It was too late to leave—
Lord Delapointe leaned in and said, “So what happened to your pretty face?”
I was confused for a second. My hand went to my face but Lord Delapointe’s hand got there first. He stroked the back of his finger down my cheek. The sore one, the one with the bruise.
He was touching me and it was way past appropriate the way he lingered. And there was literally nothing I could do.
“Nothing, just ran into something. Clumsy.”
“The Earl has sent my daughter to me injured. He might be more careful.” His hand rubbed down my face again. Okay, back home there would be some serious pepper-spraying on this perv. Where the hell was my pepper spray?
I glanced at Ewan to see what he was thinking about the bruise and the discussing of it, because sadly, though he was a total monster and caused the injury, he was right now one of my only two protectors. His eyes met mine.
Lord Delapointe flicked his eyes back and forth between me and Ewan and then I saw within his eyes a moment of recognition. “Ah, I see. My daughter has been bruised and battered in the house of Campbell and this is the violator sitting here at my dinner table.“ He leveled his gaze on Ewan.
Ewan growled. “Tis none of your business. Take your hands off her face.”
“Because you’re the favorite nephew of the Earl of Breadalbane, the only price you pay is a bruising? Then you are allowed to be her bodyguard?”
I said, “That’s not really what happened.”
“Not really,” he said. He spun his pewter beer mug around and around. He slowly looked up — piercing eyes, mischievous glint. “Who bruised your face Ewan?”
Ewan looked across the table at Sean then answered. “I daena have tae answer your questions.”
“True, but there’s a young woman, my stepdaughter, a guest in my castle with a bruise upon her face and there you sit, a criminal…”
The two guards stepped up behind Ewan and struggled him up from the chair. He fought, yelling in Gaelic, twisting in their arms. Sean raced around the table, his knife drawn, battling two more guards. While Ewan kicked his chair back trying to get an arm free to draw a weapon.
I was yanked from my seat. Lord Delapointe had me by the arm, twisting it, pulling me to a back door.
I dragged my feet and pulled against him, writhing and screaming and begging—
One of the guards pulled a knife and slit Ewan’s throat from one side to the other. His head lolled forward. Blood rushed down his clothes. He was shoved brusquely to the dirt floor, a sack of lifeless human. Once a monster, now my next-to-last hope, gone.
Sean looked down at his dead cousin and then turned to see me — pulled through a door to the dark, dangerous, alone parts of the castle.
The last look between us, nothing. Nothing helpful at all. Sean was wrestled to the ground, and I had no idea whether he was dead or alive.
Lord Delapointe’s hands were clammy on my wrists. My arms were twisted and my body was forcibly moved. My mind was too shocked to be able to formulate an idea. I stubbed a toe on a step and then another as I was dragged up a stairwell of uneven stone. It was dark, very dark.
Lord Delapointe shoved me through a door into a hall. Was I on the third floor? What would I do, yell for help from a window? Would Magnus climb up here by himself?
I was in freaking Hogwarts, and I didn’t have a magic wand.
I was dragged, shoved, and wrestled for so far and so long that I had no idea where I was. Up or down, east or west. I had forgotten to concentrate on where I was, and I was lost. I would need a bread trail to figure out how to get to a main door. If there was ever any chance of escape.
I had nothing left to lose, so I went for outrage. “I demand to see Lady Mairead. You have killed one of my family members, one of your wife’s nephews. You will answer for this.”
He shoved me through a door and there I was again, in his private cabinet. I stood still in the middle.
“Have a seat.”
The room had grown dark, gloomy, cold. I could barely see a foot away. I continued to stand, but I was shaking, freezing, and worried I might fall. He lit a candle and placed it on the small table beside a chair near the fire. I couldn’t resist; I dropped into the seat. Fine, but I wouldn’t be comfortable. I kept my back straight, my hands clasped in my lap. My eyes directly ahead.
