Highland Captive

by Hannah Howell

  “And I have no want or need for another. I had such fears,” she whispered.

  “Of what, Aimil?” He knew he was close to pulling some confession of the heart from her, and felt himself tense.

  “That I couldnae hold a man such as ye, that I would wake one morn to find that I couldnae give ye all ye needed and ye had gone elsewhere. I feared to find that I no longer even held your passion.” She bit her tongue to stop her confessions.

  Seeing her reluctance, he decided he could be excused for using underhanded methods. It was past time for them to be honest with each other. He knew that, if he got her passion running hot, she would not be able to guard her words so well, so he proceeded to do his best, albeit subtly, to get her into a fever. With a touch of self-derision, he admitted that he wanted at least a strong sign of deep feelings on her part before he bared his soul. He wanted her to go first, fair or not.

  “Aimil, ye worry over naught.” He eased open the bodice of her gown and brushed soft kisses over the swells of her breasts. “I have had no wish for another since I first set eyes upon ye. The first time I held ye, I lost all interest in holding others, an interest that had already begun to wane. There was a need in me that they werenae feeding, lass, and ye touched it. When I left your arms that first night, I thought on keeping ye, but I am a cautious man and wished to wait to be certain. As Lagan said, being the first man with a lass can stir something in him. I needed to be sure I wasnae seeing what wasnae truly there. It can make a lass be fooled as weel,” he murmured.

  “Not this lass.” She sighed with pleasure as his tongue stroked the hardened tips of her breasts. “My first clear thought was that, since my maidenhead was gone, it didnae matter if ye did it again, and then I hoped ye would.”

  “‘Tis glad I am that I didnae disappoint ye.”

  Her soft laugh turned to a purr of delight as he drew the tip of one breast into his mouth, drawing upon it slowly as if he relished the taste of her. “Ye have never disappointed me, Parlan. I thought ye wished to talk.”

  “We are talking. Did ye ever have hopes that I would come to wish ye to stay at my side?”

  Finding it difficult to think clearly as he eased off her clothing and kissed each newly-exposed patch of skin, she buried her hands deep in his thick hair and nodded. “Aye. I did. All the time. I never wanted the ransom paid but”—she had to catch her breath as his kisses burned the inside of her thighs—“I feared staying until ye grew tired of me and set me aside.”

  “I have never once thought of setting ye aside.” He rose up onto his knees and hastily shed the last of his clothing.

  She stared at him, savoring the way the sun’s light enhanced the warmth of his dark skin. “Ye are beautiful.”

  “A great brute like me?” He laughed softly as he returned to her welcoming arms.

  Her answer never came for he smoothed kisses over her stomach then took the warmth of his lips lower. A protest was only half-made as searing waves of pleasure made her forget such things as the fact that she was allowing these intimacies in the full light of day. The next coherent thing she was able to say was to cry out for him to join her as her release drew near. A soft moan that was a mixture of delight and frustration escaped her as he entered her ever so slowly then remained still. She looked up at him in dazed confusion.

  “I want ye to love me, Aimil,” he whispered as he brushed his lips across hers. “Love me, Aimil.”

  As he began to move, she sighed with pleasure and clung to him. “Oh, I do, Parlan. God’s beard, I do.”

  “With your heart not just your body, sweeting.”

  “With every part of me. God help me, I love ye past thought, past reason.”

  A part of her cried out in dismay but she was too caught up in her passion to heed it. Parlan’s movements grew fierce, and she succumbed completely to her need for him. It was not until they lay sated in each other’s arms that she realized the full extent of the confession she had made as well as of how he had pulled it from her. Sensing him staring at her, she slowly opened her eyes. He was looking at her with a warmth and tenderness that made her heart skip a beat.

  “Ye are a verra sneaky man, Parlan MacGuin.”

  “Aye, I ken it. I wanted ye to go first.” He smiled faintly when her eyes widened.

  “Go first?” she whispered.

