DARE THE WILD WIND (6 page)

"Does that surprise you?" he said, his coldly handsome face unreadable.  "I don't hang women for sport."

"Then why did you drag me here?"

"To be certain I didn't have to," he said flatly.

"And a
re you certain?" she challenged. 

"You've persuaded me of one thing.  If you are a Rebel, you're an amateur at intrigue."

Brenna was faintly stung by the insult.  "Everything I've told you is tr
ue."

His cat
gold eyes mocked her.  "Once your memory was jogged."

He released her, so abruptly Brenna all but lost her balance.

"I have no need to hang you, Brenna.  You won't ride out again from
Lochmarnoch Castle while I'm inside its walls."  

Dizzy relief washed through her.  Was he really letting her go?  Then anger smothered her first rush of gratitude.  He had enjoyed his inquisition, and she wouldn't thank him for crediting the truth. 

"And how long will that be?" she asked, smoothing her crumpled and disheveled gown.

He answered with a harsh, ironic laugh.

"Much longer than you'll like.  You'll be heartily sick of the sight of me before I take my leave."

Chapter 5

       Why had he let the defiant, redhaired baggage off last night with nothing but a warning?  Drake Seton watched Brenna Dalmoral thread her way through the crush of her brother's kilted and jewel
decked guests.  Bright silk billowed over the sway of her hoops as she paused to speak to a stout oak of a man with wings of white hair below a pink and shining pate. 

Though Drake couldn't hear the words they exchanged, the hulking Scot's face creased into lines of pleasure.  The aging chief of Clan Mackintosh was as bemused as any other male by her delicately
modeled features and lush distracting body.

The girl could be winsome enough when it suited her.  Before the banquet at
midday, Drake had observed that most of Malcolm Dalmoral's guests, male and female, paid formal courtesies to their host but warmed far more to his sister. 

Drake couldn't entirely fault the local barons for their cool manner toward Malcolm.  For all his support of the King, Drake neither liked nor trusted Malcolm Dalmoral.  He strongly doubted Malcolm's loyalty to the Crown had anything to do with a conviction that George the Second sat by right on the English throne.  Lord Dalmoral had only on
e cause.  His own.  And a finely developed instinct for survival.  Malcolm's late father had been pardoned by the King after fighting for James Stuart in the 'Fifteen, and Malcolm plainly feared he would lose his lands and all he possessed if a Dalmoral rallied to the Jacobite banner again.     

When the Young Pretender had gathered his forces late in August, Lord Dalmoral had condemned rebellion as folly to every chief in his corner of the
Highlands.  Many of his neighbors had listened despite their dislike of Malcolm, proof how great a mistake the rebellion was.  Despite the blinding charm of the young Stuart prince, he had gathered an army only half the size of the Rebel force that had fought, and lost, thirty years ago for his father.

Charles Stuart had left safe asylum in
France to land last summer at Arisaig against the wishes of his father and the advice of Stuart sympathizers in Scotland.  Worse, he had set out with only a handful of men, without Louis the Fifteenth's support.  

But an army had swiftly formed.  And won quick victories while George the Second was still abroad in
Hannover.  The English army had been largely unprepared, its ranks thin and full of raw recruits, commanded by aging generals.  But the Duke of Cumberland was only five and twenty, barely a year younger than Drake, and an able soldier.  Charles Stuart had yet to meet Cumberland in battle, and Cumberland's force numbered twice that of the Young Pretender's. 

The King's army had wrested the advantage from the Rebels, if none of the clans suddenly changed sides.  Drake had been sent to Lochmarnoch to prevent just that.  Drake and his escort of dragoons would be hard put to defend the castle against an onslaught of Rebels, but his presence today reminded the gathered chieftains that the Crown considered them important allies.  And, as his own aide
de camp Thomas Wolcott put it, that they were being watched.     

