Love in the Time of a Highland Laird (A Laird for All Time Book 3) Read online

  The thought brought a sudden rush of reality and for just a second, despair gripped her. Breathing hard, she struggled to conceal her emotions, knowing that any sign of weakness would be a mistake in front of this savage man.

  Struggling to her feet, she backed away from the deadly arc of his sword as he swung it around with a haunting howl of rage and despair that exactly echoed the pain in her heart.

  Then he turned on her once more.

  “Bugger it all,” he growled and wrapped his fingers around her neck, squeezing until her face began to heat and her head pulsed painfully. “Where is he? I kent ye did something wi’ him. Tell me true!”

  Though she had no better response than before, she was spared the need to produce an answer when a shout drew his attention. Loosening his hold, he turned to another kilted man who was yelling from a rise not far away. She couldn’t understand him nor could she understand the response of her captor.

  But another appeared. Then another. And more until a small army of kilted men on horseback was riding toward them.

  “I must be away but I will hae an answer from ye yet, witch,” he ground out. “Ye’re mine ‘til then.”

  “No, no please?” Ignoring her protest, he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to where a massively terrifying horse was pawing the ground impatiently. “Y-you barbarian,” she yelled, trying to jerk her arm back before he freed it from its socket. Her face flushed, not with true anger but humiliation that ‘barbarian’ was the worst thing she thought to say.

  She stared back at the spot where the wormhole had been with pleading eyes. Futile eyes. She knew well enough from dozens of failed attempts that it was gone and that it would never… could never reappear in that spot again.

  Her fate in that regard was sealed. What remained of her future would be up to her and the wild man wrenching her arm from her body.

  Frustrated, she tried to slap his hand away, swung wide and landed a blow close to his groin.

  He hissed at the near-miss and glared down at her. “Hae a care, lass. If ye were tae land such a blow, I’ll for certs be showing ye how barbaric I can be.”

  With the menacing threat ringing in her ears, the brute smacked her bottom hard then gripped her around the waist, lifting her off the ground. He threw her facedown across the saddle and mounted behind her, bringing another hand down with a stinging blow to her backside to defuse any attempts to struggle.

  He kicked the horse into motion and the first compression of her stomach against the hard saddle brought a burning lump of acid to her throat.

  Oh, God. She fought the nausea the veritable Heimlich maneuver the saddle was generating. This certainly wasn’t like it happened in romance novels.

  Or at least she’d never read one where the heroine threw up all over the hero when she was in a position like this.

  Struggling, Al tried to lift herself into a more manageable position but her captor just shoved her back down with a hard hand between her shoulder blades.

  Hanging like that, black dots soon crowded her vision. Before long, she succumbed to horror and uncertainty, losing herself to the bliss of unconsciousness.

  Chapter 4

  The clink of metal against metal woke her. Lifting her head, Al tried to figure out where she was. Her hair, partially fallen from her now lop-sided bun during her inverted journey, obscured her vision.

  The metal clanged again when she lifted a hand to brush the tangled mass aside, and she gaped in horror at the iron manacle around her wrist.

  A metallic chill encircled her other wrist, and Al gave it the same appalled consideration as the first before turning her gaze to the huge man clamping her in irons.

  “Are you… are you actually chaining me up?”

  A swift glance took in the dark radius the circle of light cast by a single candle resting on a wooden bench nearby. Thick stone walls beneath her, behind her. The darkness beyond. Was she lying on the floor of a… a dungeon?

  Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply, trying to calm the panic rising swiftly from her gut, but no comfort was found in the stale odors of urine and abandonment.

  “Ye’re a bright one, aren’t ye?” her captor-cum-jailer drawled mockingly, lifting her from the floor and setting her on her feet.

  Taking up the length of heavy chain connecting her hands, he attached it to a ring set into the stone wall. Her arms were lifted above her head. Not far. Not painfully. But for a woman who’d never been in a dungeon… or put in chains, it was traumatic nonetheless.

