A Highlander for Christmas (11 page)

And for some reason the journey felt intensely … familiar.

~ ~ ~

Midnight.

Snow on a cold road. Wind that snapped the holly and jerked the twisted boughs of hazel.

’Twas a night for mischief and harm, had she but noticed. Yet the slender woman in gray worsted saw nothing save the rutted road before her as she tugged at her cloak, willing the miles before her to close.

But they did not. The road snaked ahead, twisting and dark. Too late the full sense of her danger became clear.

She’d been a fool to sneak from the abbey against her father’s will—and even more of a fool to attempt to return alone across the windswept downs.

Well she knew of the smugglers who plied their desperate trade from here south to the white chalk coast. But until now she had never thought they could do her a scrap of harm.

Until now…

Behind her the wind growled, tossing up dirt and pebbles. Her vision blurred as she tugged her old cloak tighter and prayed she would soon be safe at the abbey with the leaded casement windows locked and barred against the wind growling off the channel.

A branch sailed past, striking her shoulder, but she pushed forward. Brambles tugged at her long skirts, making her fight for every step. She had an hour more before the abbey’s high walls came into sight. And another quarter hour’s walkthrough the home wood after that…

And all for what?

Jewels. An hour of forbidden study with a master goldsmith from Amsterdam. How she had hungered for that knowledge. But no jewels were worth this sort of danger.

The pounding of hoofbeats came in a sudden lull of the wind. Low and fast, they raced from the north. What traveler would be abroad on such a moonless night?

No casual traveler. Someone on a darker mission, a hunter in search of prey.

The hooves drummed close, behind her now. Refusing to give way to panic, she caught up her dusty skirts and plunged into the deepest heart of the thicket, where no horse could travel.

And no grim rider.

It was but a minute’s work to sweep her cloak over her head and sink down within the spikes. And there she waited, watching the midnight road that led from Alfriston’s sleepy lanes.

In the end, they came not from Alfriston nor from the lonely coast. Over the downs they rode, across the barren hills dotted with skeletal trees. There were four men and four horses and they traveled at the gallop, like riders who knew well their way and equally well their prey.

Probably after a rich coach and a London merchant with gold sovereigns hidden within Moroccan leather panels. Not for someone like her. Her hands locked, trembling at her waist. Even if they looked, surely they would not see her here among the dark brambles.

The wind rose shrill over the low hills, carrying the rough end of a shout and words she did not understand.

In a sickening jolt of clarity, she realized these faceless men had but one prey.

Draycott’s daughter.

She curled into a ball, certain now that she was hidden by the black branches. The horses neighed and plunged to a halt but a yard before her.

No move to betray her hiding place, she thought desperately. No small sound or yet a single breath. Wind-tossed sand and dry, broken gorse tickled her nose and burned her eyes. Still she did not move.

Slowly the brambles parted. A silver foil probed the branches. Her cloak was picked up and sent flying, like great black crow’s wings carried on the wind.

She huddled amid the dead boughs, revealed now, but never would she stoop to show her fear. Highborn, she was, carrying the blood of kings, and her pride was bred to nerve and bone. Daughter of a viscount. Keeper of England’s finest old abbey, though she cared little for the titles.

“Out with you!” The words were harsh with foreign tones.

She glared. She locked her body in angry protest. Move she would not.

“Hast you ears? Come out or you’ll touch this fine steel.”

Trembling, tossed between fury and terror, she rose from her bower, her hair spilling moon-silver about her shoulders. “And you shall hang from a high rope, coward. My father will see to it—you and all the miserable dogs that bark at your feet.”

A flash of bright cloth. The drum of a curse in a tongue far older than Norman French or Saxon English.

The foil rose to probe her shoulder. There it remained with silent, capable menace.

She gave no thought to fear. Not to fear had she been bred, a Draycott daughter.

“If it’s gold and treasures you seek, then great fools you are. I’ve nothing of worth for you. No sovereigns, no trinkets. Not even a simple ring of ivory.”

The foil brushed back one silver-pale strand. Tall and unsmiling, the leader of the band moved close, grimmest of the four. “Naught of treasure, you say?” His laugh was hard as Sussex iron forged by night on the dark hills. “Naught of worth?” His laughter churned above the wind, setting the horses to a restless dance. “But I have you, my bonny lass. You with hands of silver and fingers of magic.
 
’
Tis
yourself I’ll take to ride before me this night.’’

They knew
she thought wildly
. Her name. Her family. Every detail about her.

She struggled to understand, to shape some angry protest. But there was no time. Cold ropes covered her wrists and a smoky length of rough wool bound her arms.

“I’ll fight you. You’ll rue the day you swept me to your saddle,” she shrieked. “You’ll never hold me. Not you or any other!”

And then the patterned wool blocked her mouth. She was tossed up before the leader’s saddle, caught like a chicken trussed as the grim band pounded north by night, just as they had come.

~ ~ ~

Panic swept through her.

Cold shadows on a sea wind. Rain tinged air and ropes bit at her wrists as she threw herself from the terror and the darkness, a scream on her lips. “
Never
! You’ll not hold me. Neither you,” she gasped, “nor any other!”

