The Highlander's Enchantment Read online

  Good God, if she kept that up, he’d finish before they’d even started.

  With that notion in mind, he tugged her so that she straddled him, pressing the tip of his cock at her velvet heat and thrusting up inside her. The water sloshed in the tub at their movements, but they were both oblivious to it. They were caught up in the moment of their bodies becoming one. The magic of making love.

  Edan gripped her hips, showing her how to move, keeping the pace steady even when she gasped with pleasure, seeking to ride him harder, faster.

  “Not yet,” he crooned, “too soon.” He took her nipple into his mouth, sucking hard until she cried out with pleasure and tugged the hair at the nape of his neck.

  She felt incredible. Her body wrapped around him like a warm, silken glove. He clutched at her buttocks, round and plush, soft and supple. He was trying so hard to stay in control, to drag out their lovemaking as long as possible, but the little crooning noises she made, her warm breath against his ear, her breasts bouncing against his chest…

  He couldn’t hold back any more. Edan pounded upward, allowed her to take the pace from slow and controlled to fast and frantic. Her moans grew louder, and then he was moaning in answer, clutching her arse, grabbing the back of her neck and tugging her forward to kiss him. He thrust his tongue into her mouth, letting all his passion unleash into her.

  A second later, she was shuddering over him, and he swallowed her cry of release with his own…

  Blair choked out a moan that was a half-sob as they clung to one another. He felt that every bit into his soul. He didn’t want to imagine what would have happened to her, had he not woken when he did…

  Chapter 22

  Two days later, after taking much-needed time to recover and rest, Blair and Edan emerged from their chamber. During that time, it seemed Raibert and the elders had come to the conclusion that Agnes was indeed guilty of trying to poison Edan. They were sure she’d poisoned Connor before him and was responsible for the other suspicious deaths. The basket that Blair had left in the courtyard when she’d run inside had been found in Agnes’s chamber, and it looked as though she’d been preparing to use it against Blair.

  While they were both happy to still be alive, the exit from their chamber was not to return to life as usual or to start over. It was to preside over the official accusation and judgment of Agnes’s guilt.

  The entire atmosphere of the castle seemed to have soured, growing thick with tension.

  Edan’s jaw flexed, and his muscles were tight. Blair longed to stroke her hands over his body to ease the tension, but if two days in bed making love had not been enough to calm him, neither would rubbing his shoulders. Agnes’s life was in his hands now, and she knew that would not be an easy thing to come to grips with. It was different than in battle, where death faced you head on and demanded an answer. When it was multiple words against another, what made handing down a harsh sentence feel right in one’s mind?

  Her father had had to do the same thing over the years. Some of those accused were pardoned, but those with more serious offenses were executed. It couldn’t be an easy task.

  Edan paused at the great main doors that led outside. The muscles of his jaw were flexing and unflexing in the dim light. Blair reached for his hand and squeezed it. He glanced down at her, face grim.

  Blair nodded, as though to say it was all right, but her throat was too tight to actually speak the words.

  In the courtyard, Agnes had been removed from the stocks, but she was on her knees, arms shackled behind her back. The woman’s hair was bedraggled and blowing all around her red-splotched, tear-stained face.

  At the front of the gathered crowd, a man stared with a pained expression at the housekeeper. Blair had a feeling this was her husband. What terrible thoughts must be going through his mind right then? If the laird was in agreement with her guilt, would that guilt then shift to him? Was his wife going to die? Would he be next?

  Blair’s heart ached for the man. It even ached a little for Agnes. What had gotten into her; what hatred had stolen her heart that would make her want to kill so many people out of spite?

  Edan let go of Blair’s hand and made the motion for everyone to follow them inside. Agnes’s husband stepped forward to help her stand, but Raibert made a motion with his hand, and the man stepped away. Blair’s heart lurched at the expression of pure anguish on the man’s face.

  Saints, but how was she going to make it through this? Agnes’s punishment was not only going to be a consequence for her, but so many others, too.

