The Return of Black Douglas (8 page)

“What question would that be?”

The hand moved to her bare thigh, caressing as it slid higher. He almost purred the words, “Are ye wearing naught under yer trews, lass?”

So many retorts jammed into her brain that it was deadlocked.

“Answer or dinna answer. ’Twould not be so difficult for me to answer it myself, if I had a mind to.”

Her heart pounded. She trembled at the thought of him touching her. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Nae, ’tis not my way to force a lass, unless persuaded.” He lowered her to stand next to his horse. She leaned against the saddle for support. “Ye are in no position to bargain, lass. If I decided to take ye here and now, no one would stop me. If I rode off and left ye here, no one would come to yer aid. Ye could die oot here, and no one would bury ye. Yer puir bones would end up being a wee morsel for the wild animals that roam aboot. Like it or no’, ye are at my mercy, and yer survival is dependent entirely upon me. That should sweeten yer mood and add a musical sound to yer squawk.”

He was a man who lived by his wits and the edge of his sword. He seemed to be on the brink of violence, as if the power held in check within him was done so by a very thin thread. A man like him was at his most dangerous when he seemed to be cool and dispassionate—like a rattlesnake before it strikes.

“Are you trying to frighten me?”

“If I was, ’twould seem I succeeded. Fear robs the mind of reason.”

The soft cadence of his words melted everything inside her, including her resistance. “And what makes you think I have lost all reason?”

“If ye were in possession of good judgment, ye wouldna be out here, and not dressed as ye are, for it robs a man of all rational thought and replaces it with a desire to touch ye.”

“There is a reason for my being dressed as I am, and it isn’t as it seems. You should be careful of being presumptuous or making swollen claims when you have nothing to back them up.”

He seemed to be waiting for her to say more. She remained silent rather than risk his leaving without her.

“Ye have nothing further to say on the matter?”

“No, I have nothing further to say.”

“Ye surprise me. Mayhap I mistook ye for a lass with spirit; a woman with more fight in her. Ye give up too easily, lass.”

She lifted her chin. “You misjudge both me and my motives.”

“Weel, yer no whore,” he replied.

She gasped. All the blood seemed to run out of her. She felt limp, washed out, and exhausted. “I’m not afraid of you.”

He laughed. “Mayhap ye should be. The eve is young. It’s a long way to anywhere from here. Around a near-naked lass, a man can get thoughts he canna always control, especially with the hunger that builds in his bluid after a battle. Ye should be careful. I have been without a woman for a long time.”

“I can certainly understand why.” She decided then and there that, rescue or not, she did not like him. He must have been born in a barn. He was proud, crude, and arrogant. Who did he think he was, Genghis Khan? She knew he was baiting her and decided that, for the time being, the wisdom of the moment was to retreat.

The iciness seemed to vanish from his eyes as he said, “’Tis a fault of mine to be presumptuous and persistent. Ye have naught to fear from me, mistress.”

Perhaps there was a grain of humanness in him after all. She was confused. In a short period of time, he went from Ivan the Terrible, despot and barbarian, to the archangel Michael, the slayer of dragons and weigher of souls. She gazed at the powerful hands that had gracefully wielded a sword a short while earlier and examined her ankle with surprising gentleness.

“’Tis getting colder, and yer nose is as shiny as a hedgehog’s. I’ll not have ye turning sick on me.”

Now he was being nice, just when she had decided he was an ogre.
Well, you aren’t exactly a good judge of the male character now, are you?

Chapter 12

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated,

which, when you looked at it in the right way,

did not become still more complicated.

—Poul Anderson (1926–2001)
U.S. science fiction writer

She was a strange talking woman with a fair face and a heavenly body that kept diverting his thoughts. He was a man of strong desires and in his prime, but what he wanted now were the answers to a lot of questions. Judging from the way she clamped her lips together, she was through talking.

There was something achingly real about her resistance. He shouldn’t have frightened her. He looked at her hair, rich as sable, the fair skin, and the green eyes that watched him with disdain and suspicion. Was it possible that this woman was truly an innocent? Why did he keep having the feeling, incredible though it was, that she was a novice and not really conscious of how serious things were, as if she had been locked away in some tower for most of her life and just recently escaped.

She was a strange one, and he intended to find out who she was, where she was from, and why she was here, dressed or undressed as she was. She wasn’t a Scot, but he could not place her accent. She spoke English, but he did not believe she was English or Irish. Nor was she French, Belgian, Norse, or Spanish, or of any other blood that he could think of.

He knew she was afraid and went to great lengths to hide it, which was admirable although ineffective. While he had to admire the false bravado, he detected a sadness in her—in spite of her defiance and daring—that made him want to know her story.

He studied the tightly held mouth and the distrustful gaze she directed his way and fought the urge to laugh. Didn’t she realize he could have snapped her lovely neck with one blow if he had desired and that he was not doing so because she had backed him down? He did not point that out, preferring, for some unknown reason, to hand her this small victory. It would be easier to learn what he wanted to know if he stopped scaring her.

