Duncan strode toward her. “You rely on your own judgment, lass. No one else’s.”
She
pulled
her gaze from the sky overhead and regarded his concerned expression. There was wisdom in his words, she knew it, but what seemed more relevant at the moment was the faint light of compassion she saw in his eyes, as
well
as the heavy beating of her own heart. She regarded him with curious wonder, let her eyes roam over the features of his face, and felt as if he understood what she was feeling.
He looked away, toward the trees. A muscle clenched in his jaw; his chest expanded with a deep intake of breath.
Amelia stood rapt, stricken by the need to know—what was he thinking?
He moved closer. “You have much to learn about the world, lass.”
More than ever, Amelia was shaken out of her comfortable,
well
-planned existence and had to accept that he was right, for none of this fit into her sheltered and clearly deficient realm of experience.
Then he reached out to her, and for some reason she was not afraid as he brushed his thumb across her lips. His eyes roamed over her face, a bird chirped in the treetops, then he leaned forward and gently touched his mouth to hers.
It was surprisingly comforting, which made no sense to her. No sense at
all
.
She immediately
pulled
away and backed up a few steps, but he
followed
.
all
her senses began to hum, and she felt as if she were dissolving. She couldn’t think.
He looked at her with fire in his eyes, as if he were just as surprised by the kiss as she. Then he backed away and turned his attention to the saddlebags,
pulling
the cinches tight and gathering up the reins.
She wiped the moisture from her lips. “Why did you do that?”
He did not give an answer. He simply led the horse to the edge of the glade.
“I wish you would let me go,” she softly said, fol
l
owing him.
“I am innocent in
all
this. Whatever Richard did is not my fault.
I know nothing of it. And I don’t understand why Angus hates me so much, when he was the one who shot my father on the battlefield. He has it backwards.
He
is the one who wronged
me.
”
Stopping under the shade of a tree, Duncan faced her.
“There is no clear way to put into words the fury that consumes Angus. It’s a fury that consumes us
all
, and you’re just not capable of understanding.”
She recal
l
ed the passionate fury that had swept through her when he entered her bedchamber. “Maybe you underestimate me.”
“Nay, lass. You’re an innocent. You’d have to enter
hell
on your own two feet before you could ever truly know of what I speak.”
She saw something dark and disturbing in his eyes and frowned. “I am not sure I want to hear any more.”
“Then stop asking questions. You know too much as it is.”
He strode toward her, took hold of her arm, and led her impatiently to the horse. “Do you want me to toss you up again, or can you do it yourself?”
“I can do it myself,” she replied, no longer wishing to argue with him, at least not now, when he was so very cross and she was reeling with confusion over what had just occurred between them.
Nor could she purge from her mind what had happened to Angus’s sister. She could not bear to think of that young woman’s suffering.
At least now Amelia understood why Duncan and Angus both hated Richard so much. Their motivations to wreak havoc on the English were deeply rooted.
She mounted the horse, and Duncan swung up behind her. Soon they were trotting out of the clearing, heading north.
“Don’t talk anymore,” he said. “Just keep your mouth shut, because my patience with your questions is running short, and if you bring any of it up again, I
’ll
be tempted to stuff another gag in your mouth.”
Amelia shuddered at the firmness of his command.
The others had already left the glade. They had vanished into the trees like swirls of phantom mist, and Amelia was beginning to feel like a ghost herself. She felt as if she were disappearing into a world and a life she did not truly understand.
* * *
They reached Glen Elchaig at dusk, just as the moon was beginning its rise. Stars twinkled overhead, and a wolf howled somewhere in the distance. The other Highlanders had reached the shelter of the glen before them and started a fire. Amelia inhaled the mouthwatering aroma of roasting meat and nearly leaped off the horse in anticipation of a hot meal.
“Is that rabbit I
smell
?” she asked, famished almost to the point of distraction, but not quite—for nothing could distract her from what had occurred in the glade earlier. She had not yet recovered from it.
“Aye. Gawyn is a master chef when it comes to a quick dinner. He can sniff out anything,
kill
and skin it in less than a minute, and have it roasting on a spit before you can blink twice.”
Duncan urged the horse into a gal op, and she felt the animal lift beneath her, as if they were taking flight. They rode into the camp and dismounted, and the first thing Amelia noticed was the stiffness in her legs from so many hours in the saddle. She could barely walk.
