He knocked on the door again, harder this time. “Catriona, are you awake?”
He heard a soft thumping noise coming from inside the chamber and frowned. What the devil was she doing in there? Looking for something heavy to brain him with, no doubt. Liam unlocked the door and entered the dark chamber. There was not a single candle lit in the room. But the dim light of the moon illuminated the bulk of a person on the floor near the bed with their arms suspended above their head.
“Catriona!” He rushed over to untie her. But when he bent down and looked into her face he saw that it was not Catriona at all, but Mary, one of the kitchen maids.
“What the devil is going on here?” he demanded.
Mary tried to speak from behind her gag, but she could not form any words and began crying in frustration.
“Hush now, Mary, give me a moment,” He spoke gently and kept his voice low, hoping to keep her calm while he removed the binding from her mouth.
“Oh thank ye. Thank ye, Laird MacDonell. I dinna know what I would have done if ye had not come along.”
“What happened here?” he asked as he went to work on the bindings around her ankles and then stood to make quick work of the ones around her wrists. “Who did this to ye, lass?”
“It was Lady Catriona,” the girl said with a sob as she rubbed her tender wrists.
“What!?” Liam exploded.
“It was yer new wife, sir. I came to bring the Lady Catriona her supper hours and hours ago. But when I entered she held a knife to my throat and bound me to the bed, then made her escape. I’m so sorry, Laird MacDonell, I was so scared. I could do nothing to stop her!”
Liam heard the maid's words, but he could make no sense of them. While he and Catriona had not been married long, there had been no sign of a violent nature in her. But perhaps she truly was as treacherous as he had feared after all.
“Come lass, we had best get ye seen to. Then I will find Catriona and make her answer for this.”
“Oh no, Laird MacDonell, there's no time. Ye must know. The Lady mentioned that she was going back to her father. There is no telling how far from the castle she is now.”
“Gone to rejoice with him in a plan well executed, no doubt,” he spat. Rage and betrayal welled up inside of him, spreading like a poison. That was what he got for thinking there might be a single woman to walk the earth who wouldn't lead a man to pain and ruin.
“I dinna know about all of that.” She sniffled and wiped the tears from her eyes. “There was no joy in her. She said that she was tying me up for my own good. Mine and all of your people. And that she had to stop ye from making a terrible mistake. I was scared out of my wits and nae doubt, but... tis the strangest thing. I swear to ye she was doing it to help ye.”
“Ye've had a terrible time of it, I know. Dinna think on it anymore,” he said, wanting to dismiss what she had said. But her words continued to plague him as he led her gently to the door.
“She apologized to ye? Truly?” he asked hesitantly.
“Aye, she did. She fair begged me to understand why she would do such a thing. I dinna know what it is that may be going on between you and her father, and it is not my business. I know that I'm speaking well above myself to even mention it, and I would not even dare to do such a thing, if it were not for the fact that she mentioned war, Laird MacDonell.” The maid turned to look up at him with kindness in her eyes. “And I can understand that ye see. I can understand why a good person may feel they need to do a bad thing if it means they can stop an even worse thing from happening.”
“Ye have a very forgiving heart, lass,” he told her. “There are not many who would be able to forgive such a slight against them.” Looking down at Mary, he saw that even though she had spent the last few hours bound, alone and in the dark, there was, to his great surprise, no anger or malice in her eyes. She obviously believed what she had said to be true. Had Catriona truly been so convincing that she had been able to earn the poor lass’s forgiveness for the crimes done against her?
Did Catriona truly believe that she was doing the right thing? And would she go to lengths such as this? She should have waited for him to come to her, so that she could tell him whatever it was she needed to say, not attack innocent young women.
Now she was out there on the road. In the dark, where anything could happen to her. Even as he cursed her foolishness, he could not quell the nagging voice in his head that said this entire situation was his fault. Why would she speak to him? He had showed her that afternoon that he cared not for what she had to say. He had locked his new wife away like a criminal and left her trapped in her chamber for hours on end, all because he was unable to control his temper.
Liam brushed the irritating thoughts aside. None of that mattered now. What mattered was that Catriona had at least five hours’ head start on him, and he had to move quickly if he was going to catch up with her in the dark. When he found her, he promised himself that he would listen to what she had to say with an open mind. If he didn't break her lovely headstrong neck first.
Chapter 15
Catriona kicked and struggled against her captors as the two men hauled her through the trees. Bright sparks rose from a small fire pit around which five other men sat huddled, talking and laughing boisterously.
“Look what we found on our rounds, lads,” said the man who had come up behind her out of nowhere. “Is she not a lovely wee thing?”
Catriona gasped as she was suddenly released and thrown roughly down onto the cold hard ground at the men's feet.
One of the men leaned down and grabbed her chin roughly with dirt-stained fingers and raised her head. His lips were dry and cracked, and he had a few days’ worth of hair on his jaw. Catriona squeezed her eyes shut and tried to turn her face away, but he tightened his grip. The foul odor of his breath invaded her nose. It was pungent and sour with the smell of onions on top of it. He leaned in closer to look at her and for one terrifying moment Catriona feared that he would attempt to kiss her, but suddenly the pressure was gone from her jaw and she was released.
