TENDER FEUD

by Nicole Jordan

  “Nay, ye dinna understand, Raith! Think on it. Will no’ Colin Campbell pay to get her back? Ransom!”

  He bellowed the word, which made his fellow Highlanders pause and Katrine catch her breath again.

  The black-haired thief slowly turned, his gaze flickering over her before he shook his head. “The notion’s clever, lad, but not necessary. We’ve had our revenge on Colin Campbell. Besides, it’s not his money we want, but Argyll’s.”

  Lachlan looked crestfallen. “Aweel, maybe the bluidy duke would pay. She’s a Campbell, isna that so?”

  Katrine felt her palms grow damp as the dangerous blue gaze found her. The ruffian leader didn’t seem to favor the idea of holding her for ransom. On the other hand, he was looking at her thoughtfully, the way a hawk watches its prey. Katrine decided it was high time to discourage the speculation she saw in his dark eyes.

  “You cannot hold me for ransom!” she blurted out. “I mean—you could, but it wouldn’t do any good. I doubt my uncle would pay to have me returned.”

  There was a pause, before he said coldly, softly, “Oh, and why not?”

  “Because my uncle scarcely knows me. And Argyll doesn’t know me at all. He’s never laid eyes on me.”

  “Suppose you tell me why I should trust the word of a Campbell.”

  The soft sarcastic tone, less tinged with the brogue that rolled thickly from the other tongues, set her teeth on edge. Katrine returned a stare that she hoped was just as arrogant.

  “You don’t have to believe me, but it’s true. I just arrived from England yesterday. My mother’s family is English, and they took us in when—”

  “Wouldn’t ye know it,” muttered Lachlan. “A damned Sassenach.”

  The Gaelic term denoted anyone of English birth, but on the lips of a Highlander, the word was a curse. Stiffening, Katrine raised her chin. “My mother may have been English, and I may have lived in England for most of my life, but I’m half Scottish. In fact, I was named for Loch Katrine.”

  Her revelation didn’t seem to impress the Highlanders, not at all. “A Sassenach Campbell,” the black-haired Raith murmured, his acid tone making it into an obscenity. Katrine could see he spoke for his kinsmen, for the grim, mirthless Scotsmen were staring at her as if she were some vile thing.

  Lachlan, however, seemed to be more concerned about the failure of his plan. He glowered at Katrine, complaining bitterly, “I should hae known after I had ye clawing at me that naebody would pay to get ye back.”

  Katrine returned her abductor’s glare with indignation. He made it sound as if she were at fault for not being the prize he’d supposed. But wrangling with Lachlan would not benefit her or extricate her from this precarious situation. She knew very well who was in charge.

  She looked questioningly at the man called Raith, hoping he would be gentleman enough to release her. He was still watching her with that hard, unforgiving expression. Even as their eyes met, though, he seemed to come to a decision.

  Alarmed by what she suspected, Katrine tried to take a step backward and nearly fell, having forgotten about her bound ankles. “Please don’t let me detain you. You must be anxious to be on your way.”

  “Not so anxious as all that.”

  His response gave her pause. “Well, I am rather desirous of returning home…so I’ll just take my leave now.”

  He crossed his arms over his muscular, tartan-covered chest. “And how will you get back?”

  “I shall walk. I am an excellent walker.”

  “You don’t expect us to leave you here in this wild terrain to fend for yourself, garbed only in a nightdress?”

  “I don’t mind, truly. You needn’t concern yourself with my welfare.”

  A muscle flexed in his jaw. “Oh, I won’t, Miss Campbell, you can be sure. There are a great number of people whose welfare concerns me more than yours.”

  Katrine stared at him with growing dismay. “You don’t intend to release me?” Her protest was more of a squeak than a forceful challenge. She swallowed to control the shameful quivering of her voice.

  “Why should I do that? So you can set the militia in hot pursuit?”

  Must the man answer every question with one of his own? “But I won’t. I swear. If you let me go, I’ll forget this ever happened. I’ll forget I ever saw you. We’ve never met. Indeed, I had no desire to improve the slight acquaintance anyway—”

  He cut swiftly into her hysterical chattering. “The way you agreed not to scream in your uncle’s study? How easily lies fall from the tongue of a Campbell.”

