He’d dragged himself out of that pit of despond eventually, but by then the damage was done. What frightened him now was the fear that he was about to slip back into that place again. It had been over six years since Cat was taken from him. He was resigned to being alone for the rest of his life, but it was unfair to his boys to let his misery dictate their lives as well. Callum’s actions last night had shocked him to the core.
The dogs had wandered off, and he was so sunk in gloom he didn’t register anything until the blow between the shoulder blades sent him stumbling forward onto his knees.
A cry of “Aiyee!” behind him was all the warning he got before he was knocked flat on his face by another blow and something heavy landing on his back. If he’d been less hungover and more awake, his reactions would have been quicker. As it was, he lay stunned with the breath knocked out of him for a moment before he heaved sideways, throwing off the person who had landed on him, and discovered his assailant was female.
At least he thought she was female, but she was the strangest one he’d ever seen. She had long straight black hair in a ponytail and a delicately featured face with long, narrow black eyes, and she was dressed in a blue silk tunic and wide-legged pants. She had a pack on her back, and she held a knife in her hand as she crouched, ready to attack him again.
Prone on his knees, he watched her, fascinated, as she circled him in a bent-kneed fashion and gabbled something unintelligible at him.
“I’ve nae the faintest idea what ye’re saying, lassie,” he said, grinning and rising. She feinted at him with the knife and came at him with a roundhouse kick that was so swift it sent him sprawling on his back. She leapt onto his chest, holding the knife to his throat, and gabbled at him some more.
No longer amused, he put up a hand and grabbed her thin wrist—really there was nothing of her—and twisted until she dropped the knife with a cry. Levering himself over, he squashed her flat beneath him on the grass and, gripping both her hands, he said, “That’s enough!”
She wriggled beneath him, and he discovered that she was definitely female, or at least his body thought so. It had been so long since he’d felt anything resembling desire, it took himaback. Rising to his feet abruptly, he dragged her up and threw her, pack and all, over his shoulder. She shrieked at this treatment and kicked and wriggled and belted him with her fists, but he held her tightly and the dogs came running, barking and capering around him, leaping up and generally making a ruckus.
“Heel!” he snapped at them, and they settled, following him back to the house. This female was one of the accursed Chinese he’d heard so much about. There seemed to be a plague of them suddenly in this corner of the world, all to do, he suspected, with his brother. Since he couldn’t understand this one, and she seemed somewhat dangerous, it would seem to be prudent to lock her up until he could ascertain what she wanted.
Thus, he headed for the steps down to the cellar at the back of the house. Opening the door with one of the keys from the set on his belt, he entered the cellar and opened a second door, to the dungeon, as the boys called it. It was the place the laird, in times gone by, had locked up miscreants until they could be dealt with at council. There’d not been a council meeting since his Grandfather’s day, but the cell was still here.
Passing through the second door, he reached the cell, which was locked off with bars and a door. He dumped his burden on the stone floor and beat a hasty retreat to lock the barred door behind him and then regarded her in the meagre light coming through the two doors from the outside.
She was screaming at him and shaking the bars, reaching through them to try to grab him, but he kept his distance. The cell was grubby with debris and cobwebs, not having been used in a while, and it lacked any amenities. He backed away.
“I’ll fetch ye a bed and blanket and a bucket to piss in!” he said, knowing she wouldn’t understand him, yet compelled to communicate with her, nevertheless. And food, he reflected. She was thin as a reed, a tiny thing, and enticingly feminine in an elfin way that made him think of how the seelie folk might look.He shoved that last thought away; it was disloyal to Cat to think of another woman as comely. No one could hold a candle to Cat’s lush, dark beauty.
He had loved Catriona McTavish from the moment he set eyes on her. It had taken him six months to win her heart and her father’s permission to wed, and he had considered himself the luckiest fellow in creation. They’d had seven wonderful years together before she was taken.
He returned to the cellar and entered the house via the stairs that lead up to the kitchen, where he found Angus skinning rabbits. For rabbit stew, again.
“We have a guest in the cell downstairs,” he said.
“Aye?” Fergus left off skinning to scratch his white beard with one bloodied hand, leaving a red mark among the whiskers. “What’s he done?”
“She,” corrected Col. “I’ll need a mattress and some blankets, a bucket, and some food and drink.”
Fergus goggled at him. “Ye can’t go around lockin’ up lassies, milord!”
“She’s a foreigner. One of those heathen Chinese,” he said. “Tried to attack me in the park and slit my throat.”
“Oh well, in that case . . . ” He scratched his beard again. “There’s the mattress we made up fer yer brother and his wife in the daffodil suite.”
“Good idea, I’ll fetch it down.”
“Why ye going to keep her here? Shouldn’t ye hand her over to the magistrate?”
“I want to know why she’s trying to stab me. It’s something to do with Merlow, I’d stake me bollocks on it. But I cannae understand a word she bluidy says. I want to figure it out.”
Fergus shrugged and went back to skinning.
“Leave off that for a minute and fix her a tray of food and something to drink. That is, if we have anything but mutton? Those chops last night nearly broke my teeth.”
Fergus sniffed, offended, and went to wash his hands in a bowl of water. “Yer tastes been spoilt by yon lassie of Merlow’s. Ye didn’t used to complain.”
“Ye’re right, Fergus, the lass was a fine cook.”
“Well, ye can always put me out to pasture and hire some young flibbertigibbet from Dysart,” he said grumpily.
“Nae, Fergus, I’ll nae do that. We don’t need women here upsetting everything. Look what havoc Hetty caused in just a fortnight. The boys ha’ nae been the same since she left.”
