Highlander Unbound

by Julia London

  Beneath her, Liam chuckled. “Ye donna have to fear an escape, lass. I’ll no’ go before ye’ve done what ye will to me.”

  Ellen ignored him, studying the bindings. He could not possibly pull free of it. She looked at the other hand. It, too, was secure.

  “Come on, then, ye’ve tied them so tight I canna feel me hands.”

  Her heart was pounding now, so hard that it felt as if it might actually break free of her chest. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She braced her hands against Liam’s chest, bent over, and kissed him gently on the lips.

  “Ummm…”

  She lifted off his body and onto the floor, and pulled the kilt from beneath him letting it fall to the floor. Liam opened his eyes, turned his head to look at her, his expression still one of a man anticipating a rousing, lustful bout of sex. “What are ye about, leannan? Come here.”

  She couldn’t speak, could not find her voice, as she hurried to where he had dropped his shirt. She thrust first one arm, then the other, into it.

  “All right, then, what is this?” he asked, his voice having lost some of the warmth.

  Don’t talk, not yet.

  “Ellie! What are ye about?” he demanded, realizing quickly that it was no longer a game.

  Avoiding his gaze, she looked around the room, saw his buckskins draped across a chair. She ran to them and put them on, but they were impossibly big. Wild with fright now, she looked around, saw the belt she had tossed aside, and picked it up.

  “What in God’s name are ye about?” he demanded gruffly. “Untie me, Ellie!”

  Her fingers trembling, she managed to thread the belt partially through the belt loops. She needed a coat to hide her figure. Why hadn’t she thought of a coat?

  “Goddamn it, Ellie! Untie me!” he demanded more loudly, bucking forcibly against the bed, straining against the ropes around his wrists. “I’ll skin ye alive, I swear to God I shall if ye donna untie me at once!”

  His kilt. There it was on the floor. Just below the bed where he lay captive, seething with fury. Ellen risked a glimpse of him; his face had turned to cold stone, his eyes full of murderous rage. He knew what she was doing, and a dagger of terror impaled her. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t do this!

  “I donna know what ye think ye will do, but if ye think I will remain bound like a fucking hog, ye are wrong.”

  “I have to,” she said, surprised by the strength in her voice, and moved slowly toward the kilt, watching him carefully. He looked like a beast now, one intent on his prey. His chest was rising and falling with each furious breath as he glared at her. Slowly, she went down on her haunches and reached in front of her, grabbing a corner of the kilt. Liam tried to lunge off the bed then, and with a screech, Ellen went falling backward onto her bum, dragging the plaid with her.

  Knowing full well that he was captive, Liam fell back against the bed, his teeth bared now. “Ye foolish chit!” he spat at her. “Do ye think ye can climb a trellis? Open a window? Pick a lock? Do ye think ye willna be caught? And what do ye think Farnsworth will do to ye when they find ye stealing into a man’s house! Listen to me, Ellie! Come on, then, we’ll do this together—”

  No! She had anticipated this. “I have to do this, Liam. I have no other option. And I am so very sorry for it, you’ll never know how truly sorry I am,” she cried, and before she dissolved into a torrent of tears, she ran to the door and slipped out into the corridor, grabbing her shoes just as she closed the door, wincing as he bellowed her name. She prayed that Follifoot had drunk the whiskey she’d stolen from her father’s study and given him, and would not hear Liam’s cries in his rooms at the far end of the house.

  Twenty-one

  Astonishingly, it was not as hard as she had feared.

  Not that it was precisely easy, either, but Ellen had been so fearful as she ran along the streets to Mayfair, dipping into alleys and behind trees to avoid being seen—fearful that she wouldn’t be able to do it, that she wouldn’t have the strength or the courage necessary to do it.

  But she did.

  She found the Lockhart mansion easily enough and was pleased that there were no lights, except for two on the lower floors, well in the back. The trellis was exactly as Liam had said it was, like a ladder provided expressly for this purpose. She knew a moment of panic standing there, realizing she had not thought of how she might bring the beastie down, but thought that as she had come this far, she would simply have to figure that out when the time came. First things first—she had to climb that trellis.

