Highlander’s Veiled Bride: Scottish Medieval Highlander Romance (Highland Seductresses Book 2)

by Shona Thompson

  His own men were dying right outside his tent, and he didn’t move a muscle. He was either a coward, or he had been protecting Vika, choosing her over all the men who fought for him.

  Either way, Angus had no respect for people who left their men to die all alone. He had never once thought about sending his own clansmen in his place, without being right there with them, fighting side by side.

  In the heat of the moment, Angus had failed to notice that the sounds of the battle outside had died down and that his and Hamish’s swords were the only ones that echoed still around the clearing. A part of him rejoiced, knowing that it was his men who had won the battle, but most of his attention was naturally still on Hamish, who was doing his best to send him to an early grave.

  Each one of Hamish’s strikes was full of fury, the force that he used unparalleled. If Angus wasn’t the one fighting him, he would have been impressed, but as it were, he was simply growing tired and impatient.

  He wanted to catch his breath, and there was only one way to do that. He had to make Hamish talk, and it was a good thing that the man liked to do so.

  Besides, it would give him a chance to finally find out why the Keith clan was so against him, and what he could do about it once the battle was over.

  “What are ye trying to do here, Hamish?” Angus asked. “Why are ye trying to kill me? Why did ye attack my people?”

  Hamish paused then since Angus stood far enough from him to not pose a big threat quite yet. He simply looked at Angus, a small, confused frown on his face.

  “Are ye a fool?” he asked him. “How havenae ye realized yet?”

  “Weel . . . I think out of the two of us, yer the one who’s the fool,” Angus said, and he got a frustrated growl in reply before Hamish attacked him again out of sheer anger. Angus parried his blows one by one, and then he kicked him in the stomach, sending him stumbling back.

  He wasn’t done with him yet. He wouldn’t kill him until he found out the truth.

  Hamish stayed back, a hand coming up to clutch at his stomach as he heaved. The kick had left him breathless, and Angus couldn’t help but smile to himself, satisfied.

  “It’s not the Keith clan, Angus,” Hamish spat between heaving breaths. “Laird Keith doesnae have anything against ye. I was the one who ordered all the attacks. I was the one who wanted ye and yer people dead.”

  “And Laird Keith let ye?”

  “He didnae have a choice!” Hamish roared. “He may be the Laird, but he’s an old man, a man with no power. His own clansmen dinnae want him as their leader, they think he’s weak, they think it’s time for someone else. Someone better. Someone who can restore the clan to its former glory.”

  “Ye.”

  It was that simple, after all. The attacks and the battle weren’t the result of something that had happened between the MacMillan clan and the Keith clan. Angus hadn’t done anything to offend Laird Keith, and there was no real animosity between the clans, save for whatever ill feelings Hamish had for him.

  “Aye, of course, me,” Hamish said. “What did ye expect? Out of everyone else in the clan, I am the one who deserves to be the Laird. I’ve worked harder than anyone else to get where I am, and I wasnae about to let anyone take my chance, I wasnae about to let anyone take what is rightfully mine.”

  “It isnae rightfully yers, Hamish,” Angus pointed out. “Yer nae the son of the Laird. Nothing is rightfully yers, especially not the title.”

  Once again, Angus’ words infuriated Hamish, and he attacked him again. Their blades clashed and clanged against each other, and Angus could feel his sweat rolling down his forehead in tiny beads.

  This time, he swung his sword and cut Hamish’s arm deeply, making him hiss and pull away from him as he instinctively pressed his hand over the wound.

  Angus watched Hamish, how he glanced at the blood that flowed between his fingers, his expression pinched and pained. He didn’t seem willing to back out, though; Angus didn’t think Hamish would stop until one of them was dead.

  “I am more qualified to be a Laird than ye or anyone else ever was!” Hamish roared. “We had the same training, didnae we? I trained with Cormag, too, ye ken that. I trained with him, and I trained under Laird Keith, and I have been his general longer than any other clansman has held that position. I’m nae his son, yer correct . . . but that doesnae mean that there’s anyone else out there who is a better fit for the title, or that ye or Donal deserve the title more. Ye never worked for it. Ye were born into it, and ye were handed everything on a silver platter. Weel . . . I wasnae handed anything, Angus. Everything I have, I worked for. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done it to become better.”

  “Ye dinnae care for yer people,” Angus pointed out. “It doesnae matter how good ye are at war tactics. It doesnae matter how good of a fighter ye are. That isnae what makes a good Laird, Hamish, and ye ken that. Ye could never be good, because yer nae kind.”

  Hamish didn’t seem to know what to reply to that, so instead, he began to cautiously walk towards Angus once more. Angus raised his sword, ready to defend himself, and it didn’t take long before Hamish’s next attack when he tried to slice his throat. He was too far from him, though, and all Angus had to do was take a step back to avoid him and his blade.

