The highlanders tudor la.., p.19
The Highlander's Tudor Lass, page 19
Instead of letting Elias prod her along, Jandeau grabbed Anna’s arm so hard that she knew there’d be bruises. The man was all dark power and stood at least a foot taller than her, and right then he seethed. Anna knew enough about survival to keep her mouth shut and in a neutral line. He yanked, and her feet flew out from under her enough that he dragged her by the arm toward the stairs, her knees hitting the wooden floor. Did he mean to throw her down them?
Her legs churned under her, and she was finally able to find purchase, righting herself as he started his descent without pause. Her heart beat frantically, knowing that he wouldn’t have cared one bit if she’d tumbled, falling to her death down the turning tower stairwell.
“Bloody foking hell!” Hamish’s voice flew up the stairs.
The remaining men, Dora, and Mary were all behind Anna and Jandeau, but he didn’t hurry or let them by.
“What?” one of the men yelled around them.
“Get down here,” Hamish called back.
“Trying,” Pete said, right behind Anna, but he chose not to attempt to push past Jandeau.
Making it to the bottom, Anna hurried to keep up with the pirate captain’s even strides back into the great hall, the other men dodging past him to the table.
Lying on the floor were Pock Face and the pirate who’d found Jack in the stables, eyes open and mouths slack and foamy.
“Poison!” Pete yelled, grabbing his stomach. “And we all ate the stew.”
It was almost comical to watch their heads turn between the bowls and pot of stew, the lid off showing that the two dead had taken a second serving while they guarded the fare below.
“They’re foaming at the mouth,” Elias yelled, his hands going to his head where he raked through his perfectly coiffed hair.
“’Tis definitely poison,” Travis said in awe, shaking his head. “He trained a horse to kick Jack, pushed Frank down a privy hole, and stabbed Bruce through the eye. Now these two have been poisoned. All in one day. Who the bloody hell is Callum Macquarie?!”
Anna inhaled. “Obviously someone you don’t want to anger.” Everyone except Jandeau turned to stare at her, their eyes a bit wider.
Jandeau crossed his arms over his chest. “We’ll find him,” he said, his words rough and even. He nodded to two men. “Take the maid to the kitchen and watch her make something fresh, something that hasn’t been left out.” He looked at Elias. “I assume you have canned food since winter is coming.”
Elias looked to Mary, his brows rising in question.
“He has no idea,” Dora whispered.
Mary nodded. “In the cellar, there are some pickled vegetables and candied fruits and jam.”
Anna felt a gentle jab in her side and glanced to Dora beside her. “The base of the hearth,” she whispered without moving her lips.
Anna took her time to look about. Her heart leaped higher in her chest at the site of larger rocks set in a line against the wall. Callum was continuing to arm her. Before the night was out, the entire room might be laden with throwing rocks.
Jandeau waved the maid away with a flick of his hand. “We will eat what is safe and then split into pairs to check every inch of this castle, starting on the outer edge and slowly moving inward.”
“This isn’t a ship, Jandeau,” Elias said. “There are too many ways for him to escape.”
Jandeau looked over to Anna. “But he hasn’t, and he won’t, because I have something he wants.”
Anna’s breath staggered in her chest. The knowledge that Callum wouldn’t abandon her should warm her. But right then, knowing that she would be the bait to capture Callum, Anna wished he didn’t desire her. Because she couldn’t live knowing she was responsible for Callum’s torture and death.
“Captain!” Pete came running up the corridor from the kitchen.
“Good God, now what?” Elias said, dramatically throwing his hands in the air as if to beseech God. Anna was sure, though, that if he wanted any deity to assist him, Elias Grigg should have been throwing his hands downward toward Hell.
Pete held a scrap of paper in his hand. “This was left in the preserve cellar on the table.”
“What does it say?” asked the pirate that Anna had heard Pete call Jim.
“I can’t read,” Pete said and held it out to Jandeau.
Elias read over the captain’s shoulder and cursed as Jandeau crumpled it in his fist.
