Though next time he wouldn’t look at her face. Pride couldn’t mask the look in her eyes when they were riding away, leaving her daughter behind…
He’d seen enough men being tortured to recognize it. Agony. Pure, raw, and unadulterated agony.
He bit off another piece of beef to stave off the slight tightening in his chest, even though it was too high to be hunger.
Suddenly he grimaced and reached for his skin, taking a long swig of theuisge-beathato wash it down.
Gordon was watching him “Something wrong with your food?”
“Damned beef is rancid.”
“Mine tastes fine.”
Lachlan shrugged, taking another long drink. The liquid fire of the whisky burned away the taste of everything.
He could feel MacKay’s eyes on him, but the fierce Highlander didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. His disapproval rang out loud and clear.
Magnus MacKay hailed from the mountains of Northern Scotland. Tall, heavily muscled, and almost as strong as Robbie Boyd, he was one of the toughest son-of-a-bitches Lachlan had ever met, able to survive in the most varied and extreme of conditions.
About the only place he didn’t seem comfortable was on a horse. Not the most graceful of riders in the best of circumstances, in the worst he seemed to hold his seat by sheer force of will. After the harrowing night of riding they’d just had—the last half of which had been in heavy rain—the countess wasn’t the only one who’d needed a rest.
MacKay didn’t like him, but that was hardly unusual. As long as he didn’t get in Lachlan’s way, they’d be fine. He sure as hell hadn’t been looking for camaraderie when he agreed to join Bruce’s secret band of phantom warriors.
It was an intriguing concept, he had to admit. The best warriors in each discipline of warfare joined together in one elite force. He’d already seen what they could do. But they couldn’t win the war alone, and he was skeptical that knights like Robert Bruce, engrained in the chivalric code, would embrace the furtive tactics of Highlanders.
Undoubtedly they were the best men Lachlan had ever fought with. But that didn’t mean he wanted them to rely on him or that he would rely on them. His wife’s betrayal had taught him a hard lesson in trust that had left the men who followed him dead, himself unjustly disgraced, and his holdings forfeited. He’d turned to what he had left: being a trained killer who lived by and for the sword.
“Something to say, Saint?” he challenged, using the name MacSorley had taken to calling the big man in jest. It wasn’t because of his piety. Unlike the other men, MacKay never seemed to talk about the lasses. Whereas on missions, in battle, away from home and sitting by a campfire at night, most warriors talked about nothing else. Lachlan intended to find out why.
“The countess is right,” MacKay said, putting down the strange implement he’d been working on. He was always trying to come up with ways to make weapons more efficient—in other words, deadly. “We were supposed to bring herandthe lass.”
“He explained what happened,” Gordon interjected before Lachlan could tell him to bugger off. “There wouldn’t have been time.”
William Gordon possessed a unique skill—and it wasn’t just that he was one of the few men who seemed to like Lachlan. He knew how to make thunder and flying fire with the secret recipe of black powder brought back from the holy lands by his grandfather.
“Maybe not,” the stubborn Highlander conceded. “But if he’d told us his plan, we might have been able to help.”
“How?” Lachlan challenged. “Nothing you could have done would have changed anything. My job was to sneak us in the castle and find the lass. You and Gordon provided the distraction. I don’t need you or anyone else looking over my shoulder.” They would have only gotten in the way. They knew that as well as he did. “I got her out, didn’t I?”
MacKay stared back at him. “Aye, you got her. But if I were you I’d watch my back for a while.”
On that, at least, they could agree.
Gordon had taken off the plaid that he wore around his shoulders to blend into the night and twisted it into a thick rope between his hands, squeezing the water from the rain onto the dirt floor at his feet. “You were right about something else,” he said to Lachlan in a low voice. “This is no place for a child.” He shivered. “Damn, I wish we could light a fire.”
They couldn’t risk it. Though Lachlan hoped they’d put distance between them and Buchan, they couldn’t be sure how long it would take for him to discover his wife had fled.
Realizing he no longer felt two holes burning in his back, Lachlan stole a glance toward the back of the cave and saw that the countess had taken his advice to rest while she could. They wouldn’t be staying for long.
Gordon followed his eyes. “She’s got a lot of courage,” he said with obvious admiration. “I wonder why she’s doing it?” Lachlan had wondered the same thing. “A remarkable woman.”
Lachlan scoffed sharply. “I think her husband might disagree with you.”
“Buchan’s a belligerent arse. Almost as much of a spiteful tyrant as Edward. He’s old enough to be her father, and she’s…” His voice drifted off and Lachlan felt an irrational twinge of annoyance, knowing exactly where Gordon’s mind was headed. The same place it did every time Lachlan looked at her: to his cock. Which was why he avoided looking at her. “There’s something about her that’s hard to put into words.”
Sensual. Seductive. Cock-hardening.
Gordon shrugged, giving up. “Seems a waste on an old man. Buchan doesn’t deserve such a boon.”
