Seduced by a Highlander (42 page)

Alex let her pull him toward the castle, looking over his shoulder a few times as they went. “What the hell have ye done, Isobel?”

“Hush, Alex. Have the control to at least wait until we get inside. Ye are reckless and will get yerself killed one of these days. And it is mine and Patrick’s fault fer being too lenient with ye.”

“Patrick was worried sick over ye.”

“Well, as ye can see, I am fine.”

“Did they force ye to come here with them?”

“No,” she told him, leading him into the castle. “Cam, Tamas, and I came willingly.”

“Have they treated ye poorly?”

“They have treated me like a queen.”

“They killed our father, Isobel. Have ye fergotten that?”

She stopped and looked at him, shaking her head. “No, but I have put the past behind me where it belongs, as have they. Ye must do the same.”

“I never will,” he vowed, and then turned to the men entering the castle. His eyes hardened on Tristan. The laird’s eyes hardened on him.

“This is good fortune!” Tristan’s ever-joyful smile lit the halls. “Ye have all arrived in time fer our weddin’. Where the hell is Father O’Donnell?”

John, perched on his shoulder, laughed into his hand at Tristan’s expletive.

“Yer wedding?” Alex glared at Tristan first and then at Isobel. “How can ye mean to—” His words ceased abruptly when Callum MacGregor appeared at his side.

“Alex Fergusson,” the Chief said quietly, dangerously.

Alex swallowed audibly and tilted his face up to meet Callum’s lethal gaze. Patrick took a tentative step forward, but Tristan stopped him.

“Ye are sorely in need of some guidance. Ye will stay here.”

“What?” Alex looked ill.

“With him,” the laird pointed to Tamas. “Ye will both remain at Camlochlin under my command.”

Tamas grinned. Alex balked. “I am not a child to be—”

“Ye behave like one.” The raw power in Callum’s voice quieted everyone around them. “ ’Tis time ye became a man, and ye will do that under my direction if ye ever want to leave here alive.”

He flicked his gaze to Isobel when she made a frightened sound. “Will ye trust me with them, then? I didna’ do poorly with my own sons, aye?”

“Aye,” she agreed quietly.

He turned to Patrick next, and when he, too, nodded, Callum scooped up Tamas in his arms and called over his shoulder, “Come, Patrick, we have much to discuss aboot yer land and how many men ye think ye will need to aid ye with it. Brodie,” he said, entering the Great Hall, “Alex is now yer charge.”

Tristan spared Alex a genuinely pitying smile as Camlochlin’s sourest warrior hauled him into the Great Hall behind the others.

“I like all the mountains,” John said, looking up at Tristan after he plucked him off his shoulder and set him on his feet.

“Is that so?” Tristan smiled at him and mussed his crown of orange hair. “Well, we shall have to climb one of them, then.”

John’s eyes opened wide. “Can we?”

“Of course, that is what they are there fer. But later. Now, go with the others and let me have a word with yer sister.”

When they were alone, Tristan took her hand and kissed it. “Have I thanked ye, fair lady?”

“Fer what, gallant knight?” She looked lovingly into his eyes.

“Fer rescuin’ me.”

She crooked her smile at him. “It is what I do best.”

He laughed and looked inside the Great Hall at their two families sharing drinks and discussing their future. Hell, it was a good moment. A good day, to be followed by many more if he had his way about it. And as most already knew, Tristan MacGregor almost always had his way.

“Now.” He took Isobel in his arms and bent to kiss her. “Where the hell is that priest?”

M
airi MacGregor sat in a chair in her father’s guest chambers at Whitehall Palace waiting for the door to open. In her lap, her fingers twisted a loose thread in her kirtle, over and over, until the coarse wool made her flesh raw. But that was the only outward sign of the turmoil within her. He was coming, likely walking up the stairs at this very moment. She breathed steadily, even offering a temperate smile to her mother pacing before her.

“I’m certain there is a good reason fer Rob to have gone home. Ye must not worry so.”

“What is taking them so long?” Her mother wrung her hands as she proceeded on her steady march. “You do not think your father brought Captain Grant and Colin to the king first, do you?”

“Callum would not keep our sons away from us a moment longer than he has to, Kate,” Lady Claire Stuart reassured her from her seat beside the hearth fire. “We will find out soon enough why they have returned to the palace without their brothers. If it was something dire,
Connor would have told us the moment he arrived. Now sit down. You are making me fidget.”

Kate continued to pace. As a mother, she had every reason to fret. Mairi’s eldest brother, Rob, had taken a detour along the Scottish border on their way to England. With him rode the youngest of the MacGregor brood, Colin, their cousins Will and Angus, and Finlay Grant, Graham and Claire’s son. They had not arrived at Whitehall the day after the rest of their kin, as planned, but had sent Angus back with news of an attack on an abbey and a lass Rob had rescued from the flames.

The MacGregors and the Grants knew nothing more until today, when Colin arrived with Captain Connor Grant.

He was here. Connor was here.

The knot in Mairi’s stomach grew tighter than the one in her fingers. It had been three years since she told him she hoped never to see him alive again. Seven years since the last time he told her he loved her and then rode out of Camlochlin to join the king’s Royal Army. She had never forgotten the way he looked that day—resolved, despite the tears she foolishly shed for him.

He never saw her weep again after that.

