The Chief (29 page)

“Enough,” he said gruffly, holding her away from him. “You are my wife. You will obey me in this. I do not need to explain my reasons. Nor will you bend me to your will with your body.” His eyes darkened. “As enticing as it might be.”

Christina lurched back as if scalded. Was she doing that? She covered her mouth with her hand, shame washing over her. She was, albeit unknowingly. “I didn't realize…”

He seemed to believe her. He heaved a heavy sigh. “I came to tell you that I'm leaving.”

She gasped. “Leaving? But you've only just returned.”

“I'll be back by Yule.”

Disappointment wrenched inside her. “But that's two weeks.” It would feel like forever. “Where—” She stopped herself, looking into his shuttered gaze.
Don't bother
, she thought, knowing he wouldn't tell her anyway. Instead she said, “But your brother, he's just arrived. I can't believe you didn't tell me you were twins.”

“I didn't think it would matter.” His mouth hardened. “Besides, Torquil is leaving tomorrow.”

Her eyes widened. “But why?”

He gave her a hard look, his eyes unreadable. “I sent him away.”

“Whatever for?”

It was clear he didn't wish to explain. “For abducting his bride and almost causing a war.”

“But they are in love. Anyone can see that. If you'd only meet Meg—”

“I did. Their feelings make no difference.”

“No difference?” What was wrong with him? This was
his brother. His
twin
brother. How could his happiness not matter? “How can you be so cold and unfeeling?”

He is cold
.

Nay. She refused to believe she had imagined what she'd felt before. He might seem like a hard, ruthless warlord on the outside, but there was more to him than that. He was capable of love; she just had to show him how to open his heart.

Her accusation was not without effect. His jaw clenched and the tic pulsed ominously. “Because I have to be. Hundreds of people are counting on me to protect them—to make decisions for the good of the clan. What my brother did could have caused a war that would have killed tens—perhaps dozens—of my people. If that is ‘cold,' so be it.”

Christina twisted her hands, feeling horrible. She'd never thought of it like that. This wasn't how things were supposed to happen. Her surprise had turned into a disaster. “Please, I'm sorry. I was only trying to help. I promise I won't interfere anymore. But don't leave like this.” A tear escaped the corner of her eye. “Can't you just stay the night?”

The intensity of his gaze took her aback. He was waging some kind of battle, though she didn't know what. “I can't,” he said fiercely.

No explanation. No tenderness. Nothing. She gave him a long, searching look, seeking any sign of weakness. It was futile. She dropped her gaze to the floor, misery washing over her. “I see. Until you return, then.”

God keep you safe
.

He took a step toward the door, and then spun around with a crude oath she'd heard from him once before. Before she realized what was happening, he had her in his arms, pressed against the steely shield of his chest, his mouth covering hers in a hard, demanding kiss. A kiss that made her heart pound and stomach flip. A kiss that left her breathless.

A kiss that was over much too soon.

With a groan that was more of a growl, he wrenched away. Their eyes met, and for a moment she caught a glimpse of the tenderness she'd been desperate to see. Then, without another word, he was gone.

“Do you see anything?” Tor asked Lamont, although with his weather-beaten face, beard, and hair thick with ice, and heavy furs draped over his head and shoulders, he was virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the men.

Lamont, or the “Hunter” as MacSorley had dubbed him for his tracking abilities, shook his head, squinting into the heavy mist in the waning hours of daylight. “Nay, captain. Nothing.”

Tor swore, his impatience catching up with him. He was ready for this training exercise to be over. It wasn't just weariness or the brutal conditions; he couldn't shake the unease that had followed him since he left Dunvegan. “Keep looking, he didn't just disappear. He's out there.”

Lachlan MacRuairi was a slippery bastard, giving proof of his skill of getting in and out without being seen. He was the only one who was yet to be found. Even with Lamont's tracking skills, he'd eluded capture for four days—nearly a full day beyond MacKay, the only other man who'd made it past two nights in the frigid, unforgiving shadow of the Black Cuillin. Named for the dark garbbo rock that made up their peaks, the Black Cuillins were the highest mountain range on Skye and were considered some of the most formidable in all of Scotland.

In the winter they could be deadly.

Hell wasn't a pit of fire, Tor knew; it was being cold and wet. Cold that numbed your bones even in the daylight hours. But night—he shivered reflexively—night was pure agony. The cold air penetrated through their heavy furs like icy needles.

Tor knew there was every possibility that MacRuairi was lying somewhere frozen solid, buried under a foot of freshly fallen snow. Last night it had stormed, the thick heavy curtains of white falling in endless waves, leaving the corries at the base of the mountain blanketed in more than a foot of snow, with treacherously deep pockets in some areas. Higher up the mountain the snow depth lessened, due to the narrow ridges and sheer rock faces of the peaks, but there was plenty of ice.

