Highlander’s Betrayed Vixen (Warriors of the North #4)

Prologue

“Get that blade up,” Vaila McGregor, née Donaghey, snapped at one of the soldiers she was training.

“Ye’ll nae block anything with your sword down there.

Nay, dinnae look at him,” she shouted, striding toward the man with her own blade in hand as the young soldier dared a look at Vaila’s husband, James McGregor, the Captain of the Guard for Clan Buchanan. “He’s nae teaching ye. I am.”

The soldier made the foolish choice of still sending a pleading look over at the captain—the male captain.

James’ mouth hitched to the side.

“She’s going to thrash ye,” he informed the young man from his position leaning against one of the fenceposts in the training yard.

Several of the other guardsmen paused in their training to observe as well, something that James would normally have scolded them for. He understood the urge to see his wonderful, competent wife put the overconfident youngling down on his arse, though.

Vaila raised her own sword in the appropriate form, her dark eyes flashing as her lithe form rippled through the movements of preparing a strike.

The young soldier stumbled backward.

“I cannae fight ye,” he stammered. “Ye are a woman.”

Around James, the soldiers started laughing at the young lad’s mistake.

“Now she’s really going tae thrash ye, lad,” James called, not even bothering to hide his amusement.

Vaila’s long dark plait slithered down her back like a snake about to strike as she took a step forward, then another, then raised her blade—

“Vaila.Vaila!”

Eilidh Donaghey, the youngest of four Donaghey sisters, raced into the training yard, unheeding of any moving blades or potential dangers. James, along with half his battalion, took an alarmed step forward.

Vaila, though, trusted her own competence. She halted her strike with expert precision, stopping her movement the instant her sister was within reach.

“Damn it, Eilidh!” she snapped, annoyed rather than afraid. “Ye ruined my drill. Now this bawface excuse for a warrior will never learn.”

“Oi,” the lad protested, his hand going self-consciously to his cheeks which did, indeed, have a certain babyish roundness still clinging to them.

Both sisters ignored him.

“Your training can wait,” Eilidh said.

She squared her shoulders, tossed her golden braid over her shoulder, and spread her arms wide in a grandiose gesture. James knew that this penchant for the dramatic in her youngest sister drove his wife to distraction, but some of the older soldiers chuckled affectionately at her antics.

“It is time,” Eilidh said grandly. When this did not have the effect she desired, she let out an impatient huff. “Ailsa’s gone into labor,” she said in a much diminished tone.

Vaila’s response, however, was significantly more marked this time around.

“She has?” she exclaimed, her eyes going wide in her face.

The real marker of her intense reaction, however, was that she let the tip of her blade drop to touch the dirt, something that James had never once seen her do before.

It made sense, however, that if one thing was going to distract his wife from maintaining a warrior’s form, it would be the news that her eldest sister, Lady Ailsa Buchanan, was in labor with her first child.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, whirling to face her husband, who was already approaching to take Vaila’s sword.

The two elder Donaghey sisters were close, and Vaila was the one person, aside from midwives and assistants, that Ailsa desired at her side during her labor.

Ailsa’s husband, Ewan, Laird Buchanan, had not been happy about this decree, but he’d been outvoted by his wife and all the other women of the family, who had insisted that birthing babies was women’s work.

“Men are too fragile about childbirth,” Dowager Lady Buchanan had confided to her daughter by marriage, while her son sputtered his protestations. “He will merely distract ye when ye cannae afford distraction.”

“Mithair!” Ewan protested.

Three sets of female eyes had narrowed on him as though he, and indeed all of mankind, were responsible for every ill ever suffered by the fairer sex. James, who had wished ardently to be elsewhere but had remained out of a sense of solidarity to his Laird and friend.

Now, however, he was determined to do his duty by accepting his wife’s blade for cleaning so that she could grasp her skirts in both hands and dash up to the keep proper, where her sister’s long challenge was beginning.

“Tell Ailsa that we love her!” Eilidh called after Vaila’s retreating form. When Vaila gave no acknowledgement, Eilidh’s dainty, fey features collapsed into a pout. “Nobody ever appreciates my help,” she complained, though there wasn’t any real ire to her words.

James found himself biting back a fond smile.

Eilidh was sweet and fanciful, if a bit naive, and she always made him feel like he was playing the role of the protective elder brother, particularly when Eilidh’s actual elder brother, Graham Donaghey, was off protecting his Keep, the great Castle Dubh-Gheal, from Finlay Gordon, the villain who had been wreaking havoc on the Donagheys and their allies this past year.

“They appreciate ye plenty, lass,” he said, placing an affectionate pat on his shoulder before reaching for a polishing blade in his sporran to wipe down Vaila’s sword, which was dusty from training. “But ye cannae tell me that ye never rile your sisters on purpose.”

Eilidh pressed her lips together, clearly trying not to smile.

“Mayhap,” she allowed.

James didn’t bother to contain his laughter. Eilidh could be a little pest sometimes, but she was sweet as honey, too.

“What are ye going to do while ye wait for the babe?” he asked. “I gather it can take quite some time.”

Eilidh cast him a sidelong glance that was laden with feminine exasperation.

