Intimate Enemies Page 3

  The other woman in the room spoke mildly down to her embroidery.

  “Be more charitable to him. It might easily have been him saving us, you know.”

  “No, I don't know that. I'll tell you why.” Lauren pushed out of the chair, already impatient with rest, and paced around the chamber. “If it had been us out there yesterday morning, being slaughtered by a boatload of Vikings, du Morgan would have merely turned away. He would have let those Northmen do his dirty work for him, and then most likely thanked them kindly when it was over. It would save him a parcel of trouble to have us dead, and don't think he doesn't know that.”

  “You are too harsh.”

  Lauren shrugged, not replying because the only things now on the tip of her tongue were unkind. Hannah was her best friend in this world, and Lauren did not wish to be unkind to her. So instead she walked to one of the windows of her father's private solar, gazing out to what surely had to be her favorite view of Shot.

  The woods, deep and dark and filled with green mystery.

  The slope of the hills that turned into mountains, varied and rugged with granite and quartz.

  The shoreline, deceptively calm and flat.

  The ocean. Cold, endless. Sparkling indigo and green and silver.

  And it was hers, all of it. Well, hers and her people's. The Isle of Shot belonged to the Clan MacRae, and had since the beginning of time. No English edict was going to change that. No English devil family could alter it. The MacRaes were here first, no matter what the English said, and so Shot would always rightfully be theirs. It was as true as the rhythm of life itself, sometimes stronger, sometimes fainter. But always there.

  To o bad for her, right now the pulse was at its fainter wane. The threat from the outside had begun to wear on them all. But she was not ready to give up yet—not ever.

  “How is he doing?” asked Hannah now, her voice just as gentle as always.

  Lauren turned around and stared at her blankly.

  “Our visitor,” Hannah reminded her, looking up from her sewing.“Our guest. The Earl of Morgan.”

  “Oh.” She turned back to the window.“I'm sure he's fine. Elias said he would recover. That's good enough for me.”

  “Indeed,” agreed Hannah. “But perhaps you should go see for yourself.”

  Clever Hannah, always finding her sore points. Hannah knew that Lauren didn't want to spend any more time with the Englishman than she had to. He was most likely awake now, and demanding answers.

  Lauren lifted one hand to the glassed window, tracing the outline of lead that held the panes together. Let him wait. Let him worry. Just a bit longer.

  “He was defending our land, after all,” said Hannah, after a pause.“He almost died for it.”

  “You know he thinks it's his land.”

  “And you know it isn't. So what does it matter? His blood was spilt for Shot. The blood of his kin, as well.”

  “And the blood of my kin!” Lauren pushed away from the window and started pacing again, giving in to the anger simmering in her with each strong step.

  “Oh, Lauren.” Hannah's voice was soft with sorrow. “Your father's death was a terrible loss to us all. But don't you think it might be time to let go your hatred of this family? We have a new worry to consider. We have a new enemy to vanquish from our home. It was not the du Morgans who killed your father. It was not the du Morgans who injured Quinn. It was the Vikings.”

  Lauren bowed her head, wanting to block out the words, wanting to block out the truth of it all.

  Da, murdered by these foul invaders not yet a week ago. Her cousin Quinn, next in line to lead the clan, so seriously injured from the same battle that it was thought he might not recover.

  Lauren had never been like other girls she knew. She had never willfully maintained the fantasy of a soft, sheltered life. She was a daughter of Shot, and of Hebron MacRae, the finest laird ever to head the clan. Her mother had passed away when she was young, so Lauren had grown up in the footsteps of her father, playing in the untamed woods of the island, learning to hunt and fish and even scuffle with the boys. Not for her, the confines of embroidery and looms and cooking and the safety of the walls of Keir Castle. She could shoot an arrow as straight as anyone; she was one of the swiftest in the whole clan. And, Da would say, laughing at her exploits, one of the most dauntless.