Panting heavily, she looked around the circle of men with a glare and struggled to her feet. Over the last two weeks she had been attacked by a drunkard, forced to marry a man who despised her, was locked in her own bedchamber, and was now lost in the forest and attacked by men once more. Catriona was at the end of her patience. She had had more than enough of male brutes and their high-handed treatment of her. Strangers, her husband, and even her own father treated her as though she were little more than a plaything for their own gain and amusement. Well, she was having none of it. Not anymore.
“I demand that you release me this instant. How dare you treat me in this manner.”
“A bit high handed for a harlot, is she not?” said one of the men.
Catriona rounded on him, outraged. “How dare you? I am not a harlot!”
Sharp, jagged fingernails dug into her arm, and she winced in pain as she was jerked around forcibly, her body twisted uncomfortably while her knees slid across the rocky ground. Catriona's heart quickened in fear at the sight of this man. The light of the fire illuminated the hard line of his mouth and the crags of his face. There was a long, raised red scar down the side of his face. It looked as though whoever had attacked him had just barely missed blinding the man. Catriona did not doubt that whoever had done it was now surely dead. Because it was not the scar or look of him that scared her so. No, it was his eyes. They were such a dark brown they looked to be black, and in them she saw no life, nor feeling, nor mercy. There was nothing but an empty void filled with icy cold that made Catriona want to shiver at his touch, no matter how close she was standing to the warmth of the fire.
“Not a whore, ye say,” he spoke softly, but it only made his deep voice all the more menacing. Catriona could see a barely restrained rage in the man, and she had no doubt he would not hesitate to do her violence. “What kind of woman but a whore would be riding through the woods unaccompanied in the middle of the night?”
Catriona trembled, and continued to stare into his eyes, trapped in his gaze, fearing that if she were to look away, even for a single moment, he would strike out like a snake.
“A desperate woman,” she whispered.
“Desperate, aye,” he nodded and examined her face slowly. His eyes traveled over every inch of it as though he could read every secret she ever held as clearly as if it were written on her skin in ink. “And what is yer name, my wee desperate lass.”
“I am Catriona Drummond, daughter of Laird Ewan Drummond, Chief of Clan Drummond,” she told him. “I am trying to get home to my father. If ye take me to him unharmed, ye will be well rewarded for it. I swear.”
“Reward us, will he?” His smile chilled Catriona to the bone. “Well, I suppose we could consider it. Though I dinna doubt that my men might consider ye a reward in itself.” He trailed a finger slowly down her cheek, and Catriona’s stomach rolled in revulsion.
“If you do anything to harm me, I swear my father will not stop until he has hunted you all down and gutted ye like cattle. That is not a threat, it is the plain truth of it. So please, either release me or help me reach him.” Catriona held her breath, waiting to see how he would react. She worried that she may have pushed too far. But she would rather tell them the truth of who she was and be bartered for ransom than be victim to their whims. And since news of her marriage to Laird MacDonell had not spread yet there was no way for them to know that her husband was the one they should truly be trying returning her to. Maybe all was not yet lost.
The cold-eyed man laughed and released her. Catriona gave a sigh of relief when he turned away from her, until she heard his command:
“Tie her up.”
“What? No! I will not run, just take me back to my father. Please, I beg ye!” She was grabbed roughly from behind once more, and soon she felt the rough slide of rope along her wrists.
“And gag her,” the man added. “I dinna want to have to listen to her bleat on all night.”
Catriona's curses were muffled behind the gag in her mouth as two of the men dragged her to a nearby tree and tied her to it.
“There, now,” one of them said as he finished tying the rope. “Dinna go making any trouble, and ye might still make it out of this with all of your teeth in yer mouth. Ye dinna want to go making that one angry.” He gave the rope a tug to test the bonds and nodded, satisfied with his work. Catriona glared at his back as he walked away from her to go enjoy sitting next to the warmth of the fire.
When she glanced away she noticed that one of the other men was staring at her, but when her gaze caught his, he quickly looked away. His shoulders were hunched over and the bulk of his body was turned away from her, showing him to be narrow of build. He had wrapped a length of his plaid around his shoulders, and looked to be trying to tuck it up around his ears in an attempt to obscure his face. Catriona sat there watching him, and every few minutes, the man's eyes darted back in her direction again for only a moment before once more looking away.
Catriona studied him silently. There was something about him that felt familiar, but she could not place where she knew the man from.
She shivered and tried to adjust herself into a more comfortable position but it did not work, the ropes were much too tight.
“So,” she heard one of the men say, “what are we going to do with her then?”
“We should take her back to Laird Drummond. He would pay a pretty price to have her back,” said another.
Catriona stopped fidgeting and held herself still in order to hear their conversation more clearly.
“We will not be taking her back to Laird Drummond,” said the cold-eyed man. He walked around the fire, circling the men. “I have a better idea. A much more profitable one.”
There was some grumbling, but none of the others outright challenged him. Whoever he was, the men were obviously afraid of him.
“Ye'll have us all dancin’ at the end of a rope,” came a muffled slurred voice.
The cold-eyed man stopped and turned to face the man who had spoken.
