Just in Time for a Highlander (10 page)

But claiming the spoils of war required a deeper trespass.

He dropped to his knees as well and pushed her firmly onto the grass. Then he climbed on her, his cock as hard as his blade and just as intent on penetration.

“I have a knife,” she said, reminding him of the steel in her hand. “And I will use it, I warn you.”

“’Twill be the only way to stop me.”

With a low growl, he plunged into her, driven by a need so ancient it seemed to come from outside him.

In the far reaches of his consciousness, he took remote note she was not a virgin, a fact which only fueled his need. In a much more immediate part of his mind, he was aware of her blade, pointed at his carotid, its length sparking in the sunlight. If she were to kill him now, in this moment, it would be deserved. However, he would die unrepentant.

She was slick, ready, responding roughly to his movement.

He licked the salt of her skin and brought the taste back to her mouth. Focused only on his need, he hammered her, deep as he could go, charging toward a brutal release. His balls, hot and tight, readied their contents.

The chill of a steel point against his rib brought him to a sudden stop.

“Too soon,” she commanded. “And too fast.”

He dared not move. The thrust he longed for would put the blade into his heart.

She shifted her hips and clasped her long legs around his back, tucking her heels under his thighs. With the blade still burning into his flesh, she drew her quim along the length of his cock until the head caught the entrance of the moist hollow between her legs. She mewled, digging her nails into his back, and repeated the movement, again and again, until he thought he’d die.

“If you’re going to kill me, do it now. I cannot even breathe.”

The corner of her mouth rose. She withdrew the blade and brought the arm around his back.

He dropped into her, relieved. The release, once so close, had receded, and he pressed himself furiously into the work of recalling it.

Flush with color, her lips parted like a thirsty bud, and he kissed her, grasping her silky chestnut hair. She had nearly bested him in the fight, and now her throaty sounds and immodest hips threatened to get the better of him here as well.

A fly bit his buttock and he jerked. But it wasn’t a fly. She had positioned the tip of her blade a scant inch or two above his flesh.

He swore but slowed. It was the only way to keep the point from piercing him. Without a word, she had driven him into a rhythm of her own liking. Sweat beaded on his skin as he strained to minimize the force of his thrusts. He was a draft animal, bridled to plow, the prick of her blade like the farmer’s whip.

At last she arched. The knife slipped from her flailing fingers. He drove himself hard into the beautiful, sharp-witted, imperious woman who had mastered him.

With a cry, she arched again, and, obeying an unspoken command that she was not to be encumbered with a child, he wrenched himself free of her body and released his seed with a roar.

But seed or no, she was his, just as he was hers, and he would serve her like this whenever she commanded.

Inebriated with lust and joy, he collapsed beside her. The lilac scent of her hair and satin smoothness of her skin and the deeply satisfying sigh of pleasure she made thrilled him. He shoved Rosston firmly out of his head. With a strong arm, Abby need not marry Rosston. Hell, she needn’t marry anyone. With Duncan beside her—well, perhaps a step or two behind—Abby could handle anything.

*

As the wild flush of pleasure receded from her body, the cold lens of reality returned. She closed her eyes and buried her face in Duncan’s dangerous, warm chest to try to fend it off, but each moment that passed made the fending off harder.

He wrapped his hand around her hair and kissed her. “Tell me, chieftess, what is lesson two?”

Oh, ye foolish, foolish girl. What have ye done?

Having reached the point where the sun’s warmth crosses the line between pleasing and discomfort, Duncan, stirred from his muzzy, relaxed sleep, lifted his arm from where it curled around Abby and rolled to his back to cool off, eyes still closed.

The light dimmed, and Duncan said a grateful thanks to whatever cloud had chosen this moment to sail by.

“Mr. MacHarg?”

Duncan bolted upright and found himself under both the shadow and somewhat nervous observation of Jock Kerr, the steward, on his horse. “We don’t usually find our guests quite so far from the protection of the castle,” he added with a sigh of relief. “I was afraid perhaps you’d been attacked and left for dead.”

Duncan reached for his sword, only to discover it, along with Abby, had disappeared. He glanced around.

“Did you lose something?”

“No. Yes, I suppose.” Duncan found his sark, which he pulled over his head. “Though I was no’ robbed.” Except perhaps of a bit of self-esteem. How had Abby gotten away without him noticing?

“But you’re bleeding.”

Duncan had almost forgotten the wounds, numbed as he’d been by anesthesia of pleasure. “Oh, that. I…fell in the middle of the stream. Cut myself on the rocks.”