“I ken that it can take time, thank ye very much,” she said tartly. “I’m nae a man. I’ve seen babes born before.”

“I beg your pardon, lassie,” he said teasingly. “I bow to your expertise.”

She looked pleased at that.

“I’ll gather flowers,” she said in response to his earlier question. “A new baby should have sommat pretty to look at when they’re born, and if he or she doesnae like flowers, Ailsa does, so all will be well.”

James finished polishing Vaila’s sword, then reached out and ruffled Eilidh’s hair. She squeaked her objection and ducked away.

“Go off, then, lass,” he said. “Fetch your flowers. I have men to train.”

“Aye, aye,” she said. “Ye are very important. I’ll nae bother ye any longer.”

James strongly doubted that this was true, but he didn’t really mind being bothered by Eilidh.

He’d never had a family before marrying Vaila, and he hadn’t expected to like having sisters as much as he did.

Technically, he supposed he also had a brother by marriage, too, but Graham Donaghey was too imposing for James to feel as close to him as he did the girls.

That brotherly instinct had him keep an eye on Eilidh as he guided his men through the remainder of their training session.

She wandered idly through a nearby glen, stopping at apparently random intervals to pluck blossoms from the ground.

He could vaguely see a growing bundle of white and purple blooms clutched in her fist.

Even with his attentiveness, James didn’t see anything amiss before he heard Eilidh shout. He’d been in the middle of rehearsing an advance move to separate an enemy from his blade with one of the guardsmen when her cry of surprise echoed through the glen.

James—along with every man in the training yard—whipped around, blades raised.

A dark shape was cutting across the horizon, speeding toward them. James blinked, and the shape turned into a horse, bolting toward them.

The men surged toward this unknown, unexpected arrival, though James noted that some younger, unmarried guards headed for Eilidh more directly than they did the arriving mount.

As he ran, James tried to puzzle through this appearance.

Was it a Buchanan horse returning home? If so, who was its rider? And where had they gone?

But even as he tried to make a mental accounting of who might have left the Keep that day, he saw something alarming.

There was someone atop that horse. Someone who was slumped over the horse’s neck, clearly unconscious—or at least pretending to be.

“Line up!” he roared to his men. “This could be another of Gordon’s tricks!”

James himself had spent a very unpleasant day enjoying Gordon’s dubious hospitality.

He’d escaped with his life—not to mention Vaila’s—only because Graham Donaghey had arrived at precisely the right moment.

The bastard was treacherous, and he would not gain a footing in Buchanan lands on James’ watch.

As the men, who had been running pell-mell toward Eilidh and the horse, reorganized themselves into formation, James noted with horror that Eilidh wasn’t moving back toward the approaching phalanx of potential protectors.

Instead, she tilted her head curiously and walked toward the thundering horse, her hand raised.

“Eilidh!” he roared, pumping his arms and legs even more furiously, even though he knew there was no chance of reaching her before she met the horse and its unknown rider. “Eilidh, get away!”

But she didn’t listen. Of course she didn’t listen. If there was anything that all four Donaghey sisters had in common, it was that they were all stubborn as rock itself when they got an idea in their minds.

The horse didn’t plow right through the slender lass, however. Instead, it trotted right up to her, slowing with a palpable aura of relief, as if it recognized Eilidh as a source of safety. When she was within touching distance, it nuzzled its nose against her palm.

“Hold!” James called to his men.

He didn’t dare spook the horse, not when it was close enough—and large enough—to cause Eilidh irreparable harm.

One of the particularly eager young bucks looked as though he was desperate enough to be the lass’ savior that he was going to disobey James’ order, but he staggered to a stop only a few paces ahead of his companions.

“There’s a good lad,” Eilidh was murmuring to the horse as James reached her side. “Aye, ye are a braw, good lad.”

Her voice was low and hypnotic, and the horse—a midnight-black stallion with a single white star on its brow—seemed entirely in her thrall. James waved to his men, using hand signals to instruct them to approach slowly and cautiously.

“Will ye let me see to your rider?” she asked the horse.

“Eilidh,” James said warningly.

She ignored him. Bloody again.

Before she could reach for the rider, however, whatever lingering consciousness had been keeping him in the saddle gave up; he slid in an ungainly flop off the back of the horse, landing heavily enough on the ground that James winced slightly in sympathy.

The man was clearly not feigning unconsciousness. Nobody could fake that fall without reacting, not if they were aware of the fall in any way.

An uncharacteristic seriousness fell over Eilidh’s features as she patted the horse’s nose one last time, then turned to kneel beside the man on the ground.

“Bi crivvens, Eilidh,” James breathed, dropping to kneel beside her.

But the lass’ hands were certain as she gently guided the slumped man to lay on his back. His face was bloody, and his dark clothes were wet in places that indicated that there were more injuries than met the eye.

But he was breathing. The breaths were shallow and clearly labored, but they were there. He was alive.

Eilidh’s shaky exhale was full of relief.

She squared her shoulders, determination overtaking her features. She looked back at the guards and spoke with certainty and command that James had never heard from her before.

“Bring him inside at once,” she ordered in a voice that reminded everyone assembled that, for all her flights of fancy, she still was a Donaghey sister. “He needs a healer. Quickly. We are going to save this man.”