Taken by the Highlander

by Julianne MacLean

  Still half asleep and cursing the effects of the wine from the night before, Logan sat up lazily and squinted at the two men who held the weapons. They were Scots, not Redcoats, and they wore the MacDonald tartan.

  “Logan! Ye lazy arse!” Gawyn shouted with merriment. “Where the devil have ye been all this time? And what are ye doing, making camp with a Campbell?”

  Both weapons were immediately lowered, and Logan grimaced against the pounding agony in his skull. “His name is Tomas and he’s a friend. Jesus, Fergus!” He waved a hand in front of his nose. “When was the last time you took a bath?”

  Fergus laughed, turned around and lifted his kilt to expose his bare, hairy bottom. “Missed me, did ya?”

  Logan shielded his eyes. “Nay, I did not!”

  He was vaguely aware of Tomas lowering his hands from behind his head and rolling his neck and shoulders, as if he were working hard to bury the urge to punch Fergus in the face.

  “Tell us more,” Gawyn said, plunking himself down next to Logan and rifling through his saddle bag, no doubt searching for something good to eat. “What have ye been up to? Angus thought ye were sleeping with the crows.”

  “I broke my arm,” Logan explained. “I’ve been laying low, waiting for it to heal.”

  Fergus gestured toward Tomas, who stood in silence, observing their conversation. “Is that how you met this old bugger?”

  “Aye,” Logan replied, not quite ready to reveal all the particulars of the situation—namely, that he’d married the Campbell lass who’d found him in her field and given him care. “Like I said, he’s a friend. We’re on our way to Kinloch to speak to Angus.”

  “You don’t need to travel all the way to Kinloch Castle for that,” Gawyn told him.

  Just then, a massive, pale gray warhorse emerged from the thick foliage, carrying none other than Angus the Lion himself.

  Logan leapt quickly to his feet.

  “Will wonders never cease,” Angus said in a low, sinister voice as he dismounted and landed with a thud on the soft ground. His golden mane of hair fell forward, but he tossed it back with a flick of his head. “I didn’t expect to ever lay eyes on you again, Logan. Not after you defied my orders and left your brother to finish your mission alone. I ought to thrash you senseless. God knows you deserve it.” He strode away from his horse and approached the campsite. “Introduce me to your friend. Tomas Campbell, is it?”

  “Aye,” Tomas replied in his deep, guttural voice while his cheeks flushed red.

  It was the first time Logan had seen Tomas appear intimidated, but Angus had that effect on most people. With his wintry blue eyes, an incomparable self-confidence and imposing muscular stature—not to mention his notorious reputation as a seasoned, ruthless warrior—he was a menacing presence to be sure.

  Angus held out a hand. Tomas shook it.

  “You’ve been recovering from a broken bone all this time?” Angus inquired of Logan. “You didn’t feel it might be a wise idea to send word back to Kinloch? To let us know that you weren’t lying dead in an English prison somewhere?”

  Logan bowed his head and shook it. “Apologies, my laird. Things got out of hand. Darach and I quarreled. I was distracted.”

  “Distracted?” Logan felt the thrust of Angus’s displeasure vibrate into the core of his chest. Angus narrowed his gaze. A muscle flicked at his jaw. “Walk with me.”

  Without waiting for Logan to speak, Angus shouldered his way past Tomas, and led Logan—alone—into the woods.

  Chapter Sixteen

  They walked a fair distance from the camp before Angus stopped and turned. “Tell me where you’ve been. What had you so distracted?”

  While most men would probably consider Logan a fool for speaking so boldly to the great Lion, he couldn’t help himself. He craved information. He had ridden halfway across the Highlands to glean it.

  “First, will you tell me what you know of Darach? I thought he was dead, but then I was told he came here.”

  “Aye, he came,” Angus replied without hesitation, “after raising the ire of the English by helping Fitzroy Campbell escape from prison. What a bloody circus that was. Did you know of it?”

  Logan shook his head. “Not before it happened. I wasn’t with Darach at the time, nor did I play a part in concocting that ludicrous plan, but I heard of it, after the fact. So he truly is alive then?”

