Chapter Thirty-Eight

Daniel sat on the edge of Abby’s bed and tugged his leather boot up over his calf. When she moved on the mattress behind him, flashes of their night together invaded his memory. He smiled and reached for his other boot while she draped herself over his back and caressed him to her. He covered her much smaller hand where it rested on his belly.

He hated having to leave her bed, but with the queen missing and him gone from the palace so often, searching for her, he didn’t want Charlotte to discover them now.

“I’ve been thinking,” she purred against his ear.

“About what?” Hell, he couldn’t let himself go hard for her now.

“Nora.”

Well, that helped. He smiled, and then laughed at himself. An instant later he groaned when she moved her naked body along his back.

“If Nora knows anything, she willna’ tell ye. I know because if ’twere my brother, I would say nothing, no matter what it cost me.”

He grew serious and held her hand at his chest. “What would you have me do?” he asked her quietly. “If she knows where the queen is, should I not use any means to get that information from her?”

She didn’t answer him, but pressed a kiss between his shoulders, and then moved away.

“D’ye believe that her brother’s men are coming here to attack?” she asked him, sounding curious and a little anxious, but not angry with him for his honesty about Nora.

“They’re fools if they do. They won’t live a full day.”

He stood up and turned to her. She was sitting up, slipping her wondrous body into her shift. He wanted to stay and peel her out of it again.

“But what reason does she have to be untruthful?”

This was a serious conversation, but that didn’t stop Daniel from wanting to smile. Abby was an intelligent woman. She thought like a leader, but she was also delightfully innocent about certain things… like people. A condition, he suspected, that came from living secluded away in the Highlands. As long as that was where she stayed, she would do well to see the best in others.

But he didn’t want her to remain in Skye, away from him.

“Mayhap,” she suggested while she left the bed and began to dress, “she is unaware of her brother’s treachery, if he is indeed involved in the queen’s disappearance.”

Daniel eyed his beloved from the corner of his eye and pushed his arm through his military coat. “He must be involved, Abby. It’s not by chance that she came here now. She wanted to get inside the palace. Why would she risk her life coming here in the night on the pretense of seeking your help?”

“Because she has no one else?” she insisted.

“She has her brother’s garrison. She could have gone to Edinburgh, where her brother was allegedly last seen. No, she came here to find out if I had taken him prisoner.”

“But,” Abby argued, “ye promised him at Tarveness that ye would leave him alone fer a few months as payment fer helping us.”

“Precisely,” he said. “Why would I arrest him unless he had done something worthy of the noose?”

She mulled it over for a moment, and then went to him. “Mayhap ye’re correct. But she was kind to me, Daniel.” She reached up and took his face in her palms. “Go, my love, before the palace and Charlotte awaken. I shall be safe. Go.”

“Whatever happens,” he told her before he left her room, “I’ll take her kindness toward you into consideration.”

“General!” Captain Lewis appeared on the other side of the door.

Hell, it didn’t bode well that Lewis knew where to find him.

“There’s a man outside the palace seeking an audience with you. He says he has information about the queen!”

“Did he give his name?” Daniel opened the door fully and stepped into the hall.

“He did, my lord. He said he is called Tristan. Tristan MacGregor.”

Abby sprang from the room and appeared at Daniel’s side, ready to go with him.

“Stay here.”

“Nae. He’s my uncle!” She raced along beside him. “If he has information about my aunt, I want to hear it.”

He would talk to her later about her inability to obey the simplest of commands. Right now, though, he wanted to know what the hell the MacGregors had to do with this! He no longer believed they meant to hurt Anne. Abby had been forced to come here upon threat of the army entering Skye. Davina MacGregor might be the true heir, but she wanted nothing to do with the throne. Daniel believed it.

He had his men escort the MacGregor into Anne’s private solar. He remembered this one from Tarveness Keep and their discussion about sleeping in stables. He was only slightly smaller than the rest of the brawny Highlanders who had accompanied him that day. Why, Daniel wondered, while he waited for his guest to finish embracing Abby, was he alone now?

Abby put the question to him soon enough when she asked where her father was.

“He is well and safe,” he assured his niece, “as are the rest of us.” He turned to Daniel. “As is the queen.”

Daniel bolted from the chair he was sitting in. “Where?”

“In a brothel six leagues west of here.”

“A brothel?” Daniel wanted to start removing some heads. He held his patience in check to hear more. “What the hell is she doing in a brothel?”

“MacPherson tried to kill her.” Tristan told them what happened and how they had stopped MacPherson from shooting Anne. Daniel listened, his rage seething closer to the surface.

He couldn’t listen any more without doing something. He dragged his sword free with a grinding swoosh and pointed it at Abby’s uncle. “Bring me to her now.”

“Daniel, please,” Abby begged. “Put doun yer sword. Are ye not listening? They saved her!”

“She’s safe, General,” her uncle told him calmly and walked over to the wine decanter set on the table. “The men guarding her will let nae harm come to her. They will keep her safe just as ye kept our Abigail safe. May I? Just a quick refreshment before we’re off again?” When Daniel nodded, still holding his sword, the Highlander poured himself a drink. He took a swig, then set down his cup. “Please, General, put yer sword away. I’d hate to be forced to remove it from ye myself. I dinna’ like having a blade aimed in my direction when I’m innocent.”

Daniel wasn’t in the frame of mind for this man’s arrogance. No one had ever unarmed him, and he was sure no one ever would. Still, he did as he was asked, preferring to get the hell out of there.

