Sins of a Highland Devil

by Sue-Ellen Welfonder

  “But”—she flashed a look at Colin—“we’ll wait while you eat this time.” She narrowed her gaze as she spoke, her fierce look of disapproval making clear that she knew he’d give more than half the food to Hector if she didn’t keep her hawk eyes on him.

  That was, after all, what he’d done with every other meal that’d been left outside his door since he’d returned from the Makers of Dreams.

  “See here, James.” Colin set his torch in an iron ring on the wall and stepped around Hector. “You cannae go on no’ eating. Word is that the King’s entourage is less than a day’s ride from the glen. The trial by combat will begin when he arrives. You’ll need your strength—”

  “Think you I’ve lost it?” James snatched the food tray from Isobel with lightning speed and plunked the victuals down before Hector. “If so, you err.”

  He grinned, triumphantly. “Or”—he stepped back, dusting his hands—“will you say otherwise?”

  “I say tossing meat to a dog is a far cry from crossing swords with MacDonalds and Mackintoshes.” Colin gave him a look as dark as Isobel’s. “I’ll no’ be denying Hector his due”—he glanced at the dog, who was enthusiastically devouring a choice beef rib—“but I’ll see you filling your belly if I must force the food down your throat. You’ve been hiding up here for nigh onto three days, and—”

  “I’ve been thinking.” James matched his cousin’s stare, belligerent.

  “No, you’ve been brooding.” Isobel set her hands on her hips and gave him a look so fierce that his head started to pound.

  “Have a care, lass. I’m no’ in a mood to be pestered.” He turned an equally fearsome stare on her, but she didn’t flinch. He wouldn’t have believed it, but he could almost see steel gleaming in her spine.

  As if she knew—and was pleased he’d noticed—she inclined her head, infinitesimally. He was sure she’d done so to annoy him. So he swatted at a fold of his plaid, pretending he hadn’t seen.

  Not to be deterred, she gave him her most disarming smile. “I’m here because I do care.”

  “Humph.” James clenched his jaw.

  Had he truly thought of her as biddable? A mild-spoken, acquiescent sister he could soon offer to a well-suited, allied laird as a fine, conformable wife?

  At the moment, she struck him as bold and brazen as Catriona.

  Worse, in the blaze of light cast by Colin’s damty torch, she minded him so much of Scandia that he was sure he’d splutter if he dared to argue with her. She stood tall and held herself erect, pride and willfulness shining all over her like a flaming beacon.

  She lifted her chin then and her braided hair slid over one shoulder, the strands shimmering like a ribbon of blue-black silk. James blinked, feeling whisked back to the mist-hung moor and a certain burn side, hemmed by a cluster of red-berried rowan trees.

  Isobel truly did look like their beautiful spectral ancestress.

  James scowled at her, wishing he hadn’t noticed.

  “Brooding,” she said again, sailing past him to claim one of the chairs before the fire. She sat very straight and folded her hands in her lap. “That’s what you’ve been about, and we all know—”

  “God be good!” He wasn’t fooled by her demure attitude. “What you know is that I’ve been up here and”—he narrowed his eyes—“that I wished to be left alone. To think, not brood, on the weal and honor of the clan.

  “That is what has occupied me, whatever.” He spoke with all the lairdly authority in him.

  Colin snorted. “So you say.”

  “I just did, aye.” James wasn’t giving an inch.

  Especially when he knew his cousin and his sister were right.

  His thoughts had slipped to other concerns. But now he’d caught himself, pushing the matter of Catriona firmly from his mind. Although…

  Isobel’s delicately arched brow and the faint, quizzical smile playing about her lips didn’t help him pretend that his life wasn’t being overrun by a pack of scheming, bolder-than-brass Valkyries.

  Even ghostly females were after him, it seemed.

  And he was having none of it.

  He did shoot an angry look at Colin, who’d gone to stand beside the bedside table—James’s bedside table—and was presently pouring himself a generous measure of finest Gascon wine. The lout had also imbibed the last few sugared almonds and honey-stuffed dates that had been left on a tray for James’s own delectation.

