by Paula Quinn
“A few more swigs of me brew and ye willna feel a thing,” Angus chuckled. Callum leaned his head back, preferring not to watch Graham’s sword heat to bright orange.
“You are not going to . . .”
Callum heard Kate’s voice and closed his eyes again. He liked the sound of her, the dulcet huskiness that carried an undercurrent of strength so deeply rooted, she did not even fear the Devil.
“You cannot mean to sear his flesh with that!” she screeched, causing Callum’s shoulders to bunch up around his ears.
“Sit ye down, lass,” Graham said softly. “There’s naught else to be done.”
Callum looked at them and blinked at the three scalding swords in Graham’s hands. One. He dragged his hand across his eyes. His friend held only one sword. One glowing, sizzling iron rod that would soon . . . He guzzled more brew and braced himself for what was to come.
“Well? What are ye waitin’ fer?” he demanded a moment later when Graham simply stood there staring down at him.
“I’m thinking I should tie yer hands first,” Graham admitted.
“Do it.”
And still Graham hesitated. Callum MacGregor was mighty indeed. If he swung that fist and made contact with Graham’s face, the commander was sure he would not awaken for a se’nnight. Years of hard labor and torture had made Callum stronger than any man Graham knew, but ’twas the torture he had endured and the scars that still marred his body that made Graham hate the task at hand.
“Graham,” Callum warned impatiently.
The blade descended. For a moment, the entire world went black. Callum clenched his teeth and threw his head back, but he did not make a sound.
Kate stood aghast, unable to move while the sickening smell of burning flesh wafted through her nostrils. Graham dropped his sword and strode away, swearing as he went. The instant he was gone, Kate bolted forward.
When Callum opened his eyes, he was not sure if he couldn’t form a rational thought because of the pain ripping through his entire body, or because of the beautiful goddess kneeling before him, looking like she was about to weep all over him.
Without warning, she snatched the pouch from his fingers and dumped a goodly amount of its contents over his leg.
Callum reacted instantly. His eyes widened and blazed with both fury and agony that made him writhe. He clutched her shoulders and fought the urge to fling her across the campsite. “Christ!” he shouted between gasping breaths. “What the hell did ye do to me?”
“The whiskey will cleanse the wound,” she explained, but Brodie yanked her from Callum’s arms and hauled her to her feet.
“Ye will stay away from him.” His dark hair eclipsed even darker eyes that impaled her while he pulled a dagger from his belt. “Have ye no’ done enough damage to him? Will ye no’ be satisfied until ye have killed him?”
“Nae!” Kate took a step back, feeling her mettle begin to fade for the first time. These men surrounding her were warriors of the most savage ilk. Their laird meant to deliver her to safety, but they looked only too eager to hang her from the nearest tree. “I did not mean to cause him injury. I saw him riding toward me and I thought he was coming to fight on the side of the McColls.”
“Why in hell would we fight on the side o’ the bloody McColls?” Brodie raised his voice at her. “Are ye daft?”
The mighty chieftain hiccuped. “’Tis understandable. She’s a Campbell.”
“Aye, she’s a Campbell.” Angus agreed and spat in disgust. “Stick a knife into a MacGregor’s guts as quick as her men kin would.”
“Treacherous she is.”
That insult was enough to strengthen Kate’s mettle back to full force. “I did not stick a knife into his guts, but his thigh. And as for my men kin, at least they are not cowards who slice men from behind like your kinsmen did to my father. They do not go around raping and pillaging innocent people and starting wars that last for centuries.”
“We didna rape anyone innocent,” Angus argued.
“Shut up, Angus.” Callum groaned against the tree. He rubbed his forehead. “And what in blazes is in this brew? I feel like my head’s floatin’ off my shoulders.” He attempted to stand, held on to the tree for a moment until the ground stopped moving, then tried again. He nearly fell on top of Kate. Grasping her waist to right himself, his heavy body almost caused her to fall with him. He groaned when a bolt of pain shot through his leg.
