The Chief (38 page)

A slow smile spread across his cruel face. “Bring her along,” he ordered to the man still holding her. “Perhaps she can be useful after all. And if she can't…” He shrugged.

She knew what that shrug meant.

Though undoubtedly his motivation hadn't been to help her, she shot Arthur Campbell a look of gratitude, but he'd already disappeared into the crowd of guardsmen manning the second galley. But his timely intervention was only a temporary reprieve; her father would not lift a finger to help her. And Tor…

She did not doubt that he would come after her. He did not love her, but he would see it as his duty to protect her. But would he discover what had become of them in time?

Success should feel better than this. Once again the team's skills had proved invaluable—from Lamont's tracking, to MacSorley's seafaring, to MacRuairi's instincts that led them to head toward Dunstaffnage. Tor doubted he
would have been able to do it without them. But throughout the entire journey—even when they'd caught up with Brother John and MacRuairi had “persuaded” him to divulge who he worked for—Tor couldn't shake the heaviness that surrounded him like a black cloud.

Christina's interference could have destroyed everything. But she was only trying to help. He couldn't blame her. She'd been tricked and had only tried to do the right thing. It was his fault for telling her too much. He couldn't let that happen again. He'd done what needed to be done. Or so he told himself countless times. But why couldn't he stop seeing her crushed face?

He adjusted his
cotun
, trying to relieve the nagging discomfort in his chest.

He wanted to put the past behind them. When the men left, he hoped to do just that and return to some state of normalcy—if such a thing existed with Christina. Nothing had been normal since the first moment he'd set eyes on her.

Two nights after he'd left, Tor strode up the sea-gate stairs, his mission an unqualified success. He'd prevented the clerk from passing on the information and learned who was responsible for the recent attacks on Dunvegan. John MacDougall of Lorne had earned himself a powerful enemy, and Angus Og MacDonald had a new ally against his treacherous kinsman. Tor would no longer stand to the side in the feud between the two powerful Island clans.

As he approached the Hall, he was thinking about what he could say to his wife to ease the discord between them, but right away he sensed that something was wrong. It was too dark. Too quiet. A funereal pall had been cast over the place.

Rhuairi and Colyne rushed out to meet him. From their expressions he knew it was bad. “What is it?” he demanded.

They looked uneasily back and forth, but it was Colyne who spoke first. “It's the lady,
ri tuath.”

A chill ran down his spine. He forced himself to speak
calmly, though every muscle inside him tensed on high alert. “Is she ill?”

Colyne shook his head. Rhuairi said, “Nay, chief, she's gone.”

His head rang as if he'd just been clabbered on his helm with a sword. It took him a moment to realize what the seneschal had said. He grabbed Rhuairi by the clasp of his plaid brat. “What do you mean, ‘gone'?”

Tor listened to the seneschal explain that she'd left with the men going to Mull with a mixture of disbelief and rising panic as the truth sunk in. She'd taken him up on his foolish vow to permit her to retire to a nunnery. He'd never dreamed that she'd actually do it, though why he didn't know. He'd given her a way out; why was he surprised that she'd used it?

Lord knew he'd given her no reason to stay. She'd done nothing but try to please him since he'd married her. She'd given him her heart, and he'd given her nothing in return. He'd been a cold-hearted bastard, driving her away.

Alone. That was what he wanted, wasn't it? To feel nothing but emptiness? But it wasn't emptiness that he felt at all but raw, searing pain. He felt as if he'd just had a blade plunged into his chest and had his insides ripped apart.

A lifetime of loneliness stretched out before him. A lifetime of nothing but war and duty to his clan. A lifetime of misery.

God, what had he done?

He should be furious that she'd dared leave him. Highlanders were known for their pride, and he was no different. But all he could think of was how badly he must have hurt her for her to do this. He felt ill just thinking about it. He had to get her back. Not because she was his wife—his possession—but because this was where she belonged. Here. By his side.

Why he felt so strongly he didn't know. But he would have to make her see it. No matter what it took.

He continued into the Hall, the two men hustling after him. A few clansmen were sleeping around the fire, but most sat quietly at the long tables. The room was just the way he'd left it, but different. Somber. As if all of the joy had been extinguished. His dogs lifted their heads as he entered. Instead of rushing to greet him, they gave him a disappointed look and laid their heads back on their paws.

“Where's Murdoch?” he demanded.

Both men looked grim. Colyne shook his head. “He is with the men who were traveling to Mull. They've not returned.”

“What do you mean they haven't returned?” Tor exploded. “Even with the added travel time to Iona, they should have been back yesterday.”

Neither man responded. His stomach took a sudden turn as if he'd just swallowed a mouthful of rancid beef. Panic welled up inside him, but he tamped it down. She was fine. There had to be some explanation. But Rhuairi hadn't finished. “This arrived for you not an hour ago. The messenger said it was for your eyes only.”

Tor unfolded it, the premonition of doom suffocating him.

His heart stopped and the blood drained from his face as he read the crudely written words on the scrap of parchment. Words that changed his life. “Men killed. English took your lady. Dumfries. Do not delay.”

Do not delay
. They'd murdered his men and meant to kill her as well.

