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“Let me go! I’m not a threat, I’m not here to kill anyone, I just want to go home.”

His face reddened, the muscles on his neck taut with pain. Part of her felt bad for him. He grunted, “Ye wicked minx, why do ye have to kick in the balls?”

“Because I won’t let you threaten me. I won’t let you stop me from going home. And I won’t be your wife for much longer.”

Chapter 9

When they arrived, Raghnall’s groin was still aching.

But as the old walls of the tower house came into sight, he forgot the physical pain as memories flooded him. His father, the deceased laird Kenneth Og Mackenzie, had brought the family here in his last attempt to get his rebellious son under control. When fists and threats didn’t help, he must have hoped that motivating a fourteen-year-old Raghnall with land and his own house might change something.

Only, land and wealth were never important to Raghnall. The four-story, rough-granite tower house with five household buildings made of timber and with thatched roofs didn’t make him want to do anything but laugh in his father’s face. How little his father knew him—none of them knew him, actually.

None of them knew that all he’d ever wanted as a child was their approval. For them to say that once in his life he’d done something right, that he’d been a worthy son and a beloved brother.

And not a changeling, a demon-child, switched with a true Mackenzie at birth.

That was where his early impulses to bring chaos, to challenge his father, to do the opposite of what a good lad would, came from.

Because it was better to be beaten than ignored. When he was bad he was important, even though the attention he received was mainly about shutting him up. He caused anger in his parents, not love, like Laomann, Angus, and even the quiet Catrìona.

He stopped counting how many times he’d heard, “One day ye’ll be the death of someone!” because he’d started believing it.

The estate wasn’t big. It was nestled in a valley at the foot of the mountain range right on the northwestern border of Kintail, on the shore of the River Croe. The mountains loomed above, as tall as giants and still green at this time of year. The estate had plenty of flat land, allowing for enough farming to sustain the lord of Tigh na Abhainn and the fifty or so tenants. Mostly, they had sheep and cows, as crops didn’t grow as well on the rocky, harsh land as they would in the Lowlands, but oats and barley grew fine enough, and the sheep could graze anywhere. Raghnall’s main business would be to sell raw wool, which was something the lord of this estate had done for generations. And he had good connections to clan MacDonald, the biggest and the richest clan in the west. They were sea merchants and would buy wool from him to resell it abroad.

Raghnall didn’t care what he’d have to do. The main thing was, this place would be safe and prosperous enough to provide for Seoc. Perhaps he’d grow to enjoy the life of an estate lord one day and have a family right here, among the steep green slopes and the gurgling mountain river.

The sky darkened, the western horizon golden behind the angry clouds. The air here was different from the loch—the barely noticeable tang of the sea was gone, and it was crisp here, more of the scent of wildflowers and moss and rocks. The house was whitening against the greenery, smoky-gray in the dusk.

Goddamn his father for making him an outcast who became a reiver, which later caused the death of the only human being he’d thought could love him. Raghnall clicked his tongue and let the horse descend the rocky mountain path.

“Are we there?” asked the honey-haired minx who had first rubbed his cock with her delicious arse all through their journey and then kicked him right in the balls, making him blind with pain.

“Aye, we’ve arrived,” he grumbled. “Rejoice.”

He felt her still between his arms. Good Lord, her scent was in his nostrils the whole way, tickling his desire, making it hard to concentrate. He tried not to think of her, not to imagine that taste of hers—something citrusy like lemon or orange, the fruit that grew only in the south of Europe. He’d once tasted some when he’d pleasured a rich widow in the Lowlands. And the herbal-lilac scent of Bryanna’s skin, would it taste as sweet if he licked her? How would that long, pretty hair feel wrapped around his fist as he made her come over and over and over around his hot, hard cock?

“Why would I rejoice?” she asked.

“Because ’tis where ye will live as my wife. All of this is yers.”

She sighed. “This is breathtaking, but as I told you, as far as I’m concerned, I’m not your wife, and I never said I wanted this. You said something about needing this estate, and I wanted to help you.”

He grunted and sighed out as the horse followed the path and turned left before a large bush. “What a good Samaritan. So ye’re a time traveler from the future who marrit me because ye wanted to help me. A stranger ye just met… Aye, that sounds very believable.”

To his surprise, she said nothing to that, and he imagined her bonnie, sulking face as she stared at the road. He wondered what she hid behind that story, and who she truly was.

If she were a spy, he couldn’t imagine a worse cover than saying she was a time traveler. A true spy would come up with something like what Tadhg, Euphemia’s last spy, had done—he had infiltrated the castle, pretending to be more wounded than he was, and poisoned Laomann and himself. So, what drove his new wife to tell such a strange story?

And what if…against all logic and his beliefs about reality…she told the truth?

Then everything about her would make sense—her clothes, her scent, the odd brightly colored purse she had with her, and even her speech. The accent, the things she told about herself—or didn’t…

But he wasn’t a fool, and he wasn’t a child to believe odd stories of magic and faeries.

He’d find out what she was hiding sooner or later. She had nowhere to run from here.

As they passed by the farms with occasional farmhouses here and there, it was clear everyone had already finished their jobs for the night. The tiny, bare windows of the farmhouses glowed with the weak light of inexpensive tallow candles, and crickets chirped. An owl hooted from somewhere back in the trees, closer to the completely black shapes of the mountains against the indigo sky.