“Bon!” Jamie snapped. “That’ll do.”
Bon shot him a helpless look, plainly trying to decide whether it would be more dangerous to offend him or the steely-eyed lass holding the gun. He returned his attention to Emma, lifting his hands in supplication. “Why, I got nothin’ but respect for a bonny lass such as yerself. Ye can ask any o’ the lads and they’ll tell ye straight. If anyone ’round these parts knows how to treat a lady, it’s me. Isn’t that right? Malcolm? Angus?” he said plaintively, appealing to the two men closest to him, one of whom he’d just tried to get shot in his stead.
Emma did a double take. Malcolm and Angus weren’t just brothers, but twins—both with long, wild hair, full lips and compelling, slightly off-kilter features that proved there was a very thin line between comely and homely.
Malcolm—or maybe it was Angus—nodded earnestly. “Bon’s tellin’ the God’s truth, m’lady. Why, only last week he was boastin’ aboot how he treated that barmaid over in Invergarry.”
“That’s right, miss,” Angus—or maybe it was Malcolm—agreed with equally convincing sincerity. “Bon swore he treated her right, he did. And judgin’ from the squeals and moans comin’ from that hayloft in the stables until the wee hours o’ the morn, he weren’t just boastin.’”
The other men snickered and nudged each other. Bon groaned and eyed the pistol still dangling uselessly from his hand as if contemplating shooting himself before she could.
Folding his arms over his chest, Jamie cleared his throat. “I couldn’t really blame you if you shot Bon, lass. Hell, I’d have shot him myself a long time ago if he wasn’t my cousin.”
“Eh!” Bon protested, giving him an aggrieved look.
Jamie continued as if there had been no interruption. “However, I feel it’s my Christian duty to warn you that my pistol only holds one shot. You can’t shoot the both of us. I’m afraid you’re going to have to choose, sweetheart.”
More infuriated by the tender note in his voice than by any crude jibe from one of his men, Emma swung the pistol back around and leveled it at his heart. “I’m not your lass. And I’m not your sweetheart.” As she faced him with her shoulders thrown back and her chin held high, she was surprised to realize her hand was no longer trembling. For the first time in a very long while she felt completely in control of her destiny. “I don’t belong to any man. At least not yet.”
She had naïvely believed she had disarmed him, but she had failed to take into account the most lethal weapon in his arsenal. Tipping his head to one side to study her, Jamie gave her a lazy grin that made her toes curl in her borrowed boots. “If you want to keep it that way, I’m afraid you’re going to have to shoot me.”
Unfolding his brawny arms, he came striding toward her. Although his men’s expressions veered wildly between disbelief and alarm, Jamie only had eyes for her.
Emma’s panic swelled as the distance between his imposing chest and the mouth of the weapon shrank. Recognizing in that moment that he was a gambling man just like her papa, she took two stumbling steps backward, raking back the pistol’s hammer with her thumb.
Yet still he came, as resolute and fearless as some great mountain cat stalking a field mouse. Emma’s field of vision narrowed until she could count each dark lash ringing those vibrant green eyes of his. Eyes that would be forever closed in death if she called his bluff.
She squeezed her own eyes shut to block out the sight of his face. But she could still see him lying in a pool of his own blood on the cold, hard ground. Could see the sun-bronzed glow fade from his face, leaving it as pale and waxen as the effigy on a tomb.
Her finger tensed on the trigger but at the exact second she squeezed it, she felt her arm jerk to the side, as if of its own volition.
She opened her eyes to find Jamie still on his feet and an acrid cloud of smoke hanging in the air between them. Through ears still ringing from the blast, she heard him let out an admiring whistle as he eyed the jagged chunk of bark the pistol ball had torn from the trunk of a nearby birch. “Not bad for an amateur marksman. Or woman. At least you didn’t shoot my horse.”
Emma’s arm fell limply to her side. Her shoulders slumped in defeat. She didn’t even protest when Jamie reached down and gently removed the smoking pistol from her hand. He tossed it to one of his men, leaving him free to deal with her.
