Warrior’s Redemption (7 page)

Her eyelids twitched and one corner of her softly pink lips lifted as if in amusement.

By the gods!

He would admit that his brother’s worry for their safety was all too real. Someone had to be responsible for this woman being here. Someone who could yet lurk under cover of the forest. But Patrick was wrong about the woman herself. The beauty in his arms was anything but trouble. She couldn’t be.

He breathed in the scent of her, light and fragrant, like a warm day in spring. Her skin, soft and flawless, brought to mind the petals of a newly unfurled flower.

That was her exactly. A delicate flower.

He turned his head to say as much as Patrick tracked round the circle, when a flash of movement caught his eye. The “delicate flower’s” fist smashed into his jaw before he could draw his next breath.

“What the hell?” she demanded, her eyes sparkling
with her emotion even as her fists flailed at his head and shoulders. “Get your hands off me. Right now! Put me down!”

While he would not harm her, he harbored no illusions as to her intent. The woman packed the punch of a blacksmith.

“Calm yerself, my lady,” he cautioned as he allowed her feet to touch the ground without releasing his hold around her shoulders.

“Calm myself, my ass! Let. Me. Go.” She shoved her weight against him, swinging her fist again as she tried to turn.

Prepared this time, her blow was easily deflected.

“As you will it, my lady.” He lifted his hands into the air to signal his capitulation to her demands even as he stepped back.

Silence reigned in the circle as they waited, her gaze swinging wildly from him to Patrick and back again, her arms held in front of her as if in preparation for attack. Bright red splotches bloomed on her cheeks just before she blinked her eyes several times in an exaggerated manner, lifting her eyebrows as if it were the only way to force her eyelids to open.

“Whoa,” she muttered, bringing one hand to her forehead. “Where am I? Who are . . . ?”

Her words trailed off as her head lolled over and her knees buckled beneath her, her body crumpling down.

“Bollocks!” Malcolm dove forward to catch her before she hit the ground, lifting her once again into his arms.

Behind him, Patrick snorted. “I said it before, did I no? Plain and simple. This one’s trouble.”

Settling onto his mount, his new charge in his arms, Malcolm shook his head in denial.

Not about the trouble part. Though Patrick always claimed that of any woman in his path, he could very well be right about trouble this time. But there was nothing either plain or simple about this woman. And even if she weren’t the trouble his brother claimed, neither was she the delicate flower he’d earlier imagined. In fact, if he were to compare her to any flower at the moment, it would have to be one with thorns.

He rubbed a hand absently over the throb in his jaw.

Sharp, prickly thorns, with a temper to match.

D
ANI AWOKE FROM
the nightmare, acutely aware of the chill in her room.

Damn.

The mind was certainly a powerful thing. That bizarre dream had felt so real, her hand actually hurt as if she had really slammed her fist into someone’s face.

Not that she couldn’t figure out why her subconscious would conjure up a scenario like men on horseback taking her captive. After all, she’d spent her evening fending off that octopus-handed, wannabe cowboy, Clay Carter. So much for the horses and captive part.

She pulled the heavy coverlet up and snuggled down in the big bed, thankful her alarm hadn’t screamed at her yet. Just a few more minutes to savor bits and pieces of the dream. No matter how foolish it might be, a part of her wished some of that dream had been real.

Or maybe it was only the man she’d dreamed up whom she wished had been real.

It took no effort at all to re-create him in her mind’s eye. Ol’ Steely Jaw had been something to look at, all right,
though if she was going to start regularly making up Scottish warriors to dream about, maybe it was time to give up reading so many of those Highland romances.

Or time to go buy some more.

She smiled to herself, thinking once more of the man. How her imagination had managed to create something as wonderful as him when she’d gone to bed thinking about that poop Clay was beyond her.

Wait.

The night before flickered through her mind like a grainy movie. She hadn’t been thinking of Clay when she’d gone to bed. In fact, she couldn’t actually remember going to bed. The last thing she remembered was standing in that Faerie Circle she’d built.

