Teresa Medeiros (6 page)

Refusing to attribute the languid weight of her limbs to the lingering effects of Morgan’s kiss, she stuffed her father’s sword under the settee and tucked the pistol behind a Venetian mirror. She cast a wistful look back at the moonlit solar before pulling the door shut. In the harsh light of morning she knew their encounter would seem to be only a dream.

Hugging the shadows, Sabrina slipped around the gallery, fully intending to bundle both Enid and herself off to bed before anyone else discovered their flummery. But a burst of laughter—rich, deep, and compelling—stopped her in her tracks.

She drifted to the railing and sank to her knees, lured by the unfamiliar sound and the ripple of gold as Morgan tossed back his head at one of Brian’s jests. A boyish smile transformed his face, erasing its weary lines and crinkling the taut skin around his eyes. Sun, wind, and responsibility had aged him far past his years. Some men would always be boys, but Sabrina sensed that Morgan MacDonnell had been born a man.

The intensity of his raw masculine beauty struck her anew; her heart spasmed as if someone had reached through her chest and squeezed it. Her hands clenched on the balusters.

On Morgan’s other side, Alex filled his own goblet with fresh wine and lifted it in a toast. Morgan’s gaze flicked to the gallery, catching Sabrina unawares. A more intimate smile teased his lips as he lifted his mug of water in a silent tribute that made all the noise and chaos between them fade to a meaningless hum. Brian slapped him on the back and Morgan lowered his gaze and his mug, taking care not to alert the others to her hiding place.

A fragile happiness welled in Sabrina’s heart. Fearful of betraying an emotion so new and precious, she forced her gaze away from him. As she watched, the dark-haired MacDonnell rose and slipped out the main door, clutching his stomach. A burst of night wind fluttered the banners.

Probably ill from too much venison, Sabrina thought, grinning.

Their animosity softened by wine and camaraderie, Angus and her father seemed to be faring as well as their sons. The hooded servant who had hovered behind Angus had disappeared, probably to curl up in some forgotten nook of the manor. Sabrina’s glassy-eyed mother looked as if she would like to do the same.

From the corner of her eye Sabrina saw the tapestry behind them ripple. She glanced toward the door, expecting to see the hoggish MacDonnell stumble back in, mopping his mouth with the back of his hand. The door remained closed.

Sabrina frowned. Almost without realizing it, she rose to her feet, beset by a terrible premonition that something was wrong. She leaned over the rail, staring hard at the tapestry. Was that a flicker of movement she saw, or just a trick of the guttering candles? Of their own volition, her feet dragged her toward the stairs, drawn as if magnetized to the source of her unease.

“Sabrina! What in heaven’s name are you doing out of bed at this hour?”

Her mother’s cry jerked her out of her reverie. She realized she was standing at the foot of the stairs. A rush of half-formed impressions buffeted her. Her father’s worried frown. The open leers of the MacDonnell men as they nudged each other under the tables. Morgan’s black scowl.

Brian’s words carried through the hall. “Good God, Alex, is that blood all over her gown?”

Sabrina had forgotten about the condition of her nightdress. Feeling naked and exposed before them all, she opened her mouth to explain, but before she could speak, Angus rose to his feet, weaving dangerously.

“Ah, this must be the bonny Sabrina! Word o’ yer beauty has spread to the farthest reaches o’ the Highlands.” Even in his drunken state he managed to leer at her mother and wink at his men at the same time. “If me Beth had been blessed with better taste in husbands, ye might have been me own daughter.”

His men burst into lusty laughter. Sabrina’s father nodded, his good-natured smile strained. She felt a painful blush creep up her throat. Scowling even more
fiercely, Morgan began to tug at the bodkin holding his plaid pinned as if he had every intention of whipping it off his own naked form and wrapping it around her.

“To Sabrina!” Angus bellowed. “The tenderest bud of my fair Beth!”

The men cheered wildly as their chieftain hefted his goblet in a mighty toast before pitching forward dead in his plate, the jeweled hilt of a dagger protruding from between his bony shoulder blades.

Morgan’s roar of anguish shook the rafters, drowning out everything but Sabrina’s shrill scream.

Dougal Cameron shoved his wife down the nearest corridor to safety, then bent to cradle Angus’s body. He lifted his hands, staring at his fingers as if bewildered to find them stained with blood. The MacDonnells fumbled for their scabbards and reached into their plaids, only to have their hands return empty.

