Kate Wingo - Highland Mist 01 (3 page)

Nightfall
can’t come soon enough.

For hours they rode
, stopping only briefly to feed and water the horses. And while the laird of Clan MacKinnon saw to it that his steed was properly cared for, the brute failed to give such consideration to his captive.

Never in her life had Yvette been so tired, hungry
, or in grave bodily distress. To further exacerbate her misery, the whole time that they galloped past glen, burn, mountain, and loch – as though the devil, himself, was on their heels – she had to cling to Iain MacKinnon like a frail leaf clings to the stalwart limb on a wind-tossed day.

Although
she wanted nothing to do with the Highland laird, because her sense of survival outweighed her disdain, she locked her arms around her captor’s waist and rested her head on his broad back, too weary and disoriented to be concerned with the impropriety of her actions.

And, truly, w
hat did it matter?

Because t
he MacKinnon ruled with an iron fist, it mattered naught if she resisted. Or pleaded. Or outright ignored him. In the end, he would
have his way with her.

Like every man she’d ever known, Iain MacKinnon saw
Yvette, not as a human being with thoughts and feelings, but as chattel, her worth set at the staggering sum of two thousand pounds.

Chattel.
It was a word she loathed. Though not nearly as much as she loathed the word ‘concubine.’ For that was the dread fate that now awaited her.

In truth, s
he almost wished that the laird had carried out his deadly threat.
Almost, but not quite.
Come what may, she intended to survive. If for no other reason than to ensure that the laird of Clan MacKinnon was made to lament his ignoble misdeed.

Although one can hardly expect a savage to behave with honor
.

With his long, wavy black hair that continually whipped against
Yvette’s cheeks and his scandalously bare legs, he seemed not so much a Scottish laird as an untamed barbarian. She had only to glance downward to see the sculpted musculature of his naked thigh, the wind swaddling his kilt around his lean hips.

Does he not know that c
ivilized men wear hose to cover their lower limbs?

Why e
ven the most vainglorious knight of the realm didn’t parade his virility in so blatant a fashion.

And
Iain MacKinnon
was
virile. Having spent hours pressed intimately close to his body, Yvette knew him to be a solid mass of sinew and muscle. No doubt the result of a lifetime of training with the deadly arms that he wore strapped to his body.

Since
she didn’t have a prayer of physically fending him off, she would have to submit to him.

What choice
do I have?
If she didn’t comply with the laird’s demands, he would kill her.

Her thoughts having wandered far afield, Yvette was surprised when the MacKinnon suddenly reined his horse to a halt. Peering about, she saw that they’d arrived at what
appeared to be a squalid village situated on the edge of a small loch. Without giving her so much as a backward glance, her captor nimbly swung his right leg over the top of the horse’s head and leapt to the ground before striding toward one of the conical-shaped huts.

Wondering how she was supposed to dismount,
Yvette gnawed on her lower lip.

“If
ye’ll put yer hands on my shoulders, lady, I will assist you
.
”

At hearing that politely worded overture
, Yvette turned toward Diarmid MacKinnon who stood beside the roan steed, a placating smile on his lips. Because she had no other way of getting off the confounded beast, she wordlessly placed a hand on each of the young man’s shoulders, permitting him to lift her from the horse.

The moment her feet touched
the ground, she yanked free of him. He was, after all, the mastermind behind her current captivity. The knave who’d blithely urged the MacKinnon to take her to his bed.

“I knew of no other way to stop Iain from putting ye to the knife,” the young Scotsman
informed her, having correctly gauged her thoughts. Then, penitently bowing his head, Diarmid MacKinnon placed his right hand over his heart as he said, “I humbly beg yer pardon, Lady Yvette. And, rest assured, I’ll do all in my power to keep ye safe from harm.”

Slapping a hand over her mouth, Yvette stifled a burst
of hysterical laughter, Diarmid’s boyish sincerity like salt on a gaping wound. That the young man would declare himself her protector was a bitter irony.

My
champion, a savage Highlander who orchestrated my exploitation at the hands of yet another savage Highlander.

“Would
you have preferred that I let the laird kill you?” Diarmid MacKinnon inquired.

On the verge of retorting, ‘Yea, I would have preferred death to sharing a barbarian’s bed,’ Yvette thought better of
the retort at the last.

I do not
wish to die
.

That
was the only certainty in the midst of the raging tempest. And, if she was to be completely honest about what earlier transpired, of all the men who’d been present, Diarmid was the only one who’d stepped forward to stop his chieftain from putting her to the blade.

