“I wouldnae hurt ye, Ewan. Nay apurpose.” She hugged him and kissed his chest.
“I ken it. That, too, came to me weeks ago. Ah, and then I began to plan ways to woo ye, to win your heart.”
“Ye have held that in your hands almost from the beginning.”
“But I couldnae be sure. I am a dark, scarred mon.”
“I think ye are beautiful.”
“Aye, weel, we can discuss your poor eyesight later.” He loved the sound of her laughter, he decided. “Ye are beautiful, m’love. In face and heart. I just didnae see how ye could want me. I am always a wee bit astonished when ye turn to such sweet heat in my arms. Then, slowly, I began to believe that ye did care for me a wee bit, that, if God was merciful, I might be able to win your love. I needed it, ye see, for ye had won mine.” He felt a dampness on his chest, took her chin in his hand, and turned her face up to his. “That makes ye weep.”
Fiona kissed him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and pressed her face against his throat. “From happiness. From relief. From utter, blind joy. When did ye ken that ye loved me?”
“When Menzies took ye. I might nay have called it love, I cannae recall, but I did ken that I would have naught, would be without a future, if I lost ye. Then I plotted ways to woo ye. Then Ciaran arrived, and I feared I would lose ye. Then, when ye came to my rescue, I saw that ye might care for me more than I had realized and I began the struggle to rouse my courage and tell ye how I felt. I was going to tell ye tonight, after the feast.” He stroked her cheek when she lifted her head to stare at him.
“I was planning to tell ye that I love ye tonight, as weel. And then, tell ye about the bairn.”
“Why didnae ye tell me when ye first kenned ye were carrying the bairn? Was it truly just to be certain?”
“Aye, and nay. I wanted to be sure, but I also wanted time to try and make ye love me ere ye kenned there was a child. If ye kenned about the child ere I kenned how ye felt, weel, I feared I would drive myself mad trying to judge your every word and deed as to whether it meant ye cared for just me or for the woman who carried your bairn.” She kissed his chin and whispered, “Ye havenae actually said the words, Ewan.”
“I love ye,” he said against her mouth, then kissed her with all the passionate emotion he was feeling. “Ye are my heart, my future. I ken I am nay good with sweet words…” He stuttered to a halt when she brushed her lips over his to silence him.
“I dinnae need sweet words. I dinnae need flatteries, poetry, song, or gifts. I just need ye to tell me every now and again that ye love me.”
“That willnae be so verra hard to do, nay if ye do the same. Tis odd, but I thought of my feelings as a weakness, and I cannae believe that anymore. Kenning that ye love me makes me feel strong, whole in some odd way.”
“As if a part of ye is finally where it belongs,” she said. “The moment I saw ye, I kenned something special about ye. It wasnae long ere I realized ye were the one I had been waiting for. After ye kissed me in the herb hut, I kenned ye were my mate and I was determined to make ye see it, too.” She sighed rather dramatically. “I hadnae realized it would take ye so long to understand.”
He smiled at her teasing, but was deeply moved by her words. It was going to take a while for him to fully accept that this beautiful, passionate woman loved him, saw him as beautiful, as her mate. Such great gifts needed getting used to.
Gently turning her onto her back, he began to make love to her, whispering his love against every inch of her soft skin. She returned his every caress, telling him of her love for him in words and touch. When he eased their bodies together, he looked into her eyes, and felt humbled by what he saw there.
“I love ye,” he said, finding it easier to say every time he did so.
“And I love ye.” She suddenly grinned and grasped him by the hips, pushing him deep inside her. “I will love ye e’en more if ye move.”
Ewan laughed and began to move. Soon, despite all his efforts to make it last, they reached the blinding heights together. As he rolled onto his back, their bodies still joined, he held her close as he tried to regain his breath.
“That is what should have told me that I loved ye, that ye loved me,” he said. “I should have seen that such pleasure could not be possible without true, deep emotion. I have ne’er felt such passion before.” He touched a kiss to her mouth when she started to speak. “Nay, not e’en with her. She was lust and mayhap a touch of vanity and pride. I havenae been with many women, have always feared becoming like my father. One reason I found ye such a trial was that ye roused the beast in me, that passion and fire I had thought weel controlled.”
