Authors: Gather the Stars
The one thing that had kept her sane during the grueling trek had been the hope that she would be rescued at any moment. Nate must be aware she hadn't returned to the ballroom by now, and a party of soldiers would be riding hard in search of her.
To aid them in their quest, she had done all in her power to slow her captor's progress. She dallied as long as possible during his merciful moments when he would shove a crumbling bannock into her hands or press an otter skin full of water to her lips. Yet as time ticked by, even Rachel had to admit that it would be more and more difficult to track her in this immense Scottish wildland.
That admission left her two choices—give way to blind panic, or summon her courage. She must prepare to confront the despised enemy of her betrothed as though she were a captive queen, to face the rebel who was almost a legend....
She swallowed hard, imagining a primitive Scot warrior with tangled hair and bestial eyes, lust twisting a cruel mouth—the very object of every maiden's worst nightmare in the days of the border wars. She shivered, recalling the tales Dunstan had told her, the ruthless savages that had murdered his father and brother and countless other ancestors through the ages.
She was just dismissing the image as one more folly when a shrill sound shattered the silence, drawing a stifled cry from her own lips.
Not even her wildest imaginings had prepared her for the barbarian war cries that erupted around her as her captor pulled the horse to a halt. The Gaelic cries cut at her like the blade of a claymore, left her knees shaking no matter how desperately she tried to stop them.
"You've got her! That bastard Wells's woman!" A high-pitched voice pierced her ears through the cacophony of sounds.
"I hope to hell I've got the right one," her captor called out, dragging her down off the horse with him. "It'd be damned inconvenient to have abducted the wrong woman."
He flung Rachel over his shoulders like a sack of grain, crossing to God knew where with long strides. Rachel could feel fingers plucking at her, poking her.
"Did she scream and faint?" someone demanded to know.
"If she didn't already, the Glen Lyon'll make her wail like a pig with its tail caught in a gate," another voice insisted.
"The Glen Lyon can go to hell!" Rachel snarled despite the sack. "Take your hands off me, you—you traitor scum." Yet it was unnerving—the voices pounding her like battle clubs, the chill that seemed to envelop her, the hard hand of her captor smack in the middle of her upturned rump. Without another word, he dumped her unceremoniously onto something cool and hard.
She struggled to stand up. She'd be damned if she was going to face these traitors on her knees. But before she could, a swarm of fiends engulfed her— crawling over her legs, tugging at the sack, their hands sticky-sweet... with blood? The gruesome possibility teased her mind.
Dear God, what had she stumbled into?
Garbled, indecipherable babble pounded against her, as if some evil horde of gnomes or mythical demons had been set upon her.
One of them ripped the blindfold from her head, taking a good-size hank of her hair with it. Light from blazing flambeaus bored all the way to the backs of her eyes, blinding her for long seconds, yet when her vision began to clear, she wanted to grab the blindfold again, to draw it over her eyes.
She was staring into the face of the most hideous gnome she had ever seen. It was barely a hand's length away from her nose. Thick white paste stiffened its hair into gruesome spikes, and primitive, painted symbols traced grimy paths on skin dark with filth. One side of the creature's face was horribly distorted, its cheek bulging, its upper lip twisted. Despite all her brave intentions, Rachel couldn't keep from shrinking back. Dear God, what was it?
"We're not going to feed you even a crumb, Sassenach!" The gnome's hate-filled voice echoed through what seemed to be a rough stone cavern. "We're going to starve you until your bones stick right out of your skin."
"No!" A creature that looked half human leaped with wild excitement. "We're going to pull her skirts all up and let someone jump on top of her and she'll scream and scream!"
Her captor cut in. "The Glen Lyon will be the one meting out justice here. Of course, I'm certain he'll take your suggestions under advisement."
She turned to see the man who had carried her away from the garden—a swarthy mountain of a man with ebony hair and a flashing grin that made her want to ram his white teeth down his throat. "Now let the lady up this instant," he commanded.
Obedient demons?
Rachel wondered incredulously as the pack of gnomes scuttled off her with groans of disappointment. She scrambled to her feet, her knees all but buckling as she braced herself against a rough stone wall. She towered over her tormentors, their faces shifting into better focus as one of them plopped a grimy thumb into its mouth.