"His Highness the Duke plays a passable game of chess," Wolcott had said as they entered the hall.  "If the Pretender hadn't stirred up the
Highlands, none of these bare legged bumpkins would have caught sight of an English noble with the rank of an earl."

"I haven't noticed great awe of my rank," Drake said in a dry voice, the feel of Brenna Dalmoral's struggling body still fresh in his memory. 

"Not from that wild sister of his," Wolcott laughed.  "But more than enough from her brother."

Drake had joined in his laughter, but his exchange with the girl still rankled.  From the start, he'd had no plan to hang her.  He'd only set out to wring the names of her confederates from her.  And failed.  Brenna Dalmoral was either innocent or all too clever.  But she had done none of the things Drake might expect from a woman who played at treason.  Far from using her attractions to disarm him, she had recoiled at close physical contact with him, and told a story simple enough to be true.

They could have met by unlucky chance in the meadow below the ruined abbey.  And the man who shot his sergeant major could easily have feared Drake and the troop of dragoons meant to harm her.  Drake knew all too well that English troops had earned an ugly reputation in
Scotland.  He had seen genuine fear in the girl's face, despite her tart show of courage. 

Too often since the start of the Rising, the King's troops had ravished lone or unprotected women, whatever their rank.  Brenna Dalmoral could have thought he would use her and then cast her to his men.  She could be fully persuaded the man who shot his sergeant major had saved both her life and her honor.

But even if she and the man who defended her had encountered the dragoons by accident, there was still the question of why she rode out to meet him.  On that point, logic told Drake she almost certainly had lied.  She had adamantly denied he was her lover.  And at that moment, Drake half believed her.  Because it was what some part of him wanted to hear?  Even though it left only one clear alternative, that she was entangled in some Rebel scheme. 

Still, Drake couldn't shake the conviction that she was for the most part telling the truth.  Gratitude to the man who rescued her could cause her to protect him.  And she would have even more reason to shield a childhood friend.  Threatened by a hangman's noose, many a man would gladly have thrown Drake any bone.  He had rarely encountered Brenna Dalmoral's fierce brand of loyalty, even to the second man who allowed her to pass through the castle gates.

Without willing it, Drake found his gaze going back to her as she glided gracefully from one knot of guests to the next.  Today she wore a wide
skirted gown of hyacinth silk with beribboned sleeves trimmed in lace that cascaded from elbow to wrist.  Against the flame of her hair, the violet blue of the silk would have turned another woman's complexion to chalk.  But it only enhanced her high color and the creamy perfection of her skin.

Like most Scots, she was tall.
Unlike the sturdy work hardened women Drake had seen on the streets of Edinburgh, she was fine boned and delicately made, with slim hands as aristocratic as her features, and wrists as small as a child's.  But there was a lushness about her that would disturb any man this side of the grave.

Above a narrow waist, her breasts were high and full, and almost bared by fashion.  Despite today's concealment of panniers and yards of whispering silk, Drake had seen her rounded line of hip and thigh as she sat astride her horse, and felt the soft curve of her against him.  And her face was as distracting as her body.  Dark blue smoky eyes, widely set and enormous, looked out from under arched winging brows, and below a short alm
ost snubbed nose, a petal soft mouth perpetually and unconsciously parted, inviting an exploring tongue.

Drake shook himself back to reality.  He hadn't traveled to
Lochmarnoch Castle to speculate on the taste of a rustic girl's mouth or how she would behave between the sheets.  At court, beauties the equal of Brenna Dalmoral competed for the diversion of a night or a stolen afternoon in his bed.  Or women nearly her equal.  Drake had known women with features more perfect and bodies as tempting, but never one he found so disturbing. 

The difference was that Brenna Dalmoral was neither eager nor willing.  She only intrigued him because she gave no sign she coveted his title, or wanted anything more from him than to be left alone.  She had only dented his pride. 

Musicians struck up a lively country air on fiddles and the peculiar, jewel
crusted harp the Scots called the
clarsach
, and dancing began.  Brenna was quickly pulled out onto the smooth worn stones in the center of the great hall for the first reel. 

