Page 5 of Kidnapped By her Highland Enemy
“I beg ye,” she said instantly, “Let me and me maid go free.”
“Nay,” Lucas said as his horse cleared the apex of the hill and headed to the seaside, half a day’s ride for him and his men.
She began to shiver. “Why are ye doing this? I havenae done anything against ye. Who are ye?”
Lucas considered telling her his name but decided to do that when they were far away from the two clans’ lands.
“I’ll tell ye if ye will be quiet for the next three hours,” Lucas promised. “Can ye do that for me?”
She swallowed and while fear rested rife in her golden eyes—rimmed with the longest lashes he had seen in a while—she nodded. “Good lass.”
Huffing, she turned her head away and flattened her lips and Lucas knew she was biting back a few choice words. So, she was ahellion. Oddly, he felt alight with glee; he was going to have fun with this one.
“Where are we going?”
“Now, what is the joy in telling ye that?” he said. “I kent all ye highland lassies love a little o’ mystery from time to time. The journey isnae long, lass, but a wee nap’ll do ye well.”
“I shall talk yer head off unless ye stop treating me like I am a whelp,” she snapped. “I am two-and-twenty with more manners than ye, ye cur.”
Lucas threw his head back and laughed, long and loud. God’s bones, he was enjoying himself enough that the threat of his impending assassination was shuttled to the back of his mind.
“A while ago ye were beggin’ me to release ye, now ye are cursing me,” Lucas chortled. “Yer a spitfire, arenae ye?”
“Daenae call me a bairn or treat me like one,” she warned.
“Agreed,” Lucas replied.
Arriving on the seaside of Moray Firth, Lucas breathed in the salty air of the open North Sea. “Och,An Cuan Moireach, ye never change, do ye?”
Looking down on the lass in his arms, he smiled at her sleeping face. The half-day journey had sent her to sleep, and he smiled, his eyes drinking in every delicate feature of her upturned face.He marveled at the dark length of her light brown lashes, fluttering ever so slightly as she slept, and the rose-tinted translucence of her creamy skin. He had never felt so drawn to any woman before, but with her, he could have met his match.
“She’s out like a candle in winter, innit?” Oliver asked as he angled his horse near Lucas’s.
“Aye,” Lucas looked down on the sleeping lass, oddly hoping to see the sharp sparkle in her eye when she woke. He angled his horse up the lane to the seaside home where an old abandoned English house lay, standing on a spit of rock over a cliff. His father had bought it years ago, in the quiet, to afford his family a secret place to stay if their enemies did get a hold over them.
Hewn from the same logs as the forest around it, the house had two two-story wings attached to the eastern end of the house and blue-gray stone walls that were as strong as they were beautiful, making it into some sort of a fortress. The facade of the building was dressed stone, mullioned windows and reddish-gold bracken and dark green ivy that climbed the walls to the gardens that spilled over in a riot of color.
“The cellar is packed with food, aye?” Lucas asked.
“Aye,” Oliver said. “His lairdship made sure it will suffice us a sennight or more. If needs be, we’ll hunt, get fruits from the trees and bread from the village.”
“Hm,” Lucas said as he looked over to where Ian came trotting in with the other maiden on the saddle.
She did not look pleased, her face fixed with smoldering anger and fear. His mind doubled back on the moment he ordered his man to take the maid and he began to doubt if he had made the right decision. Looking down on the maiden in his arms, Lucas did away with his doubts; what was done was done.
Gently, he lifted from the horse and still held the lass in his arms. With her curves, she was as light as thistledown and her subtle scent still rested in his nose. He wanted to see the spitfire wake and to see her reaction to her new residence for the time being.
Oliver held the door open for Lucas to carry his precious burden through and up to the attic where most of the sleeping rooms lay and rested her on a made cot. Before he moved away, he checked the wooden windows to make sure the lass would not wake and try to escape.
He went back to the bed and gazed on her and wondered how much trouble he would get from such an angelic-looking young woman. Indeed, Maisie’s fair features shone with an uncommon beauty. Her brows arched delicately, her nose was straight and slender, her cheekbones high and graceful.
Her lips, plump and rosy—from the tight gag, he was sure— were curved in the faintest of smiles, and her light golden eyes, closed in sleep, were thickly fringed with dark lashes that fluttered ever so slightly against her creamy skin. The only feature that gave a hint of her true spirit was the stubborn set of her chin.
“Daenae give me any trouble, lass,” he said before leaving the room. “It’s for the best.”
Dunn Castle
“Me laird!” Fergus rushed into his master’s meeting room. “She’s gone.”