  “As far as I know. Although it’s been over a week since I saw him last.”

  Logan could have collapsed to his knees with relief, but he managed to stay on his feet. “Where is he, Angus? Is he safe? And what about the Campbell lass, Larena? Is she alive as well?”

  Angus gave Logan an ominous look of warning. “You’re asking me questions when you’ve neglected to answer mine, Logan. Where were you all this time? Why did you not return?”

  Logan exhaled sharply with a pang of apprehension, knowing there could be no avoiding Angus’s interrogation. “I’ve been in Campbell territory, waiting for my arm to heal.”

  “An arm that was snapped by your brother, because the two of you had a disagreement on the road to Leathan. Am I right?”

  Logan nodded. “Darach must have told you.”

  Angus circled around him like an ill-tempered shark. “Aye, he told me all about it. He said it had something to do with Larena, who you were supposed to deliver to Leathen, along with the King’s pardon to save her father’s life. She was also pledged to marry Colonel Gregory Chatham. Did you fancy her, Logan? Is that why Darach was forced to put you in your place?”

  Logan glanced up with anger. “Nay, I did not fancy that woman. I had other desires. I wanted to use her to gain entry into the castle, then I wanted to kill her father myself.” Realizing that he’d said too much, too quickly, Logan took a breath to try and cool the fires of rage that erupted in his blood at the mere memory of it. “Darach was against that plan.”

  “And rightly so,” Angus said. “But tell me this. Her father was already sentenced to die. If you wanted him dead, you could have simply destroyed the pardon. Accidentally dropped it into a river while making your way across. Wouldn’t that have been simpler?”

  “I wanted to be the one to do it myself,” Logan explained. “I wanted Fitzroy Campbell to look me in the eye and know exactly who was strangling the life out of him.”

  Angus’s ice-blue eyes narrowed. He regarded Logan for a long moment, as if he already knew far too much about the situation. “Why?”

  Logan swallowed uneasily while Angus continued to circle around him. “It’s a long story,” Logan replied. “It goes way back…fifteen years ago, to the Battle of Sheriffmuir.”

  Knowing that he could not possibly avoid telling the truth at this point, Logan suspected he and Angus might be here a while.

  Angus raised an eyebrow. “Let me guess. You fled the battlefield with your brother and changed your names from Campbell to MacDonald.”

  Logan’s head drew back in surprise. “You knew?”

  Angus rolled his eyes heavenward, as if this were a dull and tedious affair.

  “Yet you took us in, regardless?” Logan pressed.

  Angus wagged a finger at him. “Make no mistake about it, lad. It was my father who took you in, not me. I doubt I would have been so forgiving. But I suspect it wasn’t his benevolent nature or sympathetic heart that moved him to accept your oath of allegiance, because Lord knows he was a merciless brute at the best of times. I always thought he intended to use you as pawns against the Campbells somehow, eventually, since you were the chief’s only surviving heirs. I don’t know what his plan might have been, but that day never came to pass.”

  “He always treated us like sons,” Logan said, with dismay.

  Angus waved a hand through the air with bitter hostility. “Aren’t you the lucky one? I, on the other hand, was his eldest, yet he told me repeatedly that I was a constant disappointment to him. But that’s another story for another day. What are your intentions? You’ve come here with Tomas Campbell to
speak to me. Do you have plans to seize your castle back from that slapdash English bully, Gregory Chatham?”

  Logan shook his head as if to clear it. “You know about that plan, too?”

  Angus’s broad shoulders rose and fell with a sigh of impatience. “Shouldn’t it be Darach leading that charge? He is your elder brother, is he not?”

  “But he is not here,” Logan reminded Angus firmly, with a shooting glare. “And I don’t know where the devil he is. You have yet to tell me.”

  “That’s right,” Angus shouted in a deep and booming voice, striding forward aggressively and causing Logan to back up against a large oak. “I haven’t told you a bloody thing, lad, because I owe you nothing. Darach, however…” Angus took a deep breath and calmed himself. “That’s different. He saved my son’s life, and for that, I owe him everything.”

