With This Kiss: A First-In Series Romance Collection

by Kerrigan Byrne

  "I doubt Dunstan will bother to kill a lowly messenger or take him captive when there is a chance that the messenger might be careless enough to lead him to the Glen Lyon's lair. Dunstan will set a few men to track us, nothing more."

  "Damnation, Gav, you should've sent me alone—or Evan or Connor. I can't believe you insisted on coming to meet Sir Dunstan yourself! What if he realizes that you are the Glen Lyon? You're completely vulnerable out here in the middle of nowhere."

  Gavin shoved his spectacles up his nose and brushed one hand over a threadbare gray frock coat trimmed with a band of young Jamie Cameron's plaid—a symbol of the first life he'd saved and a constant reminder of how many other Jamies were left in the Highlands, waiting for the Glen Lyon to find them.

  "Adam, if you were riding through the Highlands and stumbled across someone who looked like me, would you guess that he was the dread rebel lord Glen Lyon?" A self-deprecating grin tugged at his mouth.

  "You think that wearing your damned spectacles out here today miraculously alters your face so no one could recognize you?" Adam demanded, disgruntled. "I'm sure if I saw you wandering about without them, I'd think, Who the devil could that be? Gavin? Hell, no. Doesn't look the damnedest bit like him."

  Gavin chuckled. "Wells thinks a messenger is coming, so that is what he'll see when we meet. Truth is, I doubt the man would believe me if I rode up and told him, bald-faced, that I was the Glen Lyon."

  "Blast if I'm not half afraid that you'll try it! What is this encounter to you, Gavin? Some game of hoodman blind? A chance to outwit Sir Dunstan again? You're too valuable to the Highlanders to take such risks. You're their only hope. If something goes awry and Sir Dunstan captures you, what the devil will happen to the children up in that cave, depending on you to save them?"

  Guilt ground deep, but Gavin clenched his jaw. "I have to see Sir Dunstan Wells face to face, after all this time." Gavin turned his gaze away, tormented by memories he could never be free of. Scars that war had left on his soul: a towering cliff; the sea beating itself against the rocks below; the screams of women and children as they were driven off the edge to their death; Sir Dunstan, surveying the destruction with bored arrogance, demanding to know if his underlings had found sugar for his tea in any of the hovels they'd just finished ransacking.

  "Gav, I know how much you hate Sir Dunstan. The vile cur deserves to suffer the fires of hell for all the agony he's caused; but you can't make him pay for what he's done if you're dangling from a gibbet. You and Wells faced each other on the battlefield. You can't be sure he won't remember."

  "I didn't acquit myself in a fashion that would have drawn Wells' attention. I assure you, I was far beneath his notice."

  Adam started to protest, but Gavin held up his hand. "Enough. Whatever happens, the die is cast. Perhaps Sir Dunstan will ambush us. Perhaps he will recognize me. But my gut tells me I'm doing the right thing."

  "Your gut," Adam muttered. "I don't suppose it's possible that you're merely suffering an attack of indigestion?"

  For months Adam had questioned Gavin's instinct, and yet, Gavin had filled five ships with fugitive Jacobites by relying on those elusive intuitions. Always, the thought of those he was trying to save had kept him focused on his goal. But today was different. From the moment he and Adam had ridden away from the cave, Gavin's intuition seemed muddled, his senses distracted by the dark-haired captive barred in his cave chamber a dozen miles away.

  He'd felt splintered, scattered, haunted by the memory of Rachel de Lacey facing him with regal courage. Not once had a sliver of fear stumbled onto that cameo-perfect face. Only outrage and scorn had snapped and sparkled in eyes the color of the bluebells that were scattered over the Highlands.

  Perhaps that was why the slight tremble of her hands had reverberated through Gavin. Or perhaps it was the words she had spoken, words that revealed a part of her that Gavin knew she would die to keep hidden.

  My papa, the general, would turn in his grave—

  If what? If she dared to show fear? If she let go of the rigid control she'd clung to so ferociously, revealing her true feelings? Genuine emotions that clamored to burst free?

  Gavin closed his eyes as a memory assailed him. Flashing equine eyes, bared white teeth, hooves slicing at the turf as if they were practicing to carve those huge crescents into human flesh. Terror, blank terror, shuddering through Gavin, pleas clogging his throat until he thought he'd choke on them.

