Highland Wolf (Highland Brides) Read online

  “Skilled?” Did her voice squeak?

  “Does he make ye shiver at his touch.” He slid his fingers up her slim throat. She trembled as if on command. “Does he make yer blood run hot and wild?” he asked, touching the throbbing pulse in her neck.

  Her eyes were as wide as a doe’s. “Ahh. Yeah.”

  “I think ye lie again, lass.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I’ve met me share of dukes. They’re a boring lot.”

  “Not… ‘arry.”

  “Do ye love him then?”

  He watched her face, sensed her emotions, evaluated her silence.

  “Has he tamed the wild vixen of the Red Fox?”

  She snorted and straightened somewhat, seeming more like the fiery lass he had met less than four days ago. “Do I look a dolt?” she asked. The sauciness had returned to her tone. “I ain’t foolish enough ta love ‘im. But I ain’t stupid enough ta turn down ‘is money, either.”

  “He pays ye well?”

  ‘“E pays for the ‘ouse.” She nodded toward the humble cottage behind her. “Ya don’t think I can pay for this with my wages from the Fox, do ya?”

  “It hardly seems like enough for the pleasure of yer company, lass.”

  She swallowed, but kept up the bold tone. “Well, I got me a bit of a nest feathered when this one don’t work out no more.”

  “Mayhap I could feather it better.”

  “I know a bird in the hand when I sees one,” she said. “And I ain’t about ta send it flyin’ whilst I chase after one on the wing.”

  “What if it’s a bigger bird?”

  Some of her nervousness seemed to fade, and when she chuckled, the tone sounded sincere. “Are ya always so concerned about size, Scotsman?”

  “I’m just trying to impress ye. What with thousands of men ta compete with, I figure I’d best pull out me best weaponry.”

  “Please don’t,” she said, and to his own surprise, he laughed.

  She watched him. Silence settled in, then, “Ya should laugh more, Scotsman. It becomes ya.”

  “Let me come in, and I’ll laugh all night.”

  She smiled. Someone had lighted the lantern beside’her door again. The light glistened on her teeth and eyes. “No,” she said.

  “One night,” he whispered.

  “No.”

  “Scared I’ll spoil ye for the others?” he asked, and leaned closer still.

  “Terrified,” she said, and pushed at his chest.

  “Who’s ta know?’

  ” ‘E will. ‘E’ll know.”

  “Is he coming tonight?”

  “Aye. And ya’d best be gone when ‘e does, or there’ll be ‘ell ta pay.”

  He sighed and placed a hand over hers where it rested on his chest. “I’m a stranger in a strange land. I suppose it would be unwise to offend a duke.”

  Her fingers were long and slim and felt warm beneath his.

  “Aye, it would, indeed,” she said.

  “Ye’re sure?”

  “About…”

  “Ye dunna wish for me company.”

  She scowled. “Ya don’t take a hint easy, I’ll say that for ya, Scotsman.”

  He drew her hand to his lips. “There are those who say we’re a stubborn lot. Ye’ll tell me when ye learn anything about the Shadow?”

  “I tell ya ‘e’s naught but a myth.”

  “Mayhap yer right.” Roman released her hand with a sigh. “But there’s a good sum in it for ye if ye find out different. Perhaps ye could ask yer duke regarding him.”

  She nodded once. “I will,” she said, and fished out a key nestled tight and snug between her breasts.

  He watched her in awe, and she glanced at him and scowled.

  “I couldn’t think of a safer place ta keep it.”

  Roman exhaled slowly. “Strange, I can’t think of anywhere more dangerous,” he said, and, turning, walked away.

  Chapter 5

  Harrington House was large and ostentatious. Roman silently studied the anteroom where he was told to wait. It was decorated in bright reds and royal blues, from the brocade on the chairs to the tapestries on the walls. The arched windows were made of stained glass, a far cry from the scraped leather that kept the weather at bay in most of the hovels in Firthport. It was not the first time Roman was made aware of the differences between the English classes. Neither was it the first time he wished to return home.

