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Chapter One

“H ang on, lass,” MacInness urged. “’Tis just through the wood.”

Shards of pain splintered throughout his bruised and battered body. His grip slackened. Ruthlessly pushing the pain aside, he focused on the woman in his arms and tightened his hold.

Ebony tresses lay plastered against her ghastly pale face. His throat closed. Was he too late? “Almost there,” he rasped.

Refusing to give in to his body’s clamoring need to stop and rest, Scots Mercenary, Winslow MacInness, clenched his jaw and his resolve. If he stopped now, he’d drop from sheer exhaustion. He’d not give the bastards the satisfaction of dying. Not now when sanctuary lay just across the open field.

Merewood Keep.

He crossed toward the Saxon holding. He’d been gone for months. Though he wished he’d stayed on in the Highlands, fate had brought him home and had him rescuing the woman he carried.

Would she make it? Duncan hadn’t. He must be losing his mind as well as his life’s blood if he was thinking about his dead horse.

Numbness crept slowly up his shins and his mind drifted. Not paying attention, he slipped on the wet grass, going down hard on one knee. The jagged edge of a rock tore into his flesh. Pain shot through him. Thank God he still had feeling in his legs.

“Hold!” a voice commanded through the mist.

Ignoring it, he placed one quivering leg in front of the other. If he stopped now, he’d never make it. He glanced down; she was still unconscious.

Too long.

The gash on his forehead began to throb in earnest, accompanied by the warm trickle of blood sliding down the side of his face.

The first arrow surprised him. He braced for another. The tip of the second arrow sliced through the bottom edge of his plaid before plunging into the soft earth between his feet. The feathered knock brushed against the top of his thigh and his manly pride.

“ Bollocks ,” he swore.

The lads are gettin’ better. He shifted his handhold freeing his right hand and gave the signal Garrick taught him when he had sworn allegiance and become vassal to the Lord of Merewood Keep. Raising his fist in the air, he waited a heartbeat, then touched it to his heart.

The third arrow sailed wildly over his head and a voice called out, “MacInness?”

“Aye.”

“We thought you dead.” Garrick’s shout was echoed by the grating of wood against stone as the gate opened.

“No’ yet.” His vision grayed as the blood oozing from a dozen places reached a crucial level. Darkness danced at the edge of his sight.

His legs wobbled, forcing him to his knees. The impact jarred the deep wound in his thigh. Razor sharp pain lanced through him as the healing wound re-opened. He gasped for breath.

“Let me help.” A disembodied voice said while questing hands reached for the battered woman still held protectively in his arms.

“Nay.” He fought off a surge of dizziness, pulling her closer to his heart.

“You cannot even hold yourself up. Let me take the woman.”

He focused his gaze and looked into his overlord’s eyes. “I canna,” he whispered half to himself. “She’ll die.”

He closed his eyes against the harsh reality. After finally saying aloud what he’d feared while making his way back to Merewood, anguish lanced through him. Somehow, he knew if he severed the physical connection of her limp body tucked against his, she’d let go of the last thread of life she clung to.

MacInness had never seen anyone so fragile looking suffer so much and yet live to tell of it.

“Winslow?” A soft lilting voice called to him through the fog of pain threatening to swallow him whole.

“Jillie lass,” he murmured.

“Aye,” Garrick’s wife answered. “You trust me, do you not?”

“What about—” Garrick started to protest.

MacInness opened one eye and saw the glare Merewood’s lady bestowed upon her husband, and the answering look of retribution reflected back at her. He almost smiled.

“With my life, lass,” he answered.

“And your friend’s as well?” she asked, all the while prying his stiff fingers apart, one at a time.

His gut clenched. “I wilna let her suffer.” He was too exhausted to care that his voice broke over the words.

“Let me ease her pain,” she urged. “I’ve brought my healing herbs.”

Garrick knelt down, waiting. MacInness slowly nodded to his overlord and then looked at Jillian. “Take away her pain, lass. I couldna.”

Jillian nodded and touched the tips of her slender fingers to his brow. MacInness sighed and gratefully gave up his hold on the ebony-haired woman in his arms and let the pain have him.

