“Hell-” The man stared, his eyes flying wide. Then he turned to run, bolting for the far side of the clearing just as James, Alasdair, and others galloped out of the trees, each man couching his sword like a spear.
“Aye, it’s hell for you!” James kicked his horse forward, spurring after the man to skewer him before he’d run more than a few frantic paces.
“James!” Catriona reeled, her tormentor’s death cry echoing in her ears, shrill and terrible. Screaming, lathered horses and screeching steel filled her vision, the ground shaking beneath the fury of so many racing hooves. She stood frozen, dizzy as the earth tilted and the trees and rocks spun crazily, blurring everything.
Hell’s gates crashed open, trapping her in a tide of whirling, red-tinged madness. Her skewered tormentor stared at her from where he fallen, his face a mask of terror, his grin no more.
His companions scrambled, tearing off in all directions, stumbling over rocks, and screaming like women. James and Alasdair rode them down, slashing with swords or swiping axes in deadly, hissing arcs. More MacDonald horsemen burst from the wood, one banking a long spear, which he used to make short work of the cheese-eater.
Only the tall, hard-faced man who’d ordered Erc to cut her wrist-binds stood firm, whipping his sword from side to side, and even knocking the blade from the hand of one of the MacDonald horsemen.
Seeing him, James slewed his horse around, forcing the beast through the seething chaos until he reached the man. “Your name,” he demanded, swinging down from his saddle, his own steel pointing at the man. “Now, if you’d no’ have me carve it out of you.”
The man spat in answer.
“He has no tongue!” James glanced at Alasdair who, still mounted, had ridden near to watch. As were the other MacDonalds, for the steely-eyed sword-wielder was the only one of Catriona’s captors yet on his feet. The others lay dead or dying, a menace no longer.
“Perhaps” – James spun fast, swinging his blade in a hissing arc that sliced through the man’s sword arm before he could parry – “he’ll find it now!”
And the man did, howling as he staggered backwards, clutching his severed wrist to his chest, blood streaming through his fingers.
“Ah, so he does speak.” James strode after him, prodding the man with the tip of his reddened blade. “Your name, man. And dinnae tell me it’s MacNaughton” – he flicked the edge of the man’s blood-drenched plaid – “for I know this tartan isn’t your own.”
The man didn’t answer, bending nearly double over his bleeding wrist.
“They’ve stolen more than MacNaughton plaids.” One of the MacDonalds came forward to fling a bulging leather pouch at James’ feet.
A score of plaids quelled from the bag’s opening, spreading across the ground in a tangle of color. Cameron plaids, Mackenzie, Macpherson, and even a few Campbell tartans, blended together, proving their thievery.
As did a spill of silver coins, a bronze torque, two gem-encrusted chalices, a candle holder studded with almost as many jewels as the wine cups, and – James eyes narrowed – even a battered golden crucifix.
James and Alasdair exchanged a look.
“Kill him now!” another of Alasdair’s men growled. Others shouted agreement and started forward, each man reaching for his sword.
“They came to rape and plunder.” A burly, heavy-bearded man put all the men’s thoughts to words. “No matter this one’s name, his life is forfeit!”
“That one was called Erc.” Using both hands, Catriona pointed her ax – she couldn’t seem to unclench her fingers from the haft - at the fearsome giant now sprawled some yards away, her lady’s dagger still raging from his groin. “That’s the only name I-”
“You stay where you are!” James flashed a look at her when she started forward. Anger blazed in his eyes, scorching her. “No’ one step closer, I warn you. We’ll speak when I have you alone.”
To her surprise, none of her kinsmen challenged him for his boldness.
Alasdair hadn’t seemed to hear, his own fierce gaze on the tall, stern-faced man who’d straightened again. The man was beginning to sway, weaving as he lurched from one foot to the other, trying to hold his balance.
“You have two choices.” James snarled the words at him. “Die quickly, one sword strike and you’re in hell. Or” – he whipped his sword again, letting the blade flash past the man’s throat, missing his neck by a breath – “we kill you slowly, and we’ll do it in ways so vile you’ll remember the agony for all eternity.