  But again his night watch had been fruitless, for neither Betty nor her clandestine lover had passed the door of her cottage. Before the gray light of morning had seeped up from the east, Roman had left his hiding place in the shadows and stumbled off toward his own rented room.

  Four hours of sleep later, he had asked directions and found his way here. Now he sat in silence. Without trying, he could hear two men speaking near the door. He supposed one was the viscount he had come to see.

  “I thank you for coming, Lord Dasset.”

  “‘Twas my pleasure, I assure you,” said the second man. “You have a lovely daughter.”

  Harrington sighed. “My apologies for her… reticence.”

  Dasset laughed. The sound was low. “Nonsense. I do not consider a silent woman undesirable.”

  Harrington was quiet for a moment, as if thinking. “‘Tis glad I am to hear that. And I assure you she will be more herself next time you call.”

  “I’ll look forward to that moment.”

  They said their good-byes. Roman waited.

  Footsteps echoed down the hall.

  “So you have finally deigned to show your face, Scotsman, after being in Firthport for more than half a week.”

  Roman rose to his feet and turned to view Lord Marcus Harrington for the first time. He was of medium height, thin, boasting that peculiar kind of nose that some would call regal and some would simply call large.

  “Lord Harrington,” Roman said, nodding in deference.

  “My son suggested you may have sold the necklace to the highest bidder and were now living off the proceeds.” The viscount took a step into the room. Light through the vivid stained glass cast his shadow at a crooked angle. “Perhaps that would have been preferable to having you appear like this…” He waved his hand up and down as he appraised Roman’s battered appearance. “Had Lord Dasset seen you, I would have been hard-pressed to explain your presence. There are enough people already who know of my daughter’s … indiscretions. I’ve no wish for Dasset to know.” His eyes were watery, his gait stiff as he crossed the room to prop himself on one of the spindly-legged chairs. “Despite his attitude, he possesses the power and the wealth to keep the gossips quiet if he takes her to wife. And with the necklace added to the dowry I think he will see the wisdom of doing so. I assume your presence here means that you have not sold the necklace but have brought it to me, albeit late. Sit down.”

  Roman did as commanded. “I am here,” he said. For a moment he offered no more. But rarely had delay aided his cause, and he doubted it would do so now. Thus, he continued on. “But I fear I come without the necklace, for it has been stolen.”

  “Stolen!” Anger showed in the old man’s eyes. His face grew red. “Stolen!” He rose abruptly to his feet, but suddenly his hands shook and his breath rattled in his throat. Seating himself again, he lifted a bell from a nearby table. The tone of it was sharp and loud in the close room.

  A servant bearing a chalice appeared in less than a heartbeat. Harrington’s face remained a vivid red, but he ignored the cupbearer and kept his gaze on Roman. “Dalbert warned me you might come here with such a tale,” he said, his voice little more than a croak.

  “‘Tis na a tale, me lord, ‘tis the truth. ‘Twas stolen from me as I slept at the Queen’s Head.”

  “While you slept!” Harrington croaked. “Damn you…” His voice wheezed into a cough. The servant rushed over, but he was waved back. “Damn all you Scots!” he raved, pushing himself to his feet again. “You lie!”

  Roman sat very still. “Me fa
ults may be many and varied, me lord, but a liar I am na. The necklace was stolen from me as I have said.”

  The old man began to pace. “And of course you have searched long and hard for it!”

  Roman drew a careful breath. Something about this man reminded him of his uncle Dermid. In his mind’s eye he saw the upraised fist, heard his own whimper of fear.

  “Have you searched?”

  Harrington’s words echoed in the room. Reality caught Roman in a hard grip. The past was gone. Dermid was dead and rotting in his grave. But memories were strange things, for it seemed they could fly up on the wings of fatigue and frustration and consume him at any time. “Yes, me lord, I have indeed searched long and hard,” he said.

  The viscounf s wide nostrils flared. “Huh!” he spat, then coughed spasmodically and waved frantically for the servant, who handed him the chalice. Drinking it quickly, he handed the cup back and said, “huh,” again, in a voice much reduced in strength.

  “Ye should have that cough attended, yer lordship,” Roman said. It was the tone that made him a valued diplomat. It was also the tone he had used to soothe a drunken uncle.

