The Raider (A Highland Guard Novel) Read online

  “My father will kill you for this! He will see all of your rebel heads on spikes!”

  She nearly sighed with relief, hearing Roger’s voice—even if she wished that indelible Clifford pride would show more discretion in issuing threats to large, menacing-looking barbarians with sharp swords. Her too confident, thirteen-year-old intent-on-being-a-fearsome-knight nephew was going to get himself killed.

  Pushing her way past the last few fleeing villagers, she was at last able to see him. The Scot was still holding him by the neck, with Roger’s sword at his feet, having disarmed the youth rather than kill him. Thank God!

  “Let me go, damn it!” Roger thrashed around, pulling on the hand of the man holding him.

  “Let him go!” Rosalin shouted, echoing her nephew’s demands. Racing forward, she threw herself between them.

  She didn’t know which one of them looked more surprised. Beneath the steel helms she could see both sets of blue eyes widen.

  The rebel recovered first. “Get back, my lady,” he said, in the same surprisingly refined Norman French that she’d instinctively used. Although she was fluent in the English more typically used by people in the North and Borders, French was the language of nobles and the court. “I don’t wish to hurt you.”

  “Then let go of him!” she said fiercely, latching on to her nephew and trying to free him from the warrior’s hold.

  Her appearance incited a renewed frenzy in her nephew’s effort to free himself. Together they fought against the much larger warrior and struggled to free Roger from his vise-like grip.

  They almost succeeded. Roger saw just as she did that the warrior wasn’t going to draw his weapon, not with her there (apparently there was some vestige of chivalry even in barbarians), and they used it to their advantage.

  A fierce Viking game of tug-of-war ensued, with Rosalin trying to insert herself between Roger and the warrior. If his frustrated swearing was any indication—at least she assumed it was swearing from his tone, as it was spoken in Gaelic—their efforts were taking a toll.

  Finally, she freed Roger’s habergeon from the warrior’s grip (he’d been holding the mail shirt and not Roger’s neck as she’d thought) and was about to pull him free, when she heard a horse galloping up behind her.

  She turned and caught the heart-stopping, blood-chilling flash of an enormous shadow looming over her right before darkness smothered her. Instinctively she cried out and raised her hands to claw at the thing covering her head. It was coarse and scratchy and smelled of grass. Nay, grain, she realized. Barley.

  The vile beast had put a sack over her head!

  She fought to rip it off, realizing her mistake too late. She’d let go of Roger. Only for an instant, but it was enough. The terrifying shadow barked some kind of order in Gaelic, presumably to the warrior who’d been holding Roger, and an arm circled around her waist. At least she thought it was an arm, though it felt more like a steel hook. With her as the fish!

  She gasped, too shocked to scream, and in one smooth motion, he lifted her off the ground and none-too-gently slung her over his lap.

  Her ribs and stomach met the rock-hard muscles of his thighs with enough force to jar the air from her lungs in a hard whoosh.

  All at once the reality hit her. She was being abducted. Fear raced through her veins, setting off every primitive instinct inside her. To fight. To flee. To live.

  She screamed and thrashed about wildly in his lap, trying to get free, not caring that they were riding faster than she’d ever ridden in her life. She’d take her chances with the ground. It would be more forgiving.

  Her captor swore, the crude oath recognizable in any language, and one big hand covered her bottom to hold her more firmly against him.

  The shock of a man’s hand on such an intimate part of her body made every muscle in her body still.

  She forgot to breathe.

  She could feel the size of his palm, feel the length of every finger, as his gauntleted hand held the soft flesh. His grip was firm, not rough or threatening in any way, but still her blood went cold with terror.

  “Don’t move,” he warned in a low voice, the gravelly lilt of the Gael lending a shiver-inducing edge to his English. “You won’t be of much use to the boy if your head is splattered on the rocks.”

  Roger! Oh God, he was right. As desperately as she wanted to get away, she could not do so without Roger.

  But it wasn’t just the barbarian’s words that sucked the fight right out of her. It was also her sudden awareness of the part of him wedged against her stomach. The very big, very hard part of him that reminded her that for a woman, there were fates far worse than abduction.

  Every scary story she’d ever heard about the Scots picked that moment—the very worst moment—to come back to her. Rape, torture, and God knew whatever other hideous manners of death they might devise filled her head with ghastly images and made her do as he bade. For now.

  What the hell was wrong with him? Obviously, Robbie had neglected certain areas of late if the frantic wiggling of a woman—and an Englishwoman at that—was enough to get a rise out of him.

  It was bloody embarrassing. Shameful even. He shuddered to think of the shite he’d hear from MacSorley if he ever found out. Erik “Hawk” MacSorley could always be counted on to lighten the mood during the tense, dangerous missions of the Highland Guard, but Robbie preferred when it wasn’t at his expense. And Robbie, who hated all things English, stiffening like a lad with an Englishwoman would be sure to qualify.

  With so many willing Scottish women throwing themselves in his path, he had never considered looking south of the border. His reputation as the strongest man in Scotland fostered at the Highland Games over the years was not without its benefits. With the exception of Gregor MacGregor, whose war name of “Arrow” attested to his skill with a bow rather than his reputation as the most handsome man in Scotland, Robbie had more female admirers than anyone. Besides, if he’d ever seen an attractive Englishwoman (and right now he couldn’t recall one), as soon as she opened her mouth any spark of lust would surely die a cold, quick death.

  Hell, the woman strewn over his lap was probably old enough to be his mother if, as he initially suspected from the simple plaid, she was one of Clifford’s servants.

  His gaze fell to the hand that still gripped the surprisingly curvaceous and firm, plaid-covered bottom, peeking out from beneath the edge of the burlap sack he’d requisitioned from some of their spoils to drop over her head. He frowned, reconsidering. Perhaps not so old after all.

  Guessing what it was that had stopped her wriggling, he removed his hand. He was tempted to tell her that her fears were unfounded. He did not abide the rape of women, and God help the man in his command who thought otherwise. But he doubted she would believe him. And as he’d learned from fighting this war, fear could be a powerful weapon. If it kept her still until he could be rid of her, it would be worth it.

  And he planned to do exactly that—be rid of her—as soon as it was safe. Chancing a glance behind him, he saw that the English soldiers giving chase from the burning village were not too far behind. But that wouldn’t last.

  With the woman secure, he urged his mount faster across the flat fertile valley of the Tweed River. It wasn’t long before the ground started to rise and they entered the altogether different terrain of the Lammermuir Hills. The hills and forests of the Borders—like those of the Highlands—were Bruce territory. The English might control the castles, but the Scots controlled the countryside. The light, agile, and sturdy hobby horses Robbie and his men used had been bred for this type of terrain, and it wasn’t long before their English pursuers faded into the distance behind them.

  He slowed, but it wasn’t until another hour had passed, and they were deep in the forested hills, that he finally signaled his men that it was safe to stop.

  They needed to water the horses, and despite the fact that she hadn’t moved an inch since his warning, he was damned uncomfortable and eager to rid hi