The Scot's Bride Read online

  At night, alone in the beds he’d paid for, he’d been examining his life more thoroughly. Being an outlawed MacGregor, he didn’t fear much. But love? Now there was a power he would confess scared the hell out of him. Love had the power to change a man, to change the course of his life. He’d seen it happen so often at home. Mighty warriors were reduced to heather-wielding, wife-pleasing pansies. Even Malcolm and Darach had traded in chasing skirts for chasing their bairns. It was pitiful really. He didn’t want to live a life dictated by commitments and duty to anyone. He didn’t want to fall in love. He’d grown up hearing extraordinary tales of it, of seeing the effects of it in his kin’s lives. It wasn’t because he didn’t believe in its power. It was because he did.

  If he were to fall in love, he’d have to be prepared to give up not only his heart, but his soul as well. He had no interest in that kind of life. He was young and virile and he was enjoying it.

  He reached the river Stinchar when the afternoon sun formed golden flashes of light on the rippling surface—and on a goddess wetting her toes in the water, her skirts hiked up to her thighs.

  Patrick wasn’t sure she was a mere lass. Playing in the glistening rivulets, she looked more like a self-indulgent forest fairy lit up by the sun. She didn’t wear layers of heavy wool, or even a jacket or arisaid, but a gown of billowing blue linen with threads of gold sewn in around the neck and sleeves. Matching laces kept her corset tight around her slim waist and full breasts. He watched behind a stand of trees while she spun in a circle with joy in the day, her skirts flaring slightly at her hips, the fabric thin enough to expose the silhouette of her long, shapely legs beneath. He forgot to breathe when her raven locks fanned out around her, a crown of daisies upon her brow.

  He couldn’t move. He could think of nothing but mayhap joining her, but his legs felt heavy, his thoughts muddled by the vision of her skipping over the water as if she were a veil in the summer breeze. His heart leaped at the sight of her lost in her own reverie, freedom personified. Had he happened upon something otherworldly, sent to seduce men to sin with her large, dark, feline eyes and dainty ankles?

  He wondered what being seduced by her would entail. What might she want from him in exchange for time in her bed? What would he be willing to give such a delicate beauty?

  His sister would have scolded him for spying on the nymph unseen. He almost laughed, giving away his position. She was made of mystery and whimsy, of daisies and darkness. How could he not stare at her? A tiny, nagging voice—likely from one of Kate MacGregor’s books on knightly behavior—compelled him to make his presence known, but Patrick decided against it. He’d left Camlochlin and the notions his kin lived by so steadfastly. Honor would deny his desire, rebuke it.

  So he watched her, unashamed and curious as to how to win the favor of a forest nymph.

  Chapter Two

  Charlotte kicked up her feet splashing water upward. She laughed when droplets fell over her face.

  Oh, what a glorious day!

  She adjusted the daisy circlet around her brow and tilted her face toward the sun. The water from the river was especially warm today, soothing away her anxious thoughts. She basked in the sounds of nature around her and nothing else. The chatter of birds filled the trees, bees buzzed while they hovered over daisies, water rushed over rocks. She drenched herself in the time she had alone, away from her father’s strict, or so he thought, confines.

  Her only regret today was that she hadn’t insisted on taking Elsie along. She would make it up to her sister later.

  She heard a sound to her left and hiked up her skirts to turn. She searched the branches of an old birch for the lark that had landed in it. When she found it, she whistled, smiled, and then headed back to the bank with a song on her lips.

  She looked around for her brothers Duff and Hendry. Not that she wanted them to hurry with their hunting. She loved being out of their company, free to do as she pleased, which was to make a crown of daisies and go into the water. But their father would be angry if he knew how long they’d left her alone. She was a troublesome daughter, far more defiant than Elsie, but she hated her father’s fears, and endless rules and ambitions. He’d tried to marry her off several times for some profit or another. But she’d managed to convince every prospect so far that she wasn’t fit to be a wife. She had faults, and plenty of them. One being that she liked to make her own decisions—a heinous offense to most men. Her last suitor, Geoffrey, Baron of Ardrossan, had needed a bit more convincing.

