Susana and the Scot (32 page)

He ordered his company to be on their guard for any such persons and to make themselves as unobtrusive as possible. But they were a large company, with horses. Still, Hamish and Isobel were nearly here. They would grab them, mount immediately, and hie away as quickly as possible, putting as much distance between them and Scrabster's men as they could.

As Hamish and Isobel neared—the latter tugging an incongruously large bow and quiver—he and Susana scuttled back down the ridge. When they reached a point where they couldn't be seen from the lookouts in the castle, Susana rushed over to Isobel and wrenched her into a ferocious hug. There was weeping—Susana, not Isobel. Isobel merely rolled her eyes and suffered her mother's attentions.

Andrew, overwhelmed with relief to see his friend alive and hale, hugged him as well, and while there may have been a prickling in his eyes, the embrace was far more manly and not nearly as demonstrative. They clapped each other on the back, as men do.

“Damn, I'm glad to see you,” he said, though his voice threatened to fail him.

“Not as happy as I am to see you,” Hamish said. “I was worrying how we would make it all the way back to Dounreay on foot.” He forced a laugh, but Andrew could tell it was an effort.

Andrew smiled. “It's a nice day for a walk.”

“Aye. But I am glad I doona need to.” He glanced over his shoulder. “We should go. They're looking for us. Their men are crawling all over these woods.”

“Aye. At once.” Andrew signaled to his company and they all mounted up. He headed for Breacher as well, but as he did, Isobel broke away from Susana and threw herself into his arms. Though his tension ran high, and he desperately wanted to leave this place, he couldn't break the embrace. It was likely his hug was as fierce as her mother's had been. It was such a relief to know she was safe. Such a relief to hold her slight body in his arms. To feel her arms close around his neck.

She pulled back before he did, but it was to set her forehead on his, as she had the day they'd met. She stared into his eyes—hers crossing slightly at the propinquity. “You came for us,” she gusted.

“Of course we did.” His pulse thudded and he had to hug her again.

“We should go,” Susana said.

“Aye. At once.” Andrew pulled back and brushed Isobel's hair from her face. He thumbed at a smudge on her cheek. While she looked sallow and wan, and terribly bedraggled, a customary mischievous light danced in her eye. He was gratified that this ordeal had not broken her spirit.

Andrew stood and headed for Breacher, but Isobel tugged on his tunic. “I want to ride with you,” she said.

He glanced at Susana, noting her slightly put-out expression, but she nodded, so he lifted Isobel up onto Breacher's back and mounted behind her. Susana rode with Hamish, which he found bothersome, but the fact that Isobel had chosen him warmed his heart. He couldn't resist wrapping his arms around her as the rode back down the road to the west. The first town they would hit once they left Scrabster's lands was Brims. He intended to halt there and give everyone the rest they so desperately needed. Scrabster wouldn't dare follow them there.

Andrew sidled up to Hamish and Susana so they could chat as they rode. “So tell me,” he asked. “What happened?”

Isobel glanced at him over her shoulder. Her expression was uncharacteristically innocent. “Nothing. I didn't do anything. I swear.”

Hamish laughed. “You did, too, you little minx. For one thing, she rescued me from certain death.”

Susana frowned. “Certain death?”

“Aye,” Hamish muttered. “They planned to kill me and blame this all on you.”

“On me?”

“On Alexander, to be precise. Scrabster was planning to use this incident in his campaign to discredit your brother.”

Andrew's eyes narrowed.
Hell.
Just as he'd suspected. Sometimes he hated always being right.

“How do you know this?” Susana asked.

Isobel fluttered her lashes. “Men are notoriously loose-lipped when they think you canna hear them. I learned a lot … just pretending to be asleep.” It occurred to Andrew that this was a tactic she might use again in the future and considered himself forewarned.

“I'm sorry to say, Keir was working with them,” Hamish said. “He wore a black hood, but I recognized his voice.”

“Oh, aye,” Isobel said. “That was him.” She sent her mother a repentant look. “He might have been one of the men I stabbed.”

Susana's eyes widened. “Might have been?” And then. “You
stabbed
someone?”

