Haunted By A Highland Curse: A Steamy Scottish Medieval Historical Romance

by Emilia C. Dunbar

  He had not launched himself at Malcolm because he was brave or foolish. He had not had the peace of mind to choose to be either. Instead, it had been a compulsion. An impulse that he had possessed neither the bravery nor the foolishness to ignore.

  No woman of such decency should ever be talked of the way that Malcolm had spoken of Caoimhe. His wife was beyond such sullying words.

  Nonetheless, he should have had the maturity of mind to not be incited to violence at a public event.

  And then, as if his opinion of her were not grand enough, his wife had shown him what true courage was. Not the smashing of fists and the ruckus of aggression that had sent him and Malcolm to the ground, but the ability to stand firm and true and speak one's mind without succumbing to baser, darker instincts. Caoimhe had comported herself as a queen, standing in defense of her nephews, in defense of him, turning Fiona away with no more than her words.

  Niall's heart seemed to swell inside his chest with just the thought of it. The strength in Caoimhe's eyes and the power in her little frame. It hadn't mattered how tall or strong or powerful she was. She was her own entity—a force of nature that would not be belittled or insulted.

  And, in that moment, Niall had realized himself to be entirely in love with her.

  It came as no great lightning strike or realization; the feelings had been there for weeks already. They had swirled throughout him, warming him whenever she knocked on his door to bring him wine as he worked, and made him feel powerful whenever she leaned into his body for comfort in her sleep.

  He had loved her since her fears over his dogs had had her curling into his embrace. Since he'd felt what he now knew to be jealousy, as she had laughed with Roy at the stables. Since she had challenged him at the dinner table over her age.

  That fire in her eyes had always been there. Since the first time they had met. And from then, it had always been in his heart. It had just taken until now for him to realize it.

  Three hours later, Niall almost wished that he still had yet to discover his feelings for Caoimhe, for they tormented him now.

  Perhaps, if he was still blind to his love, his heart would not be so heavy with worry?

  Caoimhe had left the festivities long ago and had yet to return home.

  At first, Niall had rationalized her absence, reminding himself of the love she held for her family and how she had likely talked Brogan's ear into allowing her to stay a little longer. How her father was likely pouring Brogan a cup of mead and Caoimhe was still sharing stories with her sisters. How the Webb family would have opened their doors and lost track of time in their reunion.

  Such an excuse, however, could only last for so long.

  After prowling the estate, and wandering down to the gatehouse, Niall felt an instinctive unease in his belly. He stalked about the grounds, whistled for the dogs, and walked with a pace designed to burn off his tension. When that had failed, he had wandered to the kitchens for something to eat only to discover the chambers empty and cold.

  It was then that he knew the hour to be far too late.

  Trying not to panic, to not have his behavior too extreme or have Caoimhe see him morph into her prison warden, Niall had called for Roy. The boy had scurried, not from his uncle's house, but from one of the nearby barns, pulling his shirt back on and lacing his britches as he went.

  Niall realized belatedly that Roy had been celebrating the new year with a bonnie lass, but he could not bring himself to apologize. Not when Caoimhe was missing. And despite the rumpled look of his appearance, Roy argued not a heartbeat when Niall insisted that he ride out to the Webbs and bring Caoimhe home.

  Now, Niall had abandoned the grassy lawns of the estate and turned his tense stride to the carpets indoors. He paced before the hearth in the Blue Room, his gaze flickering every once in a while upon the flames. He measured the time that passed by the logs that burned and how they shifted from brown to black to silver ash.

  By the time the sound of Roy's horse returned to Aberlynn, Niall was ready to jump out of his skin with worry. It had been six hours since Caoimhe had left the celebrations. And she was still not home.

  Niall's mood turned only darker as he stormed outside. There were two riders upon Roy's horse, but the other was Brogan. Dazed and groaning and with a smear of blood over his bruised temple, Niall felt his heart shudder in panic.