*

The voice stopped. Her mind struggled to work its way through the cobwebs filling it.

The soothing cadence that had helped her hang on since the brutal attack slowly faded until the last words she recalled were, “I’m sorry.”

Her body felt heavy, weighted down. She struggled against the need to sleep and fought to regain consciousness. Aches and pains assaulted her from different parts of her body. She felt as if she had been through a battle of epic proportions, battered about with a cudgel.

She slowly pried one eye open, and the room gradually came into focus. The wooden walls were planked…they looked new. She shifted and realized her head rested on something soft. She reached a hand around to touch the pillow; the movement releasing the faint but familiar scent of lavender. Turning her head to the side, she noticed a bowl and cloth lay on the table next to the bed, within reach. But the stool beside the bed was empty. A warm draft of air blew across her face. Instinctively, she turned toward the flames crackling in the brazier.

Sensing she was not alone, she turned her head. A woman stood staring out of the arrowslit, her delicate hand holding back the coarse cloth covering it. She did not know her. Her coloring marked her as Saxon or Scot with hair the color of fire and skin much too pale to be Norman.

Hearing the movement, the woman turned around. “Good,” she said. “You are awake.”

The words poised upon a shaft of pain before they lanced right through her head. She closed her eyes, fighting back tears of agony.

Three more knights emerged through the woods, bows drawn and battle ready. Strong arms lifted her off her feet and held tight, while her rescuer bounded over a log in their path. She wanted to look back to see if his horse was still alive, though she knew the enemy arrow had pierced its brain.

“This will help the ache in your head.”

She opened her eyes and the woman leaned over her.

She shook her head and her belly clenched in agony. Her brave rescuer was gone.

Had they killed him? Was she being held captive? Were they going to drug her to keep her quiet?

Her mother’s familiar warning arrowed through her aching head: Trust not the Saxons. She shook her head to clear it.

The red-haired woman took a step back and tilted her head to one side. The look on her face was confused at first, but then she started to smile. “I would never hurt a friend of Winslow’s. I trust him with my life, as you have trusted him with yours,” the woman paused, moving toward her once again.

“Won’t you tell me your name and where you are from?” The woman’s gentle tone soothed the frazzled nerves that quivered nonstop.

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She tried again, but this time a brutally sharp pain speared through her throat. She grabbed it with both hands and could feel the swelling. Fear enveloped her. Mon Dieu , she could not speak!

“You’ve hurt your throat,” the woman said. “Don’t worry, you’ll heal, if you’ll just drink some of the herbal draught I mixed for you.”

The realization that she could not speak swept through her like a blast of wind coming down from the north, chilling her to the bone. She started shaking.

The woman pulled the linen cover up to her chin and tucked it around her. “My name is Jillian,” she said softly, coaxingly. “This is my home, Merewood Keep, and you are a guest here.”

Her body was weak and in pain. The shock of her situation had waves of panic welling up from the pit of her belly. She was injured, far from home, but where was Merewood Keep? Her breaths became shorter and more rapid until her head started to spin.

The woman, Jillian, she remembered, took her quaking hands in her own and held them, quietly murmuring words in a foreign tongue. She had no idea what language it was, but some of the words sounded oddly familiar.

“I was taught to heal when I was very young,” Jillian explained quietly. “People would come from great distances just to have my mother lay her healing hands upon them.”

“I do not boast when I tell you that I, too, have that same ability,” she continued softly. “I will do all in my power to help you heal. Please, drink this,” Jillian handed the cup to the injured woman. “If you but rest, your body would have a better chance to heal.”

Afraid, but overwhelmed by pain, she took the cup and sipped. The taste was one she recognized as a healing herb. The soothing effects were immediate. She patted her throat, blinking back tears of frustration.

“I’ll send Winslow up, mayhap seeing him again will ease your mind.”

The door closed with a muffled click. Silence echoed through the chamber.

“My name is Genvieve,” she said again, still no sound emerged. One tear slipped past her guard, and then another. Her head and throat throbbed, and her body ached in more places than she remembered possessing.