  Katrine had no ready answer to that. With increasing desperation, she said very slowly, as if to someone of deficient understanding, “You just said you don’t want my uncle’s money, and I have already told you the duke won’t pay. There would be no purpose in trying to hold me for ransom.”

  “No, not ransom. I doubt your cheese-paring uncle would be willing to part with his silver. But even he wouldn’t want to see you come to harm. Blood is blood, after all. You’ll serve quite well as surety against the ill-treatment of the Duart MacLeans.”

  MacLeans, Katrine thought with a combination of dread and distaste. The cattle-thieving MacLeans.

  Her thoughts must have shown on her face, for his mouth twisted wryly. “You must see how imprudent it would be to release you, now that you know who we are.”

  “Imprudent!” Not for one instant did she believe he gave a fig if she could identify him or his clan. Indeed, back in her uncle’s study, he had seemed to want Colin Campbell to realize whose hand was at work. Such brazenness was not only insolent but reckless. “You must see,” Katrine said with strained patience, “it would be imprudent not to release me. It’s mad, what you’re planning. My uncle will be furious. The duke will be furious. They’ll hunt you down, the soldiers at the garrison will—”

  “I’m terrified.”

  Her threats weren’t working, she could see. “You can’t do this to me!” she cried in frustration.

  “I expect I can.”

  The amused mockery was back in his eyes, fanning her ire. Katrine would have stamped her foot in defiance if her ankles hadn’t been bound. “I won’t go with you!”

  “I’m devastated to have to disappoint you, Miss Campbell, but you have no choice.”

  She glanced wildly about her, looking for a way out, but he must have guessed her intent, for he said easily, “Don’t think of trying to escape, I warn you. You would find it rather undignified if we had to chase you down.”

  Before she could retort that it was impossible to escape with one’s feet tied, he turned away, going to his horse. The wiry animal was as black as the Highlander’s hair.

  “I hope the soldiers do catch you!” Katrine flung after him.

  “You’ll ride with Lachlan,” he answered without looking back.

  Katrine’s dismay at this pronouncement was almost as great as Lachlan’s.

  “I dinna want her!” exclaimed the brawny man. “I’d as soon ride with a wildcat.”

  Katrine felt a small measure of satisfaction at his protest. At least she had managed to give him a healthy respect for her nails in her earlier struggle to be free. But if he dared treat her the way he had then, she would…she would…

  Unable at the moment to think of anything violent enough, Katrine glared at Lachlan’s massive back. He had also turned to fetch his horse and was patting the shaggy chestnut’s nose.

  “Ma poor beastie,” he muttered to console the animal. “Ye dinna want such a hellion, either.”

  “The sentiment is mutual, I assure you,” Katrine declared just as stubbornly. “I’ve no desire to be thrown across a horse like a sack of oats by some cloth-headed halfwit who doesn’t have the—”

  “I suggest,” Raith interrupted her from across the thicket as he swung up into the saddle, “you find some other means of describing Lachlan. He doesn’t take kindly to having his intellect disparaged.”

  It was on the tip of Katrine’s tongue to ask “What int
ellect?” but the savage way Lachlan was scowling at her made her direct her tart comment to Raith instead. “If he doesn’t like cloth-head, how about lout? Or thatch-gallows? That is what you all are.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched as he urged his black mount toward her, coming to a halt a scant foot away. “Might I remind you, Miss Campbell, that your continued good health depends on our continued goodwill?”

  His sardonic look and drawl were deliberately maddening. Infuriated, Katrine tried giving him a haughty stare to match his own—and discovered herself at a distinct disadvantage. Even on the ground he was much taller than she, and when he was sitting on a long-legged horse, as he was now, she had to crane her neck just to meet his gaze. What was more, she was still in her night rail, vulnerable to the lecherous gazes of the dozen strange, armed men who were led by this black-haired devil.

