Captured by the Highlander (27 page)

Duncan turned the gun on Angus again. “I
’ll
have your word that you
will
not go against my wishes.”

“My word?” Angus spit on the floor. “What good is any man’s word when you just let my sister’s
killer
live?”

“Muira
will
have her justice.”

“But
will
I have mine?” Angus asked. “I wanted him dead, Duncan, and you’re forgetting that not so long ago you wanted the same thing.”

Angus headed for the door, and Duncan lowered the pistol at last.

Just then, four broad-shouldered clansmen entered the
hall
and blocked the exit. Angus laughed indignantly. He faced Duncan and spread his arms wide. “Are these men here to escort me off the premises?”

“Aye. I can’t let you pay a visit to the dungeon, Angus, to simply do as you please.”

The guards took hold of his arms, but he roughly shook them away. “No need to bother yourselves. I’m leaving this place, and I
’ll
not be back. I’ve seen enough here today to turn my guts to ash.”

He walked out. One of the guards looked at Duncan. He nodded to indicate an unspoken set of orders. The men
followed
Angus out of the keep to make sure he left peaceably.

Duncan turned to Amelia.

Her knees dissolved into clotted cream. She realized suddenly that her hands were shaking, and she returned to the chair and sank into it.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?” There was a hard, contemptuous edge to his voice.

“For keeping your promise.”

His blue eyes were cold as ice, and his shoulders heaved with barely contained fury. He
pulled
the wig off his head, dropped it lightly to the floor, then walked out of the
hall
without a word.

Duncan entered his study, looked around at
all
the dusty books and
roll
ed-up documents, his telescope in the window, and the portrait of his French mother over the mantel. He slammed the door shut behind him, then turned and rested his forehead against it. Closing his eyes, he fought to suppress his fury.

He had never felt such desire to
kill
a man. For a few unpredictable seconds, even his passion for Amelia was overshadowed by a blind lust for blood. He hadn’t been certain he could resist the lure of drawing his sword from his scabbard and piercing Richard Bennett straight through his cold, black heart. Even now, when Duncan thought of what Muira had endured in the orchard that day, and what Amelia might have experienced as that man’s wife, he wanted to wrap his hands around Bennett’s throat and squeeze until every last drop of putrid life drained out of his body.

Duncan pounded his fist repeatedly against the door. He felt like he was being ripped in two. What sort of man was he? Was he the diplomatic aristocrat his mother had raised him to be? The educated scholar, who was pledged to marry an English duke’s daughter? Or was he his father’s son? A battle-scarred warrior, conceived in a whore’s bed, seething with darkness and vengeance. A man who solved his problems with an axe.

He turned around, tipped his head back against the door, and tried to make sense of his duality and the savage warrior that existed within.

On the battlefield, he had never
killed
gratuitously. He had long been aware of the consequences of death. One person’s demise had a ripple effect on the world. Others suffered and mourned that loss and were affected in ways only God could understand. Sometimes grief gave rise to compassion and kindness, depth of feeling, and an understanding of the soul.

Other times, it created monsters.

He
was one such monster.

Richard Bennett was another.

Duncan opened his eyes and wondered suddenly—where had Bennett’s cruelty come from? Did he have a whore for a mother? Or had someone he cared about been sliced without mercy from his life?

A knock at the door startled Duncan. He took a step away from it. Without waiting for an invitation, Amelia pushed her way inside. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it, facing him with her hands behind her back. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes wide.

She was afraid of him. No wonder. She had seen the monster just now. He felt a terrible, crippling shame, which caught him off guard.

“Why didn’t you
tell
me about your real mother?” she asked. “And that your father
killed
a bishop? It wouldn’t have mattered—I choose to judge you for yourself—but I wish you had told me.”

He had no answer. His head was
full
of thistles. He couldn’t seem to think.

She did not press him, and he wondered how it was possible that any woman could be so calm in a situation such as this. Why was she even here? He half-expected her to be down in the dungeon, apologizing to Bennett for the way he had been treated and begging him to take her home, away from here.

“That was difficult for you,” she said.

Words
spilled
out before he could stop them. “I wanted to stab him through the heart.”

