Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(50)
Lachlan watched as the old chieftain turned to Angus after speaking to the blue-cloaked rider.
“My daughter,” Callum said, “would like us to offer you and your men an escort to Loch Fyfe.”
“My lady.” Angus swept down in a bow. “Your heart is very kind.”
“Don’t be fooled,” the old chieftain interrupted. “She knows it’s a call to courtesy that I cannot fulfill, for we are expected at the Lamonts’ by end of day. The only reason she makes the request is to delay the inevitable.”
Angus shook his shaggy head. “What on earth are you planning, old friend?”
“He’s planning to betroth me to a new husband.” The woman knocked back her hood to reveal the shine of her black hair. “Didn’t you know? My father is marrying me off to the Lamont devil.”
***
Cairenn would know the sight of Lachlan’s betrothed from a thousand miles. The woman had hair as black as the richest peat, with eyebrows like arched wings. She rode her horse as if she were born upon its back. Anger pulsed bright in the woman’s mind, an anger that kissed the woman’s cheeks pink and made her lips glisten in the dappled sun.
Leana.
In one buzzing instant, the woman’s name was in every man’s mind. The surging rise of their attention was like the crack of a wave against a cliff. It was the first strong sense of mental thought that she’d experienced since rising from her camp bed this morning. Even now, standing within a dozen steps of the chieftain and his men, all she could hear were the acid tones of the lady’s disdain floating over a collective murmuring of male admiration and lust.
Lachlan didn’t move. His stance hardened and stilled in a way that spoke of alertness. Bark bit into her side as she swayed against a tree, the fingers of one hand still caught up in Lachlan’s rope belt. She welcomed the solidity of the trunk, for it kept her from sinking to her knees and spilling the chewed-up remnants of this morning’s oatcake all over the ground. A screeching sound filled her mind and she mentally scrambled to seek the source. It took a moment for her to realize that the sound was her own heart screaming, now that she was forced to look upon the woman who would take Lachlan away from her.
Around her she heard voices, words being exchanged between the old chieftain and Angus, but it was all like the buzzing of bees beneath the mind-screeching that was increasing the sharp ache behind her eyes. Sweat gathered on her brow, though the morning was cool. The nausea, the headache, the clammy sensation…she was thirteen years old all over again, stepping on the shores of Galway.
A tinny voice spoke in her head, breathe, little Cairenn, breathe. Slowly. In and out. In and out. Her father’s voice coming to her from memory. She took the advice and it helped lessen the edge of the ache in her head and tamp down the nausea. Casting about for a center of focus, she found herself roped as if by the neck by the high, commanding voice of the daughter of Callum Ewing.
“Why the Lamonts, you ask?” The woman’s voice was punctuated by the scuffing noise of her mount’s hooves. “I’ll tell you since my father won’t.”
“Leana.” Callum’s voice held a warning.
“Angus O’Donnell has asked a question, Father,” she said, making the word drip with disapproval. “It would be uncivil to leave it unanswered.”
The woman’s dark eyes flashed as she wove her horse between the men, steering the fine beast with the lightest touch of her hand. Cairenn would feel this woman’s appeal even if she wasn’t half-drowning in the rising lust of the men around her, most of whom were widening their stances to better accommodate their thickening attraction.
“With the MacEgans gone,” the woman said, her dark gaze steady on Angus, “the Ewings need new alliances. We would go to the Campbells if we could, but they are already inbred with the MacGilchrists. We would go to the MacDonalds, but they are greedy and strong and they’d swallow the whole of the clan in one gulp. The Lamonts can be controlled, my father says. Lamonts, if they overreach, are small and weak enough to be defeated—”
“Enough, girl,” Callum snapped. “Get back to your place.”
She tossed her head just as the horse tossed his mane. “Have I said something untrue?”
“You do me dishonor.”
The woman’s mind grew dense with the black smoke of doused intent. The horse grew agitated between her thighs. With a kick, the woman urged the mount to leap forward with a dismissive swish of tail. She headed back to her place amid the riders, while every one of Angus’s men imagined plunging their cocks into her.
Lachlan would want this woman, too, she thought, hating herself for her own jealousy. He was a man like all others, and a man didn’t need a love match to want to sink himself into a woman. Such a creature had the temperament and the bloodline to breed strong children, determined sons, ambitious and mighty warriors, just what a chieftain needed to continue the ruling family. She glanced at the back of Lachlan’s hood, wishing for the thousandth time she could see inside his head to confirm or allay her fears. The only thing she could read was the stillness of his stance.
Then she noticed Angus glancing back at them, his brow raised in some unspoken question.
She tried to read that question, but Angus’s thoughts were slippery things, lost amid the waning pitch of her mind’s scream and the collective sexual musings of the men. By the movement of the folds in Lachlan’s hood, she knew Lachlan had said yes to that silent question. Then Angus turned around, his thoughts retreating from her as sure as if he pulled a basket of eels from her grasp.