Fiona sat up on him, wriggling a little as she felt him begin to grow hard inside her. “I like that beast.”
“I begin to like him as weel.” He ran his hands up her ribs and over her breasts. “I saw him as a dark part of me, something to be caged, yet I think he helped me reach out for ye. He wouldnae be still, wouldnae be pushed back into the fetters I had put upon him. He reared up each time ye walked into sight.”
“I can feel a wee bit feral myself from time to time when I look at ye.”
“Sounds intriguing.” He moved a hand down to stroke her still-flat stomach. “I did fear that part of me, Fiona. Feared it would turn me into a mon as careless as my father. Yet, as he changed, I began to see that it wasnae his lusty nature that was really the problem nor was madness. I began to see that my lusty nature was only roused by ye, that it wasnae really some mindless beast within me, but all part of what I felt for you.”
“And it had best continue to be roused by only me,” she warned, lightly touching his chin with her fist.
“No one but ye, my wee Fiona-of-the-ten-knives.”
“And I shall ne’er want anyone but ye, my dark warrior.”
“If ye keep wriggling like that, this dark warrior’s beast is going to rear up again.”
“That was my plan.”
He laughed and pulled her down into his arms. “Love me, my sweet Fiona.”
“Always.”
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HIGHLAND CONQUEROR,
the sequel to HIGHLAND WARRIOR,
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Chapter One
England—Spring 1473
“Stop staring at me.”
Liam Cameron cocked one brow in response to his cousin Sigimor’s growled command. “I was but awaiting your plan to get us out of this mess.”
Sigimor grunted and rested his head against the damp stone wall he was chained to. He suspected Liam knew there was no plan. He, his younger brother Tait, his brother-in-law Nanty MacEnroy, and his cousins Liam, Marcus, and David were chained in a dungeon set deep in the bowels of an English lord’s keep. They needed more than a plan to get out of this bind. They needed a miracle. Sigimor did not think he had done much lately to deserve one of those.
This was the last time he would try to do a good deed, he decided, then grimaced. It had not been charity that had brought him to Drumwich, but a debt. He owed Lord Peter Gerard his life and, when the man had requested his aid, there had been no choice but to give it. Unfortunately, the request had come too late and the trouble Peter had written of had taken his life only two days before Sigimor had led his men through the thick gates of Drumwich. It was swiftly made clear that Peter’s cousin Harold felt no compulsion to honor any pledges made by his now dead kinsman. Sigimor wondered if it could be considered ironic that he would die in the house of the man who had once saved his life.
“Ye dinnae have a plan, do ye?”
“Nay, Liam, I dinnae,” replied Sigimor. “If I had kenned that Peter might die ere we got here, I would have made some plan to deal with that complication, but I ne’er once considered that possibility.”
“Jesu,” muttered Nanty. “If I must die in this cursed country, I would prefer it to be in battle instead of being hanged like some thieving Armstrong or Graham.”
&nb
sp; “Doesnae your Gilly claim a few Armstrongs as her kinsmen?” Sigimor asked.
“Oh. Aye. Forgot about them. The Armstrongs of Aigballa. Cormac, the laird, wed Gilly’s cousin Elspeth.”
“Are they reivers?”
“Nay. Weel, nay all of them. Why?”
“If some miracle befalls us and we escape this trap, we may have need of a few allies on the journey home.”
“Sigimor, we are in cursed England, in a dungeon in a cursed English laird’s weel fortified castle, chained to this thrice-cursed wall, and condemned to hang in two days. I dinnae think we need worry much on what we may or may not need on the journey home. There isnae going to be one. Not unless that bastard Harold decides to send our corpses back to our kinsmen for the burying.”
“I can see that we best nay turn to ye to lift our spirits.” He ignored Nanty’s soft cursing. “I wonder why there isnae any guard set out to watch o’er us.”
