Claiming the Highlander (12 page)

“I beg your pardon?”

She dropped her pack to the ground, bent over to where she could look at her knees, then she started pulling the hem of her plaid lower.

“You know, I had six brothers, which means I don’t need the likes of you telling me everything that is wrong with my body. And in spite of what Ian, Jamie and Duncan always said while we were growing up, I do not have the legs of a scrawny, half-dead chicken.”

Braden tried not to laugh, but for his life he couldn’t help himself. The image of her plucking at the plaid and gesturing in sharp, stiff movements reminded him quite a bit of poultry. Even the manner of her speech in short, angry bursts reminded him of a chicken clucking.

However, the heated glare she shot him when she straightened up succeeded in checking his humor.

At least until he made the fatal mistake of looking at her boots. Enos’s words rang in his ears as he tried not to notice that the frayed brown boots really were ugly.

Burn the witch and her ugly shoes too.

Braden held his breath, but still the laughter bubbled up until he had no choice but to laugh or choke. Throwing his head back, he gave rein to his humor.

Maggie balled her fists at her side as she glared at him. “You better be glad I’m a woman, Braden MacAllister, or I’d be taking a sword to you right now.”

And she probably could best him too, especially in those ugly shoes.

The thought made him laugh even harder.

“You beast!” she said, an instant before something wet slapped him upside his head.

“What the …?” Braden pulled it away from his head to see a damp cloth in his hand.

“You’d best be glad I didn’t have anything harder in my pack or else I’d have used it on you instead.”

“Just so long as it’s not your shoes,” he said, choking back another wave of laughter. “I could survive anything but that.”

“My shoes?” she asked, her anger wilting beneath her confusion.

Braden cleared his throat as he fought with himself. “I wasn’t laughing at your legs, little blossom. But rather at something Enos said earlier.”

Suspicion hovered in her eyes. “You swear it?”

“On my completely unrepentant soul, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m sure you’d find something harder to slap me with than that cloth, I’d be willing to show you just how unlike a chicken I think those legs of yours really are.”

Her cheeks pinkened at his compliment as she looked about bashfully. “Then what were you going to say about my legs?”

“That they’re by far too feminine to be exposed. We need to lower your plaid and pad your …” In spite of himself, he laughed again, “Boots.”

“Oh,” Maggie said quietly. “I’m sorry about the wet cloth, then. I hope it didn’t hurt.” She came forward to take the cloth from his hand.

“It didn’t hurt,” he said, releasing the cloth to her.

Her hand gently scraped his, and for a moment he couldn’t focus on anything except the gentle softness of her skin fairy-light on his own. Unbidden, his gaze dipped back to the exposed flesh of her legs, and his mind played through several interesting scenarios he’d love to experience with her.

Aye, as passionate as she was, he could already hear her deep throaty moans as he taught her the true meaning of pleasure.

He lifted his gaze to her flat chest and the laces that drew her saffron shirt closed. In his mind, he could see himself reaching out and unlacing them, exposing the binding on her chest and then freeing her breasts to his touch.

His body drew hot and hard as his mouth watered for a taste of her skin.

“You know, Maggie …” Braden stopped himself before he propositioned her again. Any other woman would be his in an instant, but to get this woman, he would have to play the game more slowly. Skillfully.

She wasn’t the type of woman just to fall into his arms and demand his kiss.

“What?” she asked, folding the cloth and returning it to an animal skin bag in her pack.

Change the subject
, his mind warned.
Now!

“Why are you carrying that?” he asked in a deliberate effort to refocus his thoughts.

“In case it’s needed. I always pack a damp cloth for washing and such.”

Braden didn’t understand that, but then there were many things about women in general he didn’t understand. And a lot of things about Maggie in particular that defied even his best cognitive abilities.

Letting the matter go, he dared a glance at those ugly boots. “We’ll have to find something to pad your boots with. Do you have—” He broke off as he finally looked up at her head and noticed her hair.

The moonlight caught in the strands he had assumed she’d braided or twisted about her head. And it was only standing this close to her that he could finally see what the dark auburn locks really looked like.