“And we wouldna kill a Campbell from behind.” Brodie moved closer to them, his voice hard as steel. “We would look him in the eye and—”
“Brodie, step back before I take my sword to ye,” Callum warned, trying to fight the effects of Angus’s whiskey.
Angus caught his laird when Kate took a step toward Brodie and Callum teetered on his feet.
“Look him in the eye, you say?” she asked quietly, her voice seething with emotion. “Do you take that much joy in killing that you want to see your victim’s last breath?”
“If they’re Campbells, aye.”
Kate shook her head with disgust. “I see now why my uncle’s hatred for your clan is so profound. Why he always warned us about the MacGregors. You defy kings and kill earls for little reason other than you enjoy it.”
“Little reason?”
They all turned toward Callum, who was hanging over Angus’s shoulder and looking more lucid than he did a moment ago. His eyes glittered against the firelight when they locked on Kate. His nostrils flared with anger. He did not blink. He seemed not to breathe. “Did I hear ye right?”
The forest went deathly still; even the crickets seemed to hush awaiting Kate’s reply. She looked at the other men around her. Each wore the same expression of cold, hard contempt. Her heart leapt with fear. She did not doubt in that moment that should she say the wrong thing, they might just kill her after all. “I didn’t mean . . . I know it must be difficult to lose the right to bear your name, but surely you understand that—”
“Nae, ye dinna know anything aboot losin’ yer name,” Callum cut her off. He pushed himself off Angus and closed the distance between them in two strides. “Ye know nothin’ aboot us save half-truths that took place over half a century ago. Ye have no’ lost yer land, or yer—”
“I lost my family.”
His jaw tightened around something more he wanted to say. The fury in his eyes faded, leaving him with a resigned look as his gaze dropped to the pulse at her throat. Kate had the urge the lift her hand to shield her flesh from him. For he looked as if he could stop the beating of her heart if he but thought about it.
“Then ye have good reason to hate us, Katherine Campbell.” He began to turn away. “Try no’ to ferget it.”
“You make the task easy, MacGregor,” she hurled at his back. “If I had my sword I would show you.”
“Ye’re a Campbell.” Callum tossed her a dry smirk over his shoulder. “I wouldna expect anything less from ye. Angus,” he snapped. “Come here.”
The largest of Callum’s men took a step forward just as his laird’s knees buckled under him.
“Ye fokin’ poisoned him,” Brodie accused the burly warrior while Angus dragged his unconscious laird back to the tree.
“’Tis the whiskey,” Angus defended. “Auld Gillis said ’twas stronger than any man. I’m guessin’ he was right.”
Kate watched Callum slump to the ground and begin to snore. Even in his dead stupor he appeared to be brooding. By the saints, his conviction to hate her was even stronger than her uncle’s was to hate the MacGregors. She wanted to hate him, too. She did hate him! But when he let out a low moan, she found herself moving in his direction. She almost reached him when Brodie stepped in front of her, blocking her path.
“Ye’ll be away from him now.” His voice was low, warning her not to argue.
“But I—”
“Sleep over there.” He pointed, then cupped her elbow to move her along.
“Let her be, Brodie. She’s not going to stab him in his sleep, are ye, lass?”
>
Kate looked up into Graham’s warm gaze and shook her head. He smiled, revealing a dimple as devastating as Callum’s sword.
“Callum could use a woman’s gentle touch during the night,” she heard him tell Brodie as he led the grumbling Highlander to the fire.
Kate turned back to their laird. She had no intention of touching him. She simply wanted to make sure his wound had been closed properly. Savages, she thought, cringing again at the memory of his sizzling flesh. Sitting beside him, she carefully lifted the edge of his plaid off his thigh, then nearly retched. The skin was black and blistered, but the wound was sealed. Her gaze drifted over the rest of him. Heavens, he was big, his legs well muscled and long. She blinked away, covering his thigh, and looked at his hands instead. She remembered how skilled they were at wielding his great claymore against the McColls and, she realized now, her uncle’s men. She’d been so busy praying for her own life, she hadn’t even looked up to see who he was killing. They were born enemies, but she could not forget the strength in his arm or the murderous glint in his eyes when he stopped a McColl blade from cutting her down the middle. He had the look of a savage, garbed in his plaid and leather wrist cuffs instead of clean breeches and polished boots like her uncle wore. But he hadn’t tried to ravish her. In fact, his touch was so gentle when he held her in his saddle, the very thought of it drew a sigh from her lips. She closed her eyes and settled against the tree beside him, thanking God that it was Callum MacGregor who found her, and not the monster who had murdered her father.