  “Where is she?” he demanded, helping Brogan down from the back of the horse. He called one of the household staff to ride into town and find the healer, Fergus.

  Roy was panting as he hit the ground, and tried to babble his report.

  “She wasn't there!” he said, his face contorted with worry. “I found the carriage. Brogan was on the ground unconscious. He came around enough to tell me they left the Webbs hours ago.”

  Which meant that Caoimhe had been missing for hours.

  Sweat broke out down Niall's back; his breath stilled in his lungs. Panic shot through him like he had never known before, and he felt a tightening in his throat. His words were choked as he barked his orders.

  “Rouse everyone! Scour the province. I want her found and brought home!”

  For a horrible moment, as Roy ran off to obey his master's command, Niall recognized the begging sense of trepidation in his heart.

  Behind his words, in the back of his mind, he was praying.

  Please God...don't take my family away twice.

  There was sand beneath her fingers. Caoimhe didn't know where she was or how she had gotten there, but she knew the feeling of the shore. The little, irritating grains were abrasive against her palm, the exposed curve of her shoulder and her temple. She could feel the grit in her hair, and there was a dry coarseness caked to the side of her face. She tried to blink her eyes open but the candlelight she spied hurt her head.

  Trying again, Caoimhe's lashes fluttered wide, and she saw the inside of a little hut. She frowned, recognizing it as one of the little wooden structures down by the coastline of the loch. Such places were owned by local fishermen or traders on the coast to store tackle and nets. Caoimhe had spoken to Roy once about her father owning a few for his business. They had talked about his uncle being a keen fisherman and keeping one of his own.

  The hut was wooden, with half the beach already tracked in over the floorboards, and smelled of the sea, but Caoimhe was confused to also note the scent of roasted pork and the mulled warmth of wine. The gentle rush of the waves outside was muted in the distance, and there were creaks and groans in the walls as the nighttime wind rocked the shelter back and forth.

  Caoimhe frowned.

  The last thing she remembered was leaving her parents’ home. Brogan had arrived with the carriage to escort her back to Aberlynn, and she had felt herself torn between the desire to stay longer and her desperate need to speak with Niall. She could not remember what she had been needing to talk about, but perhaps that was the wine. Had she had too much wine? Was that why her head hurt?

  Wincing against the light from the candles that sat nearby in little holders, Caoimhe tried to move but found her legs stuck together. Pain broke through her ankles as she tried to wriggle, the sting of rope against her skin. She felt the roughness of cotton in her mouth and the way it was rough over her cheek. How her hands were laid out side by side, and she couldn't move them apart. She was bound.

  Bound and gagged.

  Horror broke through Caoimhe's confusion.

  It didn't matter how she had gotten there or what had been happening before. Right now, she was in danger. She had been taken, tied up, and left in an unconscious state of stupor until such a time when those that had taken her might choose to harm her.

  She felt her heart beat faster, her limbs moving to check that she was still fully dressed and that they had not seen to their depraved desires while she had been asleep. Thankfully, she was as she had been at the festival—down to the little sprig of knotgrass that she had kept in the belt of her dress.

  Listening hard for any sound of her kidnappers
, Caoimhe froze when a mumbled conversation behind her came into earshot.

  “Yah noo, it'll be easier if she's asleep, grey. Ah’m not comfortable killing a woman. It is even harder if they're lookin’ at yoo.”

  Caoimhe felt her panic increase and her muscles tense with fear.

  They were going to kill her?!

  “Then yoo best ‘ope she's still out when i’s time. Yah know the plan. The laird has to be here first.”

  Niall?

  “’Ow's he even gonna know where we are?”

  “The boss says he'll know. He left a trail. He needs to be here and then we kill her. If she's cold ‘afore he's even here, the boss cannae pin it on him.”

  Caoimhe tried to make sense of what she was hearing. To her, the men were talking nonsense. They wanted to murder her and frame Niall for the act? Just who was going to believe something like that?