She stiffened. “I could see that.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment, and the silence seemed almost thunderous in his ears. He didn’t want her here, in his private sanctuary. He wanted to push her from the room. But another part of him objected. Part of him needed her. Wanted her. Desired her.

Was this love?

No, that could not be possible. How could he feel so many different things at once? Hatred, anger, restlessness.

Sorrow.

“You resisted
killing
him,” she continued as she moved away from the door, forcing Duncan to back up into the middle of the room. “And you prevented Angus from doing so as
well
.”

Duncan let his eyes travel down the front of her gown, then back up again to the lush curve of her breasts, and final y to the gentle light of compassion in her eyes.

“If you hadn’t been there,” he said, “I might not have been so merciful. I’ve said it before, lass—you have a way of tempering my cruelty, of
pulling
me back from the brink. I hate you for it sometimes. But other times, I don’t know what to make of it. Or of myself.”

She closed the distance between them and laid her open palms on his chest. Her eyes were glossy, apprehensive—as if she didn’t know what sort of mood he was in—and he felt an odd, confusing lust quicken his blood. A part of him
still
yearned for vengeance, but more than that, he wanted to make love to his future wife. The need was potent and fierce, laced with both anger and tenderness. It was complicated—

far too complicated to understand. He simply needed to claim her now. That was
all
he knew.

His mouth closed over hers, and he kissed her deeply, cupping her head in his hands and plunging his tongue into her mouth. She moaned with pleasure. The sound of her arousal clouded his brain. He wanted her with a rock-hard passion that stifled
all
logic and seemed to make the whole world go silent.

An instant later, he was backing her up against the door, lifting her skirts,
pulling
down her drawers, and hastily unfastening his breeches.

She tore his coat off his shoulders, and he wondered why she was doing this. Did she understand the frenzy inside him that needed to be satiated? Was this for his benefit, or did she truly desire him at this moment, even after seeing his dark shadow self?

He slid his hand between her legs. She was already slick.

There was no need for foreplay. He entered her smoothly, driving
all
the way in, and she clutched at his shoulders. He lifted her up off the floor. She wrapped her legs around his hips while he pounded into her, again and again, up against the door. It was both rough and intimate. Nothing existed for him outside of their coupling. He felt only the soft, damp lushness of her womanhood and the sweet, honeyed gift of her lips.

“Don’t ever leave me,” he said without thinking, but it was as if another man had spoken.

She climaxed quickly, and he came seconds later. It was over very fast. He was not proud of it, but at least they were both satisfied.

Careful y, he lowered her to the floor, but she clung to his neck for quite some time and held on to him. Again he felt ashamed, and he was not entirely sure why. It was not clear to him.

He did not move. He waited there inside her until his racing heart slowed and his breathing returned to normal; then slowly, he withdrew. He fastened his breeches and backed away. Her skirts
fell
lightly to the floor.

“How can you care for me?” he asked with a frown of disbelief. “You are a gentlewoman. Why do you want to be my wife?”

“I told you before,” she replied. “I see goodness in you, and we both know there is passion between us.”

He turned and walked to the window, stared across the lake at the fields and forests in the distance. “But what if I
had
killed
your Richard in the
hall
just now? What if I had driven a knife through his heart, right in front of your eyes?

Would you
still
see goodness in me then?”

“He is not
my
Richard,” she said. “And you did not
kill
him.”

No, but he had come very close, and part of him
still
wanted to.

Amelia crossed the room and sat on the sofa while he continued to look out at the calm lake.

“He denied everything about Muira.” Duncan focused on the
still
ness of the natural world outside the window, because he did not want to confront the inner whirlwind of his rage. He believed that if he gave in to it now, there would be no turning back. “Do you believe I am wrong to imprison him?”

“No,” she replied. “I believe he has acted with dishonor.

My uncle believes it, too. He has just revealed to me some of the things he learned this past week, specific details that were very disturbing to hear.” She sighed. “My uncle has spoken to many soldiers and Scots, and the King must hear their stories as
well
. And besides
all
that, I saw something in Richard’s eyes today that I did not see before.”

“What was that?”

“Lies.”

He looked up at the sky and watched a blackbird soar against it. “Why did you not see it before, lass?”

