Return of the Highlander (2 page)

The gelding stomped around and snorted anxiously, tossing his head while attempting to flee, but Darach held tightly to the leather reins.

“There now,” he said in calming voice. “Don’t worry, friend. You’re safe with us.”

As the animal gradually gentled, Darach took note of the empty scabbard and saddle bags the horse carried.

“At least we know which direction,” Logan mentioned, gesturing toward the south.

“Aye.” Darach fetched a rope out of his own saddle pouch and tied a bowline to lead the gelding behind them. “Let’s see if we can find out who you belong to,” he said to the animal. “What do you say to that?”

The horse tossed his head and nickered.

Darach stroked his neck before remounting his own horse. A moment later, they were on their way down the road to investigate.

* * *

“What do you make of this?” Logan asked as they dismounted and walked toward the morbid display on the road. A few loyal horses remained nearby, seeming oblivious to the carnage, nibbling at leaves in the woods. “Redcoats and Scots alike. Do you recognize the tartan?”

Darach knelt on one knee to look more closely at one of the fallen Highlanders. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen—with an arrow sticking out of his chest. “This one’s a MacDuff,” he said. “I suspect they were having some fun, imitating the Butcher. Angus won’t take kindly to them stirring up trouble like this.”

“What about the Redcoats?” Logan asked, bending forward to pull a small knife out of a soldier’s leg. He wiped it clean on the dead man’s trousers and slid it into his own belt. “They’re a long way from Fort William. Do you think something’s brewing?”

“Like what?” Darach asked with displeasure as he rose to his full height, still gazing down at the face of the fallen MacDuff.

Logan gave him a knowing look. “You must know what I’m talking about.”

With a heavy sigh, Darach stepped over the body of an English soldier and took note of the fact that he hadn’t had a chance to draw his sword or pistol. He’d been shot between the eyes.

“Another Jacobite uprising?” Darach replied. “Aye, it could be that, or maybe just the foolish antics of a few of young troublemakers, looking for something to brag about.” He stopped and surveyed the damage. “What isn’t clear is whether or not there were any survivors. None of these men, on either side, were stripped of their weapons.”

“A strange thing, that,” Logan replied. “Maybe there was only one survivor and he was wounded. Couldn’t carry anything.”

Darach scanned the edge of the road on both sides for evidence of a retreat. His eyes narrowed in on a trail of broken foliage that led into a dense section of the wood.

“Stay here with the horses,” he said, drawing his sword and stepping into the bush. “And keep your wits about you.”

“Always do,” Logan replied.

With quiet movements, Darach followed the trail to a spot where he found a mangled section of low-lying ferns and evidence of hoof prints on the soft ground. He knelt down to look more closely at the prints. Reaching down, he touched what appeared to be the imprint of a small-heeled boot.

Odd, for a company of British soldiers in the wilds of the Highlands. This was no ballroom.

Rising to his feet, he carefully pushed his way through the brush and continued a short distance until he found a bow on the ground. He bent to pick it up.

Holding it in his hand, he tested its weight and strength. It was Scottish workmanship, no doubt about it. But where was the archer? he wondered, glancing all around. The trail seemed to go cold in the spot where he stood.

Pausing a moment to listen, he heard the sound of rushing water from somewhere and peered to his right, down over a steep overhang to a creek bed below.

Bloody hell.
There was a woman down there.

* * *

“Logan!” he called out over his shoulder as he dropped the bow on the ground. “I found a woman!”

Digging his heels into the soft ground to slow his descent, he relaxed his body and slid most of the way down to the bottom.

Rushing to her side, he knelt over her and saw that she had suffered a serious blow to the head, for her flaxen hair was stained and matted with thick, dark blood. Upon closer scrutiny, it appeared to be a gunshot wound.

Was she English? he wondered as he pressed his fingers to her soft neck, just below her jawline, searching for a pulse.

He examined the features of her face—the soft freckled complexion, the small upturned nose and full lips. She was a beauty, no doubt about it. Quickly he moved the pads of his fingers from one spot to another on her neck, and there—
at last
—he found a pulse.

Darach turned on his knee and looked up the slope to where Logan stood at the top. “She’s alive!” he called out.

“Look out!” Logan cried.

Whack!
Pain reverberated at the back of his head and down the length of his spine. He saw stars, then fell forward onto his hands and knees.

Moving swiftly, he rolled onto his back. The woman stood over him holding a large stone over her head. With wild, murderous eyes, she drew her hand back as if she were about to smash his face in.

Chapter Four

“
Ach!
” he bellowed as he caught her slender wrists and forced the rock from her hands. In a flash of movement, he flipped the crazed hellion onto her back and pinned her hands to the ground above her head.

“Let me go!” she cried, kicking with her legs and fighting to free herself.

“I’ll do no such thing, lassie. Not until you apologize.”

“For what!” Her cat-like green eyes flashed with fire.

“For thumping me on the head just now. I suspect that’ll leave a mark.”

She grunted with frustration and continued to struggle, pumping her hips like a bucking filly while Darach straddled her firmly.

Logan descended the slope and moved to stand over them. Seeming unconcerned by their tussle, he withdrew an apple from his sporran and crunched into it while he watched the woman wiggle and squirm.

“Who is she?” he casually asked while chewing.

“None of your damn business!” she yelled, but her accent revealed that she was Scottish.

Logan bent forward over her face. “You’re on MacDonald lands now, lassie, so that makes it very much our business.” He took another bite of the apple.

“Get
off
me!” she ground out, then she let out a frustrated huff and finally relaxed.

For a few critical seconds, Darach’s brain seemed to stop functioning at the sensation of their joined hips. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a woman, and this one was as comely as any he’d ever met.