  “Aye, I said I would hae answers from ye and so I shall ‘ere ye are freed from this place.”

  Despair clawed at her and Al shivered with dread. A period of unconsciousness had done nothing to make answers any easier to produce. Swaying on her feet, she wondered if another would do the trick. His behavior in abducting her had marked him as a savage, as the barbarian she had accused him of being. There was no chance that any explanation she offered would make him happy. Just as there was no chance he would understand even if she dared to answer with the truth.

  Drawing in another long breath, she rolled her shoulders under the burden of the heavy chains.

  “Och, lass, dinnae be thinking that heaving a magnificent pair of tits or wiggling a ripe arse will sway me from my course,” he growled in a husky burr. “I’ll be ha’ing my answers one way or another.”

  Puzzled, she followed his eyes downward, where her breasts were straining the buttons of her prim, green silk blouse beneath the parted lapels of her lab coat. Then she lifted her gaze back up to meet his fiery one. Her eyes widened at the appreciation she saw there.

  She’d been blessed with more tits and ass than any woman of just five feet should have, but her abundant curves draped in a lab coat didn’t usually garner the kind of male appreciation she saw in his eyes.

  Assuming she was reading him correctly.

  His gaze dropped once more before he glanced away and Al shivered, but for a very different reason this time.

  Yes, he’d taken note. A man who looked like that.

  Looking at her. Like that.

  Suddenly, the same savagery that had her quaking in her sensible heels and kept her from telling him everything he wanted to know was working against her in a way Al would never have anticipated.

  He’d shed the heavy jacket he’d worn before under the length of tartan draped over his shoulder, as well as his scabbard and sporran. She could see the deep tan of his skin straight through the thin linen of his shirt. Could fairly feel the muscles popping and bunching across his broad chest when he crossed his arms and glared at her once more.

  Oblivious to the physical awareness now setting her nerves on edge in a much different way than before, he fingered the lapel of her white lab coat then flicked at the edge of her laminated Mark-Davis personnel I.D. as if it would bite him.

  “If ye willnae answer one question, then answer me this. What are ye wearing? This outlandish jacket?”

  His question hardly registered, though she’d been rendered too speechless to even consider an answer. Perhaps she’d read too many romance novels, but there was just something about him…

  She’d always loved tales of hot men with bunches of lovely muscles wearing kilts. And this man was just that.

  Those novels were her secret passion. Fantasy and escape from the trials and tribulations of everyday life. But what else was there to do when she lived alone with no one but her cat for company?

  Horror struck and washed away the budding desire.

  “Oh, my God! Who’s going to feed Mr. Darcy?”

  “Darcy?” the man repeated, clearly puzzled by her response. The first coherent sentence she’d yet to utter, yet it was all obviously nonsense to him.

  “Are ye friend or kin to the Darcy of the West March? Are ye a Sassenach, lass?”

  Al had read enough novels to know that when a Scot—if that’s what this man truly was—asked you if you were a Sassenach in a tone bearing such disgust, the smartest recourse was
to respond with a resounding ‘no.’ The best she managed was a shake of her head.

  “Speak true for I shall ken if ye speak false.”

  “N-no,” she cried, tugging at the chain binding her as if she might be miraculously freed. The fight was as useless as thinking she might find a way home. “No, he’s my cat. Poor Mr. Darcy! He’s going to starve.”

  “A cat?” There was so much confusion in his voice, there could be no doubt she’d completely thrown him for a loop. With a finger, he lifted her chin and pierced her with a fiery gaze. “Ye weep for a wee puss? Och, if ye think the welfare of a wee animal is going to gain ye freedom from answering my questions, ye’ll be mightily disappointed. There will be nae escape for ye.”

  No, there was no escape for her. Al knew it without a doubt or a shred of hope. Fielding would never give a minute’s consideration to trying to find a way to retrieve her. Todd and Marti would be bound by their nondisclosure agreements never to breathe a word about what had happened to her.