  For some reason, she had thought herself inured to death, ready for it. She had thought it just a natural part of her world. What a naïve child she had been after all, even after she had grown up. All along she had thought she was so hardened, fit for anything. Yet last week Lauren realized for the first time that her life had been wildly protected—as if she had walked and walked but never strayed from the charmed luck of a fairy circle. Last week she had finally gone beyond the circle, and stepped into a harsh new world.

  When the truth came, when they had carried the laird's bloodied body back to the castle, all Lauren had felt was a shaking terror, followed by a profound fury.

  Da was gone. Forever.

  “War is never particular about whose blood it claims, dearest,” Hannah said, almost reading her thoughts.“Your Da understood that. You know he would have done anything to protect you, and to protect our home. The fact remains that this new Earl of Morgan and his men came across a threat to all of us yesterday, and they moved to halt it. You cannot fault them for that.”

  Lauren said nothing. She flicked a bright strand of hair out of her eyes, blinking down at the blue slate stones of the floor.

  “And it could be that thanks to this English knight,” Hannah continued,“Shot is secure another day. We didn't have a sentry for that stretch of beach.”

  “We've never needed one before! I can't believe those raiders made it past the rough currents offshore there!”

  Hannah watched her, all calm and genuine benevolence in her chair, her hands no longer busy with the thread and cloth. Her fine silver hair was lit by the sun, her brown eyes held nothing but warmth. “But they did make it past the currents. And we have du Morgan to thank for at least slowing them down enough to repel them.”

  Lauren stood with her hands on her hips, scowling out the window. She didn't want to agree to this, no matter how true it was. She didn't want to give the Englishman any credit at all. He was another enemy, that was it. He was another threat to her family—a very particular one to her.

  And she had lost so much of her family already.

  “Lauren.”

  Just that. Just her name, and Hannah knew that she could not help but bend to the understated command in the syllables.

  “I'll go to him,” Lauren said, curt.“I will.”

  “You know we cannot keep him here much longer. His people have already sent demands for his return. Best to see to him now, don't you think?” She waited, then added, “It's what your father would have expected of you.”

  The sunlight flickered and disappeared behind a bank of clouds the shade of new steel. All the colors before her shifted to match that tint, enhancing the autumn seduction of the view.

  Behind her she heard the patient silence of Hannah, her friend, her adviser.

  Lauren let out a sigh.“Very well. I'll go now.”

  “Be kind to him,” Hannah reminded her, as she was walking out of the room.

  “Oh, aye,” Lauren replied softly.“Depend upon it.”

  RION DU MORGAN LAY SLEEPING in the pallet they had provided him, drifting in and out of awareness with a slow steadiness that seemed to match the sluggish pace of his heartbeat, gradually growing stronger.

  Where was he? His memory was pained and dim— blunt flashes of faces and voices, potions of hot liquid, and a searing pain in his shoulder.

  Blood. Sand.

  He had been out on patrol with a small party of men. Aye, that was right. They were walking for stealth, because Hammond had said it would be better to walk that strange length of beach than to ride, and Ari had listened to him because Hammond knew this land far better than he did. Hammond
had been born on Shot, while Ari had spent nearly the whole of his life on the mainland. This was his first visit to the island as the new earl since his uncle had died four months ago.

  They had been walking on their patrol, had rounded the corner of a thick woods and heavy dunes, and then there were the Vikings, bold and astonishingly careless in their arrival, their longship in plain site from the shore.

  And then, Ari remembered, all hell had broken loose.

  He and his men had been spotted, and there was nothing left to do but fight or die.

  Dying had surely seemed the most likely outcome. There had been only eight of them, after all, and countless, countless Vikings….

  After that, things got blurry. But he wasn't dead; he couldn't be. His shoulder hurt too damned much for that. Definitely alive—or was this hell?

  There was something heavy and bulky tied around his shoulder and under his arm. Bandages, many of them. Dead men didn't need to be bandaged.