“Indeed?” Jock eyed Duncan with something short of credulity. “The cook can dress them for you. The shoulder one, especially, looks quite deep. What brought you to the river here?”

“Er…bathing.”

“Nearly two miles from the castle? Good Saint Margaret, you
are
a modest man.”

His plaid, sporran, and wooden sword were where Duncan had dropped them, but the steel sword was nowhere to be seen. Duncan hopped to his feet and reached for the pile of wool. “I was actually here for the fish—that is, I was looking for a good place to find them,” he said, catching Jock’s quick scan for poles or lines. “The bathing and nap came after.” He doubted there were many in Abby’s time save the feebleminded who spent the shank of the day sleeping, and the man’s mildly piteous look didn’t surprise him.

“And?” Jock said.

“And what? Oh, the fish. Yes. Quite good. Sir Alan will be pleased.”

Jock’s brows rose. “Sir Alan is returning?”

Had he said too much? “Aye. I believe I heard Thursday.”

“That
is
good news. Odd that Lady Kerr didn’t mention it.”

“Oh,” Duncan said, at once attentive. “Did you see her?” He busied himself in the rearrangement of his plaid.

“Aye. We were supposed to be reviewing the old accounts for the canal, ye ken, though she arrived near an hour late, which is not like her. She had a good reason, though.”

“Did she?”

“Said she fell in a pile of horse shite.”

Duncan winced. He opened his sporran and gazed at the twist of orange paper. The herbs smelled like flowers, which made him think of Abby’s hair. Oh God, how wonderful it had been to possess her.

Jock took a long look at the chapel’s crumbling walls. “Lady Kerr said we are to rebuild the roof here—which is how I happened to be out this way. Do you suppose the roof is connected to Sir Alan’s visit?”

This time Duncan knew better than to reply.

“I hate to see her take on any new expense,” Jock added, “though I guess even we can afford a bit of reed and wire,” he said, dismounting.

“Is it that bad?”

The steward shrugged, the same sort of noncommittal and eminently Scottish gesture Duncan’s grand-da used to make when Duncan asked when his father might be expected to visit.
Grand-da!
The thought hit him like a stomach punch. Would he worry when Duncan didn’t arrive? Or would he remember the other times Duncan had canceled a flight home when a critical project at work forced him to rearrange his priorities? Duncan’s cheeks burned with shame at the thoughtlessness.

Jock wandered behind the chapel and squinted at the leaning steeple. “Of course, if it comes to that, I suppose I can pay for the damned roof myself.”

“Is it cash flow or other troubles?” Duncan asked, wrapping the belt around the voluminous fabric. He wished he had access to an ATM. He had enough money in his checking account alone to rebuild the chapel several times over.

“Are you a bookkeeper?” Jock pulled out a small notebook and began entering figures.

“Of a sort. I used to help men with money to invest.” Several thousand of them, actually.

“The canal was Lady Kerr’s father’s dream. It was supposed to ensure the dominance of the Kerrs in the Lowlands. I thought—and still think—the idea is a good one. If you control an improved means to move goods from the west side of Scotland to the east and back again…” He paused. “Well, that’s how it was supposed to be, though it dinna come to pass. Lord Kerr was in tight with Rosston’s father, Colm Kerr, at that point—one of Lord Kerr’s cousins was Colm’s wife—but that was before the families split. They were investing in the canal as a partnership then. But the investments Colm recommended were not exactly sterling choices—at least that is my reading of the account books.”

“Your reading? Did ye not manage the books then?”

“For most things, I did. For the canal, Colm’s steward was the manager.”

Duncan heard the note of hurt in the man’s voice. “And look where it got them.”

Jock sighed. “I know. Yet ’tis no salve to know another man ruined them. Will ye be staying through the visit of Sir Alan?”

“I will be here for a while, it seems. Lady Kerr has asked me to stay. To help where I can.” Not exactly the truth, but as long as they were resorting to salves for one’s self-esteem, he decided he would let Jock believe it.

“Has she?” Jock clearly saw little role for a shirker with few skills, but added with true gladness and only a hint of wonder, “I am glad to hear it.”

“I am to be her strong arm,” Duncan said, “an adviser in all matters of enforcement and conflict.”

“Her strong arm?” The change in Jock’s eyes from pity to respect gave Duncan a rush of satisfaction.

“Oh, aye.” That, at least, wasn’t a lie. Duncan intended to serve Abby in every way she desired and perhaps a few more. Rosston could take his attempt to pressure her into sharing control of the clan and peddle it somewhere else—at least while Duncan was here.