“Try no’ to bite off his head this time, aye, Mairi?”

She turned to her brother, lounging in a high-backed chair, his boots dangling over the side. “Whatever d’ye mean, Tristan?” She did her best to sound unfazed. “I have nothing at all to say to him.”

His quick eyes dipped to her fingers coiling her thread. She ceased instantly. He said nothing more and Mairi was grateful. She usually enjoyed sharpening her tongue on Tristan’s lightning wit, but when it came to Connor she would lose.

The three of them had grown up together. Tristan
knew she had fallen in love with his best friend when she was six summers old. She had followed them everywhere, much to their disgust, until she finally proved she could climb any tree they could and get into the same trouble they did without crying like a babe when they got caught. Tristan was with them as they grew older and Connor grew more aware of her, and fonder of her, until he finally kissed her beneath the shadow of Bla Bheinn. Connor was twelve when he first promised that one day he would wed her and build her a home in her beloved Highlands. He was seven and ten when he left.

Connor had always been a part of her life. A part she cursed and cherished in equal measure. If she hadn’t fallen in love with his broad, sweeping smiles, or seen her future in the fathomless depths of his sapphire eyes, she never would have learned how false a man’s heart could truly be.

She hated him.

The door opened. Her breath paused when her father stepped into the chamber. Behind him, Graham Grant entered the room with Colin. Mairi was happy to see her youngest, dearest brother alive and looking well, but her eyes were already moving toward the tall, elegant captain framing the door. Dear God, how was it possible that he had grown even more handsome than the last time she saw him? She hated the royal uniform that stretched across his broad shoulders, but she could not deny that he looked more imposing in it than in the Highland plaid he used to wear.

He entered the room, sparing her only a brief glance behind silken strands of pale gold eclipsing his vision.

The thread in her fingers popped.

“Colin!” Her mother hurried forward and gathered her son in her arms. “You look dreadful. When is the last time you ate? Where is Rob? Why is he not with you?”

After assuring her that both he and Rob—and Finn, he added for Claire’s benefit—were well, Colin broke away from his mother’s grasping hands and crooked his mouth at Mairi when she caught his eye. It was all she would get from him for now, and all the reassurance she needed to know he was unharmed. He’d passed her the very same look many times before, after one of their “skirmishes” with the Covenanters and Cameronians who were foolish enough to find themselves on or near Skye.

“I want a full account of what happened since ye left us.” Callum MacGregor sat calmly, but his voice held the authority of a king.

Mairi listened while her brother recounted the Dutch attack on Saint Christopher’s Abbey with less interest than she would have had on any other day. She could feel Connor in the room. His very presence made her burn with so many emotions she feared that if she looked at him, she might be tempted to stare at him forever, or leap from her chair and claw his eyes out of his head.

She closed her eyes and drew in a deep, silent breath. She didn’t need to look at him to see his face. It haunted her daily. His eyes were the same color as the vast heavens over Skye on both summer days and stormy ones. His lips were full and straight, save when they curled into a slow, sensual grin adorned by a dimple on either side of his gold-dusted cheeks, the right dimple deeper than the left and needing only the slightest encouragement to appear.

She couldn’t think. She couldn’t breathe with him
there. She kept her legs from moving by finding another thread in her kirtle and knotting it.

“What do the king of England’s enemies care aboot a novice of the order,” her father asked, “that they would burn doun Miss Montgomery’s abbey and pursue her across the braes?”

“I gave Rob my word to tell no one here who she is, including the king,” Connor finally spoke, his deep, drawling voice like a balmy breeze over the moors. “But ye are his kin, and ye should know the danger he is in.”

His words, not his voice, pulled Mairi’s gaze to him.

“The danger I fear he may be bringing on Camlochlin.”

What was he saying? Rob… everyone at Camlochlin was in danger? Why? Who was this lass whose life her brother had saved? When Connor told them all a moment later, she sat stunned in her seat and then blinked when her father told them all to pack. They were going home in the morning.

“Faither,” she interrupted him as Connor and Colin left the chamber on their way to tell the king, who had led the attack on the abbey, “if this Dutch admiral attacks Camlochlin, I would like to fight.”

He gave her a horrified look that changed with her next heartbeat to one rife with warning. “Never suggest that to me again.”

“But ye know I can wield a sword!” she argued, blocking his path when he moved to pass her. He had no idea how often she had done so in real combat. It was better for her parents never to discover that she and Colin had joined the rebel militia formed to save their country from the political and religious zealots bent on promoting Presbyterianism. “Ye refuse me because I am a woman!”

“Ye’re damned right!” He cut his molten gaze to Claire first, for teaching her how to use a sword as skillfully as her brothers, and then to his wife for helping. “Ye will remain here,” he told her. “And now that I think better on it, Connor will remain with ye. I dinna’ know where ye and he sneak off to at home, but ye willna’ be doin’ it this time.”

Here? She couldn’t stay here! Not with Connor! The king certainly wouldn’t let his captain go running off to Skye to fight in a battle they weren’t even sure was going to happen. Mairi opened her mouth to protest further, but her father stopped her with a stern look.

“I willna’ be persuaded, Mairi.” His tone softened a bit. “Ye are my daughter and ye will obey me in this. I love ye, and I will do whatever I need to do in order to keep ye safe.”