“I’m going to fook your wife now,” Patrick called over her shoulder.
Alison bit and kicked at him as he tugged up her skirts. When she clawed his face, he slammed her against the iron bars, banging her head again.
He pressed his forearm against her windpipe, choking her, while he unfastened his breeks with his free hand.
“David! On the floor!” she managed to squeak out. “It’s on the floor!”
She could not breathe. She scratched at Patrick’s hands, trying to get air.
Then the sounds around her faded, and she fell into darkness.
***
David heard Alison calling him, as if from a great distance. Slowly, her voice pulled him to the surface. He fought to clear his head and wiped the blood from his eyes. When he saw Patrick holding her against the door, anguish tore through his battered body.
On the floor! Something he needed was on the floor. Walter had broken his arm, the same one with the damaged hand, but he felt the rough stone around him with his other hand, desperately searching for whatever it was. On the other side of the iron grate just a few feet away but outside of his reach, his enemy was choking and raping his wife. Jesu, where was the damned thing?
His fingers touched a thin piece of metal. He knew at once what it was. A lock pick.
Damn it! Finding the keyhole was like threading a needle in the dark. Sweat dripped into his good eye. He could hear Alison gasping for breath as he worked the thin metal shaft into the lock.
Click.
He could not work the pick with his damaged hand for the second manacle, so he held it in his teeth. Alison had gone silent. Time was running out. He had to free himself now.
Click.
David no longer felt his pain. He crossed the cell in three long strides, reached through the bar, and grabbed Patrick by the throat with his good hand. Startled, Patrick released Alison. She slumped to the ground, coughing.
David squeezed Patrick’s throat, wanting to snap his neck in two. Patrick clawed at his hand, and David squeezed tighter. When Patrick reached for the dirk at his belt, David was quicker. He released Patrick’s throat, grabbed the dirk, and plunged the blade into Patrick’s heart.
Relief swept through him when he saw that Alison was on her feet. He rested his forehead against the cold iron grate, exhausted from the effort of subduing Patrick. Loss of blood from his injuries had made him weak.
“David.” Alison reached through the bars of the grate and held his battered face between her hands. Tears streamed down her face. “What have they done to ye, my love?”
“Nothing I won’t recover from if we can open this door and escape.”
“I brought the key,” she said, pointing at it in the lock, “but I can’t make it work.”
Using his good hand, he reached through the grate and grasped the key. The lock was old and rusty. Gritting his teeth, he forced the key to turn with scraping click. He was free.
David opened the door—and fell into Alison’s arms. At least he managed to catch hold of the door as his knees gave way so he did not land on her with all of his weight. Still, she staggered backward as she attempted to ease his fall to the floor.
When she embraced him, he winced. Every inch of his body hurt, but it did not matter. Alison was here.
“Ach, ye feel good, lass,” he said, holding her against him with his good arm.
He assumed his men had somehow gotten into the castle, but he was confused as to why Alison was here.
“What is the plan for our escape?” he asked.
His heart nearly failed him when she told him she had come to the castle alone to open a secret tunnel door for his men. Once she was out of danger, he would tell his wife what he thought of what she’d done. But now he needed to reach that tunnel and get her out of here.
“Our men will be coming through the tunnel soon.” Alison’s face was pinched with worry as she attempted to wipe some of the blood from the gashes on his face. “We’ll have to wait here for them.”
“We’re not waiting. We must be gone before someone finds us—or him,” David said with a nod toward Patrick’s body.
“But ye can’t even stand, let alone climb two flights of stairs,” she said.
“I just needed to catch my breath.” Gritting his teeth, he held onto the door and pulled himself up. “Let’s go.”
She put her hands on her hips and looked him up and down. “You’ll never make it through the hall looking like that without being stopped.”
David glanced at his bloodied shirt and his hand, which was purple and three times its normal size.
“Aye, we need a diversion,” he said. “But we needed one anyway to ensure the safety of our men coming through the tunnel.”
At the sound of footsteps coming toward them, David shoved Alison behind him. Blood pounded in his veins, but he relaxed when a thin man with a weak build emerged from the shadows. Even in his current state, David could take him easily.
“’Tis the cook,” Alison said from behind him. “He’s a friend. We can trust him.”
The first time she told David to trust the cook, he had kicked the man out of the castle with the rest of the Blackadder servants. But he was a wiser man now.
“Can ye start a fire in the kitchens?” David asked the cook. “A big one?”
***
Alison coughed on the billowing smoke filling the undercroft as she peeked out from behind the door of the storeroom to watch the servants flee the kitchens. The cook was the last to run out. He paused to glance up the stairs after the others, then he waved for her and David to come out.
“Don’t worry that I’m burning the castle down,” he said. “The fire is more smoke than flame.”
“’Tis a perfect diversion,” David said. “My thanks to ye.”
“Watch how I clear the hall,” the cook said, his eyes shining as if he was actually enjoying himself. He turned and ran up the stairs shouting, “Fire! Run for your lives!”
Alison looked at David. God help me, how will I ever get him out?
