The sound of his skin sizzling like bacon inflamed his anger to dangerous levels, and he spit out the rag. He roared savagely while the smell of his smoldering flesh churned in his guts.
A second later, it was over. The hot iron came away. Lachlan lowered his head onto the table, panting with rage, while he brooded over the fact that he was still cursed and Raonaid had won. Again.
What the devil had happened back there at the stone circle? How could he have failed so miserably after all the months planning and conniving, imagining his freedom at last from this hellish torture?
Bloody hell, he knew the answer, and it lit his existing frustrations into an even bigger inferno of rancor.
After three years of celibacy, the mere act of touching a woman—even Raonaid—had provoked him to such a state of desire, he’d lost sight of his goal.
He could barely comprehend how quickly it had happened. How could he have so strongly desired the woman he despised? As soon as he put his hands on her body, a fire exploded in his veins and all he wanted to do was take her, without preliminaries, up against that rock. It was not what he’d expected.
And now here he was, tied down, yet again.…
Letting out a sharp breath of annoyance and needing to get a handle on his bearings, he lifted his head and glanced around. He was being held in a stable tack room, surrounded by leather bridles, harnesses, and whips, all hanging from the walls. A fire blazed in a hot forge, and when he turned his head to the side, he saw an anvil and a bucket of hammers, chisels, and tongs. All useful weapons, if he could get to them.
“Unfortunately it was just a surface wound,” a voice said.
Lachlan flashed a threatening glare at the Earl of Drumloch, who stepped into view as he moved around the side of the table.
“Untie me,” Lachlan snarled. “Now.”
The earl was a large man, but not a handsome one. His cheeks were pockmarked, his eyes set too close together on a greasy face that was pudgy like the rest of him. He wore a long dark curly wig and an embroidered waistcoat over a white shirt with a full cravat. His riding jacket was tossed over a nearby chair.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Drumloch replied. “I cannot take the risk that you might strike out at me, or flee back to the Highlands. The magistrate is on his way, you should know. I sent a lad to report what you did to Lady Catherine.”
Lachlan shut his eyes and spoke through tightly clenched teeth. “I told you before, she’s not who you think she is.”
The earl leaned over him. “And why should I believe you? You’re nothing but a foul, rutting savage. If not for my cousin’s delicate sensibilities, I would have shot you dead when I had the chance.”
Rutting savage, indeed. He still wanted to rut her. Good and hard.
Raonaid stepped into the doorway just then. She wore the same rich green gown of plush velvet and silk, with a low neckline that showed off her opulent bosom and deep cleavage to fine advantage.
Her fiery red hair, swept into a curled pageant of elegance on top of her head, was tousled from their brawl in the stone circle, and the dishevelled look of it—along with the memory of how it got to be that way—quickened Lachlan’s blood and stirred his loins to an irritating, unmanageable degree.
Again he kicked and thrashed against the bonds, wondering how the cold-blooded oracle he once knew had transformed herself into this. Though beautiful, Raonaid had always been impoverished, and coarse in behavior. Clearly she’d put some effort into improving her manners in order to pass herself off as the Drumloch heiress.
And pretending to have lost all her memories … That was pure genius.
But had this powerful Scottish family truly been duped? How could they not see that she was an imposter?
Raonaid moved forward and touched her cousin’s arm, as she had done before, when he held the pistol. The earl met her eyes, glanced at the hot branding iron still clutched in his hand, then set it down, hissing and sputtering, into a tub of water.
“I must speak with this man,” she said, “before the magistrate arrives. He claims to know me. Perhaps he can help us solve the mystery of my disappearance, and explain where I was and what I have been doing for the past five years.”
“Untie me,” Lachlan demanded again, “or I’ll tell ye nothin’.”
“You’ll bloody well talk if I reach for that branding iron again, you disgusting, miserable piece of—”
Raonaid spoke firmly. “Please, John, that is quite enough. Perhaps we should untie him.”
“He attacked you!” the earl reminded her. “I’ll not let him get away with it. Lord knows what he might do next. He might return and slit all our throats while we sleep.”
Lachlan pondered that for a moment, and decided that yes, he’d quite enjoy returning after dark. The first thing he’d do would be make up for how he had botched the attack at the standing stones. This time he would use a different approach. He’d seduce her and make her want it. Hell, he’d make her beg for it. Then she’d have no choice but to lift the curse.
He thrashed wildly again and struggled against the bonds. He had to get off this friggin’ table.
Lifting his head, he spotted his sword and belt on a shelf on the other side of the tack room. He wondered what they had done with his horse.…
“Fine,” Raonaid replied in response to her cousin’s refusal to release him. “But can we at least give him a drink of brandy? Clearly he is in pain.”
A drink would be good.
Unfortunately, the earl refused.
Raonaid gave him a pleading look, and to Lachlan’s surprise, the man surrendered.
“Very well. I’ll send a groom to the house.” Drumloch turned and went searching.
At last … Here was the woman Lachlan had always known and reviled. She had an inexplicable, or perhaps mystical, power to manipulate.
She moved closer—close enough that he could smell her strawberry fragrance—and his thoughtless, brazen body responded instantly with another hot surge of lust.