  “Aye, t’was unfair but there it is.” He lightly brushed a few stray wisps of hair from her face. “I wasnae doing weel in spitting out the words so I thought t’would help if ye said them first. Ye arenae alone, Aimil. The same madness holds me tight in its grip. Aye, I love ye.” He laughed when she hugged him tightly.

  “When did ye first ken it?”

  “I surprised myself with it when ye had the bairn but I ken it was there already. I but put the words to it. And ye?”

  She laughed shakily. “When Catarine arrived that day and kissed you. Leith wasnae surprised so I ken it was there already. I didnae want to see it though, for I saw what we shared as being fleeting, doomed to end.”

  “Nay, t’will never end, lass. I havenae hesitated so long for naught. I ken weel that we are a pair ‘til our bones are naught but dust. I just wasnae sure ye saw it as I did. Nay, not until I heard ye cry out my name when I went tumbling down that hole. There I was, in the midst of a struggle just to keep us alive and all I could think on was how ye must care for me, that no woman could make such a sound unless it was driven out by a heart’s pain. I decided t’was past time we spoke on such things, far past time.”

  “I nearly hurled myself after ye,” she whispered, and hugged him tightly, a hug that was heartily returned.

  “Weel, ‘tis glad I am that ye didnae. I never want ye to even think I want ye to join me in death. A man doesnae fight as hard as I have done these last months to keep his lass alive just to have her toss that life away. I want ye to live.”

  She kissed his cheek. “I fear I discovered quickly that I wanted to live too, for all I kenned that a part of me had died with ye.” Holding him close, she asked, “Tell me again, Parlan.”

  “Ye need not beg the words of me, sweeting. They will come most freely now.” He kissed her. “I love ye. Ye are what makes each day worth waking up to.”

  “And I love ye. There are no words full or sweet enough to say it.” She smiled faintly. “Ye should have guessed it when I let ye get your handsome backside on my horse.”

  “I thought it but I found that I needed the words.”

  “I see. Ye had the horse and now ye wanted his lady,” she teased. “What a greedy rogue.”

  “Ye can keep your fine stallion, dearling. I have all I will ever want or need—Elfking’s fine lady.”

  Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of Hannah Howell’s newest historical romance,

  HIGHLAND SINNER,

  coming in December 2008!

  Chapter One

  Scotland, early summer 1478

  What was that smell?

  Tormand Murray struggled to wake up at least enough to move away from the odor assaulting his nose. He groaned as he started to turn on his side and the ache in his head became a piercing agony. Flopping onto his side, he cautiously ran his hand over his head and found the source of that pain. There was a very tender swelling at the back of his head. The damp matted hair around the swelling told him that it had bled but he could feel no continued blood flow. That indicated that he had been unconscious for more than a few minutes, possibly for even more than a few hours.

  As he lay there trying to will away the pain in his head, Tormand tried to open his eyes. A sharp pinch halted his attempt and he cursed. He had definitely been unconscious for quite a while and something beside a knock on the head had been done to him for his eyes were crusted shut. He had a fleeting, hazy memory of something being thrown into his eyes before all went black, but it was not enough to give him any firm idea of what had happened to him. Although he ruefully admitted to himself that it was as much vanity as a reluctance to inflict pain upon hi
mself that caused him to fear he would tear out his eyelashes if he just forced his eyes open, Tormand proceeded very carefully. He gently brushed aside the crust on his eyes until he could open them, even if only enough to see if there was any water close at hand to wash his eyes with.

  And, he hoped, enough water to wash himself if he proved to be the source of the stench. To his shame there had been a few times he had woken to find himself stinking, drunk, and a few stumbles into some foul muck upon the street being the cause. He had never been this foul before, he mused, as the smell began to turn his stomach.

  Then his whole body tensed as he suddenly recognized the odor. It was death. Beneath the rank odor of an unclean garderobe was the scent of blood—a lot of blood. Far too much to have come from his own head wound.