  Best case scenario, someone might think to notify her mother of her ‘accidental demise.’

  But that was it. The most she could hope for. There would be no rescue. No knight on a white charger swooping in to save her.

  “No,” she said, drawing another deep breath to calm herself. “I know there will be no escaping this place. Or you. I’m a realist.” And a scientist mere steps away from a PhD in quantum physics. A depressing combination. Neither allowed for any wiggle room contrary to the facts.

  This was it for her. She couldn’t replicate the science to get back home. Barring any mystical fairy rings, enchanted Celtic stones or ancient gypsy magic she would never return.

  There was no point bemoaning her fate or casting about fruitlessly for a solution to a problem that was beyond solving. Al’s future was here in this place and time… wherever and whenever that was.

  She was on her own.

  It was a terrifying thought, but not a new one. Al had been on her own for quite some time. And had been alone for some time as well.

  She was only beginning to understand what being truly alone might be like. “No, believe me, I know I’m never getting out of this.”

  Poor Mr. Darcy aside, she had to consider her own future and unless she wanted that future to begin and end in a dark, dreary dungeon, she would have to make something happen like the bold, fearless heroines in one of her books.

  Though this was not at all what she dreamed it might be like in her own romantic fantasies…

  Okay, perhaps the hot kilted man before her.

  And perhaps the chains…

  Just a little.

  Chapter 5

  Keir regarded the curious female speculatively.

  He knew she feared him—as well she should—but for some reason, he didn’t think she was truly afraid of him.

  It made no sense as one contradicted the other. And if Hugh’s life wasn’t hanging in the balance, he might have the time to be more intrigued by this wee enigma. She was a rather fetching lass for all her oddities with her mussed blonde hair and scantily covered limbs.

  But he didn’t have time to let his baser nature interfere now, for his own life might be endangered as well. Following their victory at Culloden, the Hanoverian army would act swiftly to squash any lingering bravado the Jacobites might possess. They would be prompt in searching out Prince Charlie and taking prisoners of any they believed had supported his cause.

  From what he gathered from letters over the past few years, his father, the Earl of Cairn, had been outspoken in his support. They might think to arrest him… and by extension, come for Keir and his three brothers as well. Even if he hadn’t been in the country until only recently.

  It was an aggravating situation, made all the worse by Hugh’s inexplicable disappearance. All he had to go on was this woman.

  Whoever she was.

  And she was an oddity. A mystery. From her stumbling speech to her dress, there was nothing about her that made any sense.

  Keir hated mysteries. Whenever he came across one, he tore it down bit by bit until it was completely unraveled, comprehensible.

  He would do the same with her. The delicate shudders shaking her tiny body told him she was on the verge of becoming undone. He merely needed to push a wee bit harder.

  Fear was a strong motivator.

  “Ye ken I could beat the truth from ye. Aye?” he said softly, pacing closer and drawing his dirk from his belt. He slid the flat edge of the blade down the side of her neck, pressing the tip lightly against her jugular. Not hard enough to break her delicate skin but hard enough to make his point. “I could torture ye for it.”

  Another tremor racked her from head to toe but still she said nothing. Had he frightened her beyond words, he wondered? She was a bitty thing for all her bountiful curves. Meek. She might very well be cowed by his size.

  Or was it something more?

  * * *

  God, she was a hot mess.

  On the one hand, wallowing in utter misery for the hand fate had dealt her. The life she had worked so hard for lost. Her hopes and dreams gone. Her academic achievement all for nothing. Since that was where she had dwelt for most of her life, the loss was devastating.

  On the other hand there was terror. She had no idea what this savage man was capable of. He could skin her inch by inch with that sharp blade for all she knew. Dissect her piece by piece and have her for dinner. No one would ever be the wiser.

  No one was about who might even shed a tear for her demise.