“Mayhap because we are chained to the wall?” drawled Liam.
“I could, mayhap, with my great monly strength, pull the chains from the wall,” murmured Sigimor.
“Ha! These walls have to be ten feet thick.”
“Eight feet six inches to be precise,” said a crisp female voice.
Sigimor stared at the tiny woman standing outside the thick iron bars of his prison. He wondered why he had neither seen nor heard her approach. The word mine ripped through his mind startling him into almost gaping at her. The woman standing there was nothing like any woman he had ever desired in all of his two-and-thirty years. She was also English.
If that was not a big enough flaw, she was delicately made. She had to be a good foot or more shorter than his six-feet-four-inch height and slender. He liked his women tall and buxom, considered it a necessity for a man of his size. Her hair was dark, probably black. He preferred light hair upon his women. His body, however, seemed suddenly oblivious to his habitual preferences. It had grown taut with interest. Being chained to a wall had obviously disordered his mind.
“And the spikes holding the chains to the wall were driven in to a depth of three feet seven inches,” she added.
“Ye obviously havenae come here to cheer us,” drawled Sigimor.
“I am not sure there is anything one could say to bring cheer to six men chained to a wall awaiting a hanging. Certainly not to six Highlanders chained to the walls of an English dungeon.”
“There is some truth in that. Who are ye?”
“I am Lady Jolene Gerard.”
If she thought standing straighter as she introduced herself would make her look more imposing, she was sadly mistaken, Sigimor mused. “Peter’s sister or his wife?”
“His sister. Peter was murdered by Harold. You came too late to help him.”
Although there was no hint of accusation behind her words, Sigimor felt the sting of guilt. “I left Dubheidland the morning after I received Peter’s message.”
“I know. I fear Harold guessed that Peter had summoned help. Harold had kept all routes to our kinsmen tightly watched so Peter sent for you. I am still not certain how Harold discovered what Peter had done.”
“Have ye proof that Harold murdered Peter?”
Jolene sighed and slowly shook her head. “I fear not. There is no doubt in my mind, however. Harold wanted Drumwich and now he holds it. Peter was hale and hearty and now he is dead. He died screaming from the pain in his belly. Harold claims the fish was spoiled. Two others died as well.”
“Ah. Tis possible.”
“True. Such tragedies are not so very rare. Yet, ere that spoiled fish was buried, two of Harold’s dogs ate some. They did not die, did not even grow a little ill. Of course, Harold does not know that I saw that. The dogs snatched some of the fish from Peter’s plate when his sudden illness drew Harold’s attention. I saw it because I had to push the dogs aside to reach Peter.”
“Who died besides Peter?”
“The two men most loyal to Peter. The cook presented the fish as a special treat for the three men as it was their favorite dish. It was claimed that not enough fish was caught to prepare the dish for everyone. They were also served the last of the best wine. I believe that is where the poison was, or most of it, but I can find no trace of it. Not upon the ewer it was served from or the tankards it was poured into. I did not get hold of them fast enough and they were scrubbed clean.”
“Did ye question the cook?” asked Liam.
“He has disappeared,” she replied.
Sigimor cursed and shook his head even as he hastily introduced his men. “Then I fear Harold will go unpunished. Ye have no proof of his guilt and I am nay in a position to help ye find any. It might be wise if ye find somewhere else to live now that Harold is the laird here.”
“But, he is not the lord of Drumwich. Not yet. There is one small impediment left.”
“What small impediment?”
“Peter’s son.”
“Legitimate?”
“Of course. Reynard is nearly three years of age now. His mother died at his birthing, I fear.”
“If ye are sure that Harold killed your brother, ye had best get that wee lad out of his reach,” said Liam.
Sigimor noticed that Jolene only looked at Liam for a brief moment before fixing her gaze upon him again. Liam might not be at his best, being dirty and a little bruised, but Sigimor was surprised that the little English lady seemed to note Liam’s highly praised beauty, accept it, and then dismiss it. That rarely happened and Sigimor found himself intrigued.
