Page 3 of A Highland Rogue to Ruin

The mask was a frivolity, but the tradition gave Tormund the veil behind which he could move about this faire unseen by enemies who saw only a target on his unmistakable face. She squeaked in surprise, recovered, then smiled as he lowered her hand.

“What be yer pleasure tonight?” she asked.

He swilled his tankard and eyed James “the Devil” MacDonald across the tent, deep in trade negotiations, a murderer who’d made an art form of soaking his claymore in MacLeod blood. Moving bodies blinked around him. In a sennight, his enemy would finally be delivered justice.

“Perhaps some kisses for yer wee warrior down…here?” The wench walked her fingers down his chest.

His eyes shifted back to hers and he flashed a cocksure scowl. “Nothing wee about me, woman.”

She laughed, then leaned in to touch her lips to his—

Tormund twitched his head away before their mouths connected. Her brow furrowed.

“The answer’s no,” James MacDonald said above the din, fist pounding on the barrel between him and Laird MacNicol.

At the outburst, Tormund’s attention darted back to his enemy. Blast it, but it had been months traveling back and forth to Inverness, patrolling his waters around Stornoway ever since the MacDonalds had burned his summer crops, destining his people to a winter of starvation. Yet he couldn’t concentrate on his cock with his enemy nearby, inspiring his vengeance. He nudged the wench aside and shoved to his feet, then dug out a precious coin from his sporran hanging off his hips and flicked it to her for her trouble.

She frowned, muttering, “Blackguard.”

“Ye ken no’ the truth of it.” His voice raked over his scarred throat and he sauntered away, passing behind Devil MacDonald as if daring the bastard to notice him.

He’d come to Lughnasadh for the first time—emerging from his elusive sea mists where he protected his family’s legacy—for four reasons: to win the prize from the horse race for his people, to win the corn cutting for his people, to twist a knife into MacDonald’s gut—or throat, it nay mattered where—who’d never been brought to justice, and visit Inverness, where the most important thing in his life lay.

“Ye sit on something valuable, MacDonald,” Laird MacNicol grumbled into his tankard.

Tormund slipped outside as MacDonald replied, “Enough, MacNicol.”

“Hear me out, man. Lady Brighde ages to her prime and needs a marriage suit. She’d bring us great wealth in dower lands, which we need to reassert ourselves against the MacLeods and take back the ancestral rights to our isles that the MacLeods stole. In return, she’d always be protected.”

Brighde, James’s sister, remained unwed? Hell, the lass had been one of the bonniest Tormund had ever seen. Kind. Educated. Vivacious. Sweet. Tormund had watched the blond angel dance and spin at their siblings’ wedding, while every eligible man had drooled. How did a lass of her pedigree remain unwed?

“My sister has never concerned ye and the answer is no. Again.” Darkness hung on James’s reply.

“Ye ken when our heiress, Lady Margaret, married Murdoch MacLeod, the MacLeods seized her lands in the Hebrides and conquered them, evicting us to Skye.”

Tormund scoffed. The incident MacNicol referenced had occurred more than two hundred years in the past.

“Aye, and it’s nay my problem. I’ve protected my sister at every cost and nay need ye to do it”—as far as Tormund knew, James hadn’t just protected her, he’d cloistered her somewhere safe, far away from the world. A convent maybe? No one knew. No one had seen her since her sister Marjorie’s wedding to Tormund’s brother, Owen—“If ye pressure me further, our wool trade is through. I nay need yer patronage. But ye need my coin.”

Silence. Tormund edged closer, the din loud, while drawing out one of his blades to nonchalantly pick at his nails.

“At some point, ye have to let her go,” MacNicol said.

“Like hell I do.”

“Why no’ to a friendly clan?”

“Friendly?”

Hmm. James didn’t consider MacNicol a friend? Interesting. MacNicol was fighting a losing battle. Tormund smirked. MacDonald was just as stubborn as he was. MacNicol had been fighting to steal back Tormund’s lands for years, as had his sire, and sire before him, and so on, all sore about losing Lady Margaret’s dower lands. Over the generations, the simple contractual land transfer had grown so exaggerated in lore that nowadays it sounded as if the MacLeods had stolen those lands by a bloodbath of hellfire.

“The Demon of the Seas just arrived,” MacNicol said, changing the subject to their common enemy. Him.

“MacLeod came?”

“He never attends.”

“Shite, I never would have brought her…” Loud guffaws and tankards clinking drowned out James’s next words.