He regretted the insensitive remark the moment it left his mouth, but neither the girl—who gave a loud, unladylike chortle of amusement—or the two men seemed to take offense.
“The hood is for protection,” she explained calmly.
He frowned, intrigued by the beguilingly pale wine-red curl he could pick out against the dark wool of her plaid. “Protection from what?” he asked, scowling.
She waved her fine-boned hand toward the crag, where
the hawk sat staring down directly at Duncan. “Protection from Eun.”
Eun, the hawk. Duncan studied the bird in thoughtful silence. “That hawk shows more intelligence in its eyes than the entire lot of you combined.” His face impatient, he snatched his elbow away from his startled clansmen. “Which brings me back to the original question: You never did tell me who it was you intended to ambush today. I assume this pathetic attack was planned and that you don’t habitually lie in wait with your t
ar barrel and chicken feathers,
hoping for some unsuspecting sod to pass.”
The girl tilted her head back toward him, and he felt the strange, fey warmth of her eyes searching his face again, probing deeper than anyone else would have dared. A prickle of curiosity tinged with anticipation crawled up his spine. Who the hell was she? What uncanny influence did she wield over the clan? Did he know her?
“Of course it was planned,” she said patiently. “We saw your fancy clothes and thought you were the captain of the damned Sassenach dragoons come to carve up our fields for another road.”
Duncan snorted in disdain. “I suppose it never occurred to any of you that assaulting a king’s officer could get you hanged?”
“Didn’t assault no king’s officer,” a clansman behind the girl murmured. “We assaulted you, my lord.”
“It was an honest mistake,” she added, a hint of temper edging her voice. “I don’t see why you’re making such a fuss.”
Duncan’s dark blue eyes darkened to slate. “Oh, you don’t?” he said softly. “I suppose you think I should just go about my business and pretend I don’t have feathers stuck on my—”
“You could jump in the sea and wash,” she suggested, unperturbed by his outburst. “The water’s almost bearable this time of year. Besides, you’ve not broken anything that I noticed.”
“And you noticed everything,” he retorted in annoyance.
“ ’Twas difficult not to,” she agreed, grinning.
For a moment Duncan nearly surrendered to an overwhelming impulse to turn tail and run all the way back to
England, pretending he bore no relation
to or responsibility for this cl
an. But his entire future hinged on the success he met here. In view of what he had seen already, it was a daunting thought. Yet he was under the explicit orders of the Crown. The responsibility for his clan had been dumped at his feet by the War Office itself.
Over the course of time, reports of his clansmen’s mildly violent yet persistent attacks on the Crown’s officers had trickled all the way back to London. As luck would have it, Castle MacElgin sat right in the middle of an ancient road that led to a British garrison on the remote, rock-strewn coast that had been used for years as a port of entry for French spies and Jacobite rebels.
Because of Duncan’s late father’s notorious subversive activities against the English king, Castle MacElgin had been confiscated by the Crown the winter before. Duncan would have wished them the joy of it, but he hadn’t been given that appealing option.
The Crown, as it turned out, didn’t really want another crumbling castle to maintain. In fact, if Duncan could restore order to his unruly clansmen long enough for the English soldiers to complete work on their military roads, Duncan would be rewarded with a handsome Border dukedom.
Hell, he’d whipped the most miserable troops in Europe into shape. He had turned foreign mercenaries into fighting machines. How difficult co
uld it be to rekindle the self-
respect of his own clansmen?
Discipline. That was the first order of the day. And Lord knew this lot hardly loo
ked like it possessed the self-
motivation to scratch their own behinds in the morning.
He’d started off on the wrong foot with them too, let them make him look like a fool. He’d have to deal them a double measure of discipline to shift the balance in his favor. And he would start by making a public example of their ringleader. Right or wrong, they had to learn their disorganized attacks didn’t have a chance in hell against the British army.
He glared down his nose at his distant cousin Lachlan, a plumpish young man with thinning brown hair and a perpetually worried frown. “Enough of this bloody nonsense. Who is responsible here?”
Lachlan looked up in alarm, having obviously realized that life as Clan MacElgin knew it was about to change, and most likely not for the better. “Why, you are, my lord,” he said cautiously.
“Yes, but who was responsible before I came? Who, precisely, masterminded the attack on your lord and chieftain?”