“He may kill me yet,”
Yvette murmured, very much aware of the fact that she was a lone Englishwoman at the mercy of Scottish cutthroats.

“He will not,” Diarmid assured her. “On that ye can depend. Nor will he physically harm you.”

Yvette surreptitiously glanced at the dark-haired laird who stood on the other side of the village. With his towering height and broad-shouldered strength, she suspected that Iain MacKinnon was a warrior without peer.

“But I mean nothing to him. What is to stop your chieftain from cutting my throat when your back is turned?”

“Nothing save for his word. While my cousin can be a bit gruff at times, he is, above all else, an honorable man.”

“Honor! Bah!”
Yvette exclaimed, belligerently tipping her chin at the young man. “I have lived long enough to know the paltriness of
that
word.”

“Perhaps honor is different for Englishmen with their great riches
and insatiable hunger for land,” Diarmid countered, clearly insulted. “But here in the Highlands, we have
only
our honor. And we live and die by it.”

“What honor was there in abducting a defenseless woman?”

“And what honor was there in the atrocity committed at St. Ives’ kirk by the Earl of Lyndhurst?” Diarmid MacKinnon retorted before turning his back to take his leave.

“Wait!”
Yvette entreated, stepping in front of him. “I pray thee continue; for I would have the truth of the matter.”

His expressio
n bleak, Diarmid shook his head, refusing to oblige her request. “It is the MacKinnon’s blood debt to avenge, not mine.”

‘
The MacKinnon’s blood debt.’

Admittedly,
those words contained an ominous foreboding. One that intensified as Iain MacKinnon suddenly stalked toward her, a menacing scowl on his handsome face.

“Come with me!”

Taking exception to the man’s overbearing tone, Yvette stood rooted in place.

“Are ye deaf, woman? When I give an order, I expect it to be obeyed.”

“I am not deaf. Nor am I a dumb creature to be ordered about,” she answered in an indignant tone, making no attempt to hide her rancor. Assured by Diarmid that the laird would not physically harm her, she felt no compunction to hold her tongue. “I am an earl’s daughter. And I expect to be treated as such.”

Without warning, Iain dipped his shoulder into her torso as he wrapped a muscular arm around her legs, effortlessly slinging
Yvette up and over his back.

“Just so ye know,
this
is how the men of Scotland treat the daughters of English earls,” Iain snickered as he strode toward one of the hovels.

No sooner did Iain MacKinnon enter
one of the primitive shanties than he unceremoniously deposited Yvette onto the dirt floor.

Wrinkling her nose at the musty smell that permeated the dank, forlorn
shelter, she staggered to her feet. The only illumination was a few meager streams of dappled daylight that pierced the wattle-and-daub walls and cast ghoulish shadows onto the cobweb strewn interior. Turning her head from side-to-side, she saw that there was no furniture to speak of. Unless one counted the rickety three-legged stool upended on the floor.

As she brushed dirt and broken bits of straw from her mantle,
Yvette nervously surveyed the dilapidated abode, wondering why she’d been brought there.

Mayhap the MacKinnon intends
to make good on his threat to bed me.

At that thought,
Yvette bit back a fearful whimper. Surely, the man could not have found more squalid surroundings in which to commit the savage act, the place fit for neither man nor beast.

Does
he mean to take me on a bed of dirt?

“While I tend to my horse, ye’ll prepare our meal,” the brute commanded, gesturing to a grimy kettle on the other side of the hovel, half buried in a pile of muck. He then pointed to a large leather sack near the door. “In the pouch are the foodstuffs ye’ll need.”

“Why must
I
prepare our repast?’ she queried. While relieved not to be subjected to his carnal lusts, Yvette was none too pleased at being made his churl. “No doubt, there is a village woman hereabouts who can undertake the task.”

One side of Iain’s mouth curved into a mocking sneer. “In case ye have no’ noticed, there aren’t any village women. Or village men. Or village children. Not since William de Burgh and his
men-at-arms had the run of the place. Those who survived the assault have long since moved on.”

Stunned by the revelation, Yvette’s jaw slackened.
William de Burgh.
None other than her father, the Earl of Lyndhurst. Horrified, she suddenly saw the pathetic abode with new eyes.

How could
my father have committed so heinous an act?

“Is that why you abducted me, to avenge what happened in this village?”

Several moments passed in tense silence as Iain towered over her, his arms held rigidly at his sides as he held her spellbound in his unblinking gaze. In the fading light of day, his deep-set eyes resembled gleaming bits of lazurite.

