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Chapter Eighteen
“Can someone explain to me how all these men are now dead?”
Wentworth sounded furious, and he knew it. He knew that he should be more controlled when he was talking to his men, that Chrisdean should be spoken of with his usual manners, but he couldn’t find it in him when the men that he had sent to kill Laird MacIntosh and his party were now in a heap at the edge of his camp, rotting.
“We are supposed to be the greatest army in the world, and look at us now,” he continued, slamming his fist on the small table that they had brought with them just for his tent. “Defeated by a few Scots! What would the King say if he knew about this, hmm? What do you think he would say?”
Wentworth began to walk around his tent, looking carefully at the line of men in front of him. “Turner!” he shouted, picking one of the men at random. “What do you think the King would say?”
Turner was a young man, spotty and thin, and he stuttered every time he spoke to Wentworth, much to the man’s chagrin. As much as Wentworth had tried to threaten that stutter out of him, he only seemed to be making it worse.
“I . . . I t-think he would b-be disappointed, sir,” Turner said, keeping his gaze forward and never once looking at Wentworth.
“I think so, too, Tuner. I think so, too,” Wentworth said. “This is the first time you have said something right.”
“T-thank you, sir.”
“Well, there is only one thing to be done about all this mess,” Wentworth decided, clapping his hands together. “A few of you will go to the Clan MacIntosh castle, and you will bring me Nimue.”
There were a few murmurs among his men, and Wentworth was quick to glare at them, shutting them up. It was only Kinsley, Wentworth’s second-in-command, who dared talk then.
“How are we to get her out of the castle, sir?” Kinsley asked. “I’m sure that there are guards . . . how will we ever slip inside the castle undetected?”
“That’s for you to find out, Kinsley,” Wentworth said. He was never the one to concoct plans like that. He preferred occupying his time with pleasant things, and besides, he had Kinsley and the rest of them to make a plan for him.
“Forgive me, sir, but capturing her in the castle will be impossible,” Kinsley continued. “We would never make it to her.”
“Then get her to come out to you,” Wentworth said. “You know her habits. You’ve been watching that damn castle day and night. Just make sure to be there when she goes on one of her walks or whatever she does. I’m sure that she doesn’t spend the entire day within the castle walls.”
“No, sir.”
“Well, there you have it,” Wentworth said, thinking that, he had come up with the plan on his own after all. He wondered what he even needed those soldiers for when he was doing all the work. “Go, observe, and grab her at the first opportunity you have. I want her here as soon as possible.”
“Yes, sir.”
With that, Kinsley and the rest of the men began to exit the tent, eventually leaving Wentworth alone. He let out a long-suffering sigh as he threw himself down on his chair, drumming his fingers against the surface of the table.
Nimue and Laird MacIntosh had become more of a headache to him than he thought either of them was worth. The only reason he was still pursuing Nimue was that she was a beautiful woman, and he wanted a beautiful woman in his bed. Out of all the women that could bring him the power that he desired through marriage, she was perhaps the most beautiful.
But is she worth it? So many of my men killed.
And while Wentworth couldn’t care less about the lives of those soldiers or the families that would miss them, he did care about his numbers depleting. He could hardly fight a war without soldiers, and it would take too much time and too much gold to build a new army every time that Laird MacIntosh felt like killing the one that he already had.
No, he thought, he had to stop this Scotsman before he could become too powerful. He had to put an end to it all, and he could think of no better way to do it than to marry Nimue and force her father to use his own troops against Laird MacIntosh. That way, he would defeat this laird without having to risk any of his own men—and, consequently, the Crown’s gold.
It didn’t hurt that the marriage to Nimue would also mean that he would have a warm bed and a beautiful woman next to him every single night. He had had many women in the past and had spent endless nights in the throes of passion, but there was something different about Nimue; she was a royal.
Besides, when he tired of her, he thought he could always go back to the women he was already having relations with. Nimue would always be there to give him an heir, and that was all that he would truly need from her in the end.
A vicious smile crossed his lips as he thought about his upcoming victory. All he needed was a little bit of patience, and everything he had ever wanted would be served to him on a platter.
