Trapped with the Devil of the Highlands (Falling for Highland Villains #3)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

I’ve made a terrible mistake…

The inky sky of the wee hours did not look kindly on Paisley Callum, forming a cruel alliance with the dense forest that surrounded her on all sides, an army she could not hope to beat. The towering oaks and elders and pines muscled together, denying even the smallest sliver of defiant dawn to pierce through the canopy to guide her path.

“Cecilia?” she mumbled.

Paisley had made her choice; she had to live with the consequences. That was what the forest seemed to say as she stumbled on, crying out at the sudden, sharp scratch of a skeletal finger against her cheek.

Something warm trickled down to her jaw.

Paisley wiped it away with her scraped and muddied hands, dappled with the dirt of countless undignified tumbles to the ground, and ran on—though her screaming legs were close to giving up.

Each thigh had turned to stone, each calf as tight as stretched leather, each foot numb from the cold that slithered through the darkness. It bit through the torn holes in her too-thin woolen dress and followed the moisture of the undergrowth into her sturdy boots.

“Cecilia?” she gasped helplessly, wincing as her shoulder collided with what she hoped was a thick trunk. “Cecilia… please, where are ye?”

She did not know when she had lost her friend in the darkness—an hour ago, two hours ago, five minutes ago—but she had felt the moment when her friend was not there anymore. Rather, she had heard it, as loud as alarm bells chiming a deafening warning—the terrifying silence of being utterly alone, with no comforting footfalls a short way behind that matched her own.

Dinnae stop… Ye cannae stop now.

Cecilia would have told Paisley the same thing if she had been there, where she was supposed to be.

It cannae be long ‘til the sun starts to rise. With the daylight, I’ll see me way, I’ll find a village, and they’ll send me on me way to safety.

She grunted, her foot tangled in an exposed root, losing her balance. Her arms shot out, desperate to find purchase on a branch or trunk, but her hands sailed through thin air.

She crashed down to the spongy underbrush for what must have been the hundredth time, thorns sinking their curved teeth into her ankles, while something hard—a rock or fallen bough—thudded against her side, knocking the wind out of her.

Lying there, face down in the fecund earth, nose filled with the rotten scent of old life decaying to feed new life, Paisley closed her eyes. She shuffled her outstretched hands together in a gesture of prayer, the habit offering little comfort.

The heavens had no doubt abandoned her, as she had abandoned them.

“Confess,” a deep, almost mocking voice rumbled through the silence.

Paisley’s eyes shot open, though the darkness of the woodland made it one and the same; she could not see anything, certainly not the person who had spoken.

God? Is that ye?

Had He come looking for his wandering sheep so soon, eager to guide it back to the flock?

“Come now, dinnae be coy,” the voice taunted. “Confess yer sins while I’m askin’ nicely.”

It was not God; Paisley was certain of that. Not unless the heavenly Father was in the forest with her, close by, taking a dawn respite until His almighty duties spirited Him back up to the heavens.

But if it was not the Lord speaking to her, then who was it?

Slowly, she pushed herself up onto her knees, fearful of what she might see. She had not crossed paths with another person since Cecilia vanished, and that voice—that sultry, rolling-thunder voice—sounded like it was addressing her.

“Who’s there?” she whispered, her words barely louder than a mouse’s squeak.

In the gloaming, her eyes adjusted to the steadily brightening world. Off to her left, a knotted wall of briars and brambles offered glimpses of two figures—two men—in a misty clearing.

One knelt in the undergrowth, snowdrops bending beneath his weight, head bowed and shaking violently. The other man stood with his back to Paisley, his broad shoulders shifting in agitation, the muscle rippling all the way down. She could see every line and groove, the man’s léine soaked through with the mist or sweat—she could not be certain.

She was so busy following the lines of those powerful muscles that it took her a second to realize why the other man was shaking so hard. The one standing had a broadsword in hand, the sharp end resting against the kneeling man’s throat.

A gasp threatened to slip past her lips, and she clapped her hand over her mouth to stop it.

“I see ye need me to speak more plainly,” the standing man jeered. “Very well. Why were ye watchin’ me? What business do ye have with me clan?”

He pressed the tip of the sword a little harder against the cowering man’s throat. So much so that when the kneeling man finally spoke, his voice strained around the words.

“I was… followin’ orders.”

With disturbing calmness, the muscles of his back as still as a millpond, the swordsman asked, “Whose orders?” and pressed the tip harder still.

One more question and there would be blood, or worse.

Paisley leaped to her feet, abandoning all common sense and reason, running to the thatch of briars and brambles with nothing but faith in her heart.

She crashed through a narrow gap that snagged at her already ripped dress and staggered into the clearing, shouting with all her might, “Stop! Ye’re goin’ to kill him!”

