Heat of the Knight Read online

  “Angus!”

  She was pointing, accompanying a voice that he barely heard. Langston shook his head to clear it, and pulled on the reins before they ran over the small, wizened-looking fellow. She was off before he was, and bending over the fellow at Saladin’s hooves. If that was her husband, she’d wed poorly, he decided.

  “Forgive me, lass. I dropped it.”

  “Where?”

  “In the bog. Over yonder.”

  “Not that! Where are you hurt?”

  “I’m na’ hurt.”

  “But we heard a shot.”

  “The pistol fell. It discharged. You should na’ run about with a loaded weapon like that, lassie. Think of the consequences.”

  “Angus MacHugh, I’m going to take the entire verse of Saint John and screech it into your ear! Do you hear me?”

  “I believe everyone can hear you,” Langston replied dryly. “Including the Highland Rangers we just escaped.”

  “Sweet Lord! What are you doing with the Monteith? Devil spawn! Get back! And take your devil horse with you!” The old man leapt to his feet and spat toward Langston.

  He was spry for his age, whatever that might be, Langston thought.

  “You ken what this means to us…to me?” The man called Angus was pointing at the woman, and then at him, and his voice warbled as he asked it.

  “I had nae other choice!” she replied, too loudly once again.

  “Nae Highlander worthy of the title consorts with a Monteith anymore. Especially this Monteith. He’s black as pitch. Blacker.”

  “Your regard warms my heart,” Langston said with an even drier tone.

  “He gave me a ride to save you!”

  “And as you can see for yourself, I’m right as rain. Or I will be once I’ve a dram or two beneath my belt, and…where is my belt, lass?”

  The girl opened her mouth to howl out what sounded like absolute frustration. Langston was on the ground, had his arm looped about her, pulling her up into his chest, and a hand over her mouth before she finished. She twisted. She kicked. She bit him. The pain and stunned reflex was what got her mouth free. It didn’t last.

  “Unhand me, you—you—!”

  He had her mouth again. “Rangers,” he hissed, the word stopping further struggle. With one arm about her waist, and the other crossing between her breasts, he felt every bit of her anger, fright, and indecision. And every bit of her womanliness. That was disconcerting. He knew what she was debating, too, and his lips twisted into a shaky smile. Her nearness was intoxicating, but she was almost more willing to pay the penalty to the rangers than to continue it.

  “Let the lass go. We’ll na’ trouble you further.” The Angus fellow had lost his bravado. He seemed to shrink in the process. Langston frowned.

  “I’ll unhand the lass if she’ll keep her voice low. These trees hide many a tale. They’ll hide us, too, but not if you announce where we are. Nod for aye.”

  At her nod, he released his hand, then both arms. She flung herself from him and stood, bent forward with her hands on her knees, panting. That was an even more impressive sight. The girl was gifted with every bit of curve and softness that the Lord could have provided. She was also flushed in the face, making the azure of her eyes more vivid and piercing, although it clashed with the orange-red streaks in her hair. It was a true shame she was already wed. Even with what Langston thought of the institution, he’d consider it, if the bride was her. He shook his head to clear it. Marry a Highland lass? he wondered. There wasn’t one outside the Monteith clan that would have him.

  “What do you want?” she asked when she had control of her breathing. There wasn’t one emotion on her face as she stood there asking it either. Langston folded his arms and considered her.

  “A graceful ‘thank you’ would be appreciated,” he replied, keeping his features as stone-stiff as she was hers.

  “I’d rather thank a snake,” she finally said.

  “Very well. An ungraceful, begrudged thanks, pulled from the depths of your gut. That will do,” he responded.

  She looked like that was what it would take. One side of his lip lifted.

  “Perhaps your spouse isn’t so stubborn. What say you, Angus? Will you say a proper thanks to me?”

  She snorted at his words, sounding like it cleared her nose. Then she caught her middle and held onto the merriment. Langston had never seen withheld laughter so vividly displayed before. He was beginning to think there wasn’t anything she did that wasn’t vividly and intensely done.