  Fortunately, her foot was small enough to fit in the latticework, and she was relieved to discover that all the time spent climbing her grandfather’s trees as a girl stood her in good stead. But her strength was not what it had once been. The muscles in her arms began to burn halfway up; she didn’t think she could pull herself up even another inch. Toward the top, her arms were shaking; but she managed to grip the window ledge and pull herself up so that her bum was resting on the ledge. And just as Liam had hypothesized, the window was not locked. In fact, someone had left it ajar. Miraculously, Ellen was inside the Lockhart mansion in less than ten minutes.

  She stood in the drawing room, panting heavily; fearful that someone would hear her trying to catch her breath, and strained to hear any noise that would indicate she had been discovered. There was nothing but silence, golden silence. Not even the sound of a ticking clock. She glanced around, let her eyesight adjust to the darkness, seeing, finally, the door that led to the adjoining room. Just to be safe, she removed her shoes and left them beneath the window, then wrapped Liam’s plaid tightly around her shoulders as she walked to the door. She pressed her ear against it, listened intently for several moments, but hearing nothing, tried the knob. It turned easily; the door creaked only a little as she pushed it open.

  The adjoining room was darker and colder than the first.

  Cautiously, Ellen stepped across the threshold; the darkness, she quickly realized, was due to the drapes having been drawn shut. Without even a hint of moonlight, she could see nothing and was forced to grope along the wainscot, inching her toes forward, feeling for anything that might impede her progress, until she at last reached a window. When she pulled back the drape, weak moonlight filtered in, hardly enough to see, blast it, but at least enough to make out the various shapes of furnishings. Worse, there was no drapery cord that she could find feeling about the wall. But there was a chair nearby, and Ellen pushed that up against the wall, wound the drapes around it and hoped they wouldn’t slide free.

  Satisfied that it would have to do, she looked around and saw the murky shape of the gentleman’s armoire Liam had told her about. Almost there, almost done. Almost free.

  She scurried across the carpet, dodging an ottoman a mere moment before she would have crashed into it. Her breath was coming in short gulps now, her heart beating wildly in her chest as she tried the latch. Locked! God, oh, God, she had forgotten his dagger! Ellen felt her heart plummet—she couldn’t do this, of course she couldn’t do this! She’d been a fool to ever think she might! How could she come all this way only to be locked out? There are no second chances, Ellen! None! If you do not succeed, you will never have another opportunity!

  She whirled about, trying to make out other shapes, looking for anything that might help her. Seeing a table nearby, she darted forward, ran her hands lightly over it, trying to find something, anything, to pick the lock.

  Nothing.

  Tears began to well in her throat, the bitter taste of her defeat choking her. Gulping, she fought back the river that threatened to flow, knowing that even the slightest sound might bring the house down on her. She tried to remain calm, to think, and turned and looked at the armoire again, hating it, hating the Lockharts for locking up their foolish treasures—

  Wait a moment. Farnsworth had a similar piece of furniture, on top of which he kept the key. Ellen moved quickly to the armoire and stood on tiptoe, just barely able to reach the top. With the tips of her
fingers, she skirted the edge, felt something…it was the key! Ecstatic, Ellen attempted to retrieve it, but knocked it from the top of the armoire. Instantly, she was on her knees, running her hands over the carpet, desperately searching the dark, and in a final moment of sheer desperation, she found it. Quickly, for she was panicking now, she scrambled to her feet, fumbled with the lock, and managed to open it.

  The door sprang open; even in the weak moonlight, she could see the gold glow of the horrid little beastie.

  Honestly, Liam had not done well in describing it, for that was the most hideously grotesque little thing she had ever seen. No wonder the Lockharts kept it locked away; they didn’t want to frighten old women and small children with it. Perhaps even more curious, she thought wildly as she lifted the heavy ornament from the cabinet, was that someone, at some time, had commissioned its creation to begin with.

