Authors: Patricia McAllister
How could she bear to let Cullen Maclean leave Auchmull without giving her any answers? She could ask him to take a message to Braidwood for her, reassuring Sir Jasper of her good health and relatively strong spirits. Her heart raced with anticipation and desperation as Gilbert bade her good night and left the chamber. She would find a way to meet with Cullen before morning came. She must!
* * *
NOT LONG AFTER, DARKNESS fell and the full onslaught of the first Highland storm hit Auchmull. From her room, Merry could hear the high, thin whine of the wind whistling through the cracks in the stone walls. The sound made her nervous. She set Hertha to the task of helping her move the tapestries about, to try and cut down on the drafts, and also occupy both of them while her mind wildly churned for ideas on how to escape the confines of the keep.
She only needed an hour, at the most. Under the cover of the storm, mayhap none would notice her slipping out to the stables, especially if she wore a dark cloak. Merry inspected the contents of her belongings from the coach after Gilbert and Hugo brought them to her. She had hoped for something useful amid the frippery, but her gowns were as frivolous as any notion she might escape.
There was also a brief message from Wickham, which had been passed on from Gilbert once it had been determined to contain no seditious information. The note simply stated Sir Jasper would be arriving soon at Auchmull for negotiations with Ranald Lindsay. He was, of course, hoping to have Merry removed from such horrendous circumstances at earliest opportunity.
Merry felt a shiver course through her body as she read the terse note. She must trust Ranald had no treachery planned. She prayed he had no intention of trying to kill Sir Jasper. She feared less for herself than for the involvement of so many innocents.
It dawned on Merry with a distinct sense of dismay, that Sir Jasper and his men might be similarly inclined to attempt an overthrow of the seat at Auchmull. It would be a nice plum, and offer the Englishman direct control over the fractious Highlanders. Wickham had the money, and the favor, of the queen. Why he had not bothered to attack Auchmull before still bothered Merry. He had the manpower, and surely an excuse if he so chose.
These thoughts and others were nearly driving her mad. She paced half the night away, while Hertha alternately soothed and watched her mistress with grave concern.
Eventually Merry stopped fussing with the tapestries and tried to concentrate on a sampler Hertha had brought her to pass the time. She was so nervous she kept poking her fingers, and in a fit of frustration, she finally hurled the cloth across the room. After helping Merry change into a nightrail, Hertha mentioned she needed to visit Nell, check on the young woman’s progress, and retire herself for the evening. With a mixed sense of relief and resignation, Merry agreed the tiring woman might go.
Merry realized as she watched Hertha depart that this offered the perfect opportunity to effect a quick escape to the stables. With the maid gone, nobody would miss her for a while. The moment the door shut behind Hertha, she threw off her lethargic air, put on her slippers and proceeded to dig through her belongings until she had unearthed a full-length cape of dark wool. Swiftly Merry pulled it over her nightrail. She drew the hood close about her face, covering her auburn hair. Only the pale oval of her face remained, and this she kept carefully shielded as she cracked open the door to her chamber and peered both ways up and down the hall.
The storm had driven everyone indoors, so the greatest danger lay in escaping the keep. She heard the lazy banter of men engaged in a dicing game somewhere off to her right and knew she dared not risk trying to leave by means of the main door. She remembered Hertha mentioning there was a back exit through the kitchen. Stealthily Merry slipped out into the hall, keeping her back flush to the wall, and inched to her left until the laughter and rattle of dice had faded to a muffled, indistinct noise. She smelled the kitchen long before she saw it. Someone was baking bread, even at this late hour. Merry sniffed longingly and felt her mouth begin to water.
Her soft-soled slippers made no noise as she crept up to the oak door left wide open to the hall. She heard desultory feminine chatter and peeked in, watching as a pair of young serving girls poured up mugs of stout ale for the clansmen in the hall. One was Siany, Hertha’s granddaughter.
“Lord Ranald’s in a terrible black mood, he is,” she was telling the other servant, a brown-haired girl with plump, pink cheeks. “’Tis all the fault of that red-haired beldam.”
“She’s nae beautiful, but she’s verra striking,” replied the other, and with a start Merry realized they were talking about her.
