Her mouth twisted. Who was she trying to fool? The long ride, ache in her back, and lack of sleep were well worth the prospect of a little excitement. She wanted to retrieve her miscreant of a brother, of course, but if there happened to be a feast or two to celebrate Jamie’s taking of the important castle while she was here, she wouldn’t be too disappointed.
Upon learning that Archie had ridden out shortly before the messenger had arrived, Elizabeth had called immediately for her horse and gone after him. It wasn’t the first time she’d had to hunt down one of her half brothers and drag them back by the ear (fifteen-year-old Hugh was proving just as stubborn and muleheaded as other Douglas males). The difference this time was that she knew where Archie was going.
She did not consider it dangerous. What was left of English authority in Scotland had been whittled down to a few castles: Bothwell, Berwick, Jedburgh, Dunbar, Stirling, and Edinburgh. Bruce’s and Randolph’s siege blockades around the latter two castles, preventing the garrisons from leaving, made it the safest time around them in years. At least until June, when Edward II had threatened to march on Scotland again.
Nonetheless, she’d taken an escort, which was a good thing, as they’d seen a party of English knights on patrol east of Selkirk. Joanna’s eldest brother (another Thomas) was fighting with Jamie, but twenty-year-old Richard was one of the handful of warriors Jamie had left behind to defend the castle.
The men were a mostly unnecessary precaution. The English knew better than to venture into the “haunted” Ettrick Forest. It was said to be the lair of Bruce’s infamous Phantom warriors. The men were not phantoms, of course, but were extraordinary warriors. Their identities were cloaked in mystery, but as the sister of James Douglas, she had unique access to information. Listening at doors was definitely beneath her, but it did prove enlightening.
A second man at arms had been with her and Richard as well, but when they hadn’t caught up with Archie by the time they reached St. Boswell’s and the Newtun road, Elizabeth had sent him back to Blackhouse to inform Joanna of their plans to ride on to Roxburgh.
She frowned, thinking it odd that Archie had been able to evade them. At sixteen, her brother was more passion and impulse than skill and subterfuge. Richard had picked up his trail easily enough, but lost it at Selkirk. Assuming Archie would stop when it grew dark, they’d journeyed on until a few hours past nightfall. By that time they were more than halfway to Roxburgh, and she decided to bed down for the night and ride the rest of the way in the morning.
After handing off the reins to a stable lad, Elizabeth turned to Richard, who looked just as exhausted as she. “Find some food and get some rest. I’m sure Jamie will allow us a few days’ respite before we must return.”
She spoke with more confidence than she felt. She’d be lucky if her brother didn’t send her right back. Jamie would undoubtedly be furious with her for riding—anticipating his words—“halfway across Scotland” (which was an exaggeration as it was a quarter across at most) with one man for protection. But, as she intended to remind him, it was his own fault. She’d warned Jamie about Archie doing something foolish, and he was the one who’d left her in charge of their brothers while Lady Eleanor was visiting relatives in England. Besides, Jamie was the one who’d taught her how to ride, and he wasn’t the only Douglas who knew how to take advantage of the countryside.
She and Richard had stayed off the main roads, and except for the party of English they’d seen from a distance, they’d encountered nothing more dangerous than peddlers and pilgrims. The latter were all over these roads with the important abbeys of Melrose and Dryburgh so close.
Richard didn’t put up much of an argument. “If you are certain you don’t need anything else? I’d like to find my brother and hear all the details of the capture.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe I missed it.”
Elizabeth grinned. “You sound like Archie, but aye, go find your brother while I go find mine—both of them.”
He gave her a rueful grin. Like Joanna, Richard was blond and took after the Vikings who were undoubtedly in his ancestry. “I must admit the laddie impressed me. He’s more skilled at riding and evasion than I thought.”
Her as well. She frowned again, as Richard hurried off in the direction of what she assumed were the barracks. The celebrating must not have gone on too long last night—it had been a holy day, she supposed—because the yard was already bustling with activity.
The porter who had admitted them was finally coming out of his shock at her announcement of her identity. He offered to escort her to her brother, who was in the North Tower, but she’d declined. The fewer people who saw her brother lose his temper the better.
Elizabeth had seen many fine castles in her three and twenty years, but even including the magnificent palaces in France, Roxburgh was among the finest.
Situated on a hill between the Tweed and Teviot rivers, surrounded on three sides by a moat, it possessed a large dungeon and eight—she’d counted—towers. The curtain wall around the castle must be thirty feet high and eight feet thick. The castle was a walled city unto itself. The sheer magnitude of what her brother had accomplished became clear as she walked across the yard toward the impressive North Tower.
Dear Lord, how had he done it? She couldn’t believe her brother had taken this massive fortress with sixty men. Richard wasn’t the only one eager to hear the details.
A sound of banging grew louder as she approached the large circular tower. From the clouds of dust that greeted her as she entered, she realized Jamie wasn’t wasting any time. His men were already beginning the slighting of the castle.
Though she understood why it must be done, it was sad to think that an architectural masterpiece like this must be destroyed. It was one more sin to lay upon the feet of the English. It still hurt to think about her own home, Douglas Castle, which had been destroyed for the same reason—by its owner.