  Her mind went to the way that Niall had launched himself at Malcolm that night. How rage had taken hold of him and sent him straight to violence. To a stranger, perhaps he would seem a brute, a barbarian ready to let fists fly. But Caoimhe had never been afraid of that side of him, had never thought of him as a monster. There had been a time where his presence had set her on edge; and made her impossibly aware of the largeness of him against the smallness of her.

  But she had never—not for a moment—thought him capable of violence upon her.

  And surely no one else would either?

  Remembering the scent of food and wine, Caoimhe tried to look around without revealing her wakeful state. She spotted a nest of blankets and a few pillows in one corner of the hut, the remains of a dinner across two plates and a half drunk bottle of wine beside it. Her eyes widened in shock.

  Jealousy.

  They were attempting to stage some kind of infidelity on her part that would supposedly lead Niall to a murderous rage. That was their plan. To have it seem as if Niall had murdered his cheating, common-born wife.

  Caoimhe didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It took a deep love to feel such a jealous rage. Not even in these schemers’ most fantastical scenario could Niall be pushed to that. His heart was held behind so many walls that Caoimhe wasn't sure that she was ever going to get close enough to touch it.

  There was a shushing noise behind her, and Caoimhe went still. For a moment, she thought her movements had been spotted, but the men did not come over. They hovered behind her, by the window, looking out across the shore.

  “Damn, the boss w’ right. Here he comes. Quick, get the girl!”

  Caoimhe panicked. Niall was here? Ready to walk into some kind of ambush? What were these men going to do when he entered the room? Were they hiding? Did they have knives?

  Looking around, Caoimhe spotted a bucket down near her feet. It was pewter and shone a little in the moonlight from the window. Wriggling to draw her feet in close, she paused and took a calming breath, and then kicked it as hard as she could.

  The bucket ricocheted to the other side of the hut, bouncing over the floor and making an almighty crash in the quiet night. The men at the door turned to look towards her, surprised that she was awake. The next second, the door to the hut had been hurled open and crashed into the nose of one of her captors.

  Still forced on her side, half turned from the door, Caoimhe could barely see what was happening. She heard the smack and crunch of flesh on bone and winced as she heard grunts that sounded too familiar to belong to her kidnappers.

  She swallowed and closed her eyes, curling in on herself, alone in her fear.

  While it felt like an eternity for Caoimhe, it was over quickly. In moments, the two men that had seen her bound and locked away had been knocked into unconscious drools and thrown out onto the sands. The poles and nets that had been unsettled in the fight had been returned to their places, uncovering her hiding place in the corner. And a heartbeat later, Caoimhe felt a set of familiar hands coming around her and lifting her into the safety of those arms that she had so come to love.

  21

  The Fears We Hide

  The ride back to Aberlynn was lost to Caoimhe as she dozed in Niall's arms. Part of her was surprised that sleep was even something she could fathom after already spending hours dead to the world, but apparently, stress was a great exhauster. She sat in the saddle before her husband, not worried as to the speed or gait of the animal beneath. She held no fear of the ride or the darkness that closed in around them. Niall's arms were bent to cradle her, keeping her from falling, and his chest was warm against her side.

  She fell into a dreamless quiet, able to relax in the safety of his touch.

  By the time she awoke, Caoimhe was being carried up the stairs that led to their private quarters.

  When he had first taken her into his arms, Niall had murmured that it would be alright. That he had her and wasn't about to let her go. The words had been muffled, hidden behind layers of tension. And, since then, not a word had passed his lips.

  In silence, he pushed the door open to their chambers and carried her inside.

  “You'll grow tired of doing this,” she told him, her fingers curling around the wrinkles in his tunic. The garment was pulled taut over his shoulder, hugging the lines of muscle in his carriage. She smiled against his skin.

  Niall's exhale was one of calm relief that she had woken, that her mood was light enough to joke.

  “Not likely,” he said, crouching low to set her on the bed.

