Her Wicked Highlander: A Highland Knights Novella (7 page)

She shook her head, turning her lips to his palm and kissing hard. “No more blame. It’s done. Now I intend to have my vengeance on William Sutherland.”

His eyes narrowed. Clearly, he could see she wasn’t joking. He nodded slowly. “What do you wish to do?”

“Find him,” she whispered. “And then kill him.”

He shook his head firmly. “The Knights will see him brought to justice. ’Tis why we’ve come to Scotland. I’ve brought you here so the other Knights can find Sutherland without having to be worrying for your safety.”

She sniffed. “Gin was the only family I had left. And I’m just sitting here, locked in a castle and doing nothing to avenge her...”

“I ken, lass.”

“I want to
do
something. I want to go home. I want to find him.”

“Nay. ’Tis too dangerous,” Max said, his voice gentle. “Sutherland killed your maid, Aila. I’ll not have him killing you too. Dinna worry, the Knights are good at what they do. They’ll find him.” He sounded completely confident in that.

She looked away from him, swallowing hard. She might want to run Sutherland through herself, but she wasn’t daft. What Max said made sense. The Highland Knights had a great deal more experience with evil, horrible men than she did. And if she truly wanted the man dead, the Knights were the most suited to the job.

Still feeling frustrated and helpless, she clamped her lips shut and tried to chip away at the coldness in her vengeful heart. She had been independent to the point of loneliness for quite a while now, but the Highland Knights were here to help her, and she’d try her best not to look that gift horse in the mouth.

That evening, after they ate a dinner of cock-a-leekie soup that Aila made from a chicken they’d bought in the village, Max went out back to fetch water while Aila stayed in the kitchen, cleaning up.

She turned, smiling, when the door opened, and she took a step toward it to help with the water. But she froze when she saw the man wasn’t Max at all. He was as tall as Max but thin, with light-brown hair and gray-blue eyes.

Aila took a step back. The man appeared unimposing, but… “Who are you?” she whispered.

He smiled, and in that smile, Aila saw pure evil, and she didn’t even need to hear his answer.

“Good evening. I’m William Sutherland,” he said politely.

She opened her mouth to scream, but he was fast. He lunged forward on long legs and clamped a hand over her mouth. His fingers pressed down so hard, her teeth bit into her cheek, and she tasted the coppery flavor of blood in her mouth.

Keeping his hand clamped on her mouth, he flashed something silvery in front of her. It was a gun.

“Do you see this, woman?” he rasped. “It’s a pistol. Make a sound, and you’ll regret it.” And he pressed the muzzle to her head.

Aila trembled deep inside, every inch of her shaking to her core. She knew what this man was capable of. She could do nothing but comply.

He dragged her through the kitchen toward the entry hall and through the front door.

Max would be back in moments. He’d see that she was missing and come after them. She could only hope that he didn’t get himself killed. But he knew what he was doing—he was a trained warrior, and she trusted him.

That came as no small shock. Aila didn’t put her trust in many people. The only people she’d ever truly trusted in her life had been her parents…and Gin, to a lesser extent. Now they were all gone. But she had Max now, and she didn’t intend to lose him as well.

Sutherland dragged her down the road, and at the first bend, she saw a pair of horses hitched to a small cart. “Get in,” he muttered as they approached. She climbed up, trying not to look back to see if Max was already coming.

Sutherland climbed up onto the bench beside her, then reached back into the cart and withdrew a bundle of rope. He used it to tie her, both wrists and one leg, to the frame of the cart. Like Max, he knew how to tie a knot. After Sutherland urged the horses to move, she tested the strength of her bindings. There was no way to escape—not unless she was untied.

“Where are you taking me?” she said, just loudly enough to be heard over the clomping of hooves, afraid if she spoke too loudly, he’d shoot her.

He gave her a smile so cold and menacing that it made her innards lurch.

“Why, to your home, of course.”

Chapter Seven

It was the longest night of her life. For the first hour, Sutherland sat quietly sinister beside her. But then he started talking. For the next several hours, he described his hopes for Scotland and the clans. He explained his absolute conviction that the King Richard Dagger—
her
dagger—possessed great magical powers and would give untold political strength to whoever owned it.

