Heart of the Highland Wolf (15 page)

“No, Julia.” Before she could ask him why it wouldn't work, he said, “When Argent Castle was besieged, we were running out of food, and then when sappers undermined the west wall, we had no choice but to give in.”

“The castle was
ours
?” Her mouth gaped in surprise, and she couldn't let go of her disbelief. “Are you certain?”

“Yes. Conaire MacPherson agreed to give his only daughter in marriage. But he couldn't give his only daughter up to the usurper. Several of our kin escaped and eventually fled to Prince Edward Island.”

“But if the MacNeills haven't found the box before this, it may never be found. And whoever is blackmailing us will not have a leg to stand on. Even if Ian's family did locate it, Ian wouldn't force me to mate him based on some contract made centuries ago.” Not when she was an American—and a werewolf writer on top of that.

“If not you, then a subsequent laird and a daughter born to you, or a granddaughter, would be liable under the same contract. Do you want to risk that?”

“Maybe the MacNeills don't even know or don't care. Things have changed since those early years.”

Her grandfather didn't say anything, and knowing her grandfather, she envisioned him pacing. But then he said, “About the titles, you're right. If you own some land, about any amount will do, you can claim yourself a laird… or lady.”

“Oh, brother. But since he has a castle, he seems more lordlike. What if he doesn't want me? This Laird Ian MacNeill? Then the contract would be null and void. Right?”

Silence.

“Grandfather?” She had a sinking feeling about this.

“Both are bound by the contract. If Ian mated someone else, you or your next female heir would be the next laird's mate.”

“So if I were already mated…”

“If you had a female child,
she
could be mated to the current laird when she turned of age.”

Julia ground her teeth. “Why didn't you or Dad ever tell me about this?”

“We thought we could destroy the contract before you ever knew about it.”

“The castle
had
been ours.” She was truly amazed to think her family had at one time lived in the massive stone castle. Not just lived there but owned it.

“Since the time of William of Normandy's rise to power, yes. Although it was built on a Roman site and was timber after that.”

And now impenetrable stone. Ian might not think much of her as a werewolf romance writer, but
her
family, not his, had once owned Argent Castle, and
the MacNeills
were the usurpers.

“It's a contract, Julia. We need to destroy the cursed thing and be done with it.”

“All right. I'll… I'll try to find it, and I'll destroy it as soon as I do. I don't want to get caught red-handed trying to return to the States with it, though.”

Her grandfather remained quiet.

“If they catch me with it, the game is over. I should destroy it immediately.”

“Don't open the box. Just bring it here
to me
. 'Night, Julia. Stay safe.” And then he disconnected.

She stared at the dead phone, not knowing what to think.
Don't open the box.
Was there something more to the story that her grandfather wasn't telling her?

Feeling wrung out and irritable, she hung up the phone. Her ankle tingled and annoyed her, so she knew it was healing. But with what she'd learned about the MacNeills of the past and the one who was blackmailing her grandfather and father now, she couldn't sleep. The castle had been
her
family's! That meant the kitchen where she'd sat and the great hall that Ian had carried her through. Ian's office most likely would have been that of the laird of her clan, and her own people would have been there, not his.

She considered how horrible it had to have been for her great-grandfather as the MacPhersons tried to keep the MacNeills from entering the castle grounds. How the family must have felt about being forced to give up a daughter to the invading force. And then having to flee their own home.

Well, if Julia had anything to do about it, she would find that box, destroy that document, and set her family free from an obligation they should never have been forced to agree to. Unfortunately, she couldn't do anything about returning the castle to the rightful owners—the MacPhersons.

Notepad in hand, she tried to think of the way she was going to write her story to get her mind off her ankle and Ian while she gave her sprain some more time to mend. But all she could think of was how lighthearted Ian had seemed in the woods, walking with the dogs, walking with her. And then how hungry he had been for her at the falls, desirous, craving, and needy—for her. No man had ever wanted her like that. Not in a feral way. But then again, she'd never had a wolf interested in her before.

She reminded herself that
he
wasn't the one who had laid siege to her family's castle, either. That had been an ancestor of his.

She ground her teeth, forced herself to focus, and began to write her story.

It wasn't about Highland hunks. She was too angry with them for having taken her family's ancestral lands and castle, and forcing her great-grandfather to make a contract that would have tied them to the MacNeills through an unwanted betrothal. And now one of them was blackmailing her family? No way could she make them heroes in her book. She let out her breath hard and began to pen her story.