  “Don’t try to soften me with your false concerns!” roared Harrington. “I know your thieving Scottish ways. You’ve sold the necklace after all and plan now to appeal to my sense of goodness. But I tell you…” Harrington began pacing, rapping his cane against the floor as he creaked across it. “I’ve got no sense of goodness. Not in this. Your bastard countryman raped my daughter.” He stopped to turn and stare at Roman, his eyes bloodshot, his breath coming hard. “He raped my Christine,” he rasped, but the rage was slipping now, being replaced by a sadness that even his stiff-backed pride could not hide. “MacAulay will die.”

  Roman drew a careful breath. “Will it help?’ he asked softly.

  “What’s that?” Harrington turned his head to hear better.

  “Will it help if the lad is killed?” Roman asked. There was no use denying MacAulay’s actions. Not now. “Will it erase the stain from your daughter? Or will it only darken it?”

  The old man scowled.

  “If David MacAulay dies, every soul in Firthport will know the reason,” Roman said. ‘The gossip of your daughter’s disgrace will be like carrion for the crows. But if we settle this as gentlemen, who will know?”

  He had struck a blow. Harrington looked as if he might actually crumble from it. But he remained erect. Roman couldn’t help but admire him the slightest bit for that.

  “I’m sending her to London,” Harrington said.

  There. The sadness again. He could see it in the old man’s eyes. “Your only daughter?” Roman asked. “Far away in the sordid bowels of London?”

  The viscount’s face paled even more. “There is nothing else to be done,” he whispered, more to himself than to Roman. “Nothing else. But I… What shall I do without my…” He faltered, but suddenly a young woman swept into the room.

  “I’ll not go,” she said. She was dressed in a gown of black. Her hands were clasped before her and her eyes were wide and round in her pale face. “I’ll not.”

  “Christine!” said the old man. But the single word sounded more like a prayer than a reprimand.

  “I’ll not go, Father,” she repeated more softly.

  Harrington’s lips puckered and his brows lowered. “You’ll go where I say. But for now you’ll get yourself to your rooms.”

  “No! Tell me where he is. Let me go to him.” Her fingers unclasped quickly and spread in frantic appeal toward her father. “Please.”

  “Get from my sight or I’ll…”

  “You’ll what, Father? Strike me?” she asked, pulling her hands down to her sides and forming them to small, white-knuckled fists. “Do you think you can beat the love from my heart?”

  “Don’t speak of love!” he roared. “For you know nothing of the meaning. You’ve shamed me and this house, and now you dress in black and talk of things you cannot comprehend. If your mother were here, she would choose a noble of the peer for you just as I have. She would wish for you to…”

  “She would wish for me to find a man that I can respect and cherish. And cherish him I do, whether you wish it or not.”

  Harrington drew himself to his full height, pulling his cane from the floor and clasping it tightly to his chest. “Utter those words again, child, and I’ll see him hanged on the morrow.”

  Her face turned deathly white and her lips parted in surprise. “You wouldn’t!” she whispered.

  “I would!” vowed Harrington.

  “Father, please.” She stumbled forward, but the old man held up a hand. “I’ll hear no more!” The words rang in the room, followed by the silence of impending death.

  Roman’s mind scurried for words to mend the situation, but Harrington turned toward him with slow finality. “I’ve the power to see him dead,” he said. “Don’t you think I don’t.”

  In that instant Roman saw everything. The old man’s pain. His pride, his power, slipping from his failing hands like wine through a broken chalice. He nodded once. “Aye, my lord. Ye have the power.”

  Harrington nodded in return. “You’ve a score of days,” he said rustily. “Bring me the necklace in that time, and the MacAulay will yet see his son returned home and intact.”

  Less than three weeks! When he had hardly a clue to the whereabouts of the necklace. Roman was about to plead for more, but the old man shook his head.

  “One day past. One minute past, and he’ll die as surely as you live and breathe.”

