The Runaway Highlander (The Highland Renegades Book 2)

by Syme, R. L.

  That was the only thing that had reverberated in her head as she’d allowed the Sheriff to have his way with her. Save Elena.

  And then, her thoughts had turned to the future. Is this what life would be like for her with Simon Alcock as a husband? Pain and fear? Shame? What if she told her mother what he’d done?

  Elena’s fingers found her side and Anne gasped. What normally would have sent her laughing and tickling today made pain overtake her body and she started coughing to cover her sobs.

  Anne could still taste the drunken tongue. She bit down on her own tongue until she tasted blood. That was preferable to the taste of the Sheriff.

  He had only taken what was his right. That’s what he told her when he’d stumbled away in a drunk stupor after he’d finished. And she’d stayed, crouched in her own bloody clothes, against the wall until… what? She vaguely remembered crawling back into the bedroom after she’d spent her tears.

  She held up her hands and realized she was still wearing the blood-soaked shift. Good heavens, how would she tell Elena about this? Elena, whose mind was so happy and who knew nothing of the trials of life. Elena, who knew less about men and women than even Anne had.

  “Are you awake, my love?” Anne managed a raspy voice. The giggling and wriggling under the covers next to her told Anne that she was, although her sister was not answering.

  “We’re going to play a little game, Elena. Hide and seek.”

  Elena squealed. “Oh, I love games.”

  “I know you do. Now you close your eyes and count, and I’m going to go and hide, and you’re going to count as high as you can and then come and find me.”

  “I love this game.” Elena’s excited giggles were muffled by her head being under the covers and Anne made a little space between them as she slipped out of bed.

  Elena began to count.

  When Anne’s feet touched the ground, her body reminded her of how much she had struggled the previous night. Every muscle in her body had been working trying to keep the brute off her, and they all cried out in pain together.

  But Anne had to bite her lip through it or risk Elena realizing the game was a ruse. She hurried across the room to her dressing table and slipped behind the screen.

  She lifted the shift over her head and her neck cried out in pain. Naked and shivering, she felt the spot on her neck where the Sheriff had bitten her. It was hot to the touch and her fingers came away with crusts of red.

  She hoped she hadn’t started the bleeding anew. The pain dulled with each moment and as she found a clean shift among her clothes, she steeled herself against the memories. She had to be strong for Elena, and clean again.

  Her hair would hide the neck wound, and she would have to solidify her grip on her emotions. It was his right, as her promised husband, to take her.

  His roughness aside, she would have to learn how to be strong in this. She couldn’t simply cave each time she thought of it.

  Each step she took in return to her bed was a step away from that bloody shift. She could make herself strong, just by will. Couldn’t she?

  Elena’s counting slowed and Anne increased her pace back to the bed. Her mother may not care what happened to her daughters, but Elena would care, and Anne would save her from that worry.

  Of course, her mother didn’t care. She’d never been particularly enamored with her children until the Baron de Cheyne was granted the hereditary title of Earl of Caithness after Broccin’s father refused to send troops to the English crown. Suddenly, her children had value, even if that meant she quite literally saw them as piles of silver to add to her coffers.

  Anne had never felt that equivocation so squarely as she did that moment. She had been bought and paid for. And used.

  “You’re not hiding?” Elena poked her head out from under the covers and narrowed her eyes on her sister.

  “You can go back to sleep if you wish.” Anne pulled at the neck of her shift and arranged her hair around the throbbing wound, and stood next to the bed.

  Elena stretched. “I was looking forward to hide and seek.”

  “I know you are, darling, but I’m cold.” Anne saw the fire hadn’t yet been lit, although if breakfast was on its way, it had to be after sunrise. She went to the window and pulled back the heavy drapes to reveal more light.

  Elena wailed. “Don’t. Not yet.”

  “You have to wake up sometime, dear.” Anne let the cloth fall back over the small window.