  Inside the great hall, Edan took his place in his chair, and Blair moved to stand behind him, to place her hand on his shoulder as she’d been taught to do by her parents.

  “Nay, sit beside me.” He motioned to a servant, who was quick to bring over the chair by the hearth for her to sit in.

  Blair nodded slowly, keeping the smile from her face that he would want her to be seated at his side, rather than perched behind him. This was no time to gloat. Her father did the same thing with her mother, but she’d been taught this was unusual and not to expect it. Edan really did love her. Not only that, he respected her.

  The clan gathered, seemingly divided. Blair felt the hostility from half of those in attendance, as they did not even try to hide their glowers. She worked hard to ignore it, to look only to those she knew trusted her and believed her innocent. She just wanted this to be over. Willa gave her an encouraging nod as the crowd parted, and Raibert brought Agnes to the center of the great hall. She started to go to her knees, but Edan stopped her.

  “Ye may stand, Agnes.”

  The housekeeper looked relieved as she wavered on her feet, steadied by Raibert. Tears spilled down her cheeks, and she looked terrified. Not exactly the face of someone Blair would have thought was capable of murder—especially so many. She expected the woman to be raving, spitting mad.

  Cruel people shouldn’t have the ability to appear frightened, since they had not the forethought to stay themselves from brutality.

  “Agnes McQuinn of Clan Guinn, ye stand accused of multiple murders. How do ye plead?” Edan asked.

  Blair sat ramrod straight beside her husband. He, too, sat tall. She prayed for mercy, her heart hurting as she looked on the woman.

  “I am innocent, my laird, I swear.”

  Low hisses of disapproval went through half of the crowd—the half that was on Blair’s side. The other half stomped their feet, causing several guards to step toward them with bared teeth, warning them to calm or take their leave.

  “Do ye deny cruelty to your mistress?” Edan asked, his voice calm.

  Agnes’s gaze darted to Blair, pleading for understanding, and pinning Blair to her chair. Blair thought herself a good judge of character normally, but Agnes was confusing her, for if she were to go with her gut instinct, she’d think the woman innocent. It was hard to look away from the housekeeper, and so Blair worked instead on keeping her face a steady, blank slate, all while her mind whirled in confusion.

  “My lady, please, I beg your forgiveness for the petty trick I played and the rumors I started, the way I antagonized ye. I am guilty of that, but not of murder, not of harming ye or the laird, I swear it.”

  “Trick? As in a single trick?” Blair responded, trying to keep her incredulity low. “Ye played more than one on me, Agnes.”

  Agnes cocked her head in confusion. “The bath, my lady. That is all, I swear it. If ye speak of spilling the wine and the stew, I didna do it apurpose, I swear it! I was not feeling well that night, not balanced on my feet.”

  “And what of my food making me sick my first night? My altered gowns?”

  Blair eyed the woman, but she looked completely confused about the other things Blair referred to.

  Agnes shook her head. “I am sorry for anything else ye might have perceived wrongdoing in, truly I am, but I didna alter your food, or your clothes, my lady. Someone is setting me up. I wouldna ever kill anyone.” The woman’s eyes widened. “I am inno
cent! Someone has entrapped me!”

  Blair felt even worse now, that sense in her gut returning. Was Agnes telling the truth?

  “Do ye deny taking Lady Blair’s basket from the courtyard and placing it in your chambers?” Edan asked.

  “Aye, I didna take it. It wasna me!” Agnes was growing hysterical, shifting her head from side to side, looking at the people as though one amongst them might stand out to her as guilty. “Who of ye is trying to frame me?”

  “The way ye stand accused of trying to frame my wife?” Edan growled. “She was taken to the dungeon, accused of trying to murder me, and there ye stood quiet all the while.”

  “I thought her to be guilty,” Agnes murmured, swiveling her head back toward Edan. Her eyes widened as she realized that was the wrong thing to say to her laird.

  Edan leaned forward, the wood of his chair creaking beneath his weight. “Ye wanted her to be seen as guilty so ye could get away with it. We found the poisons in your room.”