“That’s better, lass,” he said, mentally shaking himself out of any lusty thoughts about the woman who had just tried to bash his head in. “You’re hurt. You shouldn’t be exerting yourself.”

Chest heaving, she shut her eyes and took a moment to catch her breath, which allowed Darach time to examine her features more closely.

She was young and small—rather waiflike, in fact, except for a lush bosom that caused his blood to course a little faster through his veins. She wore a blue bodice over a simple white linen chemise and dark skirt. There was no sign of any tartan, which was why, at first glance, he’d thought she was English.

The lass took a deep steadying breath which drew Darach’s attention again to her bosom, where he lingered a moment. Then his eyes returned to her flushed cheeks, soft open mouth and disheveled, blood-stained hair. Tangled and messy, it reached nearly to her waist, splayed out on the forest floor beneath her.

“Tell us where you come from lass,” he said, “and why you got into a scuffle with the Redcoats.”

She frowned up at him, as if she were bewildered by the question, then she blinked a few times. “I don’t feel very well.”

He stared down at her with some concern as her eyes grew empty and unseeing. Then she bucked again for a few alarming seconds, as if possessed by some sort of demon, and passed out.

Darach released his hold on her wrists, leaned forward, and tapped her on the cheek. “Lassie, are you all right? Wake up.
Wake up
!”

“Is she alive?” Logan asked, kneeling down beside him and tossing the apple core away.

Darach found the pulse at her neck. “Aye, but she’s in a sorry state. We need to get her back to the castle. Angus will have questions about what happened here, and she’s the only one who can answer.”

Logan’s eyes lifted and grew dark with unease. “There may be others.”

“Aye.” Darach considered that. Then he stood up and looked around. All was quiet.

He surveyed the grade of the slope. “She can’t weigh much. I’ll carry her up over my shoulder. You go ahead and gather as many weapons as you can from the dead. Check the saddle bags and pockets of every horse and soldier. We need information.”

Logan nodded and climbed back up to the road while Darach gazed down at the unconscious beauty at his feet.

She had spirit, to be sure, but who
was
she? And what part had she played in the ambush?

Wasting no more time thinking about the hows and whys, he squatted down, slipped his hands beneath her small, fragile frame, and hoisted her up over his shoulder like a loose sack of grain.

A short while later he was grunting and sweating, nearly to the top of the woody slope, when Logan appeared above him. “Maybe I ought to wait for you to reach the top before I tell you this,” he said.

Darach wrapped a hand around the trunk of a small tree and paused a moment to catch his breath. He hugged the lassie’s lush little bottom against his cheek. “Spit it out, Logan.”

His brother hesitated. “The woman you’re hauling up the hill is a Campbell.”

A Campbell?

Darach froze, then shifted her awkwardly on his shoulder. “Don’t tell me she’s from Leathan Castle.”

Logan made a face. “Sorry brother. Looks like that’s where they were headed. But it gets worse.”

“How?” Darach asked, still pausing at the crest of the rise.

“She’s the chief’s daughter.”

Every muscle in Darach’s body strained hotly under the added weight of the woman draped over his shoulder, and he couldn’t help but wonder about the dream he’d had that morning. Maybe it had been a premonition after all…

But Lord in heaven, he didn’t want anything to do with what that implied.

“She’s the daughter of
Fitzroy
Campbell?”

Darach felt a stab of disillusionment as he recalled how he’d been struck dumb by her beauty moments ago and aroused by her fighting spirit when she rose up to brain him with the stone. Then she’d fought valiantly against his hold, bucking and wiggling beneath him. He was twice her size and possessed at least three times her strength, yet she had been fearless and undaunted.

A small shudder traveled down his spine, for she was a Campbell.

Worse…she was Fitzroy’s daughter.

Young and tantalizingly pleasing to the eye.

Ach…Bloody hell.

Glancing over his shoulder at the creek bottom below, Darach wondered if he and Logan would be better off if he simply dropped her and never mentioned a thing about this to anyone.

Chapter Five

Many hours later, Larena woke from a murky pool of darkness to the sensation of a cool cloth dabbing at her forehead. Her head pounded mercilessly, ringing like a heavy mallet on an iron anvil. Confusion flooded her mind, and she had no notion of where she was or even what day it might be.

She fought to lift her heavy eyelids. It took immense effort for them to respond. At last they fluttered open, and she found herself gazing up at a man.

He was a Scot, dressed in tartan, with compassionate green eyes and long, golden hair tied back with a leather cord.

Larena tried to speak, to ask where she was, but she couldn’t seem to form words. Everything seemed hazy in her mind, as if her brain were full of cotton.

“There, now.” The Scot spoke softly in the flickering glow of the candlelight. “You’ll be all right now, lass.”

But where
am I
?

The Highlander dipped the cloth into a porcelain basin by the bed and squeezed it out. She listened feebly to the sound of water dripping out of it. Then he gently stroked her cheek and dabbed at her parched, cracked lips. Larena continued to blink up at him, helpless and perplexed.

A loud clang of metal jolted her into a sharper state of awareness, and the sound of a bar lifting on a door helped her to realize that she had been imprisoned somewhere.

With growing panic, she lay very still, glancing around the room. It was small, sparsely furnished and without windows. There were half a dozen candles burning on a candelabra next to the bed. The walls were constructed of stone.

The door swung open and another Scotsman entered, his strides heavy and purposeful across the stone floor. He had thick, dark, wavy hair and eyes black as night. He stood over the bed and glared down at her with menace.

The door slammed shut behind him with a terrifying echo of finality. The dark Scotsman hooked a thumb into the leather sword belt that lay across his broad chest. “What’s yer name, lass?” he asked.