"I see, my lord, that you share the countryside's admiration for the sister of our host."

Drake turned to see Charles Godwin slide next him in the press of guests clearing the center of the floor.  Godwin was neither a true Scot nor
Highland born.  His title had come to him when the male line of the MacBeals had dwindled.  The son of a distant cousin, he had inherited the title at the age of ten, and traveled with his widowed mother from England to claim his estate. 

One of the few men who hadn't donned kilt and sporran for the occasion, he plainly looked on his noisy, jovial neighbors as his inferiors.  Rail
thin and sallow complected, he had a disagreeable grating voice.

"Lady Dalmoral is a handsome enough girl," Drake said noncommitally.

"Doubtless not the match of the beauties at court," he agreed with a servile smile, "but quite a prize in the county."

"Do you pay your addresses to the lady?" Drake asked idly, looking around for some rescue from the a
ll too observant lout.

"Along with too many others."  His voice betrayed the fact that his suit hadn't been well received.  "It's past time for Brenna Dalmoral to marry."

"Perhaps her brother delays for lack of a wife to preside at gatherings such as these."

"It isn't Malcolm who delays," Godwin said with a resentful twist of his mouth.

Drake couldn't hold back a short laugh.  "Then I pity you, Godwin, and the rest who trail in her footsteps.  From what I've seen of her, she's a willful little witch."

Drake half
expected the enamored Godwin to flare angrily inher defense.  Instead his eyes narrowed to slits as he watched her.

"She's all of that, my lord, and in need of sharper discipline than Malcolm exerts."

"Lord Dalmoral claims you as his boon companion.  Perhaps he can persuade the lady of the advantages of your suit," Drake suggested in an offhand tone, though he couldn't imagine the likes of Brenna Dalmoral willingly consenting to wed this crow of a man.

"She vows to wed no one until the Rising is at an end," Godwin said shortly.

"Oh, and what can be the reason for that?"  A round dumpling of a woman with a pert, double
chinned face broke in with a mischievous glance at Godwin.

"Do you recall my being presented with my husband, Lord MacFinnan?" she asked with a twinkle at Godwin's glare.

"Indeed I do, Lady MacFinnan," Drake responded with an amused bow over her hand.  She was one of the few guests who hadn't maintained an air of reserve despite their avowed loyalty to the King.     

"None of the ladies in the county could have guessed we'd have so dashing an ambassador from the Crown," she said with a half
motherly, half flirtatious dimpling of her cheeks.

"Such flattery is fit for men who rank higher than I do at court," Drake said with a laugh.

"Not so, my dear Earl," she said, smiling again.  "We Scots tend to think as ill of Englishmen as you do of us.  It's a welcome tonic to discover you don't have cloven feet."

"Lady MacFinnan, you go too far," Godwin interrupted.  "You disgrace your husband with such talk."

"Nonsense, Charles.  You're only out of sorts from staring at Brenna Dalmoral like a moonstruck calf.  You know well enough she's promised to Cameron MacCavan."

A stain the color of port wine crept up Godwin's neck to his overlarge ears.  "No longer, Lady MacFinnan," he snapped.  "Lord Dalmoral will have no Rebel for a brother
in law."

"Perhaps not," she answered, visibly enjoying baiting him.  "But I think Brenna will outwait Malcolm and even you."

Drake stood rooted and silent for a second.  Rage knotted in his chest.  The lying little cat.  She had gone to meet her lover.  And if she had, a force of Rebels lay close by.  They could mean to encircle
Lochmarnoch Castle with all the Loyalists in three counties inside, trapping the chiefs of the clans, extorting tribute and support from their none too reluctant clansmen. 

"Forgive me, Lady MacFinnan," Drake managed, savagely grateful the woman's remark had left Godwin too livid to speak.  "I have an errand to attend."