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Chapter One
“She bit me!” one of Arabella’s captors cried, holding what she hoped was the bloody stump of his thumb.
Arabella hadn’t struggled when rival clan warriors carried her away from her father’s cottage with a blade to her throat. She’d been too startled to struggle. Too hopeful of being rescued by her father. By Conall, her betrothed. By the warriors of her clan. By any of the men in her life who were supposed to protect a Highland lass and keep her from harm. But now that her captors had her in a clearing where they built a fire against the cool autumn—presumably so they could violate her at their leisure—she realized that no man would rescue her.
Well, a simple crofter’s daughter though she might be, she wasn’t going to cooperate. Arabella learned what came of surrendering to the lusts of men when her sister had turned to harlotry to save their family from doom. But that wasn’t going to happen to Arabella. Arabella understood the truth of it. These villains had used her to cover their escape from the Macrea’s lands and now that they’d escaped, they had no more need of her.
They intended to rape and probably kill her…
…but she’d make them bleed for it first.
Which is why she scratched and kicked and bit like a frenzied thing, savoring the iron blood in her mouth. Vowing, “I’ll bite down hard on anything you put too close to my mouth, you filthy mongrels!”
A brawny Donald Clan warrior in green plaid—the one whose thumb she bit—raised a hand to beat her and Arabella braced against the coming blow. But before his fist cracked upon her cheek, one of his fellows stayed his hand. “Where’s your manners, man? The saucy young wench needs to feel like a woman before we make her one.”
They all laughed, some of them lewdly, as if they looked forward to having a turn. Then a bearded warrior sneered and thrust forward the corpses of a few rabbits, as if he expected Arabella to take them. “It’s been a long ride and we’re hungry. So make yourself useful by cooking a stew over the fire. There’s a pot and spoon in the saddlebags.”
Arabella scowled, dragging herself up from the cold ground, haughtily brushing autumn leaves from her skirts. She wasn’t about to let the bastards see her cry, so she bit her lower lip almost as hard as she’d bitten her attacker’s thumb. “I’ll need water for a stew,” she said, grabbing the string of dead rabbits. “And some herbs, I should think.”
Not that she knew how to make a stew. Or cook much of anything at all. Her older sister Heather had been the cook in the family and—
Oh, no. Thinking about her family made tears well up in Arabella’s eyes and a lump swell in her throat. She feared she’d never see her Papa or her siblings again. Maybe they wouldn’t even miss her. She’d never been an obedient daughter. She’d been a wretched sister, too. Never at home to help Heather with the bairns as much as she should, preferring to roam the wilds sketching plants and pester the village herb woman about their medicinal uses.
That is why Arabella knew next to nothing about how to skin a rabbit, how to chop it up for a stew, or even how long to set it all to boil over a campfire….
…but she knew how to spice it, of a certainty.
And the berries she needed were right there on the yew tree, red as blood.
~~~
“It’s a mite sweet for a rabbit stew,” one of the men said, savoring a scoopful. "Not half bad, though, lass.”
Arabella smiled tightly. "It's an old family recipe," she lied, encouraging him to eat more, taking none of it for herself.
Her captors groped her while she served them. Their rough hands tugged up her skirts and skimmed up her bare legs. They patted her bottom with hardened palms. And they squeezed her breasts when she bent to serve them, promising to do vile things to her once they’d eaten.
“We have to get our strength up to use you properly,” one of them said.
Then they rolled dice to see who would get her first.
Oh, how these men filled her with revulsion and fear! But the more they carried on in this way, the less she regretted what she’d done. It would take some time before the poison of the yew tree did its work. Too much time to keep them from violating her, she thought. But Arabella took satisfaction in knowing that they wouldn’t live to b
oast about it.
The one whose thumb she bit began to sweat first, pulling her down into his lap where he sat upon a fallen log. Breathing fast with foul breath, he vowed, "I'm going to take your maidenhead as my trophy!”
Then he belched in her face, his hand drifting to his belly as if it pained him. As if he were nauseated.
He let her up, just as another of the Donald men called out, “Which maidenhead? I’d wager she still has all three.”
