Captured by a Laird (26 page)

“’Tis your daughters who are the heiresses,” Patrick said with a smile that sent a chill up her spine. He turned to his men. “Take the wee lasses.”

“Don’t touch them!” Alison cried. She fought to get to her daughters, but she was held fast. “Nay, ye can’t take them!”

Her daughters’ screams rang in her ears as two men wrested them off the ponies and onto their horses. The breath went out of Alison.
Please, God, no!

“Ye can’t do this!” She kicked and bit the man who held her, but she couldn’t break free.

“I’ll take the mouthy lassie,” Patrick’s brother said.

“Mother!” Beatrix cried out as from he lifted her from the other man’s horse, plopped her in front of him, and fastened one beefy arm around her.

“Patrick, take me instead,” Alison pleaded. “Take me and leave my daughters!”

“Ye must know I can’t leave the wee heiresses behind—at least not alive,” Patrick said, then turned to her daughters, who were wailing their hearts out, and said in a falsely pleasant voice, “Ready to ride?”

“Don’t leave me here!” Alison cried. “I’ll do anything ye say.
Anything
. Just take me with my daughters.”

“And the good prior said ye were an unbiddable lass,” Patrick said. “But then, he doesn’t know much about women.”

CHAPTER 34

“David, wait,” Will called from the floor above.

“I can’t,” David said over his shoulder, and continued down the stairs two at a time, with Robbie close behind him.

“But I know where they’ve gone!”

David came to an abrupt halt and leaned back to look around the curve of the wheeled stairs at his youngest brother.

“Bea left a message,” Will said. “Come see!”

A short time later, David stood with his brothers examining a childish drawing scrawled on the stone wall.

“Bea must have used this blackened stick from the fire,” Robbie said, picking it up from the floor.

“Her mother will be angry—” David started to say, but then he remembered that both mother and daughter were gone.

“She signed it so we’d know it was from her,” Will said, pointing at the large smudged “B” beneath it.

“’Tis only a drawing,” David said, disappointment weighing him down like a boulder.

“Will’s right. See, that’s the three of them riding,” Robbie said, pointing to the three longhaired stick figures on four-legged creatures. “They’re going to this building with a wall around it. Do ye suppose it’s a castle?”

Perhaps the child did mean to leave them a message. David was afraid to hope.

“Isn’t that a cross on the building?” Will said.

“Then ’tis not a castle, but a church…” David thought aloud as he examined the scrawled drawing more closely. “Those are trees there, and that wavy line must be a burn.”

He ran his hands through his hair.
Think! Where did Alison take them?
It was obviously a place the child had seen before. There were only the three of them in the drawing. No matter how anxious Alison was to leave him, she would not take the girls very far on her own. It had to be nearby.

The answer came to him like a bolt of lightning: the abbey, where the prior was her late husband’s kinsman.

Alison had left him, and she could not have chosen a refuge that hurt him more.

She had gone to the Blackadders.

“We must ride hard for the abbey,” he said, though he suspected the Blackadders would have moved Alison and the girls by now.

That’s what he would have done in their place.

***

Alison’s fear mounted as they rode farther and farther away. Would anyone even look for them before Patrick had her and her daughters locked away inside Tulliallan Castle? And Patrick was well on his way to becoming as loathsome as her former husband.

She did her best to ignore his erection pressing against her backside, but when he attempted to cup her breast, she slapped his hand. “Stop it.”

“No need to play coy with me. We’ll be man and wife soon,” he said against her ear. “I’ve waited years for this, and I know ye have too.”

Was he mad or so vain that he had deluded himself into believing she desired him?

“Ye should have been my wife from the start,” he said. “I wanted to kill my kinsmen every time I saw him with ye. When he died, it was my turn.”

Patrick had always made her uncomfortable, but she had not realized he harbored such notions about the two of them.

“My uncle and the prior said nothing about my marrying you,” she said. It seemed unlikely he would let them go if he knew his father had a different plan, but that was the only card she held.

