She ignored that. “For…for…insulting me. I am not a doxy!”
He grinned again. “If ye were a doxy, lass, ye would be joining me.”
“You are incorrigible.”
“Aye. I’ll nae argue that.” He gave her a slight bow that was probably a mockery. “But I canna finish my bath without removing my plaid. So, if ye intend to stay—”
“I will not!”
She could have sworn she heard him laugh as she hurried away. For a moment, she was tempted to turn back just so she could have the last word, but he’d probably be naked again. And she’d already seen far too much of Rory MacGregor than she ever wanted to. Really. The man was infuriating.
Chapter One
“Ye expect me to dowhat?” Rory looked at his brother Ian over a pewter mug filled with steaming black coffee as they sat in the morning room where he and his brothers normally broke their fast. The inside of his head was pounding like a whole contingent of fife and drum players were marching through it, with perhaps a piper thrown in. The result, no doubt, of too much whisky and ale at Ian and Emily’s wedding feast last night.
Ian frowned at him. “I want ye to find Juliana, as I said when I summoned ye down here.”
Rory shook his head, although that just made his situation worse. “She’s missing?” He almost addedgood riddance, since the blasted female felt it her duty to disagree with him on every point made—including yesterday at the burn—but a look at her sisters’ faces, as well as his own sister, Fiona’s, made him hold his thoughts. “I thought ye were jesting.” Rory rubbed his throbbing temples. “Probably some man caught her eye and she succumbed—”
“Juliana? Succumb to a man?” her younger sister, Lorelei, asked incredulously.
It sounded absurd even as he said it. Juliana Caldwell, with her fiery temper, could put a fishwife to shame with her viperous tongue. A man would be a fool to lure that one to bed for fear he might wake up a eunuch.
“You know very well that is not a possibility,” her older sister, Rory’s new sister-by-marriage, Emily, said.
“Och, aye.” Rory frowned. “There are wedding guests all over the castle as well as tents inside and outside the walls. She’s probably tending to them.”
“Carr and Devon are searching the grounds,” Ian said and then hesitated. “It seems the Camerons are gone, too.”
Rory’s head snapped up. “What? Why…” He let his voice trail off. Not three months ago at the Campbells’ autumn harvest ball, Neal Cameron, son of the laird, had been quite taken with Juliana, and he’d boasted he’d tame her as a wife. Rory had nearly laughed out loud at that, and Neal had been drunk at the time, so he hadn’t given it more thought. “Ye think Cameron stole her?”
Lorelei widened her eyes. “Highlanders do notreallysteal brides, do they?”
“Your sister is gone, isn’t she?” Rory relented at the fallen look on her face. “Auld ways die hard here, lass. Neal—the damn arse—camped outside the walls at the far end of the field. Made it easy to leave from there.”
Emily gave him a startled look. “You think he planned this ahead of time?”
“I wouldna put anything past a Cameron.”
“He tried to talk to Juliana yesterday at the wedding feast,” Fiona said. “Actually, he was a bit insistent and she looked like she wanted to pour her drink on him, but Lorelei and I were close to her the whole time.”
“That doesna prove he intended to hie her away, though.”
“But she isgone,” Fiona said.
Ian nodded. “I’ve sent men to ride after the Camerons, although I doubt they—or at least Neal—will take the direct road to Fort William, if they have Juliana. They would be too easy to catch.”
“Ian says you are the best tracker the MacGregors have,” Lorelei added.
He didn’t bother to acknowledge the flattery. It was a well-known fact. Years ago he’d managed to rescue Devon when his brother had been captured by dragoons, and he usually managed to find MacGregor sheep or cows that had been reived, along with a bit of interest in the form of additional animals to add to their stock.
“Most likely they’ll head through Glen Coe,” Ian said.
Rory groaned. Not only was the glen surrounded by rugged, mountainous terrain with dozens of deer paths that led in different directions, but Ben Nevis, the highest munro in Scotland, stood just to the north of the glen and squarely in the way to Cameron lands. They, no doubt, knew the mountain’s trails well.
“’Twill be like looking for a lost sheep in the Great Glen,” he said.
“Why?” Emily asked. “Surely they will return to their castle.”
