by Connie Mason
“’Tis tradition for the laird and his lady to visit the distant crofters before Twelfth Night,” Elspeth pointed out. “My father and mother do it each year because their people expect them to provide their feast.”
“So Fiona told me,” he said. “This was her first Christmastide as my chatelaine, and she wouldna be turned from her duty. We had our first and only row over it. Lord, she was a sight when she was angry.”
“Sounds as if she had a right to be,” Elspeth said, narrowing her eyes a bit. “At least now I ken ye make a habit of irritating all the women ye know.”
Come to think of it, Rob decided, Elspeth Stewart is fine to look upon when anger bites her cheeks too.
“Did ye still go hunting?”
Rob nodded. “And we ne’er saw so much as a cloven hoof of that damned boar. But Fiona slipped past the men I’d left to guard her and rode off to see the crofters on her own. While she was out, Lachlan Drummond and some of his cronies came riding by and saw her unescorted.”
One of Elspeth’s hands crept to her chest, and Rob figured she could guess what was coming.
“Drummond carried her off to his stronghold, and there the coward had his way with her,” Rob said, the words more bitter to his tongue than the vinegary wine. “Now d’ye see why I say I was doing ye a favor to steal ye from your wedding?”
Elspeth wisely said nothing.
“Of course, wee Lachlan denied anything untoward. He claimed the abduction was just a bit of Twelfth Night high spirits, but I’m certain the blackguard must have shamed her,” Rob said. “’Tis the only thing that explains what happened.”
“What?”
“Drummond locked her up in his tower, but she found a way to escape.”
“Oh. I’m glad.”
“Don’t be,” Rob said flatly. “Fiona escaped by throwing herself from the highest tower window onto the cobbles of his bailey.”
Elspeth gasped. Rob had never been good at reading what a woman was thinking based on her expressions, but her eyes darted about as if she was searching her memory for something, while distress marred her face.
“You’re right,” he said as if she’d spoken her thought aloud. “A suicide canna be buried in holy ground. Drummond’s priest said she was damned because she knowingly committed a mortal sin, for which she couldna receive absolution.”
His shoulders sagged, but he’d started this. He was determined to drive the sorry tale to its bitter end. Unshed tears burned behind his eyes. He swallowed hard, forcing down the ache in his throat. “I dinna even know where she lies.”
Elspeth didn’t say a word. She simply stood, walked over to him, her step steady in the swaying craft, and put her hands on his shoulders. Then she leaned forward and kissed his cheek.
It was just a simple kiss. No more than the buss of soft lips on the roughness of his cheek, but something inside him splintered.
A sob escaped his throat. The tears he never let himself cry came with no way to stop them. He put an arm around her waist and pulled her close, burying his face in the crook of her soft neck.
He was so ashamed. A man didn’t weep. But he couldn’t stop his shoulders from shaking with grief.
Elspeth wrapped her arms around him, making small comforting sounds.
“’Twas my fault,” he repeated.
“No.”
“If I’d gone with her…”
“’Tis done. Hush ye now.” Her hands were cool on the feverish skin of his neck.
Rob struggled to regain control over himself, but so many bits and pieces of him were shearing away, he couldn’t grasp any of them. The hard lump in his chest melted and reformed several times. The only things that kept him from leaping out of his own skin entirely were Elspeth Stewart’s slender arms and soft voice.
She stroked his hair. She hugged him with fierceness. She rocked him, whispering tender things he couldn’t quite hear. But his soul understood them and quieted. The ache of loss, the fury of impotent rage, and the guilt flowed out of him, leaving only broken-hearted peace.
Finally, he stilled.
She wiped the last of the salty tears from his cheeks. Then she kissed him again. On the lips this time, firm and sweet. Like a blessing. Like a benediction.
“Ye are no’ to blame,” she said with conviction.
He didn’t have the heart to contradict her, but he didn’t believe it for a moment. “After all that, I’m sure ye believe me a madman now.”
