Elise

by Jackie Ivie

  “That really was you last night?” she asked.

  “Aye.”

  “But how? Why?”

  “Kung fu. I told you my houseboy won me. Every time. I had to learn it. I’m na’ a master yet, as last night showed me.”

  “You were . . . nightmarish.” Elise glanced toward him.

  He was grinning, and from his blackened face, it was garish.

  “I’ve never put it to the test with as much at stake, nor done as well. Come along. Enough talk. Climb up.”

  He went to a knee.

  “Can’t I walk?” she asked.

  “I’ve mounts hidden. Near Dugan’s Tower. We’ll not make it by midday if we walk. Come here.”

  “I’ll run, then.” At his look, her chin lifted. “I can run, you know.”

  “We’re na’ far enough. The MacKennahs will be waking with sore heads and sorer limbs, but that won’t stop them from tracking us.”

  “They don’t know it was you.”

  “True, but a dram of whiskey or two, and they will na’ care. You’re too rich a prize. Now, climb up. Time’s a-wasting.”

  “I’m too heavy,” Elise countered. She didn’t want to be anywhere near that chest and those shoulders. Not now. Not until she told him.

  His lips twisted, to hide the amusement. “You’re little more than six stone. Maybe seven.”

  “How much is a stone?” Elise asked.

  “Fourteen English pounds.”

  She considered it. She should feel heavier than that. The secret was weighty, almost hampering her own intake of air.

  “You said you were sorry earlier. Truth?”

  She nodded.

  “Then prove it. Come here. I’ll carry you. We’ll make better time.”

  “You’ll trip.”

  She deserved the look he gave her.

  “Doona’ make me come and force it. We’ll be there in time for a nice hot sup, and a long soak, and whatever else you’ve in mind.”

  “I have to tell you something first.”

  “Tell me later.”

  “I promised myself that I’d say something. When I was ransomed, I’d tell you—”

  “Say it when you’re ransomed, then,” he interrupted her.

  “You always do that to me! I have something to tell you. It’s not going to remain unsaid a moment longer. Surely we can take a moment or two for the telling. Right here. Right now.”

  “Oh. Very well.”

  He stood, crossed his arms, which tended to make the forearms bulge out from the unyielding mass of his stomach, and then waited. There wasn’t a drop of moisture in her mouth.

  “Well? Speak up. The sun will be up soon, making it easier to do a lot in, including track us.”

  Elise inhaled. The smell of the color green assimilated through her. Fresh. New.

  “Is this some new ploy?”

  “I’m not Rory’s mother,” she blurted out, stopping to suck in more air. “My sister, Evangeline, was. Evan was not my lover. He never was.”

  Everything about Colin MacGowan stiffened, clear to the lines etched in the black of his face.

  “You mean, you did this to me...on purpose?” he asked, his voice sounding like it warbled for a moment, and then cleared.

  Elise couldn’t continue meeting such damning eyes. She looked back at the moss. “It wasn’t like that. I...”

  He was waiting, and there wasn’t anything she could think of to fill the space.

  “You vicious, vindictive, vengeful...”

  He stopped his own words. Then he was making a liar out of their need for subterfuge by yelling something unintelligible at her. Elise glanced up. He wasn’t yelling it at her. He had his head tipped back, his throat tensed into cords of thickened flesh, and was sending the cry to the treetops with a gruff, throat-tearing sound.

  He finished. The throbs of sound died. He lowered his head. Elise wasn’t fast enough to dodge his gaze and gasped before she could look back down.

  “You walk. I’ll na’ touch you. Never again. You hear?”

  Her eyes widened with the shock. She watched the moss soften and warp, until it wasn’t distinct anymore. It was a wash of greenish brown and sparkled with touches of dawn. She nodded.

  “You fall behind, you stay behind.”

  He wasn’t waiting to see if she understood. He was moving again, lumbering at a jog, through trees branches that seemed to slash back at her and with steps that slammed his feet into the ground. Elise was at his heels.

