Wishing For a Highlander (3 page)

Without warning, the warrior grabbed her and threw himself down into the mud, bringing her with him. His body molded along her back, pinning her face down in the puddle she’d nearly landed in when she’d fallen off her stool. A mild pressure in her abdomen made her whimper as their combined weight tried to compress her incompressible womb.

Worry for her baby made her buck against the man. “Get off me!”

He clamped a hand over her mouth.

Pounding footsteps came close. Tension in the man’s body made her freeze with fear. Men’s voices came from the other side of the boulder.

“Gunn,” the man cursed quietly–hot breath scalding her ear. “The fools willna give up even though they’re more than matched by Keith steel. Stay here. Stay down and dinna move.”

His weight lifted from her. His footsteps squished away stealthily. A surprised groan met her ears. She looked up to see the honey-blond warrior standing to one side of the boulder with his fist pulled back, apparently ready and willing to deal a second blow to a doubled over gray-haired man wearing the same dark wool as her attacker.

“Go home with ye, Harry,” the warrior growled. “Ye canna win this, and too much blood has already been spilt.”

A younger, squat man in dark-gray wool tiptoed around the other side of the boulder. She opened her mouth to warn the warrior, but he cocked his head toward the sound and quickly positioned himself so he could keep both opponents in view.

“Back with ye, Robbie,” he said, holding his sword ready. “I didna rise this morning with a particular desire to slay Gunn. But I will if ye dinna go. Now.”

Robbie’s lip curled as he spotted the dead man on the ground and then took in her prone, mud-covered form. “Ye killed Mack,” he accused. “And over a filthy trollop, no less. You’ll die for that, Big Darcy.” He lunged at the honey-blond warrior–Darcy–and they clashed swords. The older man pulled his dirk and advanced toward Darcy’s back.

“Look out!” she yelled.

Darcy easily dodged Robbie’s attack and stabbed him through the belly with his sword. At the same time, he pulled a dirk from the sheath on his left hip and jabbed it backward, only sparing a wide-eyed glance over his shoulder for aim. The dirk sliced the gray-haired man in the arm. The man danced back with a grimace.

“Damn you, Robbie,” Darcy said to the younger man, who crumpled to the ground clutching his wound. “Why did ye attack me?” When the wounded man tried to stand, Darcy said, “Dinna make me finish this. I dinna want your blood on my hands.”

“’Tis already finished,” the gray-haired man said, advancing again. “Ye’ve killed my only son, ye bloody Keith. Ye’ve killed him!”

“I didna ask the Gunn to trespass this day!” Darcy said. “Take Robbie home now and mayhap he’ll live. Stay here and fight me and you’ll both die. ’Tis not worth it, Harry.”

Harry didn’t listen. He lunged at Darcy, a suicide move, judging by the watery sheen in the older man’s eyes. Her stomach lurched at the needless violence, the wasted lives. She tried telling herself the barbaric fantasy wasn’t real, but the desperate wish was wearing thin.

Both gray-kilted men lay dead within seconds. Darcy turned back to her with wild eyes and a hard frown. “’Tis no place for a lass. Come with me. I’ll see ye to safety.” He took off around the hill with a long stride.

Was he serious? He expected her to follow him? After what she’d just witnessed? Knowing what he was capable of?

Decisive violence. Swift decimation.

Mercy. Honor. Compassion.

She was done with this hallucination. It was too real. Too upsetting.

She tried clicking her heels together three times as she lay face down in the mud. “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”

Cold wetness still seeped past the fabric of her bra. Sharp pebbles at the bottom of the puddle dented her knees. Damn her observant senses and their insistence that she wasn’t hallucinating.

The shouts of more men drew closer as Darcy jogged away from her. Hallucination or not, if it was between men in gray kilts who thought “the English” were “only good for one thing” and a man in muted brown who seemed to value her safety and to be morally opposed to killing even if he happened to be very efficient at it, she’d take her chances with the brown.

She scrambled out of the mud. Her loafers squished through the marshy grass as she trudged after her warrior.