  “I dinna know anything about poisons. I’ve not the stomach for killing.” Her mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water as she searched for more to say.

  “Ye lie.” Edan’s voice was low, and from what Blair knew of her husband, it was a warning. Judging from the reactions of everyone else in the room, they were of the same thought. “The evidence is overwhelming. We’ve testimonies from more than one who says ye wished ill on me and my wife. What I dinna understand is, why my brother? Why the people of your clan? How did ye get the men previously accused to testify for ye?”

  Agnes shook her head, sobbing now, her words unintelligible.

  “How much did my sister-by-marriage pay ye?”

  “Mary?” Agnes looked stunned again. “She didna have anything to do with this.”

  “So ye admit that ye did?”

  “Nay! That is not what I meant.”

  “Did she leave the poison with ye? What do ye get out of it?”

  Agnes’s knees buckled then, and she dropped forward. Her husband rushed to her aid, battling off the men who tried to stay him. But he wasn’t in time. Her knees crashed, and she wavered forward. Raibert lifted her, but she shook her head, preferring to kneel.

  “Easy, McQuinn,” Edan warned her husband, but waved away the men from trying to pull him back so he could be by his wife’s side. The man tugged her to her feet. She buried her sobbing face against his neck.

  “I’d not kill anyone,” she said over and over again. The way her voice broke tore at Blair’s heart.

  “What say ye, McQuinn, of your wife’s charge?”

  He shook his head, trying not to scowl at his laird, though it was obvious as he shifted his gaze up to the rafters. “I think her guilty of unkindness toward her new mistress, aye, but not murder, my laird. She’s not wicked, just a spiteful woman.”

  Agnes sobbed harder, and her husband cooed something in her ear that reminded Blair of the way Edan had comforted her just days before.

  The whispers rushing through the crowd of gathered clan members sounded like the rustling of wind just before a storm. Blair was completely torn. This woman who stood cowering and sobbing was either an incredible actress, or she had not done the deeds she’d been accused of. Indeed, Blair found so much similarity in the way in which Agnes was acting, and the way she too had shouted her innocence that it startled her.

  Blair pressed her hand on top of Edan’s and glanced at him. She had so much to say, and yet she couldn’t say a single word for fear of what everyone would think. Edan glanced down at her, gaze locking on hers. If only she could share her thoughts with him. She mouthed the word mercy, and hoped he understood her.

  Edan turned back toward Agnes McQuinn. “The evidence that ye were involved is irrefutable. But according to a witness, we have reason to believe ye didna act alone. Tell me who has helped ye, who put ye up to it, and I will show ye mercy.”

  “What kind of mercy?” her husband asked.

  Blair waited with bated breath, hoping her husband would not say that his type of mercy was a quick death.

  “She may return to Guinn lands.”

  “Banishment?” McQuinn asked.

  “Aye. And I’d grant ye my blessing to go with her.”

  McQuinn squeezed his eyes shut; clearly the choice was a tough one. Let his wife live and be banished himself or let her die and he remain with the family he’d known all his life.

  The couple whispered, with each of them shaking their heads in turn.

  At last turning from her husband, Agnes faced them head on and said loud and clear, “Lady Mary Guinn, wife of your late brother.”

  Blair’s shoulders dropped. She’d been so sure that Agnes was innocent, and yet the way she’d so boldly tossed out the name… It made sense why Mary Guinn would target her, but why Connor beforehand?

  “Why?” Edan asked.

  Agnes looked terrified, glanced at her husband. “I dinna know.”

  “Try harder.”

  She jerked her gaze back toward Edan, eyes wild as she searched the room as though searching for an answer. “Mary was unhappy. She was certain the laird was going to…get rid of her.”

  “Why would my brother do that?”

  “Because…” Agnes was no longer crying, and the red-splotched cheeks were becoming pale. She looked ready to faint. “Because…she’d not yet gotten with child. She was becoming ill. Feared he was trying to kill her.”

  “And so, she sought to off him first.” It was not a question Edan asked.

  “Aye.”

