CLAIMED BY A HIGHLANDER (THE DOUGLAS LEGACY Book 2)

by Margaret Mallory

  “My family got word to me that they arranged passage for me on a ship bound for France, where my brothers are in exile,” she said. “You can ask at Inverness if the French ship La Fleur anchored there. It would have set sail this morning for Calais.”

  She hoped that giving him details that he could easily check would convince him. Hector narrowed his eyes at her for a long moment, then finally nodded.

  She shrieked in pain as Big Duncan lifted her out of her chair by her hair.

  “Since Rory doesn’t want her, are ye done with her?” he asked Hector.

  “She’s still a valuable asset,” Hector said. “Returning a Douglas traitor for justice could make the crown more inclined to recognize me as chieftain. Or I can sell her to James Hamilton of Finnart, son of the Earl of Arran.”

  Finnart? How did Hector know about Finnart?

  “I can see I surprised ye,” Hector said with a satisfied smile. “Once I heard that Rory had wed Lady Sybil Douglas, I made it a point to find out all I could about ye. Turns out, you’re a rather famous lass.”

  ***

  When the hall door opened, Rory looked up expecting to see Sybil. Despite the evidence to the contrary, his heart could not accept that she had left him.

  Instead of his wife, one of Malcolm’s sons came through the door.

  “Has your father returned yet?” Rory asked.

  “Nay,” the man said. “Neither has my son Lùcas, the one ye sent to Urquhart Castle.”

  Rory wondered if the Grants were holding his messenger hostage until Kenneth was delivered. That would be a common precaution.

  “I started to ride to Urquhart Castle to ask after my son,” the man continued, “but I had to turn around to tell ye what I saw.”

  Rory could see from his face that it was more bad news.

  “The Grants have set bonfires on their hilltops to call their men to battle,” he said. “I’d wager we have two days at most before they’re ready to attack.”

  Please, God, not this too. Rory’s one comfort had been the knowledge that his son was safe with the Grants. The Grants’ call to battle could only mean they believed Kenneth was dead.

  If the Grants did not have Kenneth, where was he?

  Could Sybil have taken his son with her? Could she be that cruel to leave him and also take his son?

  He went up to their bedchamber. He hardly knew why. As soon as he opened the door, he was flooded with images of Sybil. He saw her brushing her midnight hair by the window, heard her irresistible laughter that always lightened his burdens, and imagined her eyes dancing with amusement as she teased him.

  He could not avoid looking at the bed, though those memories gave him the most pain. Unable to help himself, he lifted the pillow and buried his face in it to breathe in her scent. What a sentimental fool he had become.

  He pounded his fist against the bed. How could she leave him when he needed her so much? If she had left before when he refused to trust her, he would understand. But why leave now? She had seemed so sincere when she said she forgave him and loved him still. And when they made love, she made him believe it with every touch and sigh.

  He still believed it. She had not deceived him, not this time. What had he missed? An uneasy feeling that Sybil was in trouble settled in the pit of his stomach.

  He heard a faint clink as something fell off the bed and hit the floor. Without knowing why he bothered, he dropped to his knees to see what it was. Just under the edge of the bed, a glossy black stone caught the light.

  Sybil’s pendant.

  In that moment he knew for certain that Sybil intended to return. She never would have left the pendant behind if she meant to leave for good.

  He rubbed his thumb over the stone’s smooth surface, as he had seen her do a hundred times. She had left it on the bed as a message for him. If she did not intend to disappear, where was she?

  Gripping the stone, he pressed his fists against his forehead. Perhaps the stone did have magical protective powers, for she’d never been without it before, and she had survived so many dangers with him.

  And he knew in the depths of his soul that his beloved was in danger now. Damn him! His mistrust of her feelings for him had prevented him from realizing it sooner. He could almost hear her calling to him.

  If he was wrong about Sybil leaving on that ship for France, then he was wrong about Malcolm looking for her and everything else.