“While a grave atrocity was committed against these people, that is no’ the reason for yer abduction,” he said at la
st, a husky edge to his voice.

When no further response was forthcoming, Yvette, annoyed with
Iain’s reticence, crossed her arms under her breasts and defiantly glared at him. “Would it pain you to tell me why I am being held captive? Surely, I have a right to know why I was forcibly abducted; why I was brought to this godforsaken hovel; and why I must prepare a meal for a man who has done naught but brutalize me.”

Another interminably lon
g silence passed between them.

“Aye, it
would
pain me,” Iain muttered hoarsely.

That said, he abruptly turned around
and strode toward the doorway. As he reached for the tattered cloth that hung over the entry, Yvette lurched forward and impulsively grabbed him by the forearm, forestalling his departure. Beneath the palm of her hand, she felt the raw, tensile strength of his bunched muscles.

“I need to ask
—” She halted in mid-stream, her cheeks warmly flushed with color. “That is to say, I must attend to . . . to personal matters and I don’t know where—” Embarrassed, she bowed her head as she removed her hand from Iain’s arm, unable to look him in the eye. That she’d been forced to ride all day without being permitted a moment of privacy was yet another instance of how she’d been maltreated by this savage Highlander.

“Damn ye, woman!”

Infuriated by his insensitivity, her head instantly jerked, Yvette belligerently tipping her chin at him. “And for what reason would you condemn me to the devil’s hell pit? For being human?”

“Nay, for being a thorn in my side,” Iain grumbled, having long since regretted his decision to bed the Sassenach, the decision mad
e with his cock, not his head.

And if not his cock, then loneliness drove him to
it.

It’d been thre
e years since Kenneth’s death. Nearly as long since Fiona and the bairn died. In that time, days, months, years had passed, and still the loneliness lurked. A gaping hole in his heart. From dawn to dusk he was surrounded by kinsmen, gillies, all manner of retainers, and still the loneliness pounded away at him. Like a hammer incessantly striking an anvil.

God’s teeth! What need
have I of a haughty Englishwoman when I can find a bonny Scottish lass who will gladly give me bodily comfort?

While there was truth in that,
Iain knew he wanted only one woman in his bed. An infuriating thought that made him silently damn Yvette Beauchamp for being so exotically beautiful.
For inciting a ravenous hunger within him. And for making him lust after her like an untried lad lusts after his first woman.

By hell
, she is Lyndhurst’s daughter.

A fact that should have filled him with repugnance . . .
but inexplicably did not. In truth, everything about the fair English rose – from her soft, pampered hands to her costly garments – should have aroused his contempt. But rather than contempt, Iain felt only a deep longing. A yearning unlike any he’d previously known.

Angered by what he deemed a craven weakness, Iain gr
abbed Yvette by the upper arm, refusing to let his voracious lust get the better of him. Yvette Beauchamp was the daughter of his sworn enemy. For all that she possessed the face of a Madonna, her heart was undoubtedly as black as that of the cur who sired her.

As Iain forcibly dragged Yvette out of the hovel, the lady indignantly squealed, protesting
his roughshod treatment of her. When they passed his fellow Highlanders, the five men seated around a small campfire, all save for Diarmid began to heckle.

“Och, Hamish, I’m thinking the laird has already shown the wench the difference between an English blade and a Scottish long sword.”

Laughing, the burly red-bearded Hamish, shook his head and bellowed, “The wench is wearing a sneer no’ a smile. That means the laird has yet tae unsheathe his weapon.”

Iain, paying no heed to their bawdy remarks, stormed toward a clump of overgrown hawthorn bushes on the
far side of the razed village.

“Get on with it,” he ordered
bluntly once they were out of sight of the others.

When her captor made no move to leave, Yvette, utterly aghast, said, “Surely, you do not intend to watch me?”

‘I dinna trust ye. Ye’re English,” the laird retorted; as if that was all the reason he needed to be suspicious of her. “Now raise yer skirts and get on with it. The rains will soon be upon us.”

While several ominous clouds did lurk overhead, that was shallow inducement for Yvette t
o suffer so gross an indignity.

“I refuse to relieve myself while you stand over top of
me!” she vehemently protested. “Even if I attempted to escape, where I would run to? As near I can tell, there are only the birds in the sky to save me from your cruel abduction.”

“And
because they’re loyal Scottish birdies, I doubt they’ll be coming to an Englishwoman’s rescue any time soon.”

“
From that, am I to infer that in addition to being my ‘lord and master,’ you now command the birds in the sky?” Yvette mocked.