  It was fully dark when Roman reached Betty’s house. He had tried to think of some way to retrieve the precious necklace. Perhaps if he had another priceless piece of jewelry, he might lure the Shadow out of hiding and catch him. But he had no access to such jewels and no hope of obtaining any. Thus he had returned to his only hope, Betty Mullen, the rough jewel of the Red Fox.

  Another dull, sleepless night stretched before him. He slipped silently into the shadows and tried to get comfortable in the shallow niche of a stone wall not far from the house he watched so intently.

  Time ticked away. Fatigue settled in. The huge white hound could be seen as no more than a glimmer of gray in the blackness. Would he bark if someone approached?

  Roman shifted his gaze back to the house. If only he could move about to keep himself awake. But he had paced in his rented room, and still the necklace had been stolen.

  He had paced, Roman thought, and realized that he had forgotten his endless strides across the room in a hopeless attempt to remain alert. In fact, he had forgotten much of that night. True, he had been tired. But wasn’t it strange that memories of that time were just returning to him now? He was a light sleeper. If haunting dreams hadn’t assured that, living with men called the Rogue and the Hawk, had. Even in sleep Roman had learned to sense trouble. But not that night, for the weariness had been strangely heavy.

  Roman scanned the darkness again. Shadows, deep and unrevealing, smothered the house. He shifted his gaze away, across the narrow alley then turned back to the house. All was darkness, stillness. But… Something was different. The house’s shadow had shifted. Roman stared, unblinking, until his eyes hurt. But nothing changed.

  He blew out his breath, but just then he realized the shadow wasn’t there at all. It was at the back gate, then beyond, without so much as a creak of hinges. It was a ghost or …

  Roman shook his head, trying to awaken, for surely he had fallen asleep. But just then he heard a sound like the sharp intake of breath.

  “Jesu!” he swore, and launched himself from his hiding spot. For just a moment the shadow froze, but then it swept away, no longer a shadow but a living being. A man. Roman was certain of it now. The white hound thumped his tail ingratiatingly. Roman rushed on. His prey was fast and knew the terrain. Suddenly, he was gone, vanished from sight in the middle of a blind alley.

  Roman careened to a halt, glancing wildly about. He couldn’t have disappeared. He wasn’t a ghost.

&n
bsp; There. Atop the roof, a flitting shadow, a whisper of sound. In a second Roman was climbing. Thatch scattered as he scaled the building. The thief was in sight again.

  Along the center of the building, then down, sliding on his backside and falling to the ground, for the Shadow was running again and nearly out of sight. Roman thundered after him. His chest ached from the exertion, but fury pressed him on, down another alley. Mud sucked at his shoes. The odor of urine fouled his nostrils.

  A pig squealed, and from somewhere in the darkness, a man cursed. Roman paid no heed to any of this.

  The Shadow was less than a rod ahead and losing ground. He disappeared around a corner. Roman bolted after him. Hell fire! Suddenly his prey was almost out of sight. Roman put on a final burst of speed and barreled down on the flagging runner as if he were standing still.

  Closer. Closer, until, without taking time to think, to draw an extra breath, Roman leapt.

  He hit the man’s back dead on, bowling him over with sheer impetus.

  “What the ‘ell?” he grunted, but Roman was in no mood for explanation.

  The man was huge. Both tall and fat. Roman rolled him over with some difficulty, puffing all the while and wondering how the hell this tub of a man had led him such a wild chase.

  “Where is it?” Roman rasped.

  “What the ‘ell?” the man said again, his eyes showing wide rings of fear in the darkness.

  “Where’s the necklace?” Roman panted. But just then he heard a noise behind him. He knew he should turn, knew he should duck, but his muscles were weary, his reactions slowed.

  Even as he twisted something hit him like a sledgehammer to his skull. Pain erupted in his head, crashing his brain with bright lights and clanking sounds. But the agony didn’t last long. The noises drifted to silence, and darkness came for him.

  “‘Bout time ya wake up, Scotsman.”

  Roman heard Betty’s voice above the clatter of pain that echoed in his cranium. He tried to sit up, but the clatter turned to an insistent clang.

  She pressed him back down. “Was I you, I’d stay put lest ya bust your ‘ead wide open.”