Page 7 of Highland Fire

Fear tightened her hand on the reins, and her pony plunged sideways, tossing its head to protest the sudden pressure of the bit in its mouth.

Recovering quickly, Caitlin wheeled her mount and whipped the reins across the mare’s haunches, at the same time kicking her heels against its flanks.

The pony shot forward. In a few leaping bounds, they were galloping hell-for-leather across the moor.

She did not think about what she was doing, where she was going.

Instinct had taken over. Knowing that her pony could not outdistance the stranger’s steed in a flat-out race, Caitlin had turned her mount’s head downhill, toward the abandoned quarry.

At this point, the moor changed character.

There were obstacles to be got around—stunted trees clinging to the hillside, clumps of bramble bushes, gorse and broom, huge boulders and loose rocks—and all of them a menace to the unwary rider.

It slowed her speed, but not so much as it slowed the speed of her pursuer.

When she gained the edge of the quarry, it took all of her willpower to draw rein and pause, giving him a clear view of her.

This was the dangerous part, not for her but for the man who was so tenacious in his pursuit.

If he came after her at any other point, both horse and rider would go plunging to their deaths over the edge of the quarry.

Here, and only here, there was a scree slope.

No horse could keep its footing on the loose scree, not even a Highland pony.

Horse and rider would take a tumble, but not a fatal one.

She chose her moment with care; heard the man’s violent curses, saw the whites of his mount’s eyes and the taut muscles straining as it checked for each obstacle before she kicked in her heels.

Three short steps and the little mare obediently vaulted the dense screen of brambles, landing with a soft thud on the narrow track on the opposite side.

Caitlin’s left hand tightened on the reins, swinging the mare’s head up and around, checking her momentum.

The mare reared up, almost unseating her rider, then, finding her stride, she veered off to the left.

At any moment, Caitlin expected to hear her pursuer’s cry of alarm as he took a tumble on the scree.

Not a sound reached her ears except her own ragged breathing and the muffled pounding of her pony’s hooves as they sent stones and heather flying in every direction.

It was as though her pursuer had vanished into thin air.

Panicked, she leaned forward in the saddle, giving her mount free rein. It seemed to take them forever to reach the bottom of the quarry. Only a little way farther and they would come to the tree line. Once the pines swallowed them up, she would be safe.

He came at her with such speed, such stealth, that there was no time to take evasive action. The blow caught her squarely between the shoulders, and Caitlin went tumbling off the mare’s back.

Dazed, winded, for a long moment she lay helplessly on a cushion of heather, blinking up at the stars.

When she heard him dismounting, she made an effort to pull herself together.

Ignoring her protesting muscles, she dragged herself to a sitting position and touched a hand to her aching head.

Her cap was loose. As she scrambled to her feet, she pinned it securely to her hair, keeping one eye on her attacker.

When she saw the quirt in his hand, she gasped and involuntarily reached for the dirk in her hose.

He advanced, she retreated, half-crouched over, keeping her face to him, shifting her dirk from one hand to the other as Daroch had taught her to do.

It was all show. She did not know the first thing about hand-to-hand combat.

Oh God, he was backing her into the quarry and there was nothing she could do about it.

Now that she had a closer look at him, she recognized him.

His fair, sun-streaked hair was longer than she remembered.

He moved like a predator, and that surprised her too.

Lord Randal, for all his years with Wellington, was thought, in these parts, to be something of a dandy.

He never traveled without a valet, and no one had ever seen him looking anything less than immaculate.

It didn’t seem possible that this awesome figure, twelve stones of outraged masculine virility, was the same handsome fop who made all the Deeside lassies’ hearts beat just a little faster when he flashed them one of his slow grins, or made them an elegant leg.

No one ever doubted that the Randal had an eye for the lassies. And she knew it more than most.

When he spoke, it was evident that his anger could hardly be contained.

She could almost hear his teeth grinding together.

“I thought you were party to an innocent prank,” he said.

“But I was wrong. You tried to murder me, up there.” He jerked his head, indicating the top of the quarry.

“You tried to trick me into jumping to my death. If I had not known about the quarry, at this moment I would be a dead man.”

The violence in his eyes seemed to leap out at her.

She opened her mouth, but no sound came.

Her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth and she began to shake.

This was not the man she remembered from the night he had caught her trespassing on his property, nor was he the man whose virtues David endlessly extolled.

As David would have it, Rand was the flower of English manhood.

To her furious charge that the Randal was not worthy to be chief of a great clan, David had replied with a chuckle that Rand was English bred and found Highlanders with their blood feuds and vendettas a tad too uncivilized for his taste.

In that moment, as the Randal closed in upon her, it seemed the veneer of civilization, all his English breeding, had been stripped away. He was like a wild man, an offshoot of some Viking raider who centuries before had raped and pillaged his way along the shores of western Scotland.

It was unthinkable to use her dirk against him, not only because he was chief of Clan Randal, but also because he was David’s cousin.

