Warrior and the Wanderer (3 page)

He rose to his feet. She just sat there on the sand; her legs sprawled before her, bared from the ragged hem of her tunic. The garment was torn to shreds by her husband’s cruel hands and barely concealed her.

She rushed to her feet, fighting off the dizziness.

The man stood over her, his finely tailored doublet open to the waist of his breeks, also black and expertly pieced together to hug his long, well-muscled legs. She glanced down at his boots, never having seen ones that fit the shape of right and left feet so well. She looked up again at the open doublet, the ends each bordered by thin rows of silver teeth, and beneath it at the tight crimson tunic across his broad chest. Such a well-fitted garment gave away the rigid contours of muscle beneath. Bess looked up into his eyes, and knew instantly that he was taking her in as completely as she was taking in him.

She looked down at her own body covered in the wet, pale tunic. It was all but as transparent as it adhered to her damp body. Bess stood still and silent, her body a rigid parallel to the stranger’s.

She looked into those amber eyes and asked of him the same question he had posed to her as she stood on the border of life and death. “Who are ye?”

But he did not answer her.

He took one step closer, so close she felt his warm breath, saw a trickle of blood drawing a line down the side of his face from the edge of his right brow. Instinctively, she reached up to the top of the trickle, to the expressive line of dark brows and plucked a fragment of dark glass from his flesh.

He winced just a wee bit. She looked at the shard, a neat triangle that was almost black.

“That’s what is left of my shades,” he said, “after I crashed…here.”

“Here?”

“California,” he said, and then looked up at the rock strewn beach. “I think it’s California.”

“California,” she repeated. “I dinnae know of it.”

“Who hasn’t heard of California?” He looked at the landscape, eyes searching, desperate.

“I dinnae ken it,” she said.

He looked at the landscape, blinked hard. “Get a bloody grip, Ian.”

“Is that your name?” Bess asked. “Ian? I wish to thank ye, and then I have to be on my way.”

He looked out over the firth. “Aye,” he sighed. “You probably know me. I’m not in the mood to give autographs right now. But please feel free to tell
TMZ
how Ian MacLean saved your life. I can use all the good publicity I can get right now.”

He spoke many odd, unfamiliar words. But one was very familiar.

“On the grave of my brother,” she whispered behind him as she bent down. “Ye have the same name as my husband. MacLean.”

“Sorry?” he asked without turning around, his gaze fixed on the sea, on a fishing boat that had just rounded the rocky point of land jutting out into the firth.

Bess saw it too; saw her return to her clan. She wrapped her hands around the same rock this man, this MacLean, had used to break her shackles. An act of charity or was it born of some glimmer of guilt one of his kind might possess? She would not wait for an answer.

“For the good of my clan, for my revenge,” she whispered raising the rock high. “I will find a use for this MacLean.”

He turned around just as Bess smashed a rock into the side of his face. He fell hard to the sand. She knelt down and placed her hand against the side of his neck.

Good. He would live, for now. She had plans for him. A good chief always had plans.

Bess stood and waved as hard as she might to the fishing boat as it neared the shore, its eel nets trailing behind. Soon she would be back with her clan and with Ian MacLean as her prisoner.

Chapter Two: The Prize

I
an snapped his eyes open.

He looked around, trying to find anything, something in the dim that surrounded him. And he found many pairs of eyes all staring down at him.

“What the fu—?” he uttered.

The dozen or so male faces, hairy, pale and stark in the undulating shadows of firelight stared at him as if he were some grand curiosity.

He tried to sit up, and immediately found he could barely move. His arms and legs were bound, his body spread out like an X, touching all four corners of some very scratchy mattress.

“Oh, damn and damn.”

Ian examined the length of his body as best as he was able. He was naked, spread out before these Duck Dynasty rejects.

“Oh, God,” he moaned, flopping his head back to the mattress.

A whisper rushed about the crowd. He picked up snatches of their words. He understood a few only because of where he had been born and schooled well before finding his way to the States.

One word was
toibheum
, blasphemy.

The other was
marbh
, kill.

Ian did not need translation for the word that came directly after:
MacLean
.

Kill Maclean.

He pulled hard against his binds, tightening every muscle. The ropes creaked and strained, but did not release him, only tightened because they were wet. He let out an incredible bellow of frustration that made his audience jump back a few paces.

“C’mon one of you!” he shouted. “Untie me!”

They did not move, just stood there, staring.

He relaxed for a second, laying on the mattress that was little more than a squashy pillow stuffed with pins poking his arse. Then he tried again, pulled on the ropes with all of his strength. The damp tethers gripped his wrists and ankles all the tighter, biting into his flesh.

“Fu—!”

“Och, shut yer gob, ye bloody MacLean bastard!”

Ian paused in his struggle and looked to his left. The crowd parted suddenly and disappeared into the shadows just beyond his rack. An apparition straight out of a Sir Walter Scott novel appeared over him.

Ian had to blink several times to believe what he was seeing. Then the smell of the red-haired lout struck him hard. This was no apparition. This was a walking wall of stink dressed in plaid and some dingy shirt, and carrying one hell of a huge sword.

“OK, Braveheart,” he said. “Very impressive costume. Now, untie me!”

The wall of red hair and plaid gave one vicious snarl and leaned way down over Ian. His pale eyes, deep set into his face, scanned Ian, took his time, before his meaty lips thinned into a sarcastic grin.

“She wants ye covered before she takes ye to the queen’s man.”

The hand that did not hold the sword tossed a pile of clothes onto Ian, over his privates. “Get ye dressed.”

He regarded his clothes, then looked up at Braveheart. “How the hell do you expect me to do that?”

Without a word the lout slipped the tip of his sword under the rope binding Ian’s left wrist. In a blink he cut it clean through.