  “And then ye fell in love with Vika, didnae ye?” Angus continued, shaking his head as he moved further and further away from Hamish. He glanced at Vika, who was still sitting on her furs, though now she was curled up around herself, trying to protect herself from the blows that Angus and Hamish were dealing to each other.

  He could see no regret in her. He could see nothing on her face, in fact, no emotion, nothing to betray that she was still human. He tried to think back to the time when they were children, trying to remember what she used to be like then, but it seemed harder and harder to conjure up a memory from that time.

  Could she have always been such a terrible person? Could she have always been so manipulative and so wretched?

  Could Angus really have missed it?

  It was so obvious to him then when he looked at her. It was obvious in the way that her mouth was set, the way that her eyes always seemed to have a coldness about them, something impenetrable that he could never quite understand. He supposed that after meeting Ishbel, with her warm eyes and brilliant smile, he could only see Vika as a lesser woman, someone who may have looked like Ishbel but was nothing more than a shadow of her.

  “Ye had fallen in love with her once,” Hamish reminded him unhelpfully. “Ye had loved her dearly, hadn’t ye? Everyone kent that, even the people outside of yer clan.”

  “I thought I loved her,” Angus said, and then he looked at Vika, truly looked at her for the first time in some years. He couldn’t remember how he had felt about her back then. He couldn’t remember anything about the shadow of a relationship that they had had but trying to remember left a foul taste in his mouth.

  He didn’t wish to remember. He didn’t wish to think about her at all.

  His words seemed to have caught Vika’s attention, though, and the look that she gave him was one of utter disbelief.

  “What do ye mean?” she asked. “Of course ye loved me! Ye said so, multiple times. Ye said ye would always love me, and . . . weel, it may have been a lie, but ye loved me then. I ken that, Angus. There isnae a point in denying it.”

  Angus hummed at that, considering her words for a moment. Then, he simply shook his head. “I loved ye the only way I kent how back then,” he said with a small shrug. “I’ve loved again since then, and I see noo that I never truly loved ye, not in the same way that I love the noo.”

  Vika seemed to take great offense at that, gasping and clutching onto her chest, as though she hadn’t been the one to cause the end of whatever there had been between them. Angus could have loved her, he knew that. He could have loved her just like he loved Ishbel because Vika was clever and witty, and she had many great qualities.

  Her qualities didn’t matter at all, though, not when
she was such a vile person. Her intelligence did nothing to save her from the fact that she was mean-spirited, and she never cared about anyone but herself.

  So, Angus had never truly loved her, even though he had the potential to do so. He wouldn’t trade the heartache that she had caused him for anything in the world, though, as it was the thing that had led him to Ishbel, to the love of his life.

  “Weel . . . I love her,” Hamish confessed. “And I ken that she loves me, too. We’ll conquer the entire world together, Angus, starting with ye and yer people.”

  “I dinnae think so, Hamish,” Angus said with a heavy sigh. At that point, he had begun to think that Hamish was delusional and that he didn’t understand what was happening in his camp. “Yer men are defeated by my men. They are right outside . . . they are lying dead on the ground or kneeling in front of my men, captured and weakened. There isnae anyone left, but the two of us, and I will defeat ye.”

  “Nay . . . nay, ye willnae do such a thing.”

  “Even if I dinnae defeat ye, my men will,” Angus pointed out. “If I die here, ye’ll die out there. Either way, ye lose, Hamish. This is it. If ye surrender, I will take ye back to Knapdale, and we’ll decide yer fate there, but if ye dinnae surrender . . . then I’ll have to kill ye right here.”

  “Yer a bigger fool than I thought if ye truly think that I’ll surrender to ye,” Hamish spat.

  Then, just as Angus expected, he ran towards him with a cry, attacking him one more time. Angus could see it in his eyes that he wished to make it the last, whether that meant that he would kill Angus or that he would die himself.

  Angus had no intention of letting Hamish win, though. He swung his sword and spun around him, avoiding his first blow before dealing his own. Hamish parried it with his blade, and then he tried to strike once more, but Angus blocked him with his sword.

  They went back and forth, taking turns striking and parrying until Angus realized that they were equally matched. They could go on and on, fighting each other until one of them became too tired, too weak to continue, and only then would it end.

  Or Angus could try something risky, something that he knew would gain Cormag’s disapproval. Still, it was something that he had tried before while training with Donal, and if it had worked on him, he knew that it would work on Hamish, as well.

  He had to fight smarter, not harder.

  Angus allowed Hamish to come closer to him, close enough that he managed to rip the sleeve of his shirt with his sword. He was so close then, though, that Angus only needed one swing of his sword, and he stabbed Hamish straight through the heart.

  There was a clatter as Hamish dropped his sword on the floor, eyes wide and disbelieving. He coughed, and his breath was slow and labored, as though he could hardly draw any air through his lungs. The blood from his wound seeped through his clothes, staining his shirt crimson, and he glanced at Vika one last time.