Only one thought kept her from going out of her mind. She had to find the man who’d rescued her. Genvieve wondered if he would know this Winslow her hostess kept referring to.

Weariness engulfed her. Her eyes were growing very heavy thanks to the herbal draught she was given. She stopped fighting against the inevitable and let them close.

Her last conscious thought surprised her. Amber, her rescuer’s eyes were the same pale golden brown as her father’s best cognac. Smiling, she drifted off to sleep. But her sleep was not a relief. Genvieve tossed and turned while the nightmare held her in its cruel talons.

“You’ll come with us now!” Beefy hands wrapped around her wrists.

She was pulled off her horse…trapped…but not helpless. “Nay!” she shouted back. “My father—”

“Is in Abernathy with King William,” her captor taunted.

“My mother—”

“Will stop at nothing to keep you from joining your cousin and his Saxon slut!” Dupres’s sneer of triumph sliced her aching heart.

“Nay!” she shouted, denying it.

“SILENCE HER!” Another of her captors bellowed.

She turned to shout at him, but white-hot pain slashed across her throat. The man’s elbow hit it dead center. Before she could draw in a breath, pain exploded at the back of her head and blackness engulfed her.

She tried to claw her way free from her dreams but could not seem to open her eyes. Was it a nightmare, or did it truly happen? Mon Dieu , she was not sure. Fear of being alone, trapped in horrific dreams, and unable to speak, speared through her. She whimpered.

“Have a care, lass.” The cherished sound of the familiar, deep baritone crooned. “I’ll no’ let them hurt ye.”

The voice was back, promising not to let anyone hurt her, and she believed him.

Genvieve smiled, snuggled deeper into the warmth of his familiar embrace, and drifted off to sleep.

*

MacInness settled the now sleeping woman more comfortably in his arms. The stitches running the length of his biceps pulled, but he ignored them. His broken ribs burned like the very devil, but he pushed the pain aside. The lass needed him.

A warm sensation, in the vicinity of his heart, spread through his chest as a feeling of well-being slowly enveloped him. It was somehow right holding her in his arms. She fit. He was starting to feel protective and territorial where the lass was concerned. But as soon she healed, he would walk away and return to his position as vassal to Garrick of Merewood.

An empty, hollow feeling started to spread through him at the very thought of leaving the fragile woman cradled in his battered arms. ’Tis the same that I feel for my sisters, he tried to reason, but his heart whispered that it was so much more.

“She still needs me,” he said aloud. “’Tis all.”

The empty room mocked him. His heart pounded out its denial with each successive beat. He knew it was not just the need to bed a warm and willing body; what he felt for the woman in his arms was not mere lust. The breath snagged in his chest as he realized he’d felt these feelings for a woman once before. The Lady Jillian—the woman he vowed to protect with his life. Uncomfortable with the emotions churning in his gut, he leaned toward the bed intending to lay her down.

“Winslow?” The object of his thoughts called from the doorway, a tray perched upon her hip.

He turned and straightened at the sound of his name on her lips. His overlord’s wife stood there watching him with a small smile playing about her generous mouth. He groaned inwardly. She was his liege’s wife…nay, he amended, his friend’s wife. He had struggled long and hard to tamp down and conquer the feelings he had for her. It had been agony. She was a courageous woman, fair of face with a healing touch. She had captured his heart when she had been put under his protection while they had journeyed to where she wed his lord and friend, Garrick of Merewood.

His mouth thinned to a grim line as he recalled how he had hoped to change her mind and convince her to marry him instead. But it was not to be. In the end he had come to his senses and realized she did not love him. Though theirs was an arranged marriage, she truly loved the man she was to wed.

“Has someone slipped you a bit of unripe fruit?” Jillian smiled at him, her warm brown eyes mirroring the true depth of her unspoken concern.

He watched her walk toward him, careful not to upset the tray she carried.

“ Och nay, lass.” MacInness grinned. He could not help it; Lady Jillian’s purity of spirit still had the power to move him. The woman in his arms moaned out again in her sleep. He shifted her gently until her cheek lay flush against his bandaged chest.

Uneasy with the longing that suffused him, he moved to set her aside, but she did something that made a lie out of every protest he grumbled out. The raven-haired beauty rubbed her face against him, sighed, and settled into a deeper sleep.