  “Why?” Elena pulled the blankets around her slender neck and curled her legs under the cover. “It’s so warm and cozy here. Besides, I don’t want to spend another day on parade.”

  Anne found herself smiling at the accurate description. They weren’t used to having such attention paid them, not as the daughters of a relatively poor baron from the very north of Scotland. They didn’t have the kind of extravagant home even that the Sheriff, an un-titled English sympathizer, had. And after the previous evening, each day waking to this new reality would solidify in her mind how far she was from the girl she had been at home.

  The girl who was allowed to ride her horse all day and read all night. The girl who went hunting with her father and made tapestries with her sisters. The girl who could dance on the green and who some days felt like she owned all of the land she could see. What a different place this was, and what a different life this would be. Her father’s face flashed in her memory and Anne pushed away her dark thoughts. “Do you miss home, lamb?”

  “I miss not being on parade.”

  Of course she did. The last several months had been the antithesis of their previous life. At home, Elena would sometimes hide for days, only seeing Anne or their nurse.

  “I miss home.”

  Elena chewed at the end of her blanket. “I miss Father and Dania and Victor and Brenna.”

  “I miss them, as well.”

  “Do you think Mother misses them?”

  Anne scoffed and ran her hand along the bedpost, an absent rhythm thrumming inside. “I don’t think mother is aware of much outside her own will.”

  “You are angry with her?”

  A memory caught Anne’s senses in a whirl. She and her mother had been standing on a balcony in Glasgow, overlooking the renovations to St. Mungo’s cathedral. And over the din of the men working, her mother had gotten a distant look in her eye and said the thing Anne had always dreaded she felt.

  “Mother doesn’t even really see us as people.” Anne spoke even as the memory played out behind her eyes. “Which shouldn’t shock any of us, given her general absence in our lives.”

  “But she does love us.” Elena’s voice was quiet, mouse-like. Almost as though she harbored some shred of a desire to protect Milene de Cheyne from her daughter’s wrath.

  “She loves us, certainly.” Anne paused to let the memory end and shook her head. “But not the way most mothers love their children.”

  “Meaning?”

  Anne looked at the grey stone floor and traced one of the seams with her big toe. “You won’t believe me if I tell you. I mean, I hardly believe it, and I heard it from her own lips.”

  Elena sat up fully and leaned in. “Tell me.”

  With reluctance, Anne recounted the moment in Glasgow. “She was watching something in the middle distance, likely unaware of my presence there. She said, ‘If I would have known how lucrative it would be to have daughters, I would have kept breeding’.”

  Elena’s face drew down in disappointment. Anne knew the feeling all too well. As if this husband game wasn’t enough of a sham, her mother had to add to the insult by admitting aloud that she would like to have more daughters to sell.

  And the Baron de Renault hadn’t even bitten. Not like Simon Alcock apparently had. It must have been quite a sum of money he decided to settle on the Countess if Milene de Cheyne willingly surrendered her most valuable asset. Her oldest daughter.

  “I can’t believe mother would say such things.” Elena snuggled back into her bedclothes.


  “I would love to disbelieve her ability to feel such things as well, lamb. Unfortunately, I heard the words, and subsequent feelings spoken aloud.”

  “I miss Nana Min.” Elena’s reference to their nurse—the woman Anne considered more of a mother than Milene de Cheyne—brought bitter tears to Anne’s eyes.

  She couldn’t admit to herself that she missed Nana Min. Not after what had happened the previous night. If Nana Min had still been part of the de Cheyne household, none of this farce of a husband search would have been allowed. Anne would be safe and protected and still a maid in her home.

  Her breath quickened of its own volition and she stopped breathing altogether. She held her breath and the memories with it.

  “We all miss her,” was all Anne could finally manage after taking a quick breath.

  Anne most of all, and now that she had so much at stake. Last night had been trying enough. What if he came again that night? And the night after? Or what if he came for Elena?