  Chapter 26

  The pace was brutal. Elise welcomed it. The ground was uneven and treacherous, even when she could see it. That required attention. Elise welcomed that, too. It kept her mind off other things. Things like the rain finally halting, MacKennah pursuers, clan punishment ... Colin’s words when she’d told him. Never in her wildest imagination had she thought he’d react like that.

  The moss beneath her feet wasn’t truly moss. It was rocks, and holes, and fallen, rotting material that twisted her ankle more than once, and almost took her to her knees twice. On both occasions, Elise could have sworn a hand reached out and steadied her, but it couldn’t have been Colin. Every time she looked, he was facing ahead and wasn’t paying her the slightest bit of attention. Elise had shaken her head. It had to have been Colin.

  Anything else was too fanciful.

  It wasn’t hard to see why. Everything was fanciful and mysterious in a Scots woods, with intermittent beams of sunlight piercing through, to dance on the last of the airborne mist and turn everything into a sparkling vista of wonder. It was entirely different from anything in England, even Barrigan’s unkempt property.

  Elise kept her mind on the beauty around her. It was better than listening to her body’s ill. The tartan was wrapped about her head and over her shoulders, and it itched and smelled as it dried. The skirt was still heavy with rainwater, and it chafed at her waist. The petticoat clung to each step she took. The blouse was drying to a consistency of thick paper, and the chemise she’d donned wasn’t protecting any skin from the scratch of it. The boots she’d thought so serviceable before felt like they were full of holes. Her belly was echoing with emptiness. There was a twinge of ache in her left side that accompanied each breath. The front of her thighs were making certain she knew how much muscle was being overused and abused, and the middle of her chest felt like a bruised and battered cage of pain every time it beat.

  She was vicious? Vindictive? Vengeful?

  The trees started thinning, opening the woods more and more; then Colin was leading her down into another meadow. What was thigh-high grass to him, was waist-hugging on her. Elise had to use a sashay-style movement to get through it, which had nothing to do with the way she used to walk. There were purple clumps of flowers scattered through the grass and smaller white star-shaped ones.

  She would have looked closer and appreciated how beautiful it all was, but Colin had increased his pace, and that meant she had to increase hers as well.

  The morn wore on, growing to a full, blinding, light hue that hurt the eyes to look about. The sun was welcome, though. Halfway across the meadow, Elise flipped the stiffened wool tartan from her face and turned her face toward the sun, shutting her eyes and inhaling deeply of freshness, warmth, and the clean smell of everything.

  “You’ll burn your skin,” Colin said, almost at her ear.

  Elise started, then brought her head down to look over at him. He’d wiped the black from his face, so that only smudges of it existed near the creases, and he’d tossed his cowl off his head and onto his shoulders.

  Elise kept his gaze for what felt like forever but was actually the span of three heartbeats, and then she dropped it.

  “Doona’ make the mistake of thinking I care, for I doona’.”

  “Very well,” she answered, extremely proud of the cool, unaffected tone of her own voice. “I won’t.”

  He made a grunt of sound, then he was handing her something. Elise eyed the flat, blackened squares, lifted her eye
s to his, and dropped them again.

  “Here. Take it. Eat it.”

  “What is it?”

  “Does it matter?” he asked.

  “No.” Elise took the two squares and devoured all but the last two bites. Those, she savored.

  “They’re griddle cakes. Overcooked. I always take them in the Highlands. Travel well. Filling. Hard to spoil.”

  “Oh,” she replied.

  “We’ve still a fair piece to walk.”

  The blisters in her heels, the muscles in her thighs, and, if she gave it enough time, every other inch of her would be protesting. Elise swallowed the last of her cake, licked her fingers, and waited.

  “You sufficiently rested?”

  “Does it matter?” she replied carefully.

  She got a whiff of sound that could have been amusement but was probably disgust, and then got the back of him again.