  Niall's knees found the floorboards between her feet, and he took her hands in his. His head bent low, and he kissed her fingers. When he looked up, his face was twisted in contrition, pain on every feature. He reached to touch her face, to stroke the curve of her cheek.

  “I am so sorry,” he murmured. His voice was quiet. Reverent.

  Caoimhe shook her head. A smile broke over her lips, however watery, and she squeezed his fingers in hers.

  “For what?” she chastised. Her hair was sandy and it flickered about her face. “It was not of your making…”

  Taking hold of one of her locks, Niall brushed the grains of sand from the dark strands, before quickly standing.

  “I'll have a bath prepared.”

  As a large, wooden tub was moved into the room, and the servants worked quickly to fill it with steaming water, boiled on the hearths of numerous rooms, Caoimhe sat as she was told upon the mattress. She was unsure of how to react, what to do, or what Niall was looking for from her. So, she permitted herself to be relegated to basking in the warming heat of the room.

  As she waited, a large shadow appeared in the doorway of the bedroom, and Caoimhe was quick to recognize Jaspar. He padded into the room, Aila tailing after him, and Caoimhe inhaled long and slow to set her nerves at ease.

  She knew these two now. They had slept on the rug by the fire almost every night since she had slept there, and they liked to place their noses on the edge of the bed when they thought she was likely to wake, peering at her when she woke up each morning. She still had yet to quiet her initial spark of nervousness around them, but it waned more and more with each day that passed.

  Now, the dogs padded across the room and sat beside her legs. Aila even moved to place her snout on Caoimhe's thigh. It was warm against her skin and flopped heavier when the old girl gave a long and hard sigh.

  Caoimhe giggled.

  “Busy night for you too, huh?” she asked, reaching out to stroke the girl's ears. Aila's tongue lolled out, big and pink, and Caoimhe giggled again, scratching the top of Jaspar's head with her other hand.

  Niall stopped in his tracks as he reentered the room, drying sheets in hand and a look of surprise on his face. Slowly, a smile spread across his features.

  “You appear to have made some new friends,” he said, dismissing the servants with a wave of his hand and setting the sheets on one of the chairs.

  Caoimhe smiled back.

  “You know, they're not all that scary when you get used to them.”

  “Like horses?” Niall asked.

&
nbsp; “And like you.”

  Caoimhe immediately wanted to bite off her tongue. Her lips drew in, her eyes shot wide, and she was ready to blush to the roots of her hair. Niall was looking at her with a peculiar expression that, to her relief, broke into laughter.

  “Well,” he said, moving to shoo away the dogs and shut them from the bedroom, “you are the opposite.”

  Taking her hands, Niall drew her to her feet and began to pluck at the frays along the sides of her dress. Caoimhe blinked at the suddenness of his actions, not sure if she was more startled by his hands or his words.

  “You have only grown scarier on longer acquaintance.”

  Squeaking as her dress hit the floor and her underthings with it, Caoimhe had no chance to speak before he had her up in his arms once more, ready to deposit her into the tub. She yelped and wriggled but it did no good in delaying the inevitable. A moment later, she was submerged in the water and encouraged to rinse off her hair.

  With a dark look and the sticking out of her tongue, Caoimhe did as she was bid before rising from the water with dark tresses stuck fast to her skin, and her pale face gleaming.

  “Just how am I scary?” Caoimhe demanded. She was small and weak and, apparently, could do little without being lugged about.

  Not that she minded too much this time. After the cold of the night, she could not deny that the heat of the water was a much-needed boon. However, she had managed to get there.

  Leaning back in the water, Caoimhe closed her eyes and felt her muscles relax as she tried to stretch out her back. The heat of the bath soaked through her skin to soothe her aches and pains. A moan broke on her lips and she sighed as her eyes fluttered back open.

  Niall was watching her. His gaze was dark and hungry, his lips parted. His fingers curled and uncurled at his sides.

  “Like that,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “You only have to breathe and I'm no longer in control of myself.”