* * * *

Darcy let out a relieved sigh when he heard the wee bonny lass following him. He’d have carried the bedraggled, half-dressed thing, but she’d asked that he not touch her, not even to inspect the wounds he’d thought the Gunn had cut into her creamy flesh. Her fearful request reminded him why he’d stopped bothering with dalliances long ago. So long as he didn’t try, he need not fear the stomach-curdling flush of rejection.

His memory dredged up the echo of Anya’s laughter. ’Twas the first and last time he’d attempted to cozy up with a member of the fairer sex. He’d been eighteen. Against his better judgment, he’d finally given in to Anya’s persistent advances. He’d permitted her to lead him to the stables one evening, his cock thrilling at the forbidden mysteries that awaited him while his mind insisted ’twas folly to lie with someone he didn’t intend to wed. But Anya’s searching lips and roving hands had silenced the thinking part of him.

He’d shed his plaid with eager, shaking hands.

She’d gasped. “I canna take that! No lass could.” Seeing his confusion, she’d laughed loud as a braying ass. “Oh, poor Darcy.” She pushed out her lower lip. “Ye didna ken, did you? Ye’re made all wrong for a woman. A mare, maybe, but no’ a woman.”

The next day, his kinsmen had begun calling him Big Darcy, and ’twas how he was distinguished to this day, six years later. He’d thought ’twas merely Anya’s gossip that had made all the other lasses cast him sidelong glances and whisper behind their hands, leaving him no single soul within his clan he might offer marriage to. But this stranger had taken one look at him and had seemed to ken. That one fearful request that he not touch her had ripped open the scars of wounds he’d thought long healed.

Och, what was he doing letting memory distract him? He had a woman to get to safety and Gunn to chase off Keith land before any more blood was spilt. Content to hear her light steps not far behind, he dashed into the wood to find the cart where Archie always tended the wounded. She would be safe there. Then he could forget about her odd yet stimulating speech and her frightened, lovely face.

The sound of stumbling made him spin around. She had tripped on a root and was on her hands and knees in the leaves. A muffled cry came from behind her curtain of silvery blond hair.

He ran to her. Rejection be damned, he wasn’t about to let a lass weep on the ground if he had strength to carry her. And what man worth his salt wouldn’t have the strength to carry such a delicate thing? He sheathed his sword and lifted her slight weight.

Och, did she have to feel so warm and soft against his chest? Did the sight of Gunn blood on her woolen have to tug at him so? Damn his contrary cock for stirring at the feel of her petite, lushly curved body so close to his. Gritting his teeth, he practically ran for Archie’s cart.

He made the mistake of glancing down at her face. Smooth and fair as a polished opal, it would have been glorious as the sun itself if it hadn’t been so worrit and smudged with mud. Mud he’d pushed her into in his haste to protect her from the Gunn. No tears marred her cheeks, but her trembling lower lip, full as a rose bursting to bloom, hinted that she was trying not to weep.

Was it so awful for her to be this near to him? He quickened his pace so he could relieve her of his unwelcome touch as soon as possible.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice soft and uniquely accented with a delicate drawl.

He nodded tightly. “Dinna fash. Soon, now, and I shall leave ye be.”

Her brow wrinkled. “Where are you taking me?”

“To Archie. He tends the wounded well away from the fighting.”

“I told you, I’m not wounded.”

Though he was desperate to believe somat other than his proximity was fashing her so, he’d much rather she be disgusted with his oafish size than wounded. Relief at her insistence softened him. “Aye, well, be that as it may, ’tis still the safest place for a lass during a skirmish. Archie’ll look after you and see ye to the laird upon our return to Ackergill.”

The lass took a mighty fortifying sniff. “You mean the laird of your clan? What clan are you with? Is Ackergill the laird’s home? Is it a castle? Oh, God, I’m really in Scotland, aren’t I? What year is it?”

“Are ye certain ye arena wounded?” he asked. “Did the Gunn knock you in the head? Those are peculiar questions.”

“I suppose they are,” she said. “Would you answer them anyway? Please?”

He couldn’t refuse her, daft as it was not to ken the year or whose land she was on. “’Tis the year of our Lord 1517. Springtime, if ye lust to ken. I am Darcy Marek MacFirthen Keith. And aye, ye’re in the Highlands.”