“She’s naught but a
Sassenach
strumpet, Ellen,” Siany said frankly. “Ye canna tell me any differently. The way she looks at Lord Ranald is nothin’ short of shameful. Law, ye should hae seen her! Gawking at him like a empty-headed little goose. Men be such fools.”
“I dinna like it when ye talk about others that way, Siany,” Ellen said uneasily.
“Why not?” responded the other a trifle belligerently. “Ye know ’tis true. Anyhow, Ellie, ye’ve no knowledge of men.”
“Neither hae ye!” cried little Ellen, stung.
From her vantage point, Merry saw a strange light enter Siany’s blue eyes, and a smug half-smile curved the girl’s lips. It unsettled her for some reason, and she remembered Hertha’s despair that her granddaughter would ever wed.
The moment was shattered as the two girls picked up their respective trays, each loaded with brimming tankards, and departed the kitchen through another door. Merry waited until she was sure they wouldn’t return, and then inched into the kitchen, keeping to the shadows. Her ears still burned from Siany’s words. She was mortified by what she had heard. Was her unwilling interest in Ranald truly so obvious? Or had jealousy colored the girl’s words?
She impatiently shook aside her worries by reminding herself that there were more important things to be done this night. As she moved past the great stacks of baked scones, however, she couldn’t resist snatching a couple and stuffing them into the pockets of her cloak. Cullen might be hungry. Doubtless, Gilbert’s grudging hospitality had not included food.
She was nearly to the door when she heard a whinny of horses in the yard, a murmur of men’s voices. The Wolf was back! Heart pounding, Merry froze in place, her wide eyes fixed on the door, realizing with a jolt of pure terror she had nowhere to hide.
* * *
MERRY SAW HIM BEFORE he noticed her. Ranald walked with a weary gait, broad shoulders still hunched from the cold, snow melting in his dark hair, and an air of resignation about him. Off guard as he was in those few moments, she caught a glimpse of the vulnerable man behind the fierce facade, the laird Blair Maclean had loved with her flawless devotion.
Feeling tension thicken in the air as she watched him from the shadows, Merry was surprised to discover it was not fear but fascination that rooted her in place. Something about this quiet, cold, remote man compelled her to reach out. At Court, she was renowned for making others laugh with her sparkling wit, easing uncomfortable situations and placating the queen. Surely if Elizabeth Tudor could be charmed into eating from Meredith Tanner’s proverbial hand, so, too, could the mighty Wolf of Badanloch. She pushed the cowl back over her hair.
“Milord.”
Merry spoke softly from the shadows, startling him. Ranald pivoted and his dark gaze focused on her with surprise, but before the anger might mount, she stepped forward beneath the light of a sconce and made no attempt to disguise the fact she was there.
“I trust your mission was successfully accomplished,” she said brightly.
He stared at her a moment, obviously confused and searching for an explanation not only for her appearance but her straightforward manner. There was little logic in the notion of a woman trying to escape who had stepped out and addressed him so openly. Yet his scrutiny took in her cloak and he appeared suspicious nonetheless.
Merry bit back an irreverent chuckle. It would not do, not at all, if she burst into gales of laughter at his wariness. For the first time since they met, she sensed she had the upper hand. Or perhaps it was the sight of her trim ankles beneath the nightrail that disconcerted Ranald so, a thought most amusing since he feigned the air of such a calloused man.
“’Tis past midnight. Why are you roaming about? Where is Gilbert? Hertha?”
The questions he tossed at her in short succession were clearly intended to take her off guard, but Merry did not flinch. She met The Wolf’s onyx stare with enough aplomb to make Uncle Kit proud. She doubted even a seasoned courtier like Bess’s favorite “Fox” would have been so bold as to turn an attempted escape into a social situation, while garbed in such an intimate fashion.
Swallowing a smile, Merry said, “I fear I was hungry, Lord Lindsay. Opportunity knocked and I did not question it.” She pulled one of the still-warm scones from her pockets, glad now she had the foresight to snitch them in passing. Ranald looked from the scone to her sheepish expression, and she could have sworn a faint smile curved his lips for a moment.
“I take it you do not find haggis filling, after all.”
“Oh, ’twas not sheep’s pluck tonight, but rather fried herrings and some curious kind of boiled mutton with mushy vegetables.”
“Hotch-potch?” Ranald laughed, and Merry felt the echo of his laughter curl through her as warmly as a sip of Hugo’s bracing poitin.
