Warrior and the Wanderer (29 page)

She landed with a bone-jarring thud on the bare wood floor. Lachlan grabbed her by the throat lifting her up. She clawed at his hand clamped perilously about her neck. He dropped her to the bed. In a blink he was upon her, one hand holding her by the roots of her hair the other roughly pushing up her gown.

“NO!” she screamed.

“Oh, aye, wife,” he hissed. “I shall make ye mine.”

He stabbed a finger inside her. She struggled. Tried to push him out with her hands, but he pulled her hair harder, as he cruelly explored her. The pain quickly bloomed from between her legs and to her entire body.

“Ye do with your finger what your willie cannae!” she snarled.

He released her hair and slapped her hard. Blood immediately pooled on her tongue. Then he was off of her, wiping his hand on the hem of her gown.

“Just as I suspected,” he breathed. “Ye’ve been plucked.”

Laying there, trying to grasp a shred of dignity, Bess looked up at him. Unlike Ian, Lachlan would not have believed that she lost her maidenhead long ago racing her mount across the glens and bens. He didn’t deserve that piece of truth. She could not help the smile that formed on her face.

Lachlan’s sudden look of confusion made her smile wider.

“Aye,” she said. “I am no’ yer wife in body either. Believe that, ye limp sausage.”

Lachlan stood over her, chest rising and falling beneath his dark plaid. He drew in a deep breath. “Who is the bastard?”

Bess would have been proud to tell him, to let him know that one of his own, a MacLean from five centuries hence had made love to her. She would have told him everything, confused him to madness, were it not for the sudden, beautifully odd song that broke into her wee chamber. The beautiful voice was unmistakable.

“
Oh, Danny Boy the pipes, the pipes are calling.

From glen to glen and down the winding road….
”

Lachlan rushed to the window.

Bess slipped quickly from the bed and rushed for the chamber door. Then she heard something that made her entire body turn to ice.

“The bard!” Lachlan exclaimed. “He has come to me!”

* * * *

Ian stood at the foot of a castle he had seen once before in a very long time yet to come.

“Duart Castle,” he said. “The seat of Clan MacLean.”

He had been an honored guest there once. The chief of the clan had invited him, and Ian’s manager had thought it would be good public relations to place Ian beside Scottish nobility.

It had been one of a series of many drunken weekends where Ian had taken advantage of those who temporarily hitched their star to his super nova. He recalled being shown around the castle. He did not recall hearing about any chief named Lachlan MacLean who tried to drown his wife. They may have told him about it, he just could not recall. An honored guest should not have to bear a history lesson.

“Honored guest,” he snorted. “Today I am a bloody invader.”

He stood tall on the rocky ground, his boots planted as firm as his stare on the portcullis. He wore Bess’s claymore on his back. He wore the plaid fashioned into a kilt, and the puffy sixteenth century shirt. He had left his jeans somewhere across the firth, back in the mist with Alasdair, about fifty Highland warriors and twice as many royal soldiers.

Against the wishes of Bess’s gruff champion, Ian had left alone in a small fisherman’s boat for the Isle of Mull and Duart Castle. He told Alasdair to follow him with all of his army riding as many of those little fishing boats from Oban they could find. If they could find a way to bring the horses over, even better.

Alasdair had stared at Ian in disbelief.

“Trust me,” Ian told him. “In the morning, I’ll bring Bess to lead you. Mull will be yours before the day is over.”

Alasdair growled, but grudgingly agreed. He seemed to like the “shock and awe” battle strategy Ian had explained to him based it entirely on a movie he had seen once about the D-Day invasion. He left the details up to Alasdair.

Ian stood here waiting to face the only man who placed fear in the strongest woman he had ever known.

The portcullis slid up, clanking and scraping until it disappeared into Duart’s stone gate. Ian took in a deep breath and stood steady, waiting. He did not take up the sword hidden under the plaid draped across his back. What the hell would he do with it if he did? Probably accidentally kill himself. He was returning the weapon to Bess.