She braced herself for the blow to come, knowing her open defiance had left him with little choice but to mete out her punishment in front of his men. His temper, as well as his pride, would demand it. She would not cry, she swore silently, even as she felt a treacherous sting at the backs of her eyes. Nor would she give him the satisfaction of begging for mercy. Whatever he did to her, it would be no more than she deserved for letting her own temper get the best of her and squandering her best opportunity to escape.
Despite all of her courageous intentions, she still flinched when he lifted his hand. He froze and she glimpsed a flash of genuine anger in his eyes. But instead of backhanding her as she’d anticipated, he simply captured her wrist and tugged her into motion, forcing her to follow him.
As he hauled her through the ranks of his men, they looked as if they’d like nothing more than to erupt in a triumphant cheer, but didn’t dare. Only Bon looked subdued, the mischievous spark in his black button eyes dimmed to an ember.
Given how long Jamie’s strides were, it took them less than a minute to reach the edge of the wood bordering the moonlit stretch of moor. Emma faltered but Jamie just kept walking, giving her no choice but to stumble along behind him or be dragged. As the forbidding shadows engulfed them, she realized she had sorely misjudged him.
There would be no one to witness the punishment Jamie Sinclair had planned for her.
Chapter Thirteen
EMMA STUMBLED AFTER JAMIE, forced to match his relentless pace. The thick canopy of boughs swaying over their heads diffused the moonlight, dappling their path with a sinister web of shadows that turned every rock and fallen branch into a trap to snag her clumsy feet.
She might be in danger of stumbling to her knees with every step, but Jamie navigated the treacherous terrain with rugged indifference, his stride as sure as his horse’s had been on the edge of the cliff overlooking the vale.
Emma wanted to drag her feet, to postpone the inevitable moment of reckoning when Jamie would finally prove himself to be every inch the monster the earl would have her believe he was. His kindnesses had already sent a tiny web of cracks shuddering through her heart. She feared his cruelty would shatter it into a thousand pieces.
Her breath was growing shorter, her lungs starting to burn. Her ill-fitting boots chafed her toes and heels through the thick stockings, making each step a fresh misery.
“Pardon me?” she finally gasped out, her discomfort beginning to outweigh her fear.
His pace did not falter.
“Pardon me, sir?” she repeated, louder and more forcefully this time.
Jamie just kept walking, as if her words were of no more import to him than the distant call of a nightjar or the pesky chirping of a cricket.
Emboldened by a surge of anger, Emma jerked to a dead halt and wrenched her wrist out of his grip. Jamie stopped and slowly turned to face her.
The look on his face tempted her to go sprinting off in the opposite direction, but Emma forced herself to stand her ground. “We’ve traveled far enough, don’t you think? Your men shouldn’t be able to hear my screams from here.”
Jamie gazed down at her, his expression inscrutable. “I’m more concerned about them hearing my screams. Although after that idiotic stunt you just pulled, I’m convinced no appeal to reason—however earsplitting—would penetrate that thick little skull of yours.” He leaned closer, close enough to count every freckle on her nose. “If you ever pull a pistol on me again, lass, you’d best be prepared to pull the trigger.”
“I did pull the trigger,” she reminded him with icy calm.
“Only after you made sure your shot would go astray.”<
br />
She continued to glare at him. “Perhaps the weapon simply recoiled.”
He cocked a skeptical eyebrow. “Before you fired?”
Emma swallowed her protest. She might be able to deny that moment to him, but she couldn’t very well deny it to herself. Not even if she couldn’t begin to understand it.
“There’s a chance my men wouldn’t have taken kindly to seeing me shot down in cold blood. What if one of them had been willing to shoot you to save me?”
“Then I guess you’d be robbed of your precious ransom and the earl would be forced to woo himself a new bride.”
Jamie turned and paced a few steps away from her, running a hand through his thick mane of sable hair. His big body was fraught with tension, as if there was some invisible battle being waged within.
