Charlotte kicked up her feet splashing water upward. She laughed when droplets fell over her face.
Oh, what a glorious day!
She adjusted the daisy circlet around her brow and tilted her face toward the sun. The water from the river was especially warm today, soothing away her anxious thoughts. She basked in the sounds of nature around her and nothing else. The chatter of birds filled the trees, bees buzzed while they hovered over daisies, water rushed over rocks. She drenched herself in the time she had alone, away from her father’s strict, or so he thought, confines.
Her only regret today was that she hadn’t insisted on taking Elsie along. She would make it up to her sister later.
She heard a sound to her left and hiked up her skirts to turn. She searched the branches of an old birch for the lark that had landed in it. When she found it, she whistled, smiled, and then headed back to the bank with a song on her lips.
She looked around for her brothers Duff and Hendry. Not that she wanted them to hurry with their hunting. She loved being out of their company, free to do as she pleased, which was to make a crown of daisies and go into the water. But their father would be angry if he knew how long they’d left her alone. She was a troublesome daughter, far more defiant than Elsie, but she hated her father’s fears, and endless rules and ambitions. He’d tried to marry her off several times for some profit or another. But she’d managed to convince every prospect so far that she wasn’t fit to be a wife. She had faults, and plenty of them. One being that she liked to make her own decisions—a heinous offense to most men. Her last suitor, Geoffrey, Baron of Ardrossan, had needed a bit more convincing.
She leaned against a tree and stared out at the river glimmering against her eyes, the mountains far beyond. One day, she would travel across them with Elsie, both of them liberated from tyranny and the empty promises of men who couldn’t measure up to a boy.
She heard another sound and reached under her skirts for her sling. She could take care of herself. A lass didn’t frequent pubs and the seedy allies behind them without learning to protect herself.
Why was her heart suddenly pounding? No one in a hundred-league range was foolish enough to trespass on Allan Cunningham’s land. Her father, like both his sons, didn’t care who he killed, especially if the trespasser was a Fergusson.
But no sooner did she convince herself of her safety than she heard rustling in the foliage. It could be a deer. Oh, she hoped it was. She looked around for a stone.
Her heart near stopped when she looked up to find a man rising from his crouching position in the thick bushes. And not just any man, but the apparent victor of last night’s brawl! In the full light of day, donned in nothing but a pair of snug-fitting woolen breeches, hide boots, and a purple jaw, he appeared as big as Hamish and fit enough to outrun her. The hands he held up were large enough to confine her with little effort. She knew how powerful he was, how fast. The slight tilt of his mouth almost convinced her that it would take even less effort to arrive at her throat to devour her as he had devoured Bethany.
She looked around. Where were her brothers? What was this stranger doing here? Had he followed her? She should be afraid of him, but she had her sling. She was more afraid of him telling her brothers that he’d seen her in the tavern. “Stay back!” she shouted and lifted her weapon. The man went still, eyeing the leather sling in her hand.
Something in his gaze sparked with recognition. Damn!
“Lass, where did ye—?”
She didn’t wait for him to finish, but whirled her weapon over her head. She knew nothing about him, save that he was strong, he’d been hiding in the bushes, and he was a rogue. She wouldn’t take any chances.
“Wait!” he called out, lifting his hands higher in surrender. Sunlight dripped over his carved arms. His shoulders flexed, a ripple of movement and a promise of pure, solid power. “Allow me another moment to take ye in to convince m’self that ye’re real.”
She didn’t breathe in the waiting stillness. She’d grown up among men, learning from her beloved Kendrick not to trust them, from her father to fear them, and from her brothers to keep her tongue leashed. She knew from her visits to different pubs what men were like when they wanted something. But none of them had ever spoken to her this way and with boldness and audacity to spread his appreciative gaze over her from her crown of daisies to her bare, tanned feet.
Even with the small meadow between then, Charlotte felt as if he touched her with his piercing jewel-like eyes.
She lifted the sling again. He was nothing more than a silver-tongued scoundrel who was likely here to force himself on her.
“I beg yer mercy, Angel,” he called out then lowered his chin to his chest like a repentant servant. “But if ye must shoot, aim fer m’ head and then pray over me that if I awaken, I have no memory of ye.”
She smiled at the fool when he looked up. “You’re a clever scoundrel.”
She wished she were closer just to see if his lashes were as long and lush around his green eyes as they appeared from a distance.
But a face, no matter how ruggedly appealing it was, didn’t mean anything to her. Flowery words meant even less. Duff and Hendry were handsome devils and they used their good looks to get what they wanted from women.