Isobel shrugged. “He grabbed me. I dinna want to be grabbed.”

“Good for you, darling.” Susana's chin firmed. “You should always stab a man who grabs you when you doona want to be grabbed.”

“Aye.” Isobel nodded. “That was my thinking.”

Andrew chuckled. He wasn't sure why. He frequently had urges to grab Susana. “Would you mind starting from the beginning? So we get the whole story?”

Hamish and Isobel exchanged glances. At some unspoken accord, Hamish began. “I was stationed in Isobel's sitting room. The door opened behind me and as I turned to see who it was, someone coshed me on the head.”

“He was coshed,” Isobel added with far too much enthusiasm. “There was blood everywhere.”

“Oh, dear lord,” Susana muttered.

“I woke up in the carriage, bound hand and foot. When we reached the castle, they separated us,” Hamish said. “They put me in the dungeon.”

“And they put me in Scrabster's solar.” Why Isobel grinned was a mystery.

“She escaped and came down to rescue me.”

“Oh, holy God.” Susana clutched her chest.

Hamish patted her shoulder. It didn't seem to calm her. “Isobel was really verra clever—”

“Thank you.”

“She created a diversion—”

“I started a fire.”

Susana made a sound, something strangled. “Lord have mercy.”

Isobel's eyes widened with innocence. “I dinna know they kept their munitions storage
in
the solar.”

“Half the castle blew up. We were able to sneak out during the tumult.”

“I stabbed the men who tried to grab me and…” Isobel stared at her mother and fluttered her lashes. “I might have shot someone, too.”

“She found a bow.”

“Someone just left it lying there. What was I supposed to do?”

Hamish sent Andrew a skeptical look. “I really doona think she's five,” he murmured in an aside.

“Well,” Susana gusted. “I'm just verra relieved you're all right—both of you—and that we now know who was behind all this. That was one of the worst things … not knowing. I'm so angry at Keir I could spit nails.”

“Apparently, he's been working with Scrabster all along,” Hamish said sympathetically. “Although some of the things he said made me wonder—”

What, exactly, Hamish had wondered was lost as a cry of warning went up among the men riding behind them. “They're coming!”

Hamish glanced at Andrew and with no hesitation, they both set their heels and their mounts sprang forward. Aye, they could stay and fight, but with Susana and Isobel with them, he wouldn't dare it. Better to run for the border and seek asylum with the Baron of Brims.

At full tilt, they rounded a corner … and found themselves facing a battery of Scrabster's men blocking the road. Though they were all on foot, they held weapons—everything from swords and arrows to pistols. Andrew had no choice but to slow down and come to a halt. The trees in this wood were thick—too thick to ride through without risking injury—but there was a small clearing to the left. Andrew analyzed the situation and quickly realized that position was their best bet when facing a threat from the front and rear. It would force their attackers to assemble before them. Aye, they would be cornered. But his men were some of the best-trained warriors he knew. Scrabster's men seemed to be conscribed farmers and merchants, and many of them were nervous to boot.

The men chasing them wheeled up on their mounts and circled their position, but held steady.

Given Scrabster's goal of claiming Susana, it didn't surprise Andrew that the men didn't attack, they merely held his company there as they waited … for something. What that something was, he had no clue and didn't care.

He signaled to his men to dismount and prepare to fight. On horseback, they were far too easy a target. He slipped from Breacher's saddle and helped Isobel down as Hamish did the same with Susana, nudging them both to the middle of the company, so they were shielded from any stray shots. And then he unsheathed his sword.

Silence hummed in the clearing as the two forces faced off. Andrew's men bristled with tension, poised to defend their position. The moments ticked away, measured by the beat of his heart. The only sound was the drone of bees and the occasional call of a gull.

That silence broke with the rumble of carriage wheels. All heads turned. A dark, unmarked coach rolled up and Scrabster levered out, followed by Keir.

That Keir's hand was bound—clearly where Isobel had stabbed him—wasn't as satisfying as it should have been. She should have aimed for parts south, in Andrew's opinion.