Emma could not have said what drove her forward, what possessed her to touch the back of his arm through the faded cambric of his shirt with trembling fingertips. “Can you truly blame me for trying to escape? If you had been captured by the redcoats or were locked away in one of the earl’s dungeons, wouldn’t you have done the same?”
He turned to face her, his expression so stern it took every ounce of her courage not to go stumbling backward in alarm. “Aye, I would. But I would have bluidy well succeeded. I wouldn’t have been fool enough to end up at the mercy of a mon like me.”
“Just what sort of mon are you, Jamie Sinclair? Judging from what your cousin Bon blurted out back there, you’re not in the habit of terrorizing defenseless women.”
“That was before I met you. And one could hardly call you defenseless.”
“If I hadn’t learned which end of the pistol to point at a pheasant or a hare, there would have been many winter days—if not weeks—when my mother and sisters would have gone without meat.”
“I wasn’t talking about the way you handle a pistol. You have other weapons that are far more dangerous to a man’s resolve.” Her breath quickened as he lifted a hand to trace the curve of her cheek with the backs of his knuckles.
It had never occurred to her that he might use tenderness to quell her rebellion instead of brutality. Or that it would be so devastatingly effective.
“Such as?” she whispered, knowing she was even more of a fool to ask but unable to resist.
“Your wit. Your spirit. Your willingness to sacrifice everything, including any hope of happiness, for the good of your family. Even your loyalty to your bridegroom—misguided though it may be.” His voice deepened to a smoky rumble that shook her all the way to her toes. “Your fine eyes. Your wee freckled nose. The softness of your lips…”
Before those lips could part in a wistful sigh, Jamie was on her. He seized her face in the cup of his hands, claiming her as if she had always belonged to him, would always belong to him.
His mouth slanted hungrily over hers, parting her tender lips with a mastery as undeniable as it was irresistible. His tongue plundered the slick sweetness of her mouth until the whisky-and-woodsmoke flavor of him was all she could taste, all she desired. He might be holding her face captive between his hands, but he tasted of freedom, of passion, of a danger as seductive and irresistible as it was terrifying.
It wasn’t the kiss of a lover, but the kiss of a conqueror, a marauder, a man who had spent his entire life being taught that he would have to take what he wanted if he was ever to have anything at all. There was no defense against such a provocative assault on the senses, no words to deny its dark and primal power.
She felt her fingers unfurling like the petals of a flower, rising to slip beneath the hem of his shirt and dig into the smooth, muscled planes of his lower back. All she could do was hold on and try to keep from being swept away by the indomitable force of his will. Especially when all she secretly longed to do was let go and ride that surge to wherever it would take her.
One of his hands slid around her throat to tug away the leather thong at her nape, sending her curls tumbling around her shoulders in wild disarray. As he raked his fingers through them, her scalp tingled with a decadent pleasure that made her want to butt her head against his hand and purr like some sort of overgrown lap cat.
He seized a fistful of those curls and gently tugged, tipping back her head to allow him to lick even deeper into her mouth. She didn’t even realize she had started to kiss him back, artlessly tangling her tongue with his, until she heard him groan deep in his throat, like a man who had tasted something he could no longer live without. Something he would be willing to die—or kill for—to possess.
That sound made a mockery of all her sacrifices, tempted her to forsake everything she held dear just to give him what he wanted. And what she wanted. But she had been bought and paid for with the earl’s largesse. It was no longer hers to give.
Seized by panic, she shoved at his chest. He broke off the kiss abruptly, setting her away from him with hands as unsteady as her own.
Even though she was the one who had pushed him away, all she could do was stand there, trembling and bewildered, like a child who had been abandoned in some dark and fearsome forest with no hope of ever finding her way home.
Jamie’s inky pupils had nearly swallowed the green in his heavy-lidded eyes, leaving them dusky and unreadable. As he gazed down at her, she could see herself through his eyes—the wild tumble of her curls, her dazed expression, the telltale flush where his beard-stubble had abraded the delicate skin of her jaw. She ran the tip of her tongue over lips that still felt tender and ripe from the ravenous force of his kiss.
