The Bodyguard Read online

  He took a breath and slid underwater, bringing his feet up where his hands could reach them, making himself work calmly and methodically. It took several tries before he was finally able to loosen the knots. Once his feet were free, Alastair worked on the ropes that bound his hands, but there was no way he could get the knots undone.

  Alastair heard a terrible crunching sound and turned to watch his ship sinking far beyond the shoreline. It must have hit some submerged rock farther out in the bay. He saw the three sailors heaving some barrels and a wooden crate over the side and then jumping in after them.

  “I hope you make it to shore,” he said, teeth chattering with cold. “I’ll make sure you hang, along with whoever hired you to kill me.”

  As he kicked his way toward shore through the choppy, icy sea, his mind kept returning to the question of who wanted him dead. The only person with whom he was in enmity was his brother. He could not believe Marcus …

  Then it dawned on him who might want him dead.

  After the Battle of Culloden, Alastair’s grandfather had been rewarded for his valor with Castle MacKinnon and the rich property that surrounded the stone castle in Scotland. The land and the castle, renamed Blackthorne Hall, had belonged to the Dukes of Blackthorne ever since.

  Six months ago a young Scotswoman, Lady Katherine MacKinnon, had laid claim to being The MacKinnon of Castle MacKinnon. She had challenged the original patent from the English king to his grandfather on the grounds there had been a living heir to The MacKinnon at the time the “conditional” grant was made. She had made no secret of her hatred for all things English, especially the Dukes of Blackthorne.

  Alastair had been contesting the woman’s claim through his London solicitor without much success and had decided to go to Scotland himself. He had been on his way to meet the apparent imposter when he was thrown into the sea.

  Perhaps Lady Katherine had decided to eliminate him in hopes that his brother would be less likely to fight her claim. If so, she was in for a rude surprise. He had no intention of dying. He would have his revenge on the lady and the three cutthroats who had done her dastardly work for her.

  As soon as he saved himself from the sea.

  Chapter 2

  Kitt was just about to fall asleep again, after being woken by the howling winds of a storm racing inland from the sea, when she heard the sound of straw crackling. Fearing an intruder, she had placed the seemingly innocent straw on the dirt floor of her bedroom to warn her. It was no comfort to be right. The danger was real, and to her chagrin, she was as frightened as any virgin of what she knew her clansmen intended.

  From the moment six months ago when Duncan had announced at a meeting at the kirk that she had been named The MacKinnon, her clansmen had opposed the idea of a woman as chief.

  “Rob should have chosen one of us to lead,” Ian MacDougal had ranted. “ ’Tis not proper for a wee bit of a lass to be telling men what to do.”

  “Aye. She ought to have a husband, and he should be chief,” another argued.

  “Would you deny my father the right to name his successor?” she challenged.

  “He was too old and sick at the end to realize what he was doing,” Ian retorted. “You should be married and holding a bairn in your arms, not standing before us giving orders!”

  Kitt fought back the grief that threatened to overwhelm her. She was very much aware of her empty arms, empty of the bairns she should have borne with Leith. But her father had refused to let her marry him, and then a tragedy had taken Leith from her. And then she had agreed to carry out her father’s foolhardy—and ignoble—scheme.

  Kitt saw the mutinous expressions of her clansmen and knew what she said in the next few minutes would make all the difference. She was their only hope, whether they realized it or not. She had not chosen the role of savior; it had been thrust upon her. And she had fought fiercely against her fate.

  “I wish to marry Leith,” she had said to her father a full year past. “We love each other.”

  “Pah! Leith cannot save the clan, lass. You must marry Blackthorne. ’Tis the only way to regain what was ours.”

  “I hate him, Father, as I hate all Englishmen. ’Twas bred into me, and I canna change it. Besides, ’tis a fool’s dream that the duke will even look at me.”

  Her father had searched her face with narrowed eyes, her wide-set green eyes set off by dark, arched brows, her plain, straight nose, the full-lipped mouth above a strong, square chin, and the raven curls that framed it all. “You’re every bit as beautiful as your mother. Mark my words, lass. He’ll have you.”

  “But I willna have him!”

