A Highlander Never Surrenders (5 page)

Claire gave him a cheeky smile and blinked innocently into his gaze. “Which is precisely why you will be dead when I leave.”

Laugh lines crinkled at the outer corners of his eyes as he drew back. But the amusement in his expression was appreciative, not mocking. Claire did not know what to make of it. Men usually took offense at her threats. Even if they did not believe she could carry them out until it was too late, they hated being challenged by a woman. This one was arrogant indeed.

“Why didn’t you halt your horse sooner?”

Claire turned to toss a scowl at Robert Campbell, still seated upon his mount. He regarded her with large, disarmingly innocent eyes before he came to some conclusion that did not please him.

“We only sought to protect you, my lady.”

“I do not—” Her charge was cut short by a dagger whistling past his nose, and by Grant lifting her off her feet and tossing her behind his back.

Gripping her hilt in both hands, Claire glared at his shoulders, which blocked her view, then stepped around him to stand at his side. He cut her a hasty side-glance, but spared her no more than that as he dragged his claymore from its sheath. Together, they set their eyes on the small group of men stepping out from behind the surrounding trees.

“Thieves,” Claire muttered, noting their tattered garments and the glint of appreciation in their eyes, aimed at the horses.

“About two and twenty,” the commander agreed.

“Twenty,” Claire corrected, noting with a certain amount of appreciation his fine battle stance.

“Nae, lass, there are two behind us.”

Claire glanced over her shoulder to find he was correct.

“Hand over them beasts and there won’t be any killin’,” one of the pack called out while he advanced.

Bracing her legs, Claire watched the miscreant’s every movement over the edge of her blade. She’d had just about enough for one day. She refused to allow a few parasites to postpone her task another moment. “Take the beasts,” she replied. “The horses are mine.”

The soft chuckle from the unwanted companion at her side drew her glance to him. Graham Grant believed her confidence foolish, her threats meager.

Every man’s error.

She proved it an instant later when two thieves lunged at her, their swords aloft, their legs swift. Bending her knees, she swept her blade across one man’s belly, then brought it back in a flashing arc beneath the second man’s chin. He remained upright for a grisly moment while the rest of his comrades attacked. Then he fell backward, blood spurting from his neck.

Claire did not pause to see if her champions needed aid, but blocked a crushing blow over her head, then another slice to her legs. Three clean swipes of her sword shredded her assailant’s dirty tunic, and his chest beneath. Another thief, about to raise his weapon to her, took off running instead.

With no one to fight at the moment, she spun around—and looked up into a slanted grin that made her arms feel heavy and her head feel light. Her body went alarmingly soft. There had been but one man in her life who smiled at her the way this Highlander did, with appreciation and respect for her skill, rather than disdain. She offered Graham a slight nod, and then watched, silently appraising the strength and speed of his arm as he smashed his fist into the last remaining thief’s face.

Dismounting, Campbell came to stand at his friend’s side and tossed the unconscious outlaw at their feet a disheartened glance. “He went down quickly.”

Graham agreed and patted his back. “We’ll practice more, Rob.”

“Practice what?” Claire asked, sheathing her sword.

“Fighting with fi—”

“Ehm,” Campbell interrupted, looking as if he’d just swallowed a pebble. “That is of no importance.”

Claire smiled at his sudden unease, and at the cuts and bruises marring his handsome face. It was obvious the poor man did not know how to fight. Pity she’d have no time to teach him, since his companion had clearly failed at the task.

“You fought extremely well.” The earl’s compliment caught her a bit off guard, but before she could thank him, he spoke again and her smile faded. “You said your brother taught you?”

“That’s correct,” Claire replied, meeting his scrutinizing gaze with a stoic one of her own. He might not be a warrior, this one, but he was sharper than she had first credited him with being.

“May I ask the name of such a competent warrior?” he inquired, as innocently as one might ask about the weather.

“You may not,” Claire answered, just as politely. “He is dead and I prefer not to speak of him further.”