At the present, he only knew two things about her: She and her sister had appeared in the glen suddenly without a horse or an escort, and she was not a Scot. While he didn’t think she was from England, he did not rule out that she could be a spy sent by the English. Whatever she was, she was more likely to reveal herself if she was comfortable around him.

“Ease yer fears and dinna worrit, mistress. Ye are safe with me. ’Tis not my way to harm a woman. Ye need help and I am the only one aboot, so that puts us together, does it not? Yoked by the fates, we are, and ye have no choice but to come with me, for I canna leave ye here at the mercy of the elements or the unknown.”

She looked immensely relieved, but he also heard her swallow with a gulp, just before she asked softly, “What are you going to do with me?”

He fought the urge to laugh and replied, “Nothing as vile as ye are imagining. It grows colder, and ye wouldna last the night out here dressed as ye are. The temperature goes down with the sun. In life, as it is with a sea voyage, it is oft necessary to lose sight of the shore for a long time. Ye will come with me.”

He returned to the place where she had dropped the strange-looking satchel. What was so important about it, he wondered. Did it contain clues to her identity? Why was she here? Who had sent her? As he pondered those questions, he came up with one more: And just what am I going to do with her?

***

While his back was turned, she seriously considered jumping on his horse and riding off. But she had no place to go, no survival skills for sixteenth-century Scotland, and she wanted her backpack, so she waited. Instead of handing it to her upon his return, he tucked it into a leather pouch hanging from his saddle.

“I can hold it,” she said.

“It is safer where it is and less likely to get wet if it should rain.” He removed a flask from the pouch and handed it to her. “Have a nip or two o’ this. ’Twill make the journey easier and ease the pain of yer ankle.”

“What is it?”

“’Twill warm yer insides.”

I ask what it is, and he tells me what it will do?
“Was that an answer?”

He actually smiled, but it was so brief that she wondered if she had really seen it. As for answering her question, he shrugged. “’Tis something to ease ye. ’Tisn’t a declaration o’ war.”

“Well, I always say that necessity drives away common sense.” She reached for the flask and upended it. After several quick swallows, she was certain her esophagus and everything below it were blistered. She gasped, choked, and then coughed.

“’Tis better, aye?”

When she could talk again, she whispered, “Only because it could not be any worse. You said it would warm my insides. You didn’t say it would set them on fire so I could feel them disintegrate. What was in that flask?”

“Mead.”

“Mead,” she repeated, feeling positively thrilled. Just knowing what it was made her forget the burning in her plumbing from throat to toenails. She once studied the ancient Celts and recalled their celestial nectar they called the drink of the gods. She always wondered what the mead of old would taste like.

And now she knew. The moment was star-spangled and one of those rare, almost poignant times in life when one experiences something so profound that it produces strong feelings of inspiration. She was thrilled and didn’t mind that she wasn’t sipping from an ancient Celtic drinking horn, trimmed with silver. People in the twenty-first century would kill to taste what she had just swallowed.

She closed her eyes so she could relish the earthy flavors that danced around her mouth, jubilant, savory, and warm. She gave him a tentative smile while contemplating a generous hug. “I always wondered what mead tasted like, and now I know.”

He said nothing, but he was certainly looking at her in an odd way. She knew she had a glow of childish wonderment on her face, but she didn’t care. It was such a special moment for her. What her professors wouldn’t give to be in her shoes. She wished she could turn back the clock and run screaming into one of her college classes, shouting, “Come quick! I have tasted history!”

She wished he didn’t have that sensual mouth with the yummy full lips, or the proud curve of an aristocratic nose, not to mention the powerful body that was deceptively lean and tapered. At five feet, six inches, she wasn’t short by any means, but she knew he would tower over her by a good six inches, perhaps more, which meant he was exceptionally tall for a sixteenth-century male.

She tossed her head to throw the curling tendrils of hair back over her shoulders. She wished for a scrunchie to hold it and tried to remember if there was one in her backpack. A haircut would do, but beauty shops were on a growing list of things she would have to learn to do without. Gad! She couldn’t begin to dream up a likely substitute for a toothbrush. Rubbing her teeth with a cloth simply wouldn’t do. And shaving her legs with a knife? She did not want to go there.

He reached for her and caught her up into his arms. He leaned his head close and said with a husky whisper, “Put your leg over the saddle.”

“I know how to ride.” She started to mention that she was raised on a Texas ranch, but neither word would be in his vocabulary and she wasn’t up to a lengthy explanation. She threw her leg over the saddle and swallowed hard when he removed his surcoat, left wearing only his mail hauberk and the shirt beneath.

He pulled the tunic over her head and tucked it around her bare thighs. She was certain that if she was standing, it would fall almost to her ankles. Relief washed over her. If she had been the Pope she would have canonized him on the spot. “Bless you, Sir Knight.”

