Highland Velvet Read online

  It wasn’t easy to wait. She was dressed long before it was time. For a moment she stood over the bed, caressed the pillow where Stephen usually slept. “Soon, my love, soon,” she whispered. Once there was peace between the clans, she could hold her head up before Stephen again. Maybe then he’d think her love was worthy of having.

  It was easy to slip out of her room. She and David had often, as children, sneaked out to the stables, sometimes to meet Tam or one of Tam’s sons. Rab followed her down the worn stone steps, sensing from his mistress the need for quiet.

  Roger Chatworth stepped from the shadows as quietly as a Scotsman.

  Bronwyn nodded to him curtly, then gestured Rab to be quiet. The dog had never liked Roger and made no secret of it. Roger followed her along the steep, dark path. She could feel the tension in his body, and more than once he grabbed her hand to steady himself. He clung to her and stood still until he got his breath.

  Bronwyn tried to conceal her disgust. She was glad she now knew that not all Englishmen were like this one. Now she knew there were brave, courageous men like her husband and his brothers. They were men a woman could cling to and not the other way around.

  Roger began to breathe easily once they reached the mainland and the horses. But they couldn’t speak until they were out of the valley of MacArrans. Bronwyn led them around the valley by the sea wall. She went slowly so Roger could steady his horse. The night was black, and she led by instinct and memory rather than sight.

  It was close to morning when they halted on the ridge that overlooked her land. She stopped in order to allow Roger to rest a moment.

  “Are you tired, Lady Bronwyn?” he asked, his voice shaky. He had just been through what, to him, was obviously an ordeal. He dismounted his horse.

  “Shouldn’t we go on?” she urged. “We aren’t very far from Larenston. When my men—”

  She stopped because she didn’t believe what she saw. Roger Chatworth, in one swift, fluid motion, took a heavy war axe from his saddle and struck Rab with it. The dog was looking at its mistress, concerned more with her than Roger, and so reacted too slowly to miss the lethal blow.

  Instantly Bronwyn was out of her saddle. She fell to her knees at Rab’s side. Even in the dark she could see a great gaping hole open in Rab’s side. “Rab?” she managed to gasp through a thickened throat. The dog moved its head only slightly.

  “It’s dead,” Roger said flatly. “Now get up!”

  Bronwyn turned on him. “You!” She wasted no more energy on words. One instant she was on the ground, and the next she was flying through the air, her knife drawn and aimed for Roger’s throat.

  He was unprepared for her action and staggered backward under the weight of her. Her knife blade cut into his shoulder, barely missing his neck. He grabbed her hair and pulled her head backward just as she brought her knee up between his legs. Roger staggered again, but he held on to her, and when he fell to the ground, he took her with him. She jerked her head to one side and bit him until he released her hair. When she was free, she charged him again with her knife.

  But the knife never made contact because four pairs of hands grabbed her and pulled her away.

  “You took long enough!” Roger snapped at the men holding Bronwyn. “Another minute and it might have been too late.”

  Bronwyn looked at Rab, silent on the ground, then back at Roger. “There was no message from Kirsty, was there?”

  Roger ran his hand across the cut she’d made in his shoulder. “What do I care about some damned Scot? Do you think I’d deliver messages like some serf? Have you forgotten that I am an earl?”

  “I had forgotten,” Bronwyn said slowly, “what you are. I had forgotten the way you attack a person from behind.”

  They were the last words she spoke for quite some time, for Roger’s fist came flying toward her jaw. She was able to move to one side quickly enough that he clipped her cheek instead of smashing her nose as was his aim. She crumpled forward in an unconscious heap.

  When Bronwyn woke, she had trouble knowing where she was. Her head pounded with a black fury that she’d never experienced before, and her thoughts were disorganized. Her body ached and her mouth was immobile. She gave no more than a few attempts at thought and went back to sleep.

  When she woke again, she felt better. She lay still and realized that half of her pain came from a gag around her mouth. Her hands and feet were also tightly tied. She listened and felt and knew she was in a wagon, thrown onto a heap of straw. It was night, and she knew she must have slept through the day.

  There were times when she wanted to cry from the pain of not moving. The ropes cut into her, and her mouth was dry and swollen from the gag.

  “She’s awake,” she heard a man say.

  The wagon stopped, and Roger Chatworth bent over her. “I’ll give you some water if you swear you won’t scream. We’re in a forest and no one could hear you anyway, but I want your word.”

  Her neck was so stiff she could barely move it. She gave him her word.

  He lifted her and untied the gag.

  Bronwyn knew she’d never felt anything so heavenly in her life. She massaged her jaws, wincing at the bruised place Roger’s fist had made.

  “Here,” he said impatiently, thrusting a cup of water at her. “We don’t have all night.”

  She drank deeply of the water. “Where are you taking me?” she gasped.

  Roger snatched the cup from her. “Montgomery may tolerate your insolence, but I won’t. If I wanted you to know anything, I’d tell you.” Before she could stop looking with longing at the cup he’d taken, he grabbed her hair, tossed the half-full cup aside, and replaced the gag. He shoved her back into the straw.

  Through the next day Bronwyn dozed. Roger threw burlap bags over her to hide her. The lack of air and movement made her lightheaded. Her senses drifted about, and she was in a state of half awareness, half sleep.

  Twice she was taken from the wagon, given food and water, and allowed some privacy.

  On the third night the wagon stopped. The bags were taken off her, and she was roughly lifted from the wagon bed. The cold night air hit her as if she’d been thrown into icy water.

  “Take her upstairs,” Roger commanded. “Lock her in the east room.”

  The man held Bronwyn’s limp form almost gently. “Should I untie her?”

  “Go ahead. She can scream all she wants. No one will hear her.”

  Bronwyn kept her eyes closed and her body limp, but she worked on regaining consciousness. She began to count, then she named all of Tam’s children and worked at remembering their ages. By the time the man placed her on a bed, her mind was functioning quickly. She had to escape! And now, before the castle could settle into a routine, was her best time.

  It was difficult to remain still and lifeless as the man gently untied her feet. She willed blood into them, using her mind instead of moving her ankles. She concentrated on her feet and tried to ignore the thousands of painful needles that seemed to be shooting through her wrists.

  The gag came last as she closed her mouth and moved her tongue over the dryness in her mouth. She lay still, her mind beginning to race as the man touched her hair and her cheek. She cursed his touch but it at least gave her body time to adjust to the blood that was once again beginning to flow.

  “Some men get everything,” the man said with a wistful sigh as he heaved himself off the bed.

  Bronwyn waited until she heard a footstep and hoped the man was walking away. She opened her eyes only slightly and saw him lingering by the door. She turned quickly and saw a pitcher on a table by the bed. She rolled toward it, grabbed it, and slung it across the room. The pewter clattered noisily against the wall.

  She lay still again, her eyes open only a slit, as the man rushed toward the noise. Bronwyn was off the bed in seconds and running toward the door. Her ankle gave way under her once but she kept going, never looking at the man. She grabbed the handle on the heavy door and slammed it shut, then slipped th