Jock opened his mouth to say something, then seemed to change his mind. “If ye are Lady Kerr’s strong arm, I daresay ye get yourself back to the castle. She has just called a council of war.”

Abby cast her gaze down the length of the long table slowly filling with the senior clansman of each of the seventeen families that made up Clan Kerr as well as the eleven that made up Rosston’s sept. Twenty-eight identical chairs, twenty-eight caped footmen prepared to serve at an instant’s notice. Abby met each set of eyes carefully, just as she’d watched her father do. The tapestries that lined the walls, fading with time, reminded the men of the glory of Clan Kerr, and the swords, glinting in lethal circles on the walls and ceiling, reminded them how that glory had been won.

There was one set of eyes Abby was careful to avoid, though the owner of those eyes was sitting not at the table, but just inside the door at the far end of the room. Undine’s divining was the last thing Abby needed on this disastrous day. She knew well enough she’d been a fool to give in to the heady rush of a sword fight. She’d grown up around warriors. She was as familiar as anyone with the aphrodisiacal powers of battle. She didn’t need Undine’s prying gaze searching for the truth, like some uninvited surgeon digging through her head and heart.

But aphrodisiacs are curious things. Just like the infernal powder that had summoned MacHarg, they couldn’t always be counted on to behave in the way one desired.

What she’d wanted this morning was to strut off from the fight, heady with victory, having forced MacHarg to his knees. What she got instead was his knees between her legs.

Flashes of heat exploded on her cheek and another in her belly.

She’d had men before—a lad who’d called her his wild Scottish rose, a prince in Paris, even a sympathetic English officer once—more out of curiosity than desire. She’d had her curiosity satisfied and even occasionally her body. But nothing had felt like those heated iron arms on her today or smelled like the scent of sea air that seemed to permeate MacHarg’s skin. And nothing, nothing had ever been like the driving hunger with which they seized those moments.

He was a risk in every sense of the word—too smart to be the addle-brained interloper she’d first thought he was and not quite smart enough to be an enemy spy, he begot more questions than he answered.

Of
course, look where your instincts got you this morning.

She had almost welcomed the unhappy news delivered by Nab, who had pelted across the hilly path to intercept her on her way back to the castle. It had focused her mind where it belonged—on her clan, not on the distractions of sword fights and summer swains.

The last clansman bowed and took his seat.

She rubbed a thumb against the inside of her palm, wishing for the reassuring, worn beech of her bow. With her weapon, she was the equal of the men in the room. Without it, she was forced into the position of their superior, a role in which she was far less comfortable.

She spread her hands and placed them on the table.

“A report has reached me,” she said, “of English soldiers amassing at the border.”

The men quieted instantly. Many looked surprised.

Cathal Kerr asked, “Was this the report ye received last night?”

“No.”

Murgo Kerr leaned forward. “Do ye intend to act?”

The eternal conflict between men of war and a woman of a more tempered mind. The question was more than a question. It was the first volley in a familiar blood sport where the clansmen were one team and she another. But this time, she would prevail.

“No, Murgo. I dinna. I intend to do absolutely nothing.”

*

Duncan shoved himself past the guards outside the Great Hall door, hardly troubling himself to wrestle his arms from their grasp, though even he had to admit the trouble would have been quick in coming had not a clansman at Abby’s table jumped to his feet at the same instant and shouted, “Have you lost your mind, woman?”

Stunned into stillness, the guards stared, mouths agape, and Duncan, instantly ready to launch the offending clansman into a different zip code, made it over the threshold before a cool touch on his knee brought him to a full stop.

“This is her battle,” whispered Undine, who was sitting by the door.

He didn’t know how she’d stopped him. He’d felt only the lightest touch.

“I’m her strong arm,” he said.

“Not yet, MacHarg. Not yet.”

Abby’s shoulders trembled as she regarded the offending clansman, and the hard, blue ice in her eyes made it clear the tremble’s origin was fury not embarrassment.

“Sit
down
, Murgo,” she commanded.

Take
care, Abby
, Duncan thought, his heart pained to see her tested like this.
Anger
can
be
as
debilitating
to
a
leader
as
timidity.

Her fiery stare didn’t waver, and Duncan swore she grew half a foot.

One by one, the other clansmen, whether out of disagreement with Murgo’s tactic or pure discomfort, dropped their gazes. Not Murgo, though. Duncan would have jumped out of his skin had Abby pointed such a glare at him. After what seemed like an hour, Murgo wilted and dropped into his chair.

