Claimed by the Laird. Nicola Cornick

      “You are dangerous fools,” she said. She still spoke quietly, but with an undertone of iron. “Do you really want to take this risk? Do you want to throw away all your profits because of some poor benighted city boy who gets lost in the Highlands? Think again, my friends, before it is too late.”

      Once again Lucas found himself holding his breath. Violence bred violence, and she was taking a terrible risk to save his life. There were at least four of them. They could overpower her easily enough. One bullet was all she had to stand between him and death.

      Time spun out. He felt each second pass.

      Then everything changed. Lucas felt it first in the uneasy shift and shuffle of the smugglers’ feet, then in the muttered words he could not catch, then finally in the easing of the tension. It was the money, he thought, as much as the show of force, that had changed their minds.

      “She’s right.” One of the men spoke grudgingly. “Think how much we made on the last few barrels. We don’t want the gaugers sniffing around again...”

      There was a mutter of agreement, surly, resigned. Someone sighed as though the denial of his right to mete out a violent death was particularly disappointing.

      Relief whipped through Lucas; his legs shook. If they made him walk now, he would not need to pretend to weakness. He felt the lady’s relief, too, though she masked it well.

      “Bring him.” Her voice told Lucas that she had walked away as though she had already taken their capitulation for granted.

      “My lady—” It was the spokesman, fighting a rearguard action. Then, correcting himself, “Ma’am—”

      “Yes?” Her voice was light and cold. “If you still have concerns about my clemency, then console yourself with the thought that we will know exactly where to find him if he is foolish enough to say a word about tonight.” She turned back to Lucas. “No loose words in the inn after a few drams, Mr. Ross,” she said. “And no misplaced thoughts of spilling what you know to the authorities. A fine fool you would appear telling such a cock-and-bull story. My advice is that you should give up on the job at the castle, hurry home to Edinburgh and forget all about us.”

      “Yes, ma’am,” Lucas said again. He caught the bluebell fragrance again, sweet, stirring his senses. There was no way he was going to forget her. He willed his body not to harden into arousal. Christ. Who was this woman who could do this to him when he could not even see her?

      “Bring him,” she repeated. Her tone was autocratic and this time no one argued.

      The men half carried, half pulled Lucas as he stumbled to the mouth of the cave. Outside it was full night, the darkness pressing against his blindfold. The cold air was like a slap in his face, fresh and sharp with the sting of the sea. The sound of the waves was suddenly loud, boiling on the rocks below. He sensed that he was very close to the edge of the cliff.

      “Untie him.” She was taking no chances that when her back was turned they would throw him over the edge. He knew it and the men knew it, too.

      Someone was fumbling behind him to undo the ties that held his wrists, swearing all the while because they could not see what they were doing. He was free; he flexed his hands, feeling the pain of the blood returning.

      “Remember what I told you,” she said.

      “Thank you, ma’am,” Lucas said.

      The blindfold fell from his eyes.

      It took him a second to adjust to the darkness. There was no moon tonight, and the light of the stars was dim and pale, no more than a glitter on the sea. Lucas looked down and felt a clutch of fear. He was within two feet of the edge of the cliff; a step forward and he would have fallen. He could feel the small stones slipping beneath the soles of his boots. For a second he felt light-headed and nauseous, repressing the panicked reaction to scrabble backward for a safer foothold. He forced himself to keep still, slowing his breathing, fixing his gaze on the dark horizon until the world steadied around him.

      The whisky smugglers were gone, melting into the shadows as swiftly and silently as they had appeared. Perhaps they were still watching him. He knew that the only thing he could do was to return to the inn and behave as any other man might do when he had had a narrow escape. That probably meant getting drunk on bad whisky. And remembering to keep his mouth shut about what had happened to him.

      He turned his back on the vertiginous drop and started to climb up the cliff face. It was tough going. The rough stems of heather scored his palms. Loose rock slid and slithered beneath his feet where the dry peat soil crumbled. It took him a good ten minutes to reach the path at the top where he turned inland toward the faint light in the distance where the village huddled. He was cold and damp and bruised, but he was damned grateful to be alive. The air seemed sweeter, the light and shadows sharper, the hoot of the owl clearer than ever before. Even the persistent ache in his ribs was welcome as a measure of the fact he was still alive.

      It was as he came to the edge of the village, past the kirk sheltering behind its low moss-covered wall, that those instincts that had failed him earlier in the evening blazed into life and told him that he was not alone. He stopped in the shadow of the churchyard yew and waited. His skin prickled, the wind breathing gooseflesh down his spine.

      She was here. He could sense it.

      A second later he felt the cold caress of the pistol on the side of his throat.

      “Remember what I told you. Go back to Edinburgh, city boy. There’s nothing for you here.” Her whisper was fierce.

      Lucas did the one thing he was certain she would not be expecting. He spun to face her, catching her wrist so tightly that she gasped and dropped the pistol with a clatter at his feet. He kicked it aside, pulling her hard against his body, his arms going about her cruelly tight. The shadows were so thick here that he could see nothing of her face, but he could hear the quick catch of her breathing and feel the rise and fall of her breasts against his chest.

      It felt astonishing to hold her in his arms, this woman who had saved his life. The blood surged through his veins, bringing with it instant arousal. Everything that had passed between them that evening fused in that moment into a blaze of lust as scorching as a heath fire.

      Lucas brought one hand up to push back the hood of her velvet cloak. The material was rough against his palm, the friction delicious. Uncovered, her hair was dark in the faint moonlight, a satin-soft cascade as it tumbled through his fingers. He ran his thumb along the line of her jaw, tipping up her chin so that her mouth met his.

      She made a startled sound in her throat that had Lucas’s body hardening still further, and then her lips parted beneath the insistent pressure of his. She responded hesitantly at first, then sweetly, passionately, with a lack of artifice that shook him to the core. Her body softened and yielded to his and the kiss spun away into a different realm entirely, a place of heat and need. This was new, and dangerously seductive; Lucas had always had iron control, but now he felt the danger of losing it completely.

      Under his fingertips he could feel both delicacy and strength in the exquisite lines of her jaw and neck, and when he dropped his hand to the warm hollow at the base of her throat her pulse beat frantically beneath his touch. It dimly occurred to him that he had no idea what she looked like or even how old she was, nor anything else about her. He could have been kissing a woman old enough to be his grandmother, and in that moment he was not sure he cared. Kissing her was the most explosively pleasurable experience he had ever known.

      He pressed his lips to the line of her neck and then the curve of her shoulder, pushing aside her cloak and the flimsy layers of silk he could feel below it so that he could trace the line of her collarbone with his tongue. She gave a little gasp, and he felt her knees weaken so he pulled her down to where the heather made a soft bed beneath them. There he kissed her again, deep, slow kisses this time; kisses that made time stand still. He was aware of nothing but the intimate tangle of her tongue with his, the heat of her body, the smoothness of her skin beneath his fingertips.

      Overhead the stars spun in their courses