“So-o-o.” He leveled his sword at the man’s belly. “Your name.”
“Farlan.” He glared at James, his tone surly.
James glowered back. “Farlan who?”
The man clamped his mouth, his face stony.
James gaze flickered to the smelly cloak Catriona’s tormentor had thrown over her head on Blackshore’s boat strand. It lay discarded on the ground, near her captors’ fretting horses.
When he turned back to Farlan, he gave him a look that would’ve jellied most men’s knees. “Have you been skulking about the glen in a dark cloak?” Scorn tightened his voice. “Shooting unmarked arrows at men and” – he glanced at Alasdair – “jabbing holes in MacDonald galleys?”
Farlan said nothing.
James contemplated him, his silence deadly.
“You’re a brave man.” He finally stepped back, taking a few test swings with his sword. “Daring, or” – he ran his thumb slowly along the blade’s edge, drawing a bead of red – “you’re a fool.”
“I’m no fool.” Farlan found his voice.
“You thought to steal my sister and live?” Alasdair dismounted then and strode over to James, his expression fierce. He glanced at Catriona, a muscle jerking in his jaw. “No man touches-”
“We meant her no ill.” Farlan jerked a glance at Catriona. “We’re broken men. We needed coin and thought to ransom her, no more. Ask her, she will tell you.”
Catriona started to deny it – they’d meant to kill her, she knew – but even as James and Alasdair turned to glance at her, Farlan rushed toward Alasdair, using his good hand to yank a dirk from his belt.
Raising the dagger, he lunged fast, aiming for Alasdair’s back.
“Hah!” James whipped around so quickly, Catriona only saw a flash of steel and plaid. Alasdair spun about nearly as fast, but it was James’ blade that sliced into Farlan’s side, nearly cleaving him in two. “That trick is older than the hills, my friend.”
James scowled at Farlan as the man twitched in the bracken, then went still. “Every beardless squire knows to watch for a feint.”
“He was aiming at you, lord.” One of Alasdair’s men stepped forward and spat on Farlan’s body. “It’s been long since a MacDonald chief was cut down by a dagger in the back.” The man glanced at James, and then nodded tersely. “I ne’er thought I’d praise a Cameron, but I thank God this one is so quick with his steel.”
Bending, the man snatched up one of the stolen plaids, handing it to James, who took it and began wiping the blood from his sword with a fold of tartan.
“Dinnae think I did it for you.” James glanced at Alasdair, then flung down the soiled plaid and strode over to Catriona. “Truth is” – he sheathed his sword – “I cannae bide a woman’s sorrow and I know your sister would fill the glen with her keening if you died.”
Alasdair grinned. “That may be, though I’m thinking you had other reasons, by God! Something I once said to you in Blackshore’s bailey, eh? Could it be you mean to hold me to those words?”
“What words?” Catriona shot a gaze from her brother to James, then back again. She had a good idea what was meant – a possibility that flooded her with joy - when James arm went about her and he pulled her close. He held her clutched tighter to his side than the day he’d caught her in his wood and dragged her across the glen.
And with all the passion of their night on the ice floes, but there was something else, too.
A fierce possessiveness –
a sense of claiming - that made her mouth go dry and set her heart to knocking wildly against her ribs.
There could be only one reason he’d reached for her now, especially here before Alasdair and all their gawping, drop-jawed kinsmen.
When those men started to grin, not looking at all angry at James’ seizing her, her pulse really began to race.
“I’m waiting to hear about the words?” She clutched his arm, hoping she’d guessed right.
“They were words I’ll mind him he said, aye.” James pulled her closer, his arm about her waist as firm as banded iron. “Something about offering me your hand in marriage, it was. Were I of different blood.”
The world dipped beneath Catriona’s feet. Everything around her spun away except the promise she’d just heard, the hope that set her soul soaring.
She’d wanted to provoke him into seducing her again.