Spurs clanking, sidearm holstered, Ian MacNeill grabbed hold of the mulish horse's reins and looked up at the woman who rode the animal and was just as stubborn as the blasted horse.
“
Here in Texas, ma'am, we don't cotton to horse thieves, so why don't you just come on down from there, and we'll have us a little talk before you get yourself into any further trouble.
”

Another two hours passed as Julia wrote ten more pages of her new adventure—a cowboy story set in Texas that featured a transplanted Scotsman. Lots of them had ended up in Texas, so it wouldn't be a far stretch. Only he'd wear chaps instead of a kilt. She sighed. She really did like the idea of kilts. But leather chaps, now they also had appeal. She'd change his name later, but she gleaned some satisfaction from turning Laird MacNeill into a cowboy.

She stretched her fingers and toes, tensing in anticipation of pain, but her ankle felt well enough again. She rose from the couch intent on getting some sleep while the dark still cloaked the area.

Despite what she knew now about the contract in the box, she was sure this trip was just what she needed to break through her stubborn writer's block. She'd tried everything that usually worked: cleaning her condo—which always sorely needed it between writing the last book and starting a new one—watching a movie, reading a book, taking a walk, gardening on her small patio, even digging out some earlier manuscripts that she'd never sent off and revising them. But this time, nothing had worked. Then when she'd mentioned to her father the trouble Maria's producer was having in locating a castle in Scotland to film the movie, her father had let her in on the family secret.

A Highland secret of old. Perfect to include in her story, but with different names and a different location to protect the innocent and the guilty.

But now, everything had changed. A blackmailer was involved, and he may even have had something to do with their car accident, although she hadn't wanted to worry her grandfather about it.

What if she wrote about the secret documents in a box hidden in a castle, and even though the documents could be something different in her story, what if the blackmailer let Ian know that Julia had verified the existence of such a box in a Scottish castle—now
his
Scottish castle—through her fictional writing and claimed that was too much of a coincidence?

So she was writing her cowboy story instead. No secret boxes. Or… maybe there could be one, and the damsel in distress was fleeing Ian's ranch after unsuccessfully attempting to locate the hidden cache—a title to the ranch.
Her
ranch. That would work.

With a smile on her lips, Julia fell asleep for a while. The dark still blanketed the cottage and would for another couple of hours. Maria wouldn't be getting up until it was light. Before then, it would be time for Julia's next big adventure. She would be just like the warring clan trying to find a weak spot in the enemy's defenses.

Only this time the castle was hers. And the enemy was truly the MacNeills. Or at least one of them—the blackmailer—and maybe more.

By the time she had awakened and dressed for her clandestine activities, her ankle felt much better, but it was still stiff and tingling. She was afraid that if she walked too much, the ankle would start to bother her again. If she could just slip into the castle and find the box, she'd be done with her mission and could lie around the cottage for another day just letting her ankle heal up sufficiently.

As quietly as she could, she slipped out of the cottage, locked the door, and hurried through the forest toward the castle, hoping whoever was blackmailing her family hadn't been watching the place when she left. But it had been hours, and she assumed he'd never figure her to run off like this. Yet she kept a wary watch for anyone who might follow her.

The breeze ruffled the branches of nearby trees, birds tittering back and forth, as she strained to hear over her own footfalls and thought she heard something snap. A dead branch. Or something. She froze. Whirled around. Peered into the forest. Saw nothing, no one. She was alone.

Her step more hurried, she resumed her hike and finally managed to reach the easternmost tower. She skirted around it to the eastern wall and noted no one on the curtain wall, making her feel safe to go about her sleuthing business. She sat on the damp ground to untie her boots, intending to shape-shift. After removing the one, she set it aside and heard an almost inaudible clunk as the boot touched the ground. With her wolf hearing, she thought it sounded like her boot had hit something that was metal, not rock. She scooted over to feel what had made the noise. Her hands moved over the rusty iron, and her heart nearly quit beating. Was it a door? Or just a discarded piece of scrap metal?

Whatever it was, it had been buried for some time and left undisturbed. Maybe for years. She swept away the leaves and accumulated dirt, and smiled. Her grandfather had been right. Or at least this appeared to be what he had described. But the trapdoor was secured with an ancient and corroded lock.

She pulled out her second set of standard
lupus garou
lock picks, the first having been lost in the car fire. But she wasn't sure the picks would work on something this old. Then she laughed at herself. She hadn't brought the sketch map of the place, but she carried lock picks with her? Yeah, if anyone had caught and searched her, they wouldn't have suspected a thing.

Something in her peripheral vision caught her eye, and she turned to look. Just a pine branch swaying in the breeze. She stared at the location for what seemed like forever. Nothing moved except the tree branches swaying in a waving dance.