“It was me,” the girl said in an unapologetic voice, pretending to examine her ragged fingernails. “And now that we’ve got that settled, there’s no need to go on making such a bother about the whole thing, is there?”
“
You?”
Duncan’s voice rose into a shout as he swept a scathing gaze over the men watching him. “Do you mean to tell me that Clan MacElgin follows the foolish directives of a mere woman?”
“Most of the time your clan follows no directives but those motivated by its most basic urges,” she continued with a touch of resentment in her tone. “But, yes, since you seem to need someone to vent your temper upon, then I shall shoulder the blame. I’m the one responsible for the attack today.”
“You? A girl?”
She inclined her head as if she were a princess receiving a compliment from a peasant.
The man who had brought great European generals to their knees in surrender found himself at an utter loss. How could he make an example of a stubborn
girl?
How could these men be so incredibly stupid as to obey this rebellious female’s whimsical orders? “Explain this to me, Lachlan,” he said, shaking his head in bemusement. “Why on earth would you allow a little woman like this to mislead you?”
Lachlan snagged Duncan’s elbow, covertly plucking away a pinfeather to draw the bigger man aside to warn him. “Her uncle is possessed of mystical powers, my lord. He saw a vision in the Samhain bonfire that told him Marsali should try to stop the next Sassenach who rides through the pass.”
“A pity her uncle’s mystical powers couldn’t differentiate between a Scotsman and a Sassenach,” Duncan said dryly. “Where are her parents?”
“Dead.”
“And her living relatives—that is, is there a husband or relative responsible for the troublesome creature?”
Lachlan frowned; everyone in the clan regarded Marsali with fond affection. “Marsali is responsible for herself, unless ye count old Colum, the uncle I just mentioned. He’s a wizard, ye ken,” he added slyly, in such a tone of voice that hinted Duncan should expect great cosmic repercussions from mistreating the wizard’s niece.
“Colum, the wizard,” Duncan said sarcastically. In the shadows of long-forgotten memories stirred the image of a rather nasty, white-haired old fellow who used to prance around the moor talking to rocks and peering up the shepherdesses’ skirts while casting spells that never availed much.
“Witchery runs in her family,” Lachlan said in an undertone. “ ’Tis said Marsali has the power but is hesitant to use
it.”
Marsali. Had he heard that name before? He had suppressed so many memories. Perhaps she was a newcomer to the village, the daughter of a rival Highlander who had broken with his own clan to join Clan MacElgin. Either way, whoever she was, she was a disgrace.
“You’re afraid of the girl?” Duncan asked, suppressing a scornful smile.
“Och, no.”
Duncan glanced back appraisingly at Marsali, reminding himself he was back in the Highlands, where witches, fairies, and ghosts were daily fare. “Remove your hood,” he ordered her imperiously. “I would see your face when I address you.”
“No,” she said.
“No?” he repeated in disbelief, his voice climbing. “You dare outright defiance to your laird?”
“You’re forcing me to defy you, my lord.”
He studied her in grudging amusement, aware of the clansmen waiting to see how he would surmount the hurdle of her
obstinacy
. She was pushing him to the limit, this mysterious young woman, and he wasn’t going to have it. This was as good a time as any to prove his power.
“Do not force me to make a scene, Marsali,” he said, low
-
voiced and leaning toward her. “I shall remove the hood myself if you refuse.”
“I cannot remove the cloak, my lord.” She sounded perplexed, as if only an idiot would make such a request. “Furthermore, you’ll be very sorry if you lay a hand on me.”
A muscle ticked in Duncan’s broad jaw. She had done it now—forced his hand, even if he had been inclined to show her mercy. He spared Lachlan a glance. “She is not disfigured, you say?”
Lachlan quailed at the cold anger on his chieftain’s face. “Er, no, my lord, she isna, but if I may be permitted to warn ye—”
“Permission denied,” Duncan said, frowning as he turned back to Marsali. “You’re making this so much worse for yourself, Marsali. Take off that blasted hood.”
“The hell I will.” She raised her chin, adding with a resentful little sniff, “my lord.”
Duncan proceeded to physically hoist her off her horse, realizing the time had come for a show of his power. She resisted for only a moment, stronger than he expected, but she was as light as a sack of feathers as he swung her down between his legs. Her fist flew up to clip his jaw. He caught it easily, an angry chuckle escaping him.
“Put me down!” she cried, jabbing her elbow into his side.
“With pleasure.”
