“No one will take Aileen from me,” Dunbar sneered. “Not even you, you priggish bastard.”
Niall grimaced, holding his oozing side with his free hand.
Dunbar attacked full-on, his sword hissing through the air. Niall dodged the first swipe, aimed at his head. He jumped backward to avoid two slashing blows aimed for his torso. He parried a thrust aimed at his arm, then attacked, jabbing at Dunbar’s chest, backing the sneering man until his thighs bumped against the side of the bed. Dunbar jumped onto the bed, still moving backward, stepping on the woman’s legs. She screeched and scurried away, and Dunbar lost his balance. The dirk slipped from his fingers, falling in the folds of the blankets.
Niall leapt up on the bed, intent on backing Dunbar into the corner. Dunbar jumped down on the other side. A table beside him crashed to the ground.
From his higher position, Niall slashed at Dunbar’s neck, but he jerked his head backward, and the tip of Niall’s blade scratched his jaw.
“Not good enough.” In an abrupt movement, Dunbar ducked to escape from the corner, swooping his sword low behind his back and catching Niall off guard. The sword cut through his tunic and slashed his stomach.
Niall let out a hiss of breath against the burn of it.
Dunbar’s taunting voice seemed to bounce off the stone walls of the bedchamber. “Too bad you’ll never see her pretty pink cunt. Too bad you’ll never see the marks of the whip on her back—Munro’s old ones and my fresh, bloody ones.”
He’d raped Aileen.
It was the only way Dunbar would have seen the scars on her back. Hearing the confirmation of it made Niall’s blood roar with rage.
He was too late. He had failed her.
Through the red haze, his senses narrowed and focused. There were no other people in the room—no crying woman or struggling men. There was no room, no castle, no world. There was only Gilbert Dunbar. And he had to die.
With a shout of fury, Niall leapt off the bed and lunged forward. When Dunbar dodged the blow, Niall came at him again and again, until the other man anticipated and adjusted to his never-ending assault.
But Dunbar was tiring. His free arm, the arm with the bandaged shoulder, hung limply by his side. His strokes seemed less strong, less certain in their aim.
Niall made to lunge again, but just as Dunbar raised his weapon to block, Niall changed the thrust to a slash aimed high. Dunbar completely misjudged the angle of the attack, and his parry missed. Niall’s claymore caught him in the throat, slicing him open.
Dunbar seemed to melt to the floor, his throat gurgling, a fount of blood spurting from the gash in his neck.
Clutching the throbbing wound on his side, Niall rounded on Dunbar’s male companion, who was being held by Iain with his hands bound behind him.
“Where is she?” Niall shouted above the continued screams of the woman. “Where is Aileen?”
“Gone!” the man yelled. He stared at his fallen master, eyes wide and frightened. “Gone, gone, gone!”
Niall pressed the bloody tip of his claymore to the man’s throat. “Where?”
“I don’t know,” the man sobbed. “She stabbed my lord in th-the shoulder and then es-escaped. No one knows how she got out.”
Niall closed his eyes. Someone must have told her the way out through the tunnels. She must’ve been the one who had disturbed the grate.
Thank God. She had gotten away on her own. But not before Dunbar had raped her.
The man fell to his knees and crawled to his master. Niall turned away from the gruesome scene, knowing what he must do and where he must go. As clear as if she’d called to him herself, he knew where she’d gone.
Loch Ness.
Chapter Sixteen
With only an extra plaid slung over her shoulder and a tallow candle, Aileen had escaped from Castle Aird.
She’d had an opportunity to kill Gilbert. When she’d hit his head with the lantern, he’d lost consciousness and crumpled to the floor. She’d stood over him, staring at him, hating him with all her heart. She’d pulled her dirk from his shoulder and pressed its tip to his heart. But she couldn’t take that extra step.
As long as he lived, he was her husband, and he was a threat to her life. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to murder him in cold blood.
Instead of traveling north to Ellandonan or Dornoch, she headed due south towards her grannie’s cottage. She walked through the night and the following day. She had traveled on this wagon road before. It was a quiet, desolate place, with only the occasional traveler. She slipped off the road and took shelter behind bushes and trees when she heard riders, but that was rare.