This was so much better.
She tilted her face up so that she could see his eyes, but he was looking at Alasdair, his dark gaze piercing. Her own eyes were beginning to burn, badly. And her heart knocked wildly against her ribs.
“So-o-o, MacDonald!” James voice rang with challenge. “Are you a man of your word, or nae? I’ll no’ be minding you that I’ve saved your neck twice now. That alone should sway you, my blood be damned.
“And” – he reached into his plaid, withdrawing the amber necklace – “I’ve returned a MacDonald heirloom. ‘Tis a great treasure, I hear! So wondrous, I vow, that I’m of a mind to demand something of even more value before I relinquish it to you.”
Catriona’s vision blurred. “Dear Saints….” She could hardly speak past the hot thickness in her throat. But she did peer up at James, needing the truth. “I do think you must mean me?”
“Hah!” Alasdair threw back his head and laughed. “You see what a bold minx you’re getting!”
James grinned and pulled her harder against him. “I wouldn’t have her any other way.”
“What are you saying?” Catriona squirmed in his arms, twisting to peer up at him.
“Be still – or do you no’ want me to fasten these stones around your neck again?” James reached to do just that. The deed done, he turned back to her brother.
“There.” He tightened his arm around her. “The ambers are returned. And now” – he bent his head to kiss her, hard and swift – “I’ll be having my own prize!”
“Dinnae make me regret it, Cameron.” Alasdair came forward to thump James’ shoulder. “You can have her, aye. If” – he glanced at Catriona – “she’ll have you.”
James laughed. “That’s good, because I already know she will. And” – he glanced down at her, grinning – “I’d have made her mine with or without your consent.”
“Make me yours?” Catriona touched her ambers, happiness welling inside her. Shivers of excitement raced through her and it might have been her imagination, but she thought she felt her necklace thrumming, sweetly.
She felt so giddy she could hardly stand. But James’ arrogance did pinch her pride.
So she broke free of his grasp and stepped back, setting her hands on her hips. “I thought I was a plague?”
Behind her, Alasdair laughed again, his men quickly joining in.
“You are, the saints pity me!” Before she could reply, James pulled her roughly against him, his mouth claiming hers again.
He gripped her face in his hands, kissing her savagely until she cried out and slid her arms around his neck, clinging to him as she kissed him back with all the need and desperation inside her.
She was dizzy when he finally tore his mouth from hers and set her from him. Blinking, she peered up at him, her heart swelling with all the hope and pleasure she never thought she’d feel.
Ignoring Alasdair’s grin and the hoots and whistles of her kinsmen, she blinked against the stinging heat pricking the backs of her eyes. “You were frightful to me.” Her voice caught on the words and she blinked again, faster this time, for she hated tears.
“And” – she did her best not to sniff – “you did call me a plague.”
He leaned close, kissing her softly this time. “So I did, right enough.”
She held his gaze, her heart thundering. “And now you think differently?”
“No’ at all.” He looked down at her, a devilish grin curving his lips. “You’re the worst sort of pest. And I hope you’ll keep on plaguing me forever. Because” – he pulled her back into his arms – “I cannae live without you.”
* * *
And as he kissed her again – much to the amusement of Alasdair and his men – a tall, colorfully arrayed figure watched silently from the shadows of the birch wood. Slightly transparent, for he wasn’t of this world, the man’s long fair hair shone like gold in the watery sun slipping through the canopy of trees. And those who might have seen him, if any present were so gifted, would have blinked against the brilliant blue of his tunic, the startling crimson of his fine, flowing cloak. His hand, as strong and well-made now as ever, rested on the shimmering white flank of the magnificent stag standing beside him.
He looked on as the happy pair kissed, his own heart knocking painfully. But he ignored the hurtful pangs, as he’d learned so well to do, and relished instead the strong approval soaring through him.
And – if he didn’t wish to draw attention to himself or the enchanted beast who’d led him here – he would have lent his own whoops to the joyful cries of the MacDonald warriors.
