Page 66 of Hunting for a Highlander (Highland Brides 8)

Geordie turned to look at her, noting that the women were all lined up on the steps behind him, Aulay and James Innes.

Smiling at him solemnly, Saidh added, “Rory and Jetta are staying behind to hold down the fort and prepare in case some healing is needed, but the rest o’ us are coming too.” Grimacing, she added, “Though we have promised to stay back and merely watch and wait to greet Dwyn when you big, strong men free her and bring her to us.”

Geordie tried to swallow the sudden lump in his throat so he could speak, but it wasn’t moving. In the end, all he could do was nod his gratitude. Turning away then, he continued down the stairs, thinking it was good to have family. And he had the very best.

“I’m so sorry, Lady Buchanan.”

“What for, Father?” Dwyn asked distractedly as she felt her way blindly across the ropes binding the priest’s wrists.

“For no’ being able to do aught while Laird Brodie beat ye,” Father Machar said on a sigh. “I did try to loose me bonds to help ye, but he trussed me up well.”

Dwyn was silent for a minute as her split lip and every bruise on her body seemed to ache a little more at his reminding her of the beating. Ignoring her aches and pains, Dwyn turned her attention back to what she was doing, and told herself she’d got off easy. Brodie had punched her several times, in the stomach, the chest and the face. He’d also managed to rip open the top of her gown while at it. Not intentionally. He’d held her with one hand curled around and clutching the neckline as he’d punched her in the face, and the material had torn as her body was forced back under the blow.

Dwyn looked down at it now, and had to hold back a sigh. She wasn’t falling out of the dress exactly, but it was holding her about as well as the low necklines of the dresses her sisters had altered did. This dress had been one of the new ones too, and was now, of course, ruined. Dwyn could live with that though, and considered herself lucky that the few blows and a torn dress were all she’d suffered so far. At least Brodie hadn’t tossed her out of the tent for his men to pass around and have at. She could survive a beating. She could probably survive being raped as well . . . by one man. Dwyn wasn’t too sure she’d survive being raped by one hundred of them though, emotionally or physically. She suspected something like that could kill a woman, or at least make her wish she was dead.

Clearing her throat, she murmured, “Oh, now, there’s nothing fer you to be sorry for, Father. ’Tis Brodie who should be sorry. As ye said, ye were tied up.”

“Aye, but the MacGregor offered to send warriors to escort me when Brodie’s man came to ask me to come to the camp. I refused. Had I allowed the men to accompany me—”

“They’d probably be dead by now,” she inserted on a sigh, most of her concentration on trying to unknot the ropes binding the priest’s wrists behind his back. Dwyn had managed to force her gag off by using her tongue, teeth and the priest’s back to drag it along, and then had removed the gag Brodie had tied around Father Machar’s head by using her teeth to tug the dirty cloth out of his mouth and down. While the priest had been quite flustered and embarrassed to have her sticking her tongue in his mouth to hook it under the cloth and drag it to her teeth to pull it over his bottom lip, he’d also been grateful to have the material out of his mouth. Brodie had ripped up a filthy old tunic to make the gags so that aside from the material sucking all the moisture out of their mouths, it had tasted most unpleasant.

“Oh, I’m sure he could no’ have managed that,” Father Machar assured her. “The MacGregors are fine warriors.”

“Aye, but no’ expecting trouble, the MacGregor probably would no’ have sent more than six or ten soldiers with ye. Brodie brought a hundred,” she pointed out.

“Oh, aye, well, that may ha’e been a problem,” he agreed with what sounded like a frown in his voice. He fell silent briefly as Dwyn continued tugging at the cord at his wrists, and then said, “Might I ask? Why is Laird Brodie so determined to marry ye?”

Dwyn smiled faintly. Why, indeed, she thought grimly, but said, “He wants me family home and its property. We border Brodie, ye see, and if he can force me to marry him, he plans to join the two properties and make it all Brodie . . . with him as laird, o’ course.”

“Oh, I see,” he said with an “aha” sound to his voice. “Aye, it makes much more sense now.”

Dwyn stopped working briefly, quite sure she’d just been insulted. Although she doubted the man even realized he’d just insinuated that Brodie’s desire to marry her couldn’t possibly have been just for her person, whereas greed made more sense. Shaking her head, she went back to work.

“Well, I shall have to explain to him that God frowns on greed,” Father Machar said now. “Perhaps I could even read him a passage from the Bible on it. Luke 12:15 would be good.” His voice dropped to a theatrical boom, and he quoted, “Then he said to them, ‘Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in an abundance of his possessions.’ Or,” he said, sounding excited, “perhaps Corinthians 6:10. ‘Nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.’” He barely finished that before he was exclaiming, “Oh! Or I could quote—”

“Father?” Dwyn interrupted gently.

“Aye, lass?” Father Machar asked.

“Ye may want to no’ lecture or quote to Laird Brodie. I fear the man is quite mad and like to hurt ye if ye do,” she pointed out.

“Oh, nay. Surely not?” he said, the excitement replaced with concern. “Greed may seem like madness, but—”

“He’s tied up a priest,” Dwyn pointed out dryly. “And he’s kidnapped and tied me up as well, and that besides wounding me husband terribly and trying to rape me to force me to marry him ere I came to Buchanan. And the man talks to—”

“Rape? Really?” Father Machar interrupted.

Dwyn couldn’t tell if it was titillation she was hearing in his voice, or not. Telling herself of course it wasn’t, she said, “Aye. Fortunately, me dogs attacked him and drove him off.”

“Ah,” he said wisely, and then suggested, “Have ye considered that was God’s vengeance? Punishment for his evil ways?”

“I somehow do no’ think God would make me dogs bite off the end o’ a man’s pillicock, Father,” she said dryly.

“Oh, dear,” he muttered with dismay. “Nay, I canno’ see him doing that either.” He fell silent briefly, and then in an obvious attempt to turn the subject said with feigned cheer, “So ye’re married to Geordie Buchanan?”

“Aye, Father,” Dwyn murmured, tugging a bit of cord through another and hoping she was moving it the right way and wasn’t simply knotting him up more.

“The Buchanans are fine men,” Father Machar assured her. “Good warriors too.”

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