Highlander's Reckoning (The Sinclair Brothers #3) (22 page)

“We should confirm that the men in the woods, the
ones who attacked Rona, are indeed Warren’s,” Burke said from the bed. He
gently separated himself from Meredith, who was sinking into an exhausted
torpor. As Burke stood and joined the other men, Jossalyn scooted up to take
Burke’s place, silently wrapping her arms around Meredith’s shoulders.

Daniel nodded numbly. “And then what?”

Robert ran a hand over his stubble-covered chin.

“Then we’ll wait for Warren’s ransom letter,
assuming he took her and that he wants to negotiate.”

Anger surged through Daniel once again, evaporating
his stupor. “Wait? I thought you just said—”

Robert held up a hand to stay him.

“But we won’t be sitting on our hands in the
meantime, brother. We’ll be planning an attack on Dunbraes. A
covert
attack. We’ll have to put off a full-scale siege of the castle until we have
the Bruce’s reinforcements—and until Rona is safe.”

Garrick nodded slowly. “But we can plan a stealth
extraction in the meantime. Then when Warren’s ransom letter arrives, he’ll
think he’s a step ahead of us, but we’ll be ready to launch our rescue. He
won’t expect that.”

“Forgive me for saying this,” Burke interjected with
a frown, “but we were already struggling to pinpoint a weak spot in Dunbraes
for the siege. How will we penetrate the castle with even fewer men, less time,
and a hostage to be used against us?”

“It is far easier for four men to slip around a
castle’s defenses than it is for an army to attack in the open,” Garrick
responded. “We’ll have to use stealth—darkness, silence, and only the four of
us.”

Daniel shook his head, desolation swamping him
again. The task seemed nearly impossible, and yet the alternative was
unthinkable. How could this be happening? How could Rona be in Warren’s hands,
and he and his brothers and cousin planning a covert extraction against one of
the best-fortified castles in all of Scotland or England?

His doubt and anguish must have been written clearly
on his face, for his eldest brother gripped his shoulder hard.

“We’ll get her out, Danny,” Robert said softly. “I
promise.”

Rona’s lips were cracked, her mouth bone-dry.
Blessedly, hunger had left her the day before, but thirst, along with cold,
were her constant, menacing companions. The dungeon where she was being kept
was mostly dark, so she couldn’t be sure how long she’d been down there, but
she guessed it had been close to three days since she’d been taken from the
woods.

No one had come to tend to her since that first
night—or early morning, more likely—that she’d been deposited here. The
silence, isolation, and near-darkness had begun to do things to her mind. She
tried to sleep, but the stone floor stole what little heat she had in her body.
She’d called out at first, begging for food, water, something to wipe the
crusted blood from her face, but no one ever answered.

She wondered if Warren’s plan was to simply let her
die down here without bothering to ransom her as he’d alluded to when he’d
taken her.

She prayed, but her mind was growing slow and hazy.
Sometimes she prayed for someone—usually Daniel, but anyone would be welcome—to
arrive and spirit her away. Sometimes she prayed that Warren or a guard would
appear and tell her their plan—to kill her, to release her, to let her live for
another month in the dungeon, or whatever else they had decided. Sometimes she
simply prayed for food and water. So far, she hadn’t allowed herself to pray
for death.

As the hours and days had stretched, she let her
mind wander to Bhreaca. She pictured a hot summer afternoon, one where the air
was heavy and still and the smell of warm soil and plant life hung all around.
In her mind, she could almost feel Bhreaca’s weight on her wrist. She’d give
the falcon a little push upward, and Bhreaca would launch herself into the blue
sky, speckled chest flashing.

As she always did, Rona would close her eyes and
climb with Bhreaca, pumping to gain altitude. Then they’d be gliding on the
warm, still air. Suddenly she and Bhreaca would fold their wings tight to their
bodies and plummet in a stoop. Rona was weightless, the ground fast
approaching. Just at the last moment, she and Bhreaca would unfurl their wings,
catching themselves before crashing to the earth, then sweep their feathers and
climb back into the sky.

