Hannah Howell

by Highland Hearts

  “Ye are taking me with you?”

  “Mount.”

  She mounted. There had to be a dozen ways she could break free, but not one came to mind. He swung up in front of her, reaching back and grabbing her wrists firmly. He then quickly tied them so that she was bound to him. When he spurred his horse to a gallop, she hung on, praying the fool did not kill them by riding like some madman in the dark.

  Charging out the door of his keep, Fergus Thurkettle saw his prisoner riding off. “Cut that bastard down,” he ordered his archers.

  “But, sir,” protested Thomas, “we could kill your niece.”

  Fergus cursed viciously, then abruptly halted. “What day is this?”

  “What?” Thomas asked in total confusion.

  “What day is this?”

  “Tuesday, the fifteenth day of March.”

  “Aye, so it is, and yesterday was her birthday, her eighteenth birthday,” Thurkettle murmured. Suddenly he was smiling.

  “What are ye muttering about?”

  Ignoring Thomas, Thurkettle stood watching the pair ride away as he hastily mulled his choices. Tess was eighteen. The fortune he had held in trust now belonged to her. If she died, he was the only heir. For five long years he had longed for that fortune. Now he began to see a way, a way to kill two birds with one stone.

  “Go after him,” he ordered his men.

  “But, sir,” Thomas asked, “what about Tess?”

  “Dinna fret over her. Look, that craven dog kens too much about my business with the Black Douglases. Soon Tess will too. So that makes her dangerous, no? Now—ride.”

  Once his men had raced off, Thurkettle strolled back into his keep, whistling a merry tune. He went inside, poured himself a tankard of fine French wine from a richly carved silver jug, then silently toasted himself.

  “I suppose there is little chance of Sir Revan being brought back alive,” a voice said behind him.

  Glancing over his shoulder, Thurkettle frowned at his daughter as she moved to sit at the table. “Very little.”

  “Ah, what a shame.” Brenda studied the jeweled rings on her fingers with an air of boredom.

  “Nay, a necessity. I canna risk allowing him to reach the king and tell what he has learned just so ye can get your claws into him. Ye should have played your virtuous game a little less ardently.”

  “I did that for you, so ye could find out if your suspicions were correct. I have seen little sign of gratitude.”

  “Ye willna see any. Ye were protecting yourself as well. If the man is dragged back here and is still breathing, I will let ye have him for a few hours ere I kill him.”

  “How kind.” Brenda frowned. “Ye had best be very careful of how ye handle this in front of Tess. She isna quite as dumb as she looks.”

  “There is no need to fret over Tess.” Thurkettle curled his thin, bloodless lips into a faint smile.

  “Nay? She is the one who set the man free, is she not?”

  “Aye, the stupid bitch. She also showed him how to escape. He now uses her to try and protect himself. Well, he will soon discover that willna work.”

  Very slowly, Brenda’s eyes widened as she realized what her father was saying. “Ye mean to murder Tess.”

  Scowling at his daughter, Thurkettle snapped, “Aye, what of it? Dinna tell me ye will miss her.”

  “Most of the time I barely notice her. ’Tis not me ye will have to explain it to but that horde of kinsmen Aunt was mad enough to wed into.”

  Fergus Thurkettle shuddered as he recalled his sister’s marriage. “I willna have to explain a thing. ’Twill be a sad case of kidnapping and murder.”

  “Which we swiftly avenged.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Isna killing her a wee bit harsh? ’Tis true, she released Revan but—”

  “Ye can think beyond what gown to wear, can ye not? She has to ken something about our activities. That bastard will soon get it out of her. Together they can hang us all. Aye, and hanging would be the most merciful death we could pray for.”

  “Oh—aye, I suppose she would have had to have noticed something in the five years she has been here.”

  “Just so. There is more to it than that, however. She was eighteen yesterday. Her fortune and land are now all hers.”

  “Fortune? Land? Tess has money?”

  “Aye, Tess has money. Half the gowns ye wear were bought with her money. I had the expense of rearing her and all,” he murmured. “I was allowed to extract funds for all that. For five long years I have tried to think of a way to get that money yet not bring the Comyns or Delgados clamoring at my gates. I have it now. She gave it to me herself.”

