His phone gave an annoying jingle, making them both tense. It was close to three in the morning, and she couldn’t believe anyone would bother them at this hour. Unless it was something serious.

Grant kissed her cheek and withdrew his finger from her feminine folds. “This better be damned important.” He pulled out his cell, still holding her close, moving his hips so he could connect his hard cock with her mini-kilted buttocks. She obliged him by wriggling against him, providing friction, too.

“Aye,” he growled into the phone. He slipped his hand up her sweater to cup a breast, his fingers softly pinching a nipple, making it tingle with need.

She heard Enrick say, “Archibald’s men are here. Ian said they saw five of them in the woods prowling the perimeter near the castle, and Baird is with them.”

Her heart skipped a beat. Grant stiffened against her. His sexy scent subtly changed to anger.

Grant swore. “I’ll be right down.” He gave Colleen a tight embrace. “Stay here, lass. Don’t get undressed. I’ll return,” Grant said, still dressed only in his kilt.

She knew then he would shift if he needed to chase the men or wolves down. He kissed her cheek, then stalked out of the room with the cell in hand.

“Did you see any of Baird’s cousins? Any of the rest of his men? What about Archibald?” Grant shut the door to the chamber.

Colleen slipped out of the minikilt in a flash, kicked off her boots, and hurried to throw on her jeans and boots again. At the very least, she wanted to watch what was going on from the ramparts.

Before she could grab a rain jacket, the bedchamber door opened. Thinking Grant had returned for something, she turned. And gasped.

To her horror, a soaking wet Archibald rushed into the room. Before she could scream, he struck her in the temple. A sharp pain registered, and a sprinkling of white stars against an inky black night followed. And then? Nothing.

Chapter 24

The next thing Colleen was aware of, her head throbbed, her hands were tied together, and her mouth was gagged as she lay on the soft mattress. What had happened to her? Then she remembered in a flash of horror. Archibald. He was here, and she was in grave danger.

How had he gotten inside the keep?

She kept her eyes closed, listening to movement, trying to determine where he was in proximity to her. She was lying on her side of the bed, her feet unbound. That was good. She planned to kick him, though what good that would do, she didn’t know.

Archibald moved toward her, away from the window. “Wake up or I’ll kill you where you lay,” he said, his voice soft but filled with threat.

Her eyes popped open.

He offered her a cold, calculating smile. “You don’t appear happy to see me,” Archibald said, sneering at her. “Here I thought we were getting along so famously. I imagine you wonder how I reached you so easily. Through the old sewer pipes, where we’re going now. Do you mind?” He yanked her from the bed.

Her wrists burned from the rough hemp rope. She jerked away from him to free herself. She fought him, trying to kick him with her boots, but he growled low, “If you fight me, I’ll knock you out. Your choice.”

She stilled her efforts, knowing she could do nothing if she was dead to the world, and he could easily kill her somewhere else. She was certain that was his intention. He dragged her down the hallway until they came to a door. He jerked it open and forced her inside, then shut the door. The room was a tiny water closet, never used, from the looks of it. Boards had been pulled free from a hole in an antique-looking toilet—nothing more than a box, with a couple of boards nailed to the top of it to form a toilet hole. Or that had been at one time. She smelled the faint odor of mold and mustiness.

“Hasn’t anyone told you about the Welsh princess Nest, a former mistress of King Henry I? A prince from her homeland, a second cousin, Owain, learned how she’d been enslaved by the robber chief Gerald of Windsor. Owain sought to dine with her and was so struck by her beauty that he was determined to have her for his own and free her from her despicable husband.

“The story goes that he and fifteen of his men invaded the castle at Christmastime and she left willingly with him to protect her husband and children. They, her husband and children, meanwhile, had gone through a toilet hole very much like this one. Only theirs had been in use. This hasn’t been used for several centuries. You can count yourself fortunate. Can you imagine being married to a man like that who would hide in the sewage pipes underneath the castle while his wife was taken away?

“Just a quick slide down the pipe and you will be where I want you to be,” he added.

Stuck beneath the bowels of the castle, she feared. But someone could still rescue her, she hoped.

He lifted her and dropped her through the toilet hole. Her heart skipped beats as she slid through the pipe, fearing she’d be deep in the bowels of the castle with no way to get out for hours. What she didn’t expect was to feel the chilly outdoor sea air just before she landed on the rocks below the seawall, the gag muffling her frantic screams.

The Irish wolfhounds barked in the distance, excited, wanting to join the men in their search out front. But it sounded like they had been confined to the kennels. Which was understandable. Though wolfhounds were named such because they had killed wolves in the distant past, she doubted they would do well against a pack of wolves.

The chilling rain drenched her, soaking through her sweater and her jeans.

Oh…my…God, she was certain the pipe was dumping her into the frigid sea, and with her hands tied, she would drown right away. This was bad, but she thought she still had a fighting chance as she squirmed and wriggled, trying to loosen the rope that bound her.

Archibald landed beside her before she could scramble to her feet, her bound wrists making it difficult to maneuver, the rocks even slipperier than before with the rain and wind pelting them at a slant. The whitecapped waves stood out in contrast to the black water, forcefully crashing against the moss-covered boulders.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it? Before the inhabitants cared anything about conservation or sanitation, they just let it all dump out to sea,” Archibald said, grabbing her arm and hauling her to her feet. “But they removed the section of pipe that actually fed into the water, so these now end on the rocks. Your father showed them to me when I was a boy. We practiced entering the castle in that manner. Other cases exist where an enemy force breached a castle in such a way. Only who would ever do such a thing today? Eh?”