Chapter Seven
DUNCAN CAMPBELL SLOWED his mount as he approached Kildun Castle. Something was amiss. Silence clung to the land like scum on a pond. Beneath clouds of rolling charcoal, the high battlements stood empty. He looked around and wiped the sheen of sweat from his brow. He was alone. He’d cursed his men the entire way back to Inverary for falling so easily to McColl blades. He hadn’t been there to see how it had happened. Why should he have risked losing his life to raiders? But now, with a growing sense of panic knotting his innards, it dawned on him who his men must have fought. He had feared the MacGregors would go to Glen Orchy to take revenge on his niece for what he’d done to one of their women a fortnight ago. He wanted to get Kate away before they found her, believing she would be safe in Kildun. The rebel chieftain would never return here. He had been so sure of it.
When he reached the lowered drawbridge, he dismounted and drew his sword. The wind howled through the deserted entryway, sending a chill over his flesh and the acrid scent of blood to his nostrils. Images of another day much like this one flooded his memory. Fearing what he would find when he reached the bailey, and fighting the urge to run the other way, he stepped cautiously past the gatehouse.
Over a hundred of his men scattered the bloodstained ground, flies swarming around their hewn bodies. Dread and fury produced a faint groan from the back of Duncan’s throat. He had seen this kind of destruction six years ago—when the Devil had left Kildun. Duncan had never forgotten that day. It was forged in his memory, branded into his dreams.
Alerted by the screams of his comrades, he and twenty of his men had rushed down the narrow stone stairs that led to the dungeon. When he arrived there he wanted to flee back up the way he had come. He had covered his mouth to keep from retching. Dismembered bodies littered the stony ground, all of them ravaged by a single sword. Duncan’s eyes followed that blade, glinting red in the torchlight, as it descended on Donald Stuart, his father’s first in command, and near cut him in half.
At first, Duncan had feared God had finally sought vengeance against his father’s sins and had set Satan loose upon Kildun. Blood dripped from the creature’s long, limp hair barring his face. His eyes shone beneath like brimstone against the torchlight, striking terror in the hearts of the men around him. The beast’s shoulders were slightly hunched forward and massive, providing him with unearthly strength.
Just beside him, one of Duncan’s men screamed and fell to the floor. Duncan’s body shook as he gripped his hilt with both hands. He’d managed to swing his blade, but it whooshed across empty air. Something whistled just in front of him an instant later and another guard crumbled to his knees, clutching the fatal gash across his belly.
Ten breaths had passed while Duncan stood alone in the paralyzing silence of his father’s dungeon. Someone whimpered. A lass’s voice. Duncan’s eyes darted to the eastern wall, knowing who it had to be. Still, he staggered backward when he saw that MacGregor was gone, and with him the chains that had held him. Young Margaret MacGregor’s confines lay crushed on the ground in a heap of twisted steel.
Impossible—Duncan remembered thinking—until the murderer stood before him.
“Fer now, ye will live to tell yer faither I will return fer him.”
Duncan took another swing at him, determined not to die cowering at a prisoner’s feet. His blade was met in midair by a crushing blow that sent fire up his arm. MacGregor’s sword ground against his until the tip was only inches from his eye.
Strewn over her brother’s shoulder, Margaret MacGregor cried out, halting the blade’s deadly course.
“Dinna force yer death. It will come soon enough,” MacGregor had promised him before he fled, taking his sister with him and vanishing into the mists.