As she shivered beside him, Sutherland waxed on and on about the evils of the English and how they’d subjugated the Scots for hundreds of years, how they all deserved to die fiery deaths and suffer in hell for what they’d done. How, once given the strength of the dagger, he would raise the strongest army Scotland had ever seen and defeat the damnable English once and for all.

A misty dawn had greyed the sky when they arrived at Aila’s cottage hours later. Sutherland parked the cart among the few chickens pecking around her possessions strewn about the front yard. The terrible man had definitely already been here. She clamped her teeth together, her fists clenching and unclenching in front of her, and tried to contain her boiling fury. Max had once told her that her tongue would get her into trouble someday. She’d no interest in proving him right.

Sutherland jumped off and loped around on long legs to her side, where he untied her from the cart but left her wrists tied together. He grabbed the rope between her wrists and yanked her from the cart. She stumbled, falling to her knees, and gasped as she felt something slice straight through her dress and into her kneecap.

Sutherland didn’t care. “Stand up, you clumsy bitch,” he grumbled, tugging on the rope. She stood on wobbly legs that hadn’t been given an opportunity to move in hours. A warm stream of blood soaked through her stocking.

He shoved her toward her cottage door. She stumbled, but this time managed not to fall. “Wait…”

“What d’you want?”

“I… must relieve my bladder,” she said, trying to think.

His lips curled in distaste. “I’ll come with you.”

“You dinna need to—”

“I’m not stupid, Aila MacKerrick. You’d best to remember it.”

“But—”

“I’ll be keeping you in my sight till I’ve got what I want from you.”

And then?
she wanted to ask. But she remembered Gin and what had happened to her after Sutherland was done with her, and she kept her mouth shut.

She needed to get away. She knew Max would come as soon as he could, but a terrible thought had begun to fester in her mind during the hours of travel from Beauly Castle. Shouldn’t he have already caught up with them? Sutherland hadn’t seemed to be rushing. What if Sutherland had hurt him?

If Sutherland wouldn’t let her out of his sight, she’d never be able to slip away. She knew these woods down to the location of every tree and bush, but how could she escape from him if her hands were tied and he kept that blasted gun pointed at her?

She’d need to incapacitate him somehow. Hurt him.

She just needed to find the right time.

He didn’t let go of her all the way to the privy. She used it—awkwardly, given the trussed state of her wrists—staring defiantly at him the whole time. At least let him think she was being honest about needing to go, that she wasn’t buying time to devise a plan of escape.

She finished, and he grabbed her wrists again, yanking her along with him back to the house. He opened the door to her cottage before pushing her inside. She nearly stumbled yet again, because inside the cottage was utter chaos—clothes and furniture everywhere. A mattress and her pillows had been cut open in the main room, and straw and feathers were strewn across the floor. Dishes and crockery had been thrown from shelves and lay in scattered pieces everywhere.

Aila choked on a sob. This was her home—it contained all her possessions, everything her parents had spent their lives working for. And this crazy zealot had come in and torn it all to pieces with no regard for any of it.

“Shut up.” Sutherland glanced around as if seeing the place for the first time, then kicked an iron pan on the floor. “Bloody hell,” he squealed, grimacing in pain.

She couldn’t hold her tongue a second longer. “That’s
your
fault,” she snapped.

Sutherland’s lips curled up in a snarl, and his sandy brows snapped together so there was no space between them. He drew back his hand and slapped her across the face. Her head whipped to the side.

“You wilna be speaking to me like that, Aila MacKerrick, do you understand? I’m to be your laird, and you’ll be treating me with the respect due your liege lord.”

What the hell? He was a true and thorough madman.

Her cheek throbbed, and she tasted blood again—the cut inside her cheek reopening. She battled successfully against the very strong urge to spit at him, but she couldn’t stop the glare she threw in his direction.

Why hadn’t Max come?

If she thought too hard on that, she’d despair. She couldn’t think that way. He was all right—he had to be.