The feelings she stirred within him were sharp, akin to taking an arrow to the heart. He rubbed beneath his left collarbone. He still bore the scar where an arrow had thrust into his chest. MacInness definitely knew how the pain would feel. His breath whooshed in past his tightly clenched teeth. The woman in his arms sighed again. Holding her close to his heart felt like pure pleasure.

He groaned aloud.

Jillian dropped the tray. It bounced off the rushes and clattered against the wood floor. She was at his side in a heartbeat, poking and prodding him, searching for God knows what.

“I dinna think ye mean ta kill me, lass.”

The change that came over the lady of the keep was instantaneous. All warmth receded, hiding behind the hurt in her eyes. “I thought you had opened the stitches in your arm,” she huffed. “And promised I would bring something for the poor woman to eat.”

Unnerved by her reaction, he teased, “Are ye thinkin’ to scrape it out of the rushes?”

She flushed to the roots of her hair and bent to pick up the spilled contents from the tray. Bits of broken crockery mingled among the rushes with steaming chunks of venison, potato, and onion. As he watched, Jillian scooped up the ruined stew, blowing on her hands the whole while.

“Shouldna ye wait ’til it cools, lassie?” He watched for her reaction. It was not long in coming.

Slim hands clenched into tiny fists, hitting her hips with a vengeance. From her hostile, feminine pose, she had the grit to glare at him.

God help him, he could not hold it in. He laughed aloud. The pain was like a fire searing his battered body. He had to stop to catch his breath.

A soft sound recaptured his attention.

“Hush, lass,” he soothed, stroking his fingertip across one eyebrow, then the other. Lush midnight lashes brushed against parchment-white skin, as her eyelids fluttered but stayed closed. He traced a line down the bridge of her nose with the tip of his battle-roughened forefinger.

“Hush now, Mo Cridhe. ” My heart, the endearment rolled off his tongue. The woman sighed and burrowed against him, placing a small hand against his heart.

“MacInness!” Garrick called from the open doorway. “Has Jillian told you yet?”

He turned slowly toward the still-angry woman. “Told me what?”

“Nay,” she whispered. “I have not.”

“Things have changed at Merewood,” Garrick told him.

MacInness stared at him and waited. Judging by the set of his overlord’s face, the news was not good.

“Out with it, mon.”

“Merewood has a new lord.”

“And a fine job ye’ve been doin’ of it.”

Garrick shook his head. “You do not understand.”

“Then ye’d best explain,” MacInness demanded.

“While you were in Scotland, the king decided to gift Merewood to one of his barons… Augustin de Chauret.”

MacInness felt his gut clench as his stomach began to roil, but he hid his reaction, nodding for his friend to continue.

“He has married my mother.” Garrick hesitated. “Things are well here.”

“But a Norman has control of your home.” MacInness couldn’t believe the man could calmly relate the news that he was no longer lord of the keep without emotion. “How can they be well?” MacInness demanded.

“Change comes,” Jillian said, moving to stand beside her husband. “One must accept it and move on.” When she reached out a hand to Garrick, he pulled her to his side.

MacInness nodded. “At least things are well with ye.”

Garrick smiled slowly. “More than well, have you seen the babe?”

“Nay,” MacInness answered. “I’ve been busy.” He looked down at the woman in his arms. “Have you no word yet of anyone missin’ a bride or a sister?” he asked, slowly standing intending to set the woman gently on the bed.

“Why do you ask?” Jillian prodded him, causing him to pause.

“She’s young, and beneath the bruised and battered skin, verra beautiful.” MacInness frowned. “Mayhap she was runnin’ away…” he paused and looked meaningfully at Jillian, “from an unwanted husband.”

Jillian ignored the intended barb. “I was not running away from Garrick, I was…” Her voice drifted off, and she looked at her husband.

“Not cooperative,” he finished, reminding them of her flight to London to meet with the king to try to save her home and gift it to Garrick in return for her freedom.

“I am needed in the kitchens,” she said in a strangled voice. “Call me if she wakens.”

