“The bastard doesn’t have him, fair lady.” Sir John’s deep, smooth voice sent chills all through her. “That questionable honor falls to me. If you wish to see your pet again, you won’t scream.”
Mirabelle spun around, fury replacing her fear. “Where is he?” She grabbed her night-robe off the bed, throwing it around herself as she ran at him. She grasped the front of his cloak, fisting her hands in the costly folds. “What have you done with him? Give him back now, at once!”
With ease, Sir John grasped her wrists and lowered her arms. “Are you aware, my lovely spitfire, that you are almost unclothed?”
“Did you know you’re a greater bastard than one whose birth made him that way?” She glared at him, thankful to know her night-robe was thick enough to shield her from his lecherous gaze.
“How dare you enter my room, take what is mine!” She stood straight, her shoulders squared. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of showing fear. “If it’s coin you seek, I have coffers of silver. You can have as much as you wish, just give back my kitten.”
“You know what I desire, Lady Mirabelle.” He didn’t release her arms, keeping them pinned to her sides. “Likewise, you’re surely aware that I am no longer interested in your bride money or lands.”
She raised her chin, narrowed her eyes. “Where is Little Heart?”
“He’s in his basket outside the door, hidden in the shadow of a wall niche. No harm will come to him if you do as I say. Be warned”—he leaned in, his eyes cold and unblinking—“if he brings a single flea to my fair Dunraine, I shall crush him beneath my boot. A worse fate will then befall you.” He straightened, his hooded gaze drifting over her. “But not until I’ve tired of you. Seeing you now, in all your fury, I vow that won’t be for a very long time. I enjoy a spirited woman. The lash of their fire is invigorating, breaking them a welcome challenge. Of course, then I lose interest. Would that displease you?” He curled his lip, mocking her.
Mirabelle let her distaste burn in her eyes.
Her blood was turning to ice. “You wouldn’t dare attempt to take us from here.”
“I dare anything I please.” He glanced at the door she’d forgotten to bar after Sorley left her, his voice smooth as he turned back to her. “Doesn’t my presence here prove that? If you doubt me, you won’t when we reach Dunraine.”
“You’re mad.” Mirabelle’s chest tightened, her breath starting to come in short gasps. She tried to remain calm, to think.
“So some say.” A dark smile spread over his face. His eyes were soulless. “You can decide at Dunraine.”
Mirabelle shivered. She didn’t know of such a holding, but she’d heard whispers that Sir John held a distant keep, half in ruin, where he took women to lock away and use until he wearied of them. Once that happened, they disappeared, never to be heard from again.
He was said to deny the keep’s existence, and its nefarious purpose.
She knew from his tone that Dunraine was this nightmare place. She also knew he wouldn’t mention it unless he saw her as no threat.
That meant…
“You plan to kill me.” She could feel herself paling, the blood draining from her face.
“Not for a while, perhaps never, if you can hold my attention that long.” He jerked his pointy-bearded chin at her clothes. They were draped over the room’s one chair. He also glanced at her cloak, hanging from a peg on the wall. He released her, giving her a shove. “Dress, and quickly, for I have men and horses ready.”
“Men, or snakes?” Mirabelle used her iciest tone as she hurried into her gown, pulling it on while keeping her night-robe wrapped about her. She also struggled to pin Sorley’s MacKenzie brooch on the inside of her gown, which wasn’t an easy task. She wasn’t going anywhere without it and he’d surely snatch it if he saw.
“They are guards, my lady.” He went to the door, leaning against the jamb, his arms crossed as he waited for her to dress. “Even one such as I has stalwarts. Trusted men and skilled fighters, they will circle back and cut down your hawkish bastard should he be smitten enough to follow us, hoping to rescue you.”
“He wouldn’t bother. He doesn’t care that much for any woman, all know it.” She gave him her haughtiest look. “It won’t matter to him what you do with me. You err.” She hoped he’d believe her.
He laughed, proving he didn’t.