She wasn’t so foolish.
“What do you want?” she demanded. “My brothers are just over that ridge.” She motioned toward the small hill to their right.
“Just a moment more to gaze at yer beauty.” His smile darkened with humor and something else that deepened his lilting voice to a smoky timbre. It worked its way down her spine and made her blood boil.
Knave. She’d seen him at work. He was a slayer of hearts, but he wouldn’t have hers. No one would ever again. She had more important things to do than fawning like a twit over a man. Besides if she hit him now, he’d fall into the bushes and remain unseen by her brothers when they returned for her. No reason to get the rogue killed for admiring her. “I’d rather knock you out.” She swung her sling over her shoulder and let her stone fly.
“Charlie!” her brother Hendry, having finally arrived a moment too soon, shouted from his saddle. They both heard the rock meet its target and the subsequent thump of a body hitting the ground.
Charlotte chewed her lip watching her brothers lift the man and haul him over his saddle.
“Who is he?” Hendry demanded as they headed home. “And why does he wear no shirt or coat?”
“How would I know?” She did her best keep the bite out of her question. “He appeared while I was waiting for you and Duff to come fetch me.”
That rattled him, as she’d hoped it would. Her brothers were afraid of their father.
“Why didn’t you call for us?” Duff asked her while a breeze lifted his dark hair and dragged it across pewter eyes. He wasn’t as vile as Hendry or their father. The eldest of her siblings at a score and six, he had the most patience—mainly with her and Elsie. Sometimes his eyes warmed on Charlie and she remembered how he’d adored her as a child—despite their father’s teachings to never grow weak over another person, even kin.
Though she would never return it again, she used his affection for her to her advantage. “I did,” she lied then sniffed. “Father will be angry with me for having been alone, when it was you and Hendry who left me.” She didn’t give a damn that her brothers had left her, but her father would. “I thought you’d forgotten me.”
“We wouldn’t forget you, Charlie,” Duff reassured her, softening his tone just a wee bit and moving his horse a little closer to hers.
Hendry’s golden hair blew across his dubious smirk. “Is that why you felled him to the ground with that sling of yours?”
The slash of Duff’s brow cast shadows over his eyes. “You used your sling?”
“Aye,” she confessed, “and if you and Hendry will agree to keep my sling secret, I will also agree not to tell Father that you left me long enough for this to happen.”
She prayed he would agree. Her father had forbidden her to use her sling. He had no problem expecting her to know how to protect herself against strangers, but not with her sling. It had belonged to a boy she’d once loved more than life itself. A boy she thought of often and would never forget. She’d been ten when he finally agreed to teach her how to use it. She’d practiced every day since his death five years ago until her skill was unmatched.
She’d crafted many duplicates of her sling over the years, mostly because her father always demanded she relinquish it whenever he found out that she had used it. She always gave him a replica. She’d never give up the original. It was all she had to remember Kendrick Fergusson.
“What choice did I have? Let him rape me?”
Duff set his black glare on the stranger tossed over his gray stallion. “He sought to rape you?”
She looked at the Highlander, still unconscious, and recalled how his gaze had fallen on her today and last night, when he’d looked up from devouring Bethany’s neck with those simmering green eyes, like she was a slab of roasted venison and he hadn’t eaten in a fortnight.
“Nay. I meant…” Damn it! Hendry hadn’t killed the stranger and she wanted to keep it that way. “I don’t know what he was after. I wasn’t going to stand around and wait to find out.”
“Mayhap, if you didn’t dress like a trollop—”
“Hendry,” Duff warned in a low growl.
“Come now, Duff,” Hendry argued like the fool he was. “She’s odd and you know it. She’s always seeking to come hunting with us, but she doesn’t hunt. Instead she slinks off by herself and splashes around in the river like some—”
“That’s enough,” her older brother warned, this time with more meaning. “You’ll leave her alone or I’ll break your nose again.”
Charlie grinded her jaw to keep from telling Hendry what she thought of him. It wasn’t her fault that laboring all day in the oat and wheat barns, cleaning the stables, planting, harvesting, and feeding the chickens was enough to exhaust her. She was ten and nine and she liked basking in the sun and laughing with old men.
“Do you think he’s a Fergusson, Duff?” Hendry asked, changing the topic.
She groaned inwardly, hoping he wasn’t. She may have just instigated another Fergusson attack.
Her gaze fell to the bold rogue again and the warm autumn colors in his hair. Burnt orange and bronze set ablaze by the sun, nestled within more earthy chestnut hues.