“Silence, woman!
I grow weary of yer shrewish tongue. Mayhap–” contemplatively tipping his head to one side, Iain openly stared at her mouth –“yer lovely lips would be made even lovelier if I were to stuff a gag between them.”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

“I am the MacKinnon. I do as I please.” As if to prove his point, he cinched a hand around her arm and began to drag Yvette back to the village.

“For the love of God, I pray thee stop!” she exclaimed to
Iain’s backside, digging her heels into the dirt. Not that her balking slowed him one whit. “You
must
allow me to attend to my personal needs. And you must permit me a modicum of privacy to do so.”

Iain came to a halt.
Turning to face her, he stubbornly shook his head and said, “I dinna trust ye to be left alone.”

“But I have done
nothing
to earn your mistrust. If anything, I’ve been an exemplary prisoner.”

“Ye’re
Lyndhurst’s get. For that reason alone ye’ve earned my mistrust,” Iain retorted. “On account of my meddling cousin, I’m forced to give ye a wee measure of consideration. But that’s
all
ye’ll get from me.”

“And clearly you resent
making even that small concession,” she said scornfully, taking umbrage at the fact that her father’s sins had been unjustly heaped upon her.

“Do I resent having to play ho
st to a blackguard’s daughter? Aye, I do,” Iain said, answering his own question.

Hah!
Some host.
If this was a sampling of Highland hospitality, they were an even more barbaric people than she originally supposed.

“
And what did my father do to arouse so great an enmity?”

Scowling, Iain
said, “That’s none of yer bloody business.”

“
There you are wrong,” she argued, wondering if the brute could be won over with reason. “Through no fault of my own, it has become my business in so far as I’m being unjustly punished for my father’s transgressions.”

“
The punishment is no’ so unfair given that Lyndhurst’s tainted blood flows through yer veins.”

Hearing that, Yvette dismally realized there would
be no reasoning with the man. To him, she and the Earl of Lyndhurst were one and the same, cut from the same bolt of cloth. When Iain MacKinnon gazed upon her face, he could only see her father’s visage.

Resigned to the fact that she was to be given no privacy, Yvette hitched her mantle and ski
rts to her waist and squatted. Utterly mortified that she’d been reduced to such shameful straits, she silently damned the chieftain of Clan MacKinnon. And all his forbears. And all of his descendents.

Out of the corner of her eye, she
saw that while Iain put no distance between them, he did turn his back on her.

T
hank the heavenly host for small courtesies,
she mused sarcastically as she straightened to her full height and gingerly stepped away from the tell-tale puddle.

Trying to reclaim as much of her lost dignity as possible,
Yvette straightened her shoulders and began to walk back to the village, refusing to spare Iain so much as a sideways glance.

“Where do you think ye’re going?” he demanded to know, manacling a hand around her elbow
as he stopped her in mid-stride.

“I am returning to the hovel in which I am to be housed before it b
egins to—”

‘Rain.’

As if to make mock of her, the storm clouds overhead chose that very moment to capriciously shower them with a heavy downpour.

“Damn ye, woman!
Now look what ye’ve gone and done!” Iain bellowed as he charged through the rain toward the village, his hand still lashed around her elbow.

“Twice now you have consigned me to eternal damnation,”
Yvette managed to say between ragged breaths, hastening to keep up with Iain’s longer stride lest she find herself face-down in the mud. “Your condemnation grows tiresome.”

Dragging her through the entryway of the hovel, Iain retorted,
“As do yer complaints.”

Given that h
er mantle and dress were soaked through, Yvette was actually glad to be out of the foul elements. Even if it meant being confined to a musty-smelling hut with no company save for an odious Highlander.

“Take off yer clothes.”

Certain she’d misheard him, Yvette said, “I beg your pardon?”

“I said take off yer clothes,”
Iain growled, gesturing to the woolen mantle plastered against her limbs and torso. “Ye’re soaked through and if you don’t disrobe, ye’ll catch yer death of cold.”

“While
I’m touched by your solicitude, if I fall victim to the ague that is my concern, not yours.”

“Everything
ye do is now my concern,” Iain rebutted as he stepped toward her, intimidating Yvette with his superior height. “Yer worth has been set at two thousand pounds; gold I canna collect if ye die on me. Now take off yer bloody gown or I’ll do it for ye.”

Sufficiently cowed into submission
, Yvette sidled past Iain and stepped over to the only piece of furniture in the hovel, a rickety three-legged stool. Her heart erratically pounding against her breastbone, she seated herself upon it.