“Aye,” Kate rounded on her captor, her eyes blazing. Had she thought him warm? Fool! “You could hang yourself with it!”
Her angry retort earned her a slow, devastating smile from the MacGregor chieftain.
“Och, but she has ballocks the size of the Cuillins,” Seamus MacRae laughed and turned away. “I’ll leave the wench to ye, Devil. Some might say ye deserve it.”
When they were alone, Callum’s smile deepened, making Kate’s toes curl and her teeth clench. “Ye’re learnin’ well, Kate.”
“Learning what?” Though her question was curt, she sighed miserably immediately after she asked it. “That every moment you spend with this hell-witch is a sacrifice you suffer for the name MacGregor?” He opened his mouth to speak, but Kate cut him off, holding up her palm. “That you intend to declare your hatred of me to all of Scotland?”
She turned away, leaving Callum to stare at her profile. The wind blew her dark waves across her face, compelling him to lift his hand to her cheek. When his fingertips touched her flesh, the need to touch more of her nearly doubled him over. “Kate.” She angled her head, cupping her face in his palm, and closed her eyes. “There is no’ a single part of me that hates ye.” His smile washed over her when she opened her eyes again, but his gaze was somber. “But yer life depends on ye hatin’ me.” He traced the curve of her jaw with the backs of his knuckles. “Or at least, convincin’ others that ye do.”
Chapter Seventeen
“HOW DO WE KNOW the gel is not a sympathizer?”
Robert Campbell ceased pacing and watched his uncle leap to his feet, lean across the table, and snatch the man who spoke by the throat.
“My niece is no sympathizer,” Duncan snarled.
The man nodded, then rubbed his neck when the earl released him.
Robert continued his worn path in the rushes of Hugh Menzie’s great hall. He raked his fingers through the dark strands of hair falling over his forehead. He aimed a frustrated glance at his uncle, who was reclining once again at one of three long trestle tables. Neither Duncan nor the rowdy group of Menzies sharing their ale with him paid Robert any heed. It had been over a se’nnight since the MacGregors had abducted his sister, and they were no closer to finding her than they had been the day she was taken. They had gathered men from Breadalbane to Rannoch. They had enough to face MacGregor and his men if they caught up with him now.
Robert had reminded his uncle that the miscreant laird had sent almost all of his men back to his homestead. He traveled now with only four others. They had to catch up with the MacGregors before they returned to the Devil’s lair, where they would face his army. But Hugh Menzie, laird of the Menzie clan, had news for the Earl of Argyll, and hence Robert found himself, at present, mumbling blasphemies meant only for the vilest tongue. He did not care.
“Uncle.” He stiffened his arms at his side. “Uncle!” he called more forcefully when no one looked up. “I must insist that we leave here at once and take up our search.” He almost faltered at the murderous gleam in his uncle’s eyes when Duncan finally, slowly set them on him.
“We know all we need to know,” Robert continued, refusing to be moved. He had cowered once already when he first faced Callum MacGregor, and it may have cost his sister her life. “The Devil attacked and killed seven of Laird Menzie’s kin just a few nights past. Let us make haste while his tracks are still fresh.”
“The lad is right!” a rough-looking man with hair the color of charcoal agreed. Another followed, slamming his cup on the table and rising to his feet.
Duncan’s lips hooked into a sinuous smile that he cast at his nephew before he raised his cup to the others. “Let us be off, then.”
Robert’s hopes of finding Kate began to falter two days later when they hadn’t found so much as a broken twig to keep them on the right path. How had the MacGregors disappeared without a trace? None of the men traveling with him and his uncle knew where the Devil’s holding was. It could be leagues away, or just beyond the next hill. Surveying the rocky peaks and rolling hillocks around him, Robert could not help but wonder if they were not being watched. Could he and his meager army of forty men survive an ambush of five? Hadn’t all but those five killed fifty of Duncan’s men in Glen Orchy? No one would aid them if they were attacked. The Highlanders they had questioned along the way had told them nothing. Even those the earl had beaten and threatened to hang claimed to know nothing of Callum MacGregor. If his sister’s life were not at stake, Robert would have admired such loyalty. The Highlanders did not seem frightened of the Devil, but of his uncle. And from what Robert had witnessed thus far, they had good reason to be.
When Graham Grant had first told him about the MacGregor laird’s imprisonment in his grandfather’s dungeon, Robert had refused to believe him. He had barely known Liam Campbell, for their father rarely took them to Inverary. But Robert was certain no man of his ilk could be so vile. But after what he’d witnessed so far when his uncle questioned the Highlanders, he was no longer so sure. Aye, Robert knew Duncan Campbell was a warrior. The earl had reminded him of it often enough when Robert was a boy. There was no shame in shedding blood for the good of the country. But where was the honor in torturing one’s countrymen because they did not give him the answers he desired?
Once Kate was returned to them safely, there would be much to consider about remaining in his uncle’s service. As much as Robert hated to admit it, mayhap he was not cut out for the coldhearted, underhanded business of warring. He had certainly been deceived easily enough by the traitor, Grant. Damnation, why had he not suspected something amiss when Grant had informed him that the Devil had captured his uncle?
Like any other Campbell, Graham had known much about the centuries-long battle with the MacGregors. Robert wondered now if it was the subtle inflection of admiration lacing Graham’s voice that had almost convinced him to admire the proscribed clan. The man pretending to be his kin had not denied that the one the Highlanders called the “Laird of the Mist” had massacred Liam Campbell’s garrison. But he claimed to know for certain that the laird did not kill his grandfather, though Graham told him he would have had the right to do so. Robert had found it odd at the time to hear such unprejudiced talk from a Campbell, but Graham had assured him that his Breadalbane kin did not hold the same disdain for the MacGregors. He should have asked Graham how he knew the tale of his grandfather’s dungeon was true. Instead, he let Kildun’s guardsmen ride directly into the swords of their enemies.
A cold numbness trickled down Robert’s spine, even now, at the memory of what had happened next. He’d been spared and brought before the warrior who led the battle. Stunned and shaken, he had turned to see that the man binding his wrists was Graham. Robert had fought against his tight hold, until he felt the tip of MacGregor’s blade at his throat. But it wasn’t the warm, wet metal on his flesh that halted his movements, and almost his heart. It was how badly MacGregor wanted him dead. It was clear in his eyes, in the cold snarl curling his mouth.
“Tell me where Argyll hides before I remove yer head.”
Behind him, Graham had spoken quickly, dragging the chieftain’s attention back to him. He spoke at first in Gaelic, causing the MacGregor’s expression to darken, then informed him that the earl had gone to Glen Orchy, to the home of his dead brother.
Robert would have preferred that they kill him instead of tying him to the gate and leaving him alive to contemplate what they were going to do to Kate when they found her.
It was his fault. He had left her. He had been too eager to become a knight of the realm.
He had to find her. He prayed his sister was still alive, despite his uncle’s belief to the contrary. Kate had to be alive, else not honor or even God would stop him from killing the Devil.
Chapter Eighteen
KATE RODE AT CALLUM’S SIDE as they traveled through Kylerhea toward the brae pass of Bealach Udal. She listened while Jamie, riding just ahead, pointed out the steep south ridge of Beinn na Caillich and the wild herbs and yellow and orange daffodils growing around it. The yellow daffodils are Maggie’s favorite, he advised her, then waited for Kate to catch up. “I have tried to find a flower as rare as she, but my search has proved fruitless.”
Kate’s heart lurched at such sweet gallantry. “Margaret MacGregor must be quite a lady to invoke such tenderness in a man,” she told him, wishing she knew how to do the same.