His face smug with satisfaction, he plunked her down on her feet and reached up to shove the hood back on her shoulders. She flinched, throwing up her hands to stop him. The movement deterred Duncan as much as a pair of butterflies would stop an ogre. Still, for a moment he hesitated, hearing a collective groan of apprehension from the clansmen hovering around them.
Was she in fact a monster? It would not bode well for him to humiliate one of life’s mistreated in front of the clansmen who obviously cared for her. But there was a principle to consider here. Compassion for whatever deformity that may mark her did not matter.
He forced her backward until she stood trapped between
him and the horse. “You’re going to be sorry, my lord,” she warned him again, a split second before he wrenched off the hood.
He stared at her, his eyes narrowing in confusion. He forgot what he was supposed to be doing. He had not expected the little outlaw’s heart-shaped face to reflect such an incongruously poignant combination of sweet vulnerability and indomitable will.
Gray-green eyes that looked more resigned than resentful. Well-defined cheekbones. He noted strength in her jawline, more than a hint of sensuality and humor in her soft, mobile mouth. He wouldn’t call her beautiful, not with that tangled mop of glossy auburn hair and tip-tilted nose, but she was unique, a child-woman who could have passed for a fairy princess. If he had believed in such fanciful creatures.
“You should not have disobeyed me,” he said as he recovered, injecting a note of sternness into his voice. “Now I’ll have to make an example of you.”
She sighed quietly. The powerful beating of wings filled the air. A shadow darkened the enchanting brightness of Marsali’s face, obscuring her expression of alarm.
And then the hawk came at Duncan.
Chapter
2
W
ell, the MacElgin could only blame himself for his troubles. If he had surrendered immediately upon being ambushed, if he had identified himself and worn Highland clothing instead of that
garish red jacket with al
l those boastful gold epaulets, then the mistake would never have been made. Marsali supposed she could make him suffer. She could order Eun to peck off the chieftain’s proud aquiline nose, not to mention other parts barely covered by Owen’s plaid.
Still, he was too fine a specimen of maleness to let Eun attack. From the privacy of her hood, Marsali had caught an unwilling glimpse of the chieftain’s physical strength in action. Actually, it had been impossible
not
to be impressed by his prowess, the way he fought and tossed the men about, like a Greek god dropped to earth to play ninepins with the mortals.
Marsali had never seen anything like it in her life. She had almost applauded his aggression, forgetting he was supposed to be the enemy, the oppressor. Good Lord, it had taken seven men just to pull down his breeches.
Even watching him now as he swung his thick-muscled arms above his head to deflect the hawk’s swift descent, Duncan was a masterpiece of male beauty in action. What a
pity he was the most hated Highlander in anyone’s memory. Still, everyone deserved a second chance, and excitement coursed through Marsali’s veins as she wondered if he might prove the answer to her prayers. Was he the one she had been waiting for?
“Stop it, Eun!” she cried in a sharp voice, coming to her senses. “That’s our chieftain you’re attacking.”
At her scolding tone, the hawk wheeled abruptly and circled to settle down on her shoulder, digging its talons into the softest flesh of her collarbone. She closed her eyes, cringing at the discomfort. After a moment the bird hopped up upon her head, tucked in its great wings, and fixed Duncan with an unblinking stare.
Tears of pain welled in Marsali’s eyes. Duncan slowly lowered his sword, his black hair disheveled as he stared in disbelief at the predator perched on the delicate woman’s head, her neck wobbling like the stem of a flower too fragile to bear its blossom. Marsali looked accusingly at Duncan, temporarily forgetting herself. “You’ve frightened the life out of him.”
“
I
frightened
him,
did I?” Duncan glanced down in astonishment at the long angry scratches crisscrossing his shoulders.
“Well, honestly, my lord, I did try to warn you. You can’t think I wear this hood on a warm summer day to appear the height of fashion.”
Duncan’s mouth thinned in an ironic smile. “No, Marsali. It’s much more likely that you’re wearing the hood to conceal your identity. If you are in the habit of robbing hapless incomers, then there is probably a well-deserved price on your head.”
“Not to mention a hawk,” Lachlan said, chuckling, only to subside into silence at the quelling look Duncan gave him.
“Most hawks are trained to land on a man’s fist,” Duncan said dryly.
“Eun isn’t trained at all,” Marsali retorted. “He was a fledging in a cliff that the soldiers blasted through for their roads. My uncle nursed him back to health, and the wee birdie’s been a bundle of nerves ever since.”
