The Scot and I by Elizabeth Thornton

Thomas’s youth either.
    Thomas? Who in blazes was Thomas? Alex had to keep reminding himself that Thomas and the girl were one and the same person, and the girl was an enigma.
    “You had better tell me what you know,” said Foster, “or I’ll make things very unpleasant for you.”
    “I’ll tell you for the last time,” replied Alex in a bored voice, “I have special clearance. When Durward returns, I’ll report to him.”
    His words acted on the colonel as he hoped they would. “Teach him a lesson in manners,” Foster told his guards.
    They were big-fisted, heavyset men, but for all that, Alex knew that he could disable them in a fight. They hadn’t been taught the tricks of an assassin’s trade as he had. He didn’t want to disable them. He wanted them to take him to his brother so that he could devise a way to get Gavin out of the castle. The only way that was going to happen was if he took a beating and convinced the colonel that he was in no condition to escape.
    He came at the soldiers as though he were a gentleman boxer trained to follow the Marquess of Queensbury rules. The soldiers laughed at him, as well they might, but he got in a few punches before he allowed them to do much damage. The fist in his solar plexus drove the air from his lungs, and he keeled over and lay writhing and groaning on the floor.
    Only then did Foster get up from his desk and come to stand over him. “You see here, gentlemen,” he said, “the best that Her Majesty’s Secret Service has to offer, God help us,” and he kicked Alex in the back, hard. “A stint in the army is what these glamour boys need. Put him in the nursery with his brother.”
    The kick in the back had Alex writhing in earnest this time. He felt dizzy, disoriented, and horribly nauseated.
    They hauled him up and supported him by linking their arms under his, then they dragged him away.
     
     
    Mahri wanted to put as many miles between herself and the Hepburn as fast as she possibly could. They were hampered by the roadblocks that forced them to keep to the trees—the great forests of Scots pines that marched like an army over the slopes. It gave them excellent cover but slowed their progress. They’d gone only four miles, and it was another four to go before they reached Braemar. She was tired, she was hungry, and her spirits flagged. She was still thinking of the Hepburn, wondering whether he had recovered from his concussion or whether, contrary to Dugald’s opinion, he was sinking into a coma.
    According to Dugald, the Hepburn . . .
    He shouldn’t be called “the Hepburn” because he wasn’t the chief of his clan. Mr. Hepburn was all that he was entitled to. Dugald had elevated him to a chieftain as a mark of respect. A warrior, Dugald called him, basing his judgment on what she had told him of her encounter with the man. He’d even laughed when she’d told him about the spanking he had administered. And she’d thought Dugald would be on her side!
    She didn’t think of the Hepburn as a warrior so much as a worthy opponent. A gentle warrior, perhaps. An honorable warrior, certainly. She could vouch for that. When he’d stripped her of her boy’s clothes and discovered that she was a female, he hadn’t tried to seduce her.
    But he’d wanted to.
    Just thinking about his expression when he’d seen her naked made her toes curl. At the time, she’d known real fear. Would she ever forget the way his eyes had darkened when he’d captured her in his stare? She’d thought rape , violence , a forced seduction . Then he’d turned into a bad-tempered slave master and started finding fault with her.
    A smile flickered at the corners of her mouth.
    Her smile gradually faded. She would never see him again, not unless fate took a hand in things, and the fates had not been kind to her in the last little while. But if they should meet again in the not too distant future, would he remember her?
    A blast of wind made the tall pines sway alarmingly,