  Don't make me get on the horse, Papa. I’m frightened.

  But the Earl of Glenlyon hadn't had to say a word to convince Gavin to mount the hell-spawned beast. His father had only looked at him with that penetrating glare far more painful to endure than bumps and bruises.

  Gavin had bested the horse that day, but he had broken his arm sometime during the course of the battle. Still, it had been one of the few times his father had been proud of him.

  He struggled to shake off the painful memories, and his mind filled once again with the image of Rachel.

  Blast the woman, it would have been so much easier if she had just dissolved into a bout of hysterical feminine tears. He could have comforted her, soothed her. If only she had been able to maintain that haughty mask of hers, so that he never had to see the cracks in her facade and catch a glimpse of the frightened young woman beneath.

  It would have been so much easier.

  But instead, Gavin had spent the ride through the Scottish wilds ignoring Adam's ceaseless attempts to get him to return to the cave. With each clop of his horse's hooves against the ground, he'd imagined how terrified Rachel de Lacey must have been after what she had endured—being kidnapped, dragged halfway across Scotland to be dumped at the feet of a rebel lord, a man she saw as traitor, outlaw.

  From the moment he'd conceived the idea of abducting her, he'd been prepared to soothe her fears as much as possible. He'd spent weeks framing the comforting speeches he would make to her. But her beauty and defiance had left him as awkward and tongue-tied as he'd been at his first ball. The magnitude of what he'd done had filled him with guilt and self-loathing. Rachel de Lacey had pounded on those sensitive places in Gavin with the deadly accuracy of a blacksmith's hammer until anger had made him lash out, demolishing all his good intentions.

  "I don't see why we had to go to all this trouble to begin with." Adam's grumbling annoyed him a great deal. "We should have kidnapped Sir Dunstan himself. Held a gun to the cur's head until the army did as we asked."

  Irritation pinched Gavin, followed by gratitude that his half brother had distracted him from far more troubling thoughts.

  "We've been through this a dozen times," he said. "They would've shot Wells themselves to get to me, then drunk to his memory and recounted his brave deeds. Kidnapping the woman was the only way."

  "By the time this is over, you're going to wish you'd put all that dazzling genius of yours into thinking up another plan. That woman is going to give you nothing but grief, Gavin. I've had plenty of experience with the fairer sex. Trust me, I know Rachel de Lacey's breed. You'll be lucky if you don't murder her yourself before this month is done."

  "She will be no more distraction to me than that puppy little Barna brought into the cave the other day. Rachel de Lacey is a minor inconvenience, nothing more." Gavin pushed his fingers through his tangled locks, trying to believe his own words, but the woman was already throwing him off balance in ways that were dangerous, making him look at facets of himself that were too painful to examine.

  "I still don't know why we couldn't just capture Wells himself," Adam protested again.

  "I need Dunstan Wells free," Gavin said. "He's the only one who can order his men away from the inlet in Cairnleven. Rachel de Lacey is the only leverage I could find to bend him to my will."

  "Are you so sure that threatening this woman will work?" Adam asked quietly.

  Gavin's temples throbbed. "She's going to be his wife. Of course Dunstan will do anything in his power to protect her."

  "If he loves
her. A man doesn't always love the woman he marries."

  As if anyone, especially Adam, should have to remind Gavin of that fact.

  He closed his eyes, images again welling into his mind: a sad-eyed woman with dark-gold hair waiting for her husband to come; a small boy trying to distract her from her heartache, trying in vain to cushion her from the truth they both knew but never spoke of.

  That her husband was a day's ride away, laughing with a bonny, bright-curled lady who was his lady-wife in spirit, and dandling a pack of bold, dark-haired children on his knee.

  "Damn, Gavin, I'm sorry," Adam snapped, and Gavin turned his gaze to his half brother, wondering what he was apologizing for—bringing up a past that was still painful, or stealing away the father that was Gavin's own.

  "It's just that this whole escapade is so risky. Hell, I haven't been this edgy since the night Colonel Mayfair almost caught me sleeping with his pretty little wife."