This training exercise was designed for two purposes. Mountains and bad weather were two things the men could count on having to face in the coming days. If they were going to successfully apply their pirate tactics to land, they needed to be able to condition themselves to survive in any conditions. Tor also knew that nothing brought a team together more than shared suffering.

That most of the men had lasted even two days in these harsh surroundings was unusual. The challenge was designed to be nearly impossible: hide anywhere between the three lochs that framed Sgurr an Lagain—“peak of the little hollow,” the highest peak in the range—for seven nights without being found. No small feat given that the barren, rocky terrain provided virtually no cover or shelter. Most of the men he'd brought here before lasted only a few hours—one night at the most. Tor knew all of the caves, and even if you could manage to scavenge enough brush or wood to light a fire, it would be easily spotted.

He'd given the guardsmen an hour's head start and then hunted them down one by one. Each man found was added to the pack of hunters until, as now, only one remained.

Tor gazed at the fearsome warriors who surrounded him, right now a haggard and miserable-looking group. “Fan out,” he ordered. “We'll make our way up to the summit from all directions and flush him out that way.” If MacRuairi was alive, they would find him.

And he was alive. Out there, watching them. Tor could feel it. It was almost as if they were waging a private battle of skills—the hunter and the hunted. Chief to chief. Leader to resentful pupil. Normally, it was a challenge he would relish, but right now he just wanted it done.

He positioned most of the men in rough intervals around the base of the mountain. He, Campbell, MacKay, and Lamont would ascend to the main ridge of the summit from all of the possible approaches.

And so they climbed, methodically scrambling their way up the mountain. Tor had taken the most difficult route from the southeast, requiring a steep climb up a craggy cliffside.

A short while later, he stopped to catch his breath on a narrow scree ridge high on the mountainside. Shielding his eyes with his hand, he scanned the peaks above him shrouded in mist, looking for any sign of movement or an incongruity in the landscape.

Nothing. It was eerily still. All he could see through the fog was shards of black rock laced with thin ribbons of white. After taking a fortifying swig of
uisge-beatha
, he resumed the strenuous climb up the mountain. Moving with the light, sure-footed grace of a mountain lion, nimble and fast, he scaled the treacherous terrain with the ease earned from rigorous training.

Being conditioned, however, did not mean he was impervious to nature's weapons. He could barely feel his fingertips beneath the thick leather gauntlets, or his toes in the leather boots he'd wrapped with fur. The exposed skin of his mouth and cheeks beneath his helm were burned red with cold, his unshaven jaw was heavy with ice, and his
muscles ached with the exertion of four days of climbing up and down these mountains trying to find a ghost.

If it were anyone else, Tor would have put an end to the challenge. But if a man could survive out here it would be the cold-blooded bastard MacRuairi—the devil took care of his own.

But grudgingly—very grudgingly—Tor had to admit that his enemy turned temporary brother-in-arms had impressed him over the past weeks. Lachlan MacRuairi was a skilled and fearless warrior who tackled whatever obstacle Tor threw in his path—and he threw plenty of them—with unwavering determination and grit. MacRuairi epitomized the only code Tor admired: Never give up, never surrender.

But no matter how skilled a warrior or how cooperative he appeared, Tor did not trust him. MacRuairi was like a sleeping snake waiting to strike. He had a mercenary heart; his only loyalty was to himself. He could never fully become part of a team. So why had he agreed to fight for Bruce? Money? Revenge? A death wish, or a complicated plan to go out in a blaze of glory?

Tor could read most men, but MacRuairi was an utterly impenetrable hole of blackness. Maybe that's what bothered him. It was hard to understand your enemy—brother, he reminded himself—when you didn't know what motivated him.

Where the hell was he?

Tor's uncharacteristic impatience did not stem solely from the cold or even from the desire to best MacRuairi, but from the desire to finish the job he'd set out to do so that he could return to Dunvegan. Not to his castle, but to his wife.

Damnation, he missed her. He couldn't stop seeing her face. Even high in the rocky peaks of the mighty Cuillin she haunted him. Maybe it was the very desolation of his surroundings—the harsh, bitter isolation—that made him think of her. She was warmth and light to a man who'd
been living in a barren wasteland for too long. Hell, he was starting to sound like one of those bard's tales she loved.

Reaching the top of the narrow ridge just below the summit, he scanned the mountain again in the fading daylight, catching sight of Campbell opposite him, who'd climbed the “easier” route up the great stone shoot. Tor motioned with hand signals to check the other side of the peak before heading down, making sure there wasn't an opening they'd missed.

He wasn't looking forward to another night on this mountain, but time was running out. It would be dark soon.