With her attention back on the door, she inserted a pick in the lock and jiggled and twisted until it creaked open. She felt that the whole of the castle and the surrounding area would have heard the noise, but perhaps it was just her enhanced wolf hearing that made her feel so self-conscious.

With her heart beating in excitement and trepidation, she pulled the lock free and set it on the ground. She sat and slipped her boot back on, tied it, and then stood and tried to lift the metal door, the brutal rust-caked metal harsh against her bare skin. The door didn't budge. Stuck. Damn it.

Disappointment slid through her. She wished she could have carried a crowbar with her. If she'd still had the rental car, it would have had a crowbar.

She pulled her sweater sleeves down, covered her hands with them, and tried again. A little give. Her spirits lifted. She crouched lower, putting her legs and back into it while trying not to hurt herself, and attempted to lift it again. It moved.

She grinned. She could do this. With her muscles straining, she tried again. It moved more. She let out her breath. She needed a big can of WD-40. She felt like she was in the
Wizard of Oz
and had to use a can of oil on the Tin Man, or in her case, the rusty trapdoor. Although a hefty-sized crowbar would work even better.

Her muscles were exhausted, her green sweater wearing rust stains, and her hands raw from the metal digging into them, but she wasn't about to give up. Not when she was this close to getting inside.

With the last bit of reserve strength she could muster, she pulled up on the metal, which gave the most pitifully horrible screech before she was able to flip the door onto its back on the ground. Her skin sweating with exertion and anxiety, she quickly buried the door with leaves and dirt, but if anyone came to look in the woods, they'd find the open hole into the abyss. She could crouch beside the opening forever to ensure no one heard her making noise, or she could figure that no one would hear her since no one was about, most likely because they all were dead to the world, asleep inside the thick walls of the castle. She might as well enter the tunnel now.

She gave one last look at the woods, the hair on the nape of her neck prickling with unease. Not from the worry of exploring the tunnels, but because of the feeling that something watched her from the woods. But she saw nothing except for trees and more trees. If one of Ian's people watched her, he didn't sound the alarm. It had to be nothing. Just her imagination getting the best of her.

Steeling her back, she started down a rickety ladder into the abyss.

Standing atop the curtain wall, Ian MacNeill watched the road that led over the moat to the gatehouse and that would be filled with Yanks before he knew it. But there was only one he wished to see. Werewolf-romance author Julia Wildthorn. He'd read every interview and felt he'd gotten to know far more about her than he knew about some of his own distant cousins—from her favorite coffee-flavored ice cream topped with hot chocolate fudge sauce to bathing in lavender bubbles in candlelight.

Hell, and the whole world knew it, too.

For now, he tried to enjoy the peace and quiet of the forest and his holdings before the battle of wills began with the film crew. He tried again to put out of his mind the lass who was so soft and curvy and hot and willing. All night, he'd thought about her, and no matter how much he tried
not
to think about her, he wanted to share the pizza with her like he'd planned, and more.

Hell, he should have tracked her down and brought her back to the castle, instead of sending Guthrie to return her to her cottage. But it had irked him that she had left without word to him, and a small part of him had warned that she was here only as a writer and not interested in him for more than anything but using him. In the heat of the moment, he'd told his cousin to relay the message to Guthrie to take her home.

Now, he concentrated on the darkness, knowing the Americans wouldn't show up until it was light, but still, he almost hoped he'd see the defiant little red wolf running across his lands again. This time, he'd chase her down, wolf to wolf.

Until he heard something in the woods in the direction of the east wall.

Something faint. Metallic. Something unnatural.

The first thing that came to mind was the secret tunnel entrance, but it hadn't been used in over… a couple of centuries, he thought. Probably longer than that.

He stalked toward the easternmost tower. Maybe a red deer had stumbled across it or a pine marten had scurried over the trapdoor. But it sounded more like…

The door creaked.
Hell.
He quickened his pace. Duncan saw him from the bailey below, although Ian hadn't a clue why his brother was up this early. Unless Duncan was anxious about the film crew arriving and wanted to be prepared. His brother watched Ian, knowing something was the matter, but Duncan was farther from the wall and down below, so he might not have heard the sound. When Ian navigated through the gate tower, he heard the trapdoor creaking even more. Someone had gained entrance. Then a bang. The door had been dropped on its back.

Damnation.
As soon as Ian exited the tower, he sprinted along the east wall walk, his warrior brother racing to the curtain wall from down below and looking for direction from him. But Ian concentrated on catching the culprit at his task. The man probably wouldn't realize that Ian and his people could hear noises within the castle walls because no one but the clan knew they had a wolf's distinctive hearing. Beyond that, he and his people normally would be sleeping. Within the thick walls of the castle, they most likely wouldn't have heard more than a muffled distant, ghostly sound.

