Return of the Highlander (7 page)

Suddenly, she didn’t feel so well.

Approaching the moonlit glade, Larena dropped heavily to sit on her heels on the grass. The world spun circles in front of her eyes, whirling so fast she couldn’t keep the dizziness at bay.

She strove to focus on the campfire which was in sight, but it appeared to be duplicating itself, so she wasn’t sure which one was the real fire. Squeezing her eyes shut and opening them again only made the world spin faster.

Eventually she became aware of a dark figure prowling toward her in the shadows then kneeling down in front of her.

“Are you feeling all right, lass?”

She peered at Darach, who placed a steadying hand on her shoulder. “I think I’m drunk,” she said.

For the second time that day, she saw a spark of compassion in his eyes, and she was strangely befuddled by how it touched her.

“I
know
that you are,” he replied. “But at least you’re a funny drunk.” He began to rise. “Up we go, now.”

“Do we have to?” she asked dizzily. “Can’t we just stay here?”

“Nay, lass,” he replied, standing firm on the issue. “I must keep an eye on you. Come with me now.” He held out a hand.

Larena finally took hold and couldn’t help but notice how large and warm his hand was, also callused and rough. Her own hand felt very small and fragile inside his.

“Where did Logan go?” she asked as he drew her to her feet and she followed him to the fire.

“He’s taking the first watch. He went to look around, but I suspect he’s also taking a
very
long piss.”

Larena’s eyebrows lifted. “You shouldn’t say things like that, Darach. It’s vulgar.”

“Did I offend you?” he asked, sounding sincerely apologetic.

She thought rather drunkenly about her answer. “I suppose it’s no more vulgar than my story about the stomping groomsman. And that makes me a pot.”

“I beg your pardon, lass?”

“I am a pot calling the kettle black,” she explained.

He gave her a small, barely perceptible grin that thrilled her in the most astonishing way.

They reached their bedrolls and he let go of her hand. Larena decided she wasn’t ready to lie down yet, however, for the world was still spinning. Instead, she moved to sit up against the saddle packs—but not before digging around inside them, in search of the King’s pardon.

“You needn’t worry,” Darach mentioned at the precise moment she laid her hands on it. “I’ve been keeping an eye on it for you.”

She pushed the rolled up document back down to the bottom of the pack, lowered the flap, buckled it, and leaned back against it.

“I wasn’t worried,” she lied. “I just drank too much wine tonight and I couldn’t remember where I’d put it.”

“You’re just anxious, that’s all,” he replied, forgivingly.

She closed her eyes and tipped her head back. “I suppose there is much to fret about, with my father sentenced to death if we don’t arrive in time to deliver his pardon.”

“I’ll make sure that we do,” Darach said. “But that can’t be the only thing you’re anxious about, lass. You’re also facing a lifelong sentence of marriage to a total stranger.”

Larena opened her eyes, lifted her head, and stared at him. “You make it sound as if that were an equally perilous fate.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I don’t believe so,” she said with a whisper of indignation, even though she’d been tossing and turning over the idea ever since she’d left Fort William. “I see it as a very small sacrifice to save my father’s life.”

Darach inclined his head doubtfully, as if he could see through her, straight into her soul. “It’s your whole life, lass, until you draw your last breath. I respect your sacrifice, truly I do. Clearly you are very loyal to your family, but I wouldn’t call it a
small
sacrifice, because I’m sure you must have had other plans for your future. Happier ones.”

Yes, I most certainly did have plans. I once imagined myself falling madly in love with a handsome, devoted Highlander who would adore me from the first moment we met and love me until the end of time.

Perhaps Gregory would turn out to be that man. Larena had whispered a silent, wishful prayer to that end when she’d agreed to the arrangement in Lord Rutherford’s chambers.

Nevertheless, breathing deeply, she attempted to explain herself to Darach. “Whatever I had planned doesn’t matter anyway, because I couldn’t very well refuse Rutherford’s proposal and allow my father to die.”

Darach poked at the fire with a stick. “Nay. That, you could not do.”

“Unfortunately,” she added, staring into the fire, listening to it snap and crackle while sparks flew about wildly, “alternatives become scarce with so little time to explore other potential courses of action. Believe me, when I watched them drag my father down to the prison, I tried my best to think of anything I could do to stop it, but the British army can be very intimidating.”

“And you’re about to marry one of their officers,” he reminded her.

She pondered that reality. “It is my hope that I won’t be intimidated by Gregory. From what I remember of him, he was a gentle-hearted boy.”

“He cannot be that gentle if he rose to the rank of colonel here in the Highlands,” Darach warned her. “Are you sure you’re remembering the right person?”

“Absolutely. Look.” She dug into her cleavage to withdraw the locket that hung around her neck on a long chain. “Rutherford gave this to me when I accepted his proposition. It shows that Gregory is the same boy I remember—only quite a bit older, of course. Come and see him.”

Darach stood and circled around the fire to sit down beside her. He took hold of the locket, which was still strung around her neck, and examined the miniature portrait inside.

“He’s not bad looking, I suppose,” Darach casually commented, then he snapped it shut and lifted his gaze to meet hers.

She was unnerved suddenly by his nearness, transfixed by his dark features in the dancing firelight, his face so close to her own. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the elegant line of his nose, those soft-looking, full lips, and that strong, unshaven jaw.

Letting her eyes wander down to his broad shoulders and the tartan draped across his shoulder and chest, she focused on the MacDonald clan badge at his belt as it reflected the firelight.

“Still,” she added, lifting her gaze to his face rather than letting it dwell on his magnificent lounging form, “it’s going to be strange to marry a man I barely know. I have to keep reminding myself that women do it all the time. Political marriages are hardly uncommon.”