“Susana!” Scrabster's reedy voice warbled, flecked with rage. He pushed through the crowd of his men and limped forward. There was an arrow lodged in his thigh and his hair was singed. But it was the pistol in his hand that caught Andrew's attention. It was pointed at Susana.

Without thought, Andrew stepped in front of her holding his weapon aloft.

She didn't cooperate with his protection. She pushed past him and snarled, “You bastard. I'll see you hang for this.”

Scrabster laughed. “Is that any way to speak to your intended?”

“I will not bluidy marry you.”

“Oh, you will.” His eyes narrowed; his gaze flickered over their company and landed on Isobel. “You will, if you want your daughter to live.”

With something akin to horror, Andrew watched as the pistol veered toward Isobel. He shifted his position and nudged her behind him. It vexed him that she, like her mother, wouldn't stay shielded. She poked her head out and announced, “You're a bad man. My mama will never marry you.”

Scrabster's ratlike face scrunched up into a moue of fury. “You set my castle on fire, you little fiend. Blew it up! You're the devil's spawn.”

“
You're
the devil's spawn,” Isobel retorted.

Susana shushed her and turned her vehemence back on Scrabster. “She's a girl. And you kidnapped her. You got what you deserved. And as for you lot…” She whirled on Scrabster's men, pinning them with a fierce glare. “You are all going to hang for this. Ask yourself if your loyalty to this wretched laird is worth your life, because a magistrate willna take your loyalty into account when he sentences you to die.”

This seemed to have some effect on the men surrounding them, the farmers and merchants especially. They began to murmur and shift their feet.

Unaccountably, Scrabster chuckled. “Be reasonable, Susana. I will have my way. And if you doona marry me, you will force me to take what I want by other means.”

Susana stiffened. “Such as?”

His smile was reptilian. “I believe you have one more unmarried sister. She will do just as well for my needs.”

“Leave Lana out of this.”

“Aye,” Isobel said. “Leave Lana out of this.”

Scrabster turned his glare on Isobel; his expression sent a chill down Andrew's spine. “Be silent, you monster.”

“She's not a monster,” Susana bellowed.

“She shot me.” There was a hint of petulance in his tone as he gestured at his leg.

Isobel stepped forward, peering at the wound. “You really should have that arrow out,” she suggested.

It was a logical suggestion. No telling why it enraged Scrabster as it did. “Enough,” he howled. “I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you all.” His gaze wavered back to Isobel. “Starting with you.”

Several things happened at the same time.

First, Andrew was aware of Susana's growl and her movement by his side as she lifted her bow. Second was the terror at the tinge of deranged determination in Scrabster's eye and the tightening of his finger on the trigger. Next was the burning determination that this bastard would
not
hurt Isobel, not if Andrew could help it. He launched himself to the right, throwing himself between the pistol and the girl.

And finally, he was aware of a loud explosion and a searing pain in his chest.

And then, of course, there was nothing.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY

Horror curled through Susana as Scrabster held his weapon on Isobel. Horror and anger. She knew, in the seconds before he fired, that Isobel, having stepped out into full view, was too far away for her to shield. But if she could hit Scrabster before he could fire, she could protect her daughter. With seething resolve, she lifted her bow and shot, without even aiming. There was no time to aim; she had to trust her instinct and pray the arrow would fly true.

She was a fraction of a second too late. Even as the arrow thudded in his chest and a bolt of satisfaction whipped through her, he squeezed the trigger. A cloud of smoke erupted from the pistol and a heart-stopping boom echoed through the clearing.

Susana didn't even wait for Scrabster to fall. She whirled toward her daughter and …

Her heart stopped. Stopped right there in her chest, a cold dead lump of flesh.

Oh, Isobel was fine. She stood her ground, whole and uninjured, but there was an expression of shock on her face as she stared down at Andrew's body, lying on the ground. He did not move. A red stain blossomed on his snowy shirt.

To Susana, it felt like a dream. A bad one. As though walking through a thick fog, she made her way to his side. Isobel dropped to her knees and shook him, crying his name, although it seemed from very far away.