McWilliam could practically feel Rosa bristling with indignation. She stood before him, her back perfectly straight, her shoulders stiff and her head tilted up so she could stare directly into his eyes.
Around them, everything was still—the countryside deserted except for the occasional grazing sheep. For now, the rain had relented.
He stood his ground. He'd stared down a damn battalion of English soldiers, armed with nothing more than his dirk. Miss Rosa Blair didn't frighten him.
He stepped into her personal space. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, but she didn't back down. Not Thistle, not his feisty vixen.
His hand was on her waist, the other behind her neck before he could draw breath or form a coherent thought. And then he was kissing her.
She stiffened, resisting him for a few seconds, then, with a small sigh, her mouth softened beneath his. She parted her lips for him as his blood surged with possessive need, and he deepened the kiss, claiming her mouth with his own.
A shudder ran through her, and she pressed herself against him, her own hands grasping at the front of his shirt. With a pop, his top button dropped to the ground, and the collar of his shirt opened, cool fingers of air stroking his burning skin.
His blood was on fire with need even as his mind tried to stop him, telling him that he shouldn't be doing this, that she was off limits.
Dammit. He pulled back, dropping his arms back down to his sides.
He really absolutely shouldn't have done that. He hadn't been thinking.
"Never again," he promised her, as Rosa's hands moved to cover her swollen lips.
He grasped her around the waist with both hands, and lifted her onto Mist. She flinched at his touch, and he snatched his hands back.
The horse shuffled a few steps to the side, as if sensing the tension between them.
McWilliam didn't mount up behind Rosa. Instead, he pressed a hand to Mist's neck and started forward once more.
* * *
McWilliam set a grueling pace. Mist trotted, and he jogged along beside her. They didn't stop for lunch, not that they had any food to eat anyway.
Rosa sat stiff in the saddle, but as the hours wore on her shoulders began to droop. He spared her little sympathy—it wasn't like she was the one jogging.
As the sun crested the sky and began its descent, McWilliam knew they were approaching the border. He could feel it in his very bones. It was like the Lowlands called to him. Soon, the smooth undulating hills of the English countryside were replaced with the ragged mountains so reminiscent of his homeland; the soft, springy grass replaced by spiky thistles; and the light, gentle rain with thunder clouds that threatened a night of storms not to be reckoned with.
A smile tugged at his lips, and he closed his eyes for a second, breathing in the almost-Scottish air. Soon.
And if he had any say in the matter, he'd never step foot onto English soil again. This land spawned liars and thieves and killers. And redcoats.
He slowed, surveying the landscape. Farms were few and far between—few farmers choose to live this close to the border, not after more than fifty years of unrest and war between the two nations. Rather, brambles, nettles and gorse covered the foothills and rocks jutted out of the ground at peculiar angles, moss and lichen turning them grey, yellow and green.
This close to the border there were bound to be patrols of English soldiers. While McWilliam had continued traveling along minor roads, used only by country folk moving from farm to farm, he decided now was the time for even more caution. It was unlikely Mistress Thomas had sent word ahead of a Scotsman traveling with his reluctant—possibly kidnapped—bride, but that wasn't all he was afraid of. If Rosa caught sight of a redcoat, she'd very possibly turn him in. Just one shout from her and they'd have half a garrison on their tail.
Turning Mist from the drovers' road, McWilliam picked his way around the rocks, until the hills blocked them from view of the drovers' road.
"Where are you going?" Rosa asked, a touch of panic marring her words. "The road is back that way." She gestured over her shoulder.
"I know."
"We'll get lost."
"We won't."
"The road is there for a reason. You can't just go traipsing off through the forest." More panic.
"This is hardly a forest," he said with a cool laugh.
This seemed to spark her anger once again. She leaned forward to grab at his shoulder. "Go back to the road," she snapped as a teacher would snap at a misbehaving child.
"I'm no English servant to do as ordered," he said. "This way will suit us better."
"You're being unreasonable." Her fingers tightened. He could feel her nails digging at his skin through his shirt.
"Thistle, cling to me all you like, we're going this way."
She snatched her hand back, tucking it under the elbow of her other arm. "I wasn't clinging—"
"I know where I'm going," he interrupted. "I grew up about a day's ride from here. I can navigate through the wildest of Scottish terrain. You're safe with me."
The irony of that last sentence wasn't lost on him. Nor, it seemed, on Rosa, for she let out a huff of air.
"Safe," she repeated, contempt oozing from each syllable. "I haven't been safe since you first stepped through my bedchamber window, my lord."
"Let me make one thing very clear." He turned to stare at her, all humor gone. Rosa was a criminal. She'd stolen from him and nearly ruined all his father's hard work. She deserved to fear him. He was her retribution in human form. He was her punishment, but he wanted her under no misconception. "I've never once put you in danger."
* * *
McWilliam's voice seemed to thunder through Rosa like the deep rumblings of an avalanche.