Kendrick’s hair had been the same color. Perhaps just a bit redder. She smiled remembering the boy who still held her heart, making it impossible for any other to take his place. Once he was out of her life, her father had made certain she’d never lose her heart to a Fergusson again. He hated them over some ridiculous feud whose beginning neither clan could recall. And after the terrible thing had been done, and almost his entire family had escaped unscathed, her father didn’t trust any stranger who happened on his land not to be a Fergusson assassin sent to finish what they’d started. And if the Fergussons returned, who would stop them this time?
“Let’s hope he isn’t a Fergusson,” Duff said in a flat tone. He kicked his mount and muttered as he passed his sister. “Imbecile.”
Charlie didn’t respond, since he was speaking to himself and not her. But she agreed with him. They should all hope he wasn’t a Fergusson since she’d injured him and would likely start another war. And Hendry was an imbecile.
As they rode onward toward Cunningham House the landscape spread out before her into rolling hills and shallow vales dotted with grazing sheep and thatch-roofed cottages beyond.
Crossing the old drawbridge, they approached the two-story house, in need of a new whitewash and a few stones to replace the crumbling ones. The stable and henhouse were also in need of repair, duties usually carried out by her father’s serfs from the village, but Allan Cunningham preferred his tenants to pay for what little protection or aid he provided, with coin rather than labor. Most of the villagers in Pinwherry were poor or ill, or both.
Charlie looked up at Bhaltair and Kevin, the two guardsmen keeping watch from a high tower to the west of the house. Another two patrolled the perimeter—surely not enough men to counter an attack should the Fergussons ever return. They’d come only once, but no one had forgotten the dead they had left behind. Especially Charlie. The men in the surrounding countryside had been warned not to guard the Cunninghams. And when Cameron, John, and Tamas Fergusson warned a man of something, the man listened. Cunningham House had no bailiff, no reeve, and the only priest in attendance lived in the village.
As they neared the small outer gate, the intruder began to move. Hendry noticed and rode his horse to him. Charlie’s blood went cold when her brother kicked the man in the head, knocking him out again.
She recoiled and glared at him. “Your needless violence makes me ill, Hendry.” She ignored his murderous gaze. He wouldn’t try to strike her with Duff here. “One day, someone is going to give you the beating you deserve.”
“Not likely,” he drawled and continued on.
Forgetting her brother for now, Charlie waved to Alice, the Cunninghams’ cook, when she stepped out of the small servant’s house built inside the inner gate, this “gate” fashioned with short sticks and shrub.
Charlie headed her horse toward the stable, but Duff called her back.
“Hendry will take care of your mount, Charlie.”
“Why do I have to tend to her horse?”
She tossed Hendry another glare that heated her large coal eyes and dismounted.
She didn’t argue though. Why provoke him to getting even with her later? She bit her tongue until it almost bled, but she’d learned that sometimes it was better to tame the tongue than wield it.
“Charlie,” Duff called out again. “Your sling.”
She spun on her heel and stared at him, her eyes wide. “You will tell Father and have me disarmed then?”
He shook his head. “I’ll get you a pistol in the morning.”
“I don’t want a pistol.”
He held out his hand for the sling. She gave him one last glare then hiked up her skirts over her left leg and yanked the counterfeit free from where it was secured. After handing it over she turned, smiled, and left him with Kendrick’s sling still secured to her right leg.
When she entered the house, she spotted her sister bobbing down the stairs, her heavy petticoats lifted in both hands.
“Thank God, you’re back! You were gone all morning!” Elsie exclaimed with her flare for the dramatic. Her golden waves bounced over her diminutive shoulders, her blue eyes wide with apprehension. “I was beginning to fear something terrible might have happened.”
“I told you, darling,” Charlie cooed and took her sister’s hand. “Nothing will take me from you.”
And nothing would. Their mother had died five years ago. Elsie was the babe by a year and was often ill and needed mothering. Charlie had happily taken up the duty. The village physician had treated her with various concoctions but none of them helped Elsie’s condition. Most of the time the poor darling lost her breath, sometimes she struggled through each one. It was difficult to witness, especially when her attacks made her weak and pale for days. There had to be a way to help her. According to the physician, keeping her indoors and safe from the elements was all they could do. Charlie refused to believe it. There were other healers out there. She’d found some. She would find them all, and not stop looking until she found the one with the cure. Until then, she did her best each day to teach Elsie how to be a strong, confident woman.
“Charlotte!” Their father bellowed from the parlor. “Get your arse in here, gel!”
Charlie closed her eyes. Damn her brothers for telling him anything. He always overreacted and she was weary of it.