The flame of the candle cast a small pool of flickering light about six inches around. It wasn’t enough. Lord Delapointe sat in a chair close to mine and if he leaned forward, the light illuminated his malevolent face. But when he leaned back, outside of the pool of light, his expressions and movements were hidden. It was terrifying like I was blind in pieces.
“I want to return to Sean Campbell. He has been ordered not to leave me and you have no jurisdiction over—“
Lord Delapointe stepped across the space, out of my field of vision. I heard him crouch down to stoke the fire. “Who has ordered him?” His back was to me. I had a knife. I could just stab him. I would hike my skirt, undo the knife — he turned with a long metal stick, red hot at the end. “Who has beaten the man, Ewan?”
“The Earl punished him. I don’t know why you’re asking this…”
“Magnus Campbell, you mean. Magnus Campbell, who is now waiting for word of you at the edge of my forest—“
My breath caught.
“—or was.” His smile widened. “Right now he is being apprehended by my men.” He admired the end of the poker. His face loomed into my light, glowing with the red of the heated stick. “It’s been a good day for me. I didn’t seek a fight, yet I have somehow conquered some of the best warriors of the Campbell clan.”
My anger boiled over. I said, “Jesus Christ, do you have to sound like such a sick fuck?”
His brow went up. He lost his step for a moment. “Pardon?”
“Where I come from there’s an archetype, a god-dammed stereotype — it’s called super villain and really you’re such a fucking cliche — have you been reading comic books?”
My hands trembled, I tried to keep them still over my anger, but I was growing wild.
“Comic books?”
My eyes glanced to the window — not really any moon at all, a faint glow. Would it be possible to jump from here? If this dickhead wasn’t here, knocked out or something, could I bust out the glass, squeeze through, and jump? How many floors up were we?
“Yes, comic, comedy, joke books. You’re like a character from one, with your tiny little mind and your jackass, malevolent smile.”
I was pretty sure this was the third floor. Plus, the landing would probably be onto solid, body-breaking, brick pavers.
I continued, “Is that the kind of jerk-ass smile you had plastered across your face while you beat Magnus?”
His smile turned slithery, exactly what I was talking about. “You know more than you have admitted. Your husband was my guest not three weeks ago. He disappeared from my jail.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about that, but I’m so glad he escaped from your twisted little prison palace.”
He quickly grabbed my face in a claw-like hand. Pressed close. His face not an inch away.
“You don’t sound like how a girl raised by a gentle British family in the West Indies would sound.”
I glared into his eyes. The red hot poker was just a few inches from my face. “It’s the mother fucking New World asshole, no one is gentle there.”
His breath was hot and gross on my face. He ignored me and closely inspected the bruise on my cheekbone.
I said, “You know, until just a few minutes ago Ewan Campbell was the biggest monster I knew. Congratulations, you’ve been crowned king supreme of the mega monsters.”
He shoved my chin away, tossing me to the arm of my chair. He laughed loudly and menacingly.
I righted myself fast. I had to keep him in my sights; he was too unpredictable. He tossed the poker into the fire. I glanced toward the door trying to make out in the darkness if the gua
rds were standing there. They could have moved closer for all I knew. Or left the room altogether.
Lord Delapointe brought me back to the conversation from his position crouched in front of my knees. “Mairead too is gone. I suppose you haven’t seen her? I had something I needed to speak to her about.”
My breath was coming ragged and hard. “Good, I’m glad she got away, I hope she’s long gone.”
He grinned widely, maniacally. “You have taught me a lot this visit daughter. You are a true gift.”
“What the hell are you taking about?”
“I seem to have found myself in possession of a magical device. I have been attempting to understand its purposes and uses, yet every man who uses it returns dead or on the edge of death. I believed that the mere act of using it was what killed them. And then I supposed that perhaps they traveled to a brutal age and that is how they have died. But you have crossed from that time. You survived the jump and are unscarred and healthy. Your only blemish is from the brutes my wife calls family.”