  He remembered more. He remembered attempting to get up, trying to leave this place and search out his men. But the people here had stopped him, whoever they were—demons or angels—and gradually Ari had come to understand that his men were safe, all seven of them. They had repeated that to him enough so that he had surrendered again to the sleeping potions.

  Arion tried to sit up now and immediate, unpleasant waves of blackness rolled up into his vision. When they receded, he was sprawled flat again, breathing hard, twisted awkwardly across the pallet. Slowly, carefully, he straightened himself out.

  The room that held him was small but had a window which let in the fresh ocean air. Too nice a breeze for hell, he would think. There was also a great, tall ceiling, with heavy beams of wood crisscrossing the arch of it. The shadows up there seemed to shift and float in peaceful grace, silent spirits, guardian angels, perhaps, watching him … so this might be heaven….

  The door opened. Still dazed, Ari turned his head to look and watched as one of the angels from above took shape and form and glided forward into the chamber, a vision of celestial copper-haired beauty in—surprisingly enough—a tartan.

  Arion frowned. It was significant, that tartan. Perhaps even more so than the angel herself, who had walked over to him lying flat there on the hard pallet and stood silent, examining him with sober radiance.

  The tartan was fixed and pinned in intricate folds over one of Angel's shoulders with a brooch of silver, then wrapped around her waist to fall in warm lines almost to the floor, covering the gown beneath. It was a deep, subtle blue, with blurred lines of emerald and teal and violet running through it. A hunting tartan, designed to disguise the form it covered in the patchwork pattern of the forest.

  And that meant that this woman was no angel at all, but a hunter.

  “Awake?” she asked, a single word she managed to imbue with a rich variety of inflections: scorn and disdain, danger and threat.

  He sat up fully despite the streaking pain that stabbed through him and the black waves that rushed back. Ari gritted his teeth, fighting them, and felt a slow victory when they began to dissolve. He was bare chested, blankets around his waist, clearly unable to hide the fact that his breathing was strained. But Angel's eyes did not shift from his face.

  Reality came back. He knew now where he was, and who she was. There could be only one possible answer. At the very same moment, Arion realized that he was nude, that his sword was nowhere to be seen, and that this enemy of his had a heavy silver dagger tucked prominently into the folds of material at her waist. It would take her no time at all to draw it—and he had no doubt that she knew how to use it.

  She watched him steadily, unmoving, and Ari thought she must have sensed at least some of his comprehension, for now a slow smile curved her pretty lips, one that held no humor at all.

  Angel took one step closer, keeping the smile. Her hair fell loose and free, untied from the queue she had worn on the beach—yesterday? today?—and it now covered her shoulders and back in an unbelievably rich cascade of color. It framed her so perfectly, waved and satiny in the sunlight. A breeze came and stirred it, shimmering copper, and the light showed him her eyes now, too, hauntingly familiar, the color of …

  “Whiskey,” he said.

  She actually looked surprised, if only for second.

  “Have you any, Lauren MacRae?” Arion asked, leaning back against the wall behind him.

  She stood frozen, staring down at him.

  “I have it right, don't I?” Ari asked now, moving his own glance away from her, as if unconcerned. The blankets around him fell away further, exposing not just his torso but his stomach as well, and even lower. “You are Lauren MacRae, are you not? Or is it Lauren Murdoch by now?”

  Angel gave him a frigid smile—wholly at odds with the warm halo of her hair—and crossed to a table Ari hadn't noticed before, by the door. When she turned back she carried a flask. She pulled out the stopper for him and handed it over.

  “Enjoy,” she said, but the tone of her voice said, Choke on it.

  He offered back his own smile, dry, then took a long draw from the flask.

  The whiskey was good. Better than good, it was incredible, spicy and warm and smooth. But he was careful to stop after two swallows, because he knew he would need his wits to stay sharp around his adversary.

  She was stunning. He couldn't think of a better word for her than that—stunning. She was exquisite and delicate and shone with all the wonderful colors he could have ever imagined on a woman—pale golden eyes and lustrous copper hair and alabaster skin tinted with pink … dark brown lashes and brows; her lips blood rose, full and erotic. He couldn't believe this was the child he had seen all those years ago, a thin brat grown up to be—a goddess.

