A Highlander Never Surrenders Read Free Page B

marry some despicable Roundhead soldier at this very moment. “I am a Campbell, and if you release me now I will beg my father to spare your worthless life.”
    “She’s lying, John. No Campbell would let his daughter ride alone.” The man she’d kicked staggered to his feet rubbing his injured groin. “Kill the bitch. Better yet, let me do it after I shove my cock up her arse.”
    “Touch me again,” Claire’s voice was a low warning growl, “and I’ll cut out your innards and then strangle you with them, you filthy son of a whore.”
    He came at her quickly, and pushing John’s sword out of his way, cracked her hard across the face.
    “Geoffrey, stand down!” John commanded, stepping away from Claire’s treacherous boots. “If she is a Campbell we’ll be flogged for striking her.” He angled the edge of his sword against her throat to keep her still, then lifted his other hand and swept a strand of flaxen hair off her cheek. “We’ll take her back to camp and find out who she is.” John inched closer to her, so that when he spoke his breath touched her clenched jaw. “If she is lying, I will take her first and then give her to the rest.”
    Claire closed her eyes, sickened when he spread his tongue over the seam of her mouth. She beseeched God and all His saints to give her the opportunity to kill these two Puritan Roundhead bastards quickly. She had to find her sister.
    Dear God, Anne. Poor Anne. She’d been taken from their home by General Monck’s army, but how long ago, Claire did not know. She’d been at Ravenglade Castle, awaiting her brother’s return from England, when she received word that he had been killed. Immediately, she’d gone home to Anne to give her the terrible news, but her sister was gone. A message left for Claire, written in Monck’s own hand, told her that he had promised their guardian that he would keep them protected from the fanatical Independents in England. Claire did not believe it. Not after what had happened to Connor. The General had the audacity to add in his missive that he believed their lives were in danger, and he’d come to take them to Edinburgh.
    He was going to marry them off. With Connor now out of the way and the king exiled in France, the Stuart lands could be given to a man of Monck’s choosing. No. She would never obey the man behind her brother’s death. She was going to kill Monck first and then rescue her sister.
    She cursed herself for meeting with the resistance at Ravenglade, and not being home to protect Anne. Her sister was delicate and mild-mannered. She didn’t have the blood for fighting the way Claire did. After Charles was banished from Scotland, she never showed the slightest bit of interest in the rebellion. Anne had refused to lift a blade, even after their parents were killed. Instead, she locked herself away with her books, never complaining to her elder siblings about their long absences from home.
    They were supposed to protect her, and Claire had failed. She prayed it was not too late, else she’d have to make her sister a widow. All she had to do was get rid of these two dimwits and she’d be on her way.
    “Geoffrey,” John turned to his companion after getting no reaction from her. “I’ll get the horses. Do not untie her until I return.”
    Claire stood alone facing the grinning soldier. Geoffrey stepped closer, pulled her dagger from her belt, and traced the tip along her cheekbone. “Not so bloody fierce now, are you. Think you will still want to kill me after I fuck you bent over backward?”
    Every muscle in Claire’s body ached with the need to end this pig’s life. “I’m certain I will kill you just for breathing on me.”
    He raised his fist to strike her again, but a powerful command to halt stopped his hand in midair.
    Claire looked over his shoulder to see two men mounted on great black warhorses approaching cautiously, one surveying the six dead men scattered along the ground, the other surveying