  “He’s not—I mean…we’re not…wed. He’s my uncle. Through marriage.” She was getting the words through wheezes of breath.

  “Where do I go to find him?”

  “Where do you find whom?” she asked, putting an emphasis on the last word.

  “Your husband. There must be some man on this continent capable of making you obey. So, where is he?”

  Her merriment died before his words ended, finishing off with several indrawn breaths held to the point of pain, before she let them out. She wasn’t looking at him with anything other than unveiled dislike and absolute disgust. Langston pulled back despite himself.

  “He’s beneath the sod at Culloden. Rotting beside every other Highlander that possessed honor and bravery and strength. Exactly where you should be,” she replied.

  Everything went completely solid, still, and quiet, and very focused. Langston swallowed. He raised himself to his full height before bowing mockingly to both of them. Then he turned and mounted Saladin before he said something he’d regret. The sound of his leather saddle creaking and the slight clink of his reins were the only breaks in the stillness. She watched him, and it didn’t look like she blinked the entire time.

  He knew exactly what he was going to do: the same thing he did with every other stiff-necked, pride-filled, arrogant, and judgmental Scot. He was going to make the MacHughs an offer they couldn’t turn down.

  Chapter Two

  Ornate, sealed, Monteith messages started arriving the very next day. Lisle sent every one back, unread, and once the emissary started leaving several of them behind, she resorted to putting them in with the smoldering peat they used for a cook fire, adding a strange odor to everything that came out of their oven. She’d have used a real fire to burn them…if she had one with which to do so. Building a fire took wood. Everything took something else; something that they didn’t possess and couldn’t afford. It was dire.

  She knew just how dire it was when the west hallway collapsed, sending a wall of rainwater into a hall where royalty had once walked, and waking everyone except the youngest lass, Nadine. That lass could sleep through a war, Lisle thought as she shoved her arms into the thick, woolen, unbending fabric making up the sleeves of the housecoat that doubled for indoor and outdoor use. There wasn’t anything else she could use. The trousseau that she’d spent so many years laboriously putting minute stitches in adorned her stepdaughters and aunts, unless it was of more use as a drapery or bed linen. That included every lace-bedecked, satin, and gossamer…

  Her thoughts stalled the moment her feet did. The hall roof had finally given into a rain that chilled and pelted and stole breath. She was experiencing all of it as she picked her way along the bricks and sod, the broken, rotted beams that had made up this section of the MacHugh ancestral castle.

  “Oh, my God!” The screech accompanied Aunt Fanny as she launched her skeletal, white, bridal-satin-clothed body through the rubble. It was Lisle that had to stop her headlong flight before she twisted an ankle, or worse.

  “Aunt Fanny! Stop that! You’ll injure yourself.” She was putting the same amount of volume into the words, but a mouthful of rain and wet hair muffled them.

  “The chest! Doona’ let it get the chest.”

  Aunt Fanny hadn’t much energy left in her body, and what she did possess, she’d just used. Lisle held to her and assisted her back, over chunks of indecipherable debris: an upturned chair—that was easy to identify—and what had once be
en a beautiful, grand tapestry depicting a faded, ancient battle that a Scotsman might actually have won, for a change.

  Lisle had to swipe a hand across her eyes to make out the safest path back to the broken-off eave, where a sleepy-eyed mass of MacHughs huddled. She was grateful for the coat, since there wasn’t much that could penetrate it, rain included.

  “Here. Take Aunt Fanny. Aunt Matilda? Come on, love. She’s distraught.”

  “Poor dear. Come along. I’ll get you a bit of spirits. It will do your body good, it will.” Aunt Matilda had an arm around the frailer aunt, and was trying to turn the woman away.

  “I canna’ go yet, Mattie. You doona’ recall it? I’ve got to get the chest. It’s priceless.”

  There was nothing priceless in the entire castle. Lisle looked back over her shoulder at wreckage that glimmered in what light was available.

  “What chest, love?” Aunt Mattie asked.