“I want to see her,” Daniel demanded. “You’ll tell me the rest on the way.”

“That’s why I’m here, to bring ye to her,” Tristan said, smiling amiably. Daniel understood why the chief had sent him and not any of the others. This MacGregor wasn’t as quick to draw his weapon as another Highlander would be.

“I’m coming along.” Abby moved forward but was stopped when her uncle spoke again.

“Ye wilna’ be coming back here again, lass.”

“What d’ye mean?”

“Yer faither has decided that ye’re coming home with us. We’ve convinced Anne that yer mother has nae interest in the throne and she’s already agreed to go before Parliament and do all she can to end the proscription. There’s nae longer a reason fer ye to stay.”

Abby fell back into her chair like she never wanted to leave it and looked up to find Daniel’s gaze on her.

He’d thought about this day for weeks. The day it all ended between them. The day she returned to Skye. It had come too soon. He wanted to tell her not to go. He wanted to beg her not to leave him. He opened his mouth but only a garbled groan escaped him. He hadn’t loved before her. Not like this. Damn it, he loved her so much it made him hurt worse than any wound he’d received in battle. He wouldn’t love again after her. He didn’t care about monarchies, British or Danish, when it came to her. But she dreamed of becoming chief of her clan.

This glorious Highland woman belonged on windswept moors, free of the encumbrances of England’s stuffy courts. Her mother had rejected it, and so had Abby. How could he ask her to give up her dreams, her home, and her family?

But he wanted to. He wanted to beg her to stay.

“Ah.” Her uncle poured himself another drink. “We suspected this.”

Abby sniffed and watched him with eyes that gleamed like sapphires under water. “Ye did? And my faither?” she added when he nodded.

“He was afraid of it, aye. The queen suspects feelings between the both of ye, as well.”

“I don’t care if they all come down together on me for it.” Daniel went to her and knelt before her chair. “I’m asking ye to stay here and let’s discuss this when I return, Abigail.” He took her hand and kissed it. “There must be something we can do to change our fate. We’ve more ahead of us than secrets and sorrow.”

She loved him. He could see it in her eyes. When she turned to her uncle and spoke, she spoke it with her mouth. “I’m going to wait here to hear what General Marlow wishes to say.”

“Yer faither—”

“Tell my faither I refused to leave. He’ll know then that there was nothing ye could do to change my mind, Uncle.”

Daniel winked at her as he straightened. “Let’s go,” he told her uncle. “The sooner I get the queen, the quicker I can return to her.” He winked at Abby. Everything would work out. They would make it work. “Keep clear of Nora MacPherson’s room.”

“She’s here?” her uncle asked.

Daniel nodded and promised to explain on the way.

While they rode to the brothel Tristan filled Daniel in on everything they knew—thanks to Colin MacGregor—about Richard Montagu and his plot to use the Jacobites to kill the queen.

“Of course, we would have preferred a Catholic king on the throne,” Tristan admitted. “But that was before we met Anne. We all agree that she is most likable. And truly, what we want is a monarch who will leave us to our ways. Anne has promised that she would.”

“I’m pleased to hear it,” Daniel told him honestly. “Anne has enough enemies. I didn’t want to have to fight more of you.”

“ ’Twould have been a quick fight.” Tristan said, offering Daniel a bright grin before picking up speed on his mount.

They reached the brothel while the sun was still high and were met by the chief and his brother Colin. Daniel didn’t waste time with pleasantries, but listened on the way to Anne’s room while the chief filled him in on everything Tristan had left out, which wasn’t much.

When Daniel reached the door, he pushed it open and plunged inside. What he found stunned him beyond speech. There she was, his normally morose queen, propped up in a bed with an enormous dog sprawled out beside her and four Highlanders sitting around her, her head tossed back in laughter. The sound filled the room, bringing sunshine to the gloom that had covered his heart these last few days.

There was hardly any room to walk, but that wasn’t why Daniel didn’t move from the doorway. He didn’t want to disturb her joy. He never wanted to snatch this moment from her.

When another massive hound growled at him, the queen turned her head toward the door. “Daniel!” She gasped and tried to move in her bed.

He went to her then, brushing past the fangs of the hound without so much as a thought. “Anne! I was worried out of my mind.” He practically lifted her from the bed in a great embrace that made her moan. He pulled back, sorry for hurting her, but then grinned when she laughed at him and patted his face.

“Thanks to these men, I’m fine.”

Daniel looked around, not knowing what to say. Thank you didn’t seem enough. They’d not only saved her life, they’d bound her bones and made her laugh like a woman who had reason to be happy.

“She’s doin’ well,” the chief told him, coming to sit at the table. Daniel caught the wink he shot to Anne. “We weren’t certain how ye would receive the news that she was with us. And she was pretty beat up.”

“But now I am strong enough to return home,” she told them. “And I want to bring my new family with me. Of course, we will say they are Campbells and Gordons to keep anyone from finding out about Davina. I will…”

Hell, Daniel thought, while she continued on. Highlanders at St. James’s. The palace would never recover.

“General.”

Daniel turned to Robert MacGregor and knew what was coming by the seriousness in the chief’s tone, the clarity in the cool blue eyes much like his daughter’s.

“Where is Abigail and why did she not return with ye?”

Daniel looked at him and then at the rest of them, each one bigger than the next, their dogs eyeing him as if he were their worst enemy yet.

Hell.