Chapter Nine

They rode all night, the dark forest blurring ominously around them.

Lillian sat rod-straight in the saddle before her captor, her fury fueling her through the grueling ride.

But when a gloomy, gray dawn began to break, so did her spirit—and her body.

Uncontrollable shivers wracked her, sending her bumping into her captor’s stone-hard torso repeatedly. Her right ankle throbbed terribly where it bounced in front of the man’s stirrupped boot. In fact, her whole body ached from the fall out the window, her desperate flight, and the teeth-jarring pace her captor set as he drove them mercilessly south.

To her relief, he suddenly reined in the enormous roan steed. Before she could breathe a sigh of gratitude for the respite, however, she reminded herself that she had no idea what the man intended for her. It could be far worse than what she’d already endured.

He dismounted in the dense patch of forest he’d halted in, then reached for her.

Lillian shied away, but before she had time to snatch up the reins or kick the horse into motion, he’d already plucked her from the animal’s back as if she weighed naught.

She swung at him clumsily, her cold, aching limbs refusing to fight even as she screamed at them in her mind to move.

“Cease,” he snapped, easily controlling her with his far greater strength.

He might be able to contain her body, but he’d have to cut out her tongue before he could stop her from speaking.

“I’ll scream,” she shot back, then dragged in a lungful of air to do just that.

“Ye may, but there is no one around to hear ye,” he said.

The scream died in her throat before it reached her mouth. Her lungs deflated. She knew he was right. From what little she’d seen of the Highlands on her journey northward with Will three months past, she knew this land to be a desolate, unforgiving place.

Even here in this thick patch of forest, the trees were twisted from the wind that so frequently blasted the land. The oak and alder trees that interspersed the pines had already begun to turn golden and orange, a sign that the short, mild summer had long ago come to an end and winter approached. Even the ground told of the land’s harshness. It was soft and mossy underfoot, but rocks made the soil uneven and thin.

This place was naught like England, whose softly rolling hills were dotted all over with farmlands—and people. Nay, from what she’d seen of the Highlands, the people tough enough to survive here were few and far between, with farms and villages isolated by vast swaths of unforgiving mountains, moors, and forests.

Lillian would be foolish to waste her voice and her energy screaming at naught but the cloudy sky. Yet she would not give up so easily.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “What do you intend—”

Without responding, her captor suddenly lifted her into his arms once more and began striding deeper into the forest.

Up until that moment, anger at being kidnapped, at this man’s handling of her, and the fact that he’d hurt Will and the other men had kept her fear at bay. Now it tore through her like flames through dry kindling.

A scream rose in her throat. Even though the logical part of her mind knew it would do no good, logic did not rule her—only sheer, unfettered terror did. He was taking her away to—what? Rape her? Slit her throat and leave her body for the ravens? Both?

She bucked and twisted in his hold. She felt his arms tighten around her, and then he suddenly stopped. He lowered her onto a boulder under a drooping pine tree, taking hold of her wrists and pinning her arms to her sides so that she could not flee.

“Easy, lass,” he barked over her hysterical cries. “I am no’ going to hurt ye. I only want to look at yer ankle to make sure it isnae broken. ”

Heartbeat hammering in her ears, she clamped her mouth shut. She needed to think, not scream. Why would he kidnap her if he didn’t intend to hurt her? And why should he care what state her ankle was in? What he said made no sense.

Holding her gaze, he slowly loosened his hold on her wrists. “Dinnae do aught foolish, lass,” he said lowly. “If ye try to run, ye’ll only hurt yerself worse.”

Pain already radiated from her right ankle up her shin. She tried to experimentally roll it, only to have to bite her lower lip against the shooting agony.

He fully released her wrists, but his hands hovered over her for a moment as if she might bolt.

As the cold from the stone beneath her began to seep into her legs and bottom, so too did her strength drain away. What chance did she have against the fierce warrior crouched before her? She was alone, in the middle of nowhere, injured, and completely under his power.

“Are you…are you truly not going to hurt me?”

It was a stupid thing to ask. He hadn’t taken out her guards, chased her down, thrown her on horseback, and ridden into the night to give her a bundle of posies or play a rousing game of chess with her before returning her to Will’s protection.

The man looked at her for a long moment. “Nay, I willnae hurt ye.”

“You will not kill me?”

“Nay. ”

“You will not r-rape me?” She had to sink her teeth into her bottom lip once more to stop its wobbling.

A dark shadow crossed the man’s ice-blue eyes, and for a moment she thought the emotion she saw there was…sadness. Self-loathing. Disgust. But that couldn’t be right, for a second later, his gaze was hard and flat once more.

“Nay. I willnae rape ye. I willnae lay hands on ye at all, unless I must.”

“Why?” None of this made any sense. Why had he taken her? Why would he make promises not to touch or hurt her?

He dropped his gaze from hers. “Because it is no’ my job.”

Cold trepidation washed her. Even if she were safe for the time being from bodily harm, there was clearly a larger plan for her. Was this the same man who’d chased her through Berwick’s alleyways? Nay, the man in Berwick hadn’t been quite as tall and broad as the one before her. Still, was he working for the ones who had tortured and killed Richard?

