And what would she find instead?
A crumbling pile of rocks encircled by a chicken-infested moat, which, if she survived being flattened by the drawbridge, she would cross only to dodge a fatal barrage of arrows shot courtesy of the clan’s children.
She would then choke down a supper of stringy poultry plunked down before her by a handful of belligerent Highlanders. A well-meaning clansman might whack her on the back if she turned blue at the table, or he might not, depending on how drunk he was.
If she was lucky, no one would drop a frog down her dress at the table, or roll her around the courtyard in a herring barrel. If she made it that far and did not run shrieking from the castle, she would probably be awakened during the night by the resident ghost looking for the chamberpot.
And she would realize that her betrothed was detested by the clan he had led her to believe revered him.
“I’m doomed.” He spoke the thought aloud, his attention returning to the two men still seated at the table.
They were watching him closely. Too closely. He sat forward, the skin of his nape crawling. Trouble was brewing. They knew something.
“What is it?” he demanded, glancing from one to the other.
Angus gave him an evil grin.
“What is what, my lord?” Johnnie asked innocently.
Duncan’s face darkened as he scanned the suddenly deserted hall. “Where did Lachlan go? I wasn’t finished assigning him his duties on the watch.”
“He’s gone off, my lord,” Johnnie said.
“Gone off? To do what? Milk a—”
Milk a cow. Ride a horse. Catch lobsters.
Duncan rose slowly from his chair, hovering over the two men like a hammer about to fall. Lobsters: lobsterbacks. It was ludicrously obvious. While he sat on his behind bemoaning his fate, the fairy princess was leading her band of misfits on another ambush. Only this time her victim would be a genuine, Highland-hating English captain of dragoons who would jump at the chance to retaliate.
“That’s it.” He pushed his chair aside, his voice clipped and furious. “I can’t believe I felt sorry for her. I’m marrying her off to the first unlucky bastard who’ll take her. Angus, have the horses saddled. Johnnie, off your duff. You’re helping me.”
He strode from the table, his spurred boots ringing on the sunken flagstones. Johnnie hoisted up his trews and hurried
after him. In the aftermath of Duncan’s outburst there was a stretch of absolute silence until Angus’s muffled chuckling erupted into full-fledged lau
ghter that echoed to the smoke-
blackened beams of the empty hall.
H
e rode his Flanders stallion like a fury to intercept the ambush but arrived too late. In helpless frustration, he watched the denouement of the scene unfold from the same knoll where only two days earlier he had laughed at Marsali clumping about in his boots.
Two days, he raged inwardly. Only two days and his life had already begun to unravel like the threads of the ancient tapestries that had hung in the great hall. He tugged the spyglass from Johnnie’s hand, his jaw taut with anger as the disheartening details of the ambush came into focus.
His clansmen had not only ambushed the captain of dragoons and his small command of soldiers, but also the coach that the captain had presumably been escorting to safety. Duncan’s mind raced. What idiot would commission a coach to carry him into these wild Highland hills? A foreign dignitary who wished to hunt deer o
n a whim? What bloody stupid…
He looked up at the dainty figure on horseback a few yards from the scene. She was bellowing out orders to Effie, who strode back and forth like a sergeant, with the piglets wallowing in the muddy water of the tarn.
He leaned over the pommel, a vein pulsing in his temple as a tall cloaked figure emerged from the coach waving a white handkerchief in surrender. Lachlan followed, prodding the mercifully dressed victim toward the band of soldiers, who were huddled together in humiliation at the base of the crag.
“Well, they’ve done it now,” Johnnie murmured, shaking his head in what might have been admiration or apprehension—Duncan was too upset to tell.
He lowered the spyglass, his fingers flexing inside his gloves. What should he do? March back to the castle and pretend ignorance of the hellion’s activities? There would be a price on her head after this. A captain wouldn’t easily forget the humiliation of being paraded bare-bottomed in front of his men.
Unnerved by Duncan’s silence, Johnnie cleared his throat. “What do we do now, my lord?”
“God help me if I know. I’m damned if I come to the captain’s rescue, and damned if I don’t. And that idiot in the coach—”
The idiot in question chose that precise moment to raise the lace hanky to give its nose a resounding blow. It was a gesture so annoyingly familiar that Duncan’s heart plunged in recognition. He’d know that honk anywhere.
He forced his horse down the hillside and raised the spyglass again, praying he was wrong. He wasn’t.