Darach frowned, then he faced the fire and leaned back against Logan’s saddle. Reaching into his sporran for the flask he carried, he uncorked it and offered her whatever was left inside.

“No thank you,” she replied, holding up a hand. “I think I’ve had quite enough for one night.”

“I won’t argue with you there.” He raised it to his lips and sipped. “But I must warn you, lass. Be careful not to lose your head around my brother.”

“What do you mean?”

Darach scanned the perimeter of the glade and listened carefully for a moment, then he spoke in a low voice. “When it comes to the lassies, he’s a flirt. He knows how to charm them, so don’t fall for it.”

She inclined her head at Darach. “Are you implying that he might try to seduce me?”

“There is a danger of that if you’re not sensible.”

Larena’s head drew back in surprise. “Not sensible… Darach, I am insulted. I may have had too much wine tonight, but I am pledged to another man and I do not take that promise lightly, especially when my father’s life is at stake.” She looked away in the other direction. “Besides, your brother has been a perfect gentlemen since the moment we left the castle, which is more than I can say for you.”

“How have
I
not been a gentleman?” Darach asked, taking genuine affront at her tone. “Didn’t I help you back to the campfire just now when you didn’t think you could get up?”

Yes, he had indeed come to her aid, so she had no choice but to reconsider what she’d just said. “I suppose that was courteous of you. But that’s not what I was referring to. I was talking about before.”

“Before
what
?” he asked, still sounding offended.

Larena wondered uneasily if she had overstepped her bounds, but it was too late now. He was demanding clarification and she couldn’t simply say “never mind.”

Turning her face toward his, she wet her lips and spoke frankly. “I am referring to how you marched into my prison cell with my father’s pardon which you refused to hand over to me, even though it was my property. Then you dragged me through the castle to speak to your laird. If I am to be perfectly honest, Darach, you were boorish and mean.”

“Boorish.”

“Don’t you remember how you were?” she asked, turning her whole body to face him more squarely. “You reminded me countless times that I was a dirty Campbell and not fit to lick your boots—”

“Now see here, lass, I never said
that
.”

“Well, perhaps not
exactly
that…but the implication was there. And ever since we left the castle, you’ve been quiet and moody, almost as if you’re sulking about something. Probably the fact that your brother is far more charming than you could ever dream of being, and the fact that you don’t know how to laugh.”

“I do know how to laugh,” he argued in that quiet, husky drawl that made something inside her tremble. He sat forward slightly and turned his body to face hers as well. “And I told you before, lass. I can be charming when I wish to be.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” she replied, realizing that sometime during this conversation, she’d sobered up completely. She felt entirely clearheaded and sharp-witted enough to recognize that her heart was racing with exhilaration. “And please be informed that I have no use for your so-called ‘helpful’ warnings about your brother. I suspect you’re just jealous because he’s more pleasant than you are, and you simply can’t keep up. And I am not foolish enough to be taken in by a charming seducer—if that’s what Logan is. As I mentioned before, I think you’re just jealous, and may I remind you again that I am betrothed? The way I perceive it, Logan is merely fulfilling his duty to your chief. I see nothing untoward in his attentions. If I drank too much wine tonight and behaved out of turn…that was my own fault because it’s been a difficult time…with all that’s happened lately.”

Darach stared at her intently. “I’m not jealous.”

He continued to look into her eyes, then down at her lips, his face mere inches from hers. Eventually, she could do nothing but stare down at her lap.

“Of course you’re not jealous,” she conceded. “I don’t know why I said that. Clearly I’m still a bit inebriated.”

Although it had nothing to do with the wine and everything to do with the dangerously intoxicating way his voice slid over her like soft velvet, rippling across her skin.

“Just keep your head on straight as far as my brother is concerned,” Darach said in a commanding tone. He rose to his feet and returned to the other side of the fire. “Get some rest, lass. Tomorrow will be a long day. We’ll be spending many hours in the saddle.”

Nodding her head, she inched down into her bedroll, closed her eyes, and tried to think of nothing but her arrival at Leathan.

* * *

Darach shouldn’t have been surprised that the lassie curled up in her bedroll and fell asleep within minutes of closing her eyes. She’d had far too much wine to drink, and besides that, she had no notion of the danger she was in with him and Logan as her escorts back to Leathan.

It was just his luck that Logan was taking his good old time scouting the surrounding area, which left Darach with nothing to do but sit by the fire and watch over Larena. It was not a task he relished, for she was a Campbell—Fitzroy’s daughter no less—and this whole situation had stirred up an angry hornet’s nest full of problems, especially where Logan was concerned.

Darach bowed his head and shook it slowly with regret, for he’d once believed that the past was long dead and buried, and he and his brother could go on to live relatively normal lives. It had taken Darach many years to push certain memories into the ground and stop checking over his shoulder at every turn. He’d not woken up in a cold sweat in almost a decade, yet here he sat tonight, plagued with wretched torment as he watched Larena Campbell sleep soundly a few short feet away from him with no knowledge of the men who had been assigned to protect her. She knew nothing of their past or the extent of the antagonism they felt toward her father, Fitzroy Campbell of Leathan.

For two years ago, he had murdered
their
father.

At least that’s what they suspected.

It was difficult for Logan. He had a fierce and reckless fire in his blood that Darach had never been able to put out, no matter how hard he tried. Ever since that day on the battlefield at Sheriffmuir, fifteen years ago, Darach had suspected that his baby brother would always feel as if he had something to prove. It was no secret that he blamed Darach for everything, including how their lives had turned out.

Over the past two years, however—since the death of their father—it had gotten much worse. Logan had always imagined he would return to make amends and somehow win back their father’s approval, but that dream was snuffed out now. It was impossible to seek approval from the dead.