“What’s it say?” asked Hamish.
Elias sighed. “It says guess where the poison is.”
At that very moment, a roaring came down the chimney. Dora jumped, grabbing onto Anna, and they both turned toward it. A collective gasp had come from the remaining crew as they stared at the cinders that glowed with every whine of the wind funneling down.
“Holy Lord,” Dora whispered.
Callum’s voice began, and Anna’s hand went to her heart. She knew it was Callum’s, but it sounded ghostly or disturbed, like a warrior desperate to spill blood in battle.
“One kicked in the head, one drowned in shite,” Callum hollered down with enough edge to make a chill slide along Anna’s skin.
“One stabbed through the eye, and two doomed by their appetites.”
Anna held a hand over her mouth at the absurdity of the rhyme, but one look at the crew, and she could see it was having an effect. Wide eyes, slack mouths, weapons out. They were astonished and not just a little frightened.
“Is he in the hearth?” Travis asked taking steps closer, but Callum’s ominous voice continued, and the man stopped.
“One by one, ye will feel my vengeance,” Callum called down, his voice booming. “My warrior’s sword will mete out your penance.”
“He’s in one of the upper chimneys,” Jandeau said, motioning for some of the crew to run up the stairs, but they didn’t move except to jump when a large rock shot down and out of the hearth to roll onto the floor.
“And if ye harm these lasses three…” Callum paused and then continued without the ghostly rhymes. Instead, his sharp, hate-filled words flew like shot arrows. “I will rip off your cods, stuff them in each other’s mouths, and hang ye all naked from the roof for the vultures to pick apart.”
They were all silent until Pete made a strangled noise. He nodded to the hearth. “That last part…well, that didn’t rhyme, now did it?”
“Get up those stairs!” Jandeau yelled.
“Nay,” Hamish yelled back. “He’s mad! I’m leaving for the port where there’s food.” He lifted his face to the ceiling. “And I’m taking your foking horse, Highlander.”
“If you leave, you cow-hearted bilge rat, you’re off my crew,” Jandeau said. “And I will consider you an enemy.” The malice in his voice made Hamish pause, but then he looked around at the two on the floor, their mouths agape and foaming.
“I’ll take my chances, Frenchman,” Hamish said and strode toward the front doors.
“But you said you’d take stinking Bruce out,” Pete called. Hamish bit his thumb at him and kept walking.
Anna slowly bent to the floor and picked up another rock, slipping it into her pocket. Callum’s clever note and ghostly rhyme had gotten rid of another brute. Her Highlander wasn’t mad. He was extraordinary.
…
Bloody hell. Callum had meant to take out more than two with his clever poisoning, or at least Grigg since he’d been the one to give Callum the idea. Would they fall for the same trick with the butter smeared on the underside of the lid melting into the soup?
He huffed in the shadows where he balanced on the planks in the small turret on the roof. This would be so much easier with his brothers. God, if ye help me save Anna and the women, he prayed again, I will tell Adam that straight away. “Daingead,” he muttered. Even Drostan, God. I’ll even tell him that I needed his help.
Callum had retreated to the roof after hollering down the third-level chimney. He’d have untied his plaid and used it since Jandeau knew he was still in the castle, but one of the bastards had stolen it, leaving him in a now-tattered, rose-colored wrap. “Better than hose,” he murmured.
A flapping made him look across at the three sets of eyes watching him. The pigeons seemed to accept him as one of their own now and roosted on the perpendicular plank. Luckily for them, Callum had eaten a big helping of the stew before Mary had taken it to the pirates with the poisoned lid.
“What the fok am I going to do?” he asked out loud, thinking of the remaining crewman and Jandeau. He must also count the baron as an adversary despite him being a pompous, scheming fool. “Even a fool can slit a throat.”
He lowered his feet to the rock below and lifted his sword down from the planks, along with some larger rocks he’d chiseled out of the wall along the roof. Perhaps he should hide some in Grigg’s bedchamber in case they were needed to bash the damn pirate or baron. Because Callum would not allow either of them to rape Anna or any of the lasses. Aye, he needed to go back inside where he could hear what was happening.