  He had a sweet tooth, as did many Highlanders. The treats were all he’d been allowing himself to enjoy these last few hungering days.

  Now his cousin had eaten them.

  James fisted his hands. His rising hopes of moments before were spiraling away before his nose, dwindling rapidly to a mean rumbling somewhere in his empty stomach.

  He cleared his throat, his gaze on Colin, the sweet-thief. “If you must know, you sticky-fingered buzzard, my time up here hasn’t been wasted. Solitude is good for the soul.” He clasped his hands behind him, began walking slowly toward his cousin. “Wits are as crucial to winning a battle as broadswords and cold steel.

  “This e’en”—he lunged to snatch the wine jug from Colin’s hand, returning it to the table before the loon could refill his cup—“we rally the clan. I have something that will stir—”

  “They’re roused already, though no’ in a way that’ll please you.” Colin grabbed the ewer and splashed wine into his cup, tipping back the contents before James could object. “Some of the men are angry, now that the King and his entourage are so near.”

  He dragged a hand over his mouth, leaning close. “They’re riled, James. They say we’ve waited too long, and wrongly. They’re growling that we should’ve seen to the Lowlanders in the old way.”

  “Then they’re fools.” James spoke in a low, hard voice. “They know what happens if a Highlander even looks cross-eyed at the King. To openly defy him, ignoring his writ and having done with his men…” He let the words tail off, shaking his head. “I say you, our men know better.”

  Colin held up his hands. “I only repeat the grumbles in the hall.”

  James looked at him, a ghastly notion prickling his nape. “Then some flat-footed troublemaker has slipped into their ranks, spreading doubts and lies.”

  Something golden caught his eye then. A drop of honey on the table, all that remained of his special stuffed dates. At once, the image of Alasdair MacDonald’s magnificent sword rose before him, the amber pommel stone shining brightly, just as it’d done in the bailey at Blackshore.

  The speck of honey glistened in the firelight, almost winking at him.

  His mind raced, whirling with possibilities.

  If Alasdair had sent someone, perhaps in a guise, to mingle with James’s men, dropping a poisoned hint here, a goading word there…

  But the thought vanished as quickly as it’d come.

  Alasdair would challenge him openly, he was sure.

  Much as it irked him to credit the bastard with even a smidgen of honor. Worse, the lout’s penchant for valor left James little choice but to show him equal gallantry. Anything else would shame him as chief and discredit the good Cameron name.

  Yet he had a terrible suspicion that when he next came face-to-face with the loon’s delectable sister, honor and all its attendant qualities would be the last thing on his mind.

  The silken swells of her breasts and her sweetly rounded hips would bring out the devil in him. His need to get his hands on her, to taste her ripe, dusky nipples, would see him pulling her into his arms and dragging her straight into hell’s most wicked fires.

  And no power on earth would stop him.

  Her brother be damned.

  Chapter Seven

  Before James’s head could begin to pound, he pushed all thought of Catriona from his mind. He especially tried not to dwell on the curve of her breasts or the darker delights hidden beneath her skirts. Here in his own privy quarters, it was so easy to imagine carrying her to his bed and divesting her of those meddlesome skirt
s and everything else that kept her beauty from view. For such a pestiferous plague of a female, she possessed more feminine charms than any woman he’d ever known. Her wiles were boundless. And if he meant to think clearly, he needed to stop lusting after her. Doing so only made him the more furious.

  His inability to stop worrying about her riled him in a worse way.

  She might be her brother’s responsibility, but somehow he doubted Alasdair recognized how much trouble she could stir with her passionate, headstrong ways. And much as he resented his fool urge to protect her, his fingers still itched to shake sense into her.

  Even more vexing was that he admired her spirit.

  And it was that admiration that sent heat crawling up his neck and twisted his innards to knots.

  He frowned, not wishing to examine the feeling too closely. He did pull a hand down over his chin and tried again to blot her from his thoughts.

  Forgetting her brother proved easier, but other irritations still nagged at him.

  And he wouldn’t have any peace until he voiced them.

