Page 2 of Love with a Scottish Outlaw
Now it was his turn to blink, but he remembered that wounds of the head could cause confusion. He knew he had to stop the blood loss.
“Mistress, can ye stand?”
She opened those eyes again, large and golden, in a delicate face. Her dark hair streamed back from her forehead, her hairline coming to a peak.
He recognized her, a flash of memory from Stirling several years ago, when he’d glared his hatred at the Earl of Aberfoyle, a haughty old man on horseback, forcing aside a poor lass heavy with child to make way for him. The earl’s family was seldom in Scotland, so their arrival in the Highlands had caused a stir. Duncan had seen this woman riding just behind, wearing the fine gown and jaunty hat that marked her a noble lady. At least she’d looked distressed at her father’s actions.
Catriona Duff was the daughter of Aberfoyle, the chief of the Clan Duff and Duncan’s bitter enemy. Aberfoyle was one of the main reasons that Duncan was an outlaw who had to protect and feed his people while on the run.
He lifted his head and looked about, as if the earl and his entire retinue were somewhere nearby, waiting to attack him. “Where are your men?” he demanded.
“What happened?” she asked weakly.
“Ye’ve hit your head. Where are your men?”
“My—men?”
Her hand fluttered toward her forehead, but he didn’t allow her to touch the wound.
A spasm of pain narrowed her eyes. “I found them . . . dead,” she whispered. “What happened to me?”
“I don’t know.” He would just have to hope she was telling the truth. Six weeks after almost being captured, he was still wary of anything unusual in his part of the Highlands. Dead men would prove her story true, but he couldn’t deal with them now.
“I—I can’t remember—I can’t remember anything!” Though her cry was feeble, it was full of helplessness and fear.
“Ye don’t remember the accident?”
“Not . . . the accident, not even . . . my name.”
He frowned down at her, wondering at what intrigue she was playing—or what her father had set in motion. He wouldn’t put it past the bastard.
She clutched his plaid. “What happened to me?” she cried in despair.
“I do not ken. I must clean that wound. Can ye stand? I can pull ye up on my horse.”
He rose, lifting her up with him until she could clutch the saddle for support. After mounting, he reached down for her. He would have preferred she ride astride behind him, but she seemed so weak that he ended up cradling her across his thighs. She leaned into him, her head lolling onto his chest, her blood staining his black, red, and yellow plaid.
It didn’t take long to reach the rocky overhang he’d used for shelter several other times. Once out of the rain, he searched his saddle pack but found nothing that would do for a clean bandage. He ended up cutting several strips from the end of his shirt with his dirk. The wound seemed clean enough after all the rain, so he wrapped the improvised bandages around her head and hoped they stopped the bleeding.
She looked at him helplessly the whole time, and he felt like she was memorizing his features. He studied her, too. Her high cheekbones emphasized the hollows beneath, and her full lips hinted at an expressive mouth. Her pale face was as remote and beautiful as a statue, making her appeal to him on a primitive level that he would never acknowledge.
Why was she in the remote Highlands? According to gossip he’d heard long ago, she rarely visited her father’s castles. Was she the advance of a larger party headed right for Duncan’s unsuspecting people? She was so close to his hidden encampment. If he let her go, she could bring men to hunt the area, risking his people—risking the good he was trying to do. He couldn’t release her until he knew all the facts.
As he stared down at her, her eyes closed, her waxen complexion and flickering frown betraying the presence of pain. But now he saw more—the brooch that decorated her shoulder, marking her: the insignia of the Duff clan. He pulled it off her and hid it away in his saddlebag. It would be safer if no one knew who she was. There were too many desperate clansmen who might react with violence.
“Time to go,” he said gruffly, helping her to a sitting position.
He saw the panic in her anguished eyes and barely had time to help her turn her head aside before she retched. Much as he despised her father, he pitied her condition. She was almost boneless as he lifted her to her feet. He covered her bandaged head with the hood of her cloak, hoping for some protection. His gelding, which had been grazing patiently in the rain, accepted both their weight and turned for home without Duncan’s guidance. He pulled his excess plaid around her for warmth and protection from the rain, but couldn’t stop glancing at her pale face.
She represented everything he despised, daughter of the man who cared so little about the Scottish people that he allowed children to be stolen and sold as indentured servants, practically slavery, in the American colonies and the Caribbean plantations. When Duncan had tried to call attention to what was happening, the sheriff and other magistrates in Glasgow along with their sponsor, her father, the Earl of Aberfoyle, had boldly threatened to imprison him. They’d rationalized that they were taking care of the problem of the poor and orphaned. After the childhood he’d endured, Duncan couldn’t tolerate seeing children abused. Perhaps there could have been more subtle ways for him to go about it, but subtlety also meant going slow, letting even more children be abandoned.
He’d sworn he would be a better chief than his father had been, but instead, he’d made everything worse. He’d brought his complaint to the Court of Session, and the magistrates hadn’t even allowed witnesses to be brought forth. Duncan had been imprisoned in a thief’s hole, and was about to be sold himself, leaving his clan defenseless, if he hadn’t escaped. In these last five years, he’d become a wanted man, an outlaw with a price on his head. The Earl of Aberfoyle and the magistrates continued to profit from the misery of others.
Since that day, the Carlyles skirted starvation, while the Duffs enjoyed the fruits of an earldom that spanned greater Britain. Catriona’s garments were expensive and London-purchased, while his sisters wore coarse cloth they’d woven themselves. Duff children had warm beds and full bellies at night, while Carlyle children huddled with their parents in the dark, fearing being dragged from their beds.
Duncan had begun his own campaign against his enemies, and he’d learned patience. When a pack train of horses carrying casks of Duff whisky through the Highlands had come to Duncan’s notice, it had been easy to steal it, sending the Duff guards fleeing through the hills on foot. He’d begun smuggling the whisky into the Lowlands, or onto a boat in the River Clyde on the way to the Atlantic. That money had bought new seedlings after a famine had nearly starved his people. He never stole too much whisky, and never from the same route. He let the guards grow lax before he struck again. It wasn’t solving his main problems—how to get the warrant on his head rescinded and end the kidnappings—but it was the start of his retribution.
And now into his path had come Catriona Duff. If he kept her for a while—and how could he not, with her injuries?—he would make the Duffs suffer as the Carlyles had all these years. This could be the culmination of his vengeance. Let the old earl wonder where his daughter was. Duncan wouldn’t harm her, and if she wasn’t a spy, she’d get a firsthand look at what her father had allowed to happen to an entire clan.