Late in the afternoon, a glint of the blue waters of the loch finally showed between the trees, and, though she was exhausted from lack of sleep and the miles she’d traveled on foot, Aileen picked up her pace. Soon enough, she saw the thatched roof of her grannie’s cottage, perched on the banks of the loch.
She broke into a run, tears streaming down her face. She hadn’t seen her grannie in too long. She missed her. She needed her.
When the old woman opened the door, Aileen merely grinned through her tears, so happy to see her she could hardly speak through the thick emotion in her throat.
Grannie’s face collapsed into smiling wrinkles. “Aileen, a leannan,” she said in her kindly voice that shook with age. “I had a feeling I’d be seeing you soon.”
Aileen threw her arms around the old woman. As always, her grannie’s soft skin smelled of sugar and spices.
Grannie bustled her into the main room of the small, pretty cottage. A smile spread across her features, but the edges of her eyes creased with concern. “Och, lass, you’re verra gaunt. I’ve been worried about you since I heard of that bastard Munro’s death.”
Aileen widened her eyes in shock. “Grannie!”
The old woman frowned. “Well, he was one.” She gave Aileen a steady look. “If ’twere me, I’d’ve danced a jig the moment I heard the man was dead. But I expect you were a good lass, as you always are, and mourned his death like a proper wife.”
“Well…I tried.” But she hadn’t been very successful. She felt the heat of a flush creep over her cheeks as she thought of Niall’s stay at Dornoch.
Her grannie sat her in a chair, gave her a basin full of warm water to wash, and bustled about, preparing something to eat. Aileen tried to get up to help, but the old woman pressed her back down. “You sit. Something terrible’s happened, I can tell by the looks of you.”
Aileen leaned on the table, exhausted, and her stomach growled loudly. She hadn’t eaten all day.
Setting a bowl before Aileen, Grannie sat in the chair beside her, took one of her hands, and pressed it to her cheek before she kissed it and thrust a spoon into it. “First you’ll be eating, and then I’ll help you to change. Then we’ll talk. You’ve much to tell me. But for now…”
She pressed her hand gently over Aileen’s belly. Aileen looked up in surprise.
“Perhaps there is something you’d like to tell me before anything else?”
Nobody had ever understood her like her grannie. Aileen nodded, her eyes filling with tears.
“Aye, you’re right. I’m with child.”
The older woman’s face collapsed into that sweet smile again. “Oh, lass.”
“It isna Walter’s child, though…”
The smile turned wry, and her grannie’s eyes sparkled. “Well then. I’m even happier.”
***
By sunset, Aileen’s stomach was satisfied, and she’d taken a bathed and changed into a clean shift, dress, and plaid. Sitting with her grannie beside the hearth, she told the older woman all that had happened since Walter’s death.
“John summoned me to Ellandonan,” she said, “and he sent one of his men—a man who’d been a good friend to me in the early days of my marriage to Walter.”
Grannie nodded. “This man is important to you.”
“He’s always been important to me, but now…”
&nb
sp; The violet eyes softened. “The babe’s father?”
“Aye. His name is Niall MacRae.”
“Niall MacRae?” Grannie asked, her eyes clouding and her forehead wrinkles deepening as she attempted to attach a face to the name.
“You knew him before you left Dornoch,” Aileen said. Grannie had lived at Dornoch for the first several months of her marriage to Walter, but Walter had despised her, and since the feeling was entirely mutual, she’d eventually left.
“Did I?” The old woman rubbed her chin between two fingers.
“He was Walter’s ward. My age. Very tall, with dark blond hair.”
“I do remember him.” Grannie smiled. “Quite the bonny lad, wasn’t he?”
“Aye,” Aileen agreed. He was also gallant, gentle, courteous, sensitive, passionate. Ardent but volatile. Self-sacrificing. And yet…he’d left her.
She continued her story. Grannie didn’t speak through the remainder of the telling, and for a long while after Aileen had finished speaking, the old woman remained silent.