Duncan did not reply, suddenly distracted by a movement behind her. One of the clansmen had retrieved Duncan’s waterlogged velvet jacket, hat, his knee breeches, sword belt, and jackboots from the tarn. Darting Duncan a sheepish grin, he deposited the soggy articles at Duncan’s feet before sidling back toward his kinsmen.
Duncan stared down at the tadpoles swimming in the watery depths of tarn water that filled his boots. His blue eyes like ice, he raised his head and scanned the slack faces of the men he had the length of the summer to turn into a semblance of human dignity. Surely there was one man among them he could select as his successor. Pray God, let there be at least one.
His gaze swept back to Marsali, wincing audibly at Eun’s agitated movements on her head. There were welts and nasty scratches on the skin of her
shoulders too. Ridiculous girl.
“I could have beheaded that creature, Marsali,” he said, indicating the long Toledo-steel sword he had lowered to his side, “if I were a man of less restraint.”
She arched her delicately winged brow. “I do not doubt it, my lord.” She shifted her hand slightly to bring it up against her mount’s mane, revealing the flintlock pistol she was holding. “And I could have blasted you to kingdom come— if I were a woman of less restraint.”
Rude sniggers of amusement erupted behind Duncan. He allowed a smile to touch his own lips. “I’m very afraid you’re going to wish you had done away with me, lass,” he said, then added softly, “after I’m through with you.” Someone behind Marsali gave a whistle of mock apprehension. Marsali’s face reflected only the tiniest flicker of concern. Then suddenly Eun, spying a fox racing toward its den, leaned forward and launched from her forehead into the blue June sky.
She rubbed irritably at the red talon tracks on her scalp. “Do you mind explaining what you mean by the nature of that veiled threat, my lord?”
“It is no veiled threat, lass,” he said. “As incredibly asinine as it appears, these men are acting on your orders, and as their leader, you shall be held responsible for their crimes.”
“
I
s it to be the bastinado or banishment?” she asked in
mock alarm. “Or may I choose between public flaying and a firing squad?”
“Dinna forget the finger pillory, lass,” one of the clansmen suggested in a jovial voice.
Duncan’s blue eyes narrowed in warning that Marsali had stretched the limits of his patience. He raised his voice. “As the laird and chieftain of Clan MacElgin, I order you to sacrifice your summer as my maidservant in Castle MacElgin. You are to polish my boots, see that my wardrobe is in repair—”
Marsali blinked, her composure almost cracking at this unexpected turn of events.
Her,
a maidservant? Of all the cheek. “I’m to
what?”
“Answer my correspondences, assuming you can read and write, and in general perform any other menial errand that it pleases me to request.”
“This is rather presumptuous, my lord. You have yet to be officially sworn in as chieftain of the clan to be ordering me about. By ancient law, you have to stand on the white stone by the sea to take the oath.”
“It is no less presumptuous, Marsali, than to have a wild young woman assaulting innocents on the moor.”
He straightened his shoulders; against her will Marsali watched the subtle interplay of powerful muscle and sinew beneath his weather-browned skin. His face reminded her of one of the medieval knights carved into the cold stone of the castle crypts. Beautiful but impas
sive. Angular, aristocratic…
unfeeling. Only the intense blue of his eyes and the laugh lines etched around his mouth hinted he ever allowed any emotion to show. She wondered what it would take to crack the iron bands of his self-control.
“As to the matter of my chieftainship,” Duncan continued, focusing a level look around him, “is there a man here who would challenge me, or assume the responsibility?
The utter silence almost made him smile.
“Hell’s bells,” Marsali said in astonishment, craning her neck to glance around. “Isn’t
anyone
going to stop him?”
Lachlan gave her a somber if sympathetic look. “No, lass, we are not. He might be dressed like a jackanapes Sassenach—well, he
might
have been dressed like one, I should say. And he might have left a load of ill feelin’s
behind when his dad sent him off to war, but it appears he is our laird and chieftain, and we’ll obey him, until he’s proven otherwise.”
“Well,” Duncan said with a self-assured nod, “that appears to be the end of it, doesn’t it?”
“It appears to be,” Marsali said crisply. And she couldn’t entirely fault her companions. To her annoyance, some primitive instinct deep inside her was also responding to the raw power that characterized Duncan’s every movement, the spell he had cast over his ragged clan.
