Tender Feud

He lifted his gaze, impaling her with a look. “You, Miss Campbell, have the right to sit still and keep your tongue between your teeth, nothing more.”

His scathing tone grated on her nerves, but she had no chance to reply as he turned and barked, “Ewen!” One of his men rode forward instantly. “I want you to ride back and find every last piece of cloth,” Raith ordered before addressing Katrine again. “If you’re so anxious to part with sections of your nightdress, I’ll be obliged to remove it entirely.”

Katrine gasped. “You wouldn’t dare!”

The sardonic look mocked her. “See if you can manage to act like an exemplary hostage for a few hours then, without putting us to this confounded trouble.”

Lachlan’s threat was more violent. “Ye try something like that again and I’ll thrapple ye.”

Katrine, suspecting that “thrapple” meant something fatal, lapsed into fuming silence as the small party got under way once more.

This time, however, Raith rode behind his prisoner, where he could keep a keen eye on her. He had definitely underestimated her resourcefulness, he reflected, glancing with exasperation at the scrap of lace in his hand. He should have known she would possess the same measure of deceitful cunning that her clan had in such abundance. And to think that back in her uncle’s study he had actually felt drawn to her. For a dangerous moment he had felt the urge to pull her into his arms, to cover possessively the trembling lips that were parted in fear, to discover the sweet secrets her slender body promised. At least discovering her identity had instantly crushed his unwanted attraction.

Raith grimaced with self-contempt. A Campbell with English blood in her veins. There was no more treacherous a combination. No, his reaction had only been male lust, the kind any man would feel when pressed so closely against a well-shaped female in a less-than-adequate state of dress. And the spirited response that had roused his interest in the first place was no more than an indication of a vicious temper.

Her hair should have given him the clue. The fiery curls tumbling around her face should have warned him that she was no quiet, well-mannered lady like the gentle girl he had once married. Nor was Katrine Campbell a beauty. Yet her fine skin stretched over high cheekbones held a luminescent glow, almost a radiance—

Abruptly breaking off his reckless thoughts, Raith scoffed silently at himself. His late wife would have been shocked to hear herself compared to a flame-haired Campbell virago. Katrine Campbell was a shrew and an exasperating nuisance, no matter how bonny she might or might not be, no matter how she managed to affect the parts of his anatomy he couldn’t control. But for the time being, until he could be sure her kin wouldn’t retaliate against the Duart MacLeans for this evening’s work, until Argyll reconsidered his outrageous increases in feu-duties, he was stuck with her.

She was stuck with him, Katrine thought miserably at nearly the same moment. Raith MacLean was a thief and a villain—a cruel villain, threatening to divest her of her nightshift—and at the moment she was powerless to do anything about her predicament.

Katrine sighed, admitting temporary defeat. Not that she would cease her efforts to escape, of course. But for the time being she would conserve her energy and limited resources and try again when the odds for success were greater.

The odds, however, did not improve as the long night progressed. Katrine soon grew weary of simply holding her eyes open, and more than once she caught her head drooping. Dragging her chin from her chest, she would jerk herself upright and swear to fight such lapses in willpower. Yet some time before moonset, she dozed off, her shoulder sagging against Lachlan.

It was pitch-black when the chestnut suddenly came to a halt. Sensing the lack of movement, Katrine groggily roused from a restless sleep and realized she was propped against Lachlan’s massive chest. She bolted awake then, and found herself staring down into a pair of dangerous, midnight blue eyes. Raith MacLean was standing beside the chestnut, emanating an impatience she could feel.

“We’ll wait here for Ewen,” Raith informed her as his hands reached up to clasp her about the waist.

Katrine tensed, disturbed by the warm feel of his long, hard fingers. But when he lowered her to the ground, she forgot about her discomfort upon the discovery that her weak knees wouldn’t support her. With a soft cry, she fell against him, just as Raith started to step away. Katrine clutched at him in a desperate attempt to maintain her balance and came in full contact with the hard length of him. Her breath caught on a ragged gasp as a feeling of danger coursed through her. Lithe-limbed maleness. Raw strength. Bold virility. Her heart started thudding so violently she was certain he could feel its hammering beat.

His lean body had gone rigid at the impact, and though his hands instantly came up to steady her, she had no trouble sensing that he would rather be anywhere than here with her barely clad body pressing so intimately against his taut-muscled one.

He waited till she had regained her balance, then dropped his hands immediately. Her heartbeat still abnormally rapid, Katrine glanced up at his face, unreadable in the darkness.

“You can sit there on that rock.” His voice was grim, unfriendly, at odds with the warmth his body had momentarily offered her.

“What rock?” Her voice was still husky with sleep and her tone was more than a little curt. How did he expect her to see when the night was as black as his hair? Looking beyond his right shoulder, she made out the outline of a flat boulder some half-dozen paces away. “How do you expect me to get there? I can’t walk with my feet tied.”

Raith thought about lifting her in his arms. But he was still burning from the previous moment, still conscious of the feel of soft, full breasts and firm, slender thighs, and so he wisely decided not to repeat the mistake of touching her so intimately.

Instead, he drew his dirk and, ignoring Katrine’s startled gasp, bent down to slice away her woolen bonds.

He didn’t even need to warn her not to run, for she no longer had the energy. Besides, where would she go on foot in the dead of night, with her hands tied and no food or water? She would likely become lost and starve to death.

Like an old woman, Katrine inched her way to the flat rock he had indicated and sat down. Every bone in her body ached, and she was so tired she could have curled up on the hard, cold surface and gone instantly to sleep. Except that it was too chilly to sleep. The temperature had dropped drastically during the night, and the cold was seeping into her bones, adding to her discomfort.

Shivering, Katrine struggled to draw the plaid more tightly about her. Raith MacLean must be cold as well, came the unbidden thought. Or perhaps not. She remembered her fingers clutching more than a shirt, something thick and dark. He had donned the black frock coat he had worn earlier, she decided. That was why he blended in so well with the night.

Searching for him, she peered through the darkness. He must have gone to sit with the other men, who had gathered some distance away. She couldn’t see them but could hear them murmuring in quiet undertones.

This might, Katrine decided, be a good opportunity to ease another discomfort she was feeling. Slipping off the boulder and inching around to the far side, she fumbled with her nightshift and plaid, and managed to relieve her pressing need.

When she returned to her rock, though, despair returned in full force and her shoulders sagged. Aunt Gardner was right, Katrine thought morosely. She never should have glorified the romantic nonsense Papa had drummed into her head.

Yet how could she not when her earliest memories were of the Highlands, of magnificent crags and untamed people? She had been eight when she left Scotland, old enough never to forget the colorful stories she’d heard at her father’s knee, stories about the brave, rugged men who populated the Highland hills, of feuding clans with their fierce loyalties and hatreds—hatred of the English in particular.

Her father had fought with Clan Campbell on the side of the English during the Forty-Five, as the rebellion of 1745 was called. But when he’d been killed in the battle of Culloden Moor, Anne Campbell had returned home to England with her three young daughters to live with her married sister.