Bride of Fire

by Glynnis Campbell

  Hallie pulled off her boots. “He’s an honorable man.”

  “What!” Jenefer exploded. “You know as well as I do—the words ‘honorable’ and ‘Highlander’ cannot be uttered in the same breath.”

  Feiyan shrugged. “He did give us drink and…” She bounced onto the bed, testing it. “A decent enough pallet.”

  Jenefer shuddered. “Are you going to sleep in it? The bed of a flea-riddled Highlander?”

  “Don’t be absurd,” Hallie said, pulling back the coverlet. “’Tis clean enough.” She climbed in, punching the bolster into a softer shape. “Besides, I’m going to need all the sleep I can get to untangle the coil you’ve put us in.”

  “Me? You’re the ones who got in my way.”

  Feiyan shot to her feet. “In your way? My best weapons lie rusting out there on the sod, you ungrateful cur. Besides, as I recall, you were already caught fast in the villain’s clutches when we arrived.”

  “I would have found a way free.” In fact, she was sure of it. Just as she was sure she’d find a way out of this chamber.

  Feiyan clucked her tongue. “That’s the point, though, isn’t it? You always have to insist on using brute force. You have no sense of finesse. You can’t use brute force against a giant like the Highlander. By the Rood, Jen, did you get a good look at him?”

  She had gotten a good look at him. He was not only incredibly large and strong. He was also, despite the nasty cuts and bruises marring his face, a maddeningly handsome figure of a man.

  The fact that she’d noticed that irritated her greatly and made her snap at Feiyan. “Your precious finesse got you disarmed by your foe!”

  “I could have killed him if I wanted to,” Feiyan boasted.

  “Ha!” Jenefer mocked Feiyan’s delicate swishing moves. “All that polishing of your grace has left you with the strength of a child!”

  “Oh ho!” Feiyan roared. “Would you like to challenge this child to a—”

  “Quiet!” Hallie hissed from beneath the coverlet. “You’ll wake the—”

  It was too late. A renewed wail interrupted her, proving they’d already awakened the infant.

  Chapter 14

  “Bloody hell, did he put us next to that babe?”

  Jenefer could hear the crying as if the child were in the room with her. She made a mental note to relocate the nursery once she was laird here.

  Hallie shook her head at the sound. “Get some sleep, Jen. And I forbid either of you to attempt escape.” Then she burrowed farther under the bedsheets.

  Feiyan arched a slim brow at Jenefer, as if to say this was all her fault, then fell back upon the pallet beside Hallie. She snatched a bolster from the bed and folded it over her ears with a smile of mockery.

  Jenefer fired back a smoldering scowl.

  Forbidden to escape? This was a travesty. How else was she going to raise an army to claim Creagor?

  She bit back a curse and sat in simmering silence.

  Meanwhile, the babe continued to wail—long, shuddering cries.

  How anyone could ignore the sound, she didn’t know. It felt like an insistent grating on her soul. Her two cousins, however, snuggled together, as content as a pair of hens in a warm coop.

  Impatient with them, Jenefer got up and paced past the fire. She wrung her hands at the relentless howling.

  Where was the child’s mother? she wondered. Where was its nurse? Did the hardhearted Highlanders truly believe it spoiled an infant to answer its cries?

  It was disgusting. And it only proved what horrible creatures these people were. Once Jenefer took over the castle, she swore she’d send the lot of them back to the Highlands.

  To Jenefer’s further annoyance, despite the persistent wails, in another few moments, her cousins had fallen asleep. Their slow, relaxed breathing made a stark contrast to the miserable cries.

  Stopping beside the fire, Jenefer scowled intently at the wall, willing someone on the other side of it to come to the babe’s aid.

  After a long moment, the weeping finally subsided, as if someone had at last picked up the child.

  Relieved of one source of exasperation, Jenefer turned to glare at the other—the two lumps of her cousins, snug and snoring in the bed.

  They might sleep on the watch, but Jenefer would take no rest, not while a usurper inhabited her keep. Even if Hallie had commanded her not to escape, she would keep vigil. Someone had to be ready for an opportunity to overcome their captors or coerce the brutes into letting them go.