Duncan tried to catch Abby’s attention, to signal his readiness to assist, but her eyes flicked past him as if he were a hat rack.
Dammit
. He might not be the world’s finest swordsman, but he’d managed to best her at least, and, in any case, he could take on any man in this room with his fists.

He took a step closer, and the warning in her eyes stopped him.

“I dinna intend to act,” she said, addressing the clansmen, “because I am in possession of information that ye are not. Robby, open the side doors.” She nodded to one of the footmen, who did as she commanded.

In streamed several dozen boys, none more than ten, clearly awed at being invited to enter the esteemed gathering.

The looks on the older clansmen’s faces, however, ranged from confusion to shock.

One of the smallest boys, who looked about four, ran to a nearby man and clutched his legs. “Da!”

Abby said, “I have gathered your youngest sons and grandsons here to witness our council—twenty-eight in all, one boy from each family.”

Some boys climbed onto the laps of their relatives, others stood alongside.

“Welcome, lads,” Abby said warmly. “Let this serve as your first introduction to the workings of the clan.”

Abby, however, was the only adult remotely close to smiling. Duncan felt the back of his neck tingle.

“We were talking about the English army,” she said in the same tone a much-loved teacher would use. “The clan has received a report—well, I did, to be clear—that the army is doing a little sword rattling over the border to scare us. However, I have a source who is very close to the English army and, like I, values peace in the borderlands. He knows some things that no one else knows.”

“A spy!” whispered one obviously thrilled boy, who was immediately shushed by his father.

“That’s correct, Charlie, a spy. This spy has put his life on the line many times to help our clan. His information is sterling. He is paid nothing for his risk. You must never pay a spy. A spy who works for gold can be bought by the highest bidder.”

Charlie nodded, wide-eyed.

“This spy assured me the sword rattling is a mute-show meant to prod our clan into an attack. The army is under strict orders from old Queen Anne not to stir up trouble during the negotiations to unite our countries. I believe the spy, so Clan Kerr will not be mounting an attack—nor will any other clan whose chief I can convince. And yet, someone in this room, someone who is not a clan chief, took it upon himself to decide what this clan should do. Men?”

The men at the table looked at each other, uncertain what response she was asking for. It turned out, however, the men in Abby’s directive were not the men at the table, but the footmen at the perimeter of the room, who each drew a short sword from a sheath on the wall and pointed it directly at the back of the man seated before him.

The men leaped to their feet, tossing boys to the ground, but none had arms to respond.

Abby said, “I should like every man here who is sworn to my leadership to raise his hand now. Lads, you too. No one is too young to make this vow.”

The boys, deciding perhaps this was part of the ceremony, lifted their hands at once. The men’s hands rose more hesitantly, but each did rise. Undine flicked Duncan’s leg with a fingernail, and he lifted his hand, belatedly remembering he, too, was a part of this now.

“One of you, unfortunately, is a liar,” Abby said. “One of you, upon hearing the news of the English army’s sword rattling, decided to take matters into your own hands this morning. You gathered your sons. You went to the border intending to stir up trouble. And you turned back when realized you weren’t prepared for what you saw. I do not blame your sons. What, after all, is a loving child to do when his father commands him? But you…you are spineless and false. Do ye have the courage to admit your treachery?”

The men stared blankly, but the boys were enthralled, save one—a lad of six or seven, who looked up, terrified, into the shifting eyes of his bearded father.

The man squeezed his son’s shoulders, and the boy steeled himself. Duncan didn’t know what was going to happen next, but he knew he wanted Abby to look to him for help. He made his way to where she stood. The fire in her eyes nearly set him ablaze, but he took his place beside her.

“Repeat your oath before God.” Her voice filled the hall. “All of you—if you dare.”

The men repeated words in Gaelic Duncan didn’t recognize. His grand-da had tried to teach him the language, but Duncan had had no interest and knew only the everyday phrases he’d heard his mother and grand-da say. He recognized only two words in the oath:
blood
and
death
.

The bearded man did not move or speak. But at a pause in the oath, when the other men pressed their hands to their hearts, the man closed his eyes for a long instant. Then he opened them and launched himself through the open door, leaving his son behind.

The footmen, stock-still, waited for Abby’s command.

Duncan grabbed her arm. “Choose me,” he said.

She shook her arm free. “Sit down.”

“No.” He hardened himself against her gaze.

“Damn you,” she said, and Duncan knew she’d given in. “Go! Make him repent.”