The men laughed, two of them grabbing to tear her clothes off. Her struggles were ineffectual against the strength of their hulking bodies as they clustered around her, and her breath caught in her throat. She knew it would only go worse for her if she fought them.
But she couldn’t help it.
Crack!
Her wooden spoon whipped the face of the nearest warrior, catching him right in the eye and forcing a yelp out of him. Unfortunately, this only elicited a gale of laughter from his comrades who wrenched her arms behind her back and made her drop the spoon.
“Get her nekkid,” snarled the one whose eye she’d turned red. He must’ve been the leader of this little war band because the rest of them did as he commanded.
Arabella’s woolen outer clothes didn’t tear easy, but the men cut the laces of her bodice and her short-dress shredded under their big rough hands. As they forcibly undressed her, she screamed, kicking with her bare feet. She smelled their acrid sweat as strong arms wrestled and stripped her. Felt the bite of a dagger at her throat as they pressed her down into the dirt.
“Do it,” she finally spat at the bearded man who held a blade to her. “Slit a crofter girl’s throat, you brave, brave, man. Can’t you handle me without a weapon?”
“I’ve got a weapon for you, lass,” he promised, throwing the blade aside. “I’ll save the throat-slitting for later, since I enjoy swiving a live squirming lass and not the corpse we’re going to leave you.”
They weren’t even going to pretend to have other intentions!
God’s Blood, she hoped to live at least long enough to see them collapse in tremors, knowing that she’d been the one to drag them down into death with her. They were hurting her. Mauling her. Bruising her. Pinning down her arms and legs to the ground, wrenching her knees apart. She was exposed to them. Entirely naked, the chill of the early evening air upon her most private parts.
She was helpless and shamed enough to cry—to sob—but she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of her tears.
Red-Eye bent to take a savage kiss. Feeling revulsion and terror rise up inside her, she spit out the sickly sweet taste of him the moment he tore his mouth from hers. The men were sweating profusely now. Some of them trembling. They probably thought it was arousal, but Arabella knew better.
The man whose thumb she’d bitten staggered away to vomit in the bushes.
And a grim satisfaction came over Arabella.
Maybe she should surrender. Keep them occupied. Give up her body—which they were intent on taking anyway—to keep them distracted until they were too weak to do her harm. Though she hated to do it, Arabella let out a low moan in her throat; a kind she hoped men might find enticing. The kind she’d made when her betrothed stole a kiss on Christmas morn behind the church; a thing she’d confessed to the Reverend—a nice man of God who would no doubt pray over her coffin to save her soul, but wasn’t going to get her out of this bind.
“Oh, you like this, do you lass?” asked the bearded one, using his teeth upon her exposed nipple. She screamed at the pain, but that only seemed to make him bite harder. Her heartbeat galloped so hard in her chest that she could hear it. Was sure they could all hear it…until they realized that it wasn’t only her heartbeat that galloped.
Those were horse hooves. Then a familiar Macrae clan war cry.
Sgurr Uaran!
The Donald men sprang up off her, but too late for the one who had gone to vomit in the bushes. He lifted himself up unsteadily, too weak to dodge the blow as a dark and unsmiling avenger leapt from his black horse, then brought down his massive claymore upon the sick man’s neck and chest.
It chopped like an ax and a spray of blood misted the air.
The remaining four abductors cried out, rallying to their weapons, which some of them had left off in order to take a turn with her. But they still outnumbered the Macrae warriors, two to one.
While Arabella scrambled for her clothes, a red-headed Macrae warrior with flashing blue eyes laughed with glee as he dismounted from his bay stallion and came to blows with Arabella’s bearded kidnapper. It almost frightened her the pleasure her laughing rescuer seemed to take in the sound of metal upon metal as their swords clashed.
Meanwhile, three of the Donalds swarmed her dark rescuer with the claymore. And Arabella was breathless watching him fend them off. He was, without a doubt, the best swordsman she’d ever seen. Lithe, strong, tall enough to deliver a kick to the chest of Red-Eye that sent him falling to the grass while hacking at the arm of another.
It was bloody mayhem; a scene of horror Arabella could scarcely stand to witness. The bearded Donald warrior who had held a blade to her neck stumbled towards Arabella, and she recognized the glassy look in his eyes.