“’Tis no’ madness to weep for someone ye loved.” She shook her head. “If ye had no tears, I’d think ye less a man. Never because of them.”
“Ye’re a strange lass, Elspeth Stewart.”
“And ye’re a silver-tongued demon.” She laughed, obviously trying to lighten his mood. “Dinna think to turn my head with such compliments.”
He smiled at her, confused but strangely comforted. He still grieved for Fiona, but the serrated edge of unexpressed mourning and guilt that threatened to send him spiraling into insanity was gone.
Elspeth returned his smile. He shook his head in wonderment. He’d stolen her from the altar, taken her prisoner, and tormented her body with a wicked lover’s touch. And here she was giving him comfort. If he lived to be a hundred, he’d never understand what went on in a woman’s head.
Then while he was watching her, her eyes glazed over, and she stared sightlessly over his shoulder.
“Elspeth?”
She gave no sign that she’d heard him.
He let go of the tiller and grasped both her shoulders, but she continued to stare unblinking. He gave her a little shake. She looked at his face then, but he sensed no recognition in her eyes.
“The each uisge comes, reaching up from the depths to snag his bride,” she said in a voice devoid of all expression. “And a bolt from the dark finds its mark.”
“Elspeth!”
Then he was nearly knocked off his feet, thrown forward as the boat stopped dead in the water.
Chapter 16
“What is it?” Angus cried from the cabin. “What’s happened?”
Rob heard him scrambling, but a man as large as Angus didn’t move very quickly, even at the best of times. Wakened from a sound sleep, he was like a badger in winter, surly and disoriented, as he banged around in the small space.
“If ye’ve run my boat aground, Robbie, I’ll have your hide!”
“No, we’re still in the central channel, but—” Then Rob saw it, the line stretched across the expanse of the water reaching from one shoreline to the other. The long-necked prow of the boat was caught on it, and the stern threatened to come about suddenly.
He’d kept Elspeth from falling when they stopped suddenly, but he released her now and grabbed up the tiller again to right the vessel with the prevailing current. He wished he could have kept hold of her, because she had the dazed expression of a person who isn’t seeing clearly. Her otherworldly pronouncements still tied his gut in knots.
“Elspeth, are ye sound, lass?”
She gave herself a small shake and blinked. Then she plopped down on the bench seat as if her legs would no longer support her. Her hands trembled in her lap.
“I’m fine. What’s happened?” Her eyes widened. “Oh, no. I had a…Did I say something?”
“Aye, a daft bit about the each uisge, but we’ve no’ run afoul of the water horse, I’m thinking. We ran into a snare of sorts.” Then he realized the dark shape he’d taken for a small island was moving toward them.
Elspeth followed the direction of his gaze. “’Tis Lachlan,” she said woodenly. “He’s come for me.”
“Well, I’m no’ of a mind to let him have ye.”
“After what ye’ve told me, I find myself grateful,” she said.
The raft bore down on them. One of the men on board i
t shouted to another as they used the line to haul themselves across the water. Rob cursed himself for a half-wit. If he’d been on the watch instead of blubbering in Elspeth’s arms, he’d have spotted them lurking there in the dark, like a spider waiting for a fly to be caught in its web.
Angus was trying to shove the line down on the prow. If the rope fell beneath the hull, they might sail over it. But the curved neck of Angus’s boat was carved with fanciful beasts to ward off the odd water horse, and the line must have caught on one. The weight of the craft and the strength of the current made freeing the vessel difficult.
Rob realized he’d left his knives sticking in the boat’s neck. Cutting the line would serve just as well.
“Will ye take the tiller?” he asked Elspeth.
She nodded and moved unsteadily to replace him.
As he fairly leaped toward the prow, Rob realized a minor miracle had just occurred.
Elspeth Stewart had chosen to stay with him of her own accord.
***
“Pull, damn ye!” Lachlan roared to the man on the raft with him.