Morgan had seen too many dead men fall to waste time coddling his father’s corpse. His wide-eyed gaze lit on Sabrina. Alex and Brian reached for his arms, but he flung them away as if they were no more than puppies nipping at his heels and bounded over the table. Everyone thought he was diving for the pile of weapons.

Everyone but Sabrina. She had seen the murderous flare of accusation in his eyes. She knew what he believed as surely as if he had shouted it. That she had
been a lure, a distraction to draw his attention from his father’s impending assassination.

She was mesmerized by his charging approach. There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. No time to beg for mercy. If he had snatched up his ax in that moment and swung it, her feet would have remained rooted to the stone long after her head had flown.

His arm circled her waist. He jerked her against him and turned them both to face the hall. Sabrina felt his hand dip into his plaid, reaching for a pistol he’d surrendered to her only minutes before. Bereft of any other weapon, his big hand closed over her jaw, tilting her face upward to show them all that the slightest twitch of his fingers would break her neck.

A strange calm flowed through her. Even hanging helpless in Morgan’s grip, her weight braced against his splayed thighs, she knew she would bear no bruises from his touch. His hands were almost gentle, their violence restrained by a ruthless competence more terrifying than cruelty. She had little doubt that her death at his hands would be as brutally tender. One jerk of his blunt fingers and her life would wink out like a star at the approach of dawn.

Every man in the hall, even Morgan’s clansmen, stood frozen with shock. Impotent fury glazed Brian’s eyes. Alex was breathing hard, his face flushed redder than his hair.

“Your hospitality leaves much to be desired, Dougal Cameron,” Morgan snarled, his hot breath fanning Sabrina’s hair.

Dougal lifted his bloodstained hands in plea. “Don’t do this, Morgan. I had no hand in killing your father. If you’ll give me the chance, I swear I’ll help you find the scoundrel who did.”

“My father gave you a chance. And look what it got him. Gather your arms,” he commanded his men.

The MacDonnells fell on the weapons like a pack of ravening dogs. Their greasy hands snatched the rusted hilts of swords and dirks, caressed the scarred butts of their pistols. As each man straightened, his eyes narrowed to hungry slits at the thrill of approaching
bloodshed. They were in their element now, poised for open warfare and prepared to kill the men they’d just so amiably dined with.

Sabrina’s own eyes narrowed as she spotted the bonny dark-haired MacDonnell among them. How had he gotten back into the hall? Had she simply overlooked him in the chaos? Her questions were swallowed along with her dread as she realized her own clansmen stood before the MacDonnells as unarmed and helpless as lambs for the slaughter.

Morgan backed toward the door, using Sabrina as a shield.

Dougal slammed his fist on the table. “Damn you, Morgan, free her! She’s only a child! This fight is between you and me.”

Morgan’s voice rumbled down Sabrina’s spine, his words meant only for her ears. “You killed the wrong MacDonnell, brat. You should have cut off my head when you had the chance.”

Morgan rarely made tactical errors in the heat of battle, but indulging himself in that taunt proved to be a costly one. For Sabrina, time swept backward. He was no longer a dangerous stranger who held the fragile thread of her life in his hands, but that same vexsome, arrogant boy who had trod upon her tender feelings at every turn.

“Always have to have the last word, don’t you?” she said, her voice deceptively soft.

Every snippet of ruined embroidery, each of her tarts he’d so gleefully fed to Pugsley, every tear she’d never shed was in the force of the blow as she swung her fist behind her and smashed it into his face.

Morgan’s eyes crossed at the pain, and he knew she had broken his nose. “Why you wee bi—”

Suddenly he was holding a flailing dervish in his arms. Her sharp little heels tattooed on his shins. Between grunts and pants of exertion, she managed to choke out, “If you’d … use … that thick skull of yours for something other than hanging a … b-b-bonnet on, you’d listen to my … father.” She bit the hand he shoved over her mouth, drawing blood.

His men exchanged uneasy glances. None of them had ever bested Morgan in any contest, and they had the scars to prove it. Now this half-English slip of a girl actually seemed to be holding her own with him. Her black hair streamed over her face; her white teeth snapped at the air in a quest for fresh flesh.

“Want me to shoot her, Morgan?” Ranald suggested hopefully, cocking his pistol.