  Not that her scant attire incited his masculine interest. His dark blue eyes were giving her a skeptical perusal, which said quite clearly that he found her singularly lacking.

  Oh, how she wanted to strike him! Determinedly Katrine looked around for a weapon, a stone to throw, anything that would wipe that sardonic sneer off his face.

  He must have thought she was again considering running, for his look warned her not to attempt it. “I wouldn’t be so foolish as to try an escape. It will avail you nothing.”

  Katrine raised her chin. “On the contrary. It will avail me a great deal of satisfaction.”

  “And I will have just as much satisfaction preventing you.”

  The lethal chill that had crept into his tone and his gaze reminded Katrine of how dangerous he was, how very dire her straits were. Her mouth went slack as she stared up at him, as she finally realized that she was at the mercy of a band of cutthroats and marauders. They could abduct her if they wished. They could murder her and strew her in little pieces all over the Highlands and she would be powerless to prevent them.

  She shuddered, absently hugging her arms to herself, as much as was possible with her wrists bound.

  Seeing her shivering, a dazed look in her eyes, Raith hesitated, then reached up and drew his long tartan plaid from over his shoulder. Grudgingly he held it down to Katrine. “Here, take it. Offering comfort to a Campbell—and a Sassenach at that—goes against the grain, but you’ll be useless to us if you catch your death.”

  His consideration was charming, Katrine thought as she cast a dubious glance at the length of dark green wool. “I may have been away from Scotland for a while, but even I know the law. The clan tartan is illegal in the Highlands.”

  His mouth tightened. “I don’t recognize the right of the English government to decree what I may wear or what weapons I may carry, but in point of fact, the tartan isn’t illegal for women. Though it ill behooves a Scotsman to instruct you English on your own law. Now do you want it or not?”

  Katrine didn’t want to accept comfort or anything else from him, except her freedom, yet if she refused to take the plaid she would only be spiting herself; the mountain night air truly was cold, even though it was coming on to summer. She lifted her gaze to Raith and found him watching her mental struggle with cynical amusement. Fuming silently, quite aware that he would rather let her freeze, Katrine snatched the plaid from his outstretched hand and managed awkwardly to wrap it around her.

  “Don’t feel you have to overwhelm me with your gratitude.”

  Katrine didn’t deign to reply to his sarcasm. Squaring her shoulders, her chin thrust forward, she gave him a look of such utter disdain that he should have been frozen on the spot.

  He merely grinned.

  “Let Lachlan help you mount. If you can manage to hold your tongue and behave in a civilized manner, I imagine he’ll let you ride sitting up.” Then, as if she were beneath further notice, Raith turned his horse. “Douse those torches, lads, and let’s be off. We’ve a long ride before dawn.”

  He was decidedly odious, Katrine reflected as she glared at Raith’s retreating back. Entirely, overwhelmingly odious.

  Then the lights were snuffed out and the resulting darkness made her forget the shortcomings of the lawless Highlander, who was quickly becoming the bane of her existence, and focus instead on the lout who had precipitated her grim situation.

  Hearing Lachlan come up to her, Katrine tensed and clenched her fists, prepared to defend herself from his violence.

  “I’ll no’ fight with ye if ye’ll keep yer claws to yerself.”

  She didn’t really want to fight with Lachlan either, not when she would likely come out the loser. Thus, because she had no choice, Katrine accepted the truce of sorts that he offered her, suffering him to toss her up on his chestnut, this time in the proper position. Or almost the proper position. Without the use of her legs, she was required awkwardly to ride sidesaddle, with her right knee hooked over the low pommel. She sat bolt upright, though, as he climbed up behind her, determined not to allow one inch of her person to come in contact with him.

  It proved difficult when Lachlan spurred the animal into a bone-jarring trot to catch up to his fellows, for though Katrine frantically grabbed a handful of chestnut mane, she was thrown against her captor’s massive chest. Only the powerful arm that snaked around her waist kept her from falling off entirely.