Over a dozen large, grime-covered Highland men skulked out from under the gate. None of them was the dread Lachlan MacLean. They looked too stupid, smelled bad, and none of them looked like Bess’s type unless her type was grungy kilt-wearing hobo.

“I demand to see your chief!” Ian shouted.

The men stopped and, hands on nasty plaid-covered hips, stared at him. Ian bested most of them in height by a good twelve inches. He blinked away the stench radiating off of the tartan welcoming committee.

“Well?” he asked. “
Sprechen sie
English?”

The men looked dumbly at each other. One of them nodded toward Ian and grunted out, “
Mer.
”

Ian shook his head. He knew that word too.

“I’m no madman, just a man on a mission to see your chief. Tell him Ian MacLean, bard to royalty, is here.”

Saying his name didn’t impress any of the slack-jawed bastards. But it did summon forth the one person he came to confront.

“One of my own so boldly comes to me with strange song and demands?”

The voice was low, confident, and hidden behind the men.

“Stand down!”

Ian waited, held his breath to face the menace of the Highlands, the man who could heartlessly kill Bess’s brother and then try to kill her slowly, one wave at a time.

The wall of stinking men in plaid parted.

Ian let out his breath and smiled.

Lachlan MacLean stepped forward and looked up at Ian. From under a dark flop of hair, pale green eyes scanned Ian up and down. His lips held a perpetual sneer and a thin scar that ran along one side of that little culvert under the middle of his nose. His body, under a crisp dark plaid, was slight. There was no bulk to him or height. He looked like one of those wee, arrogant snots on the cover of teen magazines, young men hungry for success with the good looks that made tween girls scream and giggle.

“Ye’re the bard who recently entertained in the royal court?” Lachlan asked.

“Aye. The very same.”

Lachlan did not change his bored expression. “Why have ye come to Duart?”

Ian had practiced in his mind a hundred and more times on the rolling boat ride over to Mull the next words that slipped from his tongue.

He bowed slightly. “I am here to serve m’Lord and m’Lady MacLean. I too am a MacLean,
Ian
MacLean.”

If Bess was still alive Lachlan may deny that there was indeed a Lady MacLean in his gloomy castle.

“I have no’ knowledge of an Ian MacLean,” Lachlan said instead. At least he did not deny there was a Lady MacLean.

“I come from a long distance. I have not been in Scotland for a very long time.”

Let Lachlan take that any way he wished.

Ian bowed again. This time he dipped his body deeper, eyes to the rocky ground. “I am your humble servant and here to praise your greatness in song.” He would puke later.

He stood upright.

Lachlan smiled out of one half of his mouth.

“I need a bard,” he said.

Ian nodded.

“And ye sing a mighty storm, ’tis certain. I’ve no’ heard a voice like yers.”

“That’s what I do,” Ian said. “I sing a mighty storm.”

“I need ye to sing before my army,” Lachlan said standing taller. “When we attack the Campbells of Inverary while bearing the body of their chief on a pallet before we catapult it over their ramparts. Aye, ye will sing our glories before our army and when we return to Duart victorious like Caesar!”

Body of their clan chief?
Ian’s blood froze. He forced his legs to remain firm on the rocky path.

“Come within,” Lachlan said. “We’ll drink to future victories…
mo bràthair
.”

Ian grimly knew that word also. Lachlan had called him “brother”.

Bess’s claymore bounced lightly against Ian’s back. Killing was as common here as was in his time. Ian never thought he would be forced to play that hand here or anywhere. He now knew the definition of crimes of passion as he imagined driving Bess’ claymore into Lachlan’s heart.

* * * *

“Where is Lady MacLean?” Ian asked over the best whisky he had ever tasted in his life. He was now drunk enough to ask.

“’Tis no’ yer concern, bard,” Lachlan said tipping his cup and draining it. “She is where she should be.”