  An oversized, cross-legged, leather-seated chair stood beside the hearth. A large bolster cushioned the seat. She narrowed her eyes at the embroidered letters on its face—M m G—and wondered what they stood for.

  Maggot Mouthed Giant.

  Miserable Meddling Goat.

  Motherless Midge-witted Glutton.

  With a sigh, she sank down upon the chair. It proved surprisingly comfortable. So comfortable that her eyes drifted shut and she slipped into slumber.

  The serenity was broken a little while later when the babe started up again at full volume.

  Startled out of a dead sleep, Jenefer instinctively shot to her feet and reached for her bow. Of course, it wasn’t there. Two confused blinks later, she remembered where she was and what had happened.

  She glanced at the bed. Her cousins were still sleeping peacefully, sawing planks with their breathing. The fire had burned low.

  While the babe wailed away, Jenefer got up and poked at the fire, stirring the coals to life. She added another lump of peat. Ordinarily she wouldn’t waste fuel like this, but it was cold in the room with no coverlet, wearing only a linen leine. Besides, she rather liked the idea of wasting the Highlander’s resources and making him pay for the trouble he’d caused her.

  On and on the babe cried, mewling and bawling, then gasping in a quick breath, only to howl again.

  Jenefer scowled once more at the wall, silently cursing the occupants on the other side.

  Once she secured the castle, she swore she’d take that babe away from its cruel owners and give it to a milkmaid or serving lass to raise. Hell, even that gruff old knight in her uncle’s company, Sir Rauve, had better mothering instincts than whoever was caring for the child at the moment.

  After an agonizing interlude, the cries took on a rhythmic sound, as if someone had finally picked up the babe and was bouncing it on a knee. It didn’t help much, but at least Jenefer knew the infant hadn’t been completely abandoned.

  It took a long while to calm the child. But by the time its cries turned to soft whimpers, Jenefer was worn thin with irritation.

  How long the peace lasted, she wasn’t sure. It seemed she’d just lapsed into slumber once more when the air was split by new wailing and she was jolted awake yet again.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, determined to ignore the sound. After all, if her cousins could sleep through the racket, so could she.

  This time, however, the cries seemed far more piercing and insistent. Even the rhythmic bouncing didn’t stop them. On and on they continued, driving Jenefer mad.

  “Shite!” she hissed.

  The fire had burned low again, but she was too distracted to bother reviving the flame. She paced briskly before the hearth, wondering what ailed the infant and why its nurse couldn’t stop its infernal cries. How hard could it be?

  Jenefer could stop them.

  And she would, if only she could get to that chamber.

  The Highlander had posted himself on the other side of the door, so that wasn’t an option.

  She glanced at the shuttered window. He’d warned them not to leap from the ledge. But what if she could climb out and make her way to the adjoining window?

  It was risky. But risk had never stopped her before. Besides, she was getting no sleep. It would be worth the risk if she could stop the babe from crying and close her eyes for more than a few moments at a time.

  She carefully unlatched and cracked the shutters, wincing as the volume of the babe’s wa
ils increased through the opening. But when she looked over her shoulder at her cousins, they dozed on. She poked her head out and peered at the adjacent ledge, perhaps a dozen feet away.

  Pulling her head back in, she tugged hard on the shutter to test its strength. It didn’t budge. If she could tie a rope to the latch, she could swing over to the second window.

  Stirring the fire for light, she scoured the room for rope. There was none.

  Then she narrowed her eyes at the bedlinens. Those she could use.

  Disgusted by the way her cousins were still snoring through the heartbroken laments of the babe, she was tempted to yank the sheets out from under the lasses and dump them on the floor.

  But she knew Hallie wouldn’t approve of her daring plan. So she eased the linens out from around them, inch by cautious inch.

  The babe was still wailing when she managed to tie two of the sheets together. She knotted one end and secured the other to the shutter latch. Then she payed the linens out over the ledge.

  Casting one backward glance at her cousins, who were blissfully unaware of her machinations, she heaved herself up onto the ledge.