  He broke out in a cold sweat as the certainty swept over him that all four of them—Sybil, Kenneth, Malcolm and Grizel—were in grave danger. As he ran from the room, he prayed to God and all that was holy that he was not too late to save them.

  Rory rode hard for Beauly with a score of MacKenzie warriors. If Sybil and the others had been captured, he would find the trail at Beauly and follow it until he found them. If they were killed…he would not let himself think of that.

  They were only a mile from Castle Leod and rounding a curve when Curan whinnied and danced sideways to slow his pace. Ahead of them, a small figure appeared in the middle of the path. Rory’s heart slammed against his chest.

  “Halt! Halt!” He held up his hand to signal the riders behind him and leaped off Curan’s back.

  He ran to his son and swept him up into his arms.

  “Praise God,” he said as he held him against his chest. Then he leaned back to examine him. Kenneth looked tired and dirty, but unharmed. “How did ye get here? It’s ten miles from Beauly.”

  “I walked,” Kenneth said. “Grizel sent me.”

  Rory’s joy at finding his son was swept away in a wave of fear. “What’s happened?”

  “You’ve got to come,” Kenneth said, fighting tears. “Malcolm is hurt bad.”

  “What about Sybil?” Rory could not breathe. “Is she hurt as well?”

  “I don’t know,” Kenneth said. “Grizel and I had to hide in the reeds in the river for a long time, so I didn’t see what happened to her. When we came back to help Malcolm, Sybil was gone. Grizel thinks they took her.”

  “Who took her?” Rory asked, gripping his son’s shoulders. “Who?”

  “Grizel said to tell you it was Hector and his men,” Kenneth said. “And she says to hurry or Malcolm won’t make it.”

  The ride to Beauly seemed to take an eternity. On the trail to the village, Rory drew Curan to a halt beside the dark patch of blood where Malcolm had fallen. Kenneth led him from there to the thicket where Grizel waited with Malcolm.

  Rory’s heart fell to his feet when he saw his old friend covered in blood and lying motionless with his head in his wife’s lap. Rory had never seen Grizel shed a tear before, but her face was wet with them now.

  Malcolm’s eyes flickered open when Rory took his hand.

  “Don’t let me die here,” Malcolm whispered.

  “I won’t,” Rory promised. “I’ll get ye back to Castle Leod.”

  ***

  Malcolm still clung to life by a thread when they reached the castle. Rory carried him upstairs to his own bedchamber and laid him gently on the bed. He left him and Kenneth in the care of Grizel and the other women, with instructions to call him if Malcolm woke again.

  Then he set his sorrow aside. He had to protect his son and rescue his wife. He posted half a dozen men at the chamber door and ordered that no one be allowed to enter except at Grizel’s request, then he went down to the hall.

  Everyone except the men who had gone with him to Beauly was whispering about the dead boy come to life and making signs of the cross. Clearly, it was too late to maintain the pretense that the lad was dead.

  “Kenneth is my son,” he shouted over their voices, “and he was never dead.”

  When the room quieted, he explained the reason for the hoax.

  “The person who attempted to harm him may be in this castle,” he said. “Kenneth is my heir and your future chieftain, so I charge every one of you to protect him.”

  He could not risk Hector hearing from one of his spies that Kenneth was alive.

>   “No one leaves the castle until I return,” he said. “If anyone attempts to, they will be executed at once.”

  There was a general intake of breath. He had no time to discuss it further. He called his senior men to his private room behind the hall.

  “While ye were gone, we learned that the Munro chieftain survived the ambush,” one of the men reported.

  Here, at least, was one piece of good news. “How do we know?”

  “He led raids on two MacKenzie villages along our shared border.”

  Rory rubbed his forehead. “Anything else?”

  “The MacDonalds have burned MacKenzie boats in Gairloch Bay and attacked villages all along our seacoast in the west,” another man reported.

  “A’ phlàigh oirbh MacDonalds!” A plague on the MacDonalds, several of the men said in unison.

  And a plague on Hector for leaving their defenses so thin in the west. Damn him!