  It was heavy—quite heavy, actually—and she put it aside for a moment, locked the armoire, then threw the key beneath the cabinet to delay the discovery of the beastie’s disappearance. She gathered the beastie up, hurried back to the adjoining room by feeling her way along the wall, knocking the drape free of the chair. In the adjoining room she hastily donned her shoes, all the while fretting exactly how she would carry the heavy ornament down the trellis. She wasn’t strong enough to descend holding it. She leaned out the window and looked down. There was a bit of grass below, just a patch, really. Quickly, afraid to think too much, she wrapped the beastie in the plaid, then leaned out the window, carefully held it away from the house, and let it drop. The thing landed with a resounding thud she was quite certain had been heard across all of London. She instantly retreated from the window and with her back to the wall, strained to hear any sound of someone coming, either down the corridor or out the front door.

  Minutes passed. When she was convinced there was no sound, that she had not been detected, she crept away from the wall and looked out the window again. The plaid bundle lay where it had landed, on the grassy patch just below. Ellen swung one leg out, got hold of the trellis, then the other, and slipped through the open window. Since she was not strong enough to pull herself up to the window latch and hold on to the ledge, she was forced to leave the window open as she began her descent.

  She let herself drop the last several feet; it felt as if a thousand needles had been jabbed into her feet and legs when she landed. But safely on the ground again, with her heart pounding in her ears, Ellen picked the thing up, tried to repair the rather large divot it had made, but at last gave up on it in favor of fleeing for her life. She unwrapped part of the plaid to put around her shoulders, and holding the beastie in the last patch of the cloth, started home, dread burgeoning with each step she took.

  At four in the morning, after she had packed the beastie (wrapped securely in the plaid, of course) in one of two bags she would carry and had changed into traveling clothes, Ellen at last descended the stairs and crept to Liam’s room to return his clothes.

  Her breath escaped her altogether as she came to the door, and her heart, pounding in her ears again, seemed as loud as church bells. She imagined the worst of scenarios—that he had escaped or was loose and waiting for her. Certainly she harbored no illusions that he would show her mercy if he had managed to free himself. But she had no time to ponder it; the coach would leave at five, and she still had to rouse Natalie.

  She pushed the door open a crack and peeked inside.

  Liam was where she had left him, his arms trussed to the bed, naked save for a sheet that covered one leg. There was a decided chill in the room, and she worried for a moment that he might be cold. But one look at Liam’s face and she forgot any concern she had. Although he was, mercifully, rather calm, he wore an expression much like she imagined a powerful, angry beast might wear, one who was patiently awaiting the moment he would kill his prey and devour it. He smirked at her as she slipped inside the open door, clinging to his clothes to keep from trembling.

  “Ye did it, then, eh?”

  Her voice failed her; she could only nod. The deep sound of his derisive chuckle unnerved her, and she quickly moved to the table where she laid his folded clothes.

  Liam glanced at the clothing with an expression that almost seemed amused. “The kilt—where is it?”

  Too close, too close! Ellen stumbled backward, turned, and walked to the brazier to stir the coals. “I, ah…I need it,” she said hoarsely.

  “First the beastie, and now me féileadh beag. Tsk-tsk, Ellie,” he said. “And look at ye now, all sweetness and light, stirring me coals.”

  His voice was so cold and hard that Ellen shivered. What was she doing? There was nothing left to say. She stood and walked to the door.

  “Wait—are ye no’ forgetting something? Surely ye donna intend to leave me bound forever?”

  She faltered at the door, feeling suddenly and intensely uncertain, not wanting to leave him bound, but feeling sure that she must.

  “Canna look at me, is that it?” he drawled behind her. “Yer betrayal has made a coward of ye, Ellie.”

  She looked heavenward, swallowed hard before turning to have one last look at the man she loved with all her heart. “I…I had to do it, Liam,” she said with regret.

  “Oh, did ye, indeed?” he asked snidely. “Bloody stupid—I would have helped ye, Ellie, if ye had only asked!”

  Exhausted, nervous, and feeling incredibly sad about this turn of events, Ellen was dangerously close to shattering. “And how would you have helped me, Liam?” she cried, the tears falling now. “Even the very shirt off your back would not be enough!” Dear Lord, how pathetically desperate she sounded! Shaking, she swiped at the tears on her face. “You couldn’t have helped me,” she said sadly. “You’ve been quite clear about your situation. God in heaven, I would have given anything had it not come to this, Liam, I swear it, but I have Natalie to think of! You see what is happening to her, how she is slipping into fantasy! You know what will become of her if we are forced to stay here! I…I had no other choice.”

