Amanda Scott (19 page)

“Faith, he’ll murder us both,” Sidony murmured in a tremulous voice.

“No, he won’t,” Sorcha said. “I shan’t let him. He may think he can bellow at us. Indeed, we cannot stop him if he does. But he will not do more than that, for all he may threaten. Just keep silent, dearling. I’ll manage him.”

One look at his face, however, was enough to shake her confidence. To say that he was in a black rage would not, she thought, be stretching the truth an inch.

Three of his men were with him, but to her relief he dismissed them all when she and Sidony approached. He did not, however, wait until the men were beyond earshot before he snapped, “Where the devil is he?”

“If you mean Rory, sir, we’ve no more idea than you do where he has gone,” Sorcha replied. “We did not know he had left until your man told us, but I’m sure he’ll return soon, so if that is all you wanted to ask us, we will go and eat now. Come, Siddy,” she added, touching her sister’s arm.

“Not so fast, lass,” he said harshly enough to stop her in her tracks.

Sidony had not moved.

“Lady Sidony, do you know aught of that lad’s whereabouts?”

Sorcha felt Sidony’s arm tremble, but her sister just shook her head.

“Look at me,” Hugo commanded.

Obediently, Sidony did so, but the sight of tears welling in her eyes fired Sorcha’s temper.

“You’re frightening my sister, and to no purpose,” she snapped. “She knows no more than I do.”

“Are you so certain of that?” he demanded. “I thought you told me Rory MacIver had a sense of honor. Honorable men do not disobey orders, nor do they abandon women they have sworn to protect.”

Sorcha realized what he was doing and turned quickly to soothe her sister’s predictable distress, but she was too late.

“Rory
is
honorable,” Sidony said through her tears. “This is all my fault. I’m sure of it! Oh, Sorcha, you were right to scold me last night!”

“So, you did ask him to do something for you,” Hugo said, moving to confront Sidony directly. “What was it?”

Sidony sobbed, and Sorcha stepped between them. “Leave her alone!”

In response, Sir Hugo moved her bodily out of his way and said curtly, “Don’t interfere again. The lad’s life may depend on how quickly I can get to the bottom of this.” Turning back to Sidony, he said, “Tell me at once, lassie. I must know.”

With another sob, Sidony wailed, “But I don’t know where he is! I just know it’s my fault that he left.”

“Why is it your fault?” he asked, and this time, Sorcha noted, his tone was a more coaxing one. Reluctantly realizing that he was more likely to get the answers he wanted without her help, she kept silent.

Sidony glanced at her, but Hugo did not. When Sorcha said nothing, tears began to spill down Sidony’s cheeks. She turned back to Hugo with another sob.

He said gently, “Come now, tell me.”

She drew a long breath, then said, “I was so worried about Adela, sir. I told him that. But… but I also told him I would give anything just to know she was safe, to know for certain that those horrid men had not already killed her.”

“Sakes, did you offer him a reward if he could produce such information?”

“No!” she cried. “My stupidity was in not realizing he might want to please me, might even take it upon himself to set out in search of her. I cannot imagine any other reason for him to have left us, Sir Hugo. But surely, he must realize that you and your men are much better suited to find her than he is.”

Sorcha saw him grimace, but he said only, “If he has set out to look for her, he must be somewhere on the road ahead. Eat quickly, and we’ll be on our way.”

“Go on without me, Siddy,” Sorcha said, giving her arm a gentle squeeze. “Find me something I can eat as we ride. I want to speak with Sir Hugo.”

Sidony nodded and, looking much calmer, walked away.

Sorcha had intended to wait until she was beyond hearing, but Hugo said abruptly, “If you mean to take me to task for that, you can save your breath.”

“I don’t,” she said, glancing back at Sidony to see how far she had gone. “You managed her better than I would have, sir, but I want to know why you looked as you did when she said your men are better able to find Adela than he is.”

He grimaced again, but his stern posture relaxed, and she detected a rueful glint in his eyes. “You are determined to find fault with me, are you not?”

“No,” she said honestly. “I just want to know if Rory is truly in danger.”

“Aye, sure, he is. No sensible man would go in search of Waldron without greater skill and more weapons than that lad has.”

“But if he only wants to see if she is safe, he will hardly walk into their encampment. Moreover, I cannot see why that would make you look as if you’d been caught doing something you should not have done.”

“Is that how I looked?” he asked.

She nodded, wishing he would not gaze at her so directly. It made her feel as if he was trying to see into her mind and read her thoughts.

“I did feel guilty,” he admitted. “In truth, you’ve had that effect on me since the day we met. But in this case, it is not anything I’ve said or done. I just realized that the only way that lad could have ridden away without my sentries stopping him is if he rode with or after the three men I’d sent on ahead.”

“You sent men to look for Adela?”

“Nay, although I did tell them that if they learned aught of her whereabouts, one of them should ride back and tell me. Otherwise they will go to Roslin to bring reinforcements, so if we should meet Waldron before we get there oursel—”

“Sakes, sir, you should have sent for reinforcements straightaway!”

“I had only twenty men with me, lass. Waldron has twice that many by now. Moreover, I sent two of mine back to Oban when I found you, to let Hector Reaganach’s men know where you were and that we were going to Edinburgh.”

Sorcha stared at him. “Do you mean to say Hector is following us?”