  They didn’t reach the horses until almost sunset. It was probably her fault. It certainly couldn’t have been his. He’d kept up his pace, and then he’d had to slow it for her, and then he’d made a liar out of himself again by coming back to her and hefting her back onto his shoulders. It was all so stupid. Her posturing. His vow. The lies. The secrets. The only thing that mattered was survival. Their ancestors had known it. Why didn’t they?

  Elise didn’t have enough energy to lift her head from where it dangled at his shoulder, lolling back and forth with each of his steps. She didn’t have a bit of fight left in her. He was stronger. He was more fit. He hadn’t starved himself to fit into tight, little corsets, nor had he kept himself confined to indoors to protect his pale, unblemished complexion. He’d not made certain never to do a bit of exercise, for fear of making a physique that was other than ladylike and weak.

  Colin stopped walking. Elise forced her neck to move and roll her head so she could see why.

  There were horses. Lots of horses. And there were clansmen. Lots of clansmen. Red, green, and black plaid covered all of them; the patterns varied, but not the colors.

  “You’re late,” one of the men said.

  “Aye, a bit of trouble,” Colin answered. Elise heard it with her ears and felt it with the rest of her. That was strange, she decided.

  “The MacKennah?”

  “Nae. The wife. She’s not much for the clime.”

  There was a bit of laughter at that. Elise would have stiffened, but she was beyond that; besides, it was true.

  “We just about sent a search party for you.”

  “Nae need. I told you such.”

  “Dugan expected us midday.”

  “Send a party ahead. Alert the man. We’ll need food. A fire. A bath. Beds. Clean clothing. Go. Have Mick ready.”

  They didn’t answer, but Elise heard hoof beats. She focused her eyes on why. They were on hard ground. There wasn’t a hint of greenery or foliage anywhere. She wondered when that had happened.

  “Here, take the wife.”

  Elise’s heart heard it before her ears did, as he tipped forward and slid her off his shoulders and into another man’s arms.

  “Please, put me down,” she said.

  He shrugged and put her on her feet, where Elise embarrassed herself by collapsing into a folded-leg pile. She bent her head over the whole of it and tried to disappear into the rock-strewn dirt of the hillside.

  “Hand her up.”

  “You’ve your hands full with this one, Your Grace.”

  “Actually, lads, I’ve my arms full. Hand her over.”

  I’m sorry, Colin. I didn’t mean to keep it secret for so long. I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Elise opened her mouth to say everything she was carrying in her heart.

  “If you cling to me, I’ll set you on another horse, with another man. I will na’ care which man.”

  Elise hunched forward until her forehead touched the horse’s neck and tried to find the heartless demeanor she was famous for. Anything was better than knowing the man with his hand about her waist, securing her seat, hated having it there. She told herself she was exhausted. That was it. She was too exhausted to even feel the soreness taking over her entire body. All she could feel was one thing: heartache. It was strange, but there wasn’t anything worse than that.

  Elise missed their arrival. She missed the fanfare of pipes, the torches that were lit, and the boar that was brought forth and eagerly sliced into and eaten. She missed her bath. She missed everything, save the luxury of linen-covered softness pillowed against her cheek and the feel of a mattress beneath her body.

  “Well! You certainly know how to give a body a shock.”

  Elise lifted her head, groaned at the poor use of her own neck, and plopped back down on the pillow.

  “And if you think I’ll come posthaste, on horseback, over mountains and around lakes filled with sea creatures, for anyone else, you’re sadly mistaken.”

  “Daisy?” Elise’s throat hurt to use it, too. That was strange. She couldn’t remember working her voice.

  “You were expecting someone else?”

  “But...? How? Why?”

  “We were just getting settled in the nursery wing of that Castle Gowan place—Rory and I, and a whole army of housemaids and such. And my Lord, Elise, but when you see the state of this man’s holdings, your own mouth is going to drop open, just like mine did. He’s as rich as Midas. Has taste, too.”

  Elise moaned. It didn’t stop Daisy.

  “There’s rooms of tapestries and furnishings ... from France! There’s marble and teakwood, and silver and gilt, and paintings. My, my, it’s amazing. Would make that Archibald’s teeth fall out with the envy. And I didn’t even see it all in the one look I got.”

