book JdM6x1406931-20978754 (2 page)

“You’ll have to go for the sheep, boys,” he said. “This one is mine.”

The MacDonalds were clearly of a different mind.

“Is that so, Angus MacGregor?” asked the leader.

“It is, Ian MacDonald. She shamed me in those stocks today, and her virtue must be mine to dispose of according to my wish. I shall have it no other way.”

The second of the MacDonald clansmen said, “Ian, ‘tis not worth the fight. We lose half a hundred sheep for each minute we spend here.”

The third said, “He is well known for a fighter, Ian.”

“With a woodchopper’s axe?” said Ian scornfully. “Come now, lads. Let us stop losing sheep and start gaining a comely laird’s daughter.”

The three MacDonalds spread out to surround Elisabeth and Angus, but before they could fully prepare to close in upon their quarry, Angus darted forward with the quickness of an eagle stooping to its prey and with the haft of the axe dealt Ian a blow right across the face that sent blood spurting from the MacDonald’s nose and knocked him back a pace.

The other two had no time to react, let alone to draw their claymores and thus give themselves more reach, for Angus MacGregor clearly knew how to follow up an advantage, as unfair as the fight quickly looked. The axe haft found Ian MacDonald’s face over and over, until he was down, while his henchmen, paralyzed by the triple indecision of their leader’s ignominious defeat, the lure of Elisabeth, and the almost certainly greater lure of the sheep they were losing, stood by with their hands on the hilts of their undrawn swords.

The shouts of the MacDonalds as they invaded the keep of Castle Urquhart were filling the air now—they had taken the straight road to the castle gate, leaving the warehouses of the market square untouched for the moment.

“See to your chief’s son,” MacGregor said scornfully to the henchmen. Then he turned to Elisabeth and said under his breath, “Run and hide, lass. There’s a barn just to the north. They’ll take the fodder last, in the morning. When they’re all drunk, tonight, slip away.”

“What?” Elisabeth asked. “Are you just going to leave me?”

“Are you daft, milady? You would prefer that I do what I told them I would and rob you of your virtue?”

“No, I—but—”

“Do as I say, silly girl, and you may survive this day. I must see to my own skin.” He turned back to the MacDonalds, who seemed to be on the point of drawing at last.

Elisabeth gave his back a despairing glance and fled.

Chapter Two

Angus looked at the MacDonalds warily. He had thought at first that the henchmen would flee, but now that they had stayed to help their chief’s son, the chances that he could get away without more of a fight were dwindling. With every passing moment, too, there was a greater likelihood that another of the raiding party would come into the market, looking for plunder in the warehouses. He thought of the fleeces he himself would lose to these raiders today and winced briefly.

Such a lovely notion, it had seemed, to bring such a wonderful yield down to Urquhart. Even if the fleeces fetched no more there than they might have when the buyer came in a few weeks, he would still not come out the loser, he had thought, and he would get to hear the ballads and learn the news. How many times had his da said that his curiosity would be his downfall?
Of all the misfortunes of this wretched day, Da’s being proved right might well be the worst.

And the lass.
He groaned inwardly as he watched his imminent demise in the form of two sorry-looking MacDonald raiders gather its wits about it.

Perhaps if she had not turned his head quite so much as she walked haughtily up the market street, telling that poor old woman that what she had learned about cookery in the Lowlands had far surpassed anything Castle Urquhart’s kitchen had produced from the days of William the Lion until now—perhaps if at the exact moment she had stumbled over her own noble feet and fallen into the mire in the midst of a group of traders, landing, with an astonishing amount of spectacle both clumsy and somehow endearing, with her face in a pile of dung, he had not been thinking that she was as pretty as a twinflower, her cheeks pink with the exercise of walking down from the keep and her red-gold hair like the sunlight and her blue eyes like the sky—perhaps then he might not even have noticed, and he might not have let out the huge, involuntary belly-laugh that put him in the stocks.

And then she had taunted him. Why? When she had said to Gordon, the steward, who had hurried over from where he had been negotiating a price on some of the Laird’s sheep, “No, let him not be whipped—these Highlanders know no better.” It was a strange kind of mercy to humble a man in the stocks and spare him a flogging and then to say that she regretted the mistake.

