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of his entire clan.
    He had long suspected that the Hepburn secretly enjoyed the little game of cat and mouse the two of them had been playing practically from the moment Jamie had been born. Jamie could almost picture the auld man at this very moment, gleefully rubbing his bony hands together as he plotted his next move. To a man like the Hepburn the mountain was naught but his own personal chessboard, and the people who eked out their living from its rocky soil pawns to be moved about at both his whim and his pleasure. There was only one way to beat the man and that was to be cannier… and more ruthless than he was. By kidnapping an innocent woman, Jamie had finally succeeded at both.
    He scowled down at the bedroll. The girl who slept at his feet was no less a pawn to the earl. He knewthat it galled Hepburn beyond measure to have outlived his three sons and all their offspring while Jamie had not only survived, but thrived. Hepburn would stop at nothing to procure a new heir for himself.
    Jamie ran a hand over his tense jaw, wondering why he’d been foolish enough to assign himself guard duty when he could have easily commanded one of his men to do it. He glanced toward the other side of the fire where they had bedded down for the night. Although he’d trust most of them with his life, for some reason he was reluctant to trust them alone with Miss Marlowe. Hell, at the moment he wasn’t sure he could trust himself alone with her. Especially not with Bon’s taunting words still fresh in his mind.
    She had the blankets drawn up so high that even the coppery spill of curls at the top of her head was hidden. A frown creased his brow. She was a lady, not some sturdy Highland lass. She was probably accustomed to taking her ease in a fluffy feather bed piled high with down coverlets, not on the hard ground with only a thin layer of scratchy wool to shield her from the cold.
    He squatted down next to her and drew back a fold of the blanket, seeking to assure himself that she hadn’t frozen to death just to spite him.
    There was no coppery spill of curls. Miss Marlowe was gone.

Chapter Five

    F OR A DISBELIEVING MOMENT, Jamie could only stare stupidly at the empty spot where Emma should have been.
    Not only had she managed to slip out of the camp with him sitting only a few feet away, she had been clever enough to mold the blankets into a rounded heap so that anyone giving them a casual glance would assume she was still safely tucked beneath them.
    “Bluidy hell,” Jamie breathed, raking a hand through his hair.
    He should have known that anyone who would consort with the Hepburn wasn’t to be trusted. He was a bluidy fool not to have tied her to the nearest tree when he had the chance. That would teach him to try to play the gentleman.
    He straightened, his grim gaze searching the murky shadows beneath the nearest stand of cedars. He would have never dreamed such a slip of a girlwould be bold enough to defy his warning and brave the night or the wilderness on her own.
    He knew only too well just how unforgiving that wilderness could be. A sheltered English lass had no chance of navigating the brutal terrain of the mountain. She probably wouldn’t survive more than an hour before falling into a burn where she would be lucky to drown before she could freeze to death, or stumbling over the edge of a cliff. The image of her fragile young body lying crumpled and broken at the bottom of some rocky ravine troubled him more than he cared to admit.
    Jamie knew his only rational course of action was to rouse his men from their bedrolls and send them out to scour the woods for her. But some primitive instinct stayed his hand. The Hepburn had put a price on his head the minute he’d been born. He knew exactly what it felt like to be hunted through these hills; to run until you thought your aching legs would collapse beneath you and your lungs would explode; to never know if your next breath might be your last. He couldn’t bear