Winter Heat (2 page)

Logan strode resolutely onward, ignoring the increasing pain of the bayonet wound in his thigh, keeping his keen eyesight trained on his surroundings. Despite the cloak of darkness, he could make out the shadowy terrain, the barren trees, and the evergreens. If there was shelter, he’d find it. He’d survived so far, and no mere winter storm would best him. If he had to, he’d walk through it. He didn’t need the stars or the sun to guide him. These were the Highlands—his land, his home—and he could find his way north by smell, taste, and touch if need be.

Soon he glimpsed a potential shelter. Just beyond a ledge to the east, the thatch of a roof peeked out from beneath a thin layer of snow. He walked toward it, and gradually the small, stone-walled circular structure came into view.

It was more than he’d hoped for. Its owner had probably abandoned it for the winter only a month or two ago. Logan trudged around to the tightly woven wicker door and pushed it open, making out the dark shapes of furniture—a table, chairs, and bed—in the deep shadows of the room.

He felt his way to the hearth. The wide fireplace possessed the added luxury of a stone chimney, rare for so small a place in such a remote location, with a generous amount of dry peat stacked beside it.

After lighting a fire, Logan rose to more fully assess his surroundings by the light of the flames. A low stone table and two chairs occupied the room’s center. Fresh provisions—a measure of oats, a pan full of dried meat, dishes of butter and cream, a bucket of eggs, and several bottles of whisky and ale—sat on the tabletop. The wood-f rame bed with a heather-stuffed mattress was pushed against the far wall, with clothes, linens, and plaids stacked in an open chest at its foot.

This cottage hadn’t been abandoned for the winter—i n fact, the opposite appeared to be true. Someone planned to move in. Not tonight, though, Logan deduced. Not this late, and not in this storm.

Logan would light a fire and sleep, but he wouldn’t take anything from this place. When he went on his way in the morning, he would leave the cottage as he’d found it. The owner would never realize anyone had spent the night.

All that kept Logan alive was the act of moving forward, constantly striving toward his goal: his brother’s lands in the far northern Highlands. They were Logan’s lands now, and Logan’s responsibility, for his brother had died at Sheriffmuir.

Home had seemed as remote as China less than a month ago. Every day, however, he grew closer.

A few hours’ rest and he’d be on his way.

Innes Munroe was drunker than he’d originally appeared, Maggie realized. The henchman had started whining about the cold not ten minutes after they’d left her cottage, and Innes had sent him home. Now they sat astride an exhausted horse, Innes holding Maggie tightly against him, her wrists bound with rough twine, her shift riding up her thighs.

Blood still trickled from her chest, and her left eye had swollen to a slit, for he’d hit her hard enough for her to see stars the last time she’d tried to escape.

As soon as Innes had tossed her onto the horse, a light snow had begun to descend, and as they traveled on, the world turned a solid gray-black beneath the cloudy sky.

Innes slipped his arm beneath her plaid, and his callused red hand closed over her breast. “Aw, that’s nice, isn’t it? Just big enough for my hand, aren’t you, Maggie girl?”

Renewed fury stormed through her, and she twisted, ramming her elbow into his gut. “Stop pawing at me, you animal!”

His breath left him with a whoosh. Releasing her breast, he snagged one of her wrists over the twine he’d used to bind her. He squeezed until the small bones rubbed together. Maggie gasped. If he squeezed any tighter, surely he’d break her wrist.

“You’d best let me go, Innes Munroe,” she said through clenched teeth. “Torean will see you hanged for this.”

At that, Innes released a booming laugh. “I don’t think so, woman. It was his idea that I take you—show you who your master is.”

“You’re a liar!” Yet a sick feeling churned in her gut. For some unknown reason, her cousin had befriended this lout. Couldn’t Torean see how despicable he was? Was he so blind as to have sanctioned Innes’s abominable acts?