  She leaned against a tree and stared out at the river glimmering against her eyes, the mountains far beyond. One day, she would travel across them with Elsie, both of them liberated from tyranny and the empty promises of men who couldn’t measure up to a boy.

  She heard another sound and reached under her skirts for her sling. She could take care of herself. A lass didn’t frequent pubs and the seedy allies behind them without learning to protect herself.

  Why was her heart suddenly pounding? No one in a hundred-league range was foolish enough to trespass on Allan Cunningham’s land. Her father, like both his sons, didn’t care who he killed, especially if the trespasser was a Fergusson.

  But no sooner did she convince herself of her safety than she heard rustling in the foliage. It could be a deer. Oh, she hoped it was. She looked around for a stone.

  Her heart near stopped when she looked up to find a man rising from his crouching position in the thick bushes. And not just any man, but the apparent victor of last night’s brawl! In the full light of day, donned in nothing but a pair of snug-fitting woolen breeches, hide boots, and a purple jaw, he appeared as big as Hamish and fit enough to outrun her. The hands he held up were large enough to confine her with little effort. She knew how powerful he was, how fast. The slight tilt of his mouth almost convinced her that it would take even less effort to arrive at her throat to devour her as he had devoured Bethany.

  She looked around. Where were her brothers? What was this stranger doing here? Had he followed her? She should be afraid of him, but she had her sling. She was more afraid of him telling her brothers that he’d seen her in the tavern. “Stay back!” she shouted and lifted her weapon. The man went still, eyeing the leather sling in her hand.

  Something in his gaze sparked with recognition. Damn!

  “Lass, where did ye—?”

  She didn’t wait for him to finish, but whirled her weapon over her head. She knew nothing about him, save that he was strong, he’d been hiding in the bushes, and he was a rogue. She wouldn’t take any chances.

  “Wait!” he called out, lifting his hands higher in surrender. Sunlight dripped over his carved arms. His shoulders flexed, a ripple of movement and a promise of pure, solid power. “Allow me another moment to take ye in to convince m’self that ye’re real.”

  She didn’t breathe in the waiting stillness. She’d grown up among men, learning from her beloved Kendrick not to trust them, from her father to fear them, and from her brothers to keep her tongue leashed. She knew from her visits to different pubs what men were like when they wanted something. But none of them had ever spoken to her this way and with boldness and audacity to spread his appreciative gaze over her from her crown of daisies to her bare, tanned feet.

  Even with the small meadow between then, Charlotte felt as if he touched her with his piercing jewel-like eyes.

  She lifted the sling again. He was nothing more than a silver-tongued scoundrel who was likely here to force himself on her.

  “I beg yer mercy, Angel,” he called out then lowered his chin to his chest like a repentant servant. “But if ye must shoot, aim fer m’ head and then pray over me that if I awaken, I have no memory of ye.”

  She smiled at the fool when he looked up. “You’re a clever scoundrel.”

  She wished she were closer just to see if his lashes were as long and lush around his green eyes as they appeared from a distance.

  But a face, no matter how ruggedly appealing it was, didn’t mean anything to
her. Flowery words meant even less. Duff and Hendry were handsome devils and they used their good looks to get what they wanted from women.

  She wasn’t so foolish.

  “What do you want?” she demanded. “My brothers are just over that ridge.” She motioned toward the small hill to their right.

  “Just a moment more to gaze at yer beauty.” His smile darkened with humor and something else that deepened his lilting voice to a smoky timbre. It worked its way down her spine and made her blood boil.

  Knave. She’d seen him at work. He was a slayer of hearts, but he wouldn’t have hers. No one would ever again. She had more important things to do than fawning like a twit over a man. Besides if she hit him now, he’d fall into the bushes and remain unseen by her brothers when they returned for her. No reason to get the rogue killed for admiring her. “I’d rather knock you out.” She swung her sling over her shoulder and let her stone fly.

  “Charlie!” her brother Hendry, having finally arrived a moment too soon, shouted from his saddle. They both heard the rock meet its target and the subsequent thump of a body hitting the ground.