“Aye, I think Hertha dubbed it thus.” Merry wrinkled her nose. “I regret I must be honest, but I am beginning to doubt I shall ever acquire a taste for Highland fare.”
Expecting a stinging response, she was surprised when Ranald nodded. “It takes a body time to adjust to unfamiliar customs, lass.” His gaze met and locked with hers, as he idly brushed stray snowflakes from his hair. Merry resisted the urge to reach out and run her fingers over those damp dark locks gleaming beneath the torchlight. She caught the scent of him again, familiar now as her own, male and leather and the sweet pungent tinge of horseflesh and snow.
She saw Ranald looking at her form where the cloak parted over her breasts, and a flash of heat rose between them. She knew he felt it, too, by the way he suddenly inhaled. In the narrow hall where they stood so close together, each rasping breath scraped against stone, and the smoky air was intense, taut with emotion. She wondered if he experienced the same reckless thrill and had her answer when his hands suddenly came down on her shoulders, drawing her closer.
“
Yince
,” the Highland Wolf rasped, translating in a softer vein, “Once …” and then his mouth descended on hers, not with the fierceness she had come to expect but a shattering gentleness that shook her to the core. Merry swayed and clutched his shoulders, head thrown back, shivering with forbidden pleasure as his lips blazed a path from her gasping mouth down over her bared throat, pausing there where Ranald tasted her with luxuriant slowness, skimming her pale flesh and leaving a faint blush in his wake.
She trembled in his embrace, knowing in her heart it could never be, it was utter madness, yet her emotions swirled like the storm and suddenly she was like a snow raven, caught up in the tumultuous wind. Ranald, too, seemed shaken by the depth of their mutual passion. She saw the flash of emotion in his eyes before he walked her back a step against the wall, pinning her between cold stone and wet wool, devouring her mouth with a leisurely hunger that made Merry whimper deep in her throat.
She gasped when his hand slipped beneath her cloak and gently, yet urgently, kneaded her breast. She arched into his fingers, driven to surrender with neither rhyme nor reason to the one man who was her mortal enemy. Her captor. A fierce Highland laird accused of brutal murders, a man known as The Wolf of Badanloch.
Suddenly Ranald froze in place, his dark eyes clearing as he broke off the passionate kiss and gazed at Merry in equal shock. Or perhaps shock was too kind a word, for the disgruntled expression he wore as he reeled away from her was like a knife thrust between her ribs.
“Damme!” he swore, thrusting a hand through his tangled hair, the expletive hardly encompassing the roiling emotions or terrible guilt seizing them both like a vise. They stared at each other as if seeking answers, or rather pleading for them, and silence descended like a brutal hawk as the scone crumbled and fell from Merry’s numb fingers.
* * *
RAN COULD NOT SLEEP. Hours later, after leaving Merry at her chamber, he sat slumped in a deeply cushioned chair in his study, absently nursing a warm brandy while the snow beat silently and furiously against the leaded windowpanes.
Night haunted him. It always had. From the time he was a lad and his fey mother had restlessly wandered the halls of Edzell after dark, he had never slept much, nor very well. The annoying habit had also inadvertently saved his life more than once. He had not been sleeping when a killer had slipped past the guards and entered his bedchamber a month ago. He’d glimpsed the wavering shadow of a man on the stone wall, and rolled aside just as the dagger came down viciously to bury itself in the bolster where his head had lain just a moment before.
His assailant sprinted away before Ran could gain his feet. He’d shouted for his men, and there was an immediate search of the entire castle, but too late to find so much as a hair attesting to the presence of the stealthy assassin. Ran was far more furious than afraid.
Death had never particularly frightened him, but the thought of Wickham ordering someone else to do his dirty work made his blood run cold. None other had motive, except perhaps a Maclean or two, and they were sniveling cowards, the lot of them.
The only doubts he had now concerned Merry Tanner. Ran had to admit the woman daunted him. Assuming the task of chatelaine at Auchmull had infuriated him, but he grudgingly admired her pluck. He could not deny she had a winsome air, and others obviously agreed, for Hertha and Gilbert and Hugo all hurried to her bidding now. Others were coming ’round, too, including those who had cursed loudest when she came. Mistress Merry had a way of giving orders that left one feeling grateful for the task. Truly, she was a whirlwind to be reckoned with.