When she left the room, Garrick pulled the stool over next to the bed and motioned MacInness toward the bed. Once MacInness laid the woman down on it, Garrick said, “Jillian tells me the woman cannot speak. We still don’t know who she is.”

“’Tis a wonder the blow to her throat didna break her neck.” MacInness shook his head. It was a miracle she survived.

Disbelief flickered in Garrick’s penetrating gaze “You saw it happen?”

He nodded. “But I was too far away. By the time I reached her, she had taken a blow to the back of the head, as well.” He hurt just remembering the brutal force of the blows and her one sharp cry of pain before she crumbled into a heap on the ground.

“We’ll find out who she is,” Garrick reassured him. “It won’t be long before she can tell us.”

“Aye,” MacInness agreed, though he had an uncomfortable feeling that the situation was already far beyond their control. Whoever she belonged to could be out searching for her even now. “What of your new duties?” he asked, changing the subject, not wanting to dwell on having to let the dark-haired woman go.

“Augustin de Chauret is a fair man.”

MacInness wondered why the new lord of the keep hadn’t been by to question him and asked, “Where is he?”

“In London.”

“And while he’s gone?” MacInness prompted, wondering if his thickheaded friend would tell him what he really wanted to know.

“He is content to share the duties involved in the running of the Keep.”

“But what of your men?” MacInness asked. “How do they feel about the Norman warriors in their midst?”

Garrick laughed and shook his head, “That would be a tale worth repeating over more than one cup of Merewood’s fine mead.”

MacInness sensed there was more that Garrick wasn’t telling him.

“I’d like you to see for yourself how well the two groups work together,” he said. “Now that they have stopped trying to slip a dirk between one another’s ribs.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

MacInness glanced over to the bed, satisfying himself that she slept peacefully. “I’m sorry to have missed it. Do ye still have a place for me and my men?”

“Need you ask?” Garrick placed a hand on the Scot’s shoulder.

MacInness smiled and shook his head. “I’ve yet to deliver the missive from Roderick,” he said slowly, looking for the sealed bit of parchment he’d tucked next to his heart.

“Since he is not here,” Garrick said, “I can only guess he was detained by a pretty face.”

“ Och , ye could say that.” MacInness drew out the telling, cursing his inability to just blurt it out. He did not know how Garrick would take the news that they were now related by marriage.

As if he sensed trouble, Garrick asked, “What happened?”

MacInness cleared his throat. “Yer youngest brother is a married mon.”

Garrick’s shock was palpable. “Roderick?”

“Aye,” MacInness groaned, “to a little bit of a thing with hair red as fire and temper to match yer darlin’ wife.”

Garrick’s eyes narrowed, “Handfasted?” he asked.

MacInness knew then that Garrick had reasoned out part of it. There was no point in keeping the rest from him, but he really was not up to arguing today. “Can ye no’ just read it, then?”

“Do you know what it says?” Garrick asked, his expression closed.

“ Och no, ye know I canna read.”

“Are we to be brothers, then?” Garrick asked haltingly.

MacInness admired his friend’s ability to reason out the situation. “I ne’er could keep anythin’ from ye.”

“’Tis me cousin, Alwyne. She’s lived with my family since she was a bairn. Her father, my father’s younger brother, died when she was just three summers, her mother when she was born.”

Garrick nodded, waiting for him to continue.

“If it wasna for Black Doughal’s accusations, questioning Alwyne’s honor, there wouldna been a need for her to marry.” MacInness could not help but smile, remembering the way young Roderick had stood up to Clan Gordon’s fiercest warrior. “Ye’d be proud of Roderick, he fought well.”

Garrick shook his head. “Mayhap we should skip the training and head right to the mead,” he groaned. “This sounds like a long-winded tale.”

MacInness turned back to the woman and the bed. Unable to stop himself, he brushed a lock of midnight hair off her forehead, stroking a fingertip along the curve of her cheek.

“Sleep, lass,” he whispered, then turned and headed for the door.

The soft sound of her even breathing soothed the worry roiling in his gut. Who was she? Where did she come from?

And God help them, would Merewood’s defenses be ready when her people came looking for her?

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