He reached the spot where he could see the entryway to the secret tunnels at the periphery of the woods. No one was there, but whoever it was had cleverly covered the trapdoor. The entryway was still open; it wouldn't have been all that visible unless anyone had been looking for it. Ian hadn't had to deal with the enemy breaching his walls for a very long time.

Time for the hunt. He motioned to his brother, indicating the trapdoor in the woods, and then waved that he was coming down. Ian wouldn't shout his intentions and alert the intruder that they knew he'd broken in. In that case, he'd probably escape. Best to catch him at his task, discover his plan, and show him how foolish his endeavor had been.

By the time Ian reached the inner bailey, Duncan had already enlisted the support of Cearnach, who grinned as if they were going into battle and were sure to win. Guthrie had even torn himself away from getting an early start on reviewing the financial mess they were in to see what was going on. No matter what other interests the brothers had, the instinct to hunt overrode most.

Several of their clansmen also stood by, buttoning shirts and tucking them into trousers, eagerly awaiting orders.

“We enter the tunnels through the trapdoor,” Ian said. He held up his hand before Duncan could object. “We could spend hours searching all the tunnels and never come close to finding the culprit. But if we go to the tunnel where he entered, we can follow his scent.”

To two of their cousins, Ian said, “Secure the trapdoor once we've descended into the tunnel.” To two other men, he added, “Watch from the wall walk. If he leaves the tunnel while we're trying to reach it, give us a shout out, and we'll track him down in the woods.”

“Could be just someone out for a walk that stumbled upon the trapdoor, got curious, and—” Cearnach said, as Ian and his brothers headed for the main gate.

“Carried something to break the lock?” Ian asked, giving his brother a shake of his head. “Seems calculating, to my way of thinking.” Ian finally noticed that Duncan was wearing his sword. “Prepared for any eventuality?”

“Aye. If he's willing to break into a fortress like ours, maybe he's armed.”

“Maybe Flynn will scare the devil out of him,” Guthrie said, sounding amused. “You know how he doesn't like strangers. If Flynn even realizes someone is roaming about underneath the castle who hasn't been invited, he'll greet him.”

Duncan pulled his sword out of its scabbard at his back. “Flynn can't do anything to him unless the man is afraid of ghosts. But this…” He thrust the sharpened blade at an unseen enemy. “…this will put the fear of God in a man.”

“Unless he's armed, don't use your weapon, Duncan,” Ian said dryly, his blood hot with annoyance that anyone would attempt to break into their ancestral home. Yet he was concerned that someone might get hurt—not the idiot running around in the bowels of the underside of the castle, but his brothers who would stand by his side in any battle.

The culprit who had breached their defenses would soon learn how much wrath Ian could bring upon him.

***

Even though it was dark in the underground tunnel leading to the castle, darker still on the walls where torches once scorched the rock with flickering flames, Julia could see with her wolf's vision. She hurried down a rickety ladder that creaked and shuddered and bent with every step. She imagined the ladder rungs breaking, leaving her stuck down there and trying to figure out a way to sneak out of the castle from the inside. But if that happened, she'd first try to locate her family's box hidden in the wall somewhere on the third floor of the keep where the family's quarters were.

She'd barely reached the fourth rung when the rotting wood cracked with a snap. Heart in her throat, she half slipped, half fell as she tightened her hold on the rails, slivers of wood embedding themselves in the palms of her hands and fingers. She attempted to reach the next rung without falling to the rock floor below and breaking her neck or a leg. Legs would heal after a while; necks wouldn't.

But she hit the next rung so hard that it snapped, too. Stifling a strangled cry, she grabbed the ladder rails with all her strength, despite the slivers of wood digging into her hands and feeling like stinging nettles, and tried to keep from falling farther. Her arm muscles shaking, she managed to stop her fall, half sliding over the next rung and then finally managing to land on the one below without too much of a jolt.

Barely breathing, she navigated ten more. But when she reached the third from the bottom, it split in two with a nerve-racking crack. She fell too fast and broke the next rung—and missed the final one altogether. She dropped none too gracefully to the rock floor, jarring herself as she landed on her hands and knees with a hard whack. Pain radiated through her knees, making her realize just how little padding kneecaps had. Smacking her already splinter-filled hands against the rock floor added further insult to injury.

A stealthy cat she was not.

But at least with her faster ability to recuperate, she'd overcome her minor aches and pains more quickly than if she wasn't a werewolf. And she hadn't landed on her right foot, risking injuring her ankle further.