Three years earlier, Jamie had taken the castle back from the English and destroyed it to prevent it from being garrisoned by the enemy again. Losing her home in such a way had been horrible. She’d been hurt and furious with Jamie for weeks, but eventually she’d come to understand the reasoning behind it—even if she didn’t like it.
Standing in what must be a guardroom, Elizabeth looked around and saw nothing but men with shovels, hammers, and picks digging and tearing apart walls. Jamie certainly wasn’t meeting here with his men. She must have gone to the wrong tower.
She started to back away when something caught her eye. Or rather someone caught her eye.
Good Lord! The blood seemed to drain from her body and then rushed back in a strange, fuzzy heat that made her skin prickle. One of the workers had taken his shirt off while he labored. He was a big man, and very—very—powerfully muscled. He had his back to her, and every time he swung the tool in his hand—a hammer, she realized, when she could tear her gaze away long enough to look—his heavy, thick muscles rippled all across his torso. All across his broad shoulders, his narrow waist, and his bulging arms. Her breath caught as her eyes remained fixated on his arms. They looked as strong as battering rams; she wondered that he needed the hammer at all.
A rush of warmth spread to her cheeks at the primal display of brute strength and raw physicality. Her reaction didn’t make sense. She had no cause for embarrassment. She’d seen other muscular men without their shirts. Albeit none so . . . so.
But it wasn’t embarrassment, she realized, it was something else. Embarrassment didn’t heat other parts of her and make her body feel too heavy for her legs. Embarrassment didn’t hold her breath and catch her pulse. Embarrassment didn’t make her shiver.
Suddenly, realizing that she was gaping, she looked away. But something on his arm caught her attention and made her glance back. It was a red scar about three inches in length and half an inch in width on his left forearm. It was a scar you might get from being burned by a hot piece of iron.
She frowned, taking in details she hadn’t
noticed before. He was tall. About as tall as her brother at four or five inches over six feet, which was rare enough to be remarkable. His dark hair was cut too short to reveal any wave, but it was the right shade of almost black. The fluttery feeling in her stomach buzzed up her spine. It couldn’t be . . .
But indeed it could. He turned and an achingly familiar pair of piercing blue eyes pinned her to the ground.
Thommy! My God, it was him! Except that he looked so . . . different. Rocked, she felt her legs buckling and put her hand out to catch herself on a nearby post.
That was a mistake.
Thom didn’t know what was worse. That James Douglas had added one more incredible story to his ever-increasing arsenal of incredible stories and having to watch him bask in the glory, or being forced to do all the backbreaking work to clean up after it.
It turned out that brute strength was worth something after all, particularly when it came to slighting castles. Over the past two years, as castle after castle had fallen to the man they all called “the Bruce,” Thom had been prized indeed.
If he thought to escape the hammer by being a soldier, he’d failed. Doubly. Not only was he swinging one to take down walls, he was taking odd jobs repairing weapons when he could to make enough coin to purchase one of the four-hoofed fiends. A warhorse.
In between swings, he shuddered.
As if riding one of the Devil’s spawns wasn’t enough, he’d be expected to learn to fight on one of them. Christ, he had a hard enough time keeping his seat with two white-knuckled hands gripping the reins. It seemed even the most docile of beasts turned into a wild, bucking stallion when Thom was around. Even the small hobbyhorse he’d ridden here had tried to nip him.
By the time he’d arrived late last night, he’d been in a foul mood. A mood that hadn’t improved any on coming face-to-face with the hero of the hour. Hell, after what Douglas had done, probably of the year.
Decade.
Age, blast it.
There had already been some dramatic tales of trickery and subterfuge in the retaking of castles by Bruce and his men the past few years—including three by Jamie at Douglas Castle, Randolph (with James’s help) at Linlithgow, and Bruce himself at Perth Castle—but this one was the biggest, most important yet. Maybe more so because it had surprised everyone.
Even the Bruce.
The assault on the castle had been a rogue mission. Douglas had watched the garrison, seen an opportunity, and seized upon it.
With Edinburgh Castle under siege, the garrison at Roxburgh had assumed Bruce’s attention was focused in that direction. It was, but Douglas’s wasn’t. Taking advantage of the Shrove Tuesday “carnival”—the farewell to meat—Douglas and about threescore of his men disguised themselves in black cloaks, crawled on their hands and knees across a field to mix in among the grazing oxen, and scaled the walls with their newly invented rope ladders. Taken by surprise, most of the garrison had surrendered. A handful of men, including the Gascon keeper of the castle, Guillemin Fiennes, had attempted to take refuge in one of the towers, but a one-in-a-million arrow shot by the Highlander Gregor MacGregor had struck the commander below the eye as he attempted to peek out an arrow slit. He’d surrendered, and the garrison had been permitted to slink back to England in defeat.
Thom had lifted a brow at that. A brow Douglas had seen and asked if he had a problem with it. To which Thom had been unable to stop himself from sarcastically questioning whether all the larders had been full. A reference to Jamie’s most famous “black” deed, where he’d tossed the bodies of the English garrison into the larder of Douglas Castle and set it on fire.
