Page 11 of Warrior of the Highlands (Highlands #3)

He stole a glance, fascinated, as she wriggled her arms and torso through the neck of her dark dress. She shimmied and maneuvered, a look of such intense concentration on her face. It was amusing and arousing both.

The sort of shirt she’d worn underneath her gown was foreign to him. MacColla fought not to ogle, but that shirt clung to her, its white fabric looking soft to the touch, and not leaving much to the imagination.

The skin of her shoulders was pale, her collarbones delicate slopes in contrast to the firm, lean muscle of her upper arms.

MacColla distractedly rubbed his thumb along his fingertips, wondering if that ivory skin was as silky as it looked.

While she was focused on arranging the dress around her hips, he let his eyes graze her chest.

MacColla grew hard, watching as she reached her right hand across her stomach to roll the fabric down along the opposite hip.

He clenched his hands into fists, his breath suddenly shallow.

The movement crushed her arm up against the bottom of her breast, squeezing it high and tight against the white shirt. The fabric strained, revealing the barest outline of her nipple.

She folded her top up and neatly over her breasts to expose her belly. It was pale and smooth, and MacColla let out an inadvertent groan.

“Turn back around,” she snapped.

His eyes whipped up to meet hers. Her voice was indignant to match her simmering gaze.

He promptly did so, using the opportunity to gather his wits. Last time he’d lost them, he’d taken her to his mouth for a taste. It would do him no good to forget himself with his very own prisoner. And a Campbell no less, he thought with disgust.

But something about the lass riled him. Intrigued him.

What sort of woman was she to stand up to him as she did?

He was used to all and sundry cowering before him.

But there was no cowering in this woman.

She merely held her chin up with a dare in her eye as if he were some ordinary crofter instead of a leader of warriors.

And then to watch the lass peel her clothes away with mingled modesty and purpose? He scrubbed his hand over his face. It was enough to send him over the edge.

“Okay.”

MacColla heard that strange word again and took it to mean she was ready. Upon turning, however, he quickly realized that he was not.

She sat before him, rigidly upright, enduring what was surely extraordinary pain.

And yet her bearing spoke to resilience, not defeat.

MacColla had thought her a wildcat, but he saw the truth of her now.

She might adopt the persona of predator, but shedding her strange garb, she sat before him a long, gorgeous swan, with pale throat and breasts that were only accentuated by her thick black hair and white undergarment.

Her shoulders were creamy and broad, but not masculine. Hands clasped in her lap, she held her arms crooked out at her sides, those smooth, firm limbs speaking to strength, but not toil.

And then his eyes went to her stomach, and a flash of pure heat stabbed him. Rather than bones or loose flesh, her belly was firm, a sweep of polished alabaster that he had to fight not to touch.

“I . . .” He fumbled with the plaid for a moment, and then noticed it. Her neck. MacColla sucked in a breath. And this time he did reach for her, unthinking. “Och, lass, your bonny neck.”

He drew his thumb gently over her scar, a ragged, bulging line marring the otherwise perfect stretch of throat. He used the back of his hand to carefully push her hair from the skin, then traced his thumb along it once more, marveling that a thing could answer as many questions as it raised.

“How?”

He didn’t need to say more than the single word.

He could see in her averted gaze, in the stiffening of her spine, how this single mark defined her somehow, had been a turning point.

MacColla saw true how, rather than be defeated by it, whatever tragedy had befallen her had instead scraped away the nonessential to reveal some deeper power and spirit that was the root of this woman.

“None of your business.” Her voice was measured, but strained too.

He looked in her eyes, wondering at her words, and he saw a sheen of tears there. But more than her sadness, he saw her strength.

“In good time, then,” he said softly.

He unrolled the fabric between them and made quick work of it, trying his best not to flinch at what muted sounds of pain she allowed to escape.

MacColla leaned close, wrapping his arms around to reach behind her and back again.

He worked silently, his great, thick hands fumbling to tuck fabric gingerly along the top, tugging and tightening as gently as possible.

His knuckles brushed the firm underside of her breast, and he froze. He flicked his eyes up to meet hers. What was but a moment stretched long between them, their breath held, neither choosing to look away first.