“I know they told ye we would wed,” he said. “That was the agreement my father reached with the Douglases.”

“’Tis not what I was told.”

“Don’t lie to me,” he said. “The prior told me they discussed the annulment with ye, and ye refused. Why would ye do that?”

“They did speak of an annulment,” she said, “but they said it was your father I must wed.”

“That bastard!” Patrick whipped his horse so hard that they jolted forward.

She gripped the horse’s mane to keep from falling and glanced over her shoulder at her daughters, who looked so frightened she could not bear it.

“So my father and the Douglases expected me to wait, like my idiot brother,” he bit out, “and wed one of your daughters when she comes of age.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed.
Please, God, don’t let this happen.
Unfortunately, the betrothals could easily be broken. Without David’s protection, her daughters were in very real danger of falling victim to the Blackadders and her brothers’ schemes.

“Since your family did not deliver ye as promised, we Blackadders will change the terms to suit ourselves.”

“How so?” she asked, though she did not expect to like the new terms any better.

“You’ll be mine, of course,” he said, pressing against her. “My father will be happy to take one of your daughters. He has a weakness for verra young lasses.”

Alison felt nauseous. “Wedderburn will murder all of ye for even thinking of touching my daughters,” she said. “He’s verra fond of them.”

“The Beast is
fond
of them?” Patrick laughed. “He’ll be in a rage for certain, but not because he cares for them.”

“He does,” she insisted, emotion making her choke on the words, “as much as if they were his own daughters.”

She imagined David returning to the castle to find them gone. Why had she not told someone where she was going?

“What Wedderburn cares about is that we’ve ruined his own plans for the wee heiresses.”

“He’s not like you Blackadders or my family,” Alison said. “He pledged to protect my daughters with his life.”

Alison turned again to see her daughters, who rode behind them, each in the clutches of a Blackadder. They looked so small and helpless that she wanted to weep. She held back her tears and gave them what she hoped was a reassuring nod.

“Believe me, the Beast is no different from us,” Patrick said. “He’d sell those lassies to the devil to keep the lands he stole.”

She thought of Robbie and Will, who already had a bond of friendship with her daughters and would grow up to be the best of men. Her objection to the betrothals seemed trivial now. As David said, his brothers would make fine husbands, unlike the vile men her family and the Blackadders would have them wed.

“When I get my hands on Wedderburn, I’ll make him suffer for every time he touched you,” Patrick said, his lips against her ear. “I’ll punish him until he begs for death.”

CHAPTER 35

Alison’s hope that David would somehow find them faded with each mile they traveled. Most likely he had not even returned home yet to discover they were gone.

Yet she would not accept this fate. Escape was not possible now, while they were accompanied by a dozen armed warriors and she and her daughters were each held by a different rider. She would have to wait until after they reached Tulliallan Castle. But no matter how long it took, she would escape with her daughters and find her way back to Blackadder Castle.

And to David.

She heard the drum of galloping hoof beats and turned to see a group of riders appear at the top of the hill beside them. A moment later, the riders swept down the hillside like a wild river. Alison recognized David brandishing his sword at the front of the fast-approaching riders, and she knew her prayers had been answered.

The Blackadders fell into chaos, shouting to each other, while their horses whinnied and reared.

“God damn Humes!” Patrick said as he tried to control his mount.

An instant later, the Hume warriors rode into the Blackadders, filling the air with their war cries. Alison struggled to keep her daughters in sight, but she could only catch glimpses of them through the tumult.

“Mother! Mother!” Over the clank of swords and shouts, she heard them crying for her.

She elbowed Patrick as hard as she could, catching him off guard, and slid off his horse. As soon as she hit the ground, she realized her mistake. All around her, the battle raged on horseback. Swords flashed across her vision, and horses shied and sidestepped. If she did not get out of the midst of this quickly, she was going to be trampled.

She heard a roar and turned around to see David charging his horse through the mêlée toward her. Time seemed to slow and the chaos around her blurred. She saw only David coming for her, swinging his sword on one side and then the other, cutting down every Blackadder man who blocked his way.