The cloaked figure was a woman. He groaned in despair.
“What about that idiot, my lord?” Johnnie prompted softly, intrigued by the play of emotions that crossed his chieftain’s face.
Duncan swallowed over a knot in his throat the size of a crab apple. “The idiot is Lady Edwina Grayson, my future bride’s aunt and chaperone, although I use the term advisedly. If Sarah and her father are in that coach, there isn’t going to be a wedding. Only a funeral. Mine.”
C
h
apter
11
D
uncan advanced on Marsali like a panther, forcing her back toward the heavy Jacobean four-poster that dominated the castle bedchamber. “I can’t quite decide what to do with you,” he said with deadly calm. “The thumb screws come to mind
. And there are other ways…
” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Your father used to leave me alone down in the dungeon for days at a time himself.”
She wrapped her thin arms around the carved bedpost, her heart pounding in her ears. “Everyone in the castle will come running to my rescue if you hurt me.”
His smile chilled her. “The damage will be done by then, won’t it? Let them come. I’m in the mood for a fight.”
He began to peel off his gloves, tossing them down upon the bed with cold deliberation. Marsali closed her eyes, pressing her spine against the post. Where was Uncle Colum when she needed him? What good did it do to have a damned wizard in the family if he had no sense of timing?
“Help,” she whispered weakly, feeling the angry heat of Duncan’s body against hers. And then in a louder, frantic voice, “Help! He’s going to kill me!”
Nothing happened.
Eun did not slam against the shutter and burst into the bedchamber to peck off Duncan’s nose.
Her clansmen did not batter the door down to save her. Nothing.
His warm breath brushed her cheek. His low voice sent chills of anxiety arrowing down her spine. “Do you have any idea whose coach you ambushed today, Marsali?”
She gave a stiff shake of her head, then gasped in terror when he cupped her jaw, forcing her face toward his. She squeezed her eyes shut in anticipation.
Duncan stared down at her scrunched-up face, resisting an absurd impulse to laugh. “Stop cringing like that, for God’s sake. I am not going to hurt you.”
She cracked one eye partially open to take a peep at him. “You’re not?”
“No.”
She opened her other eye, regarding him with suspicion. “What about the thumb screws?”
“I don’t think they’d fit.”
She swallowed, searching his face for a sign of forgiveness. “I did what I had to do,” she said loudly.
“That was my future aunt-in-law’s coach you ambushed.”
“
What?
Oh, hell.” She released her breath, guilt and embarrassment deflating her fear. “Well, how was I supposed to know?”
“You’re a reckless, impulsive creature.”
“You should have warned us, my lord,” she said, with an injured sniff at the insult.
He studied her face in silence. “What do I have to do to put an end to the ambushes?” he asked unexpectedly.
“Make them stop building the road.”
“I can’t. You’re asking the impossible.”
She lowered her arms, her throat aching. The repercussions of his calm resignation frightened her more than his temper. “But if you can’t stop them, then no one can and the killing will go on.”
“Not necessarily. However, I’ll handle it in my own way, and you are
not
to get involved.”
“How are you going to handle it?”
“Leave the matters of war to men, little girl,” he said quietly. “Your interference will only make things wor
s
e.” They stared at each other, anger and antagonism preventing any attempts at understanding. He wondered how such
a fragile slip of femininity could harbor such a fierce soul. She wondered what it would take to make him care.
“What good is a warrior who refuses to fight?” she asked aloud, her face challenging.
The door burst open before Duncan could reply, and he felt a stab of resentment at the interruption, not only because he’d had no chance to defend himself but because she had actually managed to engage his emotions at a deeper level than anyone else had ever dared.
S
he froze in her flight to escape halfway across the room, realizing in shock that the figure in the doorway was not a clansman who’d come to her rescue but a stately older woman in a Chinese silk dressing robe. The woman with the English army officers whose carriage she had ambushed on the moor.
Marsali backed away from her until she bumped up against Duncan, who stood unmoving, his face exasperated at the interruption. She felt trapped, caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea.
The Englishwoman grinned, recognizing her, her heavily painted features warm and friendly. “You’re the girl on the moor,” she said, studying Marsali’s disgruntled face in amusement. “That was a wonderful joke you played on us, by the way. I haven’t enjoyed myself so much in ages.”