The corners of his lips lifted into a bona fide smile. Apparently, some humor transcended time. Such an odd thing really to pop into her head, but it was a comforting thought and all the angst flowed out of her. People were people after all, no matter the time period, for it stood to reason humor was not a modern invention.

She rubbed the fabric of the tunic that covered her legs, bathed in the warm feeling of knowing everything necessary was covered. “You have no idea how glad I am to have this.”

“Ye have no idea how glad I am to see ye covered.”

There was something oddly familiar about his husky voice, but the thought vanished. She smiled. “A compliment and a truce of sorts.” She turned toward him and asked, “Does that mean you find me a distraction or a burden?”

His gaze was cool and measuring. “Ye are a distraction, mistress, and one I do not need.” The saddle leather creaked as he mounted behind her. He caught up the reins and clucked to his horse, who tossed his head a couple of times, and they began their journey to wherever he was taking her.

When they reached the fringe of trees, she was charmed when he slipped his left arm around her and transferred the reins to that hand so he could shield her face from the low hanging branches. “My name is Isobella,” she said, and waited for him to introduce himself.

“And the rest of it?”

She hesitated. Should she give him her last name? It was possible he wasn’t any more enamored with the Douglases than he had been with the Macleans, but since no other name came to mind, she had no choice but to tell him the truth. “Douglas,” she said. “Isobella Catriona Douglas.”

“Humph.”

Humph? That’s it? Just humph and nothing more?
She glanced down at the powerful thighs pressed against hers, and she was tempted to poke one of them with her finger, just to see if it truly was as hard as it looked. “Would that be an approving humph or a disapproving one?”

There was no answer to that question, but it did not matter, for she was already warmed by the knowledge that he came from a bold and hardy race of men, descended from brave and warlike ancestors filled with passionate affection for their native land—their Highland mountains, the burn-filled glens, and the heather covered moors. They were tightly bound together by their tribes or clans, and distrusting of strangers.

They rode on, through the thick growth of brush and trees, broken by an occasional clearing. Not once did they come upon a road, a trail, or even a path, and she realized how primitive her surroundings truly were. The reality of sixteenth-century Scotland was vastly different from the version she had acquired in books.

“You did not tell me your name. What should I call you?”

“Alysandir.”

She waited for him to say more, but when the silence stretched on, she decided “Alysandir” was all she was getting. He was precisely the kind of man she had spent years studying about. But he was flesh and blood. She was bewitched by the man, who he was and the time period in which he existed. Everything appealing about him was natural and masculine because he was of the warrior class, not because he lifted weights and wore sleeveless T-shirts.

Sex appeal stuck to him like he bathed in it and forgot to dry off. He seemed relaxed, but there was an alert tenseness to his powerful body, for even as he spoke with her, he was acutely aware of his surroundings. He heard every sound and saw every movement. His guard was never down. She felt safe with him and prayed Elisabeth could say the same. And where was that reprobate, Sir James Douglas?
I hope you are protecting Elisabeth and plan on getting us together.

“Are ye weary, lass? Do I need to stop so ye can rest?”

“If you can make it, I can make it.” She felt the rumbling of chest muscles against her back that indicated he found her comment amusing. She would show him that she meant every word of it. They continued on for quite some time before they stopped by a narrow burn that was nothing more than a thin streamlet of water winding its way around moss-covered rocks. He dismounted and lifted her from the saddle, but he did not let her stand. Instead, he carried her to the bank and bathed her foot in water so cold she gasped. “It’s freezing!”

“Aye, ’tis good for yer ankle.” He withdrew a kerchief from his mail shirt and, wetting it, handed it to her with instructions to wash the dirt from her face. “Ye look like a street urchin,” he said, before he gathered her back into his arms.

He did not move for a moment, studying her face. “Yer a bonnie lass, and ye’ve a face that makes a man think of naught but wanting to kiss ye and see where that leads.”

“I can save you the trouble by telling you where it would lead. Nowhere,” she said, feeling light-headed from the throbbing of her heart. Sure, she would love to kiss him until his lips were numb. Who wouldn’t? She was attracted to him, and she was snared in the moment until he chuckled and carried back to his horse. Once she was mounted, he handed her the flask.

“Is this for my ankle or to loosen my resolve?”

“It can be for whatever reasons ye want it to be, or for all of them, but ye needn’t worry that I will take advantage of ye. A loose-limbed, slack-tongued woman in my bed holds no appeal.”

“Good. I will work on becoming both,” she said and upended the flask, torching her insides for the second time that day. She would have toppled from the saddle had he not mounted behind her and wrapped her in his arms. When she found her voice, she said, “Thank you. I have a surplus of bruises already.”

His dark face was expressionless. “’Tis the splendor of a sudden impulse.” They rode silently for some time, and she was on the verge of falling asleep when they passed beneath a tree and startled a linnet into flight. Still drowsy and relaxed from the mead, she thought about her parents and younger siblings. Did they know their daughters had disappeared?