  “Are ye saying ye get all that is hers if she dies?”

  “Every last ha’penny. Aye, and there is a cursed large pile of them.”

  “Just how big a purse? Are ye sure ’tis worth the risk?”

  “Does thirty thousand gold riders appeal to you as worth a wee gamble?” He nodded when she simply gaped at him. “There is also a fine, rich keep south of Edinburgh, as well as some land in Spain. The girl is wealthy. Very, very wealthy.”

  “I canna believe it. Where would that . . . that mincing portrait painter, Delgado, get that kind of money? Or the Comyns?”

  “Most of it comes from neither. ’Twas my sister’s. Our father wished to be sure she had something to live on when she came to her senses and left that mongrel she married. It grew over the years.”

  “So neither the Comyns nor the Delgados can lay claim to it?”

  “Nay. ’Twas Eileen’s, thus Tess’s.”

  “Are ye sure, ’tis a perfect plan? Very, very sure? Near half those Delgados and Comyns are in the military or the service of the king. Aye, and the law or the church. We certainly dinna wish them to look too closely.”

  “She was kidnapped and murdered. What can there be to question?”

  Brenda still frowned. “I will hold my celebrating until ye have the money in your hands and none of that mongrel, lowborn family of hers clamoring at your gates.”

  She watched her father shrug, and she silently called him a fool. The man was celebrating before the deed was done, and Brenda considered that the height of folly. Sir Revan Halyard was a clever man, and little Tess was not without some wit. The pair of them could prove far more difficult to catch than her father anticipated. It might be a good time to supplement her private funds, she mused. If her father stumbled and fell, she did not intend to join him.

  “Ye worry too much, Brenda.”

  “Aye? I think ye shouldna be quite so free of concern. I will keep mine, thank ye very much, until I see Sir Revan Halyard and Tess buried.”

  “Then ye had best see to the airing of your mourning gown, dearling, for ye will soon be standing over their graves.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Tess groaned as Revan pulled her out of the saddle. She did not even want to think about how long she had been on the back of that horse. For hours they had ridden in a tortuous, circuitous route in order to shake off their pursuers. There did not seem to be a part of her that did not ache.

  Revan roughly pulled her toward him and neatly tied her hands to the pommel of his saddle. She cursed him viciously under her breath. He was cruel and inhumane. The rope was so short she had to stand on tiptoe, pressed close to the sweaty horse. At the very first opportunity she was going to stick her dirk into the man. A stomach wound, agonizing, slow to heal but not fatal, she mused with a viciousness born of her discomfort and fear.

  “Your language could do with some refinement,” Revan murmured as he moved to push aside a large rock from the low banking.

  “Aye? Well, your ideas on how to treat someone who helped you could use some improvement.”

  “Sorry, lass, but if I hadna used you to get out of there, I would have been dead ere I had gone two feet.”

  “Well, then, I am even more sorry I wandered by.” She watched him drag some brush aside. “Curse ye to hell and back, what are ye doing?”
r />   “Readying a place to hide.”

  “Oh, ye mean we are nay going to gallop through the moonless night like some cloaked reiver any longer? I am devastated.”

  “My, ye are a bitter-tongued wee thing.” He glanced up at the quarter moon, then at her. “And ’tis not a moonless night. There is enough light to see what I was doing.”

  “Ah”—she glanced up at the sky—“of course. That moon. Its radiance was such that I was blinded to its presence.”

  It was certainly hard for her to see what he was doing, she thought crossly. The horse badly obscured her view. But she could hear Revan shifting a great deal of rock and bracken. Every time she tried to nudge the horse a little in an attempt to move the beast around, the animal nudged her right back. His horse was as ill-begotten as he was, she thought angrily.

  “Come along, then,” Revan murmured as he untied her from the horse, and rebound her wrists.