Those eyes that had at first appeared otherworldly in the dark stared at him unblinking. Gray and fathomless, spattered with black flecks like drops of ink, they were more mysterious to him now than they’d been in the shadow of Campbell’s castle.

Campbell. The thought was a distant flare, recalling MacColla to himself.

He had a duty to his sister. And, in taking the strange woman, he’d claimed an obligation to her too.

But more so, he had a duty to his clan. These two women held him back, when what he needed to do was remember what he was truly about.

“ Haley. Such an odd name.” His voice was gruffer than he’d intended, and he saw her recoil as if struck. “What are you to the Campbell?”

The delicate thread that had stretched shimmering between them disappeared like a cobweb moving from sunlight to shadow.

This man, this whole scenario, had gone beyond confusing, past surreal, and was moving well into madness. That he kept mentioning yet another famous seventeenth-century figure eclipsed her pain and slammed her back into reality. She took a moment to focus.

“What?” she asked.

“I asked what you are to the Campbell.”

She knew her history well, knew Graham and Campbell had been enemies, but what did the latter have to do with the gun?

“How about you talk first?” Haley held her body as straight as she could, trying to minimize the fresh stabbing in her ribs with a rigid spine.

Stars glittered for a moment over her vision, and she was forced to swallow convulsively from a sudden wave of nausea and the saliva it brought to the back of her tongue. “I know you know about the gun.”

“Gun?”

She gritted her teeth and pressed on. “What do you know about James Graham?” Her question was an accusation, and she felt the man stiffen as he tucked the last of the fabric into itself.

“What do you know of Graham?” He affected a cavalier tone, but Haley wasn’t fooled.

“I don’t think he died like people said,” she replied. He went still, and Haley felt gratified. She knew it. He was some sort of wacked-out academic rival. The competition made her cocky. “In fact, I’m almost certain he didn’t die when people said he did.”

A single violent movement and he held her face between two viselike hands. “Who are you?” he snarled. “Are you Campbell’s spy?”

His sudden movement jarred her. She flinched, and glass shattered in her chest. Haley gasped clipped breaths in and out through her pinched nostrils. “Campbell? What the . . .”

What kind of a freak show was this, where she found herself immersed in some strange flashback? MacColla, Graham, and now this insistence on Campbell too?

The hollow thunk of a flask dropping to the ground startled them. “You’d be wise not to try my brother.”

Haley wrenched her face free of MacColla’s grip and stared with unmitigated fury at his sister, standing hands on hips beside them. “They call him Fear Thollaidh nan Tighean , and he is bested by no man. And certainly by no woman.”

The strange Gaelic phrase resonated in the back of Haley’s mind, but she quickly shoved it aside to concentrate on the girl in front of her. Certainly by no woman, my ass. It was creatures like this who gave women a bad name.

“You’ve got me cornered.” Haley made as if to concede. She needed to rest up, not rouse suspicions, if she were to eventually get away from them. “Look. I’m hurt. I’m tired. I don’t know any Campbell.”

She scooted back and the pain threatened, ready to explode, like a flame divining a whiff of kerosene. She stilled, the stabbing in her chest lending truth to her charade. “I don’t have the gun, if that’s why I’m here. I locked it up before you took me.”

They stared at her dumbly and she chattered on. “Get it? The gun’s locked up. I don’t have it. I know you want to ride some more, but can I please just lie down and rest for a while?”

The need for sleep had grown critical. The binding around her chest had dulled her pain, and Haley felt the hysteria draining from her, leaving limp, exhausted shock in its wake. She realized her hands were freezing, and she held them before her, watching dumbly as they trembled.

The man muttered some curse under his breath. Black spots swam across her vision, dispersed just as quickly, then came again, slowing and growing into a cool darkness that swallowed her back and down.

Haley heard him issue some order to his sister, followed at once by the snap of branches. Felt his hands on her shoulders, then the rough ground at her back. There was the weight of fabric over her. Then blackness.

“Royalist or Covenanter, brother?”

