My One True Highlander

by Suzanne Enoch

  That didn’t make sense. However Highlanders felt about the English, naming the missing woman and thereby the amount of the reward for her safe recovery would have provided more than enough incentive for the local residents to scour the area clean looking for her. Her companions, though, hadn’t done that. Not yet, anyway. But why not?

  “… agree that the dancing is far too provocative,” Father Michael went on, and Graeme blinked, not certain how long the priest had been droning on. “I suggest a group reading of appropriate scripture regarding fall harvest and the inevitable onset of winter.”

  “Perhaps we should all lie doon in the graveyard in the spot where we mean to be buried.”

  The priest’s cheeks reddened. “I’m trying to shepherd a flock of hot-tempered sinners, lad, ye among them. I’d appreciate if ye’d nae jest aboot it, or the calling to which I’ve dedicated my life.”

  Graeme drew a hard breath in through his nose. “I apologize, Father Michael. God knows I dunnae envy ye yer task.”

  “Thank ye, lad.”

  “But I reckon yer sinners will be more likely to listen to yer good words if they’ve a bit of beer and dancing to reflect on.”

  The old man sighed. “I find it helpful to remind myself that if we had nae sinners we’d have nae need fer sermons.”

  After some negotiation both beer drinking and pie eating stayed on the list, and mainly out of pity Graeme allowed for a religious embroidery display beneath one of the canopies. It would be a long day of mayhem, but a last bit of fun before the heavy snow set in at least made the winter seem shorter.

  As the topic shifted back to a suggestion of local lasses of good character and family and how important it was for a clan chieftain to ensure the continuation of his line, Cowen barged into the room. “Laird Maxton, the … ye … there’s someaught wrong with one of the upstairs windows,” he panted.

  “Surely ye dunnae need to trouble the master of the hoose aboot a window,” Father Michael said.

  Graeme was already on his feet. God, had she broken out? Jumped? Fallen? “See that the Father has more tea,” he snapped, striding past the butler. If she’d been injured … “I’ll be back in a moment.”

  He took the stairs two at a time. And he wasn’t thinking about the ramifications to him or his if something had happened to her, or about the loss of blunt and corresponding loss of power. He was thinking about her. One of the house’s two footmen, Ross, pounded on the locked door at the end of the hallway, his unanswered calls sending Graeme’s heart into his throat. Aye, she was a rich Sassenach with the world at her feet, but she had a backbone, too, when he hadn’t expected that.

  Shouldering the footman aside, he dug into his pocket for the key, unlocked the door, and slammed into the room. His breath catching, he looked toward the windows. Neither was broken, both were still shut, and the lass herself stood there between them with a lit candle in her hands.

  “I am not going to be bullied into marrying you,” she stated, her chin lifted.

  As his heart resumed beating again, Graeme took another look at the windows. Devil a bit. Slamming the door closed on Ross’s surprised face, he stalked up to her. Holding her gaze, he first blew out the candle, then swiped a hand through the reversed letters she’d spelled out across the glass in what looked and smelled like strawberry jam.

  With the light behind the ten-inch letters, HELP must have shown bright and red in the window for anyone passing by to see. If Father Michael had arrived an hour later, or left a few minutes early, their discussion about the missing English lass—and his impending marriage—would have gone very differently.

  The cleverness of it—he would admire that later. At the moment he needed to stop this from happening again.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” she demanded, the lifted chin and defiant gaze betrayed a little by the shaking at the edge of her voice. Then she didn’t like being loomed over, and he definitely loomed now.

  He loomed inches from her face, from her firmly closed mouth and full, rose-petal lips, as anger, fury, admiration, frustration, and desire all slammed through him. Taking her shoulders in his big, jam-covered hands, he held her back against the narrow wall between the windows. And then he bent his head and kissed her.

  Graeme wasn’t gentle about it, either. Once he touched her, lightning skittered beneath his skin, heated and electric. Her mouth moved against his, likely protesting his ungentlemanly behavior, as her fists clenched and unclenched against his chest.