"Children," she gasped out, disbelieving. "They're... children." The notion horrified her beyond anything she had experienced, and the threats they had spewed out were even more unnerving because they had fallen from what should be innocent lips. "What kind of monster would keep children like animals."
"I suggested the Glen Lyon drown the lot of 'em, but he says they'd spoil the water for drinking." Was the man actually smiling? "Now, we don't want to keep him waiting."
He guided her through a twisted passageway that led deeper into the cave, to where a fresh-hewn door had been fitted to the stone.
Is it the rebel's lair?
Rachel wondered.
Or a prison buried so deep in the bowels of the earth that no one would hear me scream?
The lion's den. Rachel couldn't stifle the throb of fear. She felt as if she were about to become some monster's next meal. She steeled herself to confront her nemesis—the vile fiend who had ordered her abduction.
But as her captor shoved the door open, revealing the makeshift chamber beyond, Rachel froze, her mouth gaping.
A man sat at a wooden desk, a tousled dark-gold mane of hair tumbling in wild disarray about a lean face. Intense gray eyes peered through the lenses of spectacles at whatever was in his hands. He was spouting a string of words in perfect Latin. But despite the fact that Rachel had been educated far more thoroughly in the language than any other woman she knew, these were words she had never heard before.
"Christ's blood," the man muttered to himself. "I'm going to murder that bastard when I get my hands on him."
"On
her,
little brother. You did specify I was to bring you a woman."
The man wheeled, stunned as if he'd been clubbed from behind by one of the demon-children. He leaped to his feet, his spectacles sliding farther down his nose, a bundle of garish scarlet velvet that could only be a woman's gown tumbling to the cave floor. A spool of thread bounced madly across the room to thump into the heather-stuffed mattress crammed against one wall.
"Blast it, I've lost that needle again!"
Rachel gaped at him, more stunned than if he'd been a naked savage gnawing on human bones. These two men were brothers? It seemed impossible.
"Mistress de Lacey, may I present the dread rebel lord Glen Lyon."
The golden-maned man stopped groping for the needle and straightened. He was tall, too thin, with the mouth of a poet, the expression of a scholar, and the eyes of a dreamer—the absolute antithesis of every raider Rachel had read about in her contraband French novels.
Strangely, she felt almost cheated. It was upsetting enough that she'd been abducted—but to be abducted at the order of a man like this!
The Glen Lyon? He looked more like a Glen
Kitten!
But couldn't a man like this be even more dangerous? Weak men were often the cruellest, to compensate for their own shortcomings. And it was obvious that this rebel had a whole brigade of minions ready to act upon his command. The man who had plucked her from the garden looked strong enough to tie iron bars into knots if the spirit moved him.
"Miss Rachel de Lacey?" The Glen Lyon sketched her a bow, as if they were at a soiree. "I'm—"
"You don't need to introduce yourself," Rachel shot back. "From the moment I arrived in Scotland, I heard tales of the coward of Prestonpans. But I had no idea that you were so craven that you wouldn't even take your own prisoners. What kind of a man are you? Forcing others to do vile deeds for you because you lack the courage."
She'd called him a coward, an accusation that would have made Dunstan violent with rage, but this man didn't even have the grace to blush! She expected
some
reaction—an explosion of masculine outrage, a gruff denial of the charges levied against him, or at the very least, savage shame. Instead, amusement twinkled in the Glen Lyon's storm-cloud eyes.
"Abducting ladies isn't my strong suit, I'm afraid. I would've made a disaster of it. And there's nothing more upsetting than a botched abduction. However, I trust that Adam saw to your every comfort?"
Her mouth hung open like a fishwife's. Sweet God, was he jesting?
No, the knave was toying with her the way a cat tormented its prey. He had her in his power—had all the time in the world to torture her. He wasn't fooling her with that solicitous smile.
"Comfort?" she sputtered. "I was snatched from the midst of a ball, slung over a saddle like a sack of grain, and hauled off to God knows where. Then I was set upon by demons."
