At The Laird's Command (Sword and Thistle Book 3) (11 page)

And my laird—oh, he was a rampaging figure of rage, slamming the door shut to let no one else in, then shouting every curse word I’d ever heard in English or Gaelic.

I realized how lucky we were. These men had come to kill the laird. They had decided to kill him in his sleep, when he would be defenseless and alone but for his harlot. They’d obviously feared him enough to send two assassins instead of one. But they hadn’t counted on finding another swordsmen in the laird’s bed.
 

And if Ian hadn’t been there…

I shuddered to think. The laird would be dead.
 

We both would be.

~~~

THE LAIRD

That he’d been attacked in his own castle—in his own bed—was a matter of such profound disgrace that John couldn’t bear for the rest of the castle to look on. Turning to wrap Heather in a blanket, John snapped, “Let no one else in the door.”
 

Meanwhile, Heather dropped something at his feet. A bloodied candlestick, he saw. Had she used it? “Are you hurt, lass?”

She shivered, but bravely said, “Not at all.”

That wasn’t true, though. The blood on the candlestick, he realized, was from her hands, which appeared to have been burned a bit. Or maybe, along with her knees, they’d been scraped when he’d thrown her to the floor.
 

And he’d done it because of these wicked fiends.
 

“Do you know these invaders?” the laird asked his men.

Ian and Malcolm were already inspecting the bodies. “This one’s a Donald,” Malcolm grimly concluded.
 

“How do you know?” Ian asked, holding his forearm, which seemed to have been cut in the fighting.

Malcolm’s eyes never left the dead man’s face when he answered. “I killed a man who looked just like him in a clearing not long ago. I don’t forget the faces of men I kill. Especially not those fixing to rape a lass. This one is maybe a twin or a kinsman of the one I killed.”

Donalds
, in his castle. The laird seethed with fury. And yet, according to Malcolm, none of the entrances had been breached. Which lead the laird to conclude, “So they came over the wall…”

Malcolm shook his head. “I don’t think so. Not tonight. The men were alert—even young Rodric. There’s a full moon and a snapping vicious wind. Men crossing the loch in little boats would have been spotted if not sent down into the deep. T’would be suicidal for them to have made the attempt.”

Ian continued to hold his bloodied arm. “So they were more likely here all along disguised amongst the villagers, or
someone
let them inside.”

Once, I might’ve suspected that someone was you
, the laird thought. But no more. Whether the cause was love, loyalty, or instinct, the plain fact remained that Ian Macrae had saved the laird’s life. Not just his, but Heather’s too.
 

And not for the first time.

It was a thing obviously not lost on the lass, either, who stood trembling now, clinging to her blanket, staring at the corpses on the floor. Thank goodness it had been Malcolm to come running at the sound of her scream. Any other man in the castle might have something to say about finding the laird, his woman, and one of his warriors in a state of undress together in the wee hours of the night.
 

Thankfully, Malcolm was so taciturn that not only wouldn’t take any interest in what he saw, but would never say a word about it.
 

Even so, they had better get their stories straight lest the castle be thrown into paranoid turmoil. John would have liked to deny the incident completely, but that wasn’t possible, so a story would have to be concocted. “There was a lone attacker,” the laird said, slowly. “Ian was standing guard outside my door—the assassin grappled with him. Knocking Ian momentarily senseless, the attacker burst into the room; fortunately, the noise alerted me before the ax came down on the bed.”

Heather blinked, but, fortunately, John’s men knew what he was about. “One attacker instead of two,” Malcolm said, with a nod. It would be the official story…one that would leave any conspirators confused and worried. Perhaps enough to accidentally reveal themselves.

“What do we do with the extra body?” Ian asked.

Without the slightest regret in his heart, the laird said, “Dump it in the loch.”
 

His men would have to arrange it when no one was about; but the laird could trust them. For that matter, he trusted Heather, too. This carnage and cloak-n-dagger business wasn’t for simple crofter’s girls or the faint of heart. But he understood a strength in her that no one else knew. “Heather, we tell no one what actually happened here tonight. Not your sister. Not anyone.”