The groan of a door in the distance had Rona
snapping her eyes open, her reverie evaporating. She forced herself to remain
where she sat leaning against one of the dungeon’s stone walls. She had to
conserve what little energy she had left.

A flicker of torchlight reached her through the
small grate inlaid in her cell’s heavy door. She sat up off the wall in
desperate anticipation. Footsteps approached, and the light grew stronger. It
wasn’t a dream or a hallucination. Someone was coming.

Her heart pounded as she heard the jangle of a key
in the cell’s door. The door creaked open and light flooded the cell, forcing
her to throw a hand over her eyes.

Something small and hard hit her and bounced to the
ground. She blinked and kept one hand up to shade her eyes. A heel of bread lay
on the floor in front of her. She snatched it up without looking at who had
entered her cell, so desperate was she for food.

She shoved the heel of bread in her mouth and gnawed
on it, but her mouth was so dry that the bread might as well have been a ball of
cloth. She continued to gnaw, though, begging her body to cooperate.

A chuckle brought her attention up to the figures
who had entered her cell. A guard stood just inside the door holding a torch.
And Raef Warren rose over her, laughing.

“The comely wife of Daniel Sinclair, reduced to
this,” Warren said with a smile.

It was all Rona could do to suppress a snarl at him.

“What do you want?” she managed to whisper. Her
voice cracked and wavered from thirst and disuse.

Warren motioned to the guard, who unfastened a
waterskin from his belt and tossed it at Rona. She scrambled to catch it, and
then she forgot Warren and the guard and her cell for a few blessed moments as
she gulped down the water.

She forced herself to stop after several mouthfuls.
She would make herself sick if she drank too fast, and she didn’t know when
she’d get more water. As she wiped the back of her hand over her dry lips, she
looked up at Warren again.

Her eyes were now adjusted to the torchlight, and
she examined him. He was clean and tidy, his fine silk breeches and vest
perfectly smooth. But he wore a bandage around his head. It wrapped diagonally
across his face, obscuring his left eye and cheek. He continued to sneer at
her, but she noticed that it was more of a wince than a smile.

“How is your face, my lord?” she said icily, lifting
her mouth in a smile. “Scarring nicely? Or perhaps the wound is still open.”

She didn’t know what force of will simmering deep
inside her made her goad him, but she embraced it. She would never let a man
like Raef Warren send her cowering or scraping to him. He could beat her if he
wanted, or even kill her, but he couldn’t snuff the fire that burned inside
her.

Warren’s mouth dropped into a grimace, his uncovered
right eye bulging. He stepped forward and struck her across the face with the
back of his hand. She toppled over at the force of the blow but managed to hang
on to the heel of bread and the waterskin.

“You pathetic, disgusting cunt,” Warren hissed. “I
should cut your flesh off an inch at a time for what you’ve done!”

He unconsciously raised his left hand to the cheek
she’d bitten, but even before his fingertips brushed the bandage, he winced in
agony. As she squinted up at him in the torchlight, she thought she saw little
red trails running from under the bandage down his jaw and neck. He lowered his
hand, returning his attention to her.

“But I can’t dismember you quite yet.”

Warren stepped toward her once again, and she saw a
knife flash in his hand. She screamed and tried to scoot away, but she was
already backed up against the stone wall.

She caught her breath as she tried to prepare
herself for the feel of the knife slicing into her flesh, but instead, Warren
grabbed her by the hair. Gripping a lock of her hair in one hand, he slid the
knife across the strands and then stepped back again.

“What…what are you doing?” she said shakily.

“This is for the ransom missive,” Warren replied.
“We have to make it look…compelling if we want your Sinclair husband and his
men to come charging to Dunbraes.”

Rona tried to register Warren’s comment through the
fog of exhaustion, fear, and weakness floating through her mind.

“You
want
him to come? Why?”

“You need not concern yourself with that,” Warren
said dismissively and turned toward the cell door.

“Wait! When will you release me? At least give me
another waterskin!”

Warren paid her no heed and instead strode out the
cell door with the guard trailing him. The door creaked on rusty hinges and
slammed shut firmly.

“Why do you want Daniel to come?” Rona screamed
after them.