  When he’d had a good taste of her, he lifted his head again. “Never been kissed by a barbarian before, I’ll wager,” he muttered, using every ounce of self-control he possessed to keep from kissing her again.

  “I … will not dignify that with a response.”

  “I told ye there would be consequences, yer highness.” Firming his grip on her shoulders, he twisted her, pushing her backward toward the bed.

  She tried to jerk away from him, her blue gaze shifting between him and the bed. “You wouldn’t dare, sir! I would … I would see you hanged!”

  For the briefest of moments he was tempted to play the heathen she clearly thought him. Want heated his blood. Proper female that she was, she would definitely have to marry him once he’d bedded her. If he gave in, though, with her clearly frightened and unwilling, he would deserve the hanging she threatened—if he didn’t, already. Wordlessly he shoved her backward onto the bed. As she struggled to sit upright he crouched down, grabbed the shackle he’d declined to use last night, and swiftly locked it around her left ankle.

  “I thought … I thought…”

  “What, lass?” he prompted. “Ye thought I meant to have ye against yer will?” Graeme straightened, taking a step backward before she could recover her wits enough to kick him in the head. “If I were that sort of man, ye’d be wiser nae to test me, dunnae ye think?”

  Lady Marjorie tugged, but the chain didn’t budge. “I will not be chained like some animal, sir,” she retorted, wielding the “sir” like a weapon and only the shaking of her voice telling him it wasn’t just anger she felt.

  “And I’ll nae have ye endangering me and mine,” he retorted. “This isnae yer soft London where ye and yer friends play games aboot who ye dance with and who ye talk to. Here the games end bloody. I dunnae have many rules here, but ye’ll damned well follow ’em, or ye’ll stay chained to the bed until doomsday.”

  He wanted to remain in the room to bellow at her, to make damned certain she understood that he wasn’t jesting, to inform her that he could damned well bully her into marriage if he chose to do so. She’d curled her feet up beneath her, though, and shifted as far as she could away from him on the bed. Aye, they’d all fare better if she feared him, but the part of him that had given in to the absurd impulse to kiss her didn’t like the idea of her shrinking away from him.

  Clenching his jaw, Graeme turned for the door—and then flinched as a teacup hit him in the back. The delicate porcelain fell to the wooden floor and shattered into a dozen pieces. Well, he hadn’t broken her spirit, anyway. Continuing forward, he pulled open the door. “Cowen, have Ross clean off the window and the mess on the floor,” he ordered, and handed the door key to the butler. “Two of ye in here, and neither of ye talk to her majesty. Lock her in and bring me the key when ye’ve finished.”

  “We’ll see to it, Laird Maxton,” the servant replied. “Dunnae ye worry.”

  Graeme sent a glance back at the slender figure curled on the bed. He was worried, but not about what Lady Marjorie Forrester might attempt next. Rather, he was troubled because in all of her protests over her treatment and what she would and wouldn’t tolerate, she hadn’t uttered a single protest about the kiss.

  He had no complaints about it, for damned certain. In fact, he wanted to kiss her again. And that would only make things worse—for all of them.

  Chapter Six

  The blasted chain and shackle reached far enough that Marjorie could sit in the closer of the two chairs the servan
ts had carried back over to the hearth, but the window and even the door were several feet out of her reach. Her leg felt awkward and oddly weighted, a clear sign that she’d badly miscalculated.

  Given the house’s location on the rise, and her windows up on the second floor, the odds of someone seeing her request for aid had been fair. She’d watched people come and go all day, after all. And all she needed was one pair of eyes, one person whom Graeme Maxton didn’t control, to take notice and tell someone—anyone—what he’d seen.

  Marjorie shifted again, trying to find a position where the heavy chain didn’t threaten to drag her out of the chair and onto the floor. In none of her wildest imaginings could she have conjured anything as outlandish as her being chained to a bed in a pleasant-looking house in the middle of the Scottish Highlands while a strapping Highlander threatened to marry her. And she certainly couldn’t have imagined her captor kissing her—or that she might possibly have enjoyed it.