  Everything Rory touched had turned to ashes, just as Hector predicted. For the first time, Rory considered that it might actually be true that he was not his father’s son and that he had brought all this on his clan because he did not have chieftain’s blood.

  Regardless, he knew what he had to do.

  He sent a man to ride ahead to alert his uncle, then he set out with his brother and thirty men for Fairburn Tower.

  As he approached the fortified tower house, he counted the warriors in the clearing surrounding it.

  “I see two hundred to our thirty,” Alex said beside him. “And that’s just outside the house.”

  “There are more men in the woods,” Rory said. So far his uncle’s men were letting them pass.

  “I’m not sure this is wise,” Alex said. “I hope ye know what you’re doing.”

  Rory hoped he did too. But he could think of no other way out of this.

  “Hector of Gairloch!” he shouted when they halted in front of the house. “I’ve come to discuss the terms under which I will leave MacKenzie lands.”

  CHAPTER 46

  Rory laid out his conditions for leaving.

  “You will cease provoking our neighboring clans and make peace with the Munros and the Grants,” Rory said. “If ye lay the blame for your attacks and the death of Grant’s grandson on me and say you’ve banished me, that will go a long way toward appeasing them.”

  Hector shrugged. “I’ve no need to fight them now.”

  “I have one last condition. Ye must return my wife to me,” Rory said. “I know ye took her, and if you’ve harmed her, there will be no deal between us.”

  “Now that I know how much she means to ye, I wish I had kept her,” Hector said. “She said that the trouble with the Grants led ye to set her aside in favor of Grant’s daughter. I felt sorry for the lass, ye sending her off in rags with no protection, so I let her go.”

  “I did not set her aside,” Rory said between his teeth.

  “Then that lass is a damned good liar,” Hector said. “She begged me to let her board a ship that was waiting to carry her to France.”

  Rory’s heart lurched, but he kept his expression passive. He told himself that Hector could have invented the story, for it was common knowledge Sybil’s brothers were living in exile in France.

  “The ship had some frilly French name. Ach, what was it?” Hector said. “La Fleur, that was it, and it was sailing for Calais.”

  Hector could not know the name of the ship and where it was sailing without speaking to Sybil. “She’s here,” Rory said. “I know she is.”

  “Ach, ye hurt my feelings with your lack of trust.” Hector spread his arm out to the side. “But you’re welcome to search the house.”

  Rory knew exactly where to look. When he was a bairn, his uncle locked him in the dank dungeon beneath the tower and left him there until his mother found him hours later.

  He charged down the stairs and through the undercroft, grabbed a torch from the wall sconce, and pushed open the door to the dungeon.

  No one was in it. But on the stairs, he saw fresh drops of blood.

  ***

  “Rory is not the man ye thought he was,” Hector said with a satisfied smile. “He’s given up on the chieftainship without spilling a drop of blood.”

  Hector had kept Sybil bound and gagged watching from an upstairs window in the tower long enough to see Rory ride up and to hear his declaration. It had broken her heart to hear it. As Rory and Alex entered the tower, Hector’s men hustled her out a back door to her new prison, a small, windowless hut a few hundred yards from the tower house.

  Now Hector had come to gloat.

  “The man who deserves to lead is the one who can outwit his opponents,” Hector said, tapping his finger against his temple. “Rory is no match for me.”

  “If Rory gave up the chieftainship, it was because he knew you’d destroy the clan if he didn’t,” she said. “He put the welfare of the clan before his own ambitions. That’s what a great leader does.”

  “That’s a surprise, coming from a Douglas,” Hector said with a smirk, and sat down on the only chair in the hut.

  She glanced at Brighde and Lùcas, who were bound together in the corner and had the sense to keep quiet. At least they were still alive.

  “He was willing to give up on you as well,” Hector said. “Once he’s gone, I’ll make certain he hears ye chose to be Finnart’s mistress rather than live with him now that he’s a lowly warrior who must earn his living with his sword.”

  “He won’t believe that,” she said. “Rory knows I love him and that I’d never go to Finnart. And I won’t!”