Dani tossed the covers off as she pushed up to sit. The light in the room came not from the streetlamps out in the parking lot but from the glow of burning wood in a fireplace across the room from where she huddled.

A fireplace that hadn’t been there when she’d gone to sleep.

She held her breath, listening for any sound of the big rigs that came and went all through the night. Nothing. No sound at all but the crackling of the wood fire in a fireplace she didn’t have.

This can’t be real.

She denied her surroundings even as she crawled to the side of the bed and pushed away what appeared to be heavy curtains to peer down at the distance to the floor. Swinging her legs over the side,
she dropped, a move she instantly regretted when her feet hit the cold stones.

Who in their right mind had cold freakin’ floors like this, anyway? Even when she was a kid back on the farm they’d had scatter rugs on their old wood floors.

She hugged her arms tight around her middle, realizing as she did that what she was wearing was nothing she’d ever owned. It was a thick, long-sleeved, shapeless shift that just hung from her shoulders, so long it trailed on the floor.

Not that she was going to complain about it right now. It was a good bit warmer than the gauzy summer dress she remembered having on. At least, the last time she remembered anything at all.

This can’t be real.

The room was big. Big enough, anyway, that the corners were swathed in dark. The kind of dark that could easily hide any number of unpleasant surprises for someone with an overactive imagination.

A ledge to the side of the fireplace held an unlit candle, which seemed a prudent item to get her hands on at the moment. A little more light would be welcome. Not that her imagination was overacting or anything.

Keeping her eyes fixed on her destination, she willed herself to take that first step. And the next. One foot in front of the other until—

“Shit!”

Her toe smacked into the unyielding stone of a raised hearth, and the second or so it took for the pain
to race from her abused digit to her brain gave that imagination of hers more than enough diversion.

She balanced her weight on one leg, her good foot pressing down onto her injured toe as if force alone could stop the pain.

The initial wave passed, leaving only irritation in its wake.

Stupid girl.

If she’d paid more attention to her surroundings rather than letting the panic of them consume her, she could have avoided that little mishap.

Lesson learned.

Shifting her weight back to both feet, she stepped up onto the hearth and stretched to retrieve the candle. Bending down, she held it close to the glowing embers until its wick sizzled and caught fire.

Not even the additional light helped her make sense of her surroundings.

She could see now that there were rugs scattered around, furry things that she’d swear were animal skins. The room itself, or at least what she could clearly see, seemed entirely made of stone. Except for the two doors, which appeared to be wood.

Thick, heavy-looking wood. Like something out of a history lesson.

And absolutely, positively like nothing she’d seen anywhere in Comfort, Wyoming.

“I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” she whispered on a shaky breath as she stepped off the hearth toward the middle of the room.

Two doors.

If she wanted to find out where she was, her obvious choice seemed to be to go through one of them. But which one?

“And behind door number one,” she muttered, deciding as she spoke aloud that she would try the door closest to the fireplace.

It opened easily enough. That had to be a good sign. At least whoever had put her here hadn’t locked her in. She hesitated only a moment, gathering her courage, before stepping through into another, equally poorly lit, room.

The fireplace in here had burned down to a low ember, giving off even less light than in the first room, but she lifted her arm to hold the candle aloft and examined her surroundings.

This room was even larger than the one in which she had awoken. To her left, a small table with two chairs stood between her and another doorway, but it wasn’t that direction that held her attention.

By far the largest single item in the room was a massive bed, with enormous wooden posters and a top rail from which hung dark folds of heavy-looking draperies.

Ominously, the draperies were drawn shut, obscuring whatever might be in the bed.

Whoever.
Not whatever.
Whoever
might be in that bed.

Dani stilled, holding her breath, not even daring to blink, listening for any sound that might be coming from behind those draperies.

It took a bit to separate the pounding of blood in
her ears from the silence in the room, but she concentrated, willing herself to hear, and at last found what she sought.