“Come now.” Sutherland grabbed the knot between her wrists and dragged her into the kitchen, where he shoved her into one of the chairs at the old oak table. She thought he might feed them—or at least himself—but he ignored the pantry. Instead, he simply sat across from her.

“Now, where is it?” he asked, placing his forearms on the table and leaning forward.

“Where’s what?”

He gave a long-suffering sigh. “Dinna play the simpleton, woman. The King Richard Dagger. I’ve torn this hovel apart, and ’tis nowhere to be found, but you ken where it is, don’t you?”

She’d had plenty of time to think about this. The dagger was a family heirloom, and, yes, it was valuable—something she’d always known she could sell if she truly needed the money. She’d never intended to, though, unless something catastrophic happened.

Like her father, Aila had always felt a special connection to the King Richard Dagger. It was almost a thousand years old, and legend said it had passed from Richard the Lionheart to an Irish mercenary, and then it had mysteriously come to Scotland, eventually landing in the hands of the MacKerrick laird hundreds of years ago.

The dagger had been passed down, son to son, for generations. Her father had no sons, only her, but that had never seemed to bother him. He had been happy that it would be in her hands someday. He’d only asked her to make him two promises. First, that she’d sell it if she ever truly needed to, and second that if she ever had a son, she’d show him its location and tell him its history before she died.

Now, it was all she had left of her parents—indeed, of the entire MacKerrick family.

But she wasn’t stupid. Sutherland would kill for the dagger, and she wouldn’t risk death for it. Her da wouldn’t want her to go that far.

And yet, once Sutherland had the dagger in his hands, he’d probably kill her anyhow.

“If I tell you where it is, what’s to stop you from hurting me?”

His smile was completely false. “If you help me, why would I have reason to hurt you?”

She leaned forward and lied to his face. “Do you think I dinna wish for an independent Scotland? Well, I do. I dinna care about the dagger—it is nothing to me. An ornament to admire. But if you can bring greatness back to Scotland with its help, then it is all yours.”

She could tell he was having a difficult time not rubbing his hands together greedily.

“Where is it?”

She sat back, staring at him. She loathed every bit of him. Every inch of his pasty face, of his long-limbed body.

“I’ll be requiring some assurances first.”

He scowled. “I owe you nothing.”

“’Tis my dagger,” she pointed out. “It’s been in my family for centuries.”

“But only for safekeeping. It belongs to the man who is to liberate Scotland.”

She sighed. “I will tell you where it is—and it isna here, by the way—and you will go retrieve it while I go my own way… in the opposite direction.”

His lips twisted. “You’ll lie to me. You’ll send me on a fool’s errand, then disappear.”

There was an edge to his voice, and she sensed the growing rage in him. The crazy fool was quick to anger. She needed to tread carefully.

“I canna tell you where it is unless you guarantee my safety,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“I’ll let you go when it’s in my hands. I swear it.”

She shook her head. “How do I ken whether you’re lying?”

He straightened, growing several inches taller in height. “Do you imply I am a liar?”

“Nay. But how can I ken it for certain?”

His lips grew thin. “I am to be your laird, Aila MacKerrick. A laird doesna lie to his beloved people.”

She considered this, watching him closely. Finally, she shook her head. “Nay. You need to let me go first.”

He regarded her for a long moment, the look in his dead eyes sending skitters of alarm down her spine. “You’ll be regretting that decision,” he said. Then he reached across the table and grabbed her forearm, so tightly she was sure her bones would snap. She cried out in pain.

“This is just the beginning.” He leaned forward, pinning her arm to the table and looming over it until his face was mere inches from hers. “Take me to the dagger, woman. I’ll let you go when it’s in my hands, and not a second sooner.”

She hesitated. He slapped her, and then again, backhanding her. Her face whipped in one direction then the other. The now-familiar taste of blood filled her mouth.

“Tell me where it is.”

He backhanded her again. Tears gathered in her eyes. There was no way out of this, no way she could think to ensure he’d let her go.

She had no choice. “It isna far,” she whispered.

“Where?” he demanded.

“I’ll take you to it.”

He released her arm abruptly. “No tricks.”

“Nay.”

“How far?”

“Just a half mile or so.”