Duncan tended to his horse while she approached the hot, roaring fire. Sparks snapped and flew upward toward the darkening sky while drops of grease from the roasting meat sizzled and hissed on the burning logs. She held her hands out to warm them.
“Are you hungry, Lady Amelia?” Gawyn asked. It was the same question he had asked earlier, with the same proper address.
“Yes, I am. It
smell
s very good.”
He set about poking at the meat. He sniffed it like a dog might sniff the air, and she suspected his nose was as practiced as that of any famous French chef in Paris or London.
Soon they were
all
crowded around the fire, gulping down the tasty meat and sipping
full
-bodied cups of wine. Amelia was relieved to have a cup, a plate, and a rock to sit upon.
She was not squatting, as she’d imagined she would have to do. She was quite comfortable, in fact, despite her stiff muscles and numerous anxieties. She could not deny that the tender rabbit meat was the best thing she’d ever tasted.
Duncan was the first to finish eating. He rose to his feet and tossed his plate and cup into a cauldron of hot water over the fire.
“I
’ll
take the first watch.” He
pulled
his sword from the scabbard with a wide, sweeping arc and left the fireside.
Amelia stopped chewing and watched him go. She was
still
trying to make sense of what had happened between them earlier, and why he had kissed her when he seemed to despise everything she stood for and thought her a fool for agreeing to marry Richard Bennett.
What surprised her most, perhaps, was how gentle he had been in that moment, which contradicted everything she knew and thought about him. She could not have been mistaken about the compassion she saw in his eyes, and she was grateful for that.
Returning her attention to the others, she found herself suddenly caught in the ice storm of Angus’s frigid gaze. He had finished his meal and was leaning back on an elbow, cleaning his teeth with a
small
bone.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” she said, summoning every shred of courtesy she possessed just to get the words out.
He frowned at her, then rose to his feet. “I did not ask for your condolences, woman, so you’d best keep your thoughts to yourself.”
Like Duncan, he
pulled
his broadsword from the scabbard with an audible scrape of metal against leather, then stalked off in the opposite direction. The
chill
of the dark Highland night surrounded her like a cold fog.
“Pay him no mind, milady,” Gawyn said. “He’s just not over it yet.”
“You mean his sister,” she replied.
“Aye.”
She finished her meal and set the plate aside. “No, I cannot imagine one would ever get over such a thing. What was her name again?”
“Muira.”
Amelia turned her gaze in the other direction to the place where Duncan had gone. He was watching them from a rocky outcropping above.
«Will
he come back before
nightfall
?” she asked.
“Hard to say,” Gawyn replied. “He spends a lot of time alone these days.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s not over Muira’s death, either.”
Something shuddered inside Amelia as she digested the obvious suggestion that Duncan been involved with Muira, perhaps in love with her.
That would explain a great deal, she thought with a disturbing pang of discomfort when she imagined him loving a woman so deeply and devotedly that he was
compelled
to avenge her death by
killing
the man responsible.
Amelia’s very own fiancé.
She took a deep breath and forced herself to concentrate on the simple task of wetting her lips while she watched Duncan on the outcropping above.
Almost instantly she chastised herself for caring one way or another about the circumstances of his life or his romantic involvements in the past. He was her captor and her enemy, and the fact that he’d kissed her and been understanding about her feelings changed nothing. It was a single moment that should not obliterate
all
the others.
She could not afford to become distracted by an attraction to him, no matter how confusing it was. She had to remain focused on survival and escape.
She took another sip of her wine and did not permit herself to look in his direction again.
“I’m sorry, Lady Amelia,” Gawyn said, “but Duncan says I have to bind your wrists for the night.”
“You’re going to tie me up again?” she asked. “Is that real y necessary?” Her chafe wounds were only just beginning to heal.
“He says it’s for your own good, because if you tried to run off you’d get lost and might get into trouble.”
“I promise I won’t run off,” she insisted while she watched him
pull
the rough twine from a saddlebag, and winced at the recol
l
ection of being tied up that morning. “Where in the world would I go? We haven’t seen a single soul for miles.
I’m not stupid, Gawyn.”
“Aye, but you might panic in the night,” Fergus said, “or try to slit our throats while we sleep.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not a murderous savage.”
Fergus smiled crookedly. “But you’re in the company of savages, lassie, and don’t you know our wicked ways are contagious?”
She watched his ruddy face while he wrapped the twine around her wrists,
still
raw and sore from the trials of the morning. “I am not sure, Fergus, whether you are serious or jesting.”
