Sins of the Highlander (A Highland Erotic Romance) (18 page)

The lock squealed as someone inside slid it free. Niall gestured for the girl to go, and she sprinted away on silent feet down the corridor. With a deep breath, Niall opened the door and stepped into the enemy’s bedchamber.

A man sprawled on the big bed in the center of the room. This must be Dunbar—Niall had never seen the man before, but his demeanor said he thought himself the master of this place. He was a big man with dark, curling hair and narrow, calculating eyes. Naked from the torso up, he looked relaxed, though his shoulder was wrapped with a large white bandage.

Niall hoped that was Aileen’s work.

A naked woman was curled up against Dunbar, her lower half tucked under a plaid. It wasn’t Aileen, thank God. This woman was pink and busty, with pale brown hair and big eyes that sloped downward at their edges as if she were perpetually exhausted. Given her state of nudity, she likely was.

It appeared as though Dunbar and the woman had been playing a game of chess in bed. Another man, a skinny, bookish fellow with stringy blond hair, stood beside a big armchair, his arms crossed over his chest in what seemed to be an attempt to appear threatening.

Dunbar looked from Niall to Iain and back again. The surprise that lit his eyes when they’d first entered died away quickly, and a narrow-eyed sneer replaced it. “Why, if it isn’t Niall MacRae. And Iain Mackenzie. Fancy seeing you again, you traitorous slime. You smuggled this bastard into my castle, didn’t you?”

Despite the harshness of his words, Dunbar didn’t appear overly perturbed. Niall stood stiffly, every sense honed, every nerve alert.

Dunbar smiled, but his black eyes remained stone cold. “Well then. Which one of you shall I play next?” He glanced down at his naked companion. “Sorry, my pet, but this game is nearly at its end.”

No doubt of that, Niall thought wryly.

“Where is Lady Aileen?” he said aloud.

Dunbar raised a brow. “Why should I tell you?”

The blade of Niall’s claymore hissed as he unsheathed it. “Where is she?”

Dunbar gestured at his bandage. “Surely you wouldn’t attack an injured man.”

Niall stepped forward menacingly. He would do whatever it took to ensure that Aileen left this place safely. With him.

“In any case,” Dunbar continued, giving him a one-shouldered shrug, “Lady Aileen
Dunbar
is no longer any of your concern. She is mine. My wife, legally wed to
me
. Rufus, show him the marriage contract.”

The pasty-faced man near the hearth rifled through some papers on a nearby shelf, then stepped forward, holding out a document in a trembling hand. Niall snatched it and scanned it quickly. He swallowed hard, struggling against the despair and panic rising in his gut.

No
. It couldn’t be true.

“I assure you, it is no fraud.” Dunbar’s voice was as oily as mutton grease.

“Then why are you in bed with this woman and not Aileen?” He glanced at the date—God, it was just three days ago. If only he’d arrived sooner…

“My wife has been indisposed.”

The way the man called Aileen his wife made Niall shake with rage. This couldn’t be happening.

As if he found the entire situation immensely boring, Dunbar studied his nails. “She is with child, you know.”

The statement slammed into Niall’s gut, but he held his ground.

Dunbar glanced up at him, eyebrows raised, his eyes full of some knowledge about him Niall didn’t want to explore. “Oh? Hadn’t you heard? It seems Walter Munro didn’t have as sluggish a prick as we all thought.”

Niall did a quick mental calculation. If Aileen had been telling the truth about Walter’s lack of interest in her for the last several months—and he had every reason to believe her—the baby had to be his.

Aileen carried his child. And, with all those twisted, misplaced notions of honor and loyalty, he had left her alone. She and the babe were the ones who deserved his honor and loyalty, and he’d left them to Gilbert Dunbar. Hell, Niall had betrayed the only thing important to him in this world, and he’d done so in the worst possible way.

Would she ever forgive him?

“Where is she?” he ground out.

Dunbar sneered. “You have just infiltrated my home. Why would I hand my beloved wife over to you? You must think me mad.”

“Take me to her. Now.”

“For Christ’s sake.” Dunbar threw up the hand attached to his uninjured arm in exasperation. “Why in bloody hell would I take you to her? So you can proclaim your loyal, undying love? Come now, MacRae. There is nothing you can do. As much as you think you love her, you wouldn’t steal another man’s wife.”