I grunted and crossed my arms. Pouting because I hadn’t realized how much he was able to learn. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. I want Sean MacArthur, my escort, brought to me directly. My father, John Sheffield, will have you in jail for the way I have been treated here today.”
He paused, then icily said, “You are in no position to make demands my dear. That is not how this works.” He stood, stepped out of the pool of light and through the darkness toward the door into complete blackness. I was terrified he might actually leave, and I wouldn’t know if I was alone.
He spoke under his voice to someone near the door.
Then he said loudly to me, “Don’t touch anything, or my guards have permission to move you to a cell.” He banged out of the room, leaving me in pitch darkness, except for the tiny flickering candle beside my arm. A few feet away a small pile of coals smoldered in the hearth.
I looked down at my hands in the dark. Were the guards even here and were they inside the door or outside? How many were there, and where were they? It was very quiet, I couldn’t determine. I said, “Hello?”
No sound.
I listened, on edge. Every nerve was stretched to listen. I was about to stand up, look around the room, but then I could hear it — faint breathing from the door. At least one man was inside with me. Could they see me? Probably. I was sitting in a pool of light.
I hoped there weren’t rats in here with me.
Okay, also I was starving. I hadn’t eaten anything downstairs and my shaking from anger had turned into a low blood sugar sort of near-faint tremble. That did not seem helpful. I shifted my purse to my lap, opened my bag, and looked inside — nothing. I did remember the painkillers in there, six. If I could get them into his food, then wait for an hour, he might be incapacitated enough. I could get away. But there were too many what ifs.
He hadn’t taken my leg knife though.
But with my puny stab the knife would easily glance off his wool coat unless I was standing over him. So maybe the painkillers first, then the knife? That would be a cold-hearted bitch move though. Was I capable of murdering someone?
Probably, if he smiled like that one more time.
He was gone for close to an hour. In all that time I didn’t move — but my panic grew. My breaths rang in my ears. My heartbeat battered my chest.
He returned with a bang of the door and told the guards to leave us. A moment later he appeared in my field of vision and tossed a plate of food on the table beside me. “Eat.”
He grabbed the other chair and pulled it directly in front of mine, almost knee to knee. It crossed my mind that there might be something in the food, much like I had just been plotting.
He watched my face noticing my hesitation. “My wife Mairead practiced the arts of poison, every headache I ever suffered could be traced to one of her foul moods. Keeping her locked in her chambers has been my only recourse.”
“Is she still there?”
“That foul son of hers helped her escape months ago. I haven’t seen her since.” His eyes cut to me. “And since you haven’t seen young Magnus. . . Mairead did not attend your wedding?”
“No.”
“Well, that is unfortunate, she would have enjoyed meeting you. She greatly enjoys ritual sacrifice.” He leaned back, comfortable, sociopathic, bone-chillingly scary.
“Eat and then we can discuss the deal you will make with me.”
I brought the plate to my lap and ate meat and carrots with my hands. He looked somewhat proud of the meal he was providing, so I mentioned it was bland to provoke him. With the food energizing me I regained even more of my insolence.
He said, “Pass over your bag,” and wiggled his fingers expectantly.
I looped it off my shoulder and passed it to him. He pulled out the contents: the bottle of painkillers, the antibiotics, the bandaids. He turned a tampon over and over in his hand. What a dumbass. He inspected my car keys, one that was electronic, three house keys. Then my phone. He flipped it over and over in his hand while I ate.
“What is this?”
“A magical box.”
“What does this one do?”
I took it from him and pushed the home button. I showed him the home screen with the apps. He pushed at it tentatively and kept turning it over to check the other side. That was cute as hell when Magnus was doing it, but down right irritating to watch this evil man try it. Clearly he was an idiot.
I was way smarter. I just had to think my way out of this situation. “I want my stuff back.”
He ignored me, opened my wallet, and pulled out a small stack of credit cards, gift cards, and my license. What if I left one of those behind and three hundred years from now someone found my photo ID in the ruins of this castle?