As much as he wanted to demand Bess’s whereabouts, Ian bidded him time. She couldn’t be dead. He prayed he was right. But Lachlan was not offering him any information, just whisky. He would play along until he could search on his own. He was in the castle and that was a good first step in finding her.

Ian looked around the great hall at the crowd of Highlanders all giving him the stink eye over their cups of whisky. He poured himself another cup from the dusty bottle, emptying it. He tossed the bottle over his shoulder. It crashed on the rush-covered floor.

Lachlan stared at him over the rim of his cup then burst into rolling laughter.

“Sing to me,” he said, pouring himself another dram. “Sing that odd song once more, the one about a lad named Sargent Pepper.”

Ian shook his head. The room began to spin. He closed his eyes. “I’m too bloody drunk to sing anymore.”

“Aye, well, ye’ve entertained me enough tonight. Best I retire. Tomorrow ’twill be a long one especially for those Campbell bastards in Inverary.”

His clansmen roared in approval.

Lachlan rose from the table. “Sleep where ye will, Bard. Just no’ in my bed.”

Ian watched the bastard stroll to the small opening where several Highlanders stood. They followed their lord and master up a dark winding stair, disappearing from the great hall.

Some of the men in the great hall dispersed while others continued to imbibe more of the tasty whisky. They huddled into drunken conversations, their backs toward Ian, giving him a chance to slip unnoticed from the great hall and into the first doorway he found. A narrow stair wound down into darkness. He would begin his search for Bess down there.

He reached behind his back, under the plaid, and unsheathed the claymore in one motion. Anger was a mushroom cloud blooming in his soul. Bess was either a prisoner here or gone forever. Lachlan had not revealed which. Ian felt he would find out in the bowels of this castle, which might hold a gaol, or, he shuddered, a morgue.

He used one hand to tear away a strip of moldering tapestry from the wall. He wrapped it around the tip of the sword, tucking in the end and plunged the fabric into a stumpy candle on the wall at the top of the stair.

Makeshift torch in hand, Ian climbed down the narrow stair his broad shoulders brushing the walls, the increasingly cool air slipping under his kilt. At the bottom of the stair he took a step into a low-ceiling chamber. The ceiling was curved, like a catacomb. He had to bend his head down a bit to walk though the room. Rough linen sacks of what he thought might be grain lined one side of the long, narrow room. The unmistakable scent of fermented whisky stung his nose. He had found a distillery instead of a gaol.

He turned back to the stair. Several shadows lay directly ahead, only a few paces beyond the torchlight. They suddenly moved.

Ian’s breath caught in his throat. He gripped the handle of the great Highland sword tighter and waved the claymore, its fiery tip slicing through the dank air. The shadows surged toward him forcing him back into the chamber, the curved ceiling was lower there, and he bashed the top of his head hard against the ceiling. Damn his disproportionate height in this Medieval Hellhole!

He tried to recover quickly, when something hard, sharp, and very cold smashed into his wrist. He dropped the claymore, the firelight briefly illuminating the sneering faces of Lachlan’s warriors. One of them sliced his blade across Ian’s body, into the tunic, and shallowly into his flesh. The whisky in his system dulled any pain that was sure to come.

“Bloody bastard!” Ian snarled.

He lunged forward ready to beat the life out of anyone else who got in his way of finding Bess.

Another blow struck him. This one solidly to the back of his head.

A million stars exploded before him as he fell hard to the dank stone floor.

He took a quick breath, banished the stars from his sight, and scrambled back up to his feet. For his trouble he received another blow, and then another. He didn’t know how many of Lachlan’s beasts leapt upon him, beating him without mercy.

Ian’s world dimmed rapidly. His body was no longer able to do as he commanded. He was forced to his back, arms and legs pinned to the cold floor. Oddly grateful for the whisky in his system that prevented the pain from killing him outright, he knew it could not last, especially when one of Lachlan’s own planted the sole of his crude boot hard between Ian’s legs and held it there. Another bastard pressed the tip of his sword into the side of Ian’s neck. No one moved.