"What about back at the coaching inn when we were being chased by farmers with pitchforks?" she asked, determined not to let him dominate her. If she backed down now, he'd trample all over her and, heaven above, she wasn't going to let that happen, not now, not with everything she had to lose.
"As I recall, it wasn't me who locked myself in the bedchamber screaming bloody murder. And it certainly wasn't me trying to throw myself off a galloping horse." He continued forward, leading the horse around a clump of waist-high thistles, their purple flowers just beginning to open with the approaching summer.
Minor details. Since she'd met McWilliam she'd been kidnapped, threatened, chased and...ravaged. She pressed a hand to her mouth as memories of the kiss stirred in her stomach. She'd never been kissed before, not like that. McWilliam hadn't been gentle. He'd been demanding, his own lips consuming all her thoughts and feelings until she'd been nothing but wanting and needing.
But kidnapped was kidnapped. It was that plain and simple.
He'd broken the law, and he deserved to be punished. She stilled as that last though reverberated through her mind.
"So, Mr. High and Mighty," she began, breaking the short silence. "If capturing me is all part of your crusade for justice, then when are you planning on handing yourself in to the magistrate?"
He didn't privilege the question with an answer.
"Kidnapping is a punishable offense," she continued. "Any self-respecting gentleman—"
"I'm no gentleman," he repeated his words from last night.
"Any self-respecting man—"
"I'll not lie to anyone about how I came to have you, if that's what you're hinting at," he said, not bothering to glance her way. "But I'm sure my kin and clan will understand that I had no other choice. Justice would otherwise not have been administrated."
"Justice," she breathed. An Englishwoman would find no justice in Scotland. Though she'd been born a year after the last great battle, the '15 Rising, Rosa knew something of the trouble between their two countries. The Jacobites refused to bow down to the rightful King George, preferring instead to throw their weight behind the Pretender, James Stuart.
She tensed. Was McWilliam a Jacobite? His estate was in the Lowlands, and while the people from that area were a little more subdued than their Highlander cousins, there were still many Lowlander Scots who'd take pleasure in her misfortune.
That would explain McWilliam's desire to cross the border back into Scotland as quickly and quietly as possible. Any Jacobite supporter found in England would be arrested and whipped, sure as the day was long.
She examined the back of his head where his hair curled a little at the nap of his neck, the short strands just brushing his skin. His white collar was upturned and the point where fabric met skin was brown with traveling dust. This close, she could see dust lining the ridges of his skin along the back of his neck. He turned his head slightly, glancing to the left, and she was rewarded with a glimpse of his cheek. It hadn't taken long for day-old stubble to once again tickle his face, rough and prickly.
As if sensing her eyes watching, he rubbed a hand over his check and chin. She heard the stubble scraping over his calluses like the tiny bristles of an iron brush against granite.
There was nothing to mark him as a Jacobite. No scar or tattoo that couldn't be explained away.
Did the radicals even distinguish themselves apart? Perhaps it wasn't a mark, but a secret gesture or code word that alerted others to his presence.
She glanced down at his plaid. Perhaps the pattern of the weave indicated where his loyalties lay, or maybe it was the way he wore the folds? The extra length of fabric thrown over one shoulder and tucked into his belt could be important. Over the left shoulder—as McWilliam wore it—might mean supporter of James Stuart, the Pretender, and over the right could be a defender of the rightful King.
She could be in more trouble than she'd first realized. Her heart skipped a beat and her breathing quickened. She'd never met a Jacobite before.
She eased herself backwards, sliding along the horse's back towards her rump until she sat closer to her tail than her head. Anything to put a little space between herself and the Scot.
McWilliam must have caught the movement from the corner of his eye for he shot a look of disapproval her way.
"Sit still," he said, tugging at her knee, pulling her back into position.
She sucked a sharp breath in between her teeth, his hand hot on her leg. "Don't touch me." Fire speared through her, and color flooded her cheeks.
She pulled away, tugging at the folds of her mantle over her knees.
"My apologies." He touched his hand to his forehead as if he wore a top hat and bobbed his head as a dandy might when passing a lady and her family riding down Rotten Row. A grim smirk played with his lips.
A shiver stole down her spine. One moment he was angry, his voice like musket balls, and the next he was teasing. But always he was fire—intense and powerful—and directed straight at her.
He faced front again, striding forward with an easy confidence that seemed to echo around the gorse- and heather-covered hills with each step. The fact that the road was somewhere behind them, long lost to sight, did nothing to slow him down. Rosa stared at the point where the muscles of his shoulders met the muscles of his back, contracting and expanding with each swing of his arm visible through his shirt.
It was incomprehensible for anyone to be able to find their way through this scrub. By the time night came, they'd surely be lost.
She glanced skyward at the looming storm. Lost, cold and wet. McWilliam's confidence could not stop the rain from falling, nor could the heat of his body stop the darkness of night from coming.
Rosa tugged up the hood of her mantle. It was going to be another long night, and she hated him for it.