Christina would be sitting by the fire with her needlework…

He had to stop this. He couldn't focus. His thoughts kept shifting back to his wife. She had him all twisted up in uncertain knots. He couldn't stop replaying in his mind the scene in the solar with her before he'd left. Her excitement. His initial shock over her learning, and then the fear that made him lash out in anger when he learned she'd read his private correspondence. He couldn't shake the memories of her crestfallen expression and her hurt, tear-filled eyes.

For some reason the accounts were important to her and his reaction had disappointed her—badly. Fear had made him react harshly. He realized it now. Misguided though it might have been, she'd only been trying to help him. She'd been so eager to surprise him, and all he'd been able to think about was how her attempt to help might put her in danger.

Worse, he'd been too damned close to telling her why. And if he'd stayed, he knew he might have done so. Restraint. Resistance. It seemed he had neither when it came to his lovely wife. The spurious good-bye kiss had proved that well enough.

Under his skin? Hell, she was in his blood—his bones—and
he didn't know what to do about it. If he wasn't careful, he was going to turn into just as big of a fool as his brother—acting on emotion, and not on what was best for the clan. What kind of leader would he be to dance to a woman's whims.

It was almost dark by the time he started back down. Not concentrating as he should, he took an ill-placed step, causing his foot to slide out from under him and sending a slab of ice tumbling down the steep hillside below him, setting off a small avalanche of rock and snow. He caught his balance without difficulty but berated himself for the lapse. He'd better focus on what he was doing or he was going to end up dead.

Then he saw it.

At the base of the steep cliff below him, perhaps five hundred feet straight down, nearly buried by the snow, was the carcass of a deer. Not in the corrie as it should be if it had fallen to its death, but on a narrow ridge.

That's how MacRuairi had done it. The mini-avalanche had uncovered his hiding place.

Tor's blood heated with the rush of the hunter who'd finally sighted his prey. With a burst of renewed energy, he made his way swiftly down. There was just enough light to navigate.

Nearing a narrow scree ledge, he slowed his step, landing each footfall with care, all of his senses honed on his surroundings.

He was about halfway along when disaster struck.

The ground gave way beneath his foot. He slipped. His body slammed hard on the rock, face first, and he began to slide over the ledge. He fought to grab onto something, but the snow and rock fell along with him as he careened sharply toward the edge of the cliff.

He was going too fast. Wind roared in his ears. He clawed with his hands and kicked with his feet. Momentum was starting to take him backward into the air when he slammed
into a jagged rock, slowing him down just enough to dig his fingers into a crack in the rock face.

He kicked at the wall, finding nothing for his feet to latch on to. Heart racing, he tried to pull himself up, but it was useless. The sheer wall of rock and ice gave no mercy.

He was dangling by his fingertips at a dead hang, his body battered by the fall and weighed down by the pack and heavy cache of weapons strapped to his back. He dare not let go his grip to attempt to release them, or to reach the rope he had tied to his side—if he moved, he was dead.

Which, unless he found a miracle, was probably how he was going to end up in a few minutes anyway.

His fingers were slipping. The leather gauntlets he wore were as slick as the skin of an eel, providing little traction.

With as little movement as possible, he turned his head in the direction he'd last seen Campbell. He shouted out in the darkness, hearing only the dull echo of his own voice reverberating in his ears.

Hell. He'd always thought he'd die on a battlefield, not dropping off a cliff.

His arms were burning, the weight of his body pulling him down. He gritted his teeth, fighting to hold on. He did not fear death, but neither would he welcome it.

All of a sudden he felt something hit his hand from above. At first he thought it was a rock, but then he realized what it was: a rope.

A disembodied voice called out from above. “Grab it, I'll pull you up.”

MacRuairi. If the situation weren't so dire he would laugh. Lachlan MacRuairi would sooner send him to the devil than save him. “How do I know you won't let the rope go as soon as I grab it?”

For a moment there was only silence. “You don't. But from where I stand, it doesn't look like you have much choice.”

Tor swore. MacRuairi was right. It went against every
instinct, every bone in his body, but he had to trust the black-hearted viper. “Are you ready?” Tor shouted.

“Aye.”

Taking a deep breath, he released one hand and grabbed for the rope.

It held.

Still expecting to be grabbing air, he released the other hand and latched his fingers around the rope. It took about a quarter of an hour, but slowly and with considerable agony, Tor was pulled up the side of the cliff. A few feet from the ridge, MacRuairi tied the rope around the rock that he'd used to lever him up and reached down his hand.

In the darkness, their eyes met. Without hesitating, Tor let go of the lifeline with his right hand and clasped him around the arm and forearm. Seconds later his feet were on solid ground.

He bent over, catching his breath and letting the blood pool back into his arms. His mind was spinning in a thousand different directions. Straightening, he met his rescuer's gaze. Malevolent. Ruthless. With the morals of a snake. More likely to cut his throat than save his neck. They'd faced each other too many times in battle for Tor to doubt that MacRuairi wanted him dead. “Why?” he asked.