  The ride was a marginal improvement over the previous wild one, Katrine decided a short while later, but only marginal. At the moment they were negotiating a steep descent through a wooded ravine in the dark, while a patch of fog swirled around them. Katrine little doubted that any time now the sturdy chestnut would lose its footing and fling her to her death.

  Desperately clutching the horse’s mane, she shut her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look. She was beginning to wish heartily she had never come to Scotland. Abduction was not what she’d had in mind when she’d dreamed of romance and adventure. This kind of danger wasn’t appealing in the least. Nor was this ilk of fierce, tartan-clad Highlander precisely the kind of soulstirring, bold but gentle mate she had yearned for. Bold, yes. Gentle, most assuredly not. Come morning, she would be sporting a dozen bruises on various parts of her anatomy.

  Morning. An impotent wave of despair washed over Katrine. Unless she could return before then, before her absence was noticed, any chance she had of remaining in Scotland with her Uncle Colin would be less than niggling. He would send her packing, most certainly. And even though her abduction wasn’t her fault, by any stretch of the imagination, Katrine felt a stab of guilt for putting her uncle to such trouble when he had far weightier problems to concern him. The last thing she wanted was to be a burden to him, yet now he would be required to rescue her.

  If he could find her.

  Katrine’s shoulders slumped. How could her circumstances have changed so drastically in such a short span of time? Had it only been yesterday that she’d arrived in Scotland? Only yesterday that she’d eagerly awaited her first glimpse of the Highland hills she hadn’t seen since childhood?

  Katrine shook her head as she recalled her excitement then. She had blithely sailed into the Firth of Lorne the previous day and booked rooms at an inn in the picturesque seaport of Oban. This morning, for two shillings, she’d hired a carter to carry her the twenty-five miles to her uncle’s house. She’d left her servants behind with instructions that if they did not hear from her in two days, they should send her trunks on to Uncle Colin’s and return to England.

  The grandeur of the Highlands was all she remembered and more. Katrine had clung to the seat of the rickety cart and gazed about her in delight and wonder. To the north was the vast bulk of Ben Cruachan, one of the highest mountains in Scotland, adorned in vivid spring green. To the east, before her in the distance, spread a glimmering, steel-blue lake—Loch Awe, which had provided protection and sustenance to Clan Campbell for centuries.

  At the end of the loch stood Kilchurn Castle, a huge stone edifice with a rectangular tower house that had been built by a Campbell and had served as headquarters for government troops during the Jacobite
uprising of ‘45. A short distance from the castle, near a scattering of crofters’ huts, was the large two-story residence that Katrine remembered from her childhood.

  How far, Katrine wondered now as she clung to the chestnut mane, had she been carried from her Uncle Colin’s house? It had been impossible to get her bearings in the dark while hanging upside down from a galloping horse.

  A moment later, Katrine roused herself from her depression, mentally flogging herself for letting her spirits sink so low. She had to escape on her own, of course. Or, barring that, she had to alert the soldiers who would come after her, so they could attempt a rescue. It would behoove her, she realized suddenly, to discover where she was now and where her abductors were headed.

  Determinedly, Katrine opened her eyes and peered up ahead. In the faint moonlight she could make out the broad, plaidcovered backs of the MacLeans, and the coal-black hair of their leader. His head was bent to the man beside him as he conversed in low tones. Katrine strained her ears to catch the soft murmurs that occasionally drifted back to her, but they were speaking Gaelic. No matter how intently she listened to the dissonant syllables of their Highland tongue, she could understand only a word or two.

  Surreptitiously glancing to either side of her then, she took careful measure of her surroundings. Where in heaven’s name was she? All around them were high hills, with barren rocks and crags topping the highest points. Yet she couldn’t tell which peak was Ben Cruachan. Worse, the scattering of Scotch pines on their left had begun to thicken, which suggested they soon might be swallowed up by a forest.

  A trail. She had to leave a trail for her clansmen to follow.

  Taking a cautious breath, Katrine shifted in the saddle.

  “Mind ye, I’ll turn ye tapsalteerie if ye start yer girnin’ again,” Lachlan muttered, which Katrine interpreted to mean he would turn her over his horse again if she so much as squeaked.