  Vika was looking at him. She had seen the entire thing, and she hadn’t made a single sound. She didn’t scream, she didn’t even gasp; she simply looked at him, her face betraying nothing.

  “It was all for ye, Vika,” Hamish said. His voice was strained, barely audible. “It was all for ye. I love ye more than I could have ever loved anyone else.”

  Vika stayed silent, and her silence made Hamish’s eyes even wider before they softened, and he simply smiled at her.

  “That’s quite alright,” he said. “I loved ye enough for both of us.”

  With that, Hamish took his last breath, and he slumped against Angus. Angus pulled his sword out of him, letting the man fall on the ground with a dull thud as he stared at him with a small, disturbed frown.

  That could have been him, he thought. Once upon a time, he would have done anything that Vika had asked him.

  Now, though, she sat right in front of him, drenched in her lover’s blood. She was right there, and Angus was still thirsty for revenge.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Vika looked at Hamish’s body, where Angus had placed him on the ground. He had been gentle with him as he did, careful hands laying him down gingerly, almost tenderly.

  Angus saw himself in Hamish, Vika realized then, and she huffed out a humorless laugh. He had always been a sweet boy, sensitive and considerate, so much so that it often turned out to be a weakness for him.

  Had he been a little tougher, had he had a hint of cruelty in him, then Vika would have managed to control him all those years ago, despite Donal’s and Vanora’s efforts to stop her. She was certain of it, and despite the time that had passed, she was still infuriated by Angus’ kind and gentle nature.

  It was what had drawn her to Hamish in the first place. He may have been a fool, but he was an ambitious fool, someone who could have helped her get what she wanted if Angus hadn’t ruined it for her once more.

  Now, with Hamish gone, and Angus holding a blade to her throat, she didn’t have many options. She knew that Angus wouldn’t kill her though; she could see it in the way that his hand trembled ever so slightly where it was wrapped around the hilt of his sword, in the way that he swallowed hard, his throat bobbing as he did.

  He wouldn’t kill her, but he wouldn’t let her go either. He also wouldn’t put her in a monastery that time, not when he knew that she could easily escape, but his exact plans evaded her.

  She supposed she would find out soon enough.

  “How have ye been, Angus?” she asked him, voice soft and sweet, talking to him just like she used to before everything that had happened between them. “It’s been a long time since we last spoke. I’ve been wondering often about ye, ye ken, about what ye’ve been doing, whether ye’ve been weel.”

  “And I wish it would have stayed that way, I wish I would never have to speak to ye again,” Angus spat. “Dinnae ask me about things that ye already ken.”

  “I’m sure I dinnae ken what ye mean,” Vika said, though Angus was correct. She had learned everything about him, about his life after her. She had followed the news regarding Angus closely, finding out as much as she could about him, and then making up some news and rumors of her own.

  After all, there was little entertainment at the monastery, and spreading rumors about him was marginally more entertaining than listening to Sister Mary’s religious, often improvised, songs.

  “How did ye escape?” Angus asked. He sounded defeated, as though a part of him had been expecting her to escape the monastery from the moment that he put her there, but that was far from the truth.

  It had taken Vika weeks to gather her wits after she had been imprisoned. She had spent countless, endless days in a room that felt more like a cell, bare and uncomfortable, staring out of the small window at the sky outside. She hated to admit it, but for a while, she thought that Angus had won, as she couldn’t figure out a plan to escape, not when the other nuns kept such a close eye on her.

  It had taken a toll on her for longer than she was willing to confess. For days, she had refused to eat, she had refused to leave her tiny room, and she had resigned herself to whatever fate awaited her, even death.

  Self-preservation had kicked in soon enough, and Vika had returned, slowly but surely, to her true self. Once she was back to normal, nothing was stopping her from getting what she wanted.

  “Come noo, Angus. Do ye think that it was hard?” she asked. “All I had to do was pray and smile and repent.”

  Of course, everything that she did was nothing more than a charade, but Angus knew that already. After all, why else would she have warmed her way to Hamish’s bed?

  Vika stood, her gaze falling to the tip of the blade that was pointing directly at her throat, and as she took a step closer to Angus, he retreated, along with his sword, just enough so that she wouldn’t impale herself on it. It amused her to see him like that, uncertain, perhaps even a little afraid of her and what she could do to him, and she smiled as she reached up with her hand, curling her fingers around Angus’ sword.

  The sharpness of the blade made Vika draw in a
sharp breath. She didn’t pull away, though, and the small smirk that she had never faded from her lips.

  “You could have had a life there,” Angus said. “Perhaps not the life that you wanted, but a life, nevertheless. What kind of life do you think I’ll let you have noo?”

  Vika didn’t answer Angus’ question. She had no doubt that he would want to keep her locked up in a cell under his castle, spending the rest of his days knowing that she was there, all alone, with no hope of escape. She had no doubt that he would keep her alive for as long as he could, viewing it as a mercy.

  It was no mercy; it was a fate worse than death.