“I’ll come with you,” Elsie offered, biting her lip.
“Nay, dear,” Charlie smiled tenderly at her. “Wait here for me and we shall do something exciting when I’m done with him.”
“You mean after he’s done with you.”
Charlie shook her head. Five years of his bellowing had taught her that agreeing with her father was the best way to mollify him. She would handle him, but for now she preferred to waste no more time on him.
“I made this for you.” She removed her daisy circlet and placed it over her sister’s brow then stepped back to admire it. “You look like a fairy queen.”
“Charlotte! Damn it!” their father shouted.
Elsie stopped her when Charlie turned to answer his booming expletive. She stepped closer and kissed Charlie’s cheek. “I made something for you as well.” She took Charlie’s hand and placed a small leather hilt inside it.
Charlie looked down at the short, curved blade, black as a moonless sky. “What is it?” she asked running her finger along the edge. She pulled back as the blade cut her skin and drew blood.
“’Tis very hard glass,” Elsie told her in her soft breathless voice. “’Tis called obsidian. Like your eyes.”
They smiled at each other, kissed again, and then Charlie hid her dagger beneath her skirts and ran off.
“He did not tell me who he was, Father.”
“Well, what did he tell you, Charlotte?”
Allan Cunningham sat across from her and to the left of her brothers in the private parlor. The “parlor” was nothing more than a stone and timber chamber with a small hearth and several cushioned chairs. But according to Lachlan Wallace, the village tanner, Cameron Fergusson’s Tarrick Hall had a parlor, so her father had to have one as well.
“He didn’t have time to say much,” Charlie told her father, trying to remain patient. She hated having to stand before him in his stuffy parlor and give account for everything she did. She’d much rather be outdoors soaking up the sun. “He begged me not to strike him.
“Duff has my sling, as you already know, and I request it back.”
“I didn’t know,” he informed her, sparing his son a surprised glance.
Charlie turned to him as well. She wouldn’t smile or thank him for not telling their father, but she was glad he hadn’t. He was still loyal to her. It broke her heart a little to remember how much she’d loved him. That she’d not only lost Kendrick but him too. He’d always been a better brother to her than Hendry, who was jealous of any attention their father gave anyone but him. Duff had been a better person, or so she’d believed. His part in Kendrick’s death hurt more than the rest. She couldn’t forgive him.
“I shall consider it.” Her father’s dark eyes narrowed on her before he spoke again. “You struck him down after he pled your mercy?”
She nodded, keeping what she truly thought of her father hidden behind a well-learned impassive expression.
“You’ve learned well, daughter,” he smiled. She didn’t smile back. “People are merciless. You must be merciless, as well. Did he say anything else?”
She’d asked the stranger what he wanted. The conquering slant of his grin had been riddled with a natural magnetism that had rattled her a bit.
Just a moment more to gaze at yer beauty.
“His name perhaps?” her father pressed.
What would he do to the stranger if he was a Fergusson? Would her father be such a fool to harm the man and bring Cameron Fergusson and his brothers back to Cunningham House? They had four guards. Four. What would four guards do when the Fergussons could take down fifty? “I didn’t wait for him to say anything else.”
Her father laughed then offered her a nod of approval. “Duff, give her back her sling.”
She still didn’t smile. They could keep it for all she cared. She had the original.
“Thank you, Father.” She dipped her head and turned to her brother. He gave her the sling, and the slightest of smiles.
“You may go, Charlotte,” her father called out, “and take that kohl off from around your eyes. You look like a woman from a brothel.”
She remained unfazed by his insult as she turned to face him again. “Warriors used to paint their faces, Father.” And she was a warrior, wasn’t she? Perhaps not the kind he would prefer, but that hardly mattered. She did all she could to help her sister and the others. Defying her father and her brothers with her nightly visits outdoors. She’d fight to the death for the freedom she lost five years ago to her father’s fear of the Fergussons. Sometimes she painted her eyes to remind herself of who she was.
He raised a brow. “They did, didn’t they?” He looked her over from her mantle of raven hair to her long, flowing skirts she sewn herself, to her bare feet, and scowled at the last.
“You certainly don’t look like one,” he finally concluded. “I would prefer it if you wore acceptable layers and your earasaid. You look fragile in those sheer skirts.”
He didn’t know her. He used to, but not anymore. Not since her mother was killed. “Looks can be deceiving.”
“So it seems.” He dismissed her with a wave.
She turned to leave, refusing to remember the happier, kinder father who’d raised her until she was ten and four, the year, unbeknownst to her at the time, he ordered her brothers to murder Kendrick.