Outside the window, oak trees rustled in a gentle wind and clouds sailed like stately galleons across the sky. No storm. No rain.

A dream.

Maggie sat up slowly.
Only a dream
, she told herself, trying to fight the tremors at her chest.

A motor sputtered to silence. Hard hands touched her face briefly, then pulled away. “Maggie, what is it?”

For a moment she had the oddest sense of another face and another night. Of horses wild before the wind and wool that smelled of peat and heather.

She looked down, frowning at her fingers buried in the folds of the old tartan. No doubt that had been the source of her fears and foolish dreaming. Just a piece of cloth that had triggered some imagined scene from history.

Dreams
.

“Maggie?” Jared touched her chin, and his eyes seemed to darken at the slight contact. “What’s amiss then?”

For an instant, another world was before her. Enormous and complete it hung, vibrating in the rough slide of his voice.

Then it vanished. And she was Maggie, only Maggie. And he was but Jared—powerful, inscrutable.

She swallowed. “I was asleep.”

“You screamed. You nearly put your fist through the window.”

“
I told you it was
just a dream
.” She stared at the tartan, then wadded it up and shoved it behind her. “You didn’t have to stop.”

“I preferred that to us landing in a ditch.”

“Well, I’m over it now, whatever it was, so we’d better go.” She couldn’t bear being close to him, feeling the hard scrutiny of his eyes. She was too unsettled. “How much farther is it?”

“About twenty minutes. But we’ll stop for dinner in Rye first.”

Maggie
sat back stiffly. “It’s kind of you to ask, but can we forgo dinner? The jet lag must have caught up with me, because I’m suddenly exhausted. All I want to do is curl up in a warm bed.”

After a slight hesitation, he nodded. The motor sputtered, then purred back to life.

Maggie turned away, avoiding his keen eyes, uncomfortably aware of his concern and the nearness of their bodies even as she told herself she was nothing of the sort.

~ ~ ~

“Tell me who called.” Kacey Draycott studied her husband’s tense face in the shadows that filled the quiet study. A clock ticked softly beside a wreath of holly and painted gilt apples. In the two hours since Jared and Maggie Kincade’s departure, there had been four phone calls.

Nicholas frowned, facing the window. “Someone in Whitehall.”

“There’s something wrong. That’s why you wanted Maggie at the abbey so soon.”

“Never could fool you, could I? Not even that first day in the stables. I was so certain you were a reporter.”

Kacey touched his shoulder. “Don’t try to change the subject, my love. It involves Maggie, doesn’t it?”

After long seconds, the viscount nodded. “There’s been some news of Daniel Kincade…”

“Maggie’s father?”

Nicholas nodded. “A routine surveillance camera in the Singapore airport turned up the picture of someone who looked damned similar. The same thing happened in Sri Lanka a few hours later. It was near an outbound flight to England.”

“What are you saying, Nicholas?”

He took a hard breath. “That Maggie’s father might not be dead. And it is entirely possible that he’s headed toward London as we speak.”

Maggie stared up at the abbey’s great gray walls, stark in the darkness.

Moonlight touched the high parapets and glinted over hundreds of tiny mullioned windows.
Maybe you should pinch yourself,
she thought wryly.
Or maybe you should just sit back and enjoy the ride.

There was only one problem: Maggie had never been one for sitting back and enjoying anything. Life had taught her that pleasures were usually short and generally jerked away just when you started to enjoy them. Now she stayed on her guard, watching and seldom committing herself.

It was safer that way.

Jared took the bags from the car as she turned to sit on a jagged boulder that overlooked the sweep of the moat and the dark woods beyond. Against her better judgment, she relaxed, letting the beauty of the night slip into her soul. “Exactly how old is the abbey?”

“A Norman ancestor first claimed these hills through a grant from William himself. Since then a Draycott has always held this quiet corner of England for King and Crown.” The Scotsman’s lips curved. ‘‘Of course there was that period when these lands fell into the hands of a zealous religious order that required a strict vow of silence. The only sounds to be heard here then were tolling bells.”

“I wondered if it had actually been an abbey.”

“Absolutely. The monks were hard workers and built all the vaulted ceilings you see through the house. The current structure was completed around 1255. Cromwell’s men were all set to demolish it four centuries later, but one of Nicholas’s wily ancestors managed to convince them that it was a bad idea. In the 1790s more reconstruction was begun.” Moonlight played over Jared’s face as he studied the imposing walls. “Three wars have been planned here. Four American presidents have stayed here Two British monarchs have honeymooned here.” Mist trailed across the parapets, flowing white around the heads of carved animals.

“I’m impressed.” Maggie looked up at the dark walls. “There’s probably even a ghost or two hovering around the back corridors.”

“So it has been said.”

A cold wind played over her neck. “You’re kidding.” She studied his face uncertainly. “Aren’t you?”

“I’m afraid not. He is seen on quite a regular basis by visiting tourists. But you’re shivering. Let’s go inside.”

Maggie didn’t move. She fancied she could feel those ghosts now, lingering around her. In the same way, she could feel the love of generations of Draycotts who had cared for this beautiful old structure.