  The way he’d swooped in, as if he couldn’t quite stop himself, his warm mouth on hers, the scent of whisky and wilderness … She touched her fingers to her lips. Her first kiss—and an ironic one when she considered that her dreams after she’d become Lady Marjorie and moved her scant few personal possessions from Lady Sarah Jeffers’s attic room into massive Leeds House, had been filled with handsome, young, well-born men who waited in a queue to fall in love with her.

  Yes, despite the passive … disdain with which she’d been treated since Gabriel had been elevated from army major to the Duke of Lattimer, she had seen a handful of gentlemen callers—all of them fortune hunters. She’d seen to it that none of them got near enough to kiss her.

  Maxton was a fortune hunter, as well, or half one. She remained uncertain whether his primary goal in forcing her into a marriage was to gain her money, or to protect his family from her untrustworthy Sassenach ways. After they’d kidnapped her and dragged her into this, or course. But given his ham-fisted assertion that he was saving her reputation and then the way he’d chained her to the bed and locked her in a room while yelling at her to behave, she didn’t think he’d intended that kiss. And she knew for blasted certain that she should have been as offended by it as she was at the idea of being forced into a marriage.

  For heaven’s sake, she should be fearing the loss of her virtue, the ruin of her reputation, and the torching of her future prospects for a proper beau and a proper marriage in London. Mostly, though, she wished he’d brought her something more engaging to read than Culpepper’s Medicinal Herbs.

  And in her heart, she knew why she was more aggravated than fearful. Yes, she could apply everything she’d learned in boarding school and finishing school, use all the advice from the ever-optimistic Mrs. Giswell, but she knew. Years of patience and generous gifts to strategically placed persons might earn her a few dinner or soiree invitations, the least thank-yous anyone could manage without being considered impolite, but if she wanted to go to the theater she would have to rent her own box. If she wanted to attend a grand ball she would have to hold it, and then expect that no one else would attend. If she wanted to marry within her own, new station, it would have to be to a man who needed her money. But damn it all, he would ask her and she would accept. Not force her into something and announce that it was for her own good.

  Marjorie sighed, tugging on the ridiculous chain again. It must have been forged to restrain a draft horse, or perhaps an elephant. Graeme Maxton now held two keys to her imprisonment. And now that he’d made this a challenge, well, she’d make certain her next attempt at escape went better—or at least caused him more trouble.

  A trio of knocks sounded low on the door, startling her. Two more followed. Then, before she could say a word, another note slipped though the narrow opening and floated for several inches along the floor. Blast it.

  “Connell, I can’t reach the door,” she said, as loudly as she dared.

  “But ye said ye would have a note fer me.”

  “I do. But your brother chained me up, and I can’t get to it. Or to the door.”

  “Is that because ye spread jam on the window? That was a mad thing to do.”

  She frowned at the door. “Yes, I suppose it was. I had to try something, though.”

  “Ye shouldnae make Graeme mad at ye. He walloped me across the arse once when I brought home a pine marten I’d caught. I hid it in the stable, but it got oot and killed nine of our chickens. That’s nearly half of ’em. And it put the other ones off laying, so we had nae an egg fer nearly a fortnight.”

  “How long has Graeme been looking after you?” she asked, unable to help being curious. About him, about this place, his family, and what in the world had led them all to the point that kidnapping her seemed their best course of action.

  “Fer eight years,” the boy answered promptly. “Since I was a two-day-old leaking duckling of a bairn. And I smelled bad, too.” Connell sighed audibly. “Are ye going to marry Graeme? He says ye are. Do ye like cats?”

  She certainly didn’t like Lady Sarah’s fat, spoiled cats who had always eaten better than she had. “I would have to meet the cats to know if I liked them, and if they liked me. And no, I’m not marrying your brother.”

