted Lauren’s name to catch her attention.
Lauren stopped dead in her tracks, her face blanching white as chalk as she whirled around to locate the source of the shout. Rooted to the spot, she was unable to do more than gape down the hillside at her husband as he commanded her to stand fast while he tramped the rest of the way up through the tangle of junipers and leafless saplings to join her. Beside her, she heard a shuffle of tartan and a distinctive click of metal as Jeffrey Peters cocked the hammer of his steel-butted pistol.
“Dinna be a bluidy fool,” she hissed. “Ye fire that bluidy thing, ye’ll have the whole glen alive an’ up here on the run.”
“Then you had best think of something real quick,” he said with a snarl. “Because it isn’t just my throat he’ll be going after, Mrs. MacSorley—or have you forgotten the part you played in all this?”
Lauren had not forgotten. Nor could she believe the thing she had dreaded most could possibly be about to happen!
After the plan to capture the prince had failed, she had been set to cut her losses and make her way to Inverness before the government troops withdrew. She certainly did
not want to linger about until Struan and the others returned, for as soon as the yellow-haired bitch recovered from her evening of adventure, Alasdair would undoubtedly whisk them all away to Achnacarry as intended. It was a shame sweet Catherine had not died outright; equally unfortunate she had not miscarried and bled to death on the side of the mountain!
Fully convinced it had been the other Sassenach, Damien Ashbrooke, who had accosted her in the woods, Lauren had genuinely been shocked to learn the real culprit’s identity. She had been even more shocked when, the evening after the botched kidnapping attempt, she had found the broken and bleeding Jeffrey Peters waiting for her in the small cave she had painstakingly provisioned for herself when they had first arrived in the glen. How he had managed to crawl down the mountainside, she would never know. He had badly wrenched an ankle in the fall, broken three ribs, and his skin was crusted with blood from so many cuts and contusions, it looked as if he had run through a hail of broken glass.
Faced with the very real possibility he could be caught and forced to talk, Lauren had found herself with two choices. She could kill him herself and be a heroine in the eyes of the men who were scouring the woods and glens hourly. Or she could nurse him back to health and take him at his word when he promised to see her safely back into the hands of Major Garner.
One choice would leave her on her own, forcing her to make her way to Inverness and rely on the goodwill and protection of the Sassenachs to see she came to no harm. The troops in Inverness were under the command of the English, but they were still mainly Highlanders, recruited locally, and she would be in as much danger from their lunatic ideas of loyalty and betrayed honor as she was in Jacobite hands.
The second choice—to trust Peters—involved a greater immediate risk of being seen going back and forth into the forest, but it also gave her time to think, perhaps to arrive at a third possibility where she would win everything and lose nothing. In the end, revenge for past injuries, the forty thousand pounds Garner promised for the Camshroinaich Dubh’s capture, and the gnawing, unresolved insult of the yellow-haired Sassenach’s continued good fortune were convincing reasons to stay, despite the risk.
In two weeks, Peters had already improved remarkably, venturing out on longer walks to build up the strength in his legs, wandering farther and farther from the sight of the concealed cave, yet never anywhere near the normal traffic areas frequented by the men and women in the camp. MacSorley must have stalked the woods like a panther for neither one of them to notice until he was practically on top of them! But, by God, she was not about to fall apart now. Not after everything she had been through!
All of this passed through her mind in a split second. With Peters beside her, his finger tightening ominously on the trigger of his gun, she threw off her tartan shawl and started running down the slope.
“Struan!” She shrieked happily. “Struan, is it really you!”
“In the flesh, lass,” he roared, catching her as she flung herself into his outstretched arms. He spun her around and around, laughing at her greedy eagerness as she kissed his lips, his cheeks, his throat, finally lashing her tongue into his mouth with such a feverish passion he temporarily forgot himself and returned her ardor thrust for thrust.
A squeal of feminine delight sent his hands down to cup the plumpness of her buttocks, pulling her against the swift and potent response rising in his loins. She tightened her arms around his shoulders and rubbed herself against him—breasts, belly, and thighs—gasping with a pleasure that was not entirely feigned.
“Struan.” She moaned. “Struan, Struan, Struan … sweet Mither O’ Christ, but, I missed ye.”
“Missed me, eh?” His eyes narrowed and his teeth flashed through the golden bush of his beard. “Enough tae go walkin’ in the woods wi’ anither man?”
“Anither …?” She laughed heartily and clawed her fingers into his hair, savaging his mouth again before she answered. “He’s naught but an’ auld daft clootie lives in the caves wi’ his sheep. Eighty years, if he’s a day, ye randy bastard, an’ so crippled wi’ damp he canna straighten his back, no’ never mind any ither part O’ his body. I come here sometimes tae trade f’ae fresh cheese.”
Struan tried to glance back over his shoulder but determined hands and lips kept his thoughts pinioned elsewhere.
“He’s gone by now,” she whispered huskily. “Yer bellow near caused a rupture in his spleen—mines too, truth be known, but no’ f’ae fear.”
He swung around anyway, in spite of the wriggling invitation and the hot, moist lips sucking eagerly at his. Indeed, the old man was gone. Struan’s keen eyes could just make out a smear of dark tartan well along up the slope … but moving far too nimbly and hastily to be wrapped around the shoulders of an eighty-year-old reclusive shepherd.