  “Where?” She tried to resist his tug on her bound wrists. It looked as if he was dragging her and his stubborn horse straight toward the wall of rock that banked the hills. Then she espied the fault in the shadows, the hint that the wall was not as flat as she had thought. When he pushed her in front of him, she saw the opening.

  “A cave,” she drawled, as she stumbled inside. “How suitable.”

  Urging his horse into the roomy cave, Revan ignored her remarks. He grabbed the end of the rope that was around her wrists and looped it back around the pommel of his saddle. While he readied a campsite for them, he did not want to risk her fleeing. He could not risk her drawing Thurkettle’s men to his hiding place. After what they had been through, he doubted she would want to see those men, either, although he dared not trust in that.

  Once he had prepared the campsite, he untied her again, instructing her to sit in the back of the cave. Keeping a close eye on her, he then quickly covered the opening as best he could from the inside.

  Tess walked over to the campsite and wearily sat down on the bedding he had spread out. She knew she ought to try to flee into the waning night, but at the moment she was simply too tired, and he was too on-guard. Also, she was not fond of being out alone in the dark.

  She had some difficulty believing the tangle she had gotten herself involved in. Much of it made no sense. She glared at Revan as he crouched by the fire and began to make some porridge.

  “Ye murdered someone, didna ye?” Even as she accused him, she could not believe him guilty of such a crime.

  “Nay. I didna even draw my sword ere I was seized by Thurkettle.”

  “Then ye stole something.”

  “Nay. Not a farthing.”

  “Now, see here, ye had to have done something more than gawk at Brenda—”

  “I did not gawk.”

  She ignored his remark. “My uncle isna one to act like this for something as trivial or common as courting. Curse it, if he tried to kill every man who trotted after his daughter, there would be corpses piled knee-high all over Scotland.”

  “Do I detect a note of jealousy?”

  “Nay, ye do not. Are ye prepared to answer my questions or not?”

  “I have answered them.” He looked at her, studying her closely. “Now ye can answer a few questions of mine.”

  “Oh, I can, can I?”

  “Are ye truly Thurkettle’s niece? I dinna see much of a resemblance.” He snatched the battered hat she wore off of her head, then half-wished he had let it be. That action had loosened what few hairpins she had used to keep her hair up. A thick glossy mass of wavy, raven-colored hair tumbled past her shoulders almost to her waist. The way the light of the fire touched it only increased its beauty. He now understood how the floppy, wide-crowned hat had stayed on her head during their wild ride. The thick hair filling the crown had held it in place.

  “If ye kenned the family well, ye would see one or two similar traits,” she said scornfully. “Will ye free my hands now?” She held her bound wrists out toward him.

  He gently pushed them back into her lap. “I will think about it. What is your name—Tess Thurkettle?”

  “Contessa Comyn Delgado.” She found some satisfaction—but no surprise—at his stunned look. Her full name surprised everyone.

  “Ye are Spanish?” he mumbled when he collected himself. “I didna think Thurkettle had such a connection.”

  “He doesna. My father did. Thurkettle’s my mother’s brother. When my parents died, I was sent to live with him.” She inwardly grimaced, thinking of how she had gone from the wrenching tragedy of losing her parents to the continuous tragedy of living with uncaring relatives. “My father’s mother was a Scot, a Comyn, and his father was Spanish. My father wasna considered good enough for a Thurkettle, as he was only a painter at the royal court.”

  Revan had little doubt that Tess spoke the truth. Thurkettle was well known for his pretensions. He had discovered some tenuous connection to Robert the Bruce and often boasted about the fragile bond. If the senior Thurkettle had held even half the self-importance the younger did, it must have required a lot of courage for Tess’s mother to wed Delgado. Life could not have been too pleasant for Tess, either, since she was a walking reminder of her mother’s choice of husband. The Thurkettles would certainly have had other more profitable arrangements in mind.

  “But,” he spoke his thoughts aloud, “that doesna seem cause enough to kill you.”

  “Kill me?” she said, astonished. “No one was trying to kill me. They were after you.”

  “And you. They were firing arrows thick and fast, not to miss.”

