Chapter One
England—Spring 1473
"Stop staring at me."
Liam Cameron cocked one brow in response to his cousin Sigimor's growled command. “I was but awaiting your plan to get us out of this mess."
Sigimor grunted and rested his head against the damp stone wall he was chained to. He suspected Liam knew there was no plan. He, his younger brother Tait, his brother-in-law Nanty MacEnroy, and his cousins Liam, Marcus, and David were chained in a dungeon set deep in the bowels of an English lord's keep. They needed more than a plan to get out of this bind. They needed a miracle. Sigimor did not think he had done much lately to deserve one of those.
This was the last time he would try to do a good deed, he decided, then grimaced. It had not been charity that had brought him to Drumwich, but a debt. He owed Lord Peter Gerard his life and, when the man had requested his aid, there had been no choice but to give it. Unfortunately, the request had come too late and the trouble Peter had written of had taken his life only two days before Sigimor had led his men through the thick gates of Drumwich. It was swiftly made clear that Peter's cousin Harold felt no compulsion to honor any pledges made by his now dead kinsman. Sigimor wondered if it could be considered ironic that he would die in the house of the man who had once saved his life.
"Ye dinnae have a plan, do ye?"
"Nay, Liam, I dinnae,” replied Sigimor. “If I had kenned that Peter might die ere we got here, I would have made some plan to deal with that complication, but I ne'er once considered that possibility."
"Jesu,” muttered Nanty. “If I must die in this cursed country, I would prefer it to be in battle instead of being hanged like some thieving Armstrong or Graham."
"Doesnae your Gilly claim a few Armstrongs as her kinsmen?” Sigimor asked.
"Oh. Aye. Forgot about them. The Armstrongs of Aigballa. Cormac, the laird, wed Gilly's cousin Elspeth."
"Are they reivers?"
"Nay. Weel, nay all of them. Why?"
"If some miracle befalls us and we escape this trap, we may have need of a few allies on the journey home."
"Sigimor, we are in cursed England, in a dungeon in a cursed English laird's weel fortified castle, chained to this thrice-cursed wall, and condemned to hang in two days. I dinnae think we need worry much on what we may or may not need on the journey home. There isnae going to be one. Not unless that bastard Harold decides to send our corpses back to our kinsmen for the burying."
"I can see that we best nay turn to ye to lift our spirits.” He ignored Nanty's soft cursing. “I wonder why there isnae any guard set out to watch o'er us."
"Mayhap because we are chained to the wall?” drawled Liam.
"I could, mayhap, with my great monly strength, pull the chains from the wall,” murmured Sigimor.
"Ha! These walls have to be ten feet thick."
"Eight feet six inches to be precise,” said a crisp female voice.
Sigimor stared at the tiny woman standing outside the thick iron bars of his prison. He wondered why he had neither seen nor heard her approach. The wordmineripped through his mind startling him into almost gaping at her. The woman standing there was nothing like any woman he had ever desired in all of his two-and-thirty years. She was also English.
If that was not a big enough flaw, she was delicately made. She had to be a good foot or more shorter than his six-feet-four-inch height and slender. He liked his women tall and buxom, considered it a necessity for a man of his size. Her hair was dark, probably black. He preferred light hair upon his women. His body, however, seemed suddenly oblivious to his habitual preferences. It had grown taut with interest. Being chained to a wall had obviously disordered his mind.
"And the spikes holding the chains to the wall were driven in to a depth of three feet seven inches,” she added.
"Ye obviously havenae come here to cheer us,” drawled Sigimor.
"I am not sure there is anything one could say to bring cheer to six men chained to a wall awaiting a hanging. Certainly not to six Highlanders chained to the walls of an English dungeon."
"There is some truth in that. Who are ye?"
"I am Lady Jolene Gerard."
If she thought standing straighter as she introduced herself would make her look more imposing, she was sadly mistaken, Sigimor mused. “Peter's sister or his wife?"
"His sister. Peter was murdered by Harold. You came too late to help him."
Although there was no hint of accusation behind her words, Sigimor felt the sting of guilt. “I left Dubheidland the morning after I received Peter's message."