  Charlotte chewed her lip watching her brothers lift the man and haul him over his saddle.

  “Who is he?” Hendry demanded as they headed home. “And why does he wear no shirt or coat?”

  “How would I know?” She did her best keep the bite out of her question. “He appeared while I was waiting for you and Duff to come fetch me.”

  That rattled him, as she’d hoped it would. Her brothers were afraid of their father.

  “Why didn’t you call for us?” Duff asked her while a breeze lifted his dark hair and dragged it across pewter eyes. He wasn’t as vile as Hendry or their father. The eldest of her siblings at a score and six, he had the most patience—mainly with her and Elsie. Sometimes his eyes warmed on Charlie and she remembered how he’d adored her as a child—despite their father’s teachings to never grow weak over another person, even kin.

  Though she would never return it again, she used his affection for her to her advantage. “I did,” she lied then sniffed. “Father will be angry with me for having been alone, when it was you and Hendry who left me.” She didn’t give a damn that her brothers had left her, but her father would. “I thought you’d forgotten me.”

  “We wouldn’t forget you, Charlie,” Duff reassured her, softening his tone just a wee bit and moving his horse a little closer to hers.

  Hendry’s golden hair blew across his dubious smirk. “Is that why you felled him to the ground with that sling of yours?”

  The slash of Duff’s brow cast shadows over his eyes. “You used your sling?”

  “Aye,” she confessed, “and if you and Hendry will agree to keep my sling secret, I will also agree not to tell Father that you left me long enough for this to happen.”

  She prayed he would agree. Her father had forbidden her to use her sling. He had no problem expecting her to know how to protect herself against strangers, but not with her sling. It had belonged to a boy she’d once loved more than life itself. A boy she thought of often and would never forget. She’d been ten when he finally agreed to teach her how to use it. She’d practiced every day since his death five years ago until her skill was unmatched.

  She’d crafted many duplicates of her sling over the years, mostly because her father always demanded she relinquish it whenever he found out that she had used it. She always gave him a replica. She’d never give up the original. It was all she had to remember Kendrick Fergusson.

  “What choice did I have? Let him rape me?”

  Duff set his black glare on the stranger tossed over his gray stallion. “He sought to rape you?”

  She looked at the Highlander, still unconscious, and recalled how his gaze had fallen on her today and last night, when he’d looked up from devouring Bethany’s neck with those simmering green eyes, like she was a slab of roasted venison and he hadn’t eaten in a fortnight.

  “Nay. I meant…” Damn it! Hendry hadn’t killed the stranger and she wanted to keep it that way. “I don’t know what he was after. I wasn’t going to stand around and wait to find out.”

  “Mayhap, if you didn’t dress like a trollop—”

  “Hendry,” Duff warned in a low growl.

  “Come now, Duff,” Hendry argued like the fool he was. “She’s odd and you know it. She’s always seeking to come hunting with us, but she doesn’t hunt. Instead she slinks off by herself and splashes around in the river like some—”

  “That’s enough,” her older brother warned, this time with more meaning. “You’ll leave her alone or I’ll break your nose again.”

  Charlie grinded her jaw to keep from telling Hendry what she thought of him. It wasn’t her fault that laboring all day in the oat and wheat barns, cleaning the stables, planting, harvesting, and feeding the chickens was enough to exhaust her. She was ten and nine and she liked basking in the sun and laughing with old men.

  “Do you think he’s a Fergusson, Duff?” Hendry asked, changing the topic.

  She groaned inwardly, hoping he wasn’t. She may have just instigated another Fergusson attack.

  Her gaze fell to the bold rogue again and the warm autumn colors in his hair. Burnt orange and bronze set ablaze by the sun, nestled within more earthy chestnut hues.

  Kendrick’s hair had been the same color. Perhaps just a bit redder. She smiled remembering the boy who still held her heart, making it impossible for any other to take his place. Once he was out of her life, her father had made certain she’d never lose her heart to a Fergusson again. He hated them over some ridiculous feud whose beginning neither clan could recall. And after the terrible thing had been done, and almost his entire family had escaped unscathed, her father didn’t trust any stranger who happened on his land not to be a Fergusson assassin sent to finish what they’d started. And if the Fergussons returned, who would stop them this time?