Desperate to put some distance between them, she stooped to retrieve the leather thong from the ground. Gathering her curls at her nape, she began to twist them into a tight knot. “You’ve won, Mr. Sinclair,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steadier than her hands. “I promise I’ll be an obedient little captive until you deliver me safely into the hands of my bridegroom a few days hence. I won’t try to run again so you’ll be spared the onerous duty of chastising me with your kisses.” She smoothed the rumpled front of her borrowed tunic as if it were the most expensive of ball gowns. “As far as your men are concerned, I shall endeavor to behave as if you simply gave me a stern scolding, forcing me to recognize the error of my ways.”
With that pronouncement, she turned and marched away from him as fast as her legs would carry her, her shoulders squared and her head held high.
“Miss Marlowe?”
“Yes?” She turned to find him still standing in the exact same spot, his expression inscrutable.
For an elusive instant, he looked as if he wanted to say something else altogether, but then he pointed in the opposite direction. “Our camp is that way.”
WHEN EMMA WOKE THAT night, there were no warm, masculine arms to shelter her from the cold, hard ground. Her toes were numb and a thin layer of gooseflesh pebbled her arms. She sat up, blinking away the fog of confusion that came from waking up in a strange place surrounded by strangers.
On the opposite side of the dying campfire, Jamie’s men lay in blanket-draped humps. If not for the occasional drunken snort or rumbling snore, they might have been mistaken for boulders.
When Jamie had marched her back into their midst, their curious glances had been quickly quelled by Jamie’s ferocious scowl. After partaking of a meal of salted venison and stale brown bread washed down by some dark, bitter ale, she had retreated to her bedroll. She didn’t realize how much she would miss Jamie’s presence there until she awoke all alone, disoriented and shivering from the cold.
A distant yowl came from somewhere in the crags above the moor, raising the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck. She climbed to her feet and peered nervously into the shadows, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders. The night sky arched overhead like an expanse of the deepest, blackest ice, its stars glittering shards of frost. It was as if she were the only person awake in the entire universe. The only person alive.
Until she saw him.
Jamie had dozed off only a few feet away from her with his back propped a
gainst a boulder and without so much as a cloak to cover him. She frowned at the length of rope tied around his wrist, puzzled by its presence until her gaze slowly traced the other end of it to her ankle. He had evidently looped the rope around her ankle while she slept, not tight enough to bind her, but so that any suspicious movement on her part would rouse him from his slumber.
She shook her head, a reluctant smile touching her lips. She should have known he wouldn’t be the trusting sort. If she had taken one more step away from him, the rope would have jerked him awake.
Apparently, he hadn’t believed her when she had vowed not to run again. She could no longer afford to risk being punished for her disobedience by his kisses and caresses. He had warned her from the beginning that she just might enjoy him putting his hands on her. Had she known then just how much she would enjoy it, she might have heeded that warning.
Now that she was aware of his snare, it would have been a simple enough matter for her to extract herself from it. But instead of moving away from him, she found herself drifting toward him.
Just how many nights had he spent sleeping on the cold, hard ground with no roof to shield him from the rain, the snow, or the tenacious chill? He might be only twenty-seven years old, but constant exposure to sun and wind had already weathered his skin to burnished gold, carved deep brackets around his mouth and etched beguiling crinkles at the outer corners of his eyes.
Even in sleep, there wasn’t a hint of softness in the man, no revealing glimpse of the boy he had once been. He didn’t even sleep with his mouth hanging open, but compressed to a firm line, his only concession to vulnerability the smudges of exhaustion beneath his eyes. Almost as if sensing her avid scrutiny, he stirred and turned his face toward the shadows, shielding it from her gaze.
Emma sighed. He had given her his blanket, yet she was still chilled to the bone. She couldn’t help but remember how cozy it had felt to be curled up against him the previous night, how his lean, hard frame had wrapped itself around her, radiating heat like a coal stove on a snowy winter’s eve.
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