“And what is your job?”

He grunted, his features hardening. “Enough talk.”

He reached for the hem of her skirt, and she instinctively pulled back in protest.

“Yer ankle, remember?” he bit out. He clutched her skirts in his hands and tossed them up to her stocking-covered knees.

Even with the woolen stockings covering her legs, the blast of cool autumn air was a shock. She wasn’t dressed for being out of doors. Luckily she was wearing a stout, simple blue woolen dress, but she had no cloak. The gown was already damp, grass-stained, and mud-streaked from her attempted flight earlier. The stockings were a blessing, yet her thin house slippers were not meant for hard travel. Her toes had long ago gone numb.

He grunted again, staring at her wool-covered legs. “Remove yer stocking…please,” he rasped through clenched teeth.

The strain in his voice frightened her. Yet again she was reminded of a wolf barely tethered, and she shuddered to think of what exactly he hungered for. She was no innocent. Though her relations with her husband had been staid, restrained even, she knew what men wanted.

With trembling fingers, she rolled down her right stocking, exposing her pale flesh to the morning air. Goose bumps raced across her skin, but it wasn’t entirely from the cold. There was something…powerful about the way his eyes traced her calf as it was exposed inch by inch.

Good Lord, would such a man, with the look of a savage about him, truly keep his word not to touch her?

Swallowing the tightness in her throat, she pulled the stocking completely free and held very still on the boulder .

As his big, rough hands reached for her, she willed herself not to flinch away. She feared that if she made a sudden move, he would pounce on her like a predator did its prey.

His hand closed around her ankle, and a shudder swept through her. Even though the hurt ankle had already swollen to twice its normal size, he easily looped it with thumb and forefinger. His hands looked enormous on her, roughened by weather and callused with labor of some sort. She felt very small and very fragile in that moment.

“It doesnae seem broken, only badly sprained,” he said, but he did not remove his hand. Instead, he continued to gently roll her ankle this way and that. She flinched in pain but pressed her lips together to keep from crying out. All the while, she watched him.

It was her first opportunity to truly look at him in the light of day. Last night, he had appeared as if he were a specter moving out of the shadows, a nightmare come to life. In the gray light of dawn, she saw that he was just a man. Or mayhap just was the wrong word, for he was all man, every line hard and honed, every angle sharp and strong.

Those pale blue eyes were fixed on her ankle at the moment, for which she was grateful. They moved so quickly from cold to hot, from flat to stormy, that she found it hard to meet his gaze. And she didn’t want to contemplate what the eerie intensity in his eyes when he looked at her leg meant .

His dark brown hair was pulled back at the nape of his neck, but it was not the orderly queue of a refined man. The dark stubble that was almost long enough to be called a beard on his cheeks and jaw spoke the same story—that of a man half-wild.

He wore a simple brown woolen cloak over a plain tunic and breeches of similar nondescript color in the style of the English. She did not miss, however, the fact that each of his leather boots had the hilt of a dagger tucked into it.

Her mind leapt back to what this man had done to Will and Lambert and Ewan. Who knew what had become of Arnold? She must have stiffened, for he suddenly looked up at her.

“What is it? Did I hurt ye?” His voice was surprisingly soft as his gaze searched her face.

“My ankle is fine,” she said tightly. “I only wish I knew if my friends were as well as I am—or if…” A sudden, horrible thought occurred to her. “Or if they live at all.”

She’d abandoned Will, injured, bleeding, and about to be overtaken by her captor. Though Lambert and Ewan had been alive when last she’d seen them, she didn’t know what this man had done before scooping her up and riding off with her.

The man’s stony features hardened even more. “Leave that matter be, lass. They are none of yer concern any longer.”

She felt her eyes go round. “You…you killed them, di dn’t you?”

Hot, helpless tears suddenly sprang into her eyes. She’d already lost her husband, and now she’d lost the only friends she’d had in so many solitary months. “You are a monster,” she hissed, dashing the tears from her eyes angrily.

A muscle jumped in his jaw behind his dark scruff. “Those men are alive,” he said, his voice a low warning, “but aye, I am a monster. Ye would do well to remember that. Ye’ll do as I say and no’ cause trouble, else ye’ll answer to me.”

He rose slowly over her, and from her position seated on the boulder, he looked as tall and broad as one of the large oak trees behind him.

Suddenly he yanked off his cloak and tossed it to her.

“Ye are cold. Put that on. We rest for an hour. Ye’d best get whatever sleep ye can. And I’ll warn ye again—dinnae think to make trouble.”

He stalked several paces away to where his horse still waited patiently, but even with his back turned, Lillian got the distinct impression that he was aware of her every move, even the pounding of her heart.

She hurriedly shoved her foot back in her stocking, then slid from the boulder onto the mossy ground. The cloak, large enough to fit his wide shoulders and tall frame, swallowed her up. It smelled of pine and wood smoke and something else—man.

She watched him from between the folds of the cloak as he tended to the horse, trying to make sense of what little he’d said. Will and the others were alive? Why would such a fearsome man show mercy of any kind?

Before any explanation came to mind, exhaustion claimed her and she fell into a deep sleep.