Douglas had been livid, and for one moment, Thom thought they would come to blows again. Hell, after a lifetime of having to keep his thoughts to himself and deferring to the “lord,” he would have welcomed it. He wouldn’t last two minutes against Douglas with a sword, but when it came to brawling, he could hold his own with anyone.
Brute strength.
Aye, he had that, which is why it had grated when Douglas had ignored him and turned to Carrick to tell him where his men could find the hammers and other tools to get to work, while they went to the Hall to accept homage from the nobles and other landowners in the area.
Thom took another powerful swing with the blasted hammer against the section of wall and heard a crack. Good, it was finally loosening.
They’d been working on this section of the wall all morning, digging a deep trench underneath, and then loosening the stone with the hammer and picks. They were almost ready to set fire to the wooden supports. With a little luck, the whole thing would buckle and collapse into itself. But it was by no means exact. He just hoped he was far enough away when it all came down.
“Careful,” he said to one of the men. “You don’t want to hit that section too hard. It’s already weakened.”
The man had stopped to look at him, and his eyes widened at something over Thom’s shoulder. “If that lass is real, I’d give my left bollock to have her looking at me the way she’s looking at you. Is she yours?”
Thom looked over his shoulder and froze. The sight that met his eyes was so unexpected he didn’t have time to prepare himself. For one moment, he was that lad again who looked up at the tower and thought he saw a princess. And all the longing, all the admiration, all the feelings came rushing back to him in a torrential wave.
Ella.
He stiffened, remembering. Nay, not Ella, Elizabeth. Lady Elizabeth to him. That part of his life was over. “She is not mine.”
She never had been.
But what the hell was she doing here? In the middle of his work site, damn it! There were unstable walls everywhere; didn’t she realize how dangerous it was?
And why the hell was she looking at him as if he were a beast in a menagerie?
She started to sway as if she was woozy. Instinctively—as he’d done it so many times before—he lurched forward, thinking to catch her. But she was too far away.
He must have realized what she was going to do, because he was already running toward her as she reached out to brace herself on a post. A post that had been set up to support an unstable wall.
He shouted for her to get out of the way, but it was too late. In slow-moving horror he watched as a section of the wall gave way.
She stood there, frozen in horror as dust, rock, and debris came flying down upon her.
Oh God, the stone was going to hit her head. Heart in his throat, Thom leapt forward, shoving her harshly out of the way and taking her to the ground.
They landed hard, his body on top of hers, braced protectively to take the brunt of the falling stone. He grunted in pain as a sizable rock hit the edge of his shoulder. A few smaller rocks peppered his back, legs, and the arm that was protecting his head. Next time, he would remember not to remove his helm. But it was hot work, and he’d been getting sweaty . . .
Sweaty.
Ah, hell. All of a sudden he realized two things at once. The dust was settling, she was safe, and he was living out one of his fantasies.
He had a lot of them.
But one of his favorites, especially in those first few months after leaving Douglas, had been seeing her in that white gown again and running his dirty hands all over her. What was it about all that pristine perfection that made him want to mess her up a little? That made him want to take his big, callused smith’s hands and slide them all over that flawless, milky-white skin?
He imagined her soft, naked body under his, their skin hot and slick as he drove into her again and again. He imagined that icy cool facade hot and flushed with pleasure—maybe a little sweaty—begging him to take her harder, rougher. He imagined her fingers digging into his shoulders, as urgent moans came apart in a violent scream. And after, he imagined her strewn over him, naked limbs twisted in the sheets with a messy, well-tumbled look on her face.
She wasn’t wearing white, but he was half-naked, sweaty, and her fingers were digging into his shoulders. With her under him
, it was pretty damned easy to imagine everything else. He was thick and hard, and for one agonizingly perfect moment, he notched himself between her legs. Blood rushed and pounded. The urge to push—to thrust—was nearly overwhelming.
He raised his chest enough to look into her eyes. It was a mistake. Hers were filled with shock . . . and something else. Something that made him think—just for a moment—that he hadn’t been wrong. That what she felt for him was more than friendship. That she was just as aroused as he.
And that she was finally seeing him.
She cupped his jaw with one of her tiny hands, and it felt like a brand upon his skin. “You are always riding into my rescue, aren’t you, Thommy? How shall I reward you this time?”
It was a game they’d played as children.
A game, damn it. Nothing had changed. Except that he’d outgrown games years ago.
He was about to tell her exactly how she could reward him—explicitly—when he heard a familiar voice say, “Get the hell off my sister, you filthy bastard!”
Saying she was stunned was putting it mildly. For a moment, Elizabeth forgot how to breathe. The air was trapped in her lungs somewhere near her heart, which also seemed to have come to a screeching halt. Apparently her head wasn’t working very well either, as the first thought that popped into it wasn’t relief at not lying crushed under a pile of rocks, but the inane realization that he was handsome.
She’d blinked a few times, trying to clear the confusion. But it wasn’t a mirage. The piercing blue eyes, strong jaw, hard cheekbones, broken-more-than-once nose, heavy brow, and not-quite-black hair were all Thommy, and he was undeniably handsome.