  “The war chest. Laird MacHugh’s personal effects. You remember it?”

  “Calm yourself. There was nae chest in that entire hall.”

  “Was too! It was in the deacon’s bench! She’s got to get it! I canna’ rest if she does na’ get it!”

  Her words ended on a wail, and they’d just gotten her over an illness that had lingered for months. Lisle set her hips and her shoulders.

  “If there’s a deacon’s bench in there, I’ll find it. I promise. Get to the fire—” Lisle stopped her own words, but it wasn’t soon enough. All the MacHughs were shivering and rubbing their hands over their arms, and hugging each other, and she’d just reminded them all of it. There wasn’t a stick of wood worth burning in the entire place. There hadn’t been since early spring. She swallowed and turned back to the mess that used to be the west hallway. There was wood now, once it dried out enough to burn.

  “Angus!” she shouted, but it wasn’t necessary; he was already at her elbow.

  “Aye, lass?”

  “Get me something to lift…this.” The pause came as she stumbled over a rain-soaked piece of something, ripping her coat, splashing everything else, and jarring her knee against a beam, paining her enough to make her cry aloud. She didn’t. She’d learned years ago that crying, sobbing, and self-pitying didn’t do much, except gain one a sore throat and an aching head, and sometimes both.

  “We’ve na’ got anything like that. If it had a use, we sold it.”

  “Then fetch the ladder!”

  “We’ve got a ladder?”

  Laughter was bubbling in her throat now, taking the place of any desire to cry. “You were using one to pretend to clean the rafters just this morn, Angus. When you thought I wouldn’t know you were actually running about, trying to discover where I’d hidden your pipes.”

  “I—? My pipes? Oh, bless me, lass, you’re right. I’ll be back directly. Directly. That ladder’s na’ much good, but we can use it for leverage and such.”

  “And I dinna’ hide them in the rafters, Angus!” She shouted it after his retreating back. He didn’t hear it. None of the others did, either. Those still interested in watching had gathered blankets about themselves, covering over the remnants of Lisle’s French-inspired trousseau they were wearing. She sighed and ran her hands along her hair, plastering it to her head with the motion. It was easier to see that way. It was actually a good thing her husband, Ellwood MacHugh, the last laird of the MacHughs, had filled his nursery with nothing save daughters. God alone knew what she would have used to clothe a boy.

  Angus was back, sending her stumbling several steps backward with the awkward way he held what was their ladder. They’d already bartered off the serviceable one, just as Angus had said. There was nothing left. The villagers wouldn’t take credit anymore. She couldn’t afford wood to cook and warm them, or flour to eat. They were almost reduced to eating barley soup without even barley in it.

  All of which made it strange that she sent every unbidden letter from the Black Monteith right back, unopened. The last time, Nadine had tears in her eyes at her stepmother’s stubbornness. They didn’t know what it contained. She did. Monteith was buying up land and property at an amazing rate, accruing his own personal kingdom. The MacHughs would rather starve to death before taking one thin shilling from the man.

  The ladder wasn’t but six feet in length, maybe seven. Lisle eyed a promising-looking beam, draped over with pieces of thatch and what looked to be plaster, and some of that old, worn-looking tapestry. Of course, it could be anything else, but in the rain-blurred night, that’s what she decided it would be.

  She was actually grateful it was night. This might be enough to make her sit down and wallow in self-pity, if she actually saw it in the light of day

  “What are you standing about for, lass? Let’s get to rescuing the war trunk so we can find a spot to dry out in!”

  Lisle gained as many slivers in her palms as there were calluses and cracks, but she had the thing beneath the beam, and then she was shoving on it. Nothing happened. She tried putting her entire body weight on it, testing the ladder’s tensile strength. That got her a bit of sway to the pile of rubble, and a groaning sound that transferred from the wood along her palms and into her spine.