  The very next thing Tormand became aware of was that he was naked. For one brief moment panic seized him. Had he been thrown into some open grave with other bodies? He quickly shook aside that fear. It was not dirt or cold flesh he felt beneath him but the cool linen of a soft bed. Rousing from unconsciousness to that odor had obviously disordered his mind, he thought, disgusted with himself.

  Easing his eyes open at last, he grunted in pain as the light stung his eyes and made his head throb even more. Everything was a little blurry, but he could make out enough to see that he was in a rather opulent bedchamber, one that looked vaguely familiar. His blood ran cold and he was suddenly even more reluctant to seek out the source of that smell. It certainly could not be from some battle if only because the part of the bed-chamber he was looking at showed no signs of one.

  If there is a dead body in this room, laddie, best ye learn about it quick. Ye might be needing to run, said a voice in his head that sounded remarkably like his squire, Walter, and Tormand had to agree with it. He forced down all the reluctance he felt and, since he could see no sign of the dead in the part of the room he studied, turned over to look in the other direction. The sight that greeted his watering eyes had him making a sound that all too closely resembled the one his niece Anna made whenever she saw a spider. Death shared his bed.

  He scrambled away from the corpse so quickly he nearly fell out of the bed. Struggling for calm, he eased his way off the bed and then sought out some water to cleanse his eyes so that he could see more clearly. It took several awkward bathings of his eyes before the sting in them eased and the blurring faded. One of the first things he saw after he dried his face was his clothing folded neatly on a chair, as if he had come to this bedchamber as a guest, willingly. Tormand wasted no time in putting on his clothes and searching the room for any other signs of his presence, collecting up his weapons and his cloak.

  Knowing he could not avoid looking at the body in the bed any longer, he stiffened his spine and walked back to the bed. Tormand felt the sting of bile in the back of his throat as he looked upon what had once been a beautiful woman. So mutilated was the body that it took him several moments to realize that he was looking at what was left of Lady Clara Sinclair. The ragged clumps of golden blond hair left upon her head and the wide, staring blue eyes told him that, as did the heart-shaped birthmark above the open wound where her left breast had been. The rest of the woman’s face was so badly cut up it would have been difficult for her own mother to recognize her without those few clues.

  The cold calm he had sought now filling his body and mind, Tormand was able to look more closely. Despite the mutilation there was an expression visible upon poor Clara’s face, one that hinted she had been alive during at least some of the horrors inflicted upon her. A quick glance at her wrists and ankles revealed that she had once been bound and had fought those bindings, adding weight to Tormand’s dark suspicion. Either poor Clara had had some information someone had tried to torture out of her or she had met up with someone who hated her with a cold, murderous fury.

  And someone who hated him as well, he suddenly thought, and tensed. Tormand knew he would not have come to Clara’s bedchamber for a night of sweaty bed play. Clara had once been his lover, but their affair had ended and he never returned to a woman once he had parted from her. He especially did not return to a woman who was now married and to a man as powerful and jealous as Sir Ranald Sinclair. That meant that someone had brought him here, someone who wanted him to see what had been done to a woman he had once bedded, and, mayhaps, take the blame for this butchery.

  That thought shook him free of the shock and sorrow he felt. “Poor, foolish Clara,” he murmured. “I pray ye didnae suffer this because of me. Ye may have been vain, a wee bit mean of spirit, witless, and lacking morals, but ye still didnae deserve this.”

  He crossed himself and said a prayer over her. A glance at the windows told him that dawn was fast approaching and he knew he had to leave quickly. “I wish I could tend to ye now, lass, but I believe I am meant to take the blame for your death and I cannae; I willnae. But, I vow, I will find out who did this to ye and they will pay dearly for it.”

  After one last careful check to be certain no sign of his presence remained in the bedchamber, Tormand slipped away. He had to be grateful that whoever had committed this heinous crime had done so in this house for he knew all the secretive ways in and out of it. His affair with Clara might have been short but it had been lively and he had slipped in and out of this house many, many times. Tormand doubted even Sir Ranald, who had claimed the fine house when he had married Clara, knew all of the stealthy approaches to his bride’s bedchamber.