  “That’s where ye’re wrong, Ellie. Ye had another choice and ye still do. I’ll help ye, even though ye’ve betrayed me. Just untie me—”

  “No!” she cried, tears blinding her. “Follifoot will come in the morning,” she added in a voice barely above a whisper.

  “Have pity, will ye? I’m as bare-arsed as a bairn!”

  She shook her head, took a kerchief from her sleeve and swiped at her tears. “I’m so very sorry! But I have to go, Liam.”

  “I loved ye, Ellie. I loved ye as I’ve never loved another. How could ye do this to me, then?” he asked, his voice having lost some of its bitter edge.

  “Please!” she pleaded with him. “Please try and understand! I love you, Liam, I swear to God that I do—you know that I do! You shall never know the depth of my sorrow. But I must think of Natalie, and we both know you would never give me the beastie, for you need it as badly as I do. I’m sorry, Liam! I’m so sorry!” she cried. “But I must go now!”

  “Ellie! Donna go! Untie me!”

  “I can’t!”

  “I’ll find ye—ye know that I will! Run as far as ye like, but I’ll spend me life searching for ye, and I willna stop until I have what rightfully belongs to me and mine. Do ye hear me, lass?”

  She couldn’t look at him.

  “I’ll follow ye to the ends of the earth. I’ll hunt ye like a bloody dog,” he spat bitterly, and she could feel the raw loathing emanating from him.

  “Good-bye, Liam,” she whispered, and slipped out the door, pulling it to.

  Outside, she braced herself—only this time Liam didn’t shout at her to come back and untie him, did not so much as call her name. And Ellen had the horribly cold feeling that his silence was far more deadly than anything he might have said.

  Follifoot’s morning knock on the door earned him a gruff “Aye!” He pushed through the door as he always did, and walked to the table. But when he saw the pile of clothing there, he looked to the bed.
In his shock he dropped the tray, sending brown liquid streaming everywhere.

  “Ach, for heaven’s sake, Follifoot! Look what ye’ve done to me boots, then! God blind me, stop behaving so gobsmacked and untie me, will ye?” Liam demanded.

  Follifoot blinked; the captain attempted to lunge at him. “Untie me. NOW!” he roared, and Follifoot rushed to his side, fumbling with the tight cords as the captain continued to grumble under his breath. When he managed to untie the cords that bound him, Follifoot stumbled backward as the naked giant came to his feet. He paused, rubbed his wrists for a moment, then stretched his back before walking calmly to the armoire, vigorously rubbing his bum. “Feels tighter than a noose,” he said calmly to the open cabinet as he withdrew a pair of trousers.

  He turned, shoved one foot into them, then the other. “Have water brought up, will ye, Follifoot? I’d like a bath ’ere I stow all this away and take me leave.”

  “L-leaving sir?” Follifoot stuttered.

  “Aye, that I am.” The captain caught sight of something and he paused, walked to it, and peered down. It was a kerchief as far as Follifot could see, with what looked like a small neatly embroidered on it. The captain leaned over, picked it up, and held it tightly in his hand. “Aye, I’ll take me leave today, Follifoot, so get on with it, man. I’ve a wee birdie to find so that I might wring its bloody neck!” he said, and sounded, at least to Follifoot, rather cheerful about it.

  Twenty-two

  Her confidence, buoyed by the nabbing of the beastie, was effectively dashed before they had even crossed Belgrave Square. At four o’clock in the morning, with a cross nine-year-old complaining of the weight of the bag she carried and two very heavy portmanteaux cutting into Ellen’s hands, she was in no mood to discover the public coaches were not running at the time or price advertised. The journey to King’s Lynn, where Judith, her husband, and two children lived, cost three pounds more than Ellen had anticipated. For a woman with precious few resources at her disposal, the difference seemed like a king’s ransom.