He leaned to the light and investigated my license, but seemed not to know how to read the information on it.
I pushed the plate to the table — done eating and ready to get on with it. “You mentioned a deal? You should get to it; the Earl probably has an army headed here right now.”
“Ah, but see, that’s not exactly how it works here. It’s much slower. Tell me about where you’re from. What did you call it, the West Indies? They have interesting shoes.”
I glanced down. My feet, the sneakers, were sticking out from my dress. “I’m not telling you anything until I know that Sean Campbell, my escort, is okay. You sack of—“
He pulled from behind his chair a sporran. The straps were cut short. He banged it to the floor between us. “Formerly belonging to the young Magnus.”
My eyes went wide, and he chuckled. “My prisons are full of the clan Campbell. Leave it to Mairead to disappear right when we are entertaining her family.”
“Is he alive?”
“For now. He will stay that way if you cooperate.”
“Fine, what do you want?”
“I am in line to the British crown — have you heard this, Kaitlyn?”
“Nope, only that you are a total dick. Can’t imagine you’d be a good choice for a ruler.”
“It’s not a matter of choice, but of bloodline. I’m not very close, but close enough, and if bloodline doesn’t suffice, and sometimes during upheaval and confusion, bloodline isn’t enough. . . ” He lazily rolled his hand as if to infer that something would need to be done. “I thought marrying a Campbell would give me an army at my disposal, but my brother-in-laws are too busy with their own orchestrations to help me with mine. So that leaves the dowry of Mairead. Married before, as you know, to a foreigner with magical gifts. She has given me one and with a little persuasion she has given me the directions for using it.”
“I saw the cuts you made to her face.”
“She was irresolute until then. She chose the price she would pay for not sharing her wealth with her husband.”
“God, you are such an ass. How did you get her to marry you?”
“I took her. Such as one does here in Scotland. How did your Scot win y
ou?”
I did not want to say ‘by contract.’ Instead I refocused. “You know, I need to look in the sporran.”
“Ah, of course, my stepdaughter doesn’t trust me.”
I snatched it up and looked inside. Empty. Completely empty. Was this Magnus’s? It was fur and I hadn’t really…it looked a lot like it, but…
“You doubt my word Kaitlyn?”
“I do. Magnus killed your brother. He escaped you once already, I think if you found him, he’d be dead right now. So either you have Magnus, or he’s dead. If he’s alive, I’ll need proof.”
He shook his head slowly. I could barely make out his movements in the dimness. But then he hunched toward me, his face jutting into the light. “See, again, you think you’re the one making deals. I have one of the machines, I can travel to the future and the past. I need you for nothing except courtesies, dear daughter Kaitlyn, and if you don’t help — well, you can die with your husband. It’s nothing to me. As a matter of fact, it helps my case to have you all die on your visit here. Sends a clear message to the Earl — I will not be disregarded.” He punctuated the last words with his finger on the arm of the chair.
I gulped and took an edifying breath. “What do you want?”
One of my warriors has returned from your time wounded. He told me of wondrous weapons, amazing accuracy, and very deadly. I would like an arsenal of these new weapons, and I would like your help getting them. In exchange I’ll let some people live.”
“Why don’t you go get them? I don’t see what I have to do with it.”
“You can guide me. Show me around, introduce me to the right people.”
I heard yelling down the hall. Loud. Closer. Through the dark. And then, without a doubt, Magnus. He had been caught, or worse — turned himself in to get to me.
I chewed my lip.
Lord Delapointe watched my face.
A moment later a bang as the door flung open, voices in the room. Magnus struggling. He was dragged to the middle of the room, faint and shadowy in the darkness. I could barely see him. He was shoved to a kneeling position, nearer the light — his head yanked back. His eyes were black and swollen. His neck bulged with the want of beating the shit out of someone. Darkness dripped from a head wound, dark stains covered his shirt. His hands were bound in front.
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