Amanda Scott (10 page)

The party traveling to Lochbuie, on the south end of the Isle of Mull, arrived well after darkness had fallen, as Hugo had anticipated. But the castle servants had kept watch for them and had a hot supper waiting when they entered the great hall.

Everyone seemed tired, Macleod especially.

Hugo, sitting next to him at the high table, believed he was having second thoughts about his refusal to search for his missing daughter. To raise that subject might prove both tactless and unwise, but remembering his conversation with Hector, Hugo decided he had good reason to speak of something else.

He waited until Macleod had a goblet of Hector’s excellent claret in hand. Then he said quietly, “I owe you an apology, sir.”

“Do ye now, lad?”

“Aye, sir. The lady Sorcha was right to take me to task for my failure to reply to her message.”

“Bless me, the baggage ought never to ha’ sent ye any message.”

Hugo agreed but said, “As she did, however, simple chivalry demanded a reply from any man claiming knighthood, and I failed to send one. Had I let her know—or you, sir—that I was fully engaged in his grace’s installation preparations, mayhap the lady Adela would be safely wed now and at home with her husband.”

“Ye’re being gey courteous, lad, and I thank ye,” Macleod said. “What others must think o’ a Councilor o’ the Isles who couldna protect his own daughter on her wedding day, I dinna want to think.”

“Sakes, sir, you had no cause to expect trouble. The Highlands are at peace, as is all of Scotland—saving the Borders, of course, where peace is naught but a myth. No man could blame you for what happened.”

“Aye, well, I canna even think where to look for the lass.”

“What of Lady Gowrie?” Hector asked then. “Did she not perhaps see her?”

“Nay, for her ladyship had that tale from some cousin or other, Sorcha said. Moreover, she’s nobbut a foolish woman, so I doubt there be anything in it. We’d be days behind them now anyway, ye ken. They could ha’ gone anywhere.”

“They could,” Hector agreed, for that was certainly true.

“ ’Tis plain to me now,” Macleod added gloomily, “that a cautious man must beware for a sennight either side o’ any Friday falling on the thirteenth. When I think that Ardelve wanted his wedding on that bleak day itself, I shudder to think what grief could ha’ come of it.”

Hugo’s attention sharpened. “Do you believe that one should be wary of Fridays that fall on the thirteenth of any month?”

“Aye, sure, any man o’ sense believes that,” Macleod said firmly.

“Indeed,” Hugo said. “And why is that, do you think? To most folks’ minds, a Friday is just a Friday and as good as any other day.”

Macleod shrugged. “There be good reason behind it, lad, and I’m no a man to go against superstition. For such to gain acceptance means it ha’ proven itself many times over.”

“Or perhaps that it relates to some event so significant that none can ever forget it, which leads men to fear anything having a connection to it.”

“Aye, perhaps,” Macleod agreed, looking narrowly at him.

“May I pour you more claret, sir?” Hugo asked quietly.

“Aye, ye may, lad, ye may indeed.”

At dusk, his lordship had called a halt to make camp in a steep-sided, heavily wooded glen a half mile past four or five thatched huts and crofts in a loosely formed group that Highlanders called a clachan. Despite the steep, encroaching walls of the glen, he had avoided riding near or
through their midst, as he had made it his habit to do with any habitation they could skirt. But Adela knew the alert ways of such folk and believed that someone must have seen them.

Darkness had fallen by the time the cook fires were ready, and after she had eaten a hasty meal, she approached his lordship and said quietly, “I would retire, my lord, but first I would beg leave for a few minutes of privacy, if I may.”

As usual, her stomach clenched at having to ask his permission as much as at the fear that he might refuse it.

“Aye, lass, you may, although the moon will not rise for another hour. Can you see your way?”

Thinking only of getting away, she said she could, drew a deep breath, and hurried toward the area they had set aside for the purpose. As she neared it, one of the newer men stepped from behind a tree to bar her way.

“Dinna fear me, lass,” he said quietly. “I hoped ye’d come by.”

When she stepped back, he grasped her right arm and murmured near her ear, “Come now, give me a wee kiss, and mayhap I’ll do summat useful for ye later.”

As she jerked her arm away, astonished at such familiar treatment, a fist shot from nearby black shadows, knocking him flat.

Her captor stood over him and said to someone in the darkness behind him whom Adela could not see, “Throw a rope over a limb and hang this fool.”

“Faith, sir,” she exclaimed. “Is it not enough to have knocked him senseless? He was not going to harm me.”

“I am not punishing him to protect you,” he said coldly. “I’m hanging him because I told every man here
that unless I command otherwise, they are to treat you with respect. He disobeyed me. See that you do not.”

He walked away as silently as he had come, but Adela stood trembling in the darkness long afterward.

Roiling black clouds engulfed the sky, and lightning flashed through them in jagged spears. All else was black and formless, as if hell had engulfed the earth and heavens, and all that dwelt upon and within them.