  Angry, he glared again at the drop of honey on the table, evidence of how swiftly his cousin had devoured his special stuffed dates.

  There were others—men not near as close to him as Colin, or as noble as Alasdair—who’d take more from him than his favorite sweetmeats.

  Sure of it, he reached to swipe away the honey-dollop with his thumb. “Tell me”—he turned to face Colin—“have any Mackintoshes been seen skulking about in these parts?”

  Those sniveling, mealy-mouthed cravens, he could see stooping to such trickery. The cloaked figure in the wood could’ve been one of their ilk and not, as he’d guessed, a Lowlander.

  The chills creeping up and down his spine told him anything was possible.

  “Well?” He arched a brow, waiting.

  “Word is”—Colin rubbed the back of his neck—“their chief, Kendrew, has every man at Castle Nought training in the lists. Some say he’s even barred the gate with a chain, just so nary a man can escape if his sword arm tires. He wants victory, that one.”

  “Bah!” James almost choked. “The Mackintoshes are naught but a pack of shrieking women. If Kendrew locked his gate with a chain, I’m for thinking he did so to keep out the dreagans thon clan fears so greatly. No’ to keep his soft-sworded, scared-of-their-own-shadow warriors inside.

  “Or”—he really liked this idea—“to keep the loons from tumbling down the cliff some horned and furry he-goat Mackintosh forebear was fool enough to choose as a site for their wretched stronghold.”

  “I’ve heard the odd stone formations around Castle Nought do turn into dreagans at night.” Isobel spoke from her chair by the fire. “And some say they built where they did, with the walls of their keep rising so seamlessly from the cliffs, so that they can best guard the high mountain pass above their keep.” She smoothed her skirts. “Indeed, as we’ve never succeeded in using the pass without grief, perhaps they aren’t such dafties, after all?”

  James’s eyes rounded. He was sure he could feel steam shooting out his ears.

  “Since when have you become a champion for that ill-famed race of cloven-footed rock climbers?” He glared at her. “And there’s no such thing as a dreagan. There aren’t any such beasts hereabouts. And”—he leaned toward her, hoping he looked menacing—“you’ll no’ be seeing any in the benighted corner of the glen claimed by Kendrew Mackintosh and his flock of whiny women.”

  “Cook says he saw one once.” Her voice was smug.

  “Then he was either drunk or dreaming.” James folded his arms. Any moment his head was going to burst. His temples were pounding with a vengeance.

  “Ah, well.” Isobel smiled sweetly. “You will have the right of it. The dreagans said to lurk near Castle Nought are surely no more real than our own Lady Scandia, Doom of the Camerons.”

  She gave a delicate shiver. “I can’t recall having ever glimpsed her, either.”

  “Be glad you haven’t.” He blurted the words before he could stop himself.

  “You’ve seen her?” Colin’s eyes bulged, his brows hovering near his hairline. “The ghost?”

  “Nae, I haven’t.” James felt heat flood his face. “Bogles are the same bog mist as dreagans. Castle Haven’s gray lady is nothing but—” He stopped when a blast of cold, wet wind blew open the shutters and gusted into the room, flapping tapestries and guttering candles. Colin’s hand torch went out with a great belching of smoke and ash. The sparks floated through the air, glowing and hissing.

  Everyone stared.

  Hector began to howl.

  “Good lad. It’s only the wind.” James reached down to pat the dog’s bony shoulders and then strode across the room to close the shutters.

  He was just relatching them when a loud bang sounded behind him. The noise was suspiciously like the slamming of his strongbox lid.

  “Hah!” Colin’s voice rose above the echoes of the crash. “I should have known.”

  James stood frozen, his hands on the icy-wet iron of the shutter latch. His bed, a massive four-postered monstrosity, sheltered the chest from wind. The lid couldn’t slam shut on its own.

  He’d braced it open.

  Unless…

  Whirling around, he saw Colin and Isobel staring at the coffer. But it wasn’t the iron-bound strongbox that had their jaws dropping.

  It was the length of red and gold silk spilling out from beneath the chest’s now-closed lid to pool on the rush-strewn floor.