  “Let’s hope he isn’t a Fergusson,” Duff said in a flat tone. He kicked his mount and muttered as he passed his sister. “Imbecile.”

  Charlie didn’t respond, since he was speaking to himself and not her. But she agreed with him. They should all hope he wasn’t a Fergusson since she’d injured him and would likely start another war. And Hendry was an imbecile.

  As they rode onward toward Cunningham House the landscape spread out before her into rolling hills and shallow vales dotted with grazing sheep and thatch-roofed cottages beyond.

  Crossing the old drawbridge, they approached the two-story house, in need of a new whitewash and a few stones to replace the crumbling ones. The stable and henhouse were also in need of repair, duties usually carried out by her father’s serfs from the village, but Allan Cunningham preferred his tenants to pay for what little protection or aid he provided, with coin rather than labor. Most of the villagers in Pinwherry were poor or ill, or both.

  Charlie looked up at Bhaltair and Kevin, the two guardsmen keeping watch from a high tower to the west of the house. Another two patrolled the perimeter—surely not enough men to counter an attack should the Fergussons ever return. They’d come only once, but no one had forgotten the dead they had left behind. Especially Charlie. The men in the surrounding countryside had been warned not to guard the Cunninghams. And when Cameron, John, and Tamas Fergusson warned a man of something, the man listened. Cunningham House had no bailiff, no reeve, and the only priest in attendance lived in the village.

  As they neared the small outer gate, the intruder began to move. Hendry noticed and rode his horse to him. Charlie’s blood went cold when her brother kicked the man in the head, knocking him out again.

  She recoiled and glared at him. “Your needless violence makes me ill, Hendry.” She ignored his murderous gaze. He wouldn’t try to strike her with Duff here. “One day, someone is going to give you the beating you deserve.”

  “Not likely,” he drawled and continued on.

  Forgetting her brother for now, Charlie waved to Alice, the Cunninghams’ cook, when she step
ped out of the small servant’s house built inside the inner gate, this “gate” fashioned with short sticks and shrub.

  Charlie headed her horse toward the stable, but Duff called her back.

  “Hendry will take care of your mount, Charlie.”

  “Why do I have to tend to her horse?”

  She tossed Hendry another glare that heated her large coal eyes and dismounted.

  She didn’t argue though. Why provoke him to getting even with her later? She bit her tongue until it almost bled, but she’d learned that sometimes it was better to tame the tongue than wield it.

  “Charlie,” Duff called out again. “Your sling.”

  She spun on her heel and stared at him, her eyes wide. “You will tell Father and have me disarmed then?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll get you a pistol in the morning.”

  “I don’t want a pistol.”

  He held out his hand for the sling. She gave him one last glare then hiked up her skirts over her left leg and yanked the counterfeit free from where it was secured. After handing it over she turned, smiled, and left him with Kendrick’s sling still secured to her right leg.

  When she entered the house, she spotted her sister bobbing down the stairs, her heavy petticoats lifted in both hands.

  “Thank God, you’re back! You were gone all morning!” Elsie exclaimed with her flare for the dramatic. Her golden waves bounced over her diminutive shoulders, her blue eyes wide with apprehension. “I was beginning to fear something terrible might have happened.”

  “I told you, darling,” Charlie cooed and took her sister’s hand. “Nothing will take me from you.”

  And nothing would. Their mother had died five years ago. Elsie was the babe by a year and was often ill and needed mothering. Charlie had happily taken up the duty. The village physician had treated her with various concoctions but none of them helped Elsie’s condition. Most of the time the poor darling lost her breath, sometimes she struggled through each one. It was difficult to witness, especially when her attacks made her weak and pale for days. There had to be a way to help her. According to the physician, keeping her indoors and safe from the elements was all they could do. Charlie refused to believe it. There were other healers out there. She’d found some. She would find them all, and not stop looking until she found the one with the cure. Until then, she did her best each day to teach Elsie how to be a strong, confident woman.