His eyes on her softened. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

She nodded and began to turn away, ready to leave, when the Highlander stepped into her path. “Tell us yer name then.”

She thought about refusing his request. She could not tell him who she was and expect to leave with her wrists unbound. Worse, they would know Anne was not a simple servant, but the sister of the most wanted rebels in Scotland. Even if Grant had no quarrel with the royal family, the Campbells certainly did. She might be able to fight them both off and escape, but the moment they arrived in Edinburgh, the earl would alert Monck to her intention to rescue the king’s cousin.

Still, even while her logic screamed to give a false name as she had done with Lambert’s men earlier, her mouth betrayed her when she looked up into the Highlander’s twinkling emerald gaze.

“My name is Claire.”

“Claire,” he intoned in the softest of whispers, as if he’d never heard a more profound word. Reaching for her hand, he slid his fingers beneath hers and brought them to his lips. “We are at yer mercy.”

Claire pulled her hand away from the warmth of his breath and fought the titillating tremor rushing through her muscles. Damn the man, but he hadn’t stated an untruth when he claimed to be wicked. He was a rogue warrior, the embodiment of pure male temptation. The plump pout of his mouth and his slow sultry smile warned of pleasures no gentle lady should ever ponder.

But Claire Stuart was not gentle, and most who knew her did not consider her a lady. That had to be why she could ponder naught at the moment but how he might taste if she stroked her tongue over those lips.

“My horse needs water,” she said, stepping away from him and reaching for her reins. What the hell was she thinking? She was used to men trying to win her favor with lusty smiles and pretty words. This man was no different from the others she’d been rejecting since she was four and ten. She refused to give his mouth, or any other part of him, another thought. “Thank me swiftly for fighting with you rather than against you, and let me be on my way,” she said over her shoulder.

She gritted her teeth and closed her eyes in frustration when she heard the two men pick up their pace to follow after her. She had to save Anne and she couldn’t do it with General Monck’s men on her tail. Satan’s balls, they were leaving her with no other choice.

She was going to have to kill them.

Chapter Five

. . . Be wary of the fox’s snare.

Graham would have enjoyed walking at her side where he could enjoy the indignant tilt of her chin, the beguiling curve of her jaw. The thought of tracing his lips, his teeth over the creamy allure of her throat made his body tighten. But hell, keeping his stallion a slow pace behind her while he enjoyed the view was satisfying enough. He took his leisure sizing up the plump, perfect roundness of her buttocks, tantalizingly caressed by her soft woolen trews. Her manly attire only accentuated the maddening sway of her hips, the feminine grace of her long legs.

An elbow in his ribs snapped his attention to the man beside him.

“Do you know who she is?”

“If I have my way, she will be my bedmate fer the next sennight.”

Robert looked up as if beseeching the heavens to anoint him with some great gift. He leaned in closer to Graham and whispered. “Nae, she’s Claire Stuart. Connor Stuart’s sister! The king’s cousin!” He darted his glance toward her to ensure she hadn’t heard his enthusiastic discovery, then continued in a hushed tone. “Their parents were killed a year after Charles II was banished. John Stuart, I’m told, refused to pledge his loyalty to Cromwell and was summoned to London to meet with Parliament. He and his wife never returned.”

“Stuart was foolish to trust the English,” Graham murmured, sweeping his gaze over the lass a few paces away. Damnation, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. “But what does any of this have to do with her?”

“Stuart and his wife were survived by their three children, Connor, Claire, and Anne.”

Now Graham turned to him, his brows knit with the memory of her words to them earlier. “Her sister made everyone at the keep call her Guinevere. She refused to answer to Anne for a full year.”

Robert nodded. “Monck must have taken Anne to force Connor to come to him.”

“But Connor’s dead.”

“So says she,” Robert pointed out with another quick look aimed in her direction. “There is a price on Connor’s head, paid for by what she is wont to call me, Roundheads. Should her true identity be discovered, what better way to end the search for her brother than by claiming him dead?”