  "It's a small enough price I'm asking Sir Dunstan to pay for the return of his betrothed. I just want to be able to sneak one last ship into Scotland."

  "One last ship." Adam groaned. "You've been saying that for the past year. But the minute that ship sails, you start filling up another one and another one. Sometimes I think you keep smuggling out the crofters because you want to be caught. Out of some crazy sense of justice. Because," he paused. "Because of what happened at Prestonpans."

  "If I suffered a thousand deaths, I couldn't pay for what happened that day. But I did learn something: there is no justice, Adam, no justice at all."

  "Gavin, you've done more than a hundred men could have to help these people. Your debt is paid. You should hear what they say about you. You're a hero, as bold as Rob Roy."

  Bitterness and sadness weighed Gavin down. "I'm no hero. Truth is, I'm as much a monster as Sir Dunstan Wells himself."

  "Are you insane?" Adam blustered. "You're nothing like Wells!"

  "What do you call a man who abducts an innocent woman, holds her prisoner for his own gains?"

  "You aren't going to hurt her! Her fate is a bloody lot better than the women Wells has raped and slaughtered. When she goes back to her ballrooms and soirees, she'll have her own tales of heroism to share."

  "She doesn't know that. Not now."

  "I can't believe this! The woman is as spoiled a little princess as they come, Gav. If she could've ordered, 'Off with their heads,' there wouldn't be a single one of your precious urchins left alive. She's going to make life bloody hell for all of us, and you're feeling sorry for her!"

  "It doesn't matter if she's Medusa herself and turns us all into stone. Don't you see what has happened?"

  There was hurt in Adam's eyes, and confusion, the pain of not being able to understand. It was a pain all too familiar between them.

  "I thought you'd gotten exactly what you wanted," Adam said, "what we've been planning for over a month. I thought you'd gotten the key to freedom for the children of Lochavrea. You're going to win, blast it. Can't you take some bloody joy in it?"

  "Win?" Gavin gave a raw laugh. "I've already lost. Dunstan Wells has finally managed to turn me into a monster just like himself."

  "God preserve me from honorable fools!" Adam groused.

  "Quiet." Gavin snapped in a low voice, awareness sizzling at the nape of his neck. "Someone's coming.”

  Adam's hand went to his pistol. "We should have spent the time finding some lost priest to issue last rites instead of arguing."

  "Quiet!" Gavin strained, listening, half expecting the telltale sounds of ambush, the rustling of underbrush, the muted thud of more than one horse in the surrounding area he and Adam had searched so thoroughly earlier. He glimpsed two riders, hidden behind an outcropping of stone, doubtless waiting to follow them when the meeting was over.

  The only other sound was the steady clop of one animal.

  His jaw knotted as the approaching rider breached a copse of trees, sunlight turning his uniform the liquid red of a fresh sword wound. A perfect Ramillies wig framed a face of supreme arrogance, the flesh clinging starkly to jutting cheekbones and a hawk-like nose. Eyes of the most frigid blue Gavin had ever seen glittered like those of a predator whose quarry had eluded him far too long.

  It had been nearly two years since Gavin had peered through a hellish montage of battling soldiers and peasants and had first seen Sir Dunstan Wells. The knight had been orchestrating Armageddon with the delight of a maestro, his white teeth flashing, his face alive with undiluted pleasure. Half of the men under Wells’ command had died that day, along with Gavin's own honor.

  This was the man Rachel de Lacey had chosen to be her husband?

  Gavin was stunned to find he recoiled from the idea, sickened. Spoiled and beautiful as she might be, Miss de Lacey had no idea the kind of monster she intended to invite into her bed.

  "Show yourself!" Sir Dunstan bellowed. "Come out, you Jacobite dog."

  The man's shout was overlaid by Adam's harsh, whispered plea. "Gavin, don't do this. Let me.”

  Gavin shook his head, spurring his drab bay gelding forward. His stomach was a hard knot of hate and rage and loathing, his palms dampening the leather of his reins with sweat.

  "Get out here, whoever the devil you are," the knight roared. "I command you."

  "These are the Glen Lyon's lands," Gavin said, as Sir Dunstan's eyes slashed to his. "You aren't in command here."

  "The whole of Scotland is beneath the English boot, you fool. Your master is nothing but a sniveling coward without a penny to his name. He'll be hunted down like a dog."