  She did not want to talk about it. Until now she had managed to push aside her own suspicions. Although Revan had taken her as a shield, not one of her uncle’s men had taken any care not to hurt her. Deny it as she would, the truth in all its chilling ugliness refused to go away. They had been aiming for her with as much intensity as they had been aiming for Revan. It was the final rejection of her mother’s family.

  Yet, to kill her? That was so drastic. Her uncle had had five years to do it. And he had tried, a voice whispered in her mind. He had tried three times.

  Furiously she tried to shake away the insidious suspicion, but it refused to be ignored. The fact that three specific incidents came immediately to mind told her she had never fully believed them accidents; she had fooled herself into turning away from the clues.

  “Ye are wrong,” she snapped, turning her hurt into anger against him.

  Smiling wryly, Revan shook his head. At first he had thought Thurkettle’s men were merely stupid. They were indeed stupid; however, they would never do anything without exact instructions from Thurkettle. If they were shooting to kill with no thought to Tess’s safety, it was because Thurkettle had ordered it. What he needed to know was—why?

  And she knew, he thought as he poured them each a cup of wine. He could read the knowledge in her wide, beautiful eyes. He could also read her struggle to deny it. It gave her a touch of innocence he decided it was wise to ignore. He did not want to assume she was not part of Thurkettle’s treasonous plots and intrigues. Not yet. Trusting her too quickly could get him killed.

  “Nay, I am not wrong, and ye ken it,” he said, “I can see it in your eyes.”

  She gave him a contemptuous look as she accepted the cup of wine he held out. “Read it in my eyes? How foolish. They are eyes, not a letter.”

  “Your eyes are as readable as any letter, the script clear and precise. Ye are trying to deny what ye ken is the truth.”

  “Of course I deny it. ’Tis a heinous accusation. Why would my uncle wish me dead?”

  “I was hoping ye could tell me.”

  “Well, I canna for he doesna.” She sipped the wine, annoyed to find it tasted good.

  “I canna believe ’tis because he disapproves of your bloodline,” he murmured, watching her closely.

  “Disapproval can be easily accomplished through ignoring me. He doesna have to bloody his hands to disassociate himself from me. Ye have been trotting after Brenda fo
r a while, and ye didna ken I was about, did ye?”

  “Nay. Ye came as quite a surprise.”

  “Aha! So, he didna have to commit murder to cut me off from the family.”

  “True. So, what is the next possibility? Murder can have many motives. Jealousy? Nay. Unless there is some lover’s triangle I am unaware of.”

  “Dinna be such an idiot.”

  “Nay, in truth, I think love doesna enter into this family quandary at all.”

  The truth of that hurt, but she tried to hide it behind a look of disgusted annoyance.

  Revan saw the brief flash of pain in her look and felt a twinge of sympathy. He had kept a close eye on the Thurkettles for weeks, yet had never known about Tess. She had been thoroughly ignored by her own kin, tucked out of sight like a shameful secret. The time she had spent with her uncle could not have been pleasant. He quelled his sympathy, however. He was still not sure he could trust her, still did not know if she was an intricate part of her uncle’s intrigues.

  “Money, then. Greed. Do ye have some money?” Considering her rough, unsuitable attire, he doubted it but then saw a look of realization widen her beautiful eyes.

  Money, Tess thought, and shock rippled through her. It was the one thing her uncle loved more than himself. And she had some—a great deal by most people’s standards—now that she had turned eighteen. The painful fact that her birthday had passed unnoticed again faded into insignificance. Her lands and money were all hers now. Her uncle was supposed to relinquish all control to her. The doubts she had struggled to hold on to faded. For wealth her uncle would most certainly try to kill her.

  Those “accidents” had been attempts to remove the only heir that stood between her uncle and her fortune—herself. He wanted her dead and had wanted it for years. What he had needed was a way to point the finger of suspicion away from himself. An even-tempered mount suddenly gone wild and a fall that could have broken her neck was one way. A simple errand that sent her trotting back and forth over a flood-weakened bridge was another. Then there was that loosened masonry that chose to fall just as she stood beneath it.

  And now, she thought as she looked at Revan, there was a kidnapper.