The Runaway Highlander (The Highland Renegades Book 2) (8 page)

Still, Anne wasn’t sure the plan was a good one. She’d hate to see them go to months of work to secure inside men and coordinate an escape only to be stopped at the gate.

Andrew took her arm from Broccin. “I’m sorry, brother, but I’m afraid I must take her from here. I will meet you at the gate.”

Broccin kissed the top of Anne’s head and embraced her with his one available arm. “
I must stay with Lachlan. I will see you at the gate, or at the rendezvous point.”

They all made their way as silently as possible through the corridor and up the stairs into the castle. Once they reached the landing on the main floor, Andrew took two of the men dressed as guards and ran for the stairs with Anne.

She ran over and over in her mind what she was going to say to Elena. How she would get her sister to accompany her without telling her about how Simon Alcock had treated her. Or what he undoubtedly planned to do with her once she was fully his. If nothing else had confirmed his sickness, it had been the state of his dungeon. The corpses, the static torture, the oubliette, the sheer size of it. This man was far too interested in pain.

And he had most certainly was the kind of man who could have killed his previous wife.

She had to get away from him.

The men pulled at Andrew once they were at her door and the three of them took off the way they came, with Andrew calling after her, “
Bring your sister to the gate. We will have room for you. But you must hurry.”

Anne turned into her door
way and ran for her changing screen. She had to be ready by the time Elena returned. Pray she would be alone. And hope that Andrew de Moray was more a man of his word than all other men seemed to be.

Chapter Seven

An
ne changed and waited for Elena, her hands nervous as an expectant mother. But after the bells had sounded to end the service and her sister still didn’t appear, worry began to crowd out the anticipation. Anne’s stomach couldn’t promise any more patience. She rustled in the back of her closet for the bundles and secured them together with one of Elena’s hair ribbons.

She’d donned her green woolen riding dress that could have been mistaken for a day dress. Initially, the plan had been to have Elena change out of her chapel clothes and into riding clothes, and then secret her away with the guards Andrew promised would be his own men.

But the guards never came. Neither did Elena. She’d waited as long as she could wait in her room. With the bundles hanging behind her, she walked down the long hall away from her bedroom. Every few steps, she would glance behind her, in case Elena came from the great hall.

She reached the top of the stairs
and paused to watch the potential traffic. Only she never met anyone.

A sick feeling crept over her. If she’d missed her window, she would never be able to reclaim this opportunity. She had to find Elena and meet Andrew at the gate, because he’d promised to be the last one out of the city so he could wait for her. But he wouldn’t wait so long that it would endanger his men.

He wouldn’t wait forever.

At the bottom of the stairs, Anne turned toward the courtyard, only to run straight into a quick-walking Simon Alcock, flanked by two of his men.

Her heart stopped beating for a moment. The tears that she’d managed to kill over the previous day threatened to return. She tried to keep walking, to ignore him, but he grabbed her.

“
Ahhh. Here is my intended.” The way he spat out the words
my intended
had Anne on edge. She’d never heard him use that much violence in one phrase.

He knew.

No, there was no way he could know.

But his very smell made her gag and she couldn’t decide how best to approach him. He was not happy to see her, but he hadn’t arrested her on sight.

Perhaps she could play this to her advantage.

“What is my fiancé doing out and about this morning?” Anne tried to keep her voice from shaking.

His dark brows furrowed. “I thought I was attending chapel alone, without my blushing soon-to-be-bride who was in her bedchamber protecting us all from the ague.”

Anne’s pulse galloped along, certain it would give her away. “I’m feeling much better than I was this morning.”

He turned to his right and signaled to the men. Anne tensed, but instead of grabbing her, they continued along the edge of the courtyard, toward the barracks.

“I’m not so easily made a fool.” The Sheriff stepped toward her and reached around her body. Everything in her said to run, but she couldn’t move.

He wrenched the packed bundles from her hand and threw them against the stairs. His sour smell filled her entire awareness, stinging her nose and her eyes as he closed in on her.

“You think you can escape me, girl?” He grabbed her neck. The pressure on the old wound where he’d sunk his teeth into her made her cry out.