Ian MacDonald raised his head out of the dirt of the market square and looked at Angus with murder in his eyes. The henchmen were starting to help him to his feet.

There was one slim possibility of safety, Angus supposed.

“I would rather end our quarrel here, Ian MacDonald,” he said, not truly imagining he could put the thing to rest so easily. “The lass is gone and the sheep are going. You need not take precious time with the likes of me. Come north to Glanaidh when you like and you may seek satisfaction over a barrel of my oldest whiskey.”

Now the part that required the true bravery: he dropped the axe to the ground, and instead of using his speed, he advanced towards the MacDonalds with his arm extended.

“When you come, you may thank me for telling you that a pile of very fine Inverness-shire fleeces is sitting in the warehouse over yonder.” Angus pointed with his chin to the building where he had stored them that morning.

The looks on the faces of the MacDonald henchmen told Angus that he had at least won them to his peaceable plan. He saw Ian himself notice the same thing, and suddenly, Angus realized he had saved his skin. Ian MacDonald was not a stupid man—just an arrogant one—and he could see the benefit of letting the matter die away for the moment. Angus knew it would only be for the moment, though; if word were ever to travel of what he had done with the axe, Ian MacDonald would not rest until he humbled Angus more thoroughly than Angus had humbled him.

Ian seized Angus’ hand and let himself be pulled to his feet. “A fine blow, MacGregor,” he said, with the blood dripping down from his broken nose, as if he let his nose be broken every day with impunity by men who, according to the customs of the Highlands, should pay with their lives for the privilege. “I’ll see you again, though, perhaps not in Glanaidh.” There was a menace in the tone with which Ian uttered the final phrase that did not bode well for the future, but Angus could not but feel joy fill his chest at the thought that he had survived his foolhardy rescue of Elisabeth Grant.

The sounds of pillage from the castle grew. All the treasure would be in other hands by now, and so the MacDonalds headed for the sheep-folds to the west, and Angus ran north, along the same way he had told the lass to take.
Is she in the barn?
he wondered as he ran by it.
Will she be able to get away?
His pace slowed.

Devil take it, and her,
he thought, sourly. How could MacGregor honor let him beat Ian MacDonald senseless before his guard was up but refuse to let him run by this barn?

Poor lass,
he thought.
Lost her mam all those years ago, her da a right craven bastard, and herself sent away to the Lowlands to boot. It’s no wonder she’s a prideful girl.
Then a thought whose origin he could not name rose:
she could improve, if she had a man.

He looked about but saw no one; the sheepfolds north of Urquhart had been emptied mostly by MacGregor men when the alarm had been rung, he was sure. Those flocks were headed to safety, while Angus’ fleeces would go for MacDonald plaids. There might be justice in heaven, but there seemed none on earth—in the Highlands, at least.

With the native speed that his powerful frame very usefully belied, he darted across the road and into the barn. It was dark; the sun was fully down now, and the barn was full of fodder, in bales stacked almost to the roof.

“Milady?” he called, softly.

“Who’s there?” he heard from behind a stack of bales on his right. Her voice was sweet but somehow, even at this dangerous pass, infuriatingly imperious.

“Who else would it be, lass?” Angus said with anger.

“I’m sure I don’t know, goodman MacGregor.”

Angus didn’t know whether to laugh or to curse. “Spare me your Lowland ways, lass. Call me MacGregor. Now, I am here to offer you my aid in getting northward until the MacDonalds have gone. You will slow my pace, but we should be safe enough.”

“I thank you, but I have no need of your aid. I shall return to the castle.”

“That you shall not, lass. Unless I miss my guess completely, by morning there will be nothing to return to there.”

At that moment—undoubtedly because he had just framed in words the thought that had been lying unmade below the surface of his mind—he noticed that looking out the barn door into the twilight, the light had assumed a disquieting, flickering quality. He put his arm around Elisabeth roughly, hoping to put some sense into her, and drew her out of the barn. Sure enough, flames were going up from the castle roof.