The torchlight grew dimmer and dimmer until she
heard another door open and close in the distance. Then the light disappeared
completely.

She held her knees to her chest and closed her eyes
tightly, trying to keep the tears at bay. She needed to save her energy, and
she couldn’t waste precious water on tears, she told herself firmly. But the
darkness surrounding her seeped into her, blackening what little hope she had
been holding on to.

Daniel would come for her. She knew it. Though they
had not yet spoken the words to each other, there was love between them.

She thought of his strong, handsome face, his
blue-gray eyes like a stormy sea, his firm and frequently dark-bristled
jawline. She imagined his warmth and strength surrounding her as he held her,
kissed her, melded her body to his. She thought of the way he frowned and
stubbornly crossed his arms, mirroring her, and the way he smiled at her,
softening her even when her temper flared.

He would come for her. And he would be walking right
into whatever trap Warren had planned for him.

The tears came despite her efforts to contain them.
Her broken sobs echoed back to her against the cold stones of her cell.

Daniel barely made it to his study before breaking
the red wax seal on Warren’s missive. Warren’s seal was burned into his mind,
for he’d seen the bastard’s coat of arms on the dead bodies in the Galloway
forest and had waited four days to see the same seal on the ransom note he now
held in his hand.

Four days.

Four long, horrible days had passed since the
afternoon Rona had been taken. If it weren’t for his brothers and cousin,
Daniel would have ridden to Dunbraes alone a thousand times over by now, but
they kept a close eye on him, explaining over and over that they had to wait a
little longer before launching their strike against Warren.

On the first full day, they had gone to the woods
and found the bloody scene Meredith had told them about. They’d given Patrick
and Harold as proper a burial as they could manage, but left the English
soldiers to the wild animals. Sure enough, under their chainmail they wore
Warren’s coat on their tunics.

He would have charged toward Dunbraes right then if
his family hadn’t physically restrained him. They forced him to return to Loch
Doon and practically locked themselves in his study with him under the pretense
of working on their plan of attack.

The next three days had passed sickeningly slowly as
they waited and planned. He trained savagely with his men, barely ate, and
couldn’t sleep. His brothers and cousin told him he had to keep his strength
up, but food tasted like ash in his mouth.

Jossalyn made him a sleeping draught the second
night, and although he slept long and deeply, he didn’t take the potion again.
He hated himself for escaping into sleep when Rona was suffering God knew what
at Warren’s hands. And he didn’t want to return to the bed he shared with her
until she was safely in his arms again. Her scent lingered on the sheets,
haunting him.

Robert, Garrick, and Burke trained with him when
they weren’t all in his study poring over the maps Jossalyn had made for them.
She’d given them more detailed sketches on the castle’s interior, not just its
external defenses, which he prayed would help them if they ever got inside
Dunbraes.

When
, he told
himself firmly, not
if
they entered the castle.

The ransom letter was finally here, which meant that
they could set their plan in motion at last. It would all be over soon, one way
or another.

As he unfolded the missive, a lock of red hair fell
out into his hand.

Rona’s hair.

His thumb rubbed the silky red lock and his throat
tightened. He brought it to his nose and inhaled. It still held a faint trace
of her unique, intoxicating scent, the one that lingered on the bed they
shared. He couldn’t lose her. If he did…

A knock came at the door, and Robert entered a
moment later.

“What does it say?” his older brother asked without
preamble. They all knew the moment the messenger had docked against the
castle’s moors that this was the letter they’d been waiting for, but blessedly,
his family had given him a moment alone to open it.

Daniel looked down at his hands. He was still
clutching the missive in one hand and the lock of Rona’s hair in the other. He
hadn’t even read the letter yet.

He scanned it quickly as he tucked the lock of hair
into the sporran at his waist. Then he stepped forward and handed the letter to
Robert.

“This seems standard,” Robert said after glancing at
the short note inside. “It’s good that he wants to open negotiations a week from
now rather than, say, tomorrow morning. That will give us time and the element
of surprise.”

Daniel nodded, hardening himself. “We should leave
this afternoon.”

Robert remained silent for a moment, eyeing him. “Or
tomorrow.”