Torean’s father had died suddenly last winter, and Torean was a young man—younger than Maggie by four years. He hadn’t been prepared to take on the responsibility of the lairdship, and some of his actions as their leader had taken the clan aback. Nobody understood why Torean would befriend the belligerent younger brother of the Munroe laird.

Maggie blinked against the sting of snow in her eyes. She couldn’t see much farther than a few feet in front of them, but she knew they were heading uphill and had drawn far from the village. As they ascended the mountain slope, the clouds grew ever thicker. Yet Innes continued to force the tiring horse through the snow flurries. The animal’s hooves sank into the freshly fallen powder with each step it took.

Maggie gave thanks for her thick, long-sleeved shift, her two pairs of stockings, and her plaid. Thank the Lord she’d taken her plaid to bed, otherwise she’d surely be an icicle by now. At least she was dry, and though not warm by any stretch of the imagination, she wasn’t near frozen to death either. Innes, dressed in thick wool trews, boots, layers of shirts and jackets, and covered by a plaid, hadn’t given her condition a second thought.

He dropped her wrist and fumbled in his coat. She heard the glugging noise as he gulped down more of the drink. Hopefully he’d drink himself into a stupor, she thought bitterly. Then she could shove him off the horse and escape.

Returning his flask to his pocket, he switched arms, taking the reins in his right hand and clamping his brawny left arm around her torso. His thumb rubbed rough circles over her breast, and she tensed but this time she didn’t flail.

“Where are you taking me?” she said through clenched teeth.

His only answer was a low chuckle, but pinned against him as she was, she could feel his body responding in anticipation. Wherever their destination, she had a fair idea of what he intended to do to her once they arrived.

That was something she couldn’t countenance. She’d die before giving herself to this brute.

Carefully, she inched her bound hands upward over her plaid, ever so slowly so the drunken man behind her wouldn’t notice. In any case, he wasn’t paying attention—he was far more interested in pinching her breast. His arousal poked at her bottom, and his pungent breath puffed over the top of her head.

Her fingers touched the cold silver of the brooch at her shoulder. It was the only weapon she possessed, surely not as effective as a pistol or a sword, or even a dagger, but she prayed it would be enough.

Her brooch was different from the usual circular brooch worn by the women of the clan. About the length of Maggie’s hand, it was long and narrow and shaped like a sword. A dragon stood just below the hilt, its wings unfurled, its body ringed by a flat silver circle etched with the words, “
Per mare, per terras”
—“ by sea, by land”—her family’s motto. At the bottom of the ring, the dragon’s talons curled over a large, dull amber agate.

On her deathbed, Maggie’s mother had handed her daughter the brooch, saying Maggie must keep it with her always; for it possessed the magical ability to detect a MacDonald woman’s lifelong soul mate.

Her mother was as superstitious as they came, though, and Maggie didn’t believe any such nonsense. The brooch certainly hadn’t detected anything before Maggie had married Duneghall, whom she’d loved wholeheartedly during their brief time together.

It was just a trinket, and an odd one at that. But her mother died when she was fifteen years old, and out of respect for her memory, Maggie always kept it near. She enjoyed that it earned her a raised brow whenever she encountered a stranger—for what kind of a woman pinned her plaid with a miniature weapon? But more than that, it was the only possession Maggie had to remember her mother by.

Maggie fumbled with the brooch, finally releasing the pin and sliding it free from the wool. She clutched it between her palms, its sharp point facing her, and returned her hands to her lap.

The sword tip and the pin together weren’t truly dangerous. They couldn’t inflict permanent damage. Yet Maggie knew where a man was his most sensitive, and Innes Munroe was drunk as a drum. This was her last hope.

She took a deep, fortifying breath. Then she clenched her knees, scooted her bottom forward over the rise of the saddle’s pommel, twisted her body, and stabbed her hands backward, plunging the tip of the brooch into Innes’s groin.