He was so battered and bloody it was a wonder he could stand. If he collapsed, she could not carry him alone. She wiped more blood from the gashes on his face. His swollen eye looked so painful she did not dare touch it.
“Ready?” David said.
“I’ll go alone and bring the others back for ye.”
“I just watched a man try to rape and murder ye,” he said. “I’ll not let ye out of my sight until you’re safe.”
Ach, he was a stubborn man. There was no use talking to him, so she took his arm. As they started up the stairs, he swayed and had to catch himself with a hand on the stone wall. Alison swallowed back her fear and kept moving.
The hall was in chaos with men and women shouting and running in every direction. Though she thought it should be glaringly obvious to anyone who looked that David was the captured Hume laird, no one seemed to pay them any attention.
She strained under David’s weight as he suddenly leaned against her.
“Sorry, lass,” he said and straightened almost at once.
“We’re almost there,” she said.
She glanced behind them and saw that he was leaving a trail of blood. She was desperate to get him out of the hall and upstairs where she could see to his wounds.
Relief coursed through her when they finally reached the arched doorway to the tower stairs. Looking behind her, she caught sight of Walter. The tall, black-haired warrior was pushing people out of his way to reach the door that led outside.
“He’s the one who did this to my hand,” David said, staring after Walter. “I’d kill him now, but Brian needs his blood on his sword more than I do.”
Seeing Walter seemed to give David another burst of strength, and Alison had to run up the stairs to keep up with him. When they opened the laird’s chamber door, several Hume warriors were already in the room, and they drew their dirks before they realized who it was.
“Verra glad to see you’re alive
, Laird, though I’ve seen ye looking better,” Brian said with a wide grin. He handed David his whisky flask. “Better have some of this to give ye strength.”
“Ach, you’re a good man.” David tilted his head back and took a long drink, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “That’s what I needed.”
Alison stayed close to David as the room rapidly filled with Hume warriors who were still coming through the tunnel. Finding their laird there to greet them seemed to put them in high spirits.
David took another drink of whisky. As he handed it back to Brian, he said, “Walter is here.”
Brian’s expression turned to granite, and he started for the door.
“We go together,” David said, stopping him.
“But Walter is mine,” Brian said.
David nodded. Then he gave the signal, and the Hume warriors headed out. When David started to go with them, Alison clung to his arm. Had he lost his senses?
“Ye can’t go,” she said. “You’re too badly injured.”
“Ach, I’ve fought in worse shape, lass,” he said. “Wait here. This won’t take long.”
He strode down the stairs with his men, leaving Alison to stare at the drops of his blood on the stone steps.
CHAPTER 50
“Ye rode alone into the castle knowing ye could be killed and almost certainly raped,” David said between his teeth. The more he thought about it, the more furious he became.
“Aye, it was a bold plan.” Alison smiled at him as she dabbed a healing ointment on his injured hand. “But we Humes are known for that.”
Calling herself a Hume softened his anger for a moment, as his clever wife had known it would.
“Ach, this hand is bad,” she said. “Does it pain ye something terrible?”
“Hell no,” he said, though it throbbed like the very devil.
“My plan did succeed,” she said. “We both survived, and we have Blackadder Castle back.”
The Blackadders were already in disarray due to the fire when David and the men who had come through the tunnel caught them by surprise inside the hall. In a matter of moments, the Humes had taken control of the keep. The rest of the castle did not take much longer. More Hume warriors, who had been hiding in the trees by the stream, poured in through the gate, which the Blackadder guards had opened to let their people escape the fire.
Walter fought to the death, knowing there would be no mercy for him, and he died by Brian’s sword. Most of the Blackadders, however, saw how it would end and laid down their weapons.
“I’m glad ye released most of the Blackadders,” Alison said, as she wrapped a long linen strip around his hand. “With the deaths of their wicked lairds, they’re no longer a threat.”
She had persuaded him to release them, of course. But he had ferreted out the men who attacked the village, and they were no longer walking this earth but burning in everlasting hell. He could not remember much after that until he woke up starving a couple of hours ago.
“Must I wear this?” he asked, as Alison tied a goddamn sling around his arm.
“You’re trying my patience, love,” she said. “You’ll sit there and do as I tell ye after worrying me so. Ye fell like a stone when it was all over. Three days I waited for ye to wake, ye wretched man.”
Worrying her? Alison was not going to divert him from what she’d done. The image of Patrick choking her while he hiked up her skirts filled his mind’s eye again, and he pulled her onto his lap with his good arm.
“How could ye endanger yourself like that?” he asked, his voice rough with emotion.
“How could I not?” she said. “What would your brothers, the girls, Isabella, and I do without ye? You’re the center of our family, the one who binds us together. Beatrix and Margaret knew that. Why do ye think they ventured out on their own to bring ye home?”
David had never expected to find himself encircled by love and family. And it was all because of Alison. She had given him everything he had longed for and never believed he deserved.
“Without you, I’d be like Patrick Blackadder, a man with nothing to live for but hate and vengeance.” He tucked a stray strand of her midnight hair behind her ear. “Ye saved me, Allie.”