"Demons?" He frowned, lifting off his spectacles and rubbing the bridge of his nose. Then his grin widened, as if lightning had struck his all-too-numb brain. "Ah. They aren't demons. They're Picts, first mentioned in Roman records toward the end of the third century. They raided what few Roman settlements there were in Scotland to loot silver to make ornaments to deck themselves out in battle."
"I couldn't care less about ancient civilizations!" she blustered in disbelief.
"That's obvious enough. Your attire is completely wrong."
He'd just had her abducted and he was giving her a lesson in historical costuming? The man truly
was
insane. Insane people were dangerous.
"You were attempting to wear a gown of the Grecian mode, I presume," he continued. "The beauty in classical styles comes from flowing, draped lines. The ancients believed that the gods had endowed women with their own natural beauty. They didn't believe in crushing their ladies into torture chambers of bone and steel until they couldn't breathe. So to remain true to the time period, your corset should definitely have been discarded."
"My c-corset?" Hot blood warmed Rachel's cheeks, while the cave's coolness suddenly kissed bare skin where her robes had sagged askew. Her breasts, pushed high by the garment, were half revealed, an edge of stiff-boned silk corset visible to the Glen Lyon's eyes—eyes that were suddenly anything but vague and distracted. His gaze clung to breasts suddenly blushed with heat.
Clenching her teeth, Rachel jerked up her robes with trembling fingers. "I suppose you're going to ravish me," she said, straining to keep him from guessing how the prospect terrified her. "I warn you, no matter what horrendous, savage, vile things you do to my body, sir, you cannot touch my soul."
The Glen Lyon's gaze sprang away from her breasts. "Ravish you?" he echoed, blinking hard. "Mistress de Lacey, I assure you, I fully intend to see that everything possible is done to see to your comfort, but there are limits to even my hospitality."
Rachel stared at him. Was this traitorous coward telling her that she was safe from the horrors she'd been imagining? She should have been elated, relieved. Instead, fury sizzled through her.
The corner of his mouth ticked upward. Though he hadn't made a sound, the cur was laughing at her. No one laughed at Lord General Marcus de Lacey's daughter!
"I doubt you would be man enough to take a woman. In fact, I'd not be surprised if you fancied boys." Even Rachel was shocked by what had slipped past her unguarded tongue—perversions she'd heard whispered about the army camp. Was she insane? She was all but daring him to prove his manhood by raping her!
Yet for the first time since that awful moment she'd been snatched from the garden, she felt as if she'd struck a blow in her own defense. The sensation was far headier than anything so somber as caution. She would rather have been flayed alive than back down.
His gaze darkened. "A woman who has just been abducted might be wise to mind her tongue."
"Why else would an outlaw like you keep that pack of beastly urchins? They were threatening to starve me, rape me. Where do you suppose they might have learned about such ghastly things? Perhaps I should ask them."
"Say a word to them, and I swear, it will be the last time you ever speak." He squeezed the words through bloodless lips. "If those children are not the perfect little cherubs you'd prefer, Mistress de Lacey, you can thank your betrothed for that. Children have to work through the unspeakable horrors they've seen any way they can. These—little animals—are only repeating what they've seen. Their families were starved by the British army on purpose, every living thing slaughtered, every shelter destroyed. They were dying by inches. But when that wasn't expedient enough for your betrothed, he sped up the process by setting his ravening dogs on their mothers, their sisters, even their grandmothers."
Her stomach pitched. "Soldiers can lose control. Even Papa admitted that. It's hardly their commander's fault if a few of the men do despicable things."
"In my opinion, a commander is responsible for every blade of grass his soldiers crush beneath their boots, but that's immaterial here. Tell me, Mistress de Lacey, would the commander be responsible for what happened if he gave the order to his men to rape and slaughter and kill women and children?"
The words pierced her like the blade of a knife, thickening her throat. "Are you even daring to hint that Sir Dunstan Wells, the most honorable officer in the Duke of Cumberland's army, would do anything so barbaric?" She was fairly frothing with outrage.
"I'm not hinting anything. The truth is, I have an aversion to officers who believe they are God, and to spoiled general's daughters who play nasty little games with men's lives."