He’d been a warrior himself, once.
In truth, he still was.
Such things stayed with a man, always. Though he knew neither his sword nor his much-loved war ax would never again taste the thrill of battle.
Those days were centuries gone, but his heart lived on. As did his pleasure in feasting and laughing, the joy he’d taken in being young, strong, and fearless. How he’d gloried in his journeys at sea. His exhilaration at standing at the steering oar of his high-prowed dragon-ship as she sped across the long swells, oars beating and sending up spumes of white spray to flash down her sides. And – he curled his fingers into the stag’s snowy coat - the hope he’d once vested in these rugged, mist-drenched hills, the herring-filled waters of the sea-loch, and the glen’s verdant grazing land.
He’d loved the glen fiercely, though he’d only wanted a narrow slice of the rich coastal headlands. He’d yearned for no more than a fair place to settle, a haven where he could moor his ships and keep an eye on the horizon. And where those men who followed him could raise their families and cattle and grow their crops in peace.
He’d held such high hopes that his people would thrive here.
He’d thought to raise sons beneath the shoulders of these great hills and take them to sea from his own sheltering shores. Above all, he’d planned to spend his nights wrapped in his beloved’s arms, keeping her safe from danger and sorrow, and loving her all their days.
It wasn’t meant to be.
The spinners of fate had other plans.
But he was his own man now. As it were, all things considered. And much as he would’ve preferred to stride out from the trees and into the midst of the rowdy, jostling men, thumping backs, swigging ale, and whooping louder than any of them, he stayed where he stood.
The warriors were breaking up now, readying to return to their home, their duty done.
And the Cameron had just swung his bride – for he knew the pair would wed – up in his arms and was carrying her to his horse. The young chieftain grinned as if he held the greatest treasure.
To be sure, he did.
For a maid who loved a man truly, no matter his name or blood, was a prize worth more than all the world’s gold, as he knew only too well.
If the spinners were kind, the Cameron and his lady would find happiness.
He wished them every joy.
And he desired himself back in Odin’s mead hall, away from this place he’d once walked in the belief a part of it would be his.
Too many memorie
s lingered here.
“Do not come for me again.” He spoke to the white stag, but kept his gaze on the departing warriors and the young pair. “I’ll not go with you if you do.”
He rubbed the beast’s shoulders to soften the finality of his words, for the creature called for him often. And each time, as now, the returning only poured salt on old wounds, making them burn again as new.
Scandia walked here.
And each time he came, he’d seen her.
But always through a filmy veil that looked no thicker than air, but proved impenetrable when he tried to pass through it. In the early years, he’d kick at the haze, pounding his fists on the shimmering, shifting wall, as he yelled in fury. But no matter what a ruckus he caused – and he was a big man who knew how to be loud - Scandia never saw or heard him. Once he’d even swung at the barrier with his war ax and the jolt that had shot up his arm on the impact, had pained him for nearly a hundred years.
His frustration stayed with him longer.
This time he hadn’t seen her or the wall-of-haze.
And, Thor help him, that was almost worse.
“This was the last time, Rannoch.” He glanced down at the beast, his fingers freezing in midair, for he was no longer rubbing the stag’s great shoulders.
The creature was gone.
Frowning, he glanced round, but the magical creature was nowhere to be seen. The only flash of white anywhere near was a shimmer of sun-sparkle glinting off one of the birches across the clearing.
Or so he thought until the shimmer moved and he saw that it wasn’t sun-sparkle, but the luminous skirts of Scandia’s glittering gown.
She stood staring at him, more beautiful even than he remembered. Wind tossed her glossy black hair and tore at her pearly, shimmering skirts. Her eyes were huge, startled and disbelieving. There could be no doubt that she saw him – this time – for she’d pressed a hand to her breast and tears brimmed in her eyes, then spilled, glistening like stars as they slipped down her cheeks.
And – his heart seized – he could see her so clearly.
Sins of a Highland Devil: Highland Warriors Book 1 Page 31