  “I suppose ye can jump overboard and drown instead,” he said. “But ye strike me as a survivor, so I’d wager ye won’t.”

  She would get away somehow and find Rory no matter where he was.

  “Which would ye say pains a man more,” Hector asked, “losing the woman he loves to death or to another man?”

  Surely death would be harder if he truly loved the woman. She shook her head, unwilling to seal her fate. So long as she lived, there was a chance of escape.

  “I can tell ye which is worse.” Hector swirled the whisky in the cup he brought with him and stared into the amber liquid. “If she’s with another man, he has hope that she’ll leave him. Hope is a wound that festers every day, driving him mad.”

  “What would you know of love?” she said.

  He looked up, as if he suddenly remembered she was there and realized he had spoken his thoughts aloud.

  “I want her son to suffer as I did,” he said. “That is the only reason I’m letting ye live.”

  CHAPTER 47

  “Duncan will come for me now,” Brighde said, in a high voice. “Hector doesn’t need my grandmother now that the laird has given up.”

  “When he comes, that will give us our opportunity to escape.” Sybil put her arm around the girl and nodded at Lùcas, who was more alert now, but still very weak.

  They would have one chance, and that was all. Sybil had her blade, and they had searched the hut’s dirt floor until they found two small shards from a broken pot. They each had a weapon now, and they had surprise on their side.

  She tensed as she heard someone sliding the wooden bar on the outside of the door.

  “Just like we practiced,” she whispered to the others.

  But when Big Duncan filled the open doorway, she knew they could never be ready. He was too big, too powerful, too skilled a warrior. Their weapons were pathetically tiny, Lùcas could barely stand, and Brighde was little more than a child. But they had to try.

  They remained in their places on the floor, holding their hands behind their backs as if bound, waiting for Duncan to make the first move. Their plan was to wait until the last possible moment to launch their attack.

  Duncan did not even look at Sybil and Lùcas. Without a moment’s pause, he pounced on Brighde like a starving wolf attacking a helpless lamb. Brighde screamed.

  Fury surged through Sybil, obliterating all fear and any thought of thei
r plan. She flew across the hut and landed on his back like a wild cat, driven by rage and the instinct to protect her own. Before he knew what hit him, she plunged her blade into the side of his neck.

  Duncan bellowed and arched back. She clung to him with her legs and one arm around his enormous neck as she stabbed him again, this time in his back. All her efforts seemed to do was enrage him.

  He spun, knocking her against the wall as he tried to shake her off. Oof! The breath went out of her as she hit the wall again, but she managed to hold on. But then he caught hold of the back of her gown and flipped her over his head, slamming her onto the floor on her back. She lay stunned, her vision sparked with stars.

  Just before the beast of a man fell on top of her, she managed to roll to the side far enough to avoid his full weight. But she was trapped under his leg and arm.

  “Run! Run!” she shouted to the others. The door was open. “Get help!”

  She bit Duncan’s arm and wriggled out from under him while he cursed her. She stumbled to her feet and ran out the door after Brighde and Lùcas.

  Duncan caught her around her knees and she fell in the tall grass. Duncan turned her over and leaned down, his hideous face distorted by rage. “You’re going to pay for this!”

  She struggled against the enormous brute, but he had her pinned, and he was so heavy she could not move at all.

  “Rory!” she screamed as Duncan started pulling up her skirts. “Rory!”

  ***

  Rory lay flat on his belly watching the hut. He suspected Hector had moved Sybil out of the Fairburn Tower so he could make that show of letting Rory search the house. That must have amused the bastard. After riding away, Rory sneaked back and watched the tower house until he saw Duncan leave.

  It was always Duncan who did Hector’s dirty work, so Rory followed him. He could not risk giving away his presence until he was sure this hut was where Sybil was being kept. He wouldn’t have a second chance, so he held his breath and waited while Duncan went inside the hut.

  Rory heard a scream and took off running across the field toward the hut. A young man leaning on the shoulders of a lass scurried out of the hut. As Rory raced across the field, the pair saw him and waved frantically.