Chapter 46

CHAPTER 46

H er head full of mulled wine and a smile upon her lips, Ciara walked to her bedchamber. Despite all the terrible things happening around them and the looming threat of attack, she couldn’t help but feel a happiness in her heart that she had not often felt before in her life. Magnus made her feel things she never dared hope she’d feel in her lifetime.

She stepped into her bedchamber and closed the door behind her. The moment she did that, her skin broke out in gooseflesh and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Something was wrong. She wheeled around to see two figures emerge from the shadows, dressed in black from head to toe and wearing masks over their heads that revealed only their eyes. She didn’t know the men, nor were they wearing any identifying sigils.

It didn’t matter though. She knew who they were. “Damned cowards.”

The two masked figures rushed forward and Ciara reached for the dagger she usually wore on her hip. Her fingers brushed nothing but cloth though. She realized quickly she hadn’t put her dagger on her belt after her bath.

“Bollocks,” she muttered.

Ciara launched herself at the two men, throwing wild punches. The first man grunted as her first connected with his jaw and he staggered backward. She opened her mouth to scream, to sound the alarm and warn the MacLeods they were under attack, but a man grabbed her from behind, clamping his hand over her mouth. His other hand snaked around her waist and he held her tightly as the first man righted himself and approached her.

Her eyes widened when she saw the shackles he pulled from the bag on his hip, and she struggled in her captor’s grasp. She writhed and wriggled, desperate to break his grasp. He held her tightly though, so she drove her head backward and into the man’s face. She heard a muffled grunt as his nose crumpled beneath the blow. It did the trick as his hold on her loosened but as she turned to run, his fist connected with her jaw and she staggered backward.

Ciara reeled, her head spun, and her mouth was filled with the coppery taste of her own blood. She went down hard on her backside as her vision wavered. Knowing if she didn’t move, she was going to be taken, Ciara staggered to her feet again as the second man stepped forward. The breath exploded from her lungs as he drove his fist into her midsection and Ciara fell again, landing on all fours as she tried desperately to catch her breath. Croaking and unable to cry out, the man kicked her in the side, sending her sprawling onto the stone floor.

“Be careful with her,” the man in black hissed, his voice clipped and short. “Do not damage her. We were warned to keep from damaging her.”

“She attacked us!”

“She’s a woman. Just put the bloody shackles on her.”

Ciara’s vision wavered as she lay on the stone, her voice little more than a hoarse whisper as she tried to draw a breath. The man stood over her, his eyes narrowed as he glared at her like he’d enjoy nothing more than to spend a little more time beating her. But he did as he was told and put the iron shackles around her wrist, then a gag over her mouth and a rough woolen sack over her head to prevent her from seeing.

Once they had her trussed up, the first man picked her up and slung her over his shoulder. She was still struggling to breathe and unable to muster more than a creaking whisper as they slipped out of her bedchamber. She tried to struggle, which earned her another slap upside the head hard enough to take the fight out of her. Frustrated, angry, and terrified, Ciara lay slumped over the man’s shoulder as limp as a wet rag.

The men knew the layout of the castle well, for they were able to move down the corridors without being seen or raising an alarm. It was as if they had been there before. It made her think about the attack on the castle and she wondered if it had all been a pretext for gaining the knowledge they needed to slip in and out unseen. It made sense.

The two men carried her out of a passageway and through the darkness of the night to the stables. The sack over her head rode up enough to allow Ciara to see the bodies of two stable workers she recognized. A sharp pang of guilt and sadness immediately pierced her heart. The man slung her over the back of the horse like a sack of grain then mounted up behind her.

“Ride like the devil himself is on your heels,” the man said in his curt English accent. “Do not wait for me.”

They shared a chuckle then spurred their houses forward, riding hard and fast through the yard and then the sallyport. They were already on the land bridge into the village before Ciara heard the first voices raised in alarm. They rode through the sleeping village then plunged into the darkness of the woods, spiriting her away. This was her father’s doing. The men who’d taken her were English—Fairfax’s men, of course—but this had been her father’s plan. She felt it.

Ciara was bounced and jostled roughly as they rode. The men had little care for her comfort. They rode for what felt like hours, but she knew it wasn’t nearly that long. The horses stopped and the men dismounted. She heard many voices around her. She knew they had not ridden long enough to get to the valley where the army was encamped, but there was obviously a large detachment waiting for her captors to return from their raid.

She was pulled from the horse roughly then marched through soft, sandy ground. The air was thick with salt, telling her wherever they’d taken her, she was close to the sea. And then she was guided up a wooden plank that bobbed and sprang beneath her feet and Ciara knew was being marched up onto a birlinn.

“Sit down, lass.”

A hand on her shoulder pushed her down onto her backside roughly. A moment later, the sack was yanked off her head and Ciara found herself staring into the cold, reptilian eyes of Lord Edmund Fairfax. His thin, bloodless lips curled back in a feral smile as he took her in.

“Hello, future wife of mine,” he said. “It is lovely to see you again.”