The sound of hooves made him rush to the window in the turret. Were they riding away with the lasses? But it was just one rider.
“Bloody foking hell,” he said as he watched the largest of the pirates gallop away. On Rye. “Stealing bastard.” He rubbed both hands down his face, his stomach turning at the loss of his friend. Callum had helped birth Rye four years ago, his golden coat reminding Callum of the waving rye grass in the fields. The foal had been strong from the start and became Callum’s companion on Mull. He’d only just brought him over to Wolf Isle during the last year when Callum was certain the horse had a comfortable stable for his home. “I swear, Rye, I’ll get ye back.”
As he watched his friend be stolen away, he counted the remaining villains in his head. Five dead, one deserting, so five total to go.
Since Jandeau knew Callum was in the castle, he would probably set out to search the grounds. He wouldn’t send the men alone, because he knew by now that Callum would just kill them one by one. The group Jandeau had recruited for his next bloodthirsty crew did not seem to be too hardy or clever. Pairs, then. Jandeau with one of the men would make two pairs with Grigg alone. “If I could be so lucky,” Callum murmured, imagining the baron reeling from another punch in the nose.
Hopefully, some of the pails of water Callum had rigged over the doors of the bedrooms would fall on the muskets the pirates carried. Wetting the fuse of a matchlock musket rendered it useless until it dried and was relit. Maybe he should hide in Grigg’s bedchamber. If Jandeau dragged Anna there, Callum would see the pirate dead.
The thought of Anna struggling against the brute made Callum’s fists clench. Now that it was nearly nightfall, he must stay close to her. Would Jandeau leave the women in the great hall while he searched for him? The three women, with the rocks he’d left, could take out Grigg on their own. Unless he had a musket. But would Jandeau let the baron kill a lass who would bring him riches?
Thoughts, questions, and scenarios flew through Callum’s mind like leaves caught in the gusty autumn wind blowing around him.
With one last look out at the pirate fleeing on Rye, Callum huffed and walked across the roof to the door. He carried his sword, his sgian dubh in his boot, and a pointed rock tucked under his belt.
“Let’s see what ye are up to now,” he murmured and pushed through the door. In the dim light he stopped short, face to face with the scarred, devilish face of Claude Jandeau.
Chapter Eighteen
Callum shoved Jandeau backward, but the pirate captain was ready for the assault and turned so the force didn’t throw him down the stairs.
“Shite!” the man with him yelped and retreated down the steps. “He’s up here! Ho, Jim, Pete, he’s up on the roof.”
Actually, Callum was on the steps dropping his sword and yanking out his dagger for close combat. Jandeau had a larger dagger and gritted his teeth in a macabre grin of blood lust.
“Finally,” Jandeau said. “The little flea who is making me itch to slaughter.”
Callum pressed the pirate up against the stone wall at his back. The man was older than him, but still muscular even having been captured by the English and imprisoned for a month. Seeing him fight before, Callum wasn’t about to underestimate his adversary.
“A flea?” Callum said in his face. “More like a wolf who’s rid ye of half your men in less than a day.”
“Flea or wolf, I will still crush you and take your woman as my own,” Jandeau said and made a stabbing motion that Callum deflected against the wall.
“Ye mean the lass back on Wolf Isle? I didn’t happen to bring her along,” Callum said through his teeth.
Jandeau kicked out at Callum. “You think I don’t know about you and Anna Montgomerie?” Jandeau said, his vicious smile returning when Callum grunted as Jandeau’s boot hit his shin. “She smelled of sex when I first arrived, and she surely didn’t give herself to that impotent Englishman, Grigg.”
Jandeau threw his weight into Callum, and Callum lost his balance, his foot dropping a step as the slippery pirate twisted, turning outward to press down on him. Behind him in the narrow stairwell, Callum heard rapid clomping as the rest of Jandeau’s crew came running.