A shudder ran up her arms and down her spine as her ears picked up the slow, steady
whoosh
of someone breathing.

The internal debate was short but intense, with fear encouraging her to run toward the other door while curiosity pushed her to look behind the draperies.

Aunt Jean’s oft-used saying about what curiosity did to the cat rang through her thoughts even as she found herself tiptoeing toward the bed.

Mere inches from the bed, she stopped, one hand already on the curtains, fear and curiosity still locked in a vicious battle. Granted, whoever was behind those curtains should have the answers she needed. But what if they didn’t feel particularly like sharing?

Her candle didn’t make much of a weapon. Sure, she could set the bed on fire, but that wasn’t likely to stop anyone who might be less than happy to see her here. At least, it wouldn’t stop them in time to do her much good.

Holding the candle aloft, she examined the room again, this time with a purpose.

Two small bowls and a large vase sat on the table. That would have to do. Turning her back to the bed, she hurried over and set her candle on the table to pick up the vase. One sniff told her this was more decanter than flower holder. Scotch, she’d guess from the smell.

No matter. It was made of some sort of pottery and heavy enough that it should serve just fine as her new weapon.

She reached out to retrieve her candle and her hand froze as an impression of movement caught her eye. There, on the wall directly ahead of her, a misshapen blob flickered and danced. Fascinated, she stared for an instant, before her brain registered the form of shadow, a figure caught between her and the glow of the fireplace.

Arm raised, she stepped backward from the table and directly into a wall of hard flesh.

A wall with arms of steel that banded around her, one hand at her throat and the other covering her mouth before her first squeak had a chance to meet the night.

Panic speared through her chest and she swung the decanter up and over her head, wildly hoping to make contact with something. Faster than she could have imagined possible, the hand left her throat. The decanter flew from her fingers and shattered on the stone floor as her attacker deflected the blow by grabbing her wrist and twisting her arm up behind her.

“Stop it right now,” a male voice ordered. “Behave yerself.”

“Me, behave?” She sputtered from behind his hand even as he pulled his fingers away from her mouth. “I’m not the one who’s attacking some innocent woman.”

“Innocent women do not skulk about strange men’s bedchambers. Which, by the way, would be
better accomplished under cover of darkness, no by announcing yer presence with yer candle held high.”

He had let go of her arm as he’d spoken and she whirled to face him, her fear quickly taking a backseat to a building anger.

“I wasn’t . . .”

Though he no longer touched her, he hadn’t backed away. A rather disconcerting fact she hadn’t considered until she faced a wide expanse of naked chest.

“Um . . . skulking.” She fumbled for what it was she’d intended to say. Probably best her mouth had gone dry before she could get herself really wound up for a tongue-lashing. A guy built like that could easily do some real damage if that was what he intended. “I wasn’t skulking.”

Since he didn’t seem inclined to move away, she took a single backward step, forcing her eyes up to meet his as she did so. Recognition hit her hard, tightening her chest and sending an unpleasant flutter to her stomach. She stared into the face from her dreams, the face of the man who’d held her in his arms.

“In that case, my lady, I can only assume you had another reason for entering my bedchamber. It’s only fair to warn you that had I wanted you in my bed, I would have placed you there myself rather than depositing you in yer own chamber.”

“Had you wanted me in . . .” Any lingering shock fled in the face of his egotistical implication and once again she found herself reduced to a sputter. What a total arrogant prick! “Whatever you’re thinking I’m
doing in here, you better just think again. I was simply trying to find out where the hell I am and how I got here.”

“You are at Castle MacGahan. As to how you got here, we found you in the woods and brought you here.”

“In the woods. Of course you did.” That made absolutely no sense. “There are no woods anywhere around Comfort.” There weren’t any castles either.

Though there had certainly been woods in the dream.

An unwelcome doubt crept under her bravado, rapidly replacing her anger. That was bad. Very bad. Anger kept the fear at bay. Doubt invited it in like an honored guest.