Moreover, she was beginning to see that she had made a blunder by pulling a dagger on him.

His eyes were trained on it. Nothing was more certain than that he was going to take it away from her.

At the very least, he was going to break her arm.

From the savage look on his face, he might well decide to use it to slit her throat.

When he lunged for her, she let out a yelp and, dodging away, went haring into the quarry.

She didn’t get very far before he caught up with her.

Grabbing her by the scruff of the neck, he shook her with enough force to loosen every tooth in her jaws.

One kick from his booted foot sent the dirk flying out of her grasp to fall harmlessly among a clump of heather.

Like a terrified, half-crazed wild thing, she went for him.

She didn’t wish to do him any harm, she just wanted to get away from him.

With humiliating ease, he immobilized her.

Kicking, arms flailing, she was dragged by the scruff of the neck and the seat of her trews to one of the many smooth-faced granite boulders which dotted the entrance to the quarry.

Holding her face down, with one knee planted firmly in the small of her back, he brought the riding crop down smartly on the fleshiest part of her posterior.

The scream which erupted from the boy’s throat at the first stroke was eminently gratifying to Rand’s ears.

The thought that the boy had tried to lure him to his death had unleashed a murderous rage.

Nothing loath, Rand wielded the crop till the screams of pain and outrage had diminished to muffled snuffles and whimpers.

When he was satisfied that he had whipped the boy into submission, he removed his knee from her back and straightened.

“And now,” he said, tapping the crop threateningly against one booted leg, “we are going to talk. You, boy, are going to give me your name and the names of your comrades, or I shall give you more of the same. Do you understand?”

The boy rolled from the boulder onto his knees and stared wordlessly up at his captor.

As Rand made a slow inspection of that pathetic, tear-streaked face with its huge frightened eyes glimmering with reproach and something else, something indefinable, against all logic, his anger softened and gradually melted away.

He did not know what prompted him to stretch out a hand offering a belated comfort, he only knew he wanted to banish that hurt look from the boy’s face.

He succeeded. Snarling, spitting in helpless fury, the boy cowered away. Rand edged closer.

“Look,” he said, “perhaps I made a mistake. Perhaps you didn’t realize the danger. I’m not really a hard man. I’ll listen to what you have to say for yourself.”

He did not know why it mattered to him, but suddenly he wanted to think well of the boy, wanted the boy to think well of him. Again, he stretched out his hand, but let it drop away when the boy began to tremble.

For a long moment, he simply stared at the lad, wondering how they were going to communicate.

It was evident to him that the boy did not understand English.

When he made a move to go down on his haunches, the boy sucked in his breath and touched a shaking hand to his cap as though reassuring himself that it was still in place.

Rand wondered about that cap. Not once in their struggles had it slipped from the lad’s head.

As he reached out a hand to pluck it off, he became aware of something else—shapes materializing out of the shadows, from the dim recesses of the quarry.

Someone called out something in Gaelic, and the boy eagerly replied.

A dog barked. Rand was debating what his next move should be when a roar went up and four burly men came charging out of the darkness and fell upon him.

He knew at once that his assailants were not bent on doing him a serious injury.

They were not armed, nor were they disciplined.

These were not the young men who had attacked his coach, but yokels, tinkers by the stench of them.

Their aim was merely to subdue him or keep him away from the boy.

It took very little effort on Rand’s part to throw them off.

Even so, by the time he managed to hold them at bay with his pistol, the boy was already making good his escape.

One shrill whistle had brought the lad’s pony to his hand, and within minutes, horse and rider were disappearing into the trees.

There was an interval when Rand might have got off one good shot.

He never seriously considered it, not even when it occurred to him that the boy had made a fool of him.

The boy’s every move had been executed with forethought and precision from the moment he had become aware that Rand was in hot pursuit.

The leap at the top of the quarry, this nest of foul-smelling vagrants, that hurt, frozen look, the delaying tactics—all designed to elude capture and punishment, whatever the cost to the man who hunted him.

Furious now that he had softened toward the boy, Rand rounded on the tinkers who had abetted his escape.

Only the women remained, the men having judiciously melted away into the cavernous shadows.

There was no satisfaction to be had here.

They spoke only Gaelic, or so they let on, and though Rand did not know the language, he grasped their sentiments.

Shaking their fists at him, gesturing, yelling, they made no bones about their contempt for the spectacle that had roused them from their beds—a grown man terrorizing a wee lad only half his size and weight.

Unable to exonerate himself, livid at losing his quarry, Rand mounted up.

On that long, lonely ride to Strathcairn, he took comfort from the thought that it would be no great labor to discover the boy’s identity.

He already had some clues. The stag’s-head broach and the tartan plaid were emblems of the Gordon clan.

Unfortunately, there were as many Gordons in the northeast of Scotland as there were grains of sand in the links at Aberdeen.

He would find him, Rand promised himself, and when he did, he would make young Gordon sorry that he was ever born.