Her eyes closed. Thick black lashes that defied her pale hair and brows fanned over her cheeks. A single sob escaped her soft lips. She whispered, “I just want to go home. Please, I just want to wake up.”

“Ye’re awake as they come,” He told her. She must have bumped her head even if she didn’t admit it. “But if there’s aught I can do to wake ye more, I shall. Is it maybe a strong tea ye need?”

The lass met his gaze with the sad emerald pools of her eyes. He nearly stumbled, forgetting to pick up his feet.

“I can’t have caffeine,” she said with a sniff. “I’ve already had a coffee today, and more than one a day isn’t good for the baby.”

More of her gibberish.
Caffeine? Coffee? Baby?
Did she mean a bairn? She didn’t have a bairn with her, unless–a horrible thought struck him.

“Did the Gunn take your bairn?”

The lass opened her mouth, then closed it as if she didn’t ken how to respond. At last, she said, “If you mean the man with the beard, ‘the Gunn’ didn’t take anything from me, thank you very much. I meant caffeine isn’t good for the baby–the child I’m carrying.” She shifted in his arms to lay a delicate hand on her belly.

Oh,
carrying.
She was with child. Christ, he could see the bulge now that he looked properly. He’d been so focused on the fighting that he’d missed what was right in front of him, an unprotected, pregnant lass–woman, he corrected. And married she must be, if with child.

Och, and he’d pushed her in the mud and lain atop her to hide her lightly-colored woolen from the approaching Gunn. What if he’d hurt her or the bairn? He’d owe her husband compensation if so. And he’d never forgive himself.

Size might have its advantages when it came to fighting, but those few boons fell far short of making up for the problems it caused. Being the biggest and the strongest had gotten him into far more trouble than it had gotten him out of. Swallowing his regret for how careless he’d been with her, he sought to determine whom she belonged to, whom, saints forbid, he might owe.

“Whose wife are ye, then? Not a Gunn’s or I wouldna have had to rescue you from one.”

“I’m not married,” the lass said. “And thank you for the rescuing, by the way. I can’t believe I dropped the dirk. Stupid.” She shook her head.

His heart warmed at her thanks. He didn’t hear many kind words from the lasses and would take what he could get, even from a dishonored woman who had caught a bairn out wedlock. Oddly, he didn’t think poorly of her. Whether it was her worried brow, her guileless, soft mouth, or her vulnerable size, he had not the heart to condemn her.

He didn’t even mind so much that she found him distasteful for his size, although talking with her now, she didn’t seem overly upset to be in his arms. He endeavored to keep her talking, keep her distracted from her disgust.

“Ye never answered my first question,” he said. “Who are you? And where are ye from if ye’re no’ English?”

“Ugh. I don’t know. Is there an answer that won’t get me burned at the stake or locked up in a ward for the hopelessly insane?”

Like most things out of her mouth, that had been a peculiar answer. “Ye could try the truth,” he offered, slowing his pace since he heard Archie’s voice not far off.

“No,” she said flatly. “I couldn’t. At least not the whole truth. How about we just go with my name, Melanie, and with the honest fact that I’m a long way from home and I have no idea how to get back.” Her green eyes pierced his. “I’m afraid you might be stuck with me, Darcy Keith.”

Chapter 3

He’d pushed her into a bush, shoved her in the mud, squished her with his excessively-muscled body and trudged off into the woods with those tree-trunk legs of his, leaving her to jog after him in bloody, mud-caked, nettle-riddled clothes, and all it took for her to forgive him was seeing that vulnerable look in his warm brown eyes. That and the fact she could feel those tiny flutters of movement deep in her womb that meant her baby was coping admirably with the abuse her body had taken in the last half hour.

It was almost tempting to feel relief.

But true relief would only come once she figured out how to get home. She didn’t have much in Charleston, but what she had she’d worked hard for and was darned proud of: a few close friends, a small but neat apartment, a job that made up in intellectual stimulation what it lacked in pay, a routine. Her mom and dad were just a five-hour drive away in Atlanta.