  But it was she. He knew it in bones, in his soul. Now that his head had cleared some he recognized the same bold spirit he had seen in that small girl, glowing like a living flame in the woman here in front of him. This was Lauren MacRae of the Clan MacRae, and thus one of his most hated enemies.

  Ari wanted to laugh with despair and anger. Who could have guessed his enemy would have grown up to be so ruthlessly fair?

  He had to pretend to take another swallow of the whiskey to cover his body's reaction to her: total greed. Quick, raging desire. He wanted her, wanted her so badly that he couldn't even look at her face for more than a few seconds at a time. It was crazed, it was deep and shadowed and endless, passion as he had never before known—or even suspected. He had to disguise the shaking of his hands.

  This was insane. He must have injured his head in the battle. There had to be something wrong with him, something that could explain this tide of emotion that quickened through him and boiled up to his skin, this complete craving for her.

  If she discovered this fault in him she would not hesitate to use it against him. And Arion realized, to his aggravation, that he would probably have to let her, that he wouldn't be able to stop her one bit. Just the thought of touching her—even her hand, her wrist, the soft, supple flesh of her arm—brought forth a torrent of dark fantasies. He closed his eyes, fighting it.

  Her voice floated out into the room, velvet and smoke, utterly feminine.

  “What were you doing on my land, du Morgan?”

  His eyes opened again. Lauren MacRae kept her face impartial, only a glint of something cold and hostile in the lovely amber of her eyes telling him how she really felt: she loathed him. It was so obvious, and so utterly appropriate that he wanted to laugh again, but he didn't.

  “Your land?” Arion murmured. “Pardon me. I was under the impression it was mine.”

  “You could use a lesson in geography,” she replied pleasantly, and the glint grew colder. “The Isle of Shot belongs to the MacRaes.”

  “Odd. I seem to recall something about my family being here before yours.”

  “You are, no doubt, delusional. Perhaps I should confine you for your own good. Keir Castle does not have a dungeon, of course—we are not English barbarians— but I am posi
tive I can discover a sufficiently unpleasant location for you.”

  Arion did look at her now, full on. “Was that a threat, MacRae?”

  She gave a graceful shrug. “I don't have to threaten. Yo u are in my home now, du Morgan.”

  Her smile was not even guarded, just clear, gorgeous spite. If the circumstances had been at all in his favor, he would have given in to the urge to lie back and admire her gall and her beauty.

  “Your home,” he repeated lightly. “Forgive me, MacRae, my head must be muddled. When did you become the leader of your clan?”

  He meant it as a casual insult, but he could see his barb went deeper than that, that he had truly wounded her. Seeing it in her caused a similar sensation in him— his heart clenched up, a stabbing ache, pain that he had pained her.

  Arion was staggered by his reaction. He could not allow her to control him like this.

  “My cousin is the laird,” she finally said, her face showing none of her distress.“I speak for him.”

  He was surprised in spite of himself.“Your father?”

  “Dead,” she answered flatly.

  Ari nodded, understanding now the source of that hurt in her.“I'm sorry.”

  “Aye, I'm sure you are,” she said scathingly. “Very sorry indeed.”

  He could only shrug, knowing she wouldn't believe him. He couldn't blame her, so he changed the subject.

  “I want to see my men.”

  “Your men are safe enough.”

  “Take me to them.”

  She had her composure back now, a careful smile on her face that couldn't quite disguise the icy anger behind it.“I think not, du Morgan. You'll just have to believe me, because you are staying here.”

  He sat up straighter.“Am I your prisoner, MacRae?”

  “Why not? Perhaps it's your turn to play hostage.”

  “That would be,” he said softly, letting his own threat come through in his voice,“very, very foolish of you.”

  “Oh, think you so?” Her smile faded but the coldness almost sparkled around her now, sharp and winter bright.“Think you so indeed?”