  Anne found herself fisting her hands so tightly, she could feel her nails cutting into her skin. She couldn’t allow Elena to be treated like that. Now that Milene thought Anne was safely married off or matched, she’d turn her attention to Elena.

  No. Anne couldn’t allow this. She had to find a way to keep that from happening. There just had to be a way.

  A knock at the door broke both girls’ attention and one of the Sheriff’s house staff called out the words “break” and “fast” and Elena was out of bed in a flash.

  “Get back into bed,” Anne ordered.

  “But I’m hungry.”

  “They’ll serve us in bed.” Anne slid under the blanket and gestured for Elena to do the same. “Our dressing gowns are somewhere in the clothes closet and we won’t be decent otherwise.” She pulled Elena’s covers back just in time for her sister to jump in and cover up.

  “Why must we be decent?”

  “There are men outside.” Anne threw the blankets over Anne’s body and said loudly, “You may enter.”

  “Men?” Elena’s eyes rounded. When the door opened, Anne gestured to the two soldiers standing guard and Elena nodded. “Why are there soldiers at our door?”

  “You were asleep last night. We had a small misunderstanding with one of the captives. But everything is fine.”

  A woman entered carrying a tray and curtsied at the foot of the bed. “Shall I?” she asked.

  “Please,” Anne gestured to the table across the room by the fireplace. “If you leave the tray, we’ll be at it in just moments.”

  The girl dipped again and bustled over to the table, depositing dishes and uncovering cloches. “Will that be all, miss?”

  Anne nodded. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll get the dressing gowns.” Elena giggled and slipped from the bed before the girl could open the door again and was in the clothes closet before she could be spotted.

  When she returned, belted into her cover-up, she held out Anne’s morning gown and then skipped to the breakfast table. Each moment Elena spent around their clothing made Anne worry that she would find the bloody shift wadded into a ball under Anne’s jewelry chest.

  She would burn it as soon as the fire was high enough.

  They had barely made a crack at their breakfast when there was another knock at the door.

  “Enter,” Anne called after a startled jump.

  One of the guards opened the door fully, revealing that the other guard was gone. He was spearless, and as he crested the doorway, he also removed his helmet. Anne recognized those earnest eyes she’d seen last night.

  Wherever he’d been sent to, he was back again in the morning. Even his kind eyes couldn’t dampen the resentment she felt just seeing his face.

  “Miss, forgive my boldness, but I must speak with you.” The man maintained his warm gaze.

  She pulled the dressing gown around her. “Tell me why.”

  He implored her with those kind eyes, but she found herself less moved than she had been the night before when she thought he might have been there to rescue her.

  Anne finally gestured to one of the other chairs at the table, but he shook his head.

  “I cannot leave my post. My comrade has gone only for a moment to… forgive me… relieve himself, and I can’t be caught away from our guard if he returns.”

  His sheepish smile did something to set her more at ease. She remembered him. How he stood out from the others. The least she could do was allow him to speak.

  “In the essence of time, sir, I am quite ready to forgive any indecorous behavior.” Anne put her hand on Elena’s, who returned a startled look and tilted her head in question. “Stay here, dear. I must chat with this man. Only for a moment, and I’ll be right at the door.”

  “Do hurry.” Elena bit into a piece of warm bread and returned her attention to the spread before them. Anne took the opportunity to hurry to the door.

  “How can I help you, sir?”

  “Please,” the man whispered. He bowed. “I am at your service, my lady. I merely needed to speak with you.”

  “Yes?”

  “You were with the captive, William Campbell, last evening?”

  Anne nodded. Her heartbeat raced. A whole new set of worries captured her attention. Had William given her away? Had he revealed her part in his escape? What would the Sheriff do to her if he found out?

  “Before I answer you, sir, I must know your purpose and your name, for there is much at stake.”

  “Yes.” He shifted his helmet and took her hand. He bent over it, pressing his lips to her knuckles. “It is urgent that you keep my secret, my lady, for I am a disguised fugitive in this household.”