God damn it, Lachlan. Get ahold of yourself. Ever since he touched her in the stone circle, everything about her seemed erotic, and he hated himself for responding that way.
Because he didn’t want to feel that way about her.
“When we spoke before,” she said, seeming oblivious to his teeming lust, “you told me that my name was Raonaid, and that I was an oracle. A witch.”
“Aye.”
She paused a moment. “You seem quite certain that I am her, and because I have no memory of my former life, I have no way of knowing whether or not your claims are true. But I can tell you this: I do not believe I am the vengeful person you describe. I am not … like that. So perhaps you are mistaken.”
He chuckled bitterly. “Nay, lass. There’s no mistake. You are the oracle, without a doubt. I know your face very well, and the particular cadence of your voice. I would know it anywhere. It has a way of grating on my nerves.”
She slowly walked around the foot of the table.
The sway of her hips was seductive and alluring. Her eyes burned with resolve. Hell! He could still smell her juicy fragrance, and he wanted to leap off the table and slide his hands up under her skirts … wiggle his hips against hers … taste her sweet hot mouth with his lips and tongue and rip that heavy gown right off her.
He was getting hard again, and beginning to think she must have put another spell on him. She might have done it when he was still sitting in the saddle back at the stone circle. Maybe she had never been asleep while he was watching her. Maybe all those lustful moans and breathless sighs were some form of erotic sorcery.
Ah, Jesus …
“My family tells me I went missing five years ago,” she said, still oblivious to what was going on under his kilt. “How long have you known this woman called Raonaid? Where did she live?”
“I met her—” He stopped abruptly and corrected himself. “I met you for the first time four years ago. You were living far from here, on the Outer
Hebrides. With Angus.”
“Who is Angus?”
He glared at her accusingly. “My cousin and chief. Angus the Lion. But do not try to pretend you don’t know him. I know that you do. You were his lover for over a year.”
Raonaid’s eyes lifted, and all the color drained from her face.
“What’s wrong?” he asked with mocking pity. “Does your family think you are an innocent virgin?”
She lifted her chin. “That is none of your concern, sir, and it is an appalling question to ask a lady.”
He wanted to laugh at her virtuous airs—for the Raonaid he knew was no stranger to depravity. She once threw a tantrum and tore apart the kitchen at Kinloch Castle. The cooks fled like mice. That same day, she punched Lachlan in the face and nearly broke his jaw. On top of all that, she could hold her whisky better than any Highlander twice her size.
Lachlan tried to focus on those memories of her, hoping it would take care of his maddening erection, but nothing seemed to make a difference.
“Could it be possible,” she asked, changing the subject, “that I somehow assumed another identity when I went missing, and that is how I ended up in the Hebrides? Perhaps I lost my memory then, too, and became this other person because I felt very confused and alone, as I do now.”
There was something desperate in her eyes, and yet something deeply intelligent in her attempt to put the puzzle pieces together.
Not that any of it mattered. All he wanted to do was shag her witless and get back to his old life.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, lass,” he replied, working hard to ignore all the aching sensations down below, “but Raonaid has been living in the Hebrides all her life. When she—” Again, he had to stop and correct himself. “When you left your home to follow Angus back to Kinloch, it was the first time you had ever set foot on the Scottish mainland.”
She frowned. “How do you know this? Is there proof of Raonaid’s childhood on the islands?”
“Aye. You’ve always been known to the people of the Western Isles because of your strange gifts. Your reputation as an oracle was known throughout the Highlands as well, because you had visions of the future.” He paused, taking note of the discontent in her eyes. “But why am I explaining all this to you, when you already know it? It is your own life, lass, and I don’t believe for a single minute that you don’t remember. You’re a fraud. These people have been tricked. It’s a case of mistaken identity, from which you clearly stand to profit. Aye, I know all about your inheritance. You’re due to collect it soon, are you not? You must be almost five-and-twenty.”
“You offend me, sir,” she argued. “It is not my intention to mislead anyone, and if I am not Catherine Montgomery, I will not try to take an inheritance that does not belong to me. I only want to know the truth.” She paused. “It’s just that…”
“Just what?” he prodded, fighting any urge to feel sympathy or compassion, for he could not let himself fall under any more spells.
While she circled around the table again, he felt her inexplicable power and tugged fiercely at the bonds. This was all too familiar—to be held hostage by her—and he certainly didn’t want to listen to her tragic story. He just wanted to be rid of the curse, one way or another.
And to get off this damn table.
“I find it difficult to believe,” she said, “that I could be the woman you describe. First of all, I cannot see the future, or even the past for that matter. I do not have that gift. Nor can I imagine putting curses on people, and my doctor assures me that a loss of memory does not change a person’s character.” She looked down at him. “And what kind of curse is it? You never explained.”
Growing impatient with the conversation, he continued to tug at the leather straps. He tried to tear at them with his teeth. When that didn’t work, he regarded her snidely. “You know very well what it is.”
“If I did, would I be asking the question?”
He shook his head in utter disbelief. “Who knows why a witch does anything?”
“Stop calling me that. Tell me about the curse.”