She nearly crumbled under the pressure, but as he pushed her toward the stairs, she caught her heel on one of the hard steps and pressed back against him. With all her will, she met his eyes and sent her momentum back against him.

“You cannot intimidate me.”

He snorted at her. “Intimidate? You don’t know what it means to be frightened yet, my girl.” With a shift of his feet, he deflected her momentum and unbalanced her.

The lack of stability made her catch her breath as she nearly toppled forward.
With his hand still on her shoulder, the Sheriff caught her before she went too far.

He clamped one hand around her neck, then gripped her with the other, and the tight, overwhelming pressure cut off her breath. She struggled against him,
the fear escalating with each moment she couldn’t catch a breath.

With a spray of spittle, he leaned in, pushing her against he cold, stone wall of the castle. “Are you afraid yet?”

Anne clawed at him. His face, his hand, his neck, anything she could get her fingers into. But nothing helped.

The pressure in her head overwhelmed her and all she could think of as she started to slip into blackness was that if he killer her, he would somehow take her sister in her place.

Anne kept straining to stand, to hit him, to incapacitate him, however she could. She had to live, for that alone. She couldn’t let him get to Elena.

*****

Aedan dismounted in the outer courtyard and the sweat dripped so profusely from his head, he had to look up to assure himself it wasn’t raining. His horse wasn’t much better. He’d perhaps ridden too hard, but the news could not wait.

He’d even taken the Roman road all the way back to the Wall.

A strange unease seemed to linger over the entire place. More guards lined the gate, and even the city gate had been closed. He hadn’t been certain they would let him through, except that he finally found a man who recognized him.

Two soldiers stopped him before he even approached the doors that led to the inner courtyard. More men waited inside and he acquired an escort all the way to the great hall.

When the great doors swung open, Aedan noted four guards on each of the inner doors, another line of men behind each of the long tables, and two men on either side of the dais. Whatever had happened, the Sheriff meant to prevent a second occurrence.

Aedan glanced to his right, noting the absence of Anne and her sister near the fire. Once he finally allowed himself to look in her direction, he realized how much he’d been anticipating seeing her again. A good portion of his ride had been
spent envisioning various versions of meeting her again. He still hadn’t decided on how he would respond to her, even with two days to prepare.

He didn’t quite know how he felt about the woman yet, but he knew she intrigued him, which required some care. The old Aedan, the young and unhindered Aedan, would have simply plopped into the chair opposite her and stared her down until he
understood his own mind. Until he could discover why he thought about her constantly.

But this Aedan preferred to focus on his business, even when Anne’s presence, or lack thereof, pricked the back of his mind like some sort of needle torture for his memory.

On the dais, the giant man sat alone in his chair, behind the heavy, dark table. His head was wrapped in cloth that came down over one eye, which he picked at like a babe.

“Aedan Donne.” The Sheriff motioned for Aedan to approach and the guards left them.

“Please tell me you have good news,” Simon Alcock said as Aedan knelt beside him. “I’ve had a troubling few days and I feel myself in need of some swift retribution.”

“I found the camp, sir.” While he should have felt elation at delivering the news that would finally deliver
Brighde from their father’s clutches, Aedan couldn’t muster even a sense of having completed a job.

There was very little he would have preferred in that moment than to lie. But eleven days was not enough to find a new job that would pay the last five pounds he needed—more than many men made in a year entire. But the Sheriff was desperate, and that often made purses open just a bit wider.

“You what?” The Sheriff’s eyes rounded into wide, angry pools of vengeance. “I’m going to kill them all.”

“Excuse me?” Aedan inclined his head as though he’d not heard correctly, but the Sheriff had already dismissed him and called for his advisors.

“Where precisely is the camp?” A man in a long, grey tunic spread a rough drawing on the table in front of the Sheriff and gazed down at Aedan. He pointed to one corner that had a jagged line falling away from it, then several triangles and a picture of a castle.

“This is Berwick,” he said, pointing at the corner. “This is the border. That’s Lowich. This is Belford.” He pointed first to the castle, then down the line of triangles to a large circle.

Aedan stood and leaned over the crude map. He put his finger on Belford. “Just at the village, there’s a butcher who is sympathetic to de Moray. But I learned that the butcher’s boy is not above revealing the location of the camp for the right price.”

