Highland Captive (48 page)

“Aimil,
ye worry over naught.” He eased open the bodice of her gown and brushed soft
kisses over the swells of her breasts. “I have had no wish for another since I
first set eyes upon ye. The first time I held ye, I lost all interest in
holding others, an interest that had already begun to wane. There was a need in
me that they werenae feeding, lass, and ye touched it. When I left your arms
that first night, I thought on keeping ye, but I am a cautious man and wished
to wait to be certain. As Lagan said, being the first man with a lass can stir
something in him. I needed to be sure I wasnae seeing what wasnae truly there.
It can make a lass be fooled as weel,” he murmured.

“Not
this lass.” She sighed with pleasure as his tongue stroked the hardened tips of
her breasts. “My first clear thought was that, since my maidenhead was gone, it
didnae matter if ye did it again, and then I hoped ye would.”

“‘Tis
glad I am that I didnae disappoint ye.”

Her
soft laugh turned to a purr of delight as he drew the tip of one breast into
his mouth, drawing upon it slowly as if he relished the taste of her. “Ye have
never disappointed me, Parlan. I thought ye wished to talk.”

“We
are talking. Did ye ever have hopes that I would come to wish ye to stay at my
side?”

Finding
it difficult to think clearly as he eased off her clothing and kissed each
newly-exposed patch of skin, she buried her hands deep in his thick hair and
nodded. “Aye. I did. All the time. I never wanted the ransom paid but”—she had
to catch her breath as his kisses burned the inside of her thighs—“I feared
staying until ye grew tired of me and set me aside.”

“I
have never once thought of setting ye aside.” He rose up onto his knees and
hastily shed the last of his clothing.

She
stared at him, savoring the way the sun’s light enhanced the warmth of his dark
skin. “Ye are beautiful.”

“A
great brute like me?” He laughed softly as he returned to her welcoming arms.

Her
answer never came for he smoothed kisses over her stomach then took the warmth
of his lips lower. A protest was only half-made as searing waves of pleasure
made her forget such things as the fact that she was allowing these intimacies
in the full light of day. The next coherent thing she was able to say was to
cry out for him to join her as her release drew near. A soft moan that was a
mixture of delight and frustration escaped her as he entered her ever so slowly
then remained still. She looked up at him in dazed confusion.

“I
want ye to love me, Aimil,” he whispered as he brushed his lips across hers. “Love
me, Aimil.”

As
he began to move, she sighed with pleasure and clung to him. “Oh, I do, Parlan.
God’s beard, I do.”

“With
your heart not just your body, sweeting.”

“With
every part of me. God help me, I love ye past thought, past reason.”

A
part of her cried out in dismay but she was too caught up in her passion to
heed it. Parlan’s movements grew fierce, and she succumbed completely to her
need for him. It was not until they lay sated in each other’s arms that she
realized the full extent of the confession she had made as well as of how he
had pulled it from her. Sensing him staring at her, she slowly opened her eyes.
He was looking at her with a warmth and tenderness that made her heart skip a
beat.

“Ye
are a verra sneaky man, Parlan MacGuin.”

“Aye,
I ken it. I wanted ye to go first.” He smiled faintly when her eyes widened.

“Go
first?” she whispered.

“Aye,
t’was unfair but there it is.” He lightly brushed a few stray wisps of hair
from her face. “I wasnae doing weel in spitting out the words so I thought
t’would help if ye said them first. Ye arenae alone, Aimil. The same madness
holds me tight in its grip. Aye, I love ye.” He laughed when she hugged him
tightly.

“When
did ye first ken it?”

“I
surprised myself with it when ye had the bairn but I ken it was there already.
I but put the words to it. And ye?”

She
laughed shakily. “When Catarine arrived that day and kissed you. Leith wasnae
surprised so I ken it was there already. I didnae want to see it though, for I
saw what we shared as being fleeting, doomed to end.”

“Nay,
t’will never end, lass. I havenae hesitated so long for naught. I ken weel that
we are a pair ‘til our bones are naught but dust. I just wasnae sure ye saw it
as I did. Nay, not until I heard ye cry out my name when I went tumbling down
that hole. There I was, in the midst of a struggle just to keep us alive and
all I could think on was how ye must care for me, that no woman could make such
a sound unless it was driven out by a heart’s pain. I decided t’was past time
we spoke on such things, far past time.”

“I
nearly hurled myself after ye,” she whispered, and hugged him tightly, a hug
that was heartily returned.

“Weel,
‘tis glad I am that ye didnae. I never want ye to even think I want ye to join
me in death. A man doesnae fight as hard as I have done these last months to
keep his lass alive just to have her toss that life away. I want ye to live.”

She
kissed his cheek. “I fear I discovered quickly that I wanted to live too, for
all I kenned that a part of me had died with ye.” Holding him close, she asked,
“Tell me again, Parlan.”

“Ye
need not beg the words of me, sweeting. They will come most freely now.” He
kissed her. “I love ye. Ye are what makes each day worth waking up to.”

“And
I love ye. There are no words full or sweet enough to say it.” She smiled
faintly. “Ye should have guessed it when I let ye get your handsome backside on
my horse.”

“I
thought it but I found that I needed the words.”

“I
see. Ye had the horse and now ye wanted his lady,” she teased. “What a greedy
rogue.”

“Ye
can keep your fine stallion, dearling. I have all I will ever want or need—Elfking’s
fine lady.”

Please
turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of Hannah Howell’s newest historical
romance,

HIGHLAND SINNER
,

 coming
in December 2008!

Chapter One

Scotland,
early summer 1478

What
was that smell?