Faint music sounded. Until that moment he had failed to realize that no thunder accompanied the lightning, but now he heard a harp or perhaps tinkling bells. Then, before his astonished gaze, the clouds parted, speared through by a narrow, circular beam of golden light. It began slowly to lengthen, then widen as if a single, solid ray of sunlight had broken through the clouds.

Doubtless only the sea existed below, for only the sea could look so black at such a time, but he thought it odd that the golden light seemed not to touch the water or reflect from it. The beam grew longer, the circle wider, and golden steps formed. At the top of them, a figure appeared, dark and menacing.

An icy chill made him shiver as he watched the figure descend the steps. Something familiar about its movement, its very shape—broad-shouldered and powerful-looking—made him watch more intently.

The golden steps began to radiate light until at last he saw the horizon where the water below touched tumultuous black clouds above. The steps appeared to end at
the water, although water and clouds seemed endless. He saw nothing that resembled dry land anywhere.

The eerie, tinkling music stopped when the figure reached the bottom of the steps, but the figure kept walking toward him as if it mattered not what the surface was that it walked upon. He had no sense of himself now other than as a pair of eyes, watching. Even the chill had gone.

He had no sense of standing on anything, no sense of touching or smelling, hearing or tasting, only of seeing. He could not move, did not seem to have limbs or a body. He could only watch as the figure drew near and the golden light spread out over the rippled sea.

Then light touched the figure’s face, and he experienced mild shock, the sort of feeling one gets when one half expects something to be so, hopes that it isn’t, and finds that it is. He knew that face as well as his own, but the body it belonged to had no business to be walking anywhere, let alone on the water as it appeared to do now. It had, after all, drowned in the river North Esk eight months ago.

The figure’s eyes met his, and a familiar, challenging smile touched its lips. Then it stepped aside to reveal the smaller figure of Lady Adela Macleod. Abruptly, he could hear the sea, taste the salty dampness of the air, and feel the chill again.

The light passed, abandoning the figure’s face to darkness as a still-familiar voice broke the silence. “My vengeance has begun,” it boomed thunderously. “Your lady belongs to me and will serve me until my need for her ends.”

He tried to speak, to rail against such vengeance and tell Adela to have courage. But he had no power to speak
or move, and as his mind struggled to overcome the lack, the golden light faded to impenetrable darkness.

Hugo awoke sitting stiffly upright in bed, briefly disoriented not only from the dream but from a familiar need to recall exactly where he had gone to sleep. A crackling spark drew his attention to glowing embers on the hearth. Memory swept back, and he remembered he was at Lochbuie Castle, a guest of Hector Reaganach.

Within moments, he had scrambled into enough clothing to hurry to the next chamber, where Michael and Isobel lay sleeping.

He had no worry about waking his cousin, knowing that the soft click of the latch and the opening door would do so without disturbing Isobel.

“What is it?” Michael murmured as Hugo stuck his head in.

“Come,” Hugo replied in the same soft tone. Then he eased the door to again and waited the few moments it took Michael to pull on breeks and join him.

When he did, Hugo gestured toward his own chamber and Michael followed him without a word. Inside, with the door shut, Hugo said bluntly, “It’s Waldron.”

“What is?”

“He has Adela.”

“By heaven, Hugo, if I didn’t know you better, I’d…”

When he hesitated, Hugo said, “I know it sounds daft. He’s got to be dead, or we’d have heard from him long before now. But I’m nonetheless sure of it.”

“
Have
we heard from him?” Michael demanded as he
grabbed the poker and bent to stir the embers, nudging the liveliest ones together as he reached for a log.

Hugo hesitated. Then, with a sigh, he said, “Nay, but I had a dream, and he spoke so plainly that when I awoke, I knew it must be true.”

Michael laid his log on the embers and blew gently, waiting for flames to begin licking it. Then he straightened and said, “Perhaps you’d better tell me more about this dream.”

Moving to warm his hands, Hugo said, “You’ll recall that he told Isobel he would seek vengeance against all who had stood in the way of—”

“Careful,” Michael warned. “There may be unfriendly ears, even here. I do remember what he told Isobel, and I’ll admit I’d not have been surprised to learn that he survived that fall. He was always like a cat, landing on his feet when one least expected it. But I find it nearly impossible to believe he could be alive and yet have waited eight long months to seek his revenge.”

“Mayhap he decided to lie low until opportunity presented itself. And mayhap, Adela’s wedding provided that opportunity.”

“But how could he have learned where and when she would marry?”

“The same way you or I would,” Hugo said. “He gathered all the information he could. Lady Sorcha sent messages to me at a number of places. What is more likely than that Waldron intercepted one?”

“Then Adela may not have been his sole target,” Michael said grimly. “Waldron would want vengeance against you and me more than he could possibly want to hurt Adela, and he is not a chivalrous man.”

“True,” Hugo said. “He’d not think twice about using a woman for bait to catch us off our guard.”