  "So you keep saying." Gavin let his scorn flash in his eyes. "In fact, the Glen Lyon had a coffin hewn out for himself because of your predictions of doom. But considering how long it's taken for you to follow up on your threats, he's thinking of finding another corpse to entomb in it. Your betrothed’s, perhaps."

  "He dares to threaten her?" Sir Dunstan raged.

  "No. You should know by experience that the Glen Lyon never makes idle threats He simply desires that I tell you his terms for her release."

  "What does that devil want?"

  Gavin could hear just how much it cost the arrogant bastard to ask.

  "Three weeks from now, there will be a ship putting in near Cairnleven. The Glen Lyon wants your hunting curs as far away from that inlet as possible. Once this shipload is on its way to God knows where, your betrothed will be released, unharmed, and you and the Glen Lyon will pick up your amusing little game right where you left off."

  "The fool would risk kidnapping the daughter of a general for one shipload of ragged wretches? Why is this shipload so important?"

  "That is the Glen Lyon's concern. Now, do the two of you have a bargain?'

  "Thieving bastard! He dares attempt to blackmail a knight of the realm?"

  "He prefers to think of it as a simple matter of trade. If you do as directed, he will leave your beloved in the same garden from which she was kidnapped, with, shall we say, minimal harm."

  "And if I tell your bloody master to go to hell?"

  "You won't. It would be most embarrassing to lose a treasure such as the general's daughter, Wells. The man who did so would be the object of scorn and mockery. Blows to the pride that a fine, upstanding hero the likes of you could never endure. Besides, even the vilest villain who ever breathed must have some affection for something. A pet dog, a horse, or perhaps a lovely woman."

  "The Glen Lyon wouldn't kill a woman," Dunstan snarled. "He hasn't the stomach for it."

  "Perhaps not. Then again, his stomach might have grown tougher since Lochavrea."

  "If that bastard dares to so much as touch the hem of her gown, I'll slaughter every Jacobite, man, woman, or child, who stumbles into my path."

  "It's rather pointless to threaten to kill innocents after you've already resorted to wholesale butchery, isn't it?" Gavin sneered. "Just one more error in your strategy when it comes to the Highlands."

  The knight's lips whitened, his fingers tightening on his r
eins as if he were hungering to feel Gavin's throat crushed beneath them. "Tell your master I shall be delighted to give him a lesson in strategy he'll never forget when he dares to meet me face to face."

  "I am certain the Glen Lyon will tremble with fear when I give him your message. Now, although I'd love to tarry and listen to more of your empty boasting, I'm certain the two men you've stationed behind that outcropping of rock are getting restless."

  Dull red suffused Sir Dunstan's cheeks, his eyes all but bulging from his head with fury at his ploy's being discovered.

  "The choice the Glen Lyon has given you is this," Gavin said in steely accents. "Either you allow a handful of meaningless Jacobites to escape across the sea, or he will fling your woman to Scotsmen who owe you a blood price for their own women’s suffering. Vengeance far beyond a delicately bred lady's imagining. The choice is yours."

  "It will take some arranging. How can I contact the Glen Lyon to let him know?"

  "You mean so that you can have a chance to lure him into a trap? There will be no contact between the two of you. One of his men will return here in two weeks' time. If all has been arranged, tie this to the lowest branch of this tree." Gavin tore free a scrap of Jamie Cameron’s plaid. "Otherwise, may God have mercy on your lady, Sir Dunstan; the Glen Lyon will not."

  "Tell the Glen Lyon I will see him in hell," the Englishman snarled, his ghost-gray horse pawing at the ground.

  Gavin's gaze shifted, emptiness sweeping through him. "He is already waiting for you there."

  Chapter Four

  Foam flecked the lips of Sir Dunstan's horse, the beast quivering with exhaustion as he reined it in at the crest of a hill. But though Sir Dunstan and his men had all but ridden their mounts to death attempting to trail the Glen Lyon's messenger, the cunning bastard had disappeared into the Scottish mist as though Satan had stolen him away.

  Satan? Dunstan swore violently. Glen Lyon didn't need the powers of hell. Every soul in the Highlands would gladly have died to shield him from harm.