Heather’s lower lip wobbled. But she nodded. “I understand.”

“Malcolm, take her to get cleaned up and tended,” the laird commanded.

Heather didn’t want to go. “I’m no more wounded than you. It’s Ian who—”

“I’m well enough,” Ian protested, to Heather. “But tending to you will keep the staff occupied.”

Heather’s violet eyes shifted to meet the laird’s a question in them, which he answered with a nod. “I’ll come find you soon, lass. Go.”

She went, with only one backward glance at the bed where John had shared her with another man—and where an ax nearly chopped her in half. And her bleak expression would haunt the laird, he was sure, for what remained of his life.
 

He’d made his admission of love to her in the quiet of the night, just before these devils had attacked them. It had been an emotional moment, exquisite and perfectly vulnerable. Destroyed now. He was almost as bitter about that as the fact they’d been sent to kill him.

With Malcolm and Heather gone, Ian kicked one of the corpses and spit a curse. “So the story is to be that I was
outside
your door…I should’ve been, laird.”

John decided to ignore the possible double-meaning in his kinsman’s words. He’d shared Heather with Ian to bring them closer together; it would ruin everything if Ian would now regret the experience. “There was no cause for you to be outside my door. You’re not a bodyguard. You’re my second-in-command.”

Ian gave a frustrated shake of his head. “
Someone
should have been outside your door. You must have guards now at all times.”

“We can’t spare them from the walls.”

“You need someone if only for the show of the thing!”

The laird shrugged. “Post Rodric there, then, if you must.”

“The young fool who fell asleep at his post?”

“That was weeks ago,” the laird replied. “It won’t happen again. The lad will be wanting to redeem himself.”

“You won’t risk the castle, just yourself?” Ian asked.

“What’s the
point
of being a laird if not to do just that?”

Still holding a bleeding forearm, Ian paced. “If I hadn’t been here tonight…”

John’s pride nearly compelled him to argue that he could’ve taken on both assassins by himself in the dark. But that was unlikely and Heather would’ve come to harm. So he conceded the point. “If you hadn’t been here tonight, then I’d be dead now and you’d be the laird of this clan.”

Ian slanted him a glance. “Why
was
I here tonight?”
 

The laird noticed Ian’s his hooded, carefully guarded eyes, and thought it was not merely the fact they were having this talk over two dead bodies that accounted for the tension in Ian’s shoulders. “Because I invited you.”

Ian’s eyes slid away. “And yet, it felt as if you were testing my loyalty and that I failed in every particular.”

Now
that
was curious. “I should say you succeeded in the ultimate test of loyalty, Ian. Do you need thanks for fighting for me—”

“I don’t need thanks for doing what I’ve sworn to do,” Ian snapped. “But you won’t thank me for touching your woman, will you? You dangled her before me. And I failed to refuse the offer.”

Ah. So that’s what this was about. John tried to set his kinsman’s mind at ease on that score. “What did you think, Ian? That I would bid a woman to kneel and take you between her lips, then expect you to pull away? I wouldn’t have offered to share her if I didn’t wish it.”
 

Ian’s eyes narrowed. “No man could want to share a woman like her.”
 

Ian’s voice actually cracked on the last word, betraying that what he felt for Heather was not merely lust. And a mixture of emotions flooded the laird’s heart. First, came the
jealousy
. Oh, he’d known Ian lusted for his violet-eyed beauty. But to harbor emotions for her…that was exactly the kind of attachment he’d hoped to inspire in his kinsman. And yet, it was like a knife to the heart.
 

Still, John would have to endure it for Heather’s sake. She took pain for him every night. Took it gladly. Took it with courage and devotion. He could do no less for her. What he should feel was
relief
that Ian cared for Heather—had perhaps cared for her all along, and been too loyal to show it.
 

Meanwhile, Ian was saying, “I wasn’t about to let you toy with me. I decided to take you at your word because I am not a man for games. I wanted what we shared in that bed tonight, and no matter the sin—”

“Jesus, Joseph and Mary!” The laird shouted, feeling a vein in his forehead begin to pulse. “Sometimes you’re as priggish as a churchman. Until we were nearly murdered, we had a most enjoyable evening. Most. Enjoyable. And if you deny it, I’ll know you for a liar and a hypocrite.”