Marsali looked at her in suspicious silence, taking in her powdered silver-blond hair, the pearl necklace and dangling earrings, the broad, almost masculine shoulders, and expressive gray eyes. Why was she not furious for being humiliated like the others? Why did she wear that silly green gown with butterflies embroidered along the billowing sleeves? And what was the old fool blathering about? Was she a mental case?
She jumped, startled out of her thoughts, as Duncan bent his head to hers. “I explained to Edwina about our little “prank’ this morning. About the Highland sense of humor, the ambush you staged to welcome her.”
“And she believed you?” Marsali asked in an incredulous voice.
“Duncan and I have always played jokes on each other.” Edwina sauntered into the room, eyeing the heavy Jacobean furnishings with a delicate shudder of distaste.
“Yes.” Duncan smiled wryly. “I remember the Christmas
Eve that you and Sarah brought all the barnyard animals into the drawing room.”
“That wasn’t a joke,” Edwina murmured. “The poor darlings were freezing.”
“Sarah cut up my favorite cloak to make dresses for them, and she thought it was funny.”
At the mention of Sarah, Edwina’s pleasant expression took on an edge of tension. She made a great pretense of examining an ivory casket on the dressing table. “Sarah had her moments,” she said after a pause, as if she were speaking of someone who no longer existed.
Marsali gave her a sidelong glance. Sarah. This frivolous old Sassenach’s niece was the woman the chieftain loved. Marsali felt her first pang of possessive jealousy of all the people outside the castle who had laid claim to Duncan’s loyalty. The world had kept him long enough.
Duncan moved around her, his demeanor unruffled. “This is Marsali Hay, Edwina, the daughter of the clan’s late tacksman.”
Edwina gave her a friendly smile; she almost seemed relieved to turn her attention away from Duncan. “You’re a very lovely young lady, Marsali.”
Marsali plopped down on the bed, refusing to be moved. “You’re a silly old thing.”
Duncan swung around, his eyes boring into hers. “You will apologize to her ladyship for that rude remark.”
She scowled up at him, her toes twitching with a tension that gripped her entire body. Apologize? She set her jaw, stubbornly silent. The day she apologized to a grinning Sassenach with pearl earrings was the day she died.
Duncan leaned down until his face was level with hers. His low voice vibrated with warning. His hand pressed down on her backside. “There are rats in the dungeon, lass.”
She pushed herself up onto her elbows and glared at Edwina. “Oh, all right. I’m sorry that you’re a silly old thing.”
Edwina began to laugh. “How refreshing! The girl is as straightforward as a pin.”
Duncan squared his shoulders, forcing a smile. “She could take a few lessons in decorum from Sarah, couldn’t she?”
Edwina met his eyes in the mirror. “I’m not sure about that,” she said in an undertone.
Duncan gave her a puzzled look. “It’s that Highland sense of humor,” he said again, a little uneasily. “She and my clansmen take getting used to.”
“Well, I suppose I can’t blame her for resenting me.” Edwina stooped before the pier glass to smooth her powdered ringlets. “After all, I am considered the enemy in these parts. Believe it or not, though, Marsali, I do have sympathy for the Scottish cause. I’ve read all about your plight in the papers.”
Marsali flipped onto her stomach, hiding her face in the pillow. She refused to let the silly creature charm her. Bad enough that she herself was so enamored of the chieftain, who hadn’t done a damn thing to earn her trust. She refused to be disloyal to those she had loved and lost by liking the enemy. If not for the English, Marsali’s family and many others would still be alive.
“We will expect you downstairs for supper, Marsali,” Duncan said in a cool voice. “You will please wash your face before coming to the table. And you will change into another dress.”
She bounced over onto her back. “I don’t have another one. I’m poor. The chieftain of my clan prefers gallivanting around the world to taking care of his people. What does he care that he left us in rags?”
Duncan’s blue eyes held hers in a long intense stare until she began to squirm. “I’m not through with you,
Cinderella,”
he said with a heartless smile, and then he turned away, quickly ushering Edwina to the door as if afraid of what Marsali would say to embarrass him next.
She lay unmoving where he’d left her on the bed, glowering at his back and listening intently to the conversation between him and that damned Englishwoman in the robe.
“When did you say Sarah was arriving?” she heard Duncan ask in an anxious voice. Then, “God, I wish you’d told me you were coming
…
Come on, let’s go to the chapel. It’s the last place in the castle where we’re likely to be interrupted.”