Ravished by a Highlander (8 page)

A base desire it might be, but what warm-blooded female would not want a man like that to stand beside her when the world
she knew fell apart? And it wasn’t simply his strength that tempted her, but his complete command over the situation. The
way he’d made certain nothing appeared unnatural at the camp, the careful path he set them on that would leave the least tracks.
He was deliberate in his thinking, never second-guessing himself or what the others around him thought of his decisions. It
stirred her hope that this Highlander was indeed able to protect her. That he might truly mean to—at least for now. But she
didn’t trust hope. Not anymore.

“Tell me, lass.” The naturally deep baritone of Rob’s voice behind her sent unfamiliar, unwanted heat down her spine. “Why
does an English lady bear a Scottish name?”

Her back stiffened with the return of caution. “Why do you assume I am English?” she asked, keeping her eyes steady ahead.

“Ye speak like them, and ye’re well mannered.”

The heavy lilt in his voice played like a melody against her ear, soothing her nerves, but not enough to completely relax
her guard. He was clever. He’d already proven that at the camp and the way he’d tricked her with his query about loving Edward.

“I was raised by English nuns. Do you expect me to be troublesome?”

“I didna’ know they were English,” he said pensively, giving her a moment of true dread that she might have, once again, said
too much. “But ye were raised with more men than women and ye still possess all the propriety of a well-bred lady.”

Now she did turn to look him in his eyes, misgivings about him clearly showing in hers. “And who informed you that I was raised
with men? Those soldiers might have been visiting St. Christopher’s, as you claim to have been doing.”

“Yer arrow piercin’ me from within the Abbey informed me.” His voice dipped with the hint of what could have been humor. She
wasn’t certain, since he hadn’t offered her even the barest trace of a smile since he awoke this morning. “A lass doesna’
master that kind of skill unless she’s been taught fer many years.”

Yes, he was clever… and without a doubt, the finest-looking man she’d ever set her eyes on. For a shameful instant, she wondered
how he would look with those obsidian curls falling loose around his face instead of being tied back neatly from it. Was he
always so serious, so in control? God forgive her, why was she curious about the savage side of his character? She knew that
part of him existed somewhere beyond his rigid composure. She’d seen a spark of something purely feral in his eyes when she
attacked him last eve. It frightened her and heightened her awareness of his virility at the same time. She really needed
to pray.

“Who named ye?”

She blinked, clearing her unchaste thoughts. “My father,” she told him and sat forward, away from his body.

“Was yer faither a Scotsmen, then?”

Though her days were often preoccupied with thoughts of her true family, and if they would even know her if they saw her,
Davina had never spoken of them with anyone, and she did not want to do so now. “He was.”

“And yer mother?” His fingers brushed softly across her belly.

“She…” Davina wiped her brow that suddenly went hot at his touch. She tried to squirm further away from him but there was
no place else to go. “She died when I was ten, from what I am told.” She tried to relax her breathing, afraid of what questions
he would put to her next and how easily she might answer them, begging his protection. But if he was not her enemy, then he
was her enemy’s foe. If he didn’t know who she was then it was best he never discover it. She would not let more people die
because of her.

“What were they called?”

His queries were not casual, nor was his touch. She doubted he did anything without purpose—and she was tired of having to
be so guarded around him. “They were Lord and Lady Whithorn,” she said, hoping that would satisfy him. “I do not wish to think
on them.”

When she offered nothing more, his muscles tensed behind her and his spine went taut, mayhap with anger or frustration, she
did not know, nor did she care. She was only thankful that he did not speak again.

Normally, Davina relished silence. It wasn’t because she was used to it. While abbeys tended to be quiet places on the whole,
for as long as she could remember, St. Christopher’s halls often thundered with the clang of swords and the banging of hammers,
rather than whispered prayers. There were always repairs to be done and the sisters used the men they were given to fix just
about everything. The soldiers didn’t mind. There was naught else for them to do but practice, and bicker, and share stories
about their loved ones. Perhaps in another place Davina would have cherished the clamor around her, but most of the time such
sounds of normalcy had only served as a reminder of what could never be hers.

How she missed those sounds now. A tear slipped over her lashes at the memory of peering over the tower wall and seeing the
men whose faces… voices… had become as familiar to her as her own, lifeless and silent. And the sisters… their screams from
the burning chapel would haunt her for ten lifetimes.

Swiping her cheek, Davina fought to push away her grief, but now her beloved silence only intensified her loneliness.

She noticed that Finn had caught up and was keeping his mount at an even pace beside them. She looked at him through misty
eyes. He smiled softly and once again she imagined him to have flown down from Heaven, mayhap on wings he had hidden beneath
his plaid.

“Where is your home?” she asked him quietly, desperate for a distraction from her sorrow.

“’Tis on Skye.”

She had to smile at that. She’d been right about him all along.

“Is it very far?”

“Far enough,” Rob answered from behind.

For what? Davina wondered. Far enough to hide and never be found? What did it matter? If he spoke the truth about everything
so far, then he was really bringing her to Ayrshire and he would leave her. She should feel relieved, thankful that God had
sent him to help her. But first she had to be certain that it was God who brought this man to her, and not her enemies.

“Tell me how you came to meet Edward.”

He shifted behind her, a ripple of honed muscle that sent her troubled thoughts scattering to the four winds, only to be replaced
by even darker ones when his hand settled on the curve of her hip. None of the English soldiers in her company had ever touched
her with any intimacy. It was forbidden, though Edward had embraced her once. She did not know how to react to this half-dressed
Highlander who held her as if she were his.