  The air was still icy, and the Highlander’s leine provided scant comfort from the chill wind. But she would be swift.

  Giving one last testing tug on the sheets, she carefully lowered herself out the window. Bracing her bare feet on the stone wall, she made her descent, hand over hand, until she reached the end of the cloth, gripping it just above the knot.

  It was tempting to drop the several yards to the ground. It was a long drop, but she was fairly sure she could manage it without breaking her ankle.

  Still, she’d given her word to Hallie she wouldn’t try to escape. And she was a lass of her word. Besides, she wouldn’t leave her cousins defenseless against the Highlanders.

  With a determined breath, she began swinging her legs forcefully, moving the rope of sheets back and forth along the ledge. She couldn’t make too many passes, lest the fabric tear on the stone.

  Fortunately, though it took half a dozen swings and cost her a few scrapes on the rough sandstone, she finally managed to swing close enough to hook her foot on the ledge of the second window.

  For one awful moment, she hung suspended between her fists on the taut linen and one straining ankle. Then she managed to work her second foot onto the ledge. From there, she inched forward until she could balance on the ledge with both feet.

  The window was shuttered and latched. Of course. There was no graceful way to steal into the room. She would have to knock on the shutters and hope someone came to open them.

  Shivering as a gust of wind blew under her leine, she pounded on the wood with the back of her fist.

  No one came to the window. The babe wailed on. Perhaps she couldn’t be heard above its cries.

  Again she pounded for entrance, a bit harder.

  No one replied.

  She got the fleeting impression that perhaps the nurse had deserted the babe.

  Which meant no one was going to open the shutters.

  Jenefer was going to freeze to death on this ledge, fall to the ground, and shatter like an icicle into a thousand pieces.

  Out of desperation, wondering if she could splinter the wood with her hand, she reared back a fist to bang as hard as she could on the shutter.

  Just as she punched forward, the shutter was snatched open. Momentum made her spill awkwardly into the room, landing in a heap on the floor with the leine bunched up around her waist.

  Towering over her was the scowling Highlander.

  Chapter 15

  Morgan was dumbfounded.

  It took a lot to leave him speechless. But the beautiful lass sprawled bare-arsed at his feet did just that.

  The bawling bairn had been shocked silent as well.

  Beside him, his maidservant Bethac, holding the red-faced infant close to her bosom, suffered no such affliction. She blurted out, “Who are ye? Where did ye come from?”

  The wild-eyed lass didn’t answer. She scrambled to her feet and tugged down the hem of her leine. His leine, he amended.

  “What the devil?” he barked.

  Startled, the bairn resumed its wailing, filling the chamber with a long-winded lament.

  Morgan’s plot to antagonize his captives by imprisoning them next to a loud and restless infant had proved a double-edged sword. The soul-piercing cries had kept Morgan awake as well. So in frustration, he’d charged in to the chamber to insist that if the nurses couldn’t stop the infernal keening, they should take the bairn downstairs.

  When he first heard the banging at the window, he assumed it was a loose shutter stirred by the wind. The last thing he expected to see when he snatched open the shutter was Jenefer, the comely lass he’d imprisoned…in the chamber next door.

  She looked feral and breathless in the firelight, her eyes crackling with life, her hair dripping like honey over her tempting shoulders. One of those shoulders was dangerously bare where his oversized leine hung off the side.

  But more dangerous than her beauty was the fact she was standing close to his son and his heir. Too close.

  “How did ye get in here?” he demanded.

  The bairn arched his back and let out a particularly shrill cry. Bethac handed him off to the wet nurse, Cicilia. She tried to quiet him, encouraging him to take suckle at her breast, to no avail. The infant turned his head away and screamed all the louder.

  Then, before Morgan could send the servants and bairn from the chamber for their own safety, the warrior lass reached out and seized the child from the mortified nurse’s hands.

  The breath caught in Morgan’s chest. His heart hammered at his ribs. He froze. He didn’t want to incite the lass to some unspeakable act. But his gaze drifted to the open window behind her. For one horrifying moment, he imagined…

  His mouth opened and closed, but he could find no words to prevent her.