  “You’ll have no one else,” he had said.

  Kitt had been as proud and stubborn as her father. She had refused to go along with his plan. In turn, he had forbidden her to marry Leith. But Leith had died … and she had given in to her father.

  “Would you be willing to choose a husband from among your clansmen, Lady Katherine?” Duncan asked.

  I will agree to anything temporarily … until I can put my father’s plan into action.

  “Aye,” Kitt said, her hands on her hips as she surveyed the motley crowd gathered at the kirk.

  “How shall I choose a husband from among you?” she asked. “What qualities should I seek in the man who will become The MacKinnon in my place?”

  Most of those gathered were married, but there were enough unattached men to give her a choice. She walked from pew to wooden pew along the aisle of the small stone church, feeling the heat of the Sunday afternoon sun through the colorful leaded glass windows, eyeing each eligible man as though she were evaluating a prime piece of horseflesh.

  “Fletcher is the biggest man among you,” she said, putting her hands around the enormous biceps of a redheaded, freckled giant.

  Fletcher blushed so hard his freckles disappeared, but flexed his muscles. “Aye, that I am.”

  “But he canna put two thoughts together in a row,” someone murmured.

  “That’s true,” Kitt agreed, joining the general laughter. She left Fletcher and crossed to a much smaller, much older man with dark, serious eyes. “Cam is the wisest.”

  “But he’s too old for breeding up an heir,” a voice protested.

  “A finely aged wine often performs best,” Cam countered.

  “Also true,” Kitt said, giving him an approving smile.

  “Cam cannot defend himself against an enemy, much less defend the clan,” someone else argued.

  “Birk is the best bowman,” she said, pointing to a lean young man. She turned to face a middle-aged, heavyset man. “But Angus can wrestle any man to the ground.”

  Then she focused on a man whose face was scarred from fire. “And Evan is the finest swordsman. How shall I choose between them? And if the choice is for my own sake,” she added, “why then, Tavis must be in the running.”

  Tavis flashed her a devilish grin. He was the most handsome, with thick brown hair and dark brown eyes and legendary experience with women.

  The men began looking at each other warily, realizing the choice might not be so easily made.

  “What if one of us could win your heart?” Ian said.

  Ian MacDougal was not so much clever, as shrewd. He often won his fights, but not always fairly. Kitt recognized him as a dangerous opponent. What he suggested supposedly gave every unattached male in the room a fair shot at becoming chief. But she didn’t trust him.

  “I am willing to be wooed,” she said cautiously.

  “Well, then,” Ian said. “ ’Tis settled. The man who wins the lady’s heart—the man she takes to her bed—becomes chief.”

  The man she takes to her bed. Kitt met Ian’s gaze and saw the threat there. The man who forced her to his bed, Kitt thought with a shudder of dread.

  Nevertheless, Ian’s idea had merit. It would keep her clansmen distracted while she settled her business with the Duke of Blackthorne. None could complain because it gave every man an equal chance in the contest. And
she was happy because it gave her the final choice of a winner, and she knew she would never choose any of them. Especially not Ian.

  “I agree,” she said. “Whoever wins my heart becomes laird.”

  Looking back to that day, Kitt realized it had been a mistake to pit her clansmen against each other. Over the past six months there had been numerous fights, and she had found herself in more than one precarious situation with an unrequited suitor. Her clansmen were increasingly impatient with her failure to choose one of them, and she had begun to fear they would soon take matters into their own hands.

  One of them finally had.

  The crackling straw had woken her in time to defend her virtue, but Kitt was frightened by the man’s boldness. He had broken into her house in the dead of night for one purpose—to rape her, to impregnate her, and thus win her consent to be his wife. It was a time-honored way of acquiring a Scottish bride.

  Easy, lass. You needna panic. You’ve the means of protecting yourself. The dastard willna succeed.

  She had been taught by her father to defend herself as well as any man. But Kitt was all too aware, as she lay huddled in her bed, clutching her grandfather’s jeweled sword, Hellbringer, to her chest and listening to the harsh, hushed breaths of the intruder, that she was merely a woman.