“So they’re near Belford?” the Sheriff pressed.

“The camp moves every second day. They were south of the city a good two miles when I spotted them. But they will be in another place by the time your army reaches them.”

Simon Alcock made a disapproving noise and waved the map away. “Whatever you do, speak of this to no one.”

The dismissive gesture must have applied to Aedan as well, for the Sheriff then motioned for the next person to approach.

Typically, he would have been paid upon receipt of the news, and he didn’t want to be disingenuous, but his time was running out and he still needed to get home before the banns ran out.

“Excuse me, my lord.” Aedan bowed his head. “I was wondering whom I should see about my payment.”

“Oh yes. I don’t have the money to pay you today, but if you come back tomorrow, I should have finished taking on new soldiers by then
and the treasury will be secured.”

Aedan fumed. He’d been promised a hefty payment for the Judas move he’d just committed, and dammit if he didn’t want his thirty pieces of silver after all.
This was a notorious tactic for Simon Alcock.
Come back tomorrow
. Then tomorrow.
Come back tomorrow.

Likely, it meant he would never be paid.

The next supplicant came to his knees before the dais and began to beg for mercy for his son for some part he’d had in the insurrection. Aedan didn’t listen very long before he was convinced the Sheriff had moved on and was ready to forget Aedan had even served him for any length of time. There was no loyalty.

Aedan swore on every step. He found himself standing in the midst of
some extremely uptight nobles who leaned back away from him, lest he touch them and pass on his deformity, no doubt.

He waited for a few minutes, seething, trying to decide his best course of action. His anger grew more fierce with each passing supplicant. After a third man was turned away without payment, given the same excuse, Aedan shoved his way through the group toward the side door.

The soldiers moved their spears to allow him to pass and he stalked from the hall. He hadn’t gotten his money, he hadn’t found Anne, and now he had to find another way to make money.

At any moment, these days, there could be a need for his skill set, but he would generally have known if there were other opportunities in Berwick. Someone would have approached him.

He could ride toward home and stop at cities or castles and inquire. But the likelihood of being taken on by a stranger was low. Aedan’s heart began to pain him, as though a burning halo oozed around it.

The last several months had been filled with compromises of all kinds. He’d had to compromise his honor, his freedom, his patriotism, not to mention whatever moral code he retained from the years he’d actually had his mother around. Each one had been a deliberate decision not to compromise on his promise to protect
Brighde. And now, there just was no choice.

The Sheriff had cheated him out of his chance to save his sister from being chained to a clone of their father for the rest of her life. What he
wouldn’t have given for the opportunity to beat the coin out of Simon Alcock’s hide.

“Aedan Donne.” The voice that called to him was
husky and feminine. He turned to see a blonde woman in a brown woolen dress approaching. She was extremely tall for a woman and carried herself like a noblewoman, despite her simple attire.

“I’m sorry, I don’t believe we’ve met.”

But as she approached, something triggered his memory. Her face was so familiar. She’d been on the dais with the Sheriff when he’d delivered William Campbell to the dungeon.

Anne’s mother. Consort of the Sheriff.

“I’m Lady Milene de Cheyne, Countess of Caithness.”

Aedan bowed. “My lady. Aedan Donne, at your command.”

“Donne?” Her lips pursed and she circled him as he stood to attention. “I know of a Donne family in Moray. Are these your people?”

“No, my lady. My father is of little consequence. I’m sure you would not know him.”

“Where do you hail from? I assume by your accent you are not English.”

“I am not.
We make our home near the Firth of Clyde, where my father owns lands.”

“I approve of landowners,” she mused. “It breeds loyalty among our people and binds us more closely together.”

Was she testing him? Surely if she kept company with the Sheriff she cared little, or none, for the cause of those who fought for freedom from England.

“A wise position, my lady.” He bowed again, hoping his deference would win him some esteem in her sight. Perhaps he could find a way to ask after her daughter without being presumptuous.

“My father was a landowner, as well.” Her smile, while likely genuine, was also something else. Calculating? Mistrusting? He couldn’t be sure, but whatever it was unnerved him.