He howled. Dropping his hand from her breast, he slapped it to his crotch, simultaneously jerking on the reins. The horse reared its head back in discomfort and skidded to a stop.

Maggie yanked her brooch from Innes and scrambled awkwardly off the animal, falling on her face in the snow. She commanded her body to straighten by sheer force of will, for her leg—Innes had kicked her thigh earlier when she’d tried to slip off the horse and run away—protested vehemently.

Keeping her bound hands before her, she ran. Only a few seconds passed before she heard the sound of Innes and the horse advancing on her. She dove into the shelter of a snow-covered cluster of evergreen bushes, praying Innes was too drunk to heed her deep footprints in the snow.

The horse thundered past, but then Innes shouted, “Whoa!” and Maggie squeezed her eyes shut, willing her footsteps invisible as horse and rider turned and once again drew near.

“Maggie!” Innes shouted, his crusty voice raw with pain. “Damn you to hell, where are you, you bloody witch?”

She gripped her brooch in her shaking fists, prepared to use it as a makeshift weapon again.

He circled the area over and over, shouting, threatening her with everything from rape to disembowelment. Then he stopped the horse directly in front of the bushes she cowered under. The animal nickered, and Maggie clenched her teeth to prevent them from chattering.

“Don’t be stupid, lass.” Innes sounded somewhat levelheaded for the first time all night. “You’ll catch your death. You don’t want to die out here tonight, do you? It’s going to be a mean storm, Maggie girl. Already you can scarcely see your hand before your face. I’ll take you somewhere nice and warm.”

Over her dead body, she thought grimly. She’d gladly freeze to death before returning to that bastard.

“Come on now,” he crooned in his grating voice.

She remained still, resolute. She would find shelter on her own, find a way down the mountain, back to the village. She would
not
go to Innes Munroe. She’d be damned if she’d sacrifice her pride and be raped. No matter how slim they were, she’d take her chances with the storm.

Innes dismounted nearby, and she heard the streaming sound as he pissed in the snow on the opposite side of the bush. Mumbling to himself about crazy women not being worth the effort, he returned to his horse.

“Very well then, Maggie,” he shouted, trying to regain control of the animal, who tossed its head and whickered in a mild complaint. “I offered you a warm bed with me tonight, but since you’d rather die in the snow, so be it.” He gave a long-suffering, dramatic sigh and flicked the reins. “Goodbye, then. I’m going to Malmuirie’s, where the lasses know how to treat a man like a king.”

Malmuirie was the madam of the nearest brothel, and as Innes turned his horse, Maggie pressed her lips together to prevent herself from wishing him luck getting it up after what she’d done to his testicles. She remained motionless until the sound of retreating hoofbeats faded, leaving the world in silence save the whisper of the falling snow.

Using her teeth, she worked at the twine binding her wrists. Innes was ultimately a stupid man, for he’d tied her tightly but not expertly, and slowly, surely, she worked the knot loose.

The loop suddenly went slack, and she shook off the twine. Finally free, she flexed her stiff, cold fingers and rubbed her raw wrists.

Rising from her hiding place behind the bush, Maggie turned the way they had come, marveling at the fact that her footsteps had nearly disappeared. She could barely make out the path they’d taken, but that didn’t matter. She knew what direction to go: downhill, where she’d find the village, protection, warmth. Home.

She covered her head with her plaid and pulled it tight around her, thanking Providence for her second pair of stockings and for their ability to keep out some of the wetness of the snow.

Sometime later, as the first gray light of dawn edged through the thick cloud cover, Maggie’s weak legs could hardly drag her through the snow. She knew she hadn’t been walking for long, but she’d lost the ability to distinguish uphill from down. Each stride took her up to her ankles in snow, and sometimes she stepped into deep drifts and sank to her thighs. She was so tired. So very, very tired. The pale white snowdrifts called to her like warm, downy beds, and she craved nothing more than to lie down upon one of them and have a rest.