“He would eat you with a spoon, and all of you.” He strolled over to her and gripped her arm as soon as she swirled her cloak around her shoulders. Then he pulled her to the door. “He would slay his own King if Robert glanced sideways at you. I saw how he looked at you in the hall. He was all over you, kissing you, pulling you onto his lap.” His gaze swept her, disdainfully this time. “Everyone present saw him take you abovestairs, knew what then happened.”
“You’re obsessed.” Mirabelle forced down her fear. She didn’t like the glint in his eye, was becoming sure he was mad, completely crazed.
“Nae, I am doing you a service.” He inclined his head slightly, as if he expected thanks. “You shan’t be soiled by a lesser man, but honored by the skilled and vaunted touch of a noble. I shall keep you not as my wife, but as one of my Dunraine mistresses. It’s a much more fitting role, wouldn’t you say?”
Mirabelle felt bile rising to choke her.
Before it could, she drew herself up to her full height. “I’d sooner lie with a toad.”
“So you did.” He looked at her squarely. “I have spared you further soiling.”
“Pah!” Mirabelle’s temper was swelling. “You are soured because you’ve been hounding my father, pressing him to agree—”
“Ahhh… That was then, Lady Mirabelle, and is no more. I’m no longer desirous of your hand.” He shook his head in seeming regret. “Even so, you’re too fetching to suffer the taint of a nameless bastard whose ambitions and pride are greater than his station.”
“Do you speak of yourself, my lord?”
“See you? Even your wit amuses me.”
“A dagger passed between your ribs won’t.” Mirabelle stood as straight as she could and put back her shoulders. “Surely you haven’t forgotten my warning?”
“You are not wearing a lady’s dirk now.” The corner of his mouth twisted up again. “I watched you dress, or have you already forgotten?”
She glared at him. “There will be knives at Dunraine. I will find one. You will never know when it’s hidden in the folds of my skirts.”
He shrugged. “Then I shall observe you all the more closely. It will be an especial pleasure.”
“My pleasure,” Mirabelle muttered as he opened her door.
“It could be once you adjust to life at Dunraine. There are other ladies to keep you company. Although…” He shrugged again, looking amused. “Some of the Dunraine women are quite witless, poor creatures. I can’t imagine what drove them to such a state.”
His grip on her elbow like iron, he peered left and right down the dimly lit corridor.
“Come now,” he hissed, pulling her from the room. “We’ll fetch your kitten and be on our way. Just remember what I told you. One cry or an attempt to run, and Little Heart will meet the sole of my boot.”
He jerked her to a stop beside a shadowed niche in the wall, reaching in to retrieve Little Heart’s basket. He thrust it at her, then dusted his hands as if the braided wicker had soiled his skin.
“Little Heart…” Mirabelle hugged the basket to her chest, relief sluicing her when she felt the kitten shifting about inside. Hearing her voice, he yowled and thrust a paw through a gap in the weaving.
“Be still. Keep him quiet.” Sir John gave her a warning look. “I meant what I said, especially about him. Doubt me at your peril.”
She didn’t.
She believed every word.
Before the first glimmer of sunrise even touched the eastern hills, Sorley stood at his favorite spot on the battlements. The morning air was cold and wet, smelling of damp stone and the rich, black earth of the vales an
d woodland stretching away from the castle. The view he most loved. The rolling hills and distant Highlands couldn’t be seen, everything in that direction lost in heavy mist.
Still, he braced his hands on a merlon and stared hard into the whirling gray, imagining himself riding north to meet the father he’d never known.
A man he didn’t wish to know now.
So why could he so easily see himself on such a journey?
He did, the notion even making his throat constrict with emotion, not because somewhere in that distant land of cloud and mist, Archibald MacNab waited, his father by blood if nothing else. Nor were his thoughts born of knowing that even farther north than MacNab’s Duncreag Castle stretched the wilds of Clan MacKenzie’s Kintail, home of his late mother and where, likewise, his forebears had walked, breathed, loved, and died amongst the hills and heather.
His heart beat strongly at thinking of such a journey, because Mirabelle would ride beside him. They’d go together, as man and wife. And even though he was chilled by the damp wind, that knowledge warmed him to his soul, filling him with such gladness he could feel the strength of that wonder beating all through him.