  Logan turned around and rested his hand upon the gnarled trunk. “You still haven’t revealed where he is.”

  Angus spoke in a cool voice. “I haven’t, because I ought to be stringing you up by the ankles for disobeying my orders. It’s only because I know how much Darach cares for you that I am restraining myself.”

  Logan faced him and gripped the handle of his sword, just in case Angus changed his mind and found himself in a mood to strike out.

  “I always respected your brother,” Angus continued, “but you were a reckless, impatient young misfit of a warrior. You never knew how to keep calm and wait for the dust to settle.”

  Logan nodded. “I’m aware of that flaw in my character, Angus, but I’m working to remedy it. And if you wish to know where I was all this time, I was being nursed back to health by a kind-hearted, bonnie lass in a crofter’s cottage.”

  Angus inclined his head with understanding. “Ah.”

  “Her name is Mairi Campbell, and I took her as my wife.”

  “Your wife!” Angus scoffed, but there was a hint of a chuckle in it. “There it is again—the unbelievable impatience! She must have been a very bonnie lass indeed, if you wanted to shag her badly enough to walk down the aisle for her.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Logan tried to explain. He turned away again. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  No one could ever understand how Mairi had burrowed her way into the depths of his soul and calmed the storm of his hatred and desire for vengeance. She had shown him what it felt like to love and be loved. To feel gratitude instead of pessimism and anger.

  And yet, as he gripped her father’s sword in a tight fist, he did not feel ready to give up the warrior side of himself. He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to do that.

  “A woman can have an extraordinary effect on a man,” Angus said thoughtfully. “I once believed a woman made a man weak, but it depends on the woman, I suppose. Some have the opposite effect.”

  Logan watched Angus stride about the clearing, tossing his knife into the air and catching it by the handle.

  “Will you please tell me where Darach is?” Logan finally asked.

  Angus strode closer and spoke softly. “The fact is, I don’t know. A month ago, I sent him to seek sanctuary with the Duke of Moncrieffe. He hid in the whisky distillery for a time, but a week ago, he and Larena boarded a ship for France under assumed names. I cannot tell you any more than that. I don’t know where they landed or if they will ever return.”

  Logan closed his eyes as a bitter cold despair washed over him. “Darach left the country?”

  That meant he might not ever see his brother again, much less reach a reconciliation over their differences.

  “He did,” Angus said. “And he was worried about you, Logan. No one knew where you were—if you were dead or alive. You should have sent word.”

  Logan cupped his forehead in his hand. “I know that now. But here we are and that cannot be changed.” He looked up.

  Angus regarded him shrewdly. “Aye, here we are. You, with an axe to grind, arriving at my gates with the former Laird of War from Leathan Castle, while a vindictive English tyrant is wreaking havoc up and down the glens of Scotland. It reminds me of something that happened a while back.”

  “What is that?” Logan asked with a curious frown.

  Angus gave him a look. “That is yet another story for another day. But I will say this: Colonel Gregory Chatham is not the first English officer we’ve had to…” He paused. “Restrain. And you’re not the first out-of-control Highlander with an axe to grind.”

  “I’m not out of control,” Logan assured him. “Not anymore. But I’ve heard what Chatham has been doing. I cannot allow him to continue on his warpath.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it,” Angus said. “I am of the same mind. Chatham must be stopped. One way or another.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Logan asked, strolling closer with interest.

  “All sorts of things, but most importantly, it begins with the Campbell clan reclaiming their castle.”

  “But they’ve all scattered,” Logan said. “They have no chief and the English army won’t take kindly to a requests that they hand their garrison back to the Scots.”

  “I am hardly imagining a friendly request,” Angus explained. “Seizing the castle will take strength and numbers. To achieve that, you Campbells have no choice but to form an alliance.”

  “With the MacDonalds?” Logan asked, raising his eyebrows in disbelief that the suggestion of an alliance would come from Angus.

  “Only temporarily,” Angus replied with a glimmer of dark purpose in his eyes—and a hint of amusement. “Until we rid the Highlands of Colonel Gregory Chatham. Then we can go back to hating each other.”