“Ach, you were never like that vicious and self-serving man,” she said. “Everything ye did was to protect others. Love was always the reason, even if you didn’t know it.”
She always saw the best in him. He would strive every day to become the man she believed he was.
“There is something I did that I would like to change,” he said.
She tilted her head. “What’s that?”
David had struggled with what was best to do. He needed to consider the future of his brothers as well as his stepdaughters.
“I’ll destroy Beatrix and Margaret’s marriage contracts with my brothers, if that’s what the lasses wish,” he said. “When they’re of an age to marry, I’ll let each lass decide.”
His gift to his brothers would be to have wives who came willingly to their marriage.
“Thank you,” Alison said, touching her fingertips to his cheek. “When the time comes, I hope that they chose wisely, for I would like nothing better than to know my daughters had fierce Hume men to love and protect them all of their days.”
“Ye know I love ye dearly, lass,” David said. “But now you’re going to have to pay for scaring the Beast of Wedderburn witless.”
Alison smiled against his lips as he gave her a fierce Hume kiss.
***
With a sigh of regret, Alison broke the kiss and pressed her hand against David’s chest. “You’re in no shape to do what you’re suggesting.”
“Ye can see for yourself,” he said, “I’m up for the task.”
She rolled her eyes and laughed. He laughed with her, but then his expression grew serious again.
“After nearly losing ye,” he said, cupping her cheek with his big hand, “I need this, lass.”
Alison understood because she needed him desperately too. As they made love slowly, murmuring endearments to each other, she ran her hands gently over his battered body, every inch precious to her. It made her want to weep to see his cuts and bruises, but her husband was strong and would heal.
Afterward she drifted off to sleep to the comforting sound of his steady heartbeat against her ear. She awoke from a dream to the sun shining through the window. Spring had come at last to Blackadder Castle.
“I have good news to tell ye.” She took David’s hand and placed it on her stomach. “We’re having a babe.”
“Beatrix and Margaret are like my own daughters, and I would have been content if we’d had no more,” he said, his eyes soft and warm. “But a babe. Ach, this is a great blessing. Ye couldn’t make me happier.”
“You’ll be a wonderful father,” she said, “which is fortunate since we’ll be having so many.”
“And ye know this?” The corners of his mouth quirked up in a smile.
“Aye. The old woman who my mother saw when she found the magical stone appeared in a dream just now before I woke,” she said. “She told me we’ll have six children together.”
“Six!” He looked stunned for a moment, then he laughed and kissed her forehead. “I suppose every one of them will be as strong-willed and troublesome as my wife.”
“Aye,” she said, smiling up at David. “We’re going to have a joyous life.”
Alison rubbed her thumb over the black stone that was safely back in her pendant and reflected on how very lucky she had been since she found it.
EPILOGUE
Three years later…
“This babe needs to come soon.” Alison put her hand on the small of her aching back. “It was kind of ye to come for the birth, Sybil. I hope ye don’t have to wait long, for both our sakes.”
“I’m happy to get away from Court,” Sybil said. “The tension between our clan and the Hamiltons is simmering to a boil. And the queen has sided with the Hamiltons.”
“Is it true she
wants to divorce Archie?” Alison asked.
“Archie’s spies informed him that she wrote to her brother King Henry hinting she wants a divorce,” Sybil said. “Henry replied with a lecture on morality, if ye can believe it, and he’s thrown his support behind Archie. Of course, that makes the entire pro-French faction adamantly against us.”
“Ye should stay here where David can protect ye until this trouble is resolved,” Alison said.
“I’m in no danger,” Sybil said, waving her hand. “I have friends on both sides. Besides, I expect Archie will prevail in the end.”
Alison was not so sure.
“Beatrix is turning twelve,” Sybil said as Alison’s daughters and Will entered the hall from the tower stairs with Jasper on their heels. “That lad is going to be one handsome man. Has she decided whether she’ll have him for her husband?”
“David won’t let her marry for years, so there’s no hurry,” Alison said. “But that’s Will you’re looking at, not Robbie.”
Will was nearly as tall as Robbie and David now. Alison had heard the men remark on his strength and skill with a sword, but Will was still a kind-hearted lad who seemed to be lost in his own world at times.
Alison watched as Isabella and Rob emerged from the stairwell and cast surreptitious glances her way. David had been disappearing for hours at a time and being very mysterious about it. The entire family was party to his secret and did their best to divert her attention. While she trusted her husband absolutely, her curiosity was getting the better of her.
“Have they told ye what the surprise is?” she asked Sybil.
“What surprise?” Sybil gave her a blank look, but her sister was exceptionally good at keeping secrets.
David came down the stairs carrying their son, who was both the joy of the household and as troublesome as predicted, and handed him to Leana. Taking on the role of nursemaid had helped Leana heal, and she and Brian were to be wed soon. Flora and Garret were happily settled in a small cottage that David had given them.
“May I take my wife from ye?” David asked, smiling at Sybil.
CAPTURED BY A LAIRD (THE DOUGLAS LEGACY) Page 29