She mattered more than his lifelong plan to avenge himself on the old chieftain, returning the hurts of ages. He now had other wishes, more important considerations than striding into MacNab’s windblown and rocky home for the sheer pleasure of shunning him.
The hills in the distance, always such a beacon, now represented Mirabelle.
Not his wish for vengeance.
Soon, he and Mirabelle would be wed. It was a truth that upended and changed his world, but one that also filled him with pride, triumph, and love such as he’d never known. Someday, their children would walk those distant hills, playing, laughing, and growing strong there. For their sake, and Mirabelle’s, he’d make his peace with Archibald MacNab, if grudgingly and without any feeling of kinship on his part. Mirabelle apparently liked the man, and their bairns deserved to know their grandsire, to enjoy their birthright that was Duncreag Castle.
So he stared out across the familiar countryside, looking in that direction, blinking against the steely glint of the Forth as the river began to catch the first light of the day.
A small party of horsemen followed the river’s course, cloaked and hooded men racing along the foreshore, the rider in the lead carrying something in front him, draped like a bundled sack across his galloping steed.
Frowning, Sorley narrowed his eyes, lifting a hand to his brow to see against the rising sun.
Fury swept him, swift and boundless.
The bundle before the rider was a woman, held facedown by her captor.
He was sure she was Mirabelle.
“Saints, Maria, and Joseph!” He ran along the wall, his heart thundering, the edges of his vision turning red as he stared at the hard-riding party.
If the woman’s streaming, burnished red hair, shining like a balefire in the morning light, didn’t prove she was Mirabelle, then the familiar wicker basket tied to the horse’s saddle horn did.
There could be no doubt.
Mirabelle and Little Heart had been taken.
And he knew their captor.
Sir John had seized her. There was only one place he’d take her: Dunraine, in its deep, dark wood of no return, where the only living females were either servants to his twisted lusts or full crazed from having endured them.
“By the gods!” Sorley raced for the tower stair, hurtling down the winding steps.
He burst into the hall, tearing down the center aisle, dodging tray-laden servants and leaping over sleeping men and castle dogs. When he gained the bailey, he made for the stables, shouting to the first sleepy-eyed, stumbling stable-lad he saw.
“Lyall!” He grabbed the lad, shaking him to wakefulness. “A horse, saddled now! The best and fastest you have, a destrier or charger!”
Lyall blinked, rubbing his eyes. “I don’t know…” He frowned. “You ne’er ride such—”
“I’ll ride a damned lightning bolt to hell and back!” He gave the lad a shove into the stables, keeping on his heels. “Make haste, then find Munro MacLaren. He should be at the Red Lion. See he’s told that his daughter’s been taken,” he ordered as Lyall hurried a spirited charger out of a stall, quickly saddling the beast. “Alert the King, his guards. Riders have her, heading along the river.” Sorley swung up into the saddle, keeping Sinclair’s name to himself. He’d have done with the bastard singlehandedly, making sure he never again had the chance to hurt Mirabelle, or any woman.
He grabbed his steed’s reins, vaguely aware of Maili emerging from the shadows in the back of the stables.
“Sorley! What’s happened?” She started toward him, looking confused, mussed, and just as sleepy as Lyall.
Sorley waved her back and kneed the horse so that the powerful beast surged forward in a great burst of speed, almost flying away from the stables and out across the open countryside, tearing up the earth as Sorley spurred him ever faster toward the river and the woods beyond.
“Sinclair!” He roared the fiend’s name again and again as the charger splashed along the river’s foreshore and then pounded into the trees, low branches from the thick-growing pines slapping against him. He scarce noticed, only urged on the speeding horse.
“Mirabelle!” He shouted for her even louder, lifting his voice above the roar of his blood in his ears.
No one answered him.
And the only thundering hooves he heard were those of his own horse.
They plunged on, deeper into the forest, man and beast as one. Mist swirled everywhere, the trees a rushing blur of darkness against the gray. Half-sure the devil had given him wings, Sorley crouched low over the horse’s neck, determined to pursue Sinclair to the ends of the earth, farther if need be.