  He’d thought his son meant nothing to him.

  He’d blamed the infant for his wife’s death.

  But now that the bairn’s life hung in the balance…

  The lass didn’t seem to notice his panic. She was holding the bairn, his bairn, awkwardly before her in her two hands.

  “What ails you?” she demanded, scowling down at the child. “You’ve got food and drink, aye?”

  To his surprise, the infant stared back at her, as if he were listening.

  “There’s a roof o’er your head,” she pointed out, “and you’re bundled against the cold.”

  Relief came gradually as Morgan realized Jenefer meant the bairn no harm. Soon, to everyone’s astonishment, as the lass continued speaking to him in words an infant couldn’t possibly understand, the lad’s whimpers softened.

  Morgan glanced at Bethac, who looked just as puzzled as he. But as he continued listening, he realized, despite Jenefer’s sweet and tender tones, her words were as sharp as Spanish steel. The wicked firebrand was speaking ill of him…to his own son.

  “Never mind that nasty brute’s bellowing,” she confided to the bairn. “He’s a horse’s arse who thinks shouting makes a man of him.”

  “What?” Morgan demanded, almost certain he heard Bethac choke back a laugh.

  The bairn had quieted now and was focusing intently on Jenefer as she clucked her tongue. “’Tis what comes when you’re raised by barbarians and dunderheaded fools.”

  “What the—”

  “There,” she said with a nod of satisfaction as the bairn studied her. “All you needed was a kind word from a good Lowland lass, wasn’t it? You come home with me, and I’ll see you get the care you deser—”

  “Nay!” Morgan shouted, suddenly possessed of a strange possessiveness.

  The bairn fussed at Morgan’s outburst, then quickly settled back down in Jenefer’s hands.

  “Why should you care?” Jenefer asked, giving him a black look. “You Highlanders clearly don’t mind letting babes wail at all hours of the night.”

  Bethac gasped. />
  “That’s absurd,” Morgan said in his defense, angry that he felt he had to defend himself. “I came in to send them downstairs.”

  “Oh aye,” she sneered, “send them away so the noise won’t disturb your precious sleep. But the babe is clearly upset. Didn’t you wonder why? Maybe it’s swaddled too tightly. Or hungry. Or soiled. Or maybe,” she added cagily, “it doesn’t like being in a castle where it doesn’t belong.”

  “Enough!” Morgan erupted, then glanced at Bethac. “Take him back.”

  Bethac stepped forward. Jenefer shrugged and passed the bairn into the older woman’s arms. In the next instant, the whimpering resumed.

  Morgan scowled at Bethac. “Can ye not keep the bairn quiet?”

  Bethac tried jostling him, stroking his back, and even holding him out in front of her as Jenefer had, to no avail.

  She passed him to the wet nurse, who tried once again to offer him her breast. The bairn’s cries only grew in strength and volume, making the nurse more and more distressed.

  “Oh, for the love of Freya. Give him to me,” Jenefer said in disgust, holding out her hands.

  The nurse looked up at Morgan with uncertainty.

  Morgan fumed. It was aggravating to give the cocky Lowland lass the satisfaction of being right. And it was foolhardy to put his heir into the hands of the enemy.

  Still, what choice did he have? He couldn’t even hear himself think over the wailing. Besides, if she attempted some foul deed, he could snatch up the fireplace poker in the blink of an eye and do her significant harm.

  “Fine,” he decided.

  To his chagrin, once Jenefer cradled the bairn in one arm against her waist, he silenced.

  “He seems to like ye, Miss,” the nurse ventured.

  Jenefer frowned down at the bairn, as if she doubted the lad’s good judgment.

  Morgan doubted the lad’s good judgment. The lass might have calmed the bairn, but she was clearly a bad sort. How the hell had she escaped his room? And how had she ended up on the ledge?

  “How came ye to this chamber?” he growled.

  Jenefer gave him a smoky-eyed, one-sided smile. “Maybe I am a ghost, after all,” she slyly murmured, “and I floated through the air.”