“Good Lord, woman, what have you done?” he asked in disbelief as he fingered her sheered locks. Her soft hair curled about his fingers as Braden carefully brushed his hand over her head.

“I didn’t want my hair to betray us.”

Braden felt as though he’d been slapped in the face with something a lot harder than her rag. Her hair barely reached her thin shoulders. And it was then he noted the tears in her lashes. He cupped her cheek in his hand and ached to pull her close to comfort her. “Maggie.”

“It’s just hair,” she whispered. “It’ll grow back.”

“But it was beautiful hair. Hair a man dreams of holding in his hands and burying his face in.”

Her eyes sparkled in the moonlight as she looked up at him. “Did you ever dream of that?”

Placing his hands on her cheeks, Braden answered her question with a kiss.

Maggie moaned at the fierce tenderness of his embrace. Never in her life had anyone kissed her, and the thought that it really was Braden who had finally done so thrilled her more than anything else had in her entire life.

Mo chreach
, but it was wondrous. This feeling of those strong, beautiful lips on hers as his arms
wrapped about her, pulling her closer to his rock-hard chest. It was better than even her sweetest dreams. And her entire body thrummed with the rush of excitement.

He smelled of sweet, decadent elderberries and tasted of ale and honey. Of raw, earthly desires, and in that instant she understood why the women had complained so mightily at being deprived of their husbands.

Who would want to give this up for even an instant? She wished she could die right now. Right in this moment of pure heavenly bliss. If she lived to be a thousand years old, she’d never forget the taste of his mouth, the feeling of his arms holding her tight as her senses whirled from the earthy scent of his body.

For this one tiny moment, he was hers. And she reveled in it.

Braden’s head swam at the sensation of her lips beneath his. Her breath mingled with his as her tongue gently explored his mouth. He could tell by her hesitation that he was the first ever to lay claim to her lips, and that knowledge only added to his pleasure.

Aye, she was a spirited and bold lass, one who beguiled him in ways he’d never known.

“Maggie,” Braden whispered against her lips, savoring the feel of those two syllables against his tongue while he longed to savor even more intimate parts of her body. Slowly. Leisurely.

Aye, he wanted to lay her down and make love to her for the rest of the night.

And right now he could kill the MacDouglas for the absence of her hair. How he wished he had known in time to stop her. Never had a woman done such for him, and all because she didn’t want to betray him.

It was much more of a sacrifice than a scoundrel like him deserved.

Braden trailed his lips from her mouth to her jaw, then down to her neck. He inhaled the sweet fragrance of her skin and drank the moonlight and warmth from her flesh.

She ran her hands over his back, wrenching a groan from him as he lifted the hem of her plaid from behind and found out just what she wore beneath it.

Nothing.

The thought drove him close to madness.

Aye, he would have her.

Now. This instant.

He fisted his hand in the plaid as he licked the gentle hollow of her throat. He both felt and heard her moan as she tilted her head back and gasped for more.

“Am I intruding?” Sin’s voice sliced through Braden’s pleasure, almost instantaneously stifling it.

Damn the man’s presence!

Reluctantly, Braden lifted his head to see Sin
standing in the shadows. Braden narrowed his gaze on his brother, wishing the man had learned a little better timing in his years of warfare.

Unperturbed, Sin met his gaze with just a hint of a smile. “If you want, I could take a quick walk about the church and come right back. That should be enough time to finish the deed, should it not?”

Releasing the plaid to fall back around her hips, Braden gave Sin a droll stare at the insult to his stamina. “For you, perhaps. I, on the other hand, prefer to satisfy my women.”

Braden felt Maggie stiffen in his arms an instant before she pulled away. “It’s dark now. We’d best be going.”

Braden clenched his teeth, but as Sin stepped out of the shadows and into the bright circle of moonlight, he forgot his anger in another wave of laughter.

Maggie looked at him with a frown.

Braden couldn’t speak; all he could do was motion to Sin’s legs, which were almost gleaming white beneath his plaid.

“Do you want to die?” Sin asked nonchalantly.

“Nay,” Braden choked. “But have you seen your legs, man?”