  The clan banner.

  An ancient standard, its silken red furls decorated with gleaming yellow bars and, at its heart, emblazoned with the embroidered likeness of a snarling black dog.

  Known as the Banner of the Wind, it was the clan’s most prized possession.

  In the darkest days of clan legend, when Ottar the Fire-worshipper and his warriors had searched along coasts and throughout the hills for a meet place to gather food, breed, and build a dwelling place, they’d used the proud standard to help them make the decision.

  And now the glorious banner lay tangled on the floor rushes.

  The rushes might be fresh and strewn with dried heather and sweet-smelling herbs, but the floor was still an unworthy resting place for the relic.

  And the chest’s heavy, humpbacked lid was crushing stitches that had been sewn hundreds of years before, in the very morning of the world.

  “Damnation!” James sprinted across the room, raising the lid before the weight of iron and wood could damage the precious cloth.

  He scooped the treasure off the floor and into his arms. His heart raced, the old tales swirling in his blood, quickening his pulse. For tradition held that, during his quest for land, Ottar the Fire-worshipper dreamed that the gods would wrest the banner from the hands of their standard bearer so that wind could carry the banner away, planting its pole in the spot where the great Clan Cameron was destined to build their home.

  And so it had been.

  James clutched the banner to his chest, his gaze sliding to where Colin and Isobel stood watching him, each with wide, round eyes.

  Any other time, the fabled Banner of the Wind would fill him with clan pride and exaltation. But now the relic lifted every fine hair on his body, including some hairs he didn’t know he had.

  Because of its great age, the standard was kept in a soft linen pouch. And that cloth bag was then tucked inside a protective wrapping of oiled sheepskin. James’s strongbox was the treasure’s final defense, and—he was sure—he’d only just thrust his hands inside the chest when Colin and Isobel stormed into the room.

  He hadn’t removed the banner.

  And wondering who might have done so—especially moments after Isobel had uttered Scandia’s name—turned his knees to jelly.

  “So you were seeking divine aid.” Colin appeared at his elbow.

  “I was not.” James began folding the banner, not trusting himself to meet his cousin’s eye lest the long-nose see that he’d lied.

  He did
hope to use the standard’s rallying power.

  But he wasn’t of a mood to hear Colin’s hooting if he admitted that it wasn’t any divine power he was counting on. He was putting his faith in the old gods who’d led Ottar the Fire-worshipper to the beloved clan lands where Castle Haven stood this day.

  Those were the powers he wanted at his side.

  Hoping they’d guide him, as well, he tucked the folded banner beneath his arm. “I told you what I intend to do this e’en.” He turned, meeting Colin’s gaze. “If you have wax in your ears or have forgotten already”—he laid a hand over the bundle of gleaming red-and-yellow silk—“I mean to take this down to the great hall and—”

  “He’s going to use the Banner of the Wind to talk sense into our kinsmen.” Isobel’s face lit with pride. “I want to be there to hear him.”

  “Then come.” James started forward, a thrill already coursing through him as the Banner of the Wind began to weave its ancient magic.

  He was out the door and halfway to the stair tower when he heard Colin’s muttering and knew his cousin and his sister were hurrying after him. He also caught the slower clack-clackety-clack of Hector’s toenails on the cold stone floor of the corridor, proving that the dog didn’t want to miss the excitement.

  And if he’d looked over his shoulder—which, fortunately, he didn’t—he might have seen a fourth figure hastening along in their wake.

  A slender, dark-haired figure, graceful and lovely, and whose lightly slippered feet didn’t touch the floor.

  Scandia, Doom of the Camerons, was just as eager as everyone else to hear what James had to say.

  Her life, as it were, might depend on it.

  Shimmying with anticipation, Lady Scandia, Doom of the Camerons, let herself whoosh past the little party and paused by the arched entrance to the great hall. She tried to stand still but found it so difficult. Such was the nature of her ghostly state that she sometimes quivered when excited. So she did her best not to flutter and peered back down the corridor. Soon, James and the others would catch up with her. And she couldn’t wait to see what would then transpire.