After several trials earlier that day, it had been determined that only two could fit on the raft, so Drummond insisted it be he and his retainer.
“I’m her father,” Stewart had protested.
“Aye, and I’m the man who will be her husband even after this sorry business is ended,” he said. “Ye must allow me a husband’s vengeance on Mad Rob.”
Alistair Stewart had relented then, tacitly admitting that his daughter was likely no longer pure.
“I understand ye wanting to let your sword drink the man’s blood.”
But Lachlan had no intention of letting matters progress as far as hand-to-hand combat. He had his crossbow, and he intended to use it.
It was near the darkest part of the night, but Lachlan had already identified the figures on the boat based on their relative size. He was close enough now to see that MacLaren was working his way toward the prow. The other fellow, a monstrous big man, was already there, trying to wrench their boat free. Lachlan sited his bolt on Rob’s moving form.
“Rob!” The warning shout came from Elspeth.
The MacLaren ducked, and Drummond’s bolt flew harmlessly over his head.
Lachlan glared at the dark form that was his betrothed. How had she seen what was coming so easily? She must be cat-eyed as a witch! She even seemed to be helping her captors by holding the tiller steady.
That was all the proof he needed that Rob MacLaren had taken her. If a man ruts a woman soundly enough, she’ll do whatever he demands, biddable as a lamb.
The MacLaren’s wife hadn’t, of course, but she was a rarity. And to be fair, Lachlan hadn’t realized who she was when he and his men first scooped her up. Who could blame them? Ladies didn’t wander the countryside unescorted.
By the time he realized her identity, the damage was done. Who’d have thought she’d leap to her death rather than continue to service him? When she fought him just as hard the second time, he should have given Lady MacLaren to his men to pass around instead of leaving her in the tower to think better of her belligerence.
Damned if he’d let Elspeth Stewart behave so willfully.
“Stupid bitch.” He’d teach her who her laird was as soon as he got her back. There were few things more enjoyable than reducing a woman to quivering subservience.
He might even get out the shackles and birch switch for his wayward little wife, just to make sure she understood the way of things.
But first he had to get her back. He raised his crossbow and targeted Mad Rob as he reached the prow, but he hadn’t reckoned on the pitching loch throwing his aim off. Even aiming a bit high for the distance, the bolt struck wood and quivered in the hull.
“Pull faster,” Drummond ordered his man.
The raft drew ever closer to the boat. He might yet have to draw his blade. Then he heard some feral growls and saw a huge deerhound standing with its feet on the gunwale of the small craft. Those slashing teeth were a distraction he didn’t need if he was going to have to cross swords in close quarters with the MacLaren.
He loaded his crossbow once more and sited it on the dog’s chest. He squeezed the trigger, and the iron shaft flew.
Elspeth cried out and leaped from her place at the tiller, putting herself in the path of the bolt. This one struck true, and she went down. Lachlan couldn’t see her any longer because she was below the gunwale. The hound bayed and circled where she fell.
The stern of the boat swung wide, obscuring any possible shot at the men in the prow, and the rope Lachlan’s man was hauling on went suddenly slack in his hands. MacLaren had cut the line.
Wind filled the boat’s sails. The loch lifted the craft on the waves and propelled it westward too quickly for Drummond to get off another shot.
The last thing he saw was the MacLaren kneeling where Elspeth fell as the other fellow put a hand to the tiller.
Drummond swore under his breath. Elspeth might well be dying, and all on account of a dog! Cattle and land and clan alliances be damned. MacLaren had probably done him a sideways favor. If she’d risk herself for a dog, Elspeth Stewart was too half-witted to be the mother of his heir.
“What now, my lord?” Lachlan’s man asked, the end of the rope hanging limply.
Drummond took one of his bolts from his quiver and jabbed it into the floor of the raft. Then he cupped his hands around his mouth to shout back to Stewart and Calum, waiting on the shore.