Bit by bit Braveheart brought him closer to freedom.

As soon as the last fiber of rope was cut from his right ankle, Ian sat upright. He had no choice but to ignore the pain that surged from where that woman had bashed him with a rock, the ungrateful bitch. Was she the “she” this garbage heap in plaid referred to? Who cared? He was free.

Drawing in a deep breath, Ian crammed his fist into the side of the man’s face. His knuckles may have well hit granite for all the good it did him. The lout recoiled and, swifter than the plunge of Ian’s career, placed the tip of his sword at the base of his throat.

Ian held up his hands.

“OK, Braveheart, remove the blade, and take the cos-play down a bloody notch will you?”

The lout just growled. “Get yer claiths on.”

Ian did not take his eyes from the ridiculous red-haired re-enactor. He had no choice but to play along, until he saw another chance to escape. He slid his legs over the side of the bed and placed them solidly upon a very cold wooden floor.

He slipped his stare from the “Highlander” and surveyed his surroundings. The room was small in floor space, but the ceiling reached high above his head. He looked up at the firelight flicking over an intricate fretwork of joists and beams joined like some Gothic jigsaw puzzle. He dropped his gaze to the hearth, which did not fit the proportion of the room. It was huge, large enough to park an SUV inside, well, maybe not an SUV, but something much larger than a sub-compact that was for sure. The hearth was framed in rough stone and scorched with a rim of soot. Inside the hearth rested a great smoldering pile of coal-red blocks. He sniffed the air, trying to single out the scent that lay beyond that of his captor. Peat. Unmistakable, musty peat smoke.

Ian picked up his clothes and got dressed. The Highlander watched his every move without a word. But there were grunts aplenty, grunts of disapproval, grunts of sarcasm. Ian stepped into his jeans.

“Good song you got going there,” he said, before another of Braveheart’s grunts could rummage about the room. “I’m sure you know I’ve got lots of them, had lots of them. I’m sure you know who I am. If this is a kidnapping you won’t get any ransom. I am washed up, and not worth a damn thing.”

He jerked his t-shirt on over his head, pulled it down and tucked it into the waistband of his pants.

Braveheart remained mute.

“What’s the deal here?” Ian asked. “If this isn’t a kidnapping then what is it? Are you a re-enactor in some insane Scottish festival, and you want me to join in? Is that it?”

Ian sat down on the side of the bed and took up one of his socks. He yanked it up one ankle and then the other.

“You want me for the Scottish angle, am I right? Add the once famous Ian MacLean to the bill and sell a whole lot of tickets, is that it?”

His captor could not have been more silent unless he was dead.

Ian continued. It was comforting, helped him to plan another escape, got his juices working into overdrive.

“Well, I’ll tell you what, Braveheart, I might stay, but it’s going to cost you. I don’t come cheap.” What he meant to say was:
I don’t come at all and I’m leaving.

He jammed his feet into his boots and then grabbed his jacket from the bed and slipped it on.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said.

That solicited a response from Braveheart. One that sent a vicious shiver up Ian’s spine. The lout smiled and nodded, his broken, stained teeth shined in the firelight. “Over with. Oh, aye.”

* * * *

Bess dressed herself carefully. Everything she did from this moment on in her life had to be done with care.

“For the good of my clan,” she whispered. She jerked the lacings on her bodice hard and tied them in a tight bow. “And for revenge upon my husband.”

She placed her hands, one on top of the other, over the stiff fabric of her stomacher and drew in a deep breath. The scent of roses and peat smoke mingled in her nose. She was nourished by both fragrances because they reminded her of the source of her strength, of everything to her, of her land.

“This land willnae be the spoils to the likes of Lachlan MacLean.”

She stuck out her tongue, like a brash wean, and spit the bitterness of the devil’s name away.

Bess turned around and walked the long walk to her bed. The chamber used to be that of her mother and father, long ago, then just a fortnight ago it had been her brother’s. Now, it was hers. Some of the lasses had been within, tidying things up, removing any trace of her brother, and adding cheer where they could. Like the sprigs of heather that sprang in a snowy spray from a pewter tankard, one that her brother had cherished and always drank from.

She pushed aside the musty bed curtains, dusty and damp from lack of use, and tied them to the carved post with a braided cord. She knelt on the fresh rush carpet, her skirts pooling around her, the color was muted verdigris, the wool soft and finely woven. The perfect dress for a Highland chief. But there was something missing.

She worked her arm between the mattresses, her sleeve pushing up on her wrist. She searched blindly for a moment and then curled her fingers around leather and steel. Slowly, reverently, she pulled out the great length of her brother’s claymore, and her father’s before him. The leather sheath was fastened around the sword. It was a long strap that fastened across the chest with two leather loops behind that held the sword to a warrior’s back. Bess slipped it from the sheath and stood still.

She bore the weight of the claymore before the light of the peat coals in the hearth. The blade glinted orange and golden. Her knuckles glowed white as she held the great sword aloft. A chief’s duty was to protect the clan, by wits or by sword. Bess knew to defeat Lachlan MacLean she would have to use both. First she would use her wits and the prize she had brought to her clan. Her champion, Alasdair MacAlister, should be seeing to that very thing now in another part of Castle Inverary.

“Ian MacLean,” she said in a mocking tone. “My prize.”

Her gaze followed the length of blade, her tongue bitter, yet she did not spit out the tinge of the name this time. She held the taste of Ian’s name as she would hold him, bound to a tether behind her mount as she took him to the Duke of Argyll the Queen Regent’s man in Stirling. She needed his support against Lachlan. The mettle of her clan, she feared, may not be enough when her husband decided to come across the firth from Mull.