Another man’s widow, perhaps
. He was within striking distance of Dunbar. It would be so easy to slit his throat…

“And you won’t kill me either. You are too honorable to murder a defenseless man. I’ve an injured shoulder, a headache—”

Honorable
? No. In the end, he wasn’t so very honorable. Was he?

Aileen, Aileen.
What would you have me do?

Dunbar had hurt Aileen. He had stolen her from Ellandonan, possibly raped her, possibly hurt her—no,
their
—babe.

Gilbert Dunbar deserved to die.

Niall raised his sword and swung it with all his power at Dunbar’s throat.

At the same time, Dunbar leapt from the bed with surprising, almost preternatural speed and thrust a dirk at Niall’s gut. It pierced his tunic and dug into his side before Dunbar yanked it loose.

The woman screamed. The skinny man by the fire yelled. Niall heard another hiss as Iain’s sword was unsheathed.

Niall’s blow missed completely, swinging wide. His side on fire with pain, he spun around to avoid a second thrust of the dirk. Dunbar ducked low, retrieving a sword from beneath the bed and swapping it to the hand that previously held the dirk. Now he held a sword in one hand and a dirk in the hand closest to his bandaged shoulder.

“Nothing will take Aileen from me,” Dunbar sneered. “Nothing. Not even you, you cocksucker.”

Niall grimaced, holding his oozing side with his free hand.

Dunbar’s sword swooped in low, but Niall angled his weapon to block. The clang of clashing steel rang out through the room. Dunbar thrust his dirk at Niall’s uninjured side. Niall swiveled his body to dodge the blade, and with that, he learned that the man’s dirk arm was indeed much weaker than the sword arm.

Blood plastered his shirt to his side and was seeping through his plaid. Niall glanced toward the fire to see Iain struggling with Dunbar’s comrade. Dunbar held back, a smile playing about the edges of his lips.

Too cocky, Niall thought, and lunged forward to thrust at Dunbar’s gut. The other man danced around the point of his sword and slipped behind him. Niall spun around.

Dunbar attacked full-on, his sword hissing through the air. Niall dodged the first swipe, aimed at his head. He jumped backward to avoid two slashing blows aimed for his torso. He parried a thrust aimed at his arm, then attacked, jabbing at Dunbar’s chest, backing the sneering man until his thighs bumped against the side of the bed. Dunbar jumped onto the bed, still moving backward, stepping on the legs of the whore. The woman screeched and scurried away, and Dunbar lost his balance. The dirk slipped from his fingers, falling somewhere in the folds of the plaids.

Niall leapt up on the bed, intent on backing Dunbar into the corner. Dunbar jumped down on the other side. A table beside him crashed to the ground.

From his higher position, Niall slashed at Dunbar’s neck, but he jerked his head backward and the tip of Niall’s blade scratched his jaw.

“Not good enough.” In an abrupt movement, Dunbar ducked to escape from the corner, swooping his sword low behind his back and catching Niall off guard. The sword cut through his tunic and slashed his stomach.

Niall let out a hiss of breath against the burn of it.

Dunbar’s taunting voice seemed to bounce off the stone walls of the bedchamber. “Too bad you’ll never see her pretty pink cunt. Too bad you’ll never see the marks of the whip on her back—Munro’s old ones and my fresh, bloody ones.”

He’d raped Aileen.

It was the only way Dunbar would have seen the scars on her back. Hearing the confirmation of it made Niall’s blood roar with rage.

He was too late. He had failed her.

Through the red haze, his senses narrowed and focused. There were no other people in the room—no crying woman or struggling men. There was no room, no castle, no world. There was only Gilbert Dunbar. And he had to die.

With a shout of fury, Niall leapt off the bed and lunged forward. When Dunbar dodged the blow, Niall came at him again and again, until the other man anticipated and adjusted to his never-ending assault.

But Dunbar was tiring. His free arm, the arm with the bandaged shoulder, hung limply by his side. His strokes seemed less strong, less certain in their aim.

Niall made to lunge again, but just as Dunbar raised his weapon to block, Niall changed the thrust to a slash aimed high. Completely misjudging the angle of the attack, Dunbar’s parry missed. Niall’s sword caught him in the throat, slicing him open.

Dunbar seemed to melt to the floor, his throat gurgling, a fount of blood spurting from the gash in his neck.