  Her hands shook beneath the covers and a trickle of sweat stole down between her breasts, despite the cold that created foglike dragon’s breath every time she exhaled.

  Kitt clutched the ancient broadsword tighter, feeling it slip within her sweaty grasp. Hellbringer had gone to battle many times and killed many enemies. This would be one more.

  She had no intention of giving anything away without a fight. Not the castle, not the land, and most certainly not herself.

  You willna convince your clansmen of your fitness to be chief by killing one of them, a voice inside warned.

  How else am I to protect myself?

  Choose a husband from among them, one you can control.

  Will the clan respect my choice?

  ’Tis what is necessary to buy time. Once you have chosen a husband, even if you never intend to marry him, this silliness will cease.

  There was nothing silly about the copper taste of fear in her mouth. There was nothing silly about the very real threat of rape.

  “Take that ye bandit, ye robber, ye rogue!” someone shouted.

  Whap! Whap! Whap! The broom met its mark each time the old hag wielded it, landing on the head and shoulders of the intruder. “Out. Get out!” Whap! Whap! Whap!

  Kitt sat up in bed, the sword clasped tight in her hand, watching with astonished eyes as her old nurse batted Ian MacDougal toward the door of the small cottage in the gray, predawn light. The giggle came without warning, as much the result of relief as the ridiculousness of the situation. Her laughter soon overlaid the painful grunts of the hulking MacDougal, as he retreated beneath the swats of the broken broom.

  “Moira, let him be,” Kitt said, grinning. “You’ve made your point.”

  “I’ll leave no such refuse in the house,” the old woman said, intent on forcing Ian from the cottage.

  “You need a husband, Katherine MacKinnon,” Ian shouted angrily, his large hands held over his head to protect himself from the old woman’s broom. “I’m as good a man as any.”

  Kitt’s grin disappeared as she rose from her bed, for the first time revealing the sword in her hand. She watched Ian’s eyes go wide as she grasped the claymore menacingly in both hands.

  “What do you plan to do with that?” he demanded.

  “Spit you with it.”

  Ian began backing out the door. “You’ll get your comeuppance, lass. If not me, some other man will claim your bed. ’Tisna right for a woman to lead men.”

  “Whether ’tis right or no, I am chief. Go home, Ian. The choice of husband is mine, and I will never choose you.”

  “I am the best man, lass. And I am not the only one who thinks to make your mind up for you,” he said ominously. “ ’Tis time to choose.”

  “Out, Ian. Get out!” Kitt said.

  As Moira latched the cottage door behind the man, she said, “Ian has a point. Though this was no right way to make it.”

  “Not you, too, Moira,” Kitt said with a groan as she backed up far enough to slump onto the bench before the fire. She was grateful for the large shirt—her father’s shirt—that hid her knocking knees. She doubted whether Ian would have been so quick to leave if he had known how frightened she was. “Father named me The MacKinnon. I have the right to be chief,” she told her nurse.

  “Having the right isna the same as it being right, my darling Kitty,” Moira said, crossing to take the heavy claymore from Kitt’s badly shaking hands. Lacking the strength to lift it onto the brackets over the fireplace where it normally hung, she leaned it against the stone hearth.

  “Ye should’ve expected it,” Moira scolded. “Ye didna have to be chief, Kitty. Ye could’ve refused.”

  Kitt sighed. Even Moira did not know the truth. She did not want the job; she had not been able to refuse it. “I know everything I need to know to be chief.”

  “Except how to be a man,” Moira retorted. “Ye are as God made ye, Kitty. A woman. ’Tis best ye pick a man to lead and marry him.”

  Kitt’s chin jutted. “I will prove my worth to them. It will simply take time.”

  But time was running out.

  Moira put the broom to use again, this time sweeping the straw from the hard-packed dirt floor in Kitt’s bedroom. She opened the cottage door to greet the rising sun as she brushed the last evidence of Kitt’s fear out the door. “They think ye’re bringing trouble on their heads by going to the English courts. Even yer father didna dare to claim the castle,” she pointed out. “ ’Tis folly, plain and simple. No good can come of it.”

  “ ’Tis mine.”