“ Hm? ” MacColla watched the strange woman as she slept. It would be time to rouse her soon. He was desperate to be on his way, but he kept getting waylaid by the needs of these two women. He should be ravaging Campbell’s lands in Argyll, not making camp.

He needed to push south, getting Jean to safe harbor with his family in Kintyre as soon as possible. But he’d realized in frustration that the women would require a day of true shelter, with rest and hot food, if they were to keep up his pace.

Lately, allies bled from Campbell’s control as if from a ruptured vein, and MacColla knew of a place in Argyll where they might find sympathetic refuge on the way.

“Fincharn Castle,” his sister replied testily.

The return of his gaze over and again to the sleeping stranger seemed to make Jean peevish, her waning patience putting questions on her tongue for which she’d normally have no concern.

“I ask of the residents of Fincharn. Do we find a friend there, or a castle full of Covenanters residing in Campbell’s pocket? ”

MacColla spared a smile for his sister. He had to admit, she was dogged in her efforts to split his attentions from the stranger.

“We find both,” he said. “It was once a MacMartin stronghold, but Clan Scrymgeour holds the castle now. And though the father was a Covenanter, his son John is the one awaiting us now. He supports the king, as we do.”

“And when is it we return to our own home, on Colonsay?” Her chin trembled now.

“I know not.” He looked at his sister in long silence, then said somberly, “Don’t fret, girl. The Campbell may have robbed our lands, but I will take from him more than that. I’ll exact the heart and the spirit of all Campbells, if the cost is my own cold body.”

Jean shrank, looking horrified, and MacColla laughed. “My apologies, sister.” He leaned over to chuck her chin. “All you need concern yourself with is visions of joining our family in Kintyre. That’s home enough for now, aye?”

He took a stick from the dirt and stoked the fire. “For the nonce, we find Royalist allies at Fincharn. And bowls full of good, hot stew, God willing.”

He inhaled deeply, as if getting a lungful of air might quell his gnawing hunger. He needed to fill his belly with cooked meat for a change.

MacColla let his attention drift once more to the lass. He registered the faint tsking of his sister as she gave up attempts at conversation, choosing instead to stab testily at the sputtering flames.

Despite her deep sleep, the woman lay stiffly, her arms wrapped about her torso as if she could cradle the pain in her hands.

No woman had ever stood up to him as she had. Few men either, and even fewer who lived to tell about it. But rather than make him angry, her verve had excited him, kindled some long-snuffed spark back to life.

He realized he didn’t even know her full name. He’d somehow neglected asking about her father’s name, her clan, her origins.

But watching her sleep, he’d given it much thought. He found it curious that, as they’d fled the castle, Campbell’s men had attacked her ruthlessly. And so it was unlikely she was a family member. Or, if she was, she’d somehow crossed the clan in some way.

And yet Jean claimed to have been the only prisoner held at the castle.

The woman was a puzzle. Who could she be, and more importantly, on whose side?

Her questions about James Graham alarmed him. Only a very few knew of the ruse that had spared James from the gallows. Painstaking subterfuge and smoke screens on the part of only his closest friends kept his survival a secret. That a stranger had struck at the truth was deeply troubling.

Could she be a spy for Campbell? If so, why would his men try to kill her? Was the attack on her merely a charade, some sort of trap to trick MacColla into taking her into his care?

That she was strong and determined he had no doubt.

He studied her, asleep but far from peaceful.

Furrows were etched on her otherwise smooth complexion, around her mouth, at her brow, her pain written on her skin.

But the experience contained on her face couldn’t rob her of her beauty. It perhaps even contributed to it.

Her features weren’t delicate. Taken separately, they were sturdy, like her body. A square face, wide nose, full lips. Proud, unapologetic features that asserted themselves.

But, put together, those features underwent some mysterious alchemy, transformed by her luminous skin and black hair and unsettling gray eyes into some exquisitely feminine creature.

The corners of MacColla’s eyes creased as he considered her.

Fierce. Robust. Yet unmistakably lovely.

In the way a lioness is all the more magnificent for her size and the power she wields.

He’d do well to fear this woman. As any wise man would such a creature.