She screamed as someone jerked her up from behind by her hair. David’s dirk flew above her head. She heard a
thunk
and a wail of agony as her hair was suddenly released. She fell to her hands and knees. Mud from the horses’ hooves spattered her face as she struggled to get back on her feet before she was crushed.

David charged forward, cutting down one last man between them. Without slowing his horse, he leaned down over its side and swung her out of the mud and into the air. She landed with a jarring thump behind him on his horse.

“Save my daughters!” she cried, pointing in the direction she had last seen them.

“Ian, follow me!” David shouted to one of his men, and spurred his horse up the hill, away from the raging battle.

He halted under an old oak a few yards up the hill and dumped her to the ground. She was not hurt, but she lost her footing and fell backward on her bottom with her muddy skirts askew.

“Don’t let her loose,” he told Ian. “Tie her to the tree if ye have to.”

Then he turned his horse and rejoined the fight.

Alison scrambled to her feet and strained to see where her daughters were.

“There!” she screamed when she saw a rider galloping off with Margaret down the path through the wood. A moment later, Patrick and his brother galloped off in the opposite direction with Beatrix.

“Ach, he’s split the lasses up to make to make it harder for us to catch them both,” Ian said beside her. “And he’s left the rest of his men behind to hold us off while they escape.”

David was the first to break through the Blackadder warriors, and he rode after Beatrix. Though it had not taken him long, Patrick and his brother had gained a good deal of distance.

The other Humes were bogged down in the fight.

“Someone must go after Margaret before it’s too late,” Alison cried in frustration.

Robbie, who was not in the fight—probably at David’s order—was close to the path through the wood. She watched him skirt around the fighting men, then take off at a mad gallop down the narrow path. He disappeared into the wood.

“Robbie is just a lad. Ye must help him!” she said, pulling at Ian’s arm. She was frantic.

“Nay,” Ian said.

“If ye won’t go, let me have your horse, and I will.”

“The laird said to keep ye here,” Ian said, glaring down at her. “Ye may have fooled those two dimwits at the gate this morning, but I know better.”

When she started for his horse, he blocked her path. He fingered the rope around his waist to remind her of David’s order to tie her if necessary. She beat on his shoulder, but he would not budge. There was nothing she could do but wait.

She felt as if she had died a thousand deaths before Robbie emerged from the brush. When she saw Margaret clinging to him on the back of his horse, tears welled in her eyes.
Praise God!

Robbie rode up the hill to her. She saw the blood-soaked sleeve of his sword arm as he handed Margaret down to her from his horse, and she wanted to weep for what this fourteen-year-old lad had to do to bring her daughter back.

“You’re a good and brave young man, Robbie,” Alison said. “I’m forever in your debt.”

Robbie’s cheeks flushed. He gave her a quick nod, then turned his horse and rode into the fight.

Alison covered Margaret’s eyes to prevent her from seeing more bloodshed and hummed to block out the men’s screams as they died. Dear God, what had she done? The blood spilled today was on her hands. None of this would have happened if she had not left the protection of the castle.

Margaret lifted her head and asked, “Where’s Beatrix?”

“Don’t worry,” Alison said, and brushed her daughter’s hair from her face. “David’s gone after her.”

Margaret dropped her head against Alison’s chest, as if that was all she needed to hear.

Many things had become clear to Alison today. She had learned who she could trust and who she could not. And she knew with absolutely certainty that David would not return without her daughter.

***

A murderous rage coursed through David’s limbs, pulsed in his chest, and tinged the edges of his vision blood red. The Blackadders would pay for taking his wife and stepdaughters with their miserable lives.

Riding at a breakneck gallop, he was steadily closing the distance between him and the two horses. Patrick Blackadder was on one while his brother rode with Beatrix. All David could see of her behind the brother’s bulky frame was a bit of bright skirt and a tangle of dark hair blowing in the wind.

He’d never let them take her.

He spurred his horse to go faster still. Patrick Blackadder looked over his shoulder and saw him coming.