Page 2 of Claimed by a Highlander
“I’ll lend ye a bit of money for the game,” she said, her sour breath in his face. With her free hand, she reached inside her bodice, pulled a silver coin from between her ample breasts, and held it up between her thumb and forefinger.
“Isn’t that the coin I gave ye, Mattie?” the red-cheeked man complained.
“Believe me, lads,” she said, turning to the others, “I earned it.”
“Ye won’t regret this,” Rory said over the men’s laughter. But when he tried to take the coin, she held it just out of his reach.
“Promise, on your mother’s grave, that if ye can’t repay me in coin”—Mattie paused and grinned at him, showing her brown and broken teeth—“you’ll repay me in a manner of my choosing.”
Rory’s stomach clutched. In addition to her many unappealing attributes, Mattie probably was not clean of the pox, like the lasses she provided the men in the back room. But he could not shake the feeling that his brother was in trouble, so he had no choice.
“On my mother’s grave.” He jumped when Mattie reached behind him and squeezed his arse with her ham-sized hand. He closed his eyes briefly and thanked God that none of his clansmen were here to see it.
Ignoring the throbbing in his leg, he got up and followed Mattie behind a curtain into a dark corridor. At the far end, candlelight spilled through a partially closed door.
“Have a care, handsome. These are powerful men,” Mattie whispered as they paused outside the door. Then she poked his chest. “You’ll be no use to me dead.”
Holding his breath against her overpowering smell, Rory leaned closer to see the men inside. There were five, all young and well-dressed, sitting around a table with cards and small piles of coins.
“Who are they?” he asked in a whisper.
“That one is the new Douglas chieftain, and the one next to him is his brother,” she said, pointing a thick finger at two black-haired men, neither of which looked much over twenty. “Their father was killed with the king at Flodden, and their grandfather, old Bell the Cat, died last week, making young Archibald here the earl.”
Rory had never met Archibald Douglas, but he had once caught a glimpse of the beautiful Douglas sisters riding through Edinburgh. He smiled to himself, remembering a giggling young lass with flashing blue eyes and hair as black as a moonless night.
“They say this young Douglas chieftain is ‘comforting’ our grieving queen,” Mattie said, drawing Rory’s attention back to the present. “I believe the other men at the table are Boyds and Drummonds, close kin of the Douglases.”
Archibald Douglas must have heard her speak this time, for he shifted his gaze to the doorway and called out, “Who’ve ye brought us, Mattie?”
Rory stepped into the room with no notion of how this night would change his fate.
CHAPTER 1
March 1522
Kilspindie Castle,
Twenty miles from Edinburgh
Sybil set her sketch aside and covered her face with her freezing hands. She wished someone would come and spirit her far away, out of the queen’s reach. She was furious with her brothers for abandoning her. After sending reassurances for months and ordering her to wait for them here at her uncle’s castle, they and her uncle had escaped to France, leaving the rest of them to the queen’s mercy. As if that spiteful woman had any.
A shadow fell over her.How did James find me out here?She had not left the warmth of her uncle’s hall to sit under this tree on the frozen ground because she wanted company. Particularly his.
“I thought ye left, James,” she said, still keeping her hands over her eyes. “I told ye I won’t do it, so go.”
When she did not hear James walk away, Sybil was tempted to kick him. Exasperated, she dropped her hands—and sucked in her breath.
A huge Highland warrior stood over her. Her heart thumped wildly as she dragged her gaze from his giant sword, the tip of which rested mere inches from her foot, to the dirks and axe tucked in his belt, and then to his broad, muscular chest. She had not yet reached his face when he spoke in a deep voice that seemed to make the ground vibrate beneath her.
“My name is MacKenzie,” he said. “I’ve come for ye.”
Come for her? Sweat prickled under her arms. The queen had found her.
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” she said. “What are the charges against me?”
The Highlander merely grunted and held out his hand. She ignored it and forced herself to raise her gaze to his face. Despite the fierce green eyes that were locked on her like a wild cat who has found his prey, the wholly irrelevant thought that he was exceedingly handsome sprang into her head. He was young, with strong, masculine features, and she knew ladies at court who would kill to have that shade of auburn hair.
“We must go,” he said, which jarred her attention back to the danger she was in.