“Do ye have a better plan, then, Angus?”
The man, who Catriona assumed was Angus, stood up and swayed on his feet, standing toe-to-toe with the leader.
“I said, ye'll have us all dancin’ at the end of a rope. Ye'll be the death of us all. MacDonell will see us all dead if he finds us on his lands after what we did to that family. And now we have Drummond’s daughter. The ransom we could get for her would be enough to put us safely out of The MacDonell's reach. We could deliver her in two, maybe three days, and ye dinna want to do it?” Angus looked around at the others in disgust. “When I was the leader, did I not make sure ye lads were paid? Did I not make sure ye were safe? And then one day ye,” he whirled on the other man and jabbed a finger roughly into his chest, “just decided ye would take over. Claiming to have a whole second set of orders. Ye could have forged that letter for all we know. The whole thing is insanity! We should take the girl back to her father. It's Drummond's fault we're in this mess anyway. Him and that old bastard Macnaghten—”
The cold-eyed man moved quickly, pulled out his knife, and stabbed Angus in the gut with it before he could finish what he was going to say. Angus clutched his stomach with a look of surprise.
“Wha—” he choked out, but Catriona did not get to hear what Angus was going to say next because the cold-eyed man brought the knife up and across Angus's throat.
She watched in horror as Angus tried to clutch at both his stomach and throat in turn as he fell to his knees and then collapsed face down in the dirt.
“We will not be taking her back to Laird Drummond,” the cold eye man said. His voice was still light, but there was no mistaking the steel behind it. “Is that clear?”
The men nodded their heads and mumbled their assent.
“Good. We set out at first light tomorrow. There is someone she will be much more valuable to than her father.”
Catriona sat shivering as hot tears rolled down her cheeks as she stared at Angus's dead body lying on the ground. Not a single man moved to bury him. They simply left him where he lay.
She closed her eyes, trying to block out the sight, but in the darkness behind her eyes, all she could see was the look of surprise on his face when he realized that he had been stabbed, and hear him say over and over again in her mind, “It's Drummond’s fault we're in this mess anyway.”
* * *
“Wake up,”
Catriona was jerked awake by the toe of a hard boot being shoved into her tender side. She had been tied to a tree all night, and her arms, legs, and backside were all feeling incredibly numb. She couldn’t help but wonder if this was her payment for what she had done to the kitchen maid in order to make her escape. Catriona hoped that the girl had been found before too long. Her stomach twisted with guilt and worry at the thought of the young girl, trapped in Catriona’s bedchamber all night, but someone must have gone in search of her once she had been away from the kitchen for too long.
Catriona winced as she was jabbed in the side again, this time more sharply. She tried to ignore the boot and kept her eyes closed in a weak attempt to welcome back the oblivion that sleep allowed.
“I said, wake up!” There was another, harder kick to the side, one that she could not ignore, and Catriona cried out in pain.
“Enough!” she snapped. “I am awake.”
“It's time for us to head out. If ye give me any problems when I untie ye, ye'll taste the back of my hand, understood?”
Catriona nodded and sat still while the man untied the ropes that bound her to the tree. The man took her by her arm and hauled her to her feet. Her knees felt week and a sharp tingling pain shot through her limbs as the blood flow returned to them.
“Come on, then,” he said.
“I... cannot go yet,” Catriona said, her face flushing with embarrassment.
“I dinna remember asking ye for your opinion on the matter.”
“I must...
I must relieve myself,” she whispered.
The man glared at her and waited.
“Well I cannot do it here! All I am asking for is a bit of privacy,” she told him.
“Well, ye will not be going by yourself.”
Catriona's face was flaming but she did not argue with the man. She knew it would do her no good. But there was no way she would relieve herself in the view of the entire group of men.
“Can I ye not at least accompany somewhere a bit more secluded?”
The man sighed in annoyance and tugged her roughly off towards a patch of bushes.
“And where do ye think ye’re headed off to with the lass, eh?” one of the other men called.
“Our Lady Drummond here needs to take a piss!” her escort called back loudly.
Catriona wished for the ground to open up and swallow her. She thought that she would die of embarrassment. The raucous waves of laughter assaulted her back as she hurried to position herself behind the bush.
She bent over to gather up her gown but when she looked up she saw that the man was watching her, and she froze.
“Ye cannot possibly expect me to do this with ye watching me?” she snapped.
“Boss said that I'm not to take my eyes off of ye or else I'll end up as dead as auld Angus over there.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to where Angus still lay cold in the dirt.
Catriona turned her head away in shame and tried to concentrate on the job at hand. It was not easy, but eventually she was able to block out the feeling of the man’s eyes on her while she relieved herself.
As he led her back to the group, she saw that their small camp was already stripped down and the men were ready to move. They were taking her mare with them, so at least she would have her own horse to ride.
Catriona moved towards where the mare she had borrowed from MacDonell was grazing nearby, but a large chest suddenly stepped into her path and blocked her way.
Catriona stopped in her tracks as fear rolled over her. She did not need to look up into his face to know who it was. There was only one man whose presence terrified her so.
Highland Promise: The Daughters of Clan Drummond Page 10