Aileen sat gazing into the fire. She missed Niall so much.
Finally, Grannie spoke. “This all began a score of years ago. Nay—even longer.”
Aileen’s gaze swung to the older woman, who stared contemplatively at the fire. She tilted her head in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“That was a difficult time at Dornoch. ’Twas the summer Lady Dunbar died.”
“Lady Dunbar? Do you mean Gilbert Dunbar’s mother?”
The old woman placed her hand over Aileen’s and patted it distractedly. “Aye. She was a distant cousin of mine. Even though she’d married an overbearing boor who never gave her the respect she deserved, she was a sweet lady, a loving mother, and her son was a happy child—rambunctious and full of boyish vigor.”
Gilbert?
“He took a fancy to you, Aileen,” Grannie said. “Now ’twas an odd sight, seeing a growing lad handle a wee bairn with such sweetness and adoration. Yet something about him—” She shook herself as if to rid a disturbing thought from her mind. “Well, nigh on every soul in the castle came down with a terrible ague that year. You and young Gilbert were the first, and in caring for the two of you, everyone else seemed to have caught it. You bairns survived, but the adults didn’t fare as well. Lady Dunbar was the first to go.”
“Oh.” Tears welled in Aileen’s eyes. She remembered losing her own mother to sickness, and even after all these years, the pain of it was acute. The pain Gilbert must have felt as a lad might have been too much to bear—especially if his father was as harsh as Gilbert himself turned out to be. “What happened to Gilbert?” she asked.
“At the time, I thought the sickness addled his brain, quite frankly,” Grannie said. “One night I went to his bedchamber to cast an old healing charm upon him, but he flailed and kicked and screamed. He said I was casting an evil spell, that he would kill me for my sinful pagan incantations.” She shook her head. “Later, I realized it wasn’t the sickness but his mother’s death that had addled him. I never saw the lad again.”
“Oh…” All the fear drained out of Aileen. It was almost impossible to think that evil man had once been an innocent, happy youth. One who had apparently adored her. “Gilbert Dunbar is my husband now. He…kidnapped me…and married me…and tried to…to…” Aileen took a deep, shaky breath. “I think he would have killed me, eventually. He certainly would have killed my child.”
“Oh, a leannan.” Grannie stood and gathered Aileen into her arms. Aileen pressed her face against her soft shoulder.
“If his mother hadn’t died, he would be a different person,” Aileen whispered. “I feel it. He’d be honorable and good—”
“Mayhap, but it isna your responsibility. You’d naught to do with it.”
“I just—” She squeezed the other woman tightly. “I just wish I could change things. If things had been different…”
“Aileen.” Grannie stroked strands of hair off her forehead. “One thing we canna change is the past.”
“Sometimes I think we canna change the future either. We’re destined to be pulled through life by God or fate or those who surround us and never by free will.”
“Sometimes ’tis true, lass. Especially for us women. But you’re different, a leannan. You’re far stronger than most. You’ll go on, and you will make your own way.”
“Even married to a monster like Gilbert Dunbar?”
“Even so.”
“But…” Aileen’s voice was nearly a whisper. “I don’t think I can ever love anyone again.”
And how could she if she was already bound to Gilbert?
“Och!” The old woman narrowed her eyes. “Dinna be daft. Of course you are capable of loving again. The moment your bairn is born, you will have found the most enduring love of your life.”
Aileen couldn’t help but smile. It was true—the love for her child had started growing the day she realized that she was carrying him. “You know that’s not what I meant,” she said softly. “I’m so angry. I feel so betrayed. He left me and our babe alone, to fend for ourselves, to protect ourselves against Gilbert. I feel…abandoned.”
“You’re now safe with me, yet you’re still ruled by anger?”
“I should feel safe,” Aileen said. “And I do—it’s just that…”
“You must be brave, a leannan. You mustn’t become enslaved by your anger or fear. Break free and you shall recover what was lost and begin again. Here…” Grannie turned away and went to the shelf by the hearth where she stored her herbs. She returned holding a twig.
