Warrior and the Wanderer (6 page)

“Listen!” he snarled, pinning her arms to her body, pulling her against his firm body. His breath pumped hot onto her face. “I want—.

“—Let me go!” she demanded, struggling. He only held her tighter.

“I want to know where the hell I am,” he continued. “What part of California is this?”

“California? I dinnae—”

“Stop acting. Where am I?”

She regretted giving him food. It had strengthened him.

“’Tis Stirlingshire, not this California,” she replied. “California? Is that in Spain?”

“We’re in Stirlingshire?” he asked, pressing his face so close to hers, their lips almost touched.

“A-aye,” she stuttered, “Stirlingshire in Scotland.”

He relaxed his hold on her. “Scotland. You truly believe that?”

“I know that, Ian MacLean. Why don’t you?” Bess looked deep into those amber eyes of his. How could a man so strong seem so lost?

“You are clearly insane,” was all he said. But from his tone, she didn’t think he believed what he just told her. He could actually be speaking about himself.

Slowly, he released her. She slipped quickly away from him and took out the
sqian dhu
from a sheath under her arm.

“Grab me again, MacLean, and ye will feel all of this blade in yer neck.”

“Tough talk,” he said. “You’ve a wealth of it. Have you ever considered auditioning for a Tarantino or Scorsese flick?”

“Ye dinnae impress me with your Italian allies. Did Lachlan send ye to the Spaniards or Italians, trying to expand his power or are ye just an outcast?”

“Outcast. Yeah, let’s go with that.” He sighed and leaned the back of his head against the tree. Slowly, he closed his eyes. She hoped he was finally going to stop speaking his odd words with his odd inflection and go to sleep. Instead he took a deep breath, snapped his eyes open and said, “I’ll play along and then you can let me go.”

“Perhaps.” Bess knelt down by the fire and took up her supper. She began to eat. A bite of meat, a bite of root, and over again.

“This Lachlan thinks you’re dead, you know.”

“Aye, this I have considered,” she said. “What of it?”

“You can use it to your advantage. To him you’re a ghost. And a ghost can cause a lot of trouble.”

She stopped chewing. “Have ye a plan?”

“Depends. What do you want?”

“Revenge then peace.”

He cocked his head and smiled. “You’re asking a lot. I don’t know about revenge but everyone wants peace. Is there something else you want?”

“Control of my clan’s land. What is yer plan?”

“Give me what I want right now, and I’ll help you.”

Bess tossed the skewer aside. “What d’ye wish? Because I cannae grant it.”

“I want a bath.”

“I thought ye would say ye wanted yer freedom.”

“Eventually, but now I want a bath. You have pulled me behind that horse for hell knows how many miles. I have walked through mud and horse shite. I have crashed into salt water. I have more grunge on me than a band from Seattle. All I want to do is wash it off, and just maybe I can regain my sanity by feeling human again. I can help both of us. But you’ve got to help me first.”

She stood, lifted her claymore from the sheath, and walked silently toward him. The weary tone in his voice told her that he had been on a long journey. Why else would he have boots so well cobbled, unless he walked far without benefit of a mount? If Lachlan thought him good as dead, then surely he must have done something to anger his chief, to be an outcast.

Once again she knelt at his side, claymore drawn, the point resting against the side of his neck.

“I will grant your request. But ken that escape is impossible. I will find ye and make my displeasure known if ye try it.”

“Understood,” he said.

He held his bound wrists up. She slipped the blade under the ropes and sliced them through. He rubbed his wrists and laid his hands at his side. Then he turned his neck where the lock held his chained collar together. Bess reached into a slit in the side of her skirt and took out a key. She tossed it on the ground at his feet.

Ian grabbed the key and fumbled for the lock and after a few tries, he was free of the chains. He slowly rose to his feet. She had forgotten for a moment how tall he was, and feared her choice to abide his request was not a wise one. She aimed the tip of her sword at his chest.