  She went back down. The stack leaned back, an inch or two from where it had started. She only hoped this chest, that Aunt Fanny was desperate to own, was beneath this chunk of old roofing and decayed beams. Someone should have taken the time and funds years earlier and redone some of the castle. Maybe then, when there were only MacHugh daughters alive to inherit it, there might be something left to inherit.

  Lisle was being stubborn. She should open the Monteith missive, sell off the lot for a whole bunch of his dishonorable gold, and buy them a smaller place; one with some land worth farming, or raising sheep or cattle, or anything that might bring some coin into the family coffers, rather than sending all of them flying out in the opposite direction.

  She took a deep breath and launched herself onto the ladder again. The beam swayed up, dangling pieces of unrecognizable debris, and she kicked with her feet to get it to move a little farther this time before she came back down. The ladder did the same creaking motion, although the wood in her hand shivered along with it, but when she came back down, the beam had moved, and none the worse for it. She was almost in buoyant spirits the third time she tried it, absolutely amazed that something she was trying was working.

  “Good work, lass. I see it. I ken what she wants now.”

  “What?” Her teeth clenched, and the word was whistled through them as she jumped up again, bruising her ribs a bit with it, and gathering even more slivers in her palms.

  “The MacHugh war chest. It’s hid in the deacon’s bench. If it’s what I think it is, I know why the woman will na’rest without it. It’ll contain the family Bible. That’s what she wants.”

  “What…why—?” Lisle held herself up, kicking her feet with a swinging motion, and moved the beam another good foot to one side. Her query didn’t make much sense with the amount of air available to her to use on it, but he understood it.

  “I said, it contains the family Bible. All the history. All the names. All of them, lass. Every hero. Every chieftain. Every Celt.”

  “I mean, why are you keeping it in the west hallway, buried in a deacon’s bench, and being nibbled on by rats?” She didn’t pause through the entire sentence, because that would mean she’d have to suck in more air, and every breath was so laden with rain mist, she might as well be swimming. That also meant she had to wait before coming up for more air.

  “Because the chapel’s lost to us, years past.”

  That much was true. It was already roofless, and full of ghosts. No one went in there anymore, even the ones pretending to be religious. That was all right with her. She hadn’t managed to get on her knees and say one prayer since leaving the convent school what felt like years ago, but was actually only one.

  The Sisters would be mortified. That was all right with Lisle, too. She did her praying standing up; she hadn’t ti
me for any other way. Such was the punishment for being in the midst of one problem or another since becoming a MacHugh, and God wasn’t listening, anyway.

  She scrunched her lips together, launched herself up onto the ladder’s edge, and swung her legs back and forth easily this time, since the beam’s weight was putting her higher off the floor than before.

  The ladder was offended, and the wood was telling her every bit of it, as it shuddered and groaned in her hands, making it impossible to hang onto for any amount of time. Her own arms were stiff, and her elbows locked, and the shaking of her perch loosened her grip and weakened any kind of hold.

  “I’m coming down, Angus!” She was trying to shout it in warning, because he’d ducked beneath the mass of tapestry-draped beam, and she couldn’t stay aloft much longer.

  He was dragging something, and not about to let go.

  “Angus!”

  The wood creaked loudly, drowning out her voice, but the old man was scuttling out without the chest, and glaring at her like it was her fault as he sat there, his hands about his knees in the damp and decay and mess of what had once been a glorious hallway.

  “You dinna’ give me enough time, lass! Try again. And stay up longer this time!”

  “The ladder’s not going to hold, Angus. We’re going to have to leave it for now.”

  “We canna’ leave it. The women will na’ rest.”

  “They’ll have nae choice. We can fetch it on the morrow.”

  “You doona’ understand. That book’s full of heroes!” He yelled it up at her.

  “Well, they’re all dead heroes, Angus! Dead!” She yelled it right back.

  “That does na’ change it, lass. You doona’ understand. You were too long in that foreign school. It’s worrisome.”

  “Anything I am is worrisome to you. You’d best start changing your tune, or you’ll have to do it without your blessed bagpipes in future. That’s what I’m for thinking.”

  “You’re threatening me with my own pipes?”