Sin growled low in his throat as he shifted the pack over his shoulder. “Aye, and I know they’re whiter than a dove’s tail. With any luck the sun should blister them up fairly well on the morrow
and by the time we reach anyone who might care, they should be a half-normal color.”

Sin inclined his head to Maggie. “Given how hers look, I doubt anyone will ever notice mine anyway.”

The thought sobered Braden instantly. “Aye, I thought of that myself. We’ll have to be finding her a larger pair of boots, I’m thinking, and some padding for them.”

Sin tossed a brown pair of boots to him along with two worn plaids. “I always plan ahead.”

“Good lad,” Braden said as he handed the boots and cloth over to Maggie. “You must come in handy on all those sieges the English love so well.”

“I hold my own.” Sin looked about the small courtyard. “So, where are our horses?”

“We’ll be walking,” Maggie told him as she sat down on the ground and exchanged the new boots for her old worn pair. “We’ll draw less notice that way.”

The stunned, horrified look on Sin’s face was comical.

“Walking?” Sin choked. “Och, now, lass, are ya tryin’ tae kill me?”

Braden laughed at Sin’s brogue. “Do yourself a favor, brother, if we come across anyone we don’t know, don’t open your mouth. Your brogue is more likely to give you away than your legs.”

Sin glowered at Braden. “I don’t want to hear
another word from you about my legs. I’m sure by the end of tomorrow they’ll be acceptable even to you.”

“Let us hope so. For as it stands now, it’ll be a race to see which of you gets us hanged first.”

Sin cast an interested stare at Maggie’s legs. “Aye, but between the two, I must say I prefer hers.”

Braden smiled lecherously as he ran his gaze over them as well and wondered how long he’d have to wait before he got a full taste of them. “As do I.”

Rising to her feet, Maggie flushed. “Would you two stop? Is there ever a minute in the day when a man doesn’t have wenching on his mind?”

“Aye,” Braden said with a smile. “But it usually involves the minute and a half that we’re eating.”

She shook her head. “And Lochlan wondered why I chose the method of reaching his warriors that I did.”

Before Braden could retort, a door opened from the dormitory across the yard.

Maggie gasped as she dodged into the shadows. The men quickly followed suit.

Pegeen paid them no heed as she crossed the yard to the chapel, then vanished inside.

“That was close,” Maggie whispered. “We’d best be leaving before someone sees us.”

Braden nodded solemnly before leading the way out the small postern gate that Fergus had used earlier that day.

They moved quickly through the heather-covered moor behind the kirk and into the thick woods that separated the MacAllister and the MacDouglas lands. None of them spoke as they put as much distance as they could between themselves and anyone who might want to stop them.

It was nearly two hours later, and long after the dense, dark trees shielded them, that Maggie dared to speak. “Do you think we stand a chance of changing Robby MacDouglas’s mind about the feud?” she asked the men.

“Not a bit,” they said almost in unison.

A deep frown drew her brows together. “Then why are the two of you willing to do this?”

Braden gave her a grim look. He’d been dreading this question, and though he knew he should probably lie, he couldn’t bring himself to be dishonest with her. Maggie was probably the only woman he had never lied to, and for some reason he wanted to keep it that way.

“Because,” he said, “if you fail, then I know a certain way to end this feud once and for all.”

“And that is?”

“I plan to kill Robby MacDouglas.”

She stumbled at his words, then stopped dead in her tracks, her mouth open. “Nay, you canna be serious.”

“Of course I am,” Braden said. “You want this feud to end and this is the only guarantee I know.”

Maggie felt tears prick her eyes. How could he?

And all this time she had assumed he was going with her strictly to protect her.

Foolish woman
, her mind snapped.
You should have known he didn’t do this for you. Do you honestly think he’d care whether or not you live or die?

But she couldn’t say that out loud. Instead, she whispered, “I thought you were being chivalrous. You said you couldn’t let me go alone.”

“Listen to me, Maggie. The only reason I’m allowing you to come along at all is that I know you well enough to know you’d trail along after us on your own, anyway. At least this way I can keep my eye on you. Believe me, I did learn a thing or two about you while you were growing up.”