She had suffered a life with him for five long years and was determined to get Elsie away from his poisoned ways of thinking and cold, callous tongue.
But for today…She stopped at the door. There was something she wished to do and she needed her father’s permission else she’d find herself locked away in her room for the next sennight. “May I take Elsie to the village? I believe the sun does her good.”
He raised a gray brow. “You think to know more than Ennis Kennedy, the physician?”
She folded her hands in front of her, her sling dangling from one, and stood her ground. “I know Elsie more than he does. As for knowing what’s best for her, Mother always said that laughter was good medicine.”
She held fast to her stoic expression, keeping a victorious smirk hidden. If there was ever anyone Allan Cunningham loved, it had been his wife. He wouldn’t disagree with anything his dearest Margaret had believed.
Charlie didn’t even have to continue. He would grant what she asked. She felt mildly guilty for using her beloved mother to get her way, but she would always do what needed to be done. “Elsie doesn’t laugh when she’s locked within these walls.”
He looked up toward heaven and pounded his palm on his thigh. “Margaret,” he lamented dramatically, “why did you leave me with such a sickly creature?”
Charlie turned away from him, hating how he felt about Elsie’s illness. To him, she was weak and a burden.
“Go,” he breathed out as if she exhausted him. “Don’t be out for too long.”
Charlie shut the door behind her, glad to be away from him and her brothers. Someday, when the villagers were safe from her father and Hendry, she would take Elsie away from this house. They would live alone in a small cottage somewhere near the water. But until then, there were things to be done. One of them being finding a cure for her sister’s breathing ailment. The other was even more impossible. Thinking of it, she prayed that the pouch of coins she’d hidden upstairs in one of her winter boots remained unfound until she could get out of the house tonight.
But presently there was another matter that needed her attention.
She hadn’t asked her father about his prisoner. The stranger hadn’t been brought into the house so he must have been taken to the stable—which was where she’d planned on going.
She wasn’t afraid to be near the Highlander. Her brothers would never have left him unbound. Not if he was possibly a Fergusson. Was he? If he was, she didn’t think he’d be candid about it since the only reason he would have come here was for trouble. She’d find out the truth if she could, and possibly save all their lives.
She wasn’t going to help him because she liked him. She didn’t know him. She sure as hell didn’t like rakes. They were the worst kind of men; versed in flowery words, they seduced, took what they wanted, and then left. She’d seen the effects of it firsthand. She didn’t want that kind of possible trouble to complicate her life.
If he was a Fergusson she should hate him the way her father and brothers did. But she didn’t hate the clan. She wanted to forget them. She did all she could to forget them. All but one.
She’d help because if this stranger was kin to Cameron Fergusson and her father and brothers killed him, she had no doubt that this time, retaliation would include the death of everyone in Cunningham House, not just her mother. If he was a Fergusson then anything that came next was her fault. Any act of aggression would lead to bloodshed for all, and now they were holding him prisoner! If he was not kin to her father’s enemy, then he had likely just wandered onto Cunningham land and was guilty of nothing more than having a fickle, foolish heart.
She’d help because it’s what she did, what Kendrick had always told her to do, follow her heart. Her heart told her to right her father and brother’s wrongs. To give back what they took and help whom they harmed. She wasn’t completely merciless, and she wasn’t fragile. Mostly, she wasn’t about to change now, no matter who the man in the stable was.
She found her sister sitting on the steps and finally smiled. “Told you I’d be done with him quickly,” she said with victory lacing her voice. “Do you want to ride with me to the muirs?”
“The heather muirs?” Her sister sucked in a slight breath while a faint smile hovered over her lips. “’Tis too far. Father wouldn’t approve.”
“I know,” Charlie said, her eyes sparkling in the candlelight. “But he won’t find out. I told him I was taking you to the village. He won’t look for us. Will you come?”
Elsie’s smile grew wide and she nodded.
Without waiting to ponder what she was about to do and perhaps talk herself out of it, she took Elsie’s hand and led her to the front door. “Come. I must see to one thing before we go.”
Elsie made no protest when Charlie led her out but paused on their way toward the stable.
“Are we taking horses, Charlie? Will Father notice if we—”
“I’m going to help a man who is inside. Stay close to me,” Charlie warned as they neared the old structure.
She felt her sister’s thumping heart against her back as they entered. Or was it hers? It didn’t matter. She’d promised Elsie something exciting. What was more exciting than danger that wasn’t truly dangerous?
Then again, if the stranger was a relative of Cameron Fergusson, he was dangerous indeed.