Lachlan scoffed. “You don’t remember drugging me, and throwing me into a pit? The bones were a nice touch, the curse itself especially twisted. What better way to curb my sexual exploits than to promise that any woman I bedded would die in childbirth and take the innocent bairn with her.”
Raonaid’s lips parted, and she frowned.
“What’s wrong, Lady Catherine? Does the idea offend you? Do you find it cruel?”
“Of course I do.”
“But you are the one who concocted it.”
She spoke with a rising pitch of anger. “How many times must I say it? I remember nothing.”
“And I believe you are a liar.” He stared up at the ceiling and lay still for a long moment as he contemplated his life since the curse.
“I once scoffed at such tales of magic,” he quietly said. “But each time I wanted to bed a woman…” He glared at her. “I thought of you, and what you did to me, and I could not take the risk.”
A flood of loathing moved through him as he suddenly recalled the death of his own wife and unborn child, and all the grief and guilt and inescapable regret that came with it.
“Where is my horse?” he demanded to know.
“He’s in the stable. He has been fed and watered.”
“Untie me. Let me go before the magistrate arrives. It’s the least you can do.”
“The least I can do?” she snapped back. “You tried to ravish me and make me a victim of that curse.”
“But I didn’t ravish you, did I?”
She regarded him with uncertainty.
Lachlan stopped struggling and worked the situation through in his mind. There had to be a way out of this.
“When you first kissed me in the stone circle,” Raonaid said, “I thought we were old lovers.”
He turned his head to look at her, and scoffed. “Hardly.”
“Then why did you kiss me like that?”
He fumbled for an explanation when he didn’t even understand it himself. “I was desperate. I would have done anything to make you lift the curse.”
“And you thought that I would be so overcome by lust for you that I would simply swoon, and beg you to take me?”
He shrugged, for that was usually the effect he had on women. Or it used to be, at any rate.
“Aye.”
“Well, you were off to a very good start, Highlander, until I asked your name.”
Lachlan darted a surprised look at her, just as the earl returned to the tack room.
“Whisky’s on the way,” Drumloch said. “And the magistrate should be here at any moment.”
“Wonderful.” Lachlan winced at the pain in his shoulder, which he had forgotten about while the earl was gone.
“You still haven’t told us your name, savage.”
Lachlan gritted his teeth. “No, I haven’t, and I’m not telling you anything.”
“The magistrate will wish to know it. He might even ask you to spell it, in which case you might have a problem. Can you even read? Ever seen a pen before?”
Lachlan gazed up at the rafters. “It’ll be the magistrate’s problem, not mine, because he’ll have to beat the information out of me—and if it comes to that, someone might get hurt.”
A footman entered the tack room just then with a bottle of whisky and two glasses. The earl swiped the bottle off the silver tray, uncorked it, tipped it back, and took a swig.
Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he said, “This isn’t my finest, but I could hardly waste the good stuff on the likes of you.”
Raonaid strode forward. “Hand me the bottle, John.” She took it from him and poured a drink. “Can you lift your head?” she asked Lachlan.
He shot her a frosty look. “Wouldn’t it be easier if you untied me?”
“I don’t think that would be wise.”
“Certainly not!” Drumloch agreed.
She ignor
ed her cousin. Cupping the back of Lachlan’s head, she held the glass to his lips. He gulped it down in one swallow. She poured another, and he gulped that down, too. Then a third. With any luck, it would dull his senses enough to forget what had happened between him and Raonaid in the stone circle.
“You certainly can drink, Highlander,” she said with a hint of amusement as she stepped away from him.
“So can you, Catherine.” He spoke her name with sardonic bite.
“Is that a fact?”
“Aye.”
Without the slightest hesitation, she tipped the bottle back and guzzled.
Lachlan grinned with satisfaction. Now there was the Raonaid he knew—wild and uninhibited, exposing herself at last.
“Catherine, what in God’s name are you doing?” The earl stalked forward and snatched the bottle out of her hands. “Don’t let him manipulate you! He just wants to undermine your good judgment!”
She choked and rasped on the potent spirit, and sucked in a few tight breaths. “He says I know how to drink. I want to see if it’s true.”
“Nothing he says is true,” the earl argued. “He cannot be trusted.”
“How do you know?”
Drumloch lowered his voice. “Because he called you a witch.”
A horse whinnied somewhere nearby.
Raonaid was silent for a moment. “How do you know I’m not?”
The earl had no answer. He merely stared at her in bemused silence.
Lachlan rather enjoyed watching them quarrel. Again, it was a hint of the old Raonaid coming out of her snake hole, and the earl seemed quite taken aback.
“Because you are Lady Catherine Montgomery!” he finally replied.
“Indeed!” she shouted. “A woman who has been missing for five years, and has returned as a ruined lunatic who cannot remember a single thing about her life!”
“You are not a lunatic, Catherine. Do not speak that word again.”
Lachlan watched with curious interest as Drumloch moved forward. He was about to reach out to her when the sound of hooves and an approaching carriage interrupted the sudden hush in the stable tack room.
“The magistrate has arrived,” the footman said, stepping into the doorway.
Seduced by the Highlander Page 3