Duncan wished the bastard had killed him instead of leaving him to face his father. It was the first time Liam Campbell had ever struck his son. Would that he had never stopped. It would have been more merciful than the contempt hardening his father’s eyes from that day hence.
Duncan surveyed the gruesome scene around him now. The Devil had finally returned to Inverary, and with the same fury. A sound from beyond the western curtain wall startled him. He spun on his heel, his sword at the ready to send the MacGregor straight back to hell this time.
He waited, hearing naught again but the wind. He inched forward toward the heavy portcullis that led to the inner bailey, drawing up his nerves to face his most formidable enemy once again.
Instead, he came upon his nephew, tied securely with rope, to the half-raised thick iron gate.
Robert Campbell stared down at his uncle and felt a tight knot rise in his throat. His great relief at being rescued vanished from his eyes as he noted the absence of any man at mount beside his returning uncle. The knot thickened, threatening to suffocate him if the strip of plaid tied over his mouth was not removed posthaste!
It took far too long for the earl to lower the gate and cut the cloth away from his face. “Where’s Kate?” Robert erupted.
Duncan did not answer him right away but looked around the deserted grounds, then continued cutting the rest of him loose. “Did he kill everyone, then?”
“Nae, anyone who did not lift a weapon was put in the dungeon,” Robert told him quickly. “They need be released. But first, Uncle, where is my sister? Why does she not ride with you?” Panic and nausea vied for his attention. Robert refused them both. The moment one hand was free, he used it to grip his uncle’s doublet. “Give me your reply!”
Eyes of forged steel finally fastened on his, narrowing slightly and stilling any further movement from Robert, despite his freedom. “Why do you fear for her so, Robert? You do not even consider that I might have left her unharmed in the care of my guardsmen in Glen Orchy?”
Robert had spent days helplessly secured to a wrought-iron gate, praying for an act of God to free him so he could save his sister. He prayed now again that it was not too late.
“Because the men you took with you to Glen Orchy are all dead, as these men are. I beg you tell me my sister is not among them.”
Now Duncan gripped his nephew’s tunic and yanked him closer. “How do you know the others are dead? It was the MacGregor, was it not? And you told him where to find me.” His eyes seared into Robert’s. “You chose to give them my life in exchange for yours,” he accused, then pushed his nephew away. “Here you are alive and well while your sister is their captive. You are a coward, Robert.” He nodded at his own words
while Robert went pale. “Your grandfather would toss you from Kildun.”
“I did not tell them where to find you,” Robert flung at him before turning for the stable. “You did.”
“I?” Duncan stormed after him and stopped him by closing his fingers around Robert’s wrist. “I told no one but you where I was going!”
“And Graham Campbell,” his nephew informed him. “Or rather, Graham Grant, commander of the Devil MacGregor’s men. Aye, they made certain I knew whose eyes I was staring into ten breaths after we were led past the gates by the traitor that you took in as your kin after I arrived here.”
“Nae.” Duncan reeled back, stunned. He shook his head, refusing to believe he had been so easily fooled. “Graham Campbell drank with me, sat at my table.”
“And with me,” Robert agreed, his voice trembling with fury at the man he had come to think of as his friend. “He deceived us all. He led us outside the protection of the castle on the pretense that a band of MacGregors, led by the Devil himself, had captured you and were holding you just beyond Loch Awe. He led us directly into the swords of our enemies, at least two hundred strong.” Robert’s gaze swept over the bodies around him. Bodies he had been left to stare at for days. “We did not stand a chance against the wave of destruction which came upon us. Quickly our men were slain. Without mercy or pause were their bodies torn asunder and trampled.” He returned his gaze to his uncle, checking back the emotion in his voice. “The Devil and his men came here to kill you, but you were gone. Grant told him you were in Glen Orchy. They were on their way there when they left.”
“And they left you alive.” Duncan’s tone dripped with the accusation of betrayal.
“The fighting was over. My sword had been wrested from my hands. After the MacGregor instructed the bulk of his men to take your cattle to his holding, he ordered Grant to hang me, charging you with doing the same to his kinsmen.”