A spike of rage surged through Daniel’s veins,
cutting through the dull anxiety that had shrouded him for the last several
days.

“If we leave now, we’ll still be under the cover of
night by the time we reach Dunbraes.”

“You need more rest,” Robert said, his tone shifting
slightly into the familiar authority of an older brother and Laird.

“Like hell I need rest!” Daniel said, stepping toe
to toe with his brother. “What I need is to get my wife back. What I need is to
have Rona safe and sound and in my arms again. And what I need is to take the
bastard Warren’s life with my own two hands!”

“You’ll have to get in line for that last one,”
Garrick said as he stepped into the study. Burke came in behind him and closed
the door.

“We are moving—now,” Daniel commanded. “Be ready in
an hour.”

He shot a glance at Robert to see if he would
challenge his authority, but Robert only nodded.

“Burke, secure us passage to the village with one of
the oarsmen. We’ll get horses there,” Daniel said, feeling simultaneously
calmer and more energized than he had in days. The waiting was over. They could
finally act.

Burke nodded and slipped out the study door.

“I’ll let Alwin know,” Robert said.

Alwin had seamlessly and silently taken over the
running of the castle after Rona had been taken. Daniel would have to remember
to thank her when this was all over. She had a way of keeping the castle calm
and orderly, even while everything else felt like it was falling apart.

“Are you sure you don’t want Jossalyn to come with
us?” Garrick said.

“Nay, it’s too dangerous. She’s already been an
invaluable help,” Daniel replied.

Even though Jossalyn herself had offered to come
with them on their strike against Dunbraes, Garrick visibly relaxed at Daniel’s
words. He couldn’t blame him, either. What they had planned was barely anything
more than a fool’s errand. At every turn, they’d have to use all their skill,
plus a fair bit of luck. It was no place for Jossalyn, despite the fact that
she wanted to help.

The three stood in silence for a moment in Daniel’s
study. Despite the tension in the room and the nearly insurmountable task ahead
of them, Daniel gave each of his brothers a little nod, a wry smile touching
his mouth.

“This is it, then.”

“Aye, it’s time.”

They rode through the evening and the night, cutting
southeast from the village, through the Galloway woods, and toward Dunbraes.
The stars and a sliver of moon were their only light. Luckily it hadn’t rained
in a few days so the ground wasn’t as soft, allowing the horses to travel
faster.

They wouldn’t get a moment’s rest tonight, and
Daniel had barely slept in the last four days, either. Despite that, with each
stride of the horses, he grew more energized. The closer they drew to Dunbraes,
the closer he was to Rona—his love, his life, his future. Somehow, she’d become
a part of him, and he a part of her. If she were taken from him, he could never
be whole again.

Thoughts of Rona haunted him throughout the ride. It
wasn’t until the dark, early hours of the morning, when they were only a few
miles away from Dunbraes, that he forced his mind to focus on the task ahead of
them.

Finally, they slowed their horses and guided them
slightly to the left so as to approach the castle from the north, as Jossalyn
had advised. It was the furthest point from the main gates, which were more
heavily guarded. Plus, the castle’s tower keep stood closest to the northern
side of the curtain wall, meaning they’d have to cross the least amount of open
space to get to the dungeon, where Jossalyn guessed her brother would keep
Rona.

About a mile from the castle, they dismounted
silently and tied the horses in a densely foliated area of the surrounding
forest. They moved swiftly on foot through the forest until they reached its
edge, where the trees had been cleared to provide the castle with greater
visibility to protect against attack.

Daniel strained to make out any figures on the
curtain wall’s battlements. The castle loomed up against the night sky, an
almost indistinguishable shadow in the darkness.

Slowly, the four of them crept forward into the
open. Daniel, Robert, and Burke were forced to keep their swords sheathed or
risk the metal glinting in what little moonlight there was. Daniel felt naked
without his blade in hand, yet he willed himself forward. At least Garrick had
an arrow nocked in his bow, which he held half-draw
n
and at the ready.