Duncan allowed himself to relax, having expected anything but this pleasant acquiescence. “I could have made it much worse for you, you realize. I could have turned you over to the authorities.”
He thought he saw the shadow of a smile flit across her bewitching face. “I’m very afraid you’re going to wish you had turned me over, my lord,” she said, adding softly, “after I’m through with you.”
M
arsali Hay had lived on MacElgin land all her life. She was four years old when the late laird and chieftain, the sixteenth marquess of Portmuir, Kenneth MacElgin, had bought his incorrigible only son, Duncan, a commission in the British army. It had been an act of desperation. Kenneth had hoped that fighting wars would provide a safe channel for the anger and hostility that had characterized Duncan’s tempestuous youth. The lad was beyond his control.
She remembered her father telling Mama more than once that Duncan probably could not help his wildness; it had been beaten into him by the cruel fisherman who had raised him. But Marsali could recall little beyond that, except Mama retorting that even if Duncan could not help his wildness, someone still had to stop him from terrorizing the village with his drunken, wenching ways.
And then there had been a scandal, a hushed-up affair involving a doctor’s young wife and a baby, and Duncan had disappeared like a puff of smoke, banished by the laird for his misconduct.
Occasionally, over the years, the old laird would read from a tattered newspaper at a clan meeting or local gathering, recounting his son’s military exploits in the
cavalry. By then, of course, the reports were several months old, and Duncan had scored another military victory, or received another promotion or charmed another foreign princess. His talent for warring and winning hearts apparently knew no bounds.
Everyone pretended to be pleased. But in reality, Duncan had left behind too many raw wounds and unresolved accusations for anyone to view him as the hero he was to the rest of the world.
To this day, Marsali had never cared to trace the truth of those accusations. Duncan MacElgin had played no more importance in her life than the man in the moon. He was no more real to her than the water horses that supposedly lived at the bottom of the loch.
He was important, and real, albeit reluctantly, to her now.
As if she did not have enough problems.
Two years before, her father and her
fiancé
had been killed supporting Duncan’s father in a plot to bring James III to the throne. Duncan’s father had been killed too, but that hadn’t stopped Marsali’s two brothers from taking over where Kenneth MacElgin had left off, hatching their own half-cocked Jacobite revolt last winter. Her older brothers, Adam and Dougall had not returned at all, and young Gavin had come back a cripple.
Marsali could not bear to lose another loved one in these petty plots that were only doomed to failure. She wanted the British soldiers to go away forever. She wanted her nieces and nephews to grow up planning weddings, not funerals. She ached for the quiet pattern of their lives to resume. There was nothing that meant more to her than family. Grief upon grief had destroyed her future.
Could this man who fought like a devil and looked like an archangel be the answer? Her heart hammered wildly with anticipation at the thought.
For months her uncle had been predicting the dramatic arrival of the man who would restore power and dignity to the clan. Of course, Uncle Colum’s predictions were typically more wrong than right, but Marsali had a powerful feeling about this one; she
needed
to believe it.
Desperation compelled her to give Duncan MacElgin a
chance. Hope enabled her to sacrifice a little pride and physical labor to save lives. The fact that he was gorgeous didn’t hurt either. That everyone had believed him dead only enhanced his dark mystique.
“Here.” Duncan’s deep voice broke her train of thought; she glanced up just in time to catch the sodden ball of his clothing he hurled at her, the action anything but heroic. “Carry those back to the castle, Marsali, and launder them before nightfall. My belongings should arrive in another few days.”
“I can’t possibly carry all this on my horse, my lord,” she complained, striving not to stagger under the dripping load.
He chuckled, sun-lines deepening at the co
rn
ers of his eyes. Despite herself, Marsali had to admit that when he relaxed his guard, he looked a little boyish and far less threatening, an illusion that he proved could not be trusted by his next callously spoken words.
“No, Marsali, you cannot carry that load on horseback. Which is why I intend to ride
your
mare while Lachlan tries to find my horse on the moor. He was frightened away by the boulders you rolled into our path.”
“Speaking of boulders, these things weigh as much as a standing stone, my lord.”
Duncan marched past her, his face unconcerned. “You’ll probably discover you have many hidden strengths as well as weaknesses under my guardianship, Marsali.” He almost added, out of habit, that he’d make a soldier of her yet, but he caught himself in time.