“Because I was not a whole person before I met you,” she continued. “I was naïve and sheltered and inexperienced, and I was consumed by the fear of losing my father and being alone. He is gone now, but look at me. I have survived, and I have discovered that I possess a mind and a reasonably strong
will
of my own. I survived
you,
didn’t I?”

He turned and faced her. “But now you’re consumed by your passions and the pleasures we share in bed. That sort of thing can blind a person, you know.”

She smiled faintly and shook her head. “I am not blind, Duncan. I see your scars very clearly. They are deep and they are numerous.”

He
swall
owed over a heavy
swell
of despair that rose up in him without warning. He was not accustomed to feeling such things. What had this woman done to him? “I do not want to disappoint you.”

“You have not done so yet,” she said without hesitation, which unsettled him, for he was not worthy of such confidence. He did not feel it in himself. “Quite the opposite, in fact,” she added. “Especial y after what I saw today. I know it was difficult for you.”

“It was torture.”

But there was so much more he could have told her—like how it pained him to turn on Angus, his closest friend, and how he had hated her in that moment for leaving him no choice.

But those were things he could not say. They were feelings he did not welcome. Feelings he would have to bury, like so many other things.

He turned away from her and faced the window, and wondered how long this proper, civilized inquiry was going to take.

* * *

Later Amelia entered the library, where her uncle was pacing in front of the bookcases. “You sent for me?”

“Yes.” He held out his hand and guided her to a chair, but continued to pace the room.

“You are troubled, Uncle?”

At last, he stopped and faced her. His cheeks were flushed with color. “I have been thinking about what I witnessed in the banqueting
hall
, and I have become most distressed.”

Determined to stay calm, she folded her hands on her lap.

“How so?”

He began to pace again. “I have not changed my mind about Richard Bennett. I
still
believe he is a vill
ain and must be stopped, but something else has been poking and jabbing at me.” He looked at her. “That savage who approached him with the claymore—the one they
called
Angus. Is he the Butcher, Amelia?”

She blinked up at her uncle in astonishment. “No, he is not.”

He studied her careful y. “He is not the one who abducted you from the fort? You must be honest with me, gel, because if your future husband is in legion with such murderous rebels, I cannot, in good conscience, sanction this marriage.”

She
swall
owed thickly. “I assure you, Uncle, that man was not the Butcher. He is a MacDonald, and he is an old friend of Duncan’s. They fought together at Sherrifmuir, and Duncan was once betrothed to his sister. That was who Duncan was questioning Richard about in the
hall
.”

“Yes, yes, I already knew about the young woman. Duncan shared many things with me. But when I watched that fierce Highlander advance across the room, I swear, my heart nearly gave out. I have never, in
all
my years, seen such fury.”

Amelia had.

“I believe,” her uncle continued, “that he would have slaughtered Richard before our very eyes if Moncrieffe had not been there to prevent it.”

She looked down at her hands. “Yes, I believe you are right.”

Her uncle went to a side table and poured himself a glass of claret from a crystal decanter. He took a drink, then paused a moment to let it settle his nerves. “So this MacDonald is not the savage who abducted you?”

“No, Uncle, I assure you he is not.”

He faced her. “That is a relief, I must say.”

She sat for a moment, then stood up and poured herself a glass of claret as
well
.

“What
will
happen to Richard?” she asked.

“That remains to be seen. I have sent a dispatch directly to the King with the details of my findings, and I have also informed Colonel Worthington at the fort. We sent a rider there today with news of Richard’s incarceration here, and I suspect Worthington’s forces
will
be here tomorrow to arrest him and take him back to Fort
William
. After that, there
will
likely be a court-martial.”

«Will
he be hanged?”

“It is difficult to predict,” her uncle told her. “The man is a decorated military officer who has proven himself loyal to the Crown in countless situations in the past. These things can be…” He paused. “They can be delicate.”

“Do you believe he
will
be found innocent of the charges, even with your influence and the testimony of the witnesses?”

“I cannot lie to you, Amelia. It is quite possible.”

She lowered her gaze. “If that happens, Duncan
will
not be pleased, especial y if Richard is reassigned to Scotland.”

“I realize that, and who could blame him?”

She looked her uncle in the eye. “Have you expressed these concerns to him?”

“Not yet.”

“Do you plan to?”

He turned and poured himself another drink. “I haven’t decided yet.”