“Are ye nae bored?” Camden Lyall feigned a yawn, tossing his broadsword from hand to hand. “Do ye nae want to be home and warm in yer bed, eh? All ye need do is tell me why ye’re ridin’ about, torchin’ villages, and I’ll let ye run back to whatever hovel ye came from.”

He had captured the MacDunn man by one of the ‘fairy pools’ that glimmered among the rocks and moss of that fair forest, beneath a spring that had cut one giant boulder into two with the power of its ancient flow.

A little too easily if he said so himself.

Of course, the man had tried to run, despite being bound at the wrists and ankles. Camden had let him, for his own amusement, but the captive had only made it as far as the clearing where they now stood—well, one of them did.

“I’ll die first,” the MacDunn man rasped.

Camden puffed out a breath. “I’d rather ye die after.”

He caught his broadsword in his left hand and sliced it through the air, slowing down at the man’s throat. With a wry smile, Camden nudged the sharp tip against the MacDunn wretch’s throat.

The man swallowed, his Adam’s apple bouncing against the blade.

“Indulge me,” Camden urged, certain he could get the man to talk. “Confess.”

The MacDunn man did not even bother to glare at him, to give him some satisfaction. He simply stared ahead, shivering from the cold of the morning.

“Come now, dinnae be coy. Confess yer sins while I’m askin’ nicely.”

It was not enough to catch a MacDunn soldier—Camden needed information. More than they could glean from the villagers who had escaped from each razing.

The man gave him nothing.

“Dinnae make it so I’ve abandoned me warm bed and the lass in it for nothin’. Tell me where MacDunn is and we both get what we want—I get the honor of cuttin’ him down, and ye get to keep yer head attached to yer body.”

Camden eased off on the kiss of steel slightly to punctuate his point.

The man remained silent. Foolishly so.

“I see ye need me to speak more plainly. Very well. I ken yer ilk were chased into me lands by a friend of mine and his forces. I ken it must’ve come as a surprise to find a strengthened force in MacBrayne lands, where ye were expectin’ nay resistance. I ken MacDunn must be fumin’, and when a man is angry, he makes mistakes. So, all ye have to do is whisper what it is that MacDunn wants and where he might be venturin’ next, or where he’s hidin’ if it’s on me lands, and I willnae sink the pointy end of this sword into the fleshy bits of ye. Last chance. I’m nae generous enough to offer another when I’ve been in a huntin’ cabin for two nights because of yer lot.”

Camden turned the blade and pressed harder, knowing the point would feel sharper against flesh. But he understood the intimate art of pressure and how to tease the skin just enough to avoid bloodshed.

His captive, however, did not.

“I was… followin’ orders!” he squeaked, fear finally glinting in his eyes.

Camden smiled in satisfaction. “What orders? Where is MacDunn strikin’ next?”

He applied a bit more pressure, his sword an extension of his hand, his senses keenly attuned to the give and release of the blade. A single drop of blood beaded on the captive’s pale skin, running in a perfect line down his throat.

“Stop!” a sweet, feminine voice yelped somewhere behind him. “Ye’re goin’ to kill him!”

Camden arched a curious eyebrow, resisting the urge to turn and see the face that belonged to that stirring voice. He could not be distracted by any woodland nymph now, not when he was so close to gaining what he wanted from the man before him.

“M’Lady, that’s the plan,” he called back, one ear pricked up for the approaching rustle of footfalls on the wild grass of the clearing. Whoever she was, she would not stop him.

At the sound of the lady’s voice, the MacDunn man seemed to have lost his useful fear. The frightened glaze of his eyes melted back into determined clarity, a smirk appearing on the swine’s lips.

“Then do it,” he said. “I willnae tell ye anythin’ aside from what ye already ken—I fight for Laird MacDunn. I fight and die for Laird MacDunn, and if ye cut out me tongue, it still willnae wag for ye.”

With that, the man sealed his fate. Camden knew a lost cause when he saw one. He knew that as keenly as he knew he could not let the man go home to his warm bed. He had stated his allegiance with too much pride, and if Camden let him go, his own lands and people would be at risk of repercussions or spilled secrets. After all, there was no telling what the man might have seen while sneaking through Camden’s territory.

The other footsteps were almost upon him. Camden struck swiftly, seeing no need to cause the captive further struggle. The corpse collapsed at his feet.

“Nay! Why did ye do that?” That honey-sweet voice tingled up the back of Camden’s neck like teasing fingertips.

Readjusting his grip on his broadsword, Camden turned to face whoever had dared to try and stop him.

He had expected a comely village girl or a pretty woodsman’s wife, perhaps even a jerkin-clad huntress prowling the forest for dawn game. What he could never have expected, not with a thousand guesses at his disposal, was what appeared to be… a very disheveled nun.