He simply turned away from her and strolled into the pines.

“Oy!” she shouted. “I didnae give ye permission to leave!”

“Aye, you did, Blaze. You untied and unchained me,” he said, broad back to her as he swaggered off into the moon shadows.

She raced after him, claymore forward, and jabbed the tip into one of his buttocks.

“Christ! Are you mad, woman?”

He slapped the blade away with his hand as he halted by Loch Lomond. She had to dig her feet into the ground to keep from running into the back of him.

Ian shrugged out of his doublet, dropping it to the ground. He plopped down and began unlacing his boots.

“What are ye on about?” Bess asked.

“What d’ye bloody well think?” he replied. “I’m going to take a dip in that lake, wash off the layer of grime on my body, get the sand and dirt out of my hair. I’ve had one hell of a long day.”

“No longer than mine, MacLean.” She had not thought for one minute that when he requested a bath in Loch Lomond that he meant to actually remove his clothes. She had half-thoughts when she was with this man. What kind of chief had half-thoughts? “Ye’ll have to stop this.”

“No way,” he mumbled and placed his boots side by side on the bank of the loch.

He stood again and reached to the bottom of his tight crimson tunic. He paused and regarded her. “Why don’t you join me?”

Bess almost dropped her claymore. She grabbed it with both fists and held the handle tight. “How dare ye affront me!”

“Funny, I thought it was an invitation.” He yanked the shirt over his head.

She took a step back, but her gaze lingered on him, on as well muscled a chest as she had seen or imagined. She looked up at his broad shoulders down to the tight swell of his arms. She swept her gaze quickly to his abdomen, to the tight bands of muscle that led her eyes down to his navel. A line of dark hair in soft curls drew her gaze down to the top of his breeks. She could not breathe, could not speak at the figure before her raked in violet moonlight and deep purple shadow.

Given the strength of his body, he must surely be a great Highland warrior. She had been foolish to remove his bonds. Bess stepped forward, aimed the claymore at his strong chest, at the layer of tawny curls that grew from the center—

She blinked. Bess Campbell, ye are chief. Bloody well act like one!

She held her sword steady. Ian’s gaze mirrored her blade, steady, and catching glints of moonlight. He was daring her. His hand slipped down his magnificent chest to the top of his breeks. He unbuttoned the first pewter button.

“Join me,” he repeated.

All she could do was hold her claymore tighter and shake her head. Finally, she managed to squeak out, “I’ll be over there, by the trees, watching ye.”

“A lass who likes to watch,” he said with a grin. “Kinky.”

More odd words to assault her with! She turned away and tromped to the edge of the forest. A splash followed her, and then a cry.

“WHOOO-hooooo!!! That is cold!”

She turned around in time to see Ian, in the stark shadows of the moon, whipping the water from his hair. He stood waist-deep in Loch Lomond, body glistening in the moonlight, looking at her. Slowly, he raised an arm and gestured for her to come nearer.

Independent of her good sense, she stepped forward, lowering her sword.

Then her good sense asked her,
Is this for the good of the clan?

“No!” she shouted, and turned and ran into the wood, sword bared in front of her.

Ian had promised to tell her his plan. Lachlan thought her dead. How could that help her? She stood to find out. Bess turned to the loch and opened her mouth to ask what he had meant when she heard singing.

“
How is my maiden, all last night?

Very sick and like to die…
”

The voice was sent from God. Bess edged nearer the tree line. Yet, she knew it came from the MacLean. It was pure blasphemy that such beauty should emanate from the blood kin of her enemy.

“
…But if I had a kiss of your sweet, sweet lips,

 
I would lie no longer here….
”

He dove under the water’s black surface, affording her a brief glimpse of his taut, compact buttocks.

Bess sat down and rested her forehead between her arms, against the cold blade. In a moment he would be her prisoner again. Ian’s singing echoed in her ears. He must be a bard. A bard with a warrior’s body.