  “Why then did she leave ye behind?”

  “She knew I was happy here.” Agnes glanced up at her husband. “That I’d found my place.”

  This sounded like the most honest thing the woman had said yet.

  “So why then would ye go against your clan?”

  Agnes turned to face her laird, agony rippling over her features. “As Mary said, any enemy of the Guinns is an enemy of mine.”

  “What do ye mean by that?”

  Agnes shook her head, as though she didn’t really know.

  “I need an answer.”

  Agnes’s gaze slid toward Blair, pleading for…forgiveness. Then she slid her gaze away. “The answer is easy, my laird. Your lady wife is a Sutherland.”

  Blair let out the breath she’d been holding as harshly as she would have if someone had punched her in the gut.

  The blame of what was happening was once more on her shoulders, and this time she couldn’t shout out her innocence. Blair might not have done the killing herself, but she was responsible all the same. She had to tell Edan what had happened between the Guinns and her family.

  “To be clear, a feud between the Guinns and the Sutherlands has no bearing on this clan. My wife had no feud with Mary Guinn or her family. To say and believe such is blasphemy.”

  Blair winced. Edan had no idea…

  “Go and pack your things, McQuinn. Ye and your wife will be accompanied by my guards so as to be certain ye dinna try to escape, nor attempt to harm anyone further.”

  McQuinn’s face flushed, and he shuttered his emotions, but Blair had seen them flash for an instant, a whirl between shame and anger.

  Edan dismissed everyone from the great hall abruptly and then sat back with a heavy sigh in his chair.

  “I’ve need to speak with ye,” Blair said urgently, twisting her hands in her lap.

  “Come with me to my study. I’ve some missives to write.”

  She followed him to his study where he pulled out parchment, ink and quill.

  “Who will ye write to? Laird Guinn?”

  He shook his head. “What did ye want to speak to me about?”

  “’Tis about the Guinns…”

  He stopped what he was doing and met her gaze, eyes narrowing. “Aye?”

  “They may have cause to be angry with me.” She bit her lip. “A few years ago, I was the one who found out about Jean Guinn and her lover. I told my brother to go and find her when I knew she was with another man.
They were betrothed, ye see. And I could not abide by her cuckolding him. After he found her with a lover, he took her back to her clan, shamed. War broke out shortly after.”

  “Ye think this is your fault?”

  “Aye.” She folded her hands in front of her and glanced down at the ground. “I will understand if ye’d wish to send me back to my da, and I’ll not deny ye, should ye attempt to annul our marriage.”

  Edan let out a long breath. “I’m not sending ye anywhere, and I’m not annulling our marriage, Blair. I love ye, I told ye that. And what happened between your brother and his betrothed was not your fault, nor the battle after. She was the one who broke the promise between them. Any grudge that Mary Guinn had on behalf of her sister is ridiculous. I’ll not hold ye responsible, and I’ll raise my sword to anyone who dares.”

  “Ye’re not mad?” Blair peeked up at him through her lashes.

  “Not even a little bit.” He said it straightforwardly, and that was exactly what she needed—no nonsense for her to try and wade through.

  “Oh, thank God.” She rushed around the table and threw herself against him. “I was so worried.”

  “Ye need not have been. Is that what ye wanted to tell me while we were in the great hall?”

  “Part of it, aye. I had also wanted to say I thought Agnes innocent, but then when ye offered her mercy, she changed.”

  “Aye, I thought so, too. But I’m still not certain.” Edan shook his head. “’Tis the only reason I’m letting her go, because I canna be sure.”

  “What will ye do?”

  “I’ve need to write the Guinn chief and put the question to him. Tell him what’s been happening. I’ll send it ahead with a messenger, and we’ll set out tomorrow to return Agnes. If Mary did have something to do with my brother’s death, I am honor-bound to see her punished.”

  “Will ye write my brothers? My da?”

  “Aye. Straight away. ’Tis a four day’s ride north to the Guinns. I should return within a fortnight or less. I’ll not stay long, I swear it.”