  On the third hand—if she were allowed one—she was absurdly tantalized by what was happening to her. Not the potential for death and dismemberment, naturally, but by the far flung fiction of being thrown somewhere in time and landing at the feet of a man like this.

  For all his frowns and threats, her captor was dazzling. True, that cold blade across her throat brought visions of her blood being painfully spilt on the hard stone floor. Quivers of terror were winding up and down her limbs.

  But… yes, but. But she was also shaken by the thought of his rough fingers following the same trail in a far more tormenting, sensual caress.

  It was the stuff fantasies were made of, and being so much more pleasing than the reality of her situation, some part of her wanted to embrace it as such. That she couldn’t shake the thought left her on the verge of puddling at his feet.

  Not in a mound of trembling lust, but in mortification.

  Quaking, visibly no doubt, with that odd combination of fear, excitement, and humiliation, she flinched as his thick fingers encircled her neck once more. When the icy tip of the knife pricked at her throat, fear dizzied her and she might have collapsed into a heap on the floor if he weren’t holding her up.

  His breath brushed hotly against her ear. “I will hae my answers, lass. By any means necessary, so ye best speak now ‘ere something unpleasant befalls ye.” The words were a raspy burr but the threat was unmistakable. He was quite serious.

  But so was she. There was nothing she could say that would give him the satisfaction he desired. The where’s and the how’s would make no sense to a brute like this. Most likely she’d be tortured as a heretic for even suggesting such a thing. Though she wasn’t sure yet when she’d landed, it all had a very medieval, witch-hunty vibe to it that wouldn’t bode well for the truth.

  Still, holding her tongue on the matter wasn’t going to be enough for him. He shook her hard by the shoulders once more. “Tell me what I bluidy well want tae hear,” he boomed, bending her back until he was looming over her.

  Al was a petite woman. She’d spent a lifetime looking up at people. But until that instant, she’d never been completely overwhelmed by anyone. He was so massive, so muscular. He could snap her in half with those meaty hands without breaking a sweat.

  He could do anything, anything at all to her that he damn well pleased. She’d be but a gnat to be swatted away for all a struggle would be worth to oppose him.

  His eyes narrowed as if he co
uld read the thoughts running through her mind. Pushing away, he took a step back and raked his fingers through his shaggy locks. Some, but not all, of the anger in his eyes faded. “Bugger it, lass. Relax. I’m nae rapist if that’s what ye’re thinking.”

  Straightening, she shrugged, refusing to acknowledge the truth of her thoughts aloud. The marked violence of true rape hadn’t been at all what she’d been thinking. More like the impassioned struggle of an interrogation turned to a thirst for more than knowledge.

  Geez, she really had read too many novels.

  And a damned good thing he couldn’t truly read minds.

  “Ye ken, I am nae a barbarian ye think me tae be.” He flung the word she had used back at her.

  “Are you sure?” she asked, flinging her straggling hair over her shoulder with a toss of her head as if bravado could wash away the unseemliness of her thoughts. “Because it all looks pretty barbaric from here.”

  At her impudent sarcasm, her captor took a step back, regarding her with astonishment. His full lips compressed. “So, ye do hae spirit in ye, lass. I had wondered.”

  “There’s a whole lot going on here you’d wonder about,” Al shot back, surprising them both. In the normal course of her life, she was terrible with confrontations. It wasn’t like her to react aggressively in any situation. Especially one where she’d hardly been able to squeak out a word otherwise.

  “And I do. Unreservedly.” His quiet tone was the most reasonable she’d yet to hear from him. To her further surprise, he unhooked the chain holding her manacled arms above her head and gestured for her to sit on the bench. With weak knees, she slid the stubby candle aside and sank down. He retrieved a wooden chair from the shadows beyond the circle of candlelight and sat as well. “I wonder aboot ye. From whence ye came. Why ye’re dressed so… peculiarly?”