Graham mulled it over in his mind as he stepped over a fallen branch in his path. “What you say cannot be true.” He turned to Robert again. “Connor Stuart has spent the last eight years fighting the English army. Whether ye agree with his position or not, whether ye believe his efforts have been foolish or valiant, he was no coward.”

Robert paused, and setting his eyes to the woman ahead, the pleasure of his discovery faded from his features. “He would not have sent his sister to do his work.” He spoke Graham’s thoughts aloud. “She speaks the truth then. Connor Stuart is dead.”

“ ’Twould seem so,” Graham agreed, then lowered his voice. “Would Monck have sent others to find Stuart when ye had no success, and mayhap ’twas them who killed him?”

“Nae, Monck wanted Stuart alive.”

So, the general might not know Connor Stuart was dead, Graham concluded as they came upon a fern-filled glade with a thin stream running through it, its current dappled by sunlight streaming through the sparse canopy above. At the stream’s mossy edge, Claire draped the reins over her saddle and smoothed her palm down her steed’s long neck. Graham watched the delicacy of her movements, the tenderness in her touch as she comforted the heaving beast. She tilted her face upward and a splash of sunshine graced her softly curving mouth. Like a blissful angel, she basked for the space of six of Graham’s stalled breaths, then she angled her head and looked at him. No angel there. Graham’s mouth hooked into a grin. ’Twas the flash in her eyes that revealed her true nature, and intentions.

“Say naught of her identity, Rob,” Graham said, under his breath. “She is earnest in her quest and we are already a hindrance to it.”

The scalding venom of her glare would have given another man cause for concern, but the thought of going to swords with her titillated Graham’s imagination. He wanted her in every way possible, in his bed, in the woods, upon his horse. He wanted to feel her lithe body beneath him, resisting him like a wild mare until her ragged sighs gave him leave to claim her.

“Ye look ragged and dusty,” he said, coming up to stand beside her. The fire in her blue eyes flashed. He smiled. “Why d’ye not slip out of those garments and wash up?”

“Is that your best attempt to see me unclothed?” she queried with a sudden—and adorable, to Graham’s way of thinking—quirk of her brow. “Really, rogue, you disappoint me. Your skills of seduction are as weak as your friend’s fighting arm.”

Instantly, Robert sputtered his defense, but Claire’s gaze was fixed on Graham’s, and on the sun-kissed halo of curls tumbling about his face when he tugged off his cap. He unclasped the plaid at his shoulder. The heavy wool slid down his chest, stopping at the belt above his hips. She watched as he pulled his tunic over his head, exposing a tight, rippled belly and sleek, chiseled chest. She lifted her gaze from the small brown nipples that suddenly made her mouth moisten, and beheld his lecherous dimple as he reached for his belt. He turned his back on her as the wool crumpled at his feet, giving her a splendid view of his backside as he stalked toward the water’s edge, kicking off his boots.

Claire blushed three shades of scarlet and spun around, ready to give Campbell her attention and douse the heat searing her blood. It was too late. The Roundhead had stalked to one of the trees surrounding the glade and had already closed his eyes for a nap.

Claire had seen naked men before when she’d meandered into Ravenglade’s gatehouse while the men were changing for practice. None of those bodies had affected her. She was there to practice with them, and after she demonstrated her skill and determination by almost severing a few arms, most of the men accepted her in their presence. But this lout undressed for her pleasure, slowly, sensually. He challenged her mocking assessment of his ability to seduce her with a body crafted for war. Even Connor’s men, tireless as they’d been in their efforts to win her, had never been so bold.

Hearing the splashing behind her, she refused to look anywhere but at the treetops. The man was daft for bathing in the middle of autumn! It was true then, the men of the north were less affected by the cold. When the Highlander’s footsteps behind her alerted her to his exit from the stream, she closed her eyes. Certainly, the scoundrel lacked no confidence in his appearance. How many weak-kneed wenches had he seduced thus? Cocky bastard, she thought, gritting her teeth.