Page 25 of A Highland Rogue to Ruin

He dropped to hanging, the rough bark scratching at his palms, swayed on the branch, then let go and landed firmly on his boots.

“It held yer weight aye good, did it nay?” Ghost pressed.

Unsheathing his claymore and sifting a thin branch into his grip, Tormund scythed it like it was barley and thrust his sword tip into the soft earth to waver while he bent the twig, testing its flexibility.

“Good for disguises,” he deduced to himself.

“What thinks ye, laird?” Reaper said.

“Good bracken and ferns to obscure the groundmen, too,” he added while Ghost and Reaper nodded. “Four men easy could drop down from the trees whilst two more arrow strike from behind those tumbled rocks.” Tormund tilted his head toward the rocks.

“And another ten lie low in the undergrowth to strike whilst they’re disoriented,” Ghost added, echoing Tormund’s conclusions.

“’Tis the only sound place along this route for an ambush. Good work.”

Tormund nodded to his man, even as his mind flooded with warring thoughts.

Never once had he questioned the wisdom of cutting down James on this route south to Kiliwhimin, where Loch Ness narrowed into a channel more easily crossable. It was the one the westerners had taken to reach Laird Rose’s lands. He’d breathed this air of revenge for seven long years, when no Crown, no neighboring laird, no one, had been willing to help him. Never once had he considered his destiny to be anything other than protecting Owen’s legacy from MacDonald and men like him at any cost, no matter how extreme, who had struck first and never asked questions. Until now.

He’d never expected her and her soft caresses and gentle laughs and willingness to face him—even when she’d trembled with fear—to make a peace offering. Fok, that had bent his mind almost as much as their tryst. Never would he have told her anything about his life or his past had it not been for the mask and the assumption that after their tryst, they’d part ways. He was so used to guarding every blind spot from attack, but to her, he’d exposed his underbelly.

Pensive, he twisted the twigs along the branch until they snapped, one by one. She was the last person he needed under his skin.

Women made men weak. Weak men made mistakes. Yet when he’d looked at her, all he wanted to do was make mistakes. Because she was listening, and if a MacDonald was listening, wanting him, he ought to offer the same. Mayhap the peace would be achievable—

Nay, it’s dead. All was forfeit. MacLeods and MacDonalds were too far entrenched in blood feuds to ever come up for air.

Hell. What was this unfamiliar sentiment knotting his chest again? He’d felt it last night, too, when she’d walked away with her brother. He gave the space to the left of his sternum a hard pound to dislodge it. Guilt? Desire? A throat cleared.

Niall, having remained quiet, was the culprit. He stood slouched against a trunk with arms folded and his ankle slung over the other boot, eying Tormund.

“Speak,” Tormund ordered. “Ye clearly have something to say.”

“Ye’re in a quandary. I can see it brewing in yer eyes. The enemy’s verra sister just stood up for ye today, after ye bedded her last night.”

He could feel Ghost’s burning anger, like heat wavering off a pyre, without even looking at him. “Unless she’s the retaliation she thinks she is.”

He glanced at his men. Scarred from arrow and sword. Hardened by wind and sea. Men who’d suffered indescribable loss at MacDonald’s hand. Unwelcome thoughts of Owen bleeding out invaded his mind, his brother’s knees buckling and the fight leaching from him the moment James and his sire had ambushed them, booming that Marjorie was dead because of him.

It had no longer mattered to Owen, the lie, his life, his search for who had nabbed his woman. She was gone, and the reason why disintegrated on the winds. Without her, his life had meant naught. And all he’d wished to do was join her in the afterlife. So he’d sunk to his knees and taken the blow.

“Pray Uncle Niall doesna’ speak truth,” Ghost murmured. “The Crown will never hold him to account. Pray tell me that wetting yer wick with that lass hasna ruined yer sense of Highland justice.”

His jaw tightened at the crassness that normally never affected him. It had been far more than a swive. He’d stolen her maidenhood. Joined them together primally. Given her what he’d never given a lass in the heat of any passion before, and there was a fair chance in nine months’ time, her belly would look like James’s woman’s because of it, swollen with his bairn, destining her to a life of a tattered reputation and shame, and robbing Tormund of the joy of knowing his own seed.

Fok.

“She was a mistake. The ambush stands,” he replied, tossing aside the branch and sheathing his sword as he remounted.

“Should I leave men here to prepare positions?” Ghost asked.

“Nay. If we’re down several men when we return and remain so for several days, the clans will grow suspicious. Wait for my orders and gather the ropes and supplies. We’ll store them at the mouth of Glen Albyn near the firth’s headwaters north of Inverness. Ghost, ye’ll take first watch of them, to ensure the cache is nay stolen.”

He trotted back down the path, ignoring the whisper in his ear, that if he ambushed MacDonald, in sooth he’d be hurting her, and while he didn’t give one shite about James, he realized…Niall was right. He was conflicted. Because he cared about her. Because in a different world, he’d offer for her. Hell, how was it possible for Devil MacDonald to have an angel for a sister? And why did he want to accept her challenge against all better judgment?

Ye always want what’s forbidden. That was the likeliest reason for his infatuation, why his lust had been insatiable: stealing her virtue had been daring and bold and wrong. So, of course, he’d wanted it.

But his forbidden angel changed everything. Made him wonder: if he could determine who was truly responsible for Marjorie’s death and rid the earth of them, would The Great Peace…finally be possible?