He grinned again. “It
’ll
give you something to think about, lassie, while you’re floatin’ off to dreamland.”
* * *
The morning sun woke Amelia from a restless slumber, and she sat up on the bed of fur to discover the fire was already snapping and blazing in the pit. Eggs were frying on a pan. “Gawyn, do you have chickens in your saddlebags?” she asked, looking down at her wrists and noticing that they were no longer bound. Someone had cut the ropes while she slept and she had not even been aware.
Gawyn threw his head back and laughed. “Chickens! Ah, Lady Amelia, you’re a
silly
one.”
She blinked a few times; then suddenly Duncan was standing over her, holding out a banged-up pewter mug. The sleep was not yet out of her eyes, and she had to crane her neck and squint to look up from his finely muscled legs and the folds of green tartan to his face,
ill
uminated by the sun.
He seemed more attractive than ever, masculine and almost mythical, with one thick finger hooked through the handle of the dented mug, his other hand gripping the handle of his axe, his hair blowing lightly in the breeze.
“Must you always carry that thing?” she asked, tired of staring at the morbid weapon.
He tossed his head to flip his
disheveled
hair off his shoulder. “Aye, I must. Take this and drink up.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“Coffee.”
Sitting up groggily, she accepted the steaming cup.
Duncan sat down beside her.
Gawyn was busy flipping the eggs, and Fergus was some distance away, swinging his broadsword through the air, lunging forward mightily.
“Is he practicing for something?” she asked, sipping the coffee.
“Nothing in particular.”
“Just the usual, everyday deadly skirmish, I suppose.”
Duncan glanced sideways at her but made no comment.
“Was it you who untied me?” she asked. “I must have been sleeping very deeply not to have noticed.”
“Aye, you slept soundly
all
night.”
She kept her eyes on Fergus,
still
swinging his sword around. “And you could
tell
this from halfway up the mountain?”
“I came down when
all
was quiet,” he told her.
“So you were skulking around the camp, watching me sleep?”
“Aye.” He accepted another mug of coffee from Gawyn and blew the steam away. “I watched you
all
night, lass, and it’s my duty to inform you that you snore like a bul
l
.”
“I most certainly do not!”
“Gawyn heard it as clearly as I.” He raised his voice:
“Didn’t you, Gawyn? You heard Lady Amelia snoring like a
bull
last night?”
“Aye, you kept me awake, lass.”
Amelia shifted uncomfortably on the soft fur and took another sip of coffee.
«Well
, I am not going to sit here and argue with the two of you about it.”
Duncan crossed his long, muscled legs at the ankles.
“Wise decision, lass. Sometimes you’re better off just to yield at the outset.”
She chuckled bitterly. “Mm, I learned that yesterday, didn’t I? When you had me pinned to the ground in the rain.”
Gawyn, who was busy cracking two more eggs into the pan, lifted his eyes briefly.
“At least you learned your lesson,” Duncan said. “It’s important to know when you’ve been bested.”
Amelia shook her head at him, refusing to be provoked.
“And what plan does the mighty conqueror have for his prisoner today?” she asked, determined to change the subject. “I suppose you’re going to drag me higher up into the mountains? Although I don’t real y see the point in it, if you
want
Richard to find us. Which maybe you don’t.”
He glanced sideways again. “Oh, I do, lass. I just want him to suffer a bit longer with the angst of not knowing what’s happening to you. I like to imagine him tossing and turning in his bed, night after night, wondering if you’re dead or alive.
Or thinking about how my axe is slicing your dress in two, and how you must be trembling and cowering at my touch, begging for mercy, and final y pleading with me to pleasure you senseless, again and again, night after night.”
She shot him a disparaging look. “You’re having delusions, Duncan, if you think that’s ever going to happen.”
He took a sip of coffee and kept his eyes fixed on Fergus, who was
still
practicing with his sword. “I
’ll
be sending Bennett a message soon enough.”
“A message? How? When? I haven’t seen any goose quil
l
s within reach, or paper or inkwel
l
s for that matter. There are no desks in the immediate area, or post runners to deliver the dispatch.”
He
still
did not meet her eyes. “As if I’d reveal any of that to you.”
She accepted the plate Gawyn held out. “Fil
l
your bel
l
y, lass,” Gawyn said with an encouraging smile. “We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”
She picked up the spoon and ate.