  Anne’s pulse began to quiet at the news.

  “Then I must tell you, I did meet William Campbell and I attempted to help him escape.”

  The man smiled, the corners of his brown eyes turning up with almost sheer glee. “I will admit, I hoped it had been as such, rather than the story I was told.”

  “No, William did not attempt to kidnap me. In fact, it was rather the other way around. His wound was so great, I convinced him to abandon his plans and escape back to his camp and send a man to be captured who was healthy and able to accomplish what they’d set forth.”

  A heavy sigh passed the man’s lips. He backed out the door and gave a back and forth glance to the hallway. “Then we are collaborators as well, you and I.”

  “We are?”

  “Yes. For I was the key to that escape plan, and when I saw that William had not only tried to escape, but been put down into the oubliette, I knew something had gone awry.”

  “My mother.” Anne shivered.

  The man’s features relaxed and his mouth settled into a frown. “I haven’t much time, my lady, and it would appear that as we are unable to send word to all the parties involved in our previous plan, then I must take you into my confidence and beg your assistance.”

  Anne’s heart leapt. An opportunity not only to help her countrymen, but potentially to see Broc again. Perhaps Broc could take her away from this place. “Tell me, please, do you know if all de Moray’s men will be rescued in this plot?”

  “That is our plan. Why, my lady?”

  “There is a man in the dungeon that I know quite well. He is… was… my fiancé.”

  The man’s dark brows clenched in earnest. “Then tell me his name and I promise that we will do our best to liberate this man.”

  “Broccin Sinclair.”

  A look of relief relaxed the guard’s features and a smile lifted his countenance. “Then you are not only in luck, my lady, but also a confirmed miracle from above.” He again took her hand and this time bowed low over it, rather than the perfunctory kiss.

  “I am most pleased to make your acquaintance, Lady de Cheyne. They call me the Highland Renegade. I am Lord Andrew de Moray, eighth Earl of Moray and friend of Broccin Sinclair. It is on his behalf that I am here today.”

  *****

  Aedan had left the castle gat
es behind him hours previous, and he still couldn’t rid himself of the stench of that dungeon. Nor thoughts of a certain Lady Anne de Cheyne.

  Rumination over a woman was a foreign concept to Aedan Donne. Since the day of his wounding, Aedan had been the pariah of every social function and the enigma of every public gathering.

  In all his years of hiding his face and shunning the company of women whenever possible, he’d never met a female so utterly uninterested in his deformed appearance as Anne de Cheyne. She’d hardly given it a first look when they met, and since, hadn’t paid it more than a second’s notice.

  It was almost as if she couldn’t see it. Which was ridiculous.

  But it definitely explained to Aedan why his fascination wouldn’t quit. If she was used to deformity and it didn’t fascinate her, then being around her wouldn’t be so much work as it often was with other humans.

  Very few people paid so little attention to the inhuman half of his face. The Sheriff was one. His sister. A blind woman who ran the inn at Gretna. But in general, he was not only the object of scorn and ridicule, but the constant center of attention. And shame.

  Having been such an attractive and sought-after youth, and having been so completely in love as a young man, it had taken him years to stop caring what people saw when they looked at him. Until one woman looked and saw something other than a creature to be pitied or a monster to be feared.

  These thoughts had been plaguing him all through the morning ride, and Aedan saw no reprieve in sight. The directions the Sheriff had relayed to him were clear, but distant. It would take most of the day to verify what the Sheriff claimed, and even that was a stretch. He wasn’t certain he could make Belford in only a day, regardless.

  If the Sheriff had precise information, and the de Moray rebels really had managed to set up a camp inside the border of England, then his quest would be finished. He could give the English army his information and be through with it.

  A smattering of trees lined the small hill down toward the River Twill which would take him to the Roman road if he followed it. For anonymity, Aedan liked to avoid the king’s roads, all of them. But no doubt, it would provide him faster passage than following his nose over the unfamiliar terrain.