“Yer Captain Asher was fightin’ fer his life. He told me ye lived after he saw yer arrow in my hand, and asked me to save
ye.”

Davina smiled and closed her eyes, remembering her dearest friend. Even with his own death at hand, Edward sought to protect
her.

“He told me yer enemies wanted ye to burn,” Rob went on. In front of him, Davina’s smiled faded. So, her captain
had
told him more than Rob had first admitted. What else did he know?

“Did he guard ye under King Charles’s orders?”

“No,” she told him truthfully.

“Did he guard ye because he was in love with ye, then?”

All of her caution could not have prepared her for Finn’s query. Not knowing how to answer, she turned to him and knew by
the abashed expression on his face that Rob was staring at him also.

“He did love me,” she revealed, desiring to lie as little as possible. He was going to tell her that night by her door, but
he never had the chance. Perhaps it was better that he’d gone home to God not knowing that she did not feel the same as he
did. “He was a good man and one that I shall never forget.”

“A captain has no authority to keep his entire regiment holed up at an abbey to protect a lass whether he loves her or no’,”
Rob told them both with a bit of a bite in his words. Davina felt him inhale deeply, as if he was trying to rein in whatever
it was he was feeling. “I’ve let ye evade my questions long enough. I would know the truth of all this now, Davina.”

He
was
angry. He wanted answers and he wasn’t getting them. Still, her name on his lips sounded tender, oddly profound. How long
had it been since a man had spoken it? The last was Captain Geoffries when he was leaving her. Before that, mayhap her father…

“If I’m to bring war to my clan fer aidin’ ye, I would know why.”

At his words, Will, riding slightly ahead of them, turned on his mount and cast his cousin a curious look of his own. Rob
ignored it and lowered his voice so that only she, and Finn riding so close, could hear.

“Tell me why ye were cloistered away as if fergotten, but protected like a queen?”

As if forgotten.
His words dug deep into the core of Davina’s sorrow. Her true family knew she existed, and though a legion of the king’s
best men had helped raise her, the truth remained that she’d been abandoned. Her childhood was lonely, and her future, if
she lived to see it, was crowded with cold smiles and false affection.

But she had also been given so much by God, sisters who loved her and men who had given their lives for her. She had no right
to mumble and complain about things not meant to be hers, and she never did. But being in this man’s arms, riding with his
men across heather-lined hills, as if she were naught but a Highland lass returning home with her husband, stirred her longings
more than ever before.

“What have ye to do with the king, Davina? Why does Argyll or Monmouth want ye dead?”

She turned to him, wanting him to see the truth in her eyes, and to look for it in his.

“Do you truly not know, Rob MacGregor?”

“Nae lass, I truly dinna’ know.”

His answer didn’t make her as happy as she’d hoped it would. If he didn’t know, then there was still time to keep him out
of this—and her selfish longings in check. She could never belong to him, or any man like him. The life she dreamed of was
simply that—a dream. She’d known it since she was a child and she wasn’t about to awaken that lonely little girl.

“Then please understand,” she said, turning forward between his thighs. “I would prefer you know nothing more. I am grateful
for your aid and ask no more of you but your release when we reach Courlochcraig.”

He didn’t move behind her. In fact, Davina was sure he didn’t breathe. Then, with a snap of his reins that urged his mount
to move faster, he straightened away from her ear and growled. “As ye wish.”

Every moment spent between them in silence echoed like a drum in Rob’s ears. Whatever secrets Davina knew, she’d made it clear
that she was not going to tell them to him. He knew she couldn’t be happy about going to another convent, one without an army,
but she would rather see him off than tell him the truth. He would have found such courage admirable if he wasn’t so offended.
At the campsite, he’d found it endearing that she lied to him for his “safety.” But the truth was always right there in her
eyes—always present when she spoke to him. She didn’t trust him, even though he’d risked his life to save her. He was surprised
that it should prick his anger so. She had no reason to trust him, but he wanted her to.

Still, how could she when he was delivering her to more nuns instead of taking her to the only place she would be truly safe?
Hell, he couldn’t bring her to Camlochlin. Doing so would likely lead her enemies there.

He gritted his teeth against the bracing wind and all the uncertainties roiling within him. He knew what he should do—drop
her off and get the hell away from her before there was an army on his arse. But how could he run and still claim the right
to be called Chief someday? Fleeing from the unknown was cowardly. But more than that, Rob didn’t want to leave her. The thought
of it, her suggestion of it, made him want to wrap her in his plaid and head for Camlochlin.

Had Asher loved her? God help the man if he had, for losing one’s heart to this lass would cost a man much. Did she love him
in return?

Why the hell should he care? The man was dead, after all. Besides that, even if two armies hadn’t fought over her—even if
she hadn’t promised her life to God—which he now believed she had—the last thing Rob needed in his life right now was a lass.
He worked all day with his father and practiced his fighting skills at night. He had no time for wooing, and even less inclination
to do so. But damn him, the way her expression softened with affection when she spoke of the captain made Rob’s jaw clench.
Jealousy was a useless emotion and one that Rob had never wasted his time on. He might as well be jealous of God for binding
Davina to Him. May the Almighty strike him dead if he ever became
that
pathetic.

Asher was a fool to fall in love with her, and had paid the price for it. Rob would not make the same error.

T
he cross above the bell tower of Courlochcraig Abbey rose high over the old town of Ayr, casting shadows on the five faces
looking up at it.