Then the mists thinned and he saw he had, as a deep chasm opened before him.
“Hell’s fire!” He hauled on the reins even as his horse reared and swerved away from the yawning abyss. Sorley would’ve sent the beast pounding along the gorge’s length, seeking a way around it, but there was no need.
He’d found what he wanted.
Sinclair and his men were riding out of the trees, surrounding him on three sides.
Mirabelle was still with them, slung facedown over Sir John’s horse, her head turned away from him, which was a good thing.
If she saw him now, his rage would surely terrify her. He could feel fury rising, his jaw clenching so tightly, his muscle tensing with such anger, he’d swear he was turning to cold, deadly steel.
“You’re a dead man, Sinclair.” He drew Dragon-Breath, couching her like a jousting lance. He rode forward slowly, keeping his gaze on his foe. “Release Lady Mirabelle and the kitten or I’ll run you through, skewering your belly, pinching out your life.”
“Sorley!” Mirabelle’s cry was muffled. “I knew you’d come!”
“As did I.” Sir John sneered at him, reached to clamp his hand over Mirabelle’s mouth, silencing her. “Now you, you soiled vixen, will watch him die.
“It is your life that’s forfeit, Hawk,” he spoke Sorley’s by-name like a slur. “Or will you fight me and six well-armed men? There’s no escape.” He glanced at his companions, sitting their horses in a ring around Sorley. River mist swirled everywhere again and a thick layer of pine needles slicked the ground. Where the six mounted warriors didn’t block the way, the dense trees and mist did the rest, making a fast run for it impossible.
“So it appears,” Sorley agreed, hedging for time, his mind racing.
Sinclair didn’t have to know that he never took anything on appearance.
Even so, he cast another glance over his shoulder at the chasm behind him. His assessment was confirmed; the bottomless-looking abyss was a death pit, for him and the valiant charger.
One false step and…
Doom.
Even if he could reach Sinclair, maim or kill him in passing, and pluck Mirabelle and Little Heart off Sinclair’s the
n-riderless horse, there’d be nowhere to go.
He could fight two men, even three, and walk away without a scratch. He’d done so enough times. Taking on six, though he would, wasn’t a promising option.
Still, he had no other choice.
So he edged closer to Sinclair’s horse. He went slowly, leaning forward to stroke his charger’s neck, pretending ease, possibly surrender. If the gods were with him, only he knew that in a moment either he or his foe would die in a fast, bloody clash.
“Mirabelle…” Sorley caught her eye and inclined his head infinitesimally, letting his gaze flick to her left. “The reel, lass,” he looked back at her, holding her gaze. “The night of your uncle’s celebration, the feast when we met. Where was I, after you left?”
He’d been alone, surrounded by a ring of gawkers, but on his own, apart from the rest.
That’s where he needed Mirabelle now.
He hoped she understood. She couldn’t answer because of Sinclair’s cruel grip on her jaw, his foul fingers pressed over her mouth.
But her eyes lifted his spirit, for even now she looked more angry than afraid. He also saw love on her face, her silent message that if all went horribly wrong, she’d given him her heart, gladly.
As she held his—and now he meant to save her, and would.
His gaze locked on her, he inched closer, Dragon-Breath’s hilt already singing in his hand, craving blood. He kept urging the charger forward, nudging him to take a few more steps, slow and easy.
Sinclair looked amused, his sword ready, the blade gleaming brightly in the mist.
His men sat still, watching. Only two of them drew their steel.
“Mirabelle,” Sorley said again, inching even closer. “Remember the reel.”
He willed her to respond.
She did, twisting round to bite Sinclair’s arm before she flung herself to the ground. She rolled to a stop only to spring to her feet, spin about, and snatch Little Heart’s basket off the saddle horn.
She sped into the woods, clutching Little Heart’s basket and running faster than Sorley would’ve believed a woman could move.
“You whore!” Sir John roared after her, rising in his saddle.
To Love a Highlander Page 30