Just as they were about to reach the rocky terrain
upon which the castle was built, Robert threw up a hand. Instantly, they all
dropped into a crouch and froze. The curtain wall was a mere dozen yards in
front of them. They would be invisible to any guard on top of the wall once
they were pressed against it. But as Daniel looked up at the wall, he made out
a shadowy figure moving along the battlement.

Even crouched and covered by the night’s darkness, the
grasses and scattered rock outcroppings surrounding the castle offered little
cover for them. Daniel held his breath, praying the guard on the battlement
wouldn’t spot them.

As he watched the figure move toward them at an even
pace, he breathed a silent sigh of relief. The guard hadn’t seen them yet,
otherwise he would have stopped to look closer or sen
t
up a call for help.

Daniel caught a movement out of the corner of his
eye and turned slightly to see Garrick drawing his bowstring back ever so
slowly. He had an arrow trained on the figure as it moved directly in front of
them. But the figure never stopped. The guard continued around the battlement,
and after several tense moments he was out of sight.

When they’d finally closed the remaining distance to
the curtain wall, Daniel let himself breathe deeply again. The first challenge
was completed. But they would be even more vulnerable than before with their
next task.

Burke reached for his belt and unwound a length of
rope with a large fisherman’s hook attached to one end. Daniel sent thanks to
the heavens yet again for Rona’s willfulness. If she hadn’t told them the story
of how she’d escaped Loch Doon using such a rope and hook, Daniel wasn’t sure
how they would plan on scaling Dunbraes’ towering curtain wall.

As Burke hefted the hook in his grasp, Daniel could
make out its dull outline in the darkness. It was bigger than his spanned hand,
with a sturdy fisherman’s knot through the loop at the bottom. With a quick nod
to the others, Burke took a step back from the wall and threw the hook upward,
aiming for one of the crenels that opened onto the wall’s battlement.

The hook clattered onto the battlement, and all the
men tensed at the noise. They remained motionless at the bottom of the wall,
waiting for the dreaded sound of guards rushing toward them.

But the castle remained quiet, and after what felt
like an eternity, Burke gave a tug on the rope. The hook didn’t fall back down
or scrape along the stones—blessedly, it was securely wedged against the lip of
the battlement.

Garrick silently released the tension on his bow and
slipped the arrow into the quiver on his back. Then he slung the bow over his
shoulder and took hold of the rope. They had agreed that he would go first in
case he needed to pick off any guards at a distance, but it chafed at Daniel to
have to wait for his turn. Garrick braced his feet against the wall and began
to climb. In a matter of moments, he’d slipped through the crenel opening and
onto the battlement running along the top of the wall.

Daniel took up the rope next, followed by Burke and
Robert. As they each reached the battlement, they crouched for fear that their
dark outlines would stand out against the starry sky. Once they were all up,
Burke silently eased the hook off the lip of the battlement, rewound the length
of rope, and secured the hook and rope to his belt.

If all went according to the plan, they’d be leaving
the same way they came in. Daniel wouldn’t let himself think about the
possibility that they would get separated and be unable to all use the rope—or
worse, that they’d have to fight their way out of the castle.

He sharpened his mind on the task ahead instead.
Garrick again took his bow in hand and nocked an arrow, though the battlement
remained quiet and still. Daniel tapped each one of the others on the shoulder
and gestured to the left, silently pointing toward the nearest guard tower.
They moved in a crouch toward the tower, pausing every few seconds to listen
for movement.

Suddenly, Garrick froze in front of Daniel. Burke
and Robert, who were behind him, tensed also. Daniel eased one eye over
Garrick’s shoulder, and his stomach dropped.

Standing between them and the guard tower was a dark
figure. Daniel couldn’t tell if the guard was facing toward or away from them,
but if he saw them, their entire plan would be dashed, and all hope of
extracting Rona stealthily would vanish.

Daniel reached for the hilt of his sword at his hip,
but Garrick shook his head silently. He slowly drew back the nocked arrow to
his cheek and trained it on the dark figure a dozen yards ahead of them on the
battlement.

Garrick exhaled almost inaudibly, and the arrow flew
with a faint whirring noise. A fraction of a second later, it thunked into its
target. Daniel sprang to his feet and bolted past Garrick toward the guard.