The old clutch of suspicion returned without warning, combining with shades of jealousy and unwanted, nagging doubt.
“Cheese, ye say?”
“Aye, husban’,” she purred. “But I’ll settle f’ae fresh cream … if ye have any tae spare.”
MacSorley’s frown eased into a thoughtful grin as he turned again, backing her up until she was crowded against a fat tree trunk.
“Mayhap I’d have a pint tae spare,” he murmured, his hands reaching down to tug at her skirt. “Mayhap two or three.”
“Oh … oh, aye, Struan. Aye … but na’ here. It’s cold an’ … an’ the auld man might come back. It’s only a wee hap-step-an’ lowp tae the camp, where it’s warm an’ there are blankets tae lie down on.”
“Ye dinna need blankets, lass. I’ll keep ye warm enough. As f’ae lyin’ down—” He inserted a hand between her thighs, his sudden roughness lifting her onto her tiptoes with a gasp. “I’ve never known ye tae balk at takin’ yer pleasure where ye may. Ye did say ye missed me, did ye na?”
“Aye,” she said on a forced smile. “Aye, Struan, O’ course I missed ye.”
“An’ ye have been faithful tae me, have ye na?”
The amber eyes widened. “Course I have, Struan MacSorley! I told ye, he were naught but a shepherd! An auld, bent-up shepherd!”
His face loomed closer and his hand curled deeper, the blunt, calloused fingers probing into her flesh like red-hot irons. “If ye ever gi’ me cause tae think ye’ve gone back tae yer whorin’ ways, lass, ye’ll wish ye stayed in Edinburgh wi’ yer Sassenach lover.”
“Edinburgh!” she cried, recoiling from his cruelty. “Struan! What are ye talkin’ about? Ye ken I didna take any lovers in Edinburgh! Especially no’ a Sassenach!”
“Aye, there’s the hell O’ it, lass,” he said evenly. “I dinna ken any such thing, I only have yer word on it. The night we were wed, ye bleated an’ grated an’ twisted yersel’ intae rare knots tae please, me, but when ye cried out yer pleasure, it wisna ma name ye were cryin’.”
“Struan!” She gasped, hesitating the slightest fraction of a second too long. “It must be the devil’s work. On ma honor, ye’re the only man I’ve taken tae ma bed since …” She searched her memory for a plausible name, knowing full well she had never presented herself to him as a virgin, knowing equally well he had not expected nor particularly wanted one.
“Since?”
“Since ye fairst taught me the difference atween a boy an’ a man, Struan. On ma honor, it’s so.”
“Ye shouldna fling yer honor about so carelessly, lass,” he cautioned. “‘Tis a precious thing, tae be guarded wi’ yer life.”
“Then I’ll swear it on ma life, Struan MacSorley,” she declared vehemently, becoming almost desperate to squirm out from under the assault of the scraping fingers. “I’ll swear it on anything else ye’d have me forfeit as well!”
Her sigh of relief was audible as he removed his hand from under her skirts. His gaze never left her face as he smiled lazily and reached for something sheathed in the belt at his waist.
“Life an’ honor go hand in hand, wife. If ye’re willin’ tae swear one against the ither, an’ if the dark gods dinna strik
e us both deid where we stan’, then it’ll be good enough f’ae me, an’ I’ll never question ye again.”
Lauren, stunned by the quiet fury of MacSorley’s jealousy, felt the press of cold steel in the palm of her hand. As soon as she recognized the shape of the dirk and understood what he wanted, the tension melted out of her spine like a rush of icy water. To a simple lummox like Struan MacSorley, an oath was all that was required to confirm her status in his eyes. He had frightened her half to death, chafed her raw with his suspicions over her activities the past two weeks, when all he needed and wanted was a little manly reassurance. If an oath was what he wanted, an oath was what he would get; the most heart-melting, teary-eyed oath she could produce.
With a shine already formed on the surface of the amber pools, she raised the dirk solemnly and pressed it to her lips.
“Struan MacSorley, I swear by all tha’s—” She stopped, her gaze shooting back down to the carved ebony hilt of the knife she held. She had no control over the gasp that parted her lips or the sinking sensation that drained the blood out of her face, leaving it a pale, gray mask.
The dirk was the same one she had used to silence Doobie Logan, all those months ago. She had last seen it sticking out from between his bony shoulder blades, the day Alasdair’s Sassenach bride had been stolen from the gardens at Achnacarry Castle.
Logan had been a slimy, treacherous creature who had betrayed the clan’s trust for a few miserable gold coins and a moment or two of self-glorification. After selling Catherine to the Campbells, Logan had swilled himself into a drunken stupor—his usual state of mind—and Lauren had feared a loosened tongue might aim an accusing finger in her direction. Killing him had seemed to be her safest recourse, for who would suspect her involvement with scum like Logan? Who indeed would believe she could ever have befriended such a Judas, let alone conspired with him to have sweet Catherine kidnapped?
Indeed, no one had. Not until now.
But if Struan had carried the knife with him all this time, it meant he had also carried his suspicions, hiding them well, waiting for the right moment to confront her.
The Blood of Roses Page 41