Tormand
Murray struggled to wake up at least enough to move away from the odor
assaulting his nose. He groaned as he started to turn on his side and the ache
in his head became a piercing agony. Flopping onto his side, he cautiously ran
his hand over his head and found the source of that pain. There was a very
tender swelling at the back of his head. The damp matted hair around the
swelling told him that it had bled but he could feel no continued blood flow.
That indicated that he had been unconscious for more than a few minutes,
possibly for even more than a few hours.

As
he lay there trying to will away the pain in his head, Tormand tried to open
his eyes. A sharp pinch halted his attempt and he cursed. He had definitely
been unconscious for quite a while and something beside a knock on the head had
been done to him for his eyes were crusted shut. He had a fleeting, hazy memory
of something being thrown into his eyes before all went black, but it was not
enough to give him any firm idea of what had happened to him. Although he
ruefully admitted to himself that it was as much vanity as a reluctance to
inflict pain upon himself that caused him to fear he would tear out his
eyelashes if he just forced his eyes open, Tormand proceeded very carefully. He
gently brushed aside the crust on his eyes until he could open them, even if
only enough to see if there was any water close at hand to wash his eyes with.

And,
he hoped, enough water to wash himself if he proved to be the source of the
stench. To his shame there had been a few times he had woken to find himself
stinking, drunk, and a few stumbles into some foul muck upon the street being
the cause. He had never been this foul before, he mused, as the smell began to
turn his stomach.

Then
his whole body tensed as he suddenly recognized the odor. It was death. Beneath
the rank odor of an unclean garderobe was the scent of blood—a lot of blood.
Far too much to have come from his own head wound.

The
very next thing Tormand became aware of was that he was naked. For one brief
moment panic seized him. Had he been thrown into some open grave with other
bodies? He quickly shook aside that fear. It was not dirt or cold flesh he felt
beneath him but the cool linen of a soft bed. Rousing from unconsciousness to
that odor had obviously disordered his mind, he thought, disgusted with
himself.

Easing
his eyes open at last, he grunted in pain as the light stung his eyes and made
his head throb even more. Everything was a little blurry, but he could make out
enough to see that he was in a rather opulent bedchamber, one that looked
vaguely familiar. His blood ran cold and he was suddenly even more reluctant to
seek out the source of that smell. It certainly could not be from some battle
if only because the part of the bed-chamber he was looking at showed no signs
of one.

If
there is a dead body in this room, laddie, best ye learn about it quick. Ye
might be needing to run
, said a voice in his head that sounded remarkably
like his squire, Walter, and Tormand had to agree with it. He forced down all
the reluctance he felt and, since he could see no sign of the dead in the part
of the room he studied, turned over to look in the other direction. The sight
that greeted his watering eyes had him making a sound that all too closely
resembled the one his niece Anna made whenever she saw a spider. Death shared
his bed.

He
scrambled away from the corpse so quickly he nearly fell out of the bed.
Struggling for calm, he eased his way off the bed and then sought out some
water to cleanse his eyes so that he could see more clearly. It took several
awkward bathings of his eyes before the sting in them eased and the blurring
faded. One of the first things he saw after he dried his face was his clothing
folded neatly on a chair, as if he had come to this bedchamber as a guest,
willingly. Tormand wasted no time in putting on his clothes and searching the
room for any other signs of his presence, collecting up his weapons and his
cloak.

Knowing
he could not avoid looking at the body in the bed any longer, he stiffened his
spine and walked back to the bed. Tormand felt the sting of bile in the back of
his throat as he looked upon what had once been a beautiful woman. So mutilated
was the body that it took him several moments to realize that he was looking at
what was left of Lady Clara Sinclair. The ragged clumps of golden blond hair
left upon her head and the wide, staring blue eyes told him that, as did the
heart-shaped birthmark above the open wound where her left breast had been. The
rest of the woman’s face was so badly cut up it would have been difficult for
her own mother to recognize her without those few clues.

The
cold calm he had sought now filling his body and mind, Tormand was able to look
more closely. Despite the mutilation there was an expression visible upon poor
Clara’s face, one that hinted she had been alive during at least some of the
horrors inflicted upon her. A quick glance at her wrists and ankles revealed
that she had once been bound and had fought those bindings, adding weight to
Tormand’s dark suspicion. Either poor Clara had had some information someone
had tried to torture out of her or she had met up with someone who hated her
with a cold, murderous fury.

And
someone who hated him as well, he suddenly thought, and tensed. Tormand knew he
would not have come to Clara’s bedchamber for a night of sweaty bed play. Clara
had once been his lover, but their affair had ended and he never returned to a
woman once he had parted from her. He especially did not return to a woman who
was now married and to a man as powerful and jealous as Sir Ranald Sinclair.
That meant that someone had brought him here, someone who wanted him to see
what had been done to a woman he had once bedded, and, mayhaps, take the blame
for this butchery.

That
thought shook him free of the shock and sorrow he felt. “Poor, foolish Clara,”
he murmured. “I pray ye didnae suffer this because of me. Ye may have been
vain, a wee bit mean of spirit, witless, and lacking morals, but ye still
didnae deserve this.”

He
crossed himself and said a prayer over her. A glance at the windows told him
that dawn was fast approaching and he knew he had to leave quickly. “I wish I
could tend to ye now, lass, but I believe I am meant to take the blame for your
death and I cannae; I willnae. But, I vow, I
will
find out who did this
to ye and they will pay dearly for it.”

After
one last careful check to be certain no sign of his presence remained in the
bedchamber, Tormand slipped away. He had to be grateful that whoever had
committed this heinous crime had done so in this house for he knew all the
secretive ways in and out of it. His affair with Clara might have been short
but it had been lively and he had slipped in and out of this house many, many
times. Tormand doubted even Sir Ranald, who had claimed the fine house when he
had married Clara, knew all of the stealthy approaches to his bride’s
bedchamber.