“MacLaren was armed with a crossbow!” Lachlan yelled. “When we got too close, the blackguard shot Elspeth!”
Stewart roared his grief. Lachlan turned to his retainer and spoke in a furious whisper.
“If I hear a word from ye to the contrary, I can only assume ye dinna value your tongue and will no’ be surprised when I rid ye of it.”
***
“Elspeth! Oh, Lord, what happened?” Rob took a knee beside her prone form.
“He was…going to shoot Fingal,” she said, trying to rise. “But I couldna let—”
“No, dinna talk.” Rob eased her back down. “Dinna move either.”
He ran his hands over her and encountered warm stickiness on her left thigh. His fingers found the iron shaft and the spreading wetness around it.
Rob swore vehemently then caught himself, swallowing his anger. It would give no comfort to Elspeth if he couldn’t remain outwardly calm. But inwardly, he damned Lachlan Drummond and all other cowards with thrice-cursed crossbows to the fires of hell.
“Dinna draw the bolt,” Angus warned. “As much as she’s bleeding now, there’ll be more if ye pull it out.”
Rob ripped the fabric of her skirt around the shaft to expose the wound on her thigh. Her skin was pale, except for the dark ribbons of blood.
“I need light,” he said, tamping down the rising panic in his gut. “I canna see clear what to do.”
“That’ll have to wait for dawn,” Angus said. “I’ll no’ have a lit torch on my boat. Fire is a sailor’s worst fear.”
Rob’s worst fear was lying on the curved bottom of Angus’s vessel. Elspeth didn’t speak, but a small whimper escaped her lips.
“Then put in to shore,” he ordered, “and we’ll build a fire.”
“Look about ye, lad. There’s no’ a level place to put in anywhere hereabouts,” Angus said. Dark sentinels hedging the loch, the highland peaks rose steeply from the water’s edge all about. “No’ for a goodly ways, and then we must take care to make landfall only on the north side.”
“Why?” All Rob could see was delay and disaster.
“The men following ye have someone with them who’s knowledgeable about the loch. Else they’d not have waited in ambush for us to sail by that point. They must have suspected ye wished to go west instead of east and had t
o wait for the current to change,” Angus said. “Stands to reason they may try to ride through the passes to greet us at the next level spot on the south shore.”
“He’s right,” Elspeth said, her voice thready. “One of my father’s men, Calum Guthrie, is a lochman. He kens Loch Eireann and the land about it as well as any alive. If he rides with my father, that’s what he’ll advise.”
Rob pulled his shirt over his head and wrapped it around her thigh to stanch the bleeding.
“No, ’tis too cold, Rob,” she complained. “Ye’ll catch your death.”
“Let me worry about that. D’ye think ye can bear for me to move ye? The pallet in the cabin will be more comfortable than the bare hull, I’m thinking.”
She nodded, teeth clenched.
He reached under her arms and knees and lifted her as gently as he could. She didn’t cry out, but her swift intake of breath cut his heart as sharply as if she’d wailed like the damned.
Before Rob ducked into the cabin to lay her on the pallet, Angus called out, “I’m minded of something.”
“What?” Rob stopped, clutching Elspeth to his chest. The hand she splayed on his bare skin was cold.
“There’s a wise woman who lives on the loch.” Angus crossed himself as protection against the devil. “She’s a witch, some say, but they also say she kens a good deal about healing.”
“How far?”
“At this rate? A couple hours, and she bides on the north shore.”
“Make for her home then.”
“Some dinna hold with witches, Rob. Best ye ask Elspeth her wishes on the matter.”
While ye can was the unspoken rest of his thought.
Rob looked down at her. Her eyes were closed and her mouth slack. She was in no condition to make choices.
But Rob was. Perhaps if he was at Caisteal Dubh, he might be able to remove the bolt and stanch the bleeding. He could do nothing for her on Angus’s swaying vessel.
If the witch demanded his soul in exchange for healing Elspeth, he was ready to swear it away.