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

Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

“I dinnae ken why ye’re goin’ to so much trouble, Maither. It’s just a business deal with her faither. Kenna and I have nay interest in each other,” Camden said, downing what was left in his whiskey glass.

His mother froze, all the color draining from her face. “Camden, it doesnae matter if ye have nay interest in each other. It doesnae matter if ye cannae stand one another. It may only be a business contract, but dinnae forget that it will have another name—marriage.” She clasped her hands together, her eyes imploring. “So, please, me sweet boy, dinnae strike a spark into any straw houses. Laird MacLean is… nae a forgivin’ man.”

“I’m nae a laddie anymore, Maither.” Camden offered her an encouraging smile. “I’m nae goin’ to do anythin’ stupid. I ken what must be done, and I will see it done.”

His mother did not need to know until the right time that “what must be done” was not marrying Kenna, but he meant what he said about not doing anything stupid.

He had dealt with the likes of Laird MacLean before—there was always another way, always a more persuasive offering that could be accepted. And he would be careful in his planning; his mother could be assured of that.

“I pray that ye do,” his mother murmured, her knuckles whitening as she clasped her hands together harder.

Camden pushed himself up and set his glass down. “Now, in the meantime, would ye do me a grand favor?”

“Me?” His mother pointed at herself with her thumbs.

He nodded. “I need ye to order dresses for Miss Nunford—me honored guest. Gowns of forest green. Moss green. The darker, richer shades of green. I think that’ll be the most becomin’, bringin’ out the color of her eyes. And there’s naught that pairs so well with red hair if ye ask me.”

His mother’s mouth fell open, while Marcus rolled his eyes and rubbed the heel of his hand against his brow. In truth, it never failed to sting Camden’s pride, seeing how apprehensive the two of them were about his capabilities.

They seemed to forget, all too often, that Clan Cairn had never been stronger or more affluent because of him. Just as they seemed to forget that his duty, first and foremost, had always been to his clan, his people, his legacy.

“Who is she, Camden?” his mother asked more desperately.

Camden smiled wryly. “A heavenly lass, and me guest. I found her in the forest. She needs me help and me protection, and that is what I promised her. So, if ye wouldnae mind, proceed with orderin’ those dresses. I really dinnae want to have to ask ye again.”

His voice took on an edge that he did not like to use with his friends and family, but it was occasionally necessary.

“In the forest?” His mother looked like she might faint at any moment. “Have ye nae thought that she might be a… be a… MacDunn woman?”

He had for a short while, especially after Paisley had shouted for him to stop when he had swung his blade. Their night in the inn had been as much a test of her origin as it was a test of his willpower, for if she had been a MacDunn woman, she would have killed him without hesitation.

He would have prevented it before she could, of course, but the fact that there had been no assassination attempt was proof enough that Paisley was who she said she was.

“She’s nay MacDunn woman. MacDunn doesnae ride with women, as ye well ken,” Camden replied, his frustration growing. “Dresses. Now. As for ye, Marcus, ye should already be down at the stables, sendin’ out messengers.”

His mother hesitated but appeared to understand that a fight would not lead anywhere. So, with a sigh, she headed for the door, casting the final word back over her shoulder as she left. “I trust ye, Camden. Dinnae disappoint me, I beg of ye.”

Marcus loitered for a moment longer, placing his glass back down beside the decanter of good whiskey. He did not need to speak for Camden to know that a lot was going on in his mind, so Camden waited patiently for his friend to open his mouth.

“If ye’re up to somethin’,” Marcus said at last, “might ye bring me into yer scheme? It’s one thing for ye to ride out with just a note, but it’s quite another to disrupt an alliance between this clan and another without help.”

Camden padded over to the far side of the room, taking up his seat at his own desk. He took a leaf of parchment out of a stack of unused ones and took out his knife to prepare a quill, aware of Marcus’s unease as he worked.

“If I’m up to somethin’, I’ll tell ye,” he said, once the point of his quill was sharp and ready. “I promise ye.”

Marcus puffed out a clearly unsatisfied breath. “Very well. I’ll see that those messengers are sent out right now.”

“Thank ye.”

Marcus made it to the door before turning, worry etched on his sun-weathered face, his blue eyes crinkling. “For what it’s worth, M’Laird, I ken ye would never do anythin’ to put our clan in danger. So, whoever the lass is, whatever it is ye have planned, I… trust that ye’ll do what’s right.”

“Thank ye,” Camden repeated, not believing a word, though he did have faith in himself.

The door closed, and silence blanketed the study, allowing Camden a moment to catch his breath and clear his mind.

He was not the one who had arranged the betrothal between himself and Kenna, but he would be the one to end it. And he would succeed with no harm done—he would make sure of it.

First, however, he had an important message of his own to send: a letter to Laird Morris, to let him know that his daughter had been found and that, with some urgency, she wished to contact them.

Perhaps that gesture of goodwill would be enough to get Paisley to agree, once and for all, to help him with his predicament. Sooner rather than later, with the cèilidh just around the corner.

This castle is goin’ to kill me.

Paisley lurched through the door, holding her aching sides, making sounds she had never made before—great, wheezing, half-choked groans.

If it had not been woefully improper, and she had not had an audience, she would have flopped down on the bed and lain there like a strange, fallen tree until she could breathe properly again.

“Mercy, are ye well?” the maid, Rowena, asked with no small amount of alarm in her voice.

Paisley held up a hand in answer. She would have nightmares about all of those spiraling, narrow, perilously steep staircases. Of which there had been at least a thousand if the fearsome burn in her thighs and lungs was anything to go by.

A frown etched crooked valleys across Rowena’s sun-browned brow. “Can ye nae speak?”