  Once outside, Tormand swiftly moved into the lingering shadows of early dawn. He leaned against the outside of the rough stone wall surrounding Clara’s house and wondered where he should go. A small part of him wanted to just go home and forget about it all, but he knew he would never heed it. Even if he had no real affection for Clara, one reason their lively affair had so quickly died, he could not simply forget that the woman had been brutally murdered. If he was right in suspecting that someone had wanted him to be found next to the body and be accused of Clara’s murder then he definitely could not simply forget the whole thing.

  Despite that, Tormand decided the first place he would go was his house. He could still smell the stench of death on his clothing. It might be just his imagination, but he knew he needed a bath and clean clothes to help him forget that smell. As he began his stealthy way home Tormand thought it was a real shame that a bath could not also wash away the images of poor Clara’s butchered body.

  “Are ye certain ye ought to say anything to anybody?”

  Tormand nibbled on a thick piece of cheese as he studied his aging companion. Walter Burns had been his squire for twelve years and had no inclination to be anything more than a squire. His utter lack of ambition was why he had been handed over to Tormand by the man who had knighted him at the tender age of eighteen by the same. It had been a glorious battle and Walter had proven his worth. The man had simply refused to be knighted. Fed up with his squire’s lack of interest in the glory, the honors, and the responsibility that went with knighthood Sir MacBain had sent the man to Tormand. Walter had continued to prove his worth, his courage, and his contentment in remaining a lowly squire. At the moment, however, the man was openly upset and his courage was a little weak-kneed.

  “I need to find out who did this,” Tormand said and then sipped at his ale, hungry and thirsty but partaking of both food and drink cautiously for his stomach was still unsteady.

  “Why?” Walter sat down at Tormand’s right and poured himself some ale. “Ye got away from it. ‘Tis near the middle of the day and no one has come here crying for vengeance so I be thinking ye got away clean, aye? Why let anyone e’en ken ye were near the woman? Are ye trying to put a rope about your neck? And, if I recall rightly, ye didnae find much to like about the woman once your lust dimmed so why fret o’er justice for her?”

  “’Tis sadly true that I didnae like her, but she didnae deserve to be butchered like that.”

  Walter grimaced and idly scratched the ragged scar on his pockmarked left cheek. “True, but I s
till say if ye let anyone ken ye were there ye are just asking for trouble.”

  “I would like to think that verra few people would e’er believe I could do that to a woman e’en if I was found lying in her blood, dagger in hand.”

  “Of course ye wouldnae do such as that, and most folk ken it, but that doesnae always save a mon, does it? Ye dinnae ken everyone who has the power to cry ye a murderer and hang ye and they dinnae ken ye. Then there are the ones who are jealous of ye or your kinsmen and would like naught better than to strike out at one of ye. Aye, look at your brother James. Any fool who kenned the mon would have kenned he couldnae have killed his wife, but he still had to suffer years marked as an outlaw and a woman-killer, aye?”

  “I kenned I kept ye about for a reason. Aye, t’was to raise my spirits when they are low and to embolden me with hope and courage just when I need it the most.”

  “Wheesht, nay need to slap me with the sharp edge of your tongue. I but speak the truth and one ye would be wise to nay ignore.”

  Tormand nodded carefully, wary of moving his still-aching head too much. “I dinnae intend to ignore it. ‘Tis why I have decided to speak only to Simon.”

  Walter cursed softly and took a deep drink of ale. “Aye, a king’s mon nay less.”

  “Aye, and my friend. And a mon who worked hard to help James. He is a mon who has a true skill at solving such puzzles and hunting down the guilty. This isnae simply about justice for Clara. Someone wanted me to be blamed for her murder, Walter. I was put beside her body to be found and accused of the crime. And for such a crime I would be hanged so that means that someone wants me dead.”