Chapter 11

Unlike her cousins, Jenefer had no intention of going quietly into captivity. She planned to force the Highlander to carry her, kicking and screaming, all the way.

He had other plans.

“Ye can wear my leine,” he said.

His offer surprised her. She expected no mercy from him. But it was tempting to take him up on it. The sweat of battle was upon her, making the cold wind even more chilling.

Still, that would be surrendering. She didn’t want to give him the pleasure.

“I don’t want your filthy leine,” she said stubbornly, half hoping his entire clan would witness the travesty of their laird forcing a helpless, naked lass into captivity against her will.

“I’m not givin’ ye a choice,” he said.

“I won’t wear it.”

“Ye will.”

“Nay, I won’t.”

“Aye. Ye will.”

“Nay, I w—”

Before she could finish the word, he dropped to the ground with her, pressing her back onto the icy grass and straddling her.

Holding her fast between his knees to prevent her escape, he tore off his cotun and hauled his pale saffron leine off over his head.

Jenefer lay stunned. She told herself that he’d knocked the wind out of her. That she was too cold to move.

But the truth was she was rattled by the impressive sight of him. Highlanders were as massive as the rumors purported. His shoulders seemed impossibly wide. His arms were well-muscled. His chest was as broad as a bull’s. Yet for all the tales she’d heard about the furry, bearlike men of the north, his torso had only a light dusting of dark hair.

Only when he tried to sit her up did she remember to fight back.

It was a bad decision. In his efforts to wrench the leine down over her, his hands brushed her intimately more than once. Alternately gasping and cursing, batting ineffectually at his arms, she did more harm than good.

In the end, he had to settle the weight of his hips atop hers to anchor her to the ground. And all her shrieks of protest did nothing to prevent him from dressing her in his leine.

When he was done, and he set her on her feet again, her cousins’ silence was damning. Jenefer’s defiance had gained her nothing and only embarrassed them.

But she didn’t care. In her opinion, her cousins had surrendered too easily. It was more proof she was the better warrior.

Worse than weathering their disapproval, however, was being forced to wear the Highlander’s leine. The despised garment hung down past her knees, enveloping her as if to claim her. It was still warm from his body, and it smelled of spice, sweat, and smug triumph.

Still, that was the least of her troubles. If he was able to subdue her so easily, what might he do to her later, in the privacy of his chamber? What would happen to her cousins? Both of these men’s faces bore numerous cuts and bruises, marks of violence. Would they try to beat her and her cousins into submission?

She cast another quick glance at the battle-hardened Highlander, who was slipping back into his discarded cotun and retrieving his claymore. Her heart pounded at the sight of his rolling shoulders and rippling back. Even if she could make a break for it, she couldn’t leave her cousins in the arms of these powerful beasts. She had to protect them.

But she’d do it on her own terms.

When he made a move to pick her up in his free arm, she stepped back.

“I can walk on my own, Highlander.”

“I’m sure ye can,” he muttered. “But will ye?”

She chose not to answer. Instead, she let willfulness replace trepidation. She tossed her head and strode brazenly through the palisade gates and toward the castle. If her courage held, she could imagine she was attacking the keep rather than marching to her own imprisonment within its walls.

The others fell in. The tall fair-haired man still had a firm grip on Feiyan. Hallie came of her own accord.

It went against all Jenefer’s instincts to surrender. But perhaps that was for the best. Perhaps they should go willingly and wait until the Highlanders had their guard down to make their move.

Once they were inside the walls, she and her cousins could take account of their resources, look for weaknesses in the castle defenses, and combine their strengths to figure a way out of this.

Jenefer shivered as a rogue breeze whipped the linen of his leine against her thighs. She only hoped the three of them could escape before the men decided to prove their manliness.

When they pushed through the door and entered the courtyard, she was dismayed to see how quickly the Highlanders had made themselves at home. The once abandoned outbuildings were now filled with goods and tools. One pen was full of sheep. Another held half a dozen coos. And from the tower above, where her colors of du Lac and Rivenloch should have flown, waved the arrogant pennon of an unfamiliar clan.

A guard stood at one of the towers of the keep. Jenefer shot him a hateful glare, and he scrambled back, probably to alert the castlefolk.

Moments later, the doors to the great hall suddenly flung open to make way for them.

“Och shite,” her captor muttered, getting a firm grip on her arm.

Apparently he’d hoped to enter the castle quietly, unseen, not in front of a crowd of curious clansmen.

She couldn’t blame him. After all, marching through the hall with three unarmed lasses—one of them not even decently clad—was the act of a coward.

Naturally, she decided to make the most of it.

Coloring her voice with desperate fear, she cried out, “Please, m’laird, do not murder us!”