Callum stabbed his sgian dubh toward Jandeau’s chest, but the man twisted, and the blade struck the stone. Sparks spit out, and Jandeau knocked it from his hand. Callum grabbed his upper arms, throwing him around to the other side of the stairwell to slam him against the curved wall. Jandeau fell down two steps toward the three crewmen watching there.
Jandeau sneered up at him as he righted himself. “And since you’ve spoiled my profit, Anna Montgomerie will be well used by me and my men all because you couldn’t keep your cock under your petticoat, Macquarie.”
“I will kill ye,” Callum said, rushing at him. Satisfaction swelled in Callum as Jandeau’s eyes opened wider right before he barreled into him. The two of them crashed together, rolling over each other down the stairs to hit the other three crewman like a ball knocking into stacked bottles.
The men yelled, scrambling out of the way. When Callum looked up, they were all holding their cutlasses in two hands like shields before them. Two of the men were dripping wet.
The devil captain had already jumped up. “Grigg!” Jandeau’s voice boomed down the next level.
“Need help from an impotent Englishman, Jandeau?” Callum said, realizing that his sword and sgian dubh were somewhere on the steps above. The bastard’s taunt had made him lose focus.
“Go to the hearth and yell his name,” a pirate with red hair said to another who ran off, yelling Grigg’s name in a bedchamber hearth.
“’Tis my signal,” Jandeau said.
“For what?” Callum asked. “To hide.” He crouched low, his arms out ready to take him with his bare hands.
“No,” Jandeau said. “To line the lasses up against a wall. And shoot.”
“’Tis too much money in it for ye to order them shot,” Callum said, but his gut twisted at the conviction in the pirate’s gaze.
“The maid dies first. If I shout to him again, your precious Anna dies next.”
…
“Grigg!”
Anna heard the distant call from the hearth as she, Dora, and Mary sat at the table in the great hall. Elias had been making them take bites of various buns and jars of preserves to test them for poison so those crewman remaining and Jandeau could eat when they returned from hunting Callum.
Elias paused in his pacing at the sound of his name and rested the lit musket on his hip.
All of them looked at the hearth.
“They’ve got him,” he said, triumph in his voice.
Anna stood, her body going tense. “How does calling your name mean they found Callum?” God no! Don’t let them kill Callum. He’d been working these many hours to help them, taking out their captors one by one. He was over halfway there. Her stomach dropped, making her feel wobbly. She sat back on the bench, the rocks in her pockets helping to pull her down.
Elias grinned broadly. “’Tis Jandeau’s signal to me.” Using the musket, he motioned for Mary and Dora to stand against the wall. The two girls hugged each other.
Anna hurried over to stand before them. “A signal for what?”
“To line you up to shoot.”
Mary gave a little cry and slumped down the wall as if the gun had already gone off, striking her.
“I’m to start with Mary,” Elias continued, not caring how he terrified the girl. “And you second, Anna. But I’m to wait until he brings Macquarie down here so he can watch you die and know that it’s because of him. Dora is still pure and young and will bring in too much money to kill.”
Anna stood before Mary. “You will not shoot her nor me,” she said. Her hand slipped into her pocket. Her fingers wrapped around a rock, trembling like when she’d watched her father and his friends walk up the path toward their house that horrible night. They’d called to her and sang a scandalous ditty that made them laugh and stagger even more.
“I won’t let you,” Anna said, staring at Elias but seeing Roylin Montgomerie with his bloodshot eyes and coarse leer. “I won’t let you hurt anyone.”
“Get out of the way, Anna,” Elias said, his words forceful. “I hear them on the steps.”
“No,” Anna said and heard Mary weeping behind her. Dora tried to get close, but Anna waved her away. “No,” she repeated.
She focused on the fiend before her. “You see women and anyone different from you as lacking, as chattel or possessions to be placed about or used.” She shook her head. “You wear velvet and feathers in your cap, dressing like a gentleman. But you are no different than the poorest drunk who cares nothing for the souls of other people.” She pulled her hand free of her pocket. “I will not move, and you will burn in Hell, Elias Grigg.”