She glanced back at the ladder, her gaze rising until she stared at the open hole above. Now that it was missing several rungs, she wasn't sure she could navigate it back to the surface. No sense in worrying about that right at this moment, though.

Turning her attention to the tunnel before her, she got to her feet, her knees and hands still hurting. If she couldn't make it back up the ladder, hopefully once the film crew was on site, she could slip inside the castle and into the noise and confusion outside before anyone caught her.

Of course, the crew wouldn't be setting up until later this morning, and she would have to hide until then. Which could be easy enough if the castle was half empty while Ian and his people monitored the film crew outside. Or she could remain down here. But that was a worst-case scenario. She had no intention of getting stuck in the cold, dark bowels of the castle for hours.

The tunnel was narrow and the ceilings low, with water dripping into puddles and moss covering most of the walls. In some places, she had to crouch. She'd envisioned tall ceilings, maybe with smooth tile walls. Nothing this rugged or primitive. Or confining, damp, cold, and smelling of earth. Buried alive came to mind.

With all the work she'd done trying to get the door open, she'd gotten hot and sweaty. Now she was even damper than before and colder, despite the pure adrenaline rushing through her bloodstream and goading her on. She shivered.

She'd expected that the tunnel would lead straight to where she needed to be. But when she'd walked for some time and come to three different tunnels that branched out like a chicken foot from the first, she stared into the dark, trying to decide which might be the right one.

The longer she attempted to deduce the right one, the longer it would take to discover if she was correct in her assumption. She headed toward the one to the right.

Muffled voices in the keep way above her made her pause, but she couldn't make out the words. They wouldn't be able to hear her moving quietly along the wet, rough floor where she had stumbled a few times because of the unevenness and slippery, rocky ground, but she'd held her tongue in case a louder sound could travel through the ceiling of the tunnel into the lower part of the castle.

A misty light loomed deeper in the tunnel, and she halted, her heartbeat speeding up. But the light blinked out. A shudder slipped through her. She'd hoped to get the contract, return to the film crew, and take notes for her book—without anyone being the wiser—and then return to California at the end of two weeks' time. Although the men in her story were now cowboys and the castle was a ranch where nearby underground caves stored food, and outlaws and Indians had once hid out—like in Salado, Texas, a place she'd researched once for a possible story.

But finding her way around under the castle was going to be a lot more difficult than she had thought. Her grandfather had made it sound as though it would be no trouble at all, a straight shot to the upper floor. Locating the chamber and the hidden niche might be harder. Had it been so long ago that he had forgotten? Or was there another entrance that she should have taken? Oh, hell, her grandfather hadn't even been born when the MacPhersons left the castle. He must have been going on recollections from what his parents had told him.

She groaned. So much for being a super-sleuth.

Suddenly, footfalls walked behind her, headed in her direction, and she attempted to keep her rising panic from overwhelming her. She hurried as fast as she could. No place to hide. No alcove, just a narrow path where she had to squeeze through in some places. The footsteps sounded odd though, a strange steady rhythm as if made on a movie set, surreal.

Then she came to an opening where the tunnel split into two. She began to take the one to the right. Then halted. If she continued to take the rightmost path, she could find her way back, she reasoned. If she'd been in her wolf form, her footpads would have left a scent she could follow. But in her human form, unless she had bread crumbs to leave and no rats were gobbling them up behind her, her memory would have to suffice.

As soon as she walked forward through the rightmost tunnel, she again saw the light. The footfalls had died behind her. But they'd been in the same tunnel she'd been in. Had someone been following her, listening to her progress, and then when she stopped, he did also?

A wedge of panic stuck in her belly. What if the blackmailer had followed her?

For an instant, she wanted to continue on through the rightmost tunnel, to seek the light and find a way out. But the dark tunnel heading in the other direction beckoned her to go that way and remain hidden in the comforting blackness.

She glanced back over her shoulder, realizing that despite hearing the footfalls, she hadn't seen any light coming from that direction. It still remained eerily silent, as if someone was waiting for her decision. But any
lupus garou
could still see her in the dark, just as she could see any of them.

The light ahead moved toward her, footfalls accompanying it, and that decided it for her. She hurried toward the leftmost tunnel, tripped on a bit of rock jutting out of the floor, and fell. She cried out, furious with herself as soon as she did, expecting the man with the light to rush forth and grab her, or the one who'd been following her from behind to do the same. But she'd hit her shin hard, bruised it, and torn her jeans, and from the way her skin was burning, she must have torn her skin, too.

Footfalls from much farther away ran down the tunnel she was in, real footsteps, men's long strides, heavy and determined. She was in real trouble now.