Kiss of the Highlander

“To get to me,” he muttered grimly. They hadn’t drugged him this time. Rather—because Gwen was there—she’d been used as bait.

Frantically, he crammed his feet into his boots and grabbed his leather bands, strapping them on. In the Greathall, he stuffed blade after blade into the slits as he raced to the garrison.

Alone, my arse, he thought.

I’ll walk in alone, while my men sneak up behind them and destroy every last one of the bastards who took my woman.

Besseta cowered behind the lofty oak, watching the gypsies prepare to work the spell she’d commissioned. They’d painted a large crimson circle upon the ground. Runes she did not recognize marked the perimeter—dark gypsy magic, she thought, shivering.

The moment Nevin had departed for his morning stroll to the castle, she’d hastened from the cottage and crept through the forest. She was determined to see the deed done with her own eyes. Only then would she believe her son safe.

She narrowed her eyes, peering at her enemy—Drustan’s betrothed, who’d been plucked straight from his bed, she was fair certain, for the lass wore naught but a sheer nightrail. Soon the laird himself would arrive, the gypsies would enchant him and take him far away, to be interred underground, and her worries would be over. The gypsies had demanded extra coin to enchant the woman as well, forcing Besseta to pilfer from Nevin’s charity box. But no transgression was too great to save her son.

A few yards away Nevin watched his mother with a heavy heart. For some time, she’d been worsening, her moods growing increasingly erratic, her eyes too bright. She watched him ceaselessly as if she feared a bolt of lightning might strike him at any moment. He’d done all he could to allay her fears that Drustan MacKeltar might harm him, but to no avail. She was lost in terrible imaginings.

He murmured a soft prayer of thanks to God for guiding him. He’d awakened with a niggling foreboding, and rather than immediately striking out for the castle, he’d lingered behind the cottage. Sure enough, moments later, his mother had slipped out, wild-eyed, her hair mussed, half-dressed, pulling her cloak tightly about her.

When she’d scurried off, he’d followed at a distance. She’d crept to the edge of the forest, where it opened into a circular clearing at the edge of the small loch. Now he watched, deeply uneasy. What was his mother doing? What involvement had she in gypsy affairs, and what strange designs were etched upon the sod?

He scanned the clearing, stiffening when a small group of gypsies moved apart and one broke away from the rest, carrying a bound woman toward the crimson circle. It was the wee blond lass Nevin had seen about the castle of late. When the gypsy briefly glanced in his direction, Nevin ducked deeper into the brush, deeper into the shadows of the forest.

What ominous events transpired? Why did his mother lurk here, and why was a woman from the castle bound? What terrible things had Besseta gotten herself ensnared in?

Smoothing his robes, he reminded himself that he was a man of God, and as such had a duty to work in His name despite his slight stature and mild nature. Whatever was about to happen, it was clear no good might come of it. It was his responsibility to put a stop to it before someone was harmed. He began to step forth from his hidden vantage, but no sooner did he stand than Drustan MacKeltar, mounted on a snorting black stallion, burst into the clearing. He vaulted from his horse and, unsheathing his sword, stalked toward the gypsy carrying the lass.

“Release her,” Drustan roared savagely in a voice that sounded like a thousand voices. His silvery eyes blazed incandescently. ’Twas no normal voice, Nevin realized, but a voice of power.

Nevin ducked back again, blinking.

The gypsy carrying the blond lass dropped her as if burned and backed away toward the loch. The lass tumbled and rolled across the rocky sod, stopping a few yards from where Nevin stood.

And that was when all hell broke loose.

Besseta keened low and long as chaos erupted in the clearing. She wiped clammy palms on her skirt and watched in horror as mounted guards burst from the forest.

The gypsies, hemmed in by the loch at their back and guards on all sides, reached for their weapons.

Wrong, wrong, it was all going wrong!

She inched from the cover of the forest, creeping unnoticed in the tumult, toward the wagon that had been brought to cart off the laird’s slumbering body.

The gypsies were aiming their crossbows.

The guards were raising shields and swinging swords.

Men were going to die and blood was going to flow, Besseta thought, grateful that Nevin was safely in the castle working on his chapel. Mayhap rather than being enchanted, Drustan MacKeltar would be killed in battle. Not by her hand at all. Mayhap.