“’Tis four days till Christmas,” she said, “but none too early for this.”
“What is it?” Aileen asked.
“’Tis a rowan twig.”
Aileen nodded. She understood the significance of the rowan. When she was a lass, she remembered Grannie placing similar twigs over her doorway to ward off evil.
She handed it to Aileen and gestured toward the fire. “You must toss it in, lass, and watch until it burns to ash.”
“Why?”
“Burn it, and ’twill burn away feelings of betrayal and anger.” She nodded toward the fire. “Go on, now.”
She did as the older woman said. She threw it into the fire and watched as the small oval leaves caught fire and then burned.
As she watched, she thought of Niall and her resentment toward him for leaving her. She could never stop feeling pain from being separated from him, but she must let go of her anger, for her sake and the bairn’s.
He had his reasons for going—and ultimately those reasons were justified. Above all, he was an honorable man.
As the rowan disintegrated into ash, her resentment melted away. She would miss him, but she wasn’t angry anymore.
If she ever encountered Niall again, she’d tell him about the babe. After all, it was his child too. He had a right to know. And she would teach the bairn about his real father. Niall, the laird’s trustworthy warrior, the man of honor. The man who would sacrifice everything to honor the oath he’d made before God.
“Listen to me, lass,” Grannie said gently from behind her as she continued to stare at the hearth. “Never forget how strong you are. You saved yourself, and your bairn, from Gilbert Dunbar’s evil. You didna need anyone to come rescue you. You rescued yourself.”
It was true. She had escaped from Gilbert on her own, without anyone’s help, before he had truly harmed her or her babe. “Aye, I did.”
If nothing else, Aileen would be grateful for the time she had spent with Niall and the amazing gift of life he had given her.
Those feelings would sustain her.
Chapter Seventeen
On Christmas Eve, Aileen opened the cottage door and leaned against the doorframe, gazing out over Loch Ness. The water was a stunning, shimmering blue today. The color of Niall’s eyes.
This morning, Grannie had left for the village for market day. Although she’d offered to stay with Aileen, Aileen had convinced her to go. Truly, she
didn’t mind being alone. Solitude calmed her. In any case, she knew Grannie wanted to buy ingredients for her delicious Yule bread, which she made every year despite the church’s ban on making it.
Smiling and waving, Aileen had watched her grannie’s crotchety old mule hobble away.
She’d spent the morning in quiet contemplation, enjoying the cool breeze coming from the mountains and rippling over the water.
Grannie swore that the infamous kelpie of Loch Ness often swam ashore, and that they were friends and had made a truce so that Grannie could fish on the loch without fear of the animal capsizing her wee rowboat. Aileen had always laughed at those stories, though. She’d never seen any such monster. The loch was too placid, too peaceful for such an animal to inhabit it anyhow.
As she closed her eyes and tilted her face up to the sun, hoofbeats sounded in the distance, growing louder with each moment. Swallowing hard, she glanced in the direction of the sounds. Horses rarely approached Grannie’s cottage.
It might be Gilbert come to find her. She looked around, but there was no place to hide. Grannie’s house was exposed on the bank, and unless she dug herself into the mud, there would be no hiding for Aileen out here.
But then, listening intently, she realized it was only one horse. She knew Gilbert well enough to know he’d bring an entourage with him.
Who could it be, then?
The hoofbeats stopped on the other side of the cottage. She heard the rider’s feet hit the ground as he swung off the horse, and the gentle whickering noises as he tied the animal to the post.
Niall?
The chances of it being him were slim. He was in Edinburgh. He wouldn’t know anything of her abduction, her marriage, and her subsequent escape to Loch Ness. Still, she couldn’t stop her foolish heart from feeling that spike of hope.
The footfalls were steady, growing subtly louder with each step he took in her direction.
Still standing in the doorway, she looked up as he rounded the corner of the cottage.
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
A Naughty Little Christmas (Cowboys, Cops, and Kilts: 8 Seasonally Seductive Romances from Bestselling Authors) Page 42