Ian crossed his arms over himself. “I won’t deny it.”

“Good. Then I don’t want to hear another word from you about the sin of it. Especially not to the lass. She’s been through enough.”
 

Ian’s jaw clenched at that, as if he agreed.
 

Then the laird’s eyes fell upon the ax in the middle of his bed, and he admitted something that pained him to the core. “I’ve endangered her. I can’t have her here at night in my chambers anymore. Not even with a guard at the door. Nor can I send her to her own chambers unprotected.”
 

Ian nodded, as if he had never been fooled, for even one moment, about the girl’s true importance to the laird. But he stopped nodding when John added, “You will have to take her into your own chambers until the danger has passed.”

HEATHER

“May the Donalds and MacDonalds rot in hell!” my sister cried, helping to wash my skinned hands and knees. Malcolm had taken me straight-away to her chambers, which had been
my
chambers before the laird insisted upon me in his bed each night. I saw that Arabella had made herself at home, replacing a number of my candles and other pretty things with jars of dried sticks and weeds. “I don’t suppose I have to guess what the assassin meant to do to you, throwing you down on your hands and knees.”

My sister had been abducted and quite nearly violated by the enemy not long ago, and in spite of the terrible shock I’d just suffered, I still found it within myself to want to protect her from reliving any of that. “It was actually the laird who did it,” I explained, careful not to slip up on any of the particulars of the official story. “He threw me to the floor to save me from a blade…”

“Gallant of him,” she said with an edge of sarcasm. My sister didn’t entirely approve of the laird—and she was, no doubt, worried about her betrothed, who had disappeared like a ghost from the castle. Truthfully,
I
would have been more worried about her betrothed were it not for some odd pieces of information I had put together.
 

When Ian had reported Davy missing the laird dismissed any notion that Davy might have been a traitor. Instead, he suggested that Davy may have come to harm. Strangely, the laird never mentioned sending Davy on any sort of special mission. Which meant that whatever he’d asked Davy to do was something he didn’t want Ian to know about.

I’d kept quiet at the time, but for my sister’s sake, I planned to get to the truth of the matter.
 

Meanwhile, Arabella grimly pulled the stopper from a bottle with her teeth, then wetted down a rag to swab my skinned knees with the fluid. I hissed at the sting of it. “Ow!”

“It’s just vinegar,” she said. “The physicker says it helps clean wounds.”

“By
burning
the dirt away?” I groused, but let her continue as she was, finding it strange to let her tend to
my
wounds when I was the older sister and had spent the better part of my childhood tending
hers
.

“What’s this?” she asked, eyeing what looked to be finger bruises on my arm.
 

They’d got there from the laird holding me down so hard to the bed. I hesitated to tell her as much, but given her own unconventional personal arrangements, I dared to say, “These were taken in love play.”

Arabella frowned. “
Love
play. And yet, you complain of the
vinegar
.”

Well, that was different, wasn’t it? It wasn’t the pain that I enjoyed but the lust of the man who did it. Burning with embarrassment, I ventured, “Surely you know that there’s a pleasure to being roughly grabbed by a man…”

“I’m sure I don’t,” Arabella said with a sniff. “Davy is quite gentle.”

I couldn’t let her get too above herself in judgement of me. “And Malcolm?”

Her cheeks pinkened, but on the whole, she was quite shameless. What doxies we’d both become! “Neither man would leave marks like the ones I’ve glimpsed on you. There’s even a fresh, scarlet bruise at the base of your throat.”

I couldn’t imagine how
that
got there, unless it was the sucking that Ian had done on my neck. I blushed anew, but fell silent without offering further explanation. Arabella might have understood if I told her I had the affections of two men, but she likely would never understand that I let the man I loved give me to a man I didn’t. Worse, that I had enjoyed it.

When all my wounds were stinging and bandaged and I smelled like I’d been pickled in vinegar, a knock came at the doorway. It was Brenna with a shift for me to wear. “It’s a bit tattered, but I managed to mend it,” she said in her mousy voice which, nonetheless, managed to convey some disapproval.