“What?” Elisabeth gasped. “How dare they? They would never… Father will…”

“Your father fled, lass. The MacDonalds have wanted that castle down for years.”

Suddenly, she turned on him in fury. “This is your fault, man. If I had not had to see to your punishment, I would have been at the castle, and I would have gone to the boats, and I would be down the loch and safe.”

“See to my punishment, milady? If you had been able to see your way to forgiving a free man his laughter, the same result would have been reached, without putting that free man in the stocks and making him the object of MacDonald vengeance for years to come because he saved your precious virtue!”

“There are ranks, and there are stations—”

“Ranks and stations, lass? I’ll show you ranks and stations!”

He took the hand he had around her shoulders and grabbed her around the waist. He dragged her back into the barn, looking about for what he very quickly saw: an unstacked hay bale, ready to be broken up and used for fodder. He walked her briskly over there as she recovered from her initial shock at his man-handling and began to struggle and to say, “Let me go! You have no right to touch me, man! I am the Lady of Urquhart!”

“Aye, Lady of a ruin, now, girl. Count yourself lucky that you have a MacGregor here with you in this lonely barn, and not a MacDonald. If it were Ian MacDonald here with you, the spanking I’m going to give you would be the least of your worries.”

He threw her across the hay bale. She tried to rise instantly, but he put his arm across her back heavily and said, “Do not try to get out of your punishment, milady, or your backside will pay all the higher a price.” She struggled for a moment, but he held her to the bale easily, and her squirming finally ceased.

“You will pay for it, man,” she snarled, “if you lay a finger upon me.”

“Is it only you who get to make the naughty pay, then, Elisabeth Grant?” Angus said, and angered at her haughtiness despite himself, he pulled up her blue woolen gown and the silk chemise underneath with his right hand, while, as she began to struggle again, he continued to hold her down with his left.

He felt himself stir under his plaid as he exposed the lovely bottom of the nineteen-year-old Lady of Urquhart and even caught a glimpse of her tender young sex as the kicking of her legs exposed it to his view. He pushed the images that came to mind—of using his advantage to enjoy her here in the barn, over the hay bale, the way the MacDonalds would have—back down deep into the furthest reaches of his imagination, and he began to reap what he could not but think of as his just reward, giving her pert bottom cheeks what he was sure were the first three spanks they had ever experienced.

Elisabeth cried out as if she had been stuck with a dirk. Angus was grimly thankful for the cries of drunken congratulation coming from the castle and now from the market square, where they would be pillaging and drinking—and sadly and worse for the people of the town who had not managed to get away—all night.

“How’s that, milady?” he asked, mockingly. “You don’t like being the one punished?” He spanked the lovely bottom again, three more times, right, left, and center. The feeling of the little cheeks bounding under his open palm presented rather a danger, he realized, for his yard was now swollen to its full size, and her continued kicking, with the glimpses of her lovely pink cunny— lightly thatched with golden curls—that her kicks provided him, only seemed to increase the stiffness there.

“Stop this instant!” Elisabeth hissed. “This outrage will be visited back upon you, man—I promise you that!” She struggled against his arm, and sadly for the state of her rump, the struggling made him spank her harder: three, six, nine, twelve hard spanks from a hand whose great strength had come from building in stone and fighting with the claymore since he had risen twelve, these ten years past.

Now Elisabeth was sobbing, and suddenly the fight seemed to go out of her, and she lay limp across the hay bale. Her bottom was a fiery red all over, and her legs had stopped kicking, somewhat to Angus’ regret.

He stopped spanking her, but he couldn’t resist resting his hand upon her shapely rear, sure that he would never have the chance to feel such an aristocratic bottom again and loath to lose the last of the novel, wonderful sensation.

“There, milady,” he said, weighing both the little cheeks in his big right hand. “I hope you learned something about Highland dignity here in this barn and over this hay bale.”

Chapter Three

Her bottom seemed like it was on fire. Had she learned anything?
Only that Angus MacGregor is a brute,
she thought with a kind of grim and prideful satisfaction.
How foolish to have even considered apologizing for having him placed in the pillory!