Morgan saved him the trouble by slamming her to the floor and pinning her beneath his weight. His men cheered, thinking a new sport was in the offing. What better revenge for Angus’s murder than to defile the Cameron’s daughter while he and his sons were forced to watch? They licked their lips in anticipation, hoping for a turn of their own when Morgan was done with her.

Brian lurched forward only to find a MacDonnell dirk pressed to his throat. Alex cast his father a desperate glance, but Dougal stood silent, his expression almost pensive as he watched the two locked in a battle of wills on the floor of his hall.

Morgan had trapped Sabrina’s thighs between his own and captured her slender wrists in one of his hands. Both of their chests were heaving as their gazes locked. Morgan tasted blood where the back of her head had split his lip.

“Shag her once for me!” one of his men called out.

Morgan saw the color drain from Sabrina’s cheeks. Yet even now, when they both knew he had the power to leave her broken, bleeding, and debased on the stones, she refused to beg, refused to cry.

“Give the wench a taste o’ yer blade, Morgan. I’ll wager ’tis heartier than the one that killed yer da.”

Morgan drew back his fist, knowing he had no choice but to cuff her unconscious before his clansmen’s ugly mood veered beyond his control. Her struggles were only whetting their lust. She wasn’t going to make it easy on him. Her soft body trembled beneath his, but her unflinching eyes taunted him, dared him to strike her.

Her hair fanned around her face in silky black waves. It was the kind of hair a man dreamed of wrapping his hands in and pinioning to his pillow. The kind of hair …

Morgan hesitated, praying his blow wouldn’t be hard enough to shatter the defiant tilt of her jaw.

That brief flicker of compassion cost him dearly. He felt the cold muzzle of the pistol jammed against the base of his skull an instant before he heard the click of its hammer being raked back.

Elizabeth Cameron’s cultured tones were crisp with fury. “Get off my baby, Morgan MacDonnell, or I’ll send you to join your father in hell.”

Sabrina felt Morgan’s grip tighten for an implacable instant as if even the threat of death weren’t enough to make him let her go.

Had she not been riveted by the smoky green of his eyes, she would have seen the desperate glances exchanged by his men. Ranald could take out Elizabeth Cameron with one shot, but if her finger so much as twitched on her own trigger, the MacDonnells would be less not only one blustering figurehead, but also the man who bound the remnants of their clan together. A costly price to pay even for a meal as hearty as the one the Cameron had provided.

Morgan made the decision for them.

Staring straight ahead, he surrendered Sabrina’s wrists and lifted his hands. He slowly rose, unfolding his large frame with measured grace. Sabrina remained sprawled on the floor, mesmerized by his arrogant stance and the unrepentant quirk of his lips. She was beginning to wonder if she was destined to spend her
life at this man’s feet. She could now clearly see the pearl-plated pistol shoved against the side of his throat.

“Anythin’ to please a lady,” he drawled, daring a rueful smile.

Her father braced his palms on the table, looking as weary as Sabrina had ever seen him. The gray in his hair fanned out from his pallid temples in stark wings. “Brian, Alex, escort our guest to the dungeon before your mother kills him.” His voice trembled with suppressed fury. “I want the rest of you out of my home. Now!”

“Murdered our poor chieftain before dessert,” Ranald muttered, tucking his pistol down the front of his kilt. He pilfered a mutton leg from a table as he passed. “Bloody rude lot if ye ask me. No manners a-tall.”

“Aye,” another MacDonnell dared, scooping up a flagon of ale and a handful of silver spoons. “Angus was a fine man. He deserved to meet death face-to-face, not be stabbed in the back by some miserable Cameron coward.”

Grumbling like disgruntled children at being deprived of the anticipated bloodshed, the MacDonnells trailed out. The women of their acquaintance were as likely to shoot a man as bed him, and they had no reason to believe the Cameron’s wife was any different. They weren’t willing to risk Morgan’s life to salvage either pride or pudding.

One of the larger men heaved Angus’s corpse over his shoulder. Morgan didn’t even blink as his father’s body jostled past, although Sabrina would have sworn she saw a muscle twitch in his granite jaw. She shuddered to imagine her own papa’s body being bounced about with such lack of ceremony.

Brian and Alex caught Morgan’s wrists, twisting them behind him with more force than was necessary. Bronzed slabs of muscle rippled in his forearms, a harsh reminder that it was only by his grace and the pistol still trained on his head that they were being allowed to restrain him at all. Her brothers’ faces were taut with rage as they bound the hands of their former friend.