  Logan looked away, toward the camp. “Tomas was my father’s laird of war. He should be here for this discussion.”

  “Aye,” Angus replied. “And if we’re going to work together, I’ll need him to return to Campbell territory as quickly as possible and raise an army. My men can be ready to move at a moment’s notice. We can combine our forces near Leathan.”

  Logan strode closer and spoke with amazement. “You’re prepared to do that, Angus? To lead your army to help the Campbells reclaim their castle?”

  Angus’s eyes narrowed as he laid a hand on Logan’s shoulder. “Nay, I’m not going to lead them, Logan. You are.”

  Logan stared, speechless, while shock wedged in his throat.

  “You would be willing to put the Kinloch army into my hands?” Logan asked. “I’m a deserter, Angus, not to mention a Campbell, and I’ve been lying to you for fifteen years.”

  Angus nodded. “Aye, but you’ve never deserted me, nor are you lying to me now. I cannot think of a more skilled warrior, nor anyone else more motivated to break down those gates, toss the Redcoats out onto their dirty arses, and take back the home you’ve always longed for.”

  “Angus…”

  His chief cut him off. “Every man deserves a chance at redemption, Logan. I know that better than anyone, as I’ve made my own mistakes. You may be reckless and impatient, but you are no coward, and what we need is a fiery-tempered champion to rid this country of the likes of Gregory Chatham. In light of what he’s been doing to my clansmen and women, I want him gone. Or stone-cold dead, lying at the bottom of a ravine somewhere. Either will do.”

  Logan couldn’t help but savor the idea of sending Chatham back to England—or to hell.

  Indeed…either would do.

  “I won’t disappoint you,” Logan said.

  Angus re-sheathed his knife. “Good. Now the first order of business is for us to discuss plans with Tomas Campbell. Then you and he will meet a family not far from here who was burned out by Colonel Chatham and his undisciplined company of Redcoats, who did far worse than burn their home and kill their livestock. The son is dead and the daughter was dragged into the woods. After meeting them, you will then take this news to the Duke of Moncrieffe. He won’t give us an army—that much I know because he is a diplomat above all else—but we’ll need his political support. He has the ear of the King and he may be able to evo
ke some sympathy for our side. He must know what is taking place.”

  “I can leave here today,” Logan said, wanting nothing more than to meet the man who had given Darach sanctuary in his whisky distillery. Perhaps, as well as support them in their plans, the duke would know where Darach had gone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was typically a two-day ride from Kinloch Castle to Moncrieffe’s ducal estate, but Logan was highly motivated and impelled by his characteristic furor and lack of patience. Not only did he crave information about Darach’s whereabouts, but after meeting the family that had been treated appallingly and unforgivably—especially the young woman who had suffered in the worst possible way—he wanted nothing more than to rid this country of the likes of Colonel Chatham. To stop such atrocities from ever happening again. To drive the English out of the Campbell stronghold once and for all.

  Beneath all of that, he wanted to return home to Mairi, assure her that he was safe and make love to her ardently and single-mindedly until he could no longer think, see, or breathe.

  As he rode his horse across the Highlands, he wondered how in the world Mairi had succeeded in digging her way into his heart so deeply and thoroughly. He’d never imagined any woman could possess so much power over him, enough to smother the flames of his discontent and inspire a different sort of passion in him—a passion that left him burning with pure unmitigated desire to hold her in his arms again, smell the fragrance of her soft bare flesh in the deep of night, and bury himself in her heated, womanly depths.

  Most of all, he wanted to keep her safe from any further harm.

  Continuing over countless damp moors and across dangerous, fast-moving rivers, Logan imagined their reunion with longing and feverish intensity. He fell asleep at night under the stars with only one thought on his mind. Mairi.

  It seemed that she had lit a fire of passion inside of him, yet it was strange that, when he was with her, simply working her farm or sitting at the water’s edge talking, he felt a calm he’d never known before. It was the oddest combination of emotions—passion, obsession and a deep, long-awaited tranquility.