He chuckled. “That gives you pause, does it? Well, I cannot blame you for that. The man terrifies me, too. But nay, lass, Hector is committed to accompanying Donald—or MacDonald, as we should call him now—just as your father and Michael are. I merely wanted to let his men know, because he asked me to do so.”

“Do you think we’ll have enough men if they don’t send some to help us?”

“I hope we have enough for our present needs, at least. I’ve sent lads ahead and behind from the first day to watch for trouble, but I dared not send them any farther
than they could ride back each night. Now that we are nearing Stirling and Edinburgh, I decided it would be safe enough to send those three on ahead.”

“And you think Rory went with them?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m guessing, but I’m afraid their going may have given your young protector sufficient cover to slip away.”

“Perhaps he persuaded them to take him with them,” Sorcha said.

“Unlikely, since they know they’d face my wrath. He may have said that he had my permission, of course. I’ll question the lads when they return, but I’m thinking he just slipped by my guards. Their duty is to watch for intruders, so they may not have paid any heed to an extra man leaving.”

“Would your cousin really harm him?”

“Waldron is capable of anything,” he said. “Remember that. And, lass,” he added, giving her one of those straight looks that seemed to see right through her.

“Aye, sir,” she said with a sigh.

To her surprise, he reached out and casually brushed a strand of hair from her cheek as he said, “Truly, I am not an ogre. Stop trying to paint me as one.”

Hugo’s fingertips still retained warmth from touching her cheek. In fact, they fairly tingled, and he knew that every time he touched her, he was venturing into treacherous territory. Just thinking of other places he might touch her wakened parts of his body that had no business waking in her presence, making him grateful for the
shadowy darkness where they stood and for her maidenly innocence.

She smiled ruefully and said, “I do not think you an ogre, sir, merely a normal man who thinks he must order the lives of everyone he comes near. If you learn more about where Rory has gone, I would like you to tell me.”

He agreed, because it seemed a small thing to ask, and he wanted to please her when he could, if only to avoid more fratching. He still had not told her that he intended to bypass Edinburgh and make straight for Roslin, although he had nearly let it slip when he said his lads had gone for reinforcements. Since he was certain Waldron would likewise skirt the royal burgh and head southeast to Edgelaw, he had no qualms about waiting until they reached Linlithgow to tell her.

Therefore, agreeing to share information he acquired about Rory MacIver seemed only fair. But in the event, he had no need to tell her about him, because three hours later, shortly after they passed through the town of Dunblane with its beautiful century-and-a-half-old, red-sandstone cathedral, they found the poor lad bound to one of several chestnut trees at the side of the road.

His body slumped lifelessly forward, and someone had put a woman’s silver chaplet on his head.

S
orcha flung herself from her horse and rushed to Rory’s side, but Hugo caught her as she reached him and pulled her back.

“Wait, lass, let me,” he said. “He’s breathing, but he’s been hurt, and sometimes when a man regains consciousness after such an experience, he can be violent without realizing he strikes one who is trying to aid him.”

Relieved to know that Rory was breathing, she was willing to let Hugo attend him, but she hovered over them until she heard Rory groan.

“Thank heaven,” she exclaimed as she knelt swiftly beside him, appalled to see deep purple-black bruises on his face. “I thought you were dead! Speak to me, Rory. Why did you leave? What happened to you?”

“Easy,” Hugo said. “He’s barely conscious.” As he began to untie Rory from the tree, he shouted to his men,
“Einar Logan, fetch some water, and you others keep watch lest the lad be bait for a trap!”

“You don’t really think they would attack us here on the highroad,” Sorcha said, looking about for any sign of villains. “We’ve only come a few miles past Dunblane, but I see a great castle in the distance, on that massive outcropping.”

“Aye, that’s Stirling,” Hugo said, holding Rory by the shoulders as another of his men knelt by them to help untie the bindings. “I don’t think we need fear attack here,” he went on. “But I don’t want to be too confident where Waldron is concerned. My guess is the lad got too close to some of his men, but where they could have come by that pretty bauble on his head, I have no notion.”

“That’s Adela’s chaplet,” she said quietly. “I’m sure of it.”

“It is just a simple one,” he said, taking it off Rory’s head and handing it to her. While she examined it, he helped Rory, untied at last, to lie more comfortably on the ground. “Are you sure it is hers?”

“Aye, because it was our mother’s, and her initials are engraved here on the band,” Sorcha said, moving to make room for another of his men, a wiry-looking one with a dark, neatly-trimmed beard, who brought him a jug of water.

“Get something to slip under his head, Einar,” Hugo said as he took the jug, poured water in one hand, and sprinkled it on Rory’s face.

“He can ha’ me jerkin, sir,” Einar said, shrugging it off.

As she watched him ease the bunched jerkin gently under Rory’s head, Sorcha said, “Rory cannot have caught up with those villains unless they are traveling much slower than we thought they were.”

“True,” Hugo agreed, but he said no more because, as he tried to give Rory a sip of water from the jug, the lad stirred convulsively and tried to sit up.

“I think he’s going to be sick,” Sorcha warned, stepping back.

Hugo did not pause to question her judgment but shoved the jug at Einar Logan, seized Rory again, and turned him just in time to prevent him from spewing the contents of his stomach all over Hugo and himself.

Einar, just as quick, snatched his jerkin from harm’s way in time to spare nearly all of it. Without comment, he sluiced the small portion that did not escape with water from the jug, then rubbed it clean against the bark of the chestnut tree.