  “Well, that willnae make him happy, either. And how are ye to answer my letters if ye cannae reach the door?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps you could have a word with your brother and suggest to him that I don’t need to be chained to the bed.”

  “I’ll give it a try,” he returned, sounding reluctant. “Graeme’s stubborn, though. He made the lads go help at the mill to punish them for kidnapping ye, and I heard him say we all have to go clean oot the damned irrigation ditches tomorrow, before the water freezes.”

  All of them? Did that mean Graeme, as well? If so, that could be her chance to run. First, though, she needed to get free of the chain. “Anything you can do would be appreciated. This shackle is rubbing my ankle.”

  “I’ll let ye know what happens; listen fer my knock after dinner.”

  “Thank you, Connell.”

  After his footsteps padded away, Marjorie leaned over to turn up the oil lamp on the nightstand. She could only guess the time, but she knew this late in the year sunset came early to the Highlands. Four o’clock? Half-four? Several hours before the brute brought dinner, anyway—unless he’d decided she should go hungry tonght. Considering her left shoulder smelled of strawberry jam and her stomach already growled because of it, that wouldn’t be a particularly pleasant prospect.

  Instead of dwelling on that, she tallied up what she knew about this place and her captors. Four brothers—Graeme, Brendan, Dùghlas, and Connell Maxton. A butler named Cowen, a footman called Ross, and a female cook who didn’t appear to be anywhere near her size.

  They owned a wagon, had somewhere over a dozen chickens—or they had, before the pine marten got to them. A mill lay somewhere close by, and it was a punishment to send the boys there to work. From the view she’d had out the window, a wild, swift river ran across the property just down the hill and past what looked like the main road. The house had a stable with at least two riding horses, and the hay came in a wagon from somewhere to the east. Could that be where the mill lay?

  The two horses could be useful. Given that the residents of the house were all male, neither of them had likely been broken to the sidesaddle, and she’d never spent much time on horseback anyway, but if it meant escaping she would ride astride—or even bareback—if she had to. At that point she would need a better idea of where she’d be most likely to find help. The miller would be loyal to the Maxtons, so she could rule out east. That still left three other directions and a great deal of very cold, very rugged territory.

  She did have one thing in her favor; given Graeme’s reaction to her writing “help” on the window, she would be willing to wager that his neighbors didn’t know about her. Her brother and his men were likely searching for her by now, alerted by Mrs. Giswell, so the more people whose attention she could attract, th
e better. Gabriel could even offer a reward for her safe return, which a few months ago would have been impossible.

  “Leave it there, Ross. I’ll take it in.”

  Marjorie started. Good heavens, how long had she spent plotting? When she glanced over her shoulder at the window, the sky beyond the closed curtains was dark. And then she caught sight of the note in front of the door.

  Oh, no! Connell’s new missive. Stifling an unladylike curse, she lurched to her feet and limped forward—only to be brought up short by the chain. Swiftly she sank to her knees and stretched out her right hand. Damnation.

  Metal slid against metal as he pushed the key into the lock. “Don’t you dare come in here without knocking first!” she ordered, and sank down onto her stomach. Almost …

  The door swung open. Booted feet approached, stopping directly in front of her. “What do ye think ye’re doing?” he asked in a low voice touched with amusement.

  Marjorie scrambled back to her knees, using the moment ostensibly to straighten her dress, but instead shoving the missive down her front before she stood. “I wanted to see if I could reach the door,” she returned, brushing at her skirt. “I leaned too far. I told you not to come in without knocking.”

  “But then I would’ve missed that.”

  She glared at him, mostly for effect. His brother’s note—and his brother’s … friendship with her, she supposed it was—were both secure. “You don’t possess even an ounce of propriety and politeness, do you?”

  “Nae. I dunnae. Sit in yer chair if ye want dinner.” He hefted the tray in his arms. “Ye decided against punishing me with silence, then?”

  Making a show of limping and struggling with the heavy chain, she seated herself. “I decided my silence would appeal to you. Since you have no morality, perhaps you’ll bend to excessive nagging.”