Unwilling (Highland Historical #2)

and the
stables.  “All I know is that you’re his only chance.”
    Lindsay froze in the doors of the stables,
watching dumbly as Evelyn ordered and oversaw the preparing of her horse. 
    Of course she was going to go after
him.  To question that never even entered into consideration.  She wasn’t going
to let him die.  He still had ‘things’ to say to her.  Apologies to make. 
Undying devotion to pledge.  He’d promised to return and she’d hold him to that
promise even if she did have to go after him and drag his lumbering, oafish
arse back to Castle Lachlan herself. 
    Connor MacLauchlan wasn’t dying
this night.  There was no way he was getting out of this that easily. 
    It caused her some pause, though,
wondering what could possibly be fearsome enough to endanger the life of her
ferocious berserker.   She was about to find out, and she was his only chance. 
    “Lord help us both,” she whispered.

Chapter
Fifteen
     
    Only five men held the chains to
the iron clasped about his throat.  Five.  Connor scoffed at their underestimation
of his lethality as he allowed shackles to be clamped about his wrists.  He
tugged on the left one with a flex of his arm, dragging ragged chains through
both hands of one of his captors.  The skin of the man’s palms broke and he had
to turn from Connor in order to hide the wells of blood. 
    Connor bared his teeth in a sneer. 
Bloody idiot should be wearing leather gauntlets.  Obviously, he’d slaughtered
the most elite of the MacKay warriors at the river Tay, and Angus was left with
this sorry lot.  He almost felt sorry for the bastard. 
    But the villain didn’t deserve a
moment’s pity.
    The sharp sting of a cane broke on Connor’s
bare back, and he swallowed a curse.  It would welt and bruise, but wouldn’t
draw blood.  Angus was more clever and maniacal than his father had been.
    “Get the fuck out of here before he
sees ye bleed,” Angus ordered to the injured man as he strode into the tiered,
empty stables of Dun Keep.  His dirty grey eyes narrowed in his severe, thin
face as he watched them spread Connor’s arms wide and chain him to the thick loft
beams.  Folded pads of linen were shoved between the manacles and his flesh, to
prevent them from cutting him.  Not as a courtesy, but as a precaution.
    Connor snarled at Angus, but didn’t
lunge at the man.  For behind him, a heavy warrior held a dirk to the neck of a
trembling girl who could have seen fewer than seven summers.  If her blood was
spilled, Connor would berserk, and would not only rip Angus’s limbs from their
sockets and beat him to death with them, he would systematically massacre the
forty or so innocent highlanders huddled in the corner of the stable.
    One of which was Rory MacKay. 
    Sometimes the berserker was a
blessing; other times, like this, a curse.  He’d failed his charge to Rory. 
Distracted by the needs of his heart, he’d procrastinated coming after Angus
and endangered these people.  He should have known, should have foreseen that Angus
would have no problem using his own divided clan to achieve his ambitious ends. 
    He wanted to apologize to Rory, who
stood in front of the unarmed cluster, as though he could single-handedly
protect them.  Held at sword point by a score of soldiers, the crowd, comprised
of mostly women, children, and the elderly, couldn’t tear their eyes from the
child held hostage in front of Connor.  Sometimes, they’d glance at him in
fear, crossing themselves against his pagan evil.  Sometimes they looked to
Rory for hope, or to Angus for mercy.  But most of their collective notice
remained on the frightened hostage as silent tears streaked her wee cherubic
face.  Her hair was a mass of glossed ebony, just like Lindsay’s.  If their
love ever produced a sweet lass, he imagined she’d look something like this angel. 
    Connor closed his eyes against a
yawning ache in his chest.  He’d never spoken to her of love.  He should have
before he left.  He should have told her what he’d begun to want.  To look
forward to. 
    To feel.
    He couldn’t take his eyes off the
child.  
    “Do ye know why yer not dead yet?”
Angus leaned in close, secure in his false assumption that he’d leashed a
berserker. 
    Connor didn’t dignify his question
with a response, but promised a slow and torturous death with his glare. 
    Angus’s lips parted in a nasty
rendition of a smile, revealing a mouth full of crooked, unkempt