  “Hush, child,” Moira said. “Twasna cowardice that kept The MacKinnon silent before ye, but wisdom of a kind that comes with age and knowledge of his enemy.”

  “Aye. The enemy. The English. I hate them!”

  “ ’Twas yer own clansmen offered ye harm this day, lass, more’s the pity.” Moira set down the broom and grasped Kitt’s hands between her gnarled fingers. “Look at ye, still shaking, child. ’Tis only a matter of time before they discover the truth.”

  It was difficult to meet the wise old woman’s gaze. Though Moira’s skin was stretched tight over her facial bones by age, her gray eyes were still bright and sharp, and she saw far more than Kitt wished. “What truth is that?”

  “Dinna bother denying it, lass. I’ve seen ye pretending, but we both know ’tis only your pride that willna let ye admit—”

  “Admit what?” Kitt said in exasperation, yanking her hands free and pulling her feet up onto the bench to hug them to her chest.

  “Ye’re scared down to yer toenails. When yer father—God rest his soul—was here to protect ye, I didna speak my mind. But I canna keep silent now. Ye need help. Ye need—”

  “I willna marry one of them!” Kitt snapped.

  “Hush and listen,” the old woman commanded. “ ’Tis time ye—”

  Kitt shoved herself up and bounded toward the front door, her hands covering her ears. “I willna listen—”

  “Choose yerself a gille-coise.”

  Kitt whirled and stared. “A bodyguard? You think I should choose a bodyguard?”

  “Why not?” Moira retorted. “ ’Twould solve so many problems.”

  Before Culloden, the clan chieftain would have had a household that contained his courtiers, a bard and a seneschal, a piper and a sword-bearer, a quartermaster, a cup-bearer, a warder, and, of course, a personal bodyguard who stood fully armed behind the chair of his master.

  Those days were gone. The existence of such a household presumed the laird had a castle in which to house them. Castle MacKinnon had become Blackthorne Hall, and the chief’s advisors—and the chief herself—now lived in simple stone-and-thatch cottages on land surround
ing the castle, paying exorbitant rents to the detestable Duke of Blackthorne, sixth of that name.

  Kit found the suggestion tempting. If only there were some man she could trust. She shook her head. “Whoever I chose as my bodyguard would likely open the door to his friends and welcome them in.”

  “ ’Tis worth considering,” Moira said. “ ’Twould mean the end of night raids on yer bed, at least. And a body could get some sleep.”

  Kitt laughed. “I see. I need a bodyguard so you can get a full night’s rest.”

  Another knock on the door set Kitt’s heart to galloping again. She glanced at Moira, who stared at the door in alarm.

  “Not another one,” Kitt snapped, grabbing the basket-hilted claymore in both hands. “Two in one night is—”

  Moira crossed to the window and peered out. “Hold, child. ’Tis only Dara Simpson, Patrick’s wife.”

  Kitt breathed a sigh of relief and lifted the broadsword as though to set it back in its resting place. She suddenly began to tremble again. Her arms felt so weak she could barely hold the weight of the weapon.

  What’s wrong with me?

  Kitt set the claymore beside the hearth as though that was what she had intended all along and wiped the beads of sweat from her forehead with the sleeve of her father’s shirt.

  She stared into the fireplace, feeling the acid burn in the pit of her stomach. It was not her kinsmen she feared, but the revenge she must take on the Duke of Blackthorne. Marriage to her bitterest enemy. That was the crux of her father’s plan. Kitt wasn’t sure she could go through with it. She was afraid that in the end she would fail him … and her clan.

  Kitt took a shuddery breath and let it out. I will do what I must, Father. Somehow.

  She went to the door and opened it.

  “Come in, Dara,” she said with a hard-won smile, reaching for Dara’s hand and drawing her inside. “Sit and have a cup of tea.”

  “I canna stay,” Dara said, stepping inside and curtsying. She adjusted the woolen arisard around her shoulders and clutched it beneath her chin, but she was visibly shivering. “Patrick would beat me senseless if he knew I’d come,” she whispered. “But I dinna see who else I can ask for help. You’re The MacKinnon, whether Patrick likes it or no.”