“I have hidden Reynard away,” she said.
“And Harold hasnae tried to pull that truth from ye?” Sigimor asked.
“Nay. I am very certain he would like to try, but I have hidden myself away as well. Harold does not know all the secrets of Drumwich.”
“Clever lass, but that can only work for a wee while, aye? Liam is right. Ye need to get yourself and the bairn away from here.”
Jolene stared at the big man Peter had hoped could save them. That the Highlander would honor an old debt enough to ride into England itself was a strong indication that he was a man of honor, one who could be trusted to hold to his word. It was certainly promising that not one of the men had yet asked anything of her despite their own dire circumstances, but were quick to tell her to get herself and Peter’s son and heir out of Harold’s deadly reach. They were also big, strong men who, if set free, would certainly hie themselves right back to the Highlands. Harold would not find it easy to follow them there.
It did trouble her a little that she could not seem to stop looking at the big man named Sigimor. Most women would be breathlessly intrigued by the one called Liam. Despite the dirt and bruises, she had easily recognized Liam’s beauty, a manly beauty actually enhanced by the flickering light of the torches set into the walls. Yet, she had looked, accepted the allure of the man, and immediately turned her gaze back to Sigimor. At three and twenty she felt she should be well past the age to suffer some foolish infatuation for a man, but she feared that might well be what ailed her now. The fact that she could not see the man all that clearly made her fascination with him all the stranger.
She inwardly shook herself. There was only one thing she should be thinking about and that was the need to get Reynard to safety. For three days and nights she had heard Harold ranting as he had Drumwich searched and its people questioned. Last night Harold’s interrogations had turned brutal, filling the halls with the piercing cries of those he tortured. Soon one of the very few who knew the secrets of Drumwich would break and tell Harold how to find her and Reynard. Pain could loosen the tongue of even the most loyal. It was imperative that she take the boy far away and, since she had no way to reach any of the rest of her family, these men were her only hope.
“Aye, I must get myself and the boy away from here, far away, to a place where Harold will find it dangerously difficult to hunt us down, if not impossible,” she said and could tell by the way Sigimor stared at her that he was beginning to understand why she was
there.
Sigimor’s whole body tensed, hope surging through him. She said she was in hiding, yet she stood there within plain sight apparently unconcerned about being discovered. There was also something in the way she spoke of taking the boy to a place far away, a place Harold would have great difficulty getting to, combined with the intent way she was staring at him, that made Sigimor almost certain she intended to enlist his aid. He noticed that his companions had all grown as tense as he was, their gazes fixed firmly upon Lady Jolene. He was not the only one whose hopes had suddenly been raised.
“There are nay many places in England where ye could go that Harold couldnae follow,” Sigimor said.
“Nay, there are very few indeed. None, in truth. Trying to reach my kinsmen has already cost one man his life. That route is closed to me, as it was to Peter, so I must needs find another.”
“Lass, it isnae kind to tease a mon chained to a wall and awaiting a hanging.” He caught his breath when she grinned for it added a beauty to her faintly triangular face that was dangerously alluring.
“Mayhap I was but trying to get you to make an offer ere I was forced to make a request. If you offer what I seek, I can ponder it, quickly, and accept, telling myself all manner of comforting reasons for doing so. If I must ask, then I am openly accepting defeat, bluntly admitting that I cannot do this alone. Tis a bitter draught to swallow.”
“Swallow it.”
“Sigimor!” Liam glared at his cousin, then smiled sweetly at Lady Jolene. “M’lady, if ye free us from this dark place, I give ye my solemn oath that we will aid ye in keeping the bairn alive and free in any and all ways we can.”
“Tis a most generous offer, sir,” Jolene said, then looked back at Sigimor, “but does your lord give you the right to make such an oath? Does he plan to honor your oath and share in it?”
Sigimor grunted, ignored the glares of his men for a full minute, then nodded. “Aye, he does. We will take the lad.”
Highland Warrior Page 27