He sang while swimming just off shore. His voice deep, slow, soothing in the moonlit night. His song had changed to one about saying good-bye to a yellow brick road. The words were utterly daft. But his delivery was so very soothing.

Her heavy lids slipped down over her eyes. Even a great chief could not fight sleep…the song lulling her into restful oblivion….

Bess snapped her lids open. The moon, very high in the sky, told her it had been more than a moment since she had rested her head against her claymore and closed her eyes to the sound of Ian’s singing. The heavy silence of night surrounded her.

She gasped and leapt to her feet. Thousands of needles poked at her legs, threatening to cripple her and bring her back down to the ground. She fought against the numbness and stumbled from the tree line, down the few steps to the edge of Loch Lomond. Large foot prints in the sand and indenting the dew damp grass away from the lock told her his direction.

“Bloody bastard!” she hissed. “Damned to hell are the MacLeans! Especially that one named Ian!”

She tore her sword from the ground as she ran through the pine wood for her mount. Ian MacLean could not have gotten far. He surely had to have taken the southeastern trail toward the great forest that lay south beyond the foot of Beinn Lomond. Even his finely cobbled boots could not give him leave to travel swift and freely. She would catch up with him soon enough, cursing her stupidity all the way. She knew this land, knew how to track. Ian Maclean was her quarry.

She shoved the chains and the rope into the provisions pack and hung it from the saddle. She would need those chains, to strangle the song out of Ian MacLean.

Chapter Four: The Miracle

T
he sun was rising and Ian had walked all night.

“There’s got to be a farm, macadam, a dirt road, a caravan park, a McDonald’s, Starbucks, anything that denotes civilization.”

He had long ago lost track of the horse path he had taken from the lake, and from his breathtaking captor. She looked even lovelier asleep. Shame to have to bathe and run, but if she was not willing to join him; he didn’t have a reason to hang around. He did not wish to wait and find out what other cultish delights she had in store for him. Bess was far too wedded to this role she was playing, even allowing some maniac she called Lachlan to chain her to a rock with a rising tide.

He shoved aside the millionth tree branch and plodded forward up hill, always up hill, rarely down hill. He could have very well been tramping through the Scottish Highlands if he was not certain he was in the Sierra-Nevada’s. People get lost in the wilds of America all the time. Trying to survive like Bear Grylls was a better option than what Bess Campbell, Highland warrior Princess, probably had planned for him.

“Her next plan could be to put me in an underground tomb with enough food and air for a week while she and her plaid hangers-on waited for a ransom.”

His imagination was overwrought. No one would pay any ransom.

He slipped down a rocky slope, the bottoms of his boots skiing on the stones. He grabbed a pine bough to keep from falling the rest of the way down the slope that had come out of nowhere.

“Ye’re an outcast.” He mocked Bess’s Scots inflection, which felt oddly comfortable on his tongue. He had suppressed his accent for too long, although Americans could tell right off where he was from. Well, most anyway. Some had asked him if he was from England or Ireland. To those he just said, “aye.”

“Aye, aye, bloody aye. Why kidnap Ian MacLean when his life isn’t worth a damn?”

He winced. He drove his body forward, pressing his mind for more pleasant thoughts.

Bess Campbell. Too bad she was in a cult, brainwashed to really believe she was a Highland chief with a murderous husband who wanted to take over her land. It was one hell of a good story, the stuff of Scottish legends. He had looked into her eyes, searching desperately for some sanity there. Her gaze told him nothing but the truth of her belief that she was this woman she pretended to be.

He stopped at the base of the hill. Ahead, speared by the rays of the rising sun, was a small clearing, and a building of some kind. He could not see but a fraction of it through the trees.

“Well, zip-a-dee-doo-dah,” he murmured. “Finally. And where there’s a building, there’s got to be someone with a mobile phone and maybe some food.”