Clutching the throbbing wound on his side, Niall rounded on Dunbar’s male companion, who was being held by Iain with his hands bound behind him.

“Where is she?” Niall shouted above the continued screams of the woman. “Where is Aileen?”

“Gone!” the man screamed. He stared at his fallen master, eyes wide and frightened. “Gone, gone, gone!”

Niall pressed the bloody tip of his sword to the man’s throat. “Where?”

“I don’t know,” the man sobbed. “She stabbed my lord in th-the shoulder and then es-escaped. No one knows how she got out.”

Niall closed his eyes. Someone must have told her the way out through the tunnels. She must’ve been the one to have disturbed the grate to get out.

Thank God. She had gotten away on her own. But not before Dunbar had raped her.

“When?” he demanded.

“Three days ago.” The man fell to his knees and crawled to his master. Niall turned away from the gruesome scene, knowing what he must do and where he must go. As clear as if she’d called to him herself, he knew where she’d gone.

Loch Ness.

Chapter Sixteen

With only an extra plaid slung over her shoulder, a tallow candle and a small bundle of food given to her by Mary the kitchen maid, Aileen had escaped from Castle Aird.

She had thought through her options and quickly come to the conclusion that Ellandonan was too far for a woman alone to travel on foot, and Dornoch, while closer, would be the first place that Gilbert would search for her.

She’d had an opportunity to kill him. When she’d hit his head with the lantern, he’d lost consciousness and crumpled to the floor. She’d stood over him, staring at him, hating him with all her heart. She’d pulled her dirk from his shoulder and pressed its tip to his heart. But she couldn’t take that extra step.

As long as he lived, he was her husband, and he was a threat to her life. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to murder him in cold blood.

Instead of traveling north to Ellandonan or Dornoch, she headed due south, avoiding the village of Beauly—if the residents of the village saw her, they would surely inform Gilbert of the direction in which she was headed.

The days were warm, and she survived the chill of the nights, thanks to the extra plaid Mary had given her. She had traveled on this wagon road before. It was a quiet, desolate place, with only the occasional traveler. She slipped off the road and took shelter behind bushes and trees when she heard riders, but that was rare.

At dawn on the third morning of her journey, she woke in her bed of peat. She stretched her sore, battered limbs and ate the last little bit of dried herring for her breakfast. She was out of food, but it didn’t matter. She would reach Loch Ness today.

That afternoon, a glint of the blue waters of the loch finally showed between the trees, and Aileen picked up her pace. Soon enough, she saw the thatched roof of her grandmother’s cottage, perched on the banks of the loch.

She broke into a run, tears streaming down her face. She hadn’t seen her grandmother in too long. She missed her. She
needed
her.

When the old woman opened the door, Aileen merely grinned through her tears, so happy to see her she could hardly speak through the thick emotion in her throat.

Her grandmother’s face collapsed into smiling wrinkles. “Aileen,
a leannan
,” she said in her kindly voice that shook with age. “I had a feeling I’d be seeing you soon.”

Aileen threw her arms around the old woman. As always, her grandmother’s soft skin smelled of sugar and spices.

Grandmother cooed to her in Gaelic, bustling her into the main room of the small, pretty cottage. A smile spread across her features, but the edges of her eyes creased with concern. “Oh child, you are so gaunt. I have been so worried about you ever since I heard of that bastard Munro’s death.”

Aileen widened her eyes in shock. “Grandmother!”

The old woman frowned. “Well, he was one.” She gave Aileen a steady look. “If it were me, I would have danced a jig the moment I heard the man was dead. But I expect you were a good girl, as you always are, and mourned his death like a proper wife.”

“Well…I tried.” But she hadn’t been very successful. She felt the heat of a flush creep over her cheeks as she thought of Niall’s stay at Dornoch.

Her grandmother sat her in a chair and bustled about, preparing something to eat. Aileen tried to get up to help, but the old woman pressed her back down. “You sit. Something terrible has happened, I can tell by the looks of you. You look like you’ve walked fifty miles straight.”

Aileen thought it was more like sixty miles, but she didn’t say it. She leaned on the table, exhausted, and her stomach growled loudly. It had only been a few hours since her small meal this morning—she shouldn’t be
that
hungry. But perhaps the babe was already making his demands on her body.