  “Daisy,” Elise said.

  “What?”

  “Why are you here? And, if we’re so close to his home, why didn’t he take me there?”

  “Good questions. The first? His Grace sent his man Mick for me. You needed me, urgently. I can see the wisdom of that myself.”

  “I needed you? I don’t understand. Where am I?”

  “Dugan’s Tower. Or so they call it. The man’s an optimist. It’s a square heap made of mismatched rocks. There’s nothing towering about this sty.”

  “Sty?”

  “The place needs a good cleaning ... and a good sweeping. Actually, it’s more in need of a good house fire. I could probably arrange one. We could blame it on you. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Elise had been trying to lift her head but let it back down at the maid’s words. They were true. “Where is Col—I mean, His Grace?”

  “As far as I know, he’s riding. Been doing that all day. Most of yesterday, too, from what I hear.”

  “Yesterday?”

  “You’ve been asleep a day and a half. I can only surmise the horrors that man put you through that would lead to such a thing. Especially when I see the state of your clothing. Or what you’re still wearing that I’ll just assume is called clothing. What is this, please?”

  The maid was lifting the end of the MacGowan sett that was still wrapped about her.

  “It’s a MacGowan tartan, Daisy.”

  “It’s seen better days or had better use. What did you do with it? Scrub a barn floor?”

  “I think it saved my life,” Elise replied, speaking more to the down-filled pillow at her nose than to the woman moving about in the room behind her.

  “I know something that will do one better. Coffee. I’ll order it up. Some rolls, too. Some good cooked oats, heavy cream, and a bath. Do you need anything else?”

  Colin, Elise answered in her thoughts. “No,” she said aloud.

  “Well, don’t just lie there, wallowing in cloth that needs to be burnt to get the vermin out of it. Roll over. I’ll assist.”

  “Roll over? Now?”

  “Right now. You’re lying on the ends of this tartan, blanket-thing. They’re frayed. Is that a normal condition, or was it brought about by wear?”

  Elise struggled to roll over, turni
ng about so the maid could unwind her blanket. Her body was protesting, but it seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. Then she had to listen to what the maid thought of her wrinkled, unkempt blouse, with sweat stains beneath each arm.

  “You actually slept this way? Sweet heaven! You?” The maid put her hands to her cheeks and her eyes were wide.

  “There’s a lot worse things than a bit of soil and sweat,” Elise replied softly.

  “What has that man been doing to you? I’ll roast him! I’ll flog him! I’ll see every bit of flesh taken from every inch—no, that’s too severe, and I don’t have that much energy. He’s got too many inches of it. It would hurt my arm.”

  Elise would have chuckled, but her ribs hurt the moment it started. She caught the gasp in a wheeze of sound.

  “And he hurt you, too?”

  “No, that was Torquil. More specifically, it was Torquil’s horse.”

  “Who the devil is Torquil?”

  “The MacKennah laird.”

  “You’ve been with The MacKennah? Oh dear. That is not good.”

  “I wasn’t with him because I wanted to be. He abducted me.”

  “He what?” Her voice rose an octave on the last word.

  “Abducted. For ransom. They do it all the time. At least, that’s what they tell me. I don’t know if it’s true.”

  “Oh, you poor love. Those barbarians tell me nothing! They expect to pull me out of a fine sleep and get myself ready for a brisk ride, without a word of explanation, other than you’ve gone and done it now with your secrets, and then I find out they let you get taken. By their sworn enemy? Where is he? I’ll take a broom to his thick skull and my sewing scissors to his heart! I hope it cost His Grace a fine pile of gold to get you back, too.”

  “It didn’t.”

  “Why not? Were you such a horrid prisoner they let you go? Or better yet, did you escape on your own? This is thrilling! I’m so proud of you!”

  Elise giggled and stopped the instant she did. That hurt her ribs, too. “Neither. Colin... I mean, His Grace, rescued me.”