Paisley leaned against the solid oak of the doorjamb and braced her hands against her sore ribs, stooping to catch her breath. “Apologies. I am… tryin’ to… spare me breath for… breathin’. I am… nae used to stairs.”

Most of the convent was on one level, aside from a crypt that she had never visited and an upper floor that would not be available to her until she took her vows. The rolling, hilly moorland that surrounded the convent required some endurance, but it was nothing compared to the torture of those stairwells.

“Nae used to stairs?” Rowena blinked as if she had never considered such a thing. “Och, why did ye nae say?”

“If I had,” Paisley wheezed, “would it have… mattered? Is there some sort… of hoist and pulley… that could have dragged me up… to the window?”

The maid hid a laugh behind her hand. “Nay, I suppose it wouldnae have mattered. We’ve nay hoist and nay bedchambers on the lower floors.” Her hand fell away. “Might’ve made a difference to me, though.”

“Pardon?”

“I was thinkin’ ye were upset with bein’ sent off with me. I assume ye’re accustomed to a finer sort of escort where ye hail from, nae a common maid,” Rowena explained, as shy as a bairn at church.

Fear slipped between Paisley’s throbbing ribs, catching her in the heart and making it jump. Camden had not said who she was—indeed, he had given her that silly false name, no doubt amusing himself immeasurably—so why did Rowena think Paisley expected a finer guide?

She tugged at a loose thread on the left cuff of her newly acquired dress. “What makes you say that? I’m nay one special.”

“Aye, and I’m the secret Queen of Scotland,” Rowena replied with an awkward snort, waving a disbelieving hand. “The Laird wouldnae have brought ye through the front door if ye were nay one special, Miss Nunford. He never brings lasses—sorry, ladies—through the front door.”

A little thorn, like one of the many that had scratched her in the forest, dug into the center of Paisley’s chest.

Just how many lasses have been in this room? Do I look like one of his… conquests?

She gulped, worried that her behavior at the inn might be written all over her face, that it had transformed her somehow. When she eventually returned to the convent, maybe they would take one look at her and cast her out for being an unholy victim of temptation.

Mother Superior had always said that she could see the touch of a man on a woman’s skin from thirty paces. Cecilia used to joke that the severe old woman could not see her own feet from nought paces, once causing Paisley to snort so loudly that the nuns nearby had feared she was coming down with a sickness.

But Mother Superior never noticed any ‘marks’ on Cecilia after her secret trysts with that shepherd she used to meet…

Perhaps it was an untruth, designed to keep novitiates and nuns in line, which probably meant that the Lord could forgive it.

“As I say, I’m nay one special,” Paisley insisted. “I’m just…”

She faltered. There was not much she could say without giving herself away. She could not very well tell Rowena she was there temporarily to help Camden with his marriage problem. Potentially help him. Nor could she mention that she was a Lady and would not touch Camden with a ten-foot caber.

Unless he is asleep beside me and the Devil takes over me fingertips.

She could have smacked herself for her idiocy, vowing to sit on her hands whenever she was near Camden again and wear gauntlets to bed. Though, of course, he would not be joining her in this bedchamber for any reason. If he so much as stepped over the threshold, she would pick up the nearest object and chase him off like a fox in the chicken coop.

She realized that Rowena was waiting for her to finish her sentence.

“Might I have somethin’ to eat?” Paisley asked. “Somethin’ to sleep in, too, if it’s nae too much trouble? I lost me belongings on the ride, so I have nothin’ to me name.”

Instinctively, she reached for the scapular that usually encircled her waist, to soothe her unease with the rounded beads of her rosary and plead forgiveness for the partial lie.

It was not there. It was stuffed in a saddlebag that Camden had carried off with him.

Miss Nunford, indeed.

“Aye, Miss, of course!” Rowena chirped merrily. “Ye settle yerself and I’ll have some stew and a nightdress brought up to ye in nay time. And if there’s aught else that ye might want or need, ye just let me ken.”

Paisley moved out of the doorway to let the maid pass, offering a heartfelt “thank ye” as the good-natured young woman left.

On legs as tight and pulsing as overfilled waterskins, Paisley shambled over to the bed and sank down on the edge. The soft, feather-stuffed mattress welcomed her saddle-sore backside. She groaned at the comfort of it, making yet another sound that she did not think she had made in her entire life.

I am doin’ so many things I have never done before.

She leaned forward and held her head in her hands, mortified. No one had told her that the real world would be a series of embarrassments, just as no one had told her that handsome men would be so deft at unraveling eleven years of discipline and integrity.

Actually, that was not true. Cecilia had warned her of masculine wiles often enough, but Paisley had assumed she was made of sterner stuff than her dearest friend.

“I should pray,” she whispered to no one at all, taking herself to the window.

She was about to kneel when the view stalled her. A cloudless night stretched as far as the eye could see, embroidered with unending stars and a faintly illuminated tear that she had always thought of as the gateway to the heavens. It was the same view she had admired often from the convent’s central courtyard, yet somehow more beautiful, more breathtaking, more affirming.

Wincing at the sharp pain in her knee, she sank down to pray.

But clasping her hands in preparation, her mind would not clear. In place of peace and serenity and communion, startling visions flooded her mind of Camden and that pretty, dark-haired maid, tangled up together in the bed she had just moved away from.

“Heaven help me,” she gasped, standing up abruptly, dusting off her hands as if that would get rid of the visions… and the strange, hot feeling they ignited in her stomach.

Limping back over to the bed and sprawling across it, she buried her head in the clean coverlets, letting the mattress embrace her.

This castle really is goin’ to kill me.