The loss of his men enraged him. He wanted to kill someone. But the thought of Christina in danger…

Bile rose up the back of his throat. He thought himself fearless, but fear unlike anything he'd ever known consumed him—black, soul-eating fear that tore like acid through the steel encasing his heart. He felt raw. Exposed. And more terrified than he'd ever been in his life.

If the news of her leaving him had jolted him from his emotional stupor, the news that she was now a prisoner of the English was like a lightning rod of clarity, forcing him to acknowledge the truth.

He loved her.

Too late, he realized what a fool he'd been. Stubborn pride in the belief that he was impervious to emotion had blinded him from what had been there all along. It was the reason he could never stop thinking about her. The reason he looked for excuses to spend time with her. The reason it felt so different to make love to her. It was what made him content to hold her in his arms for hours and listen to her voice as she read him those silly, romantic tales. It was the reason he wanted to wake up beside her every day for the rest of his life. It was the reason his chest twisted when he walked into a room and she looked up to see him, a wide smile spreading across her face.

She'd brought warmth back into his life, broken through the icy shell that he'd erected around his heart, and dug down deep to find emotions long buried.

And now he might never have the chance to tell her.

Images long suppressed flashed before him. His mother's naked, broken body covered in bruises and blood. The look of terror fixed for eternity in her gaze. And then he remembered the rest. How he'd thrown himself over her and refused to let his father's men take her body away. How he'd cried. How the pain had burned and ravaged him, just like it did now.

It couldn't happen to her, too. The thought of never seeing her again…never touching her…never inhaling that soft, flowery scent was unbearable. He couldn't lose her.

Something inside him snapped. Rage. Madness. A single-minded determination to find her and to strike back with the sword of vengeance. He would hunt down every man responsible for the murder of his men, and if they'd
harmed one silky dark hair on her head, he vowed to make their deaths slow and painful.

Edward's minions had made a fatal mistake. In killing Tor's men and capturing his bride, the English had made Scotland's war
his
war.

His course was clear. Tor began immediate preparations to rejoin the men at the broch. To have any chance of rescuing Christina, he needed them. Surprisingly, the admission didn't bother him. Before he left, he gave Rhuairi a short message to send to MacDonald: “
We
are ready.”

He'd made his choice. There was no turning back.

“I apologize for the captain's manners, Lady Christina. It appears he was a bit overzealous in his questioning.”

A bit? Christina stared at the richly outfitted and impeccably groomed English commander, seated opposite her in the luxuriously appointed solar of Dumfries Castle. His eyes told her that he was not at all sorry. But beating a woman—even a Scotswoman—was un knightly. Lord Seagrave, with his crisp white-and-gold embroidered tabard and gleaming mail, struck her as the type of man who didn't like to sully himself with the more unpleasant aspects of his position, as the commander of the English garrison at Dumfries Castle in Galloway. At around fifty years of age, he was one of the king's most experienced commanders in Scotland, having taken part in most of the major engagements for the past decade.

Though she wanted to throw his false apology back in his face and rail at him for attacking their ship for no reason and killing all those men, she knew that to protect her husband and family she had to continue playing the frightened, simpering girl as she'd done since her capture. The past two days had been the longest of her life. Horrified by the senseless killing of her husband's men, she'd lived in a constant state of fear that they would change their minds. She had to survive long enough to let
someone know what happened. Their deaths had to be avenged.

The English captain had broken the tedium of their long sea journey by questioning her about her father and husband's activities. When he hadn't liked her answer, he struck her. The captain's arrogance, however, worked in her favor, as it was clear that he did not truly expect her to know anything. To most men, women were inferior creatures, and Englishmen with their haughty superiority were even worse.

She'd learned far more than she had revealed. The men talked freely around her—especially at night. She'd discovered that they'd just come from Inverlochy Castle, the Highland stronghold of the Lord of Badenoch, the Red Comyn. The Highland escort mostly consisted of Comyns and their MacDougall kinsmen.

When they'd arrived at the Galloway Castle, Christina had been brought to the English garrison at Dumfries while the Highlanders had gone to Dalswinton Castle to await the arrival of their lord.

She was almost certain something nefarious was afoot and that it involved the Earl of Carrick, Robert Bruce. One of Comyn's guardsmen had made a stray mention of him in an English prison, but that was all she'd been able to discover. She hoped to learn more from Lord Seagrave.

She resisted the urge to put her hand on her swollen, bruised face and tell Lord Seagrave exactly what he could do with his sympathy. Her face would heal, and her chances of escape were better if they underestimated her. She would die before she would betray her husband. The past few months had given her strength and courage she didn't know she possessed. She cowered now to play a part, not from fear. So instead of a rebuke, she bowed her head and said, “My father is a loyal subject of the king. What your man inferred”—she leaned over and whispered—“is treason.”

She hoped she had the proper amount of innocent shock in her voice.

He smiled indulgently, as if deferring to her simple womanly intellect. “Have you forgotten that your father was imprisoned for treason not so long ago?”

Her eyes widened. “Of course not, my lord. That is the reason I can assure you of his loyalty to the king. Though he said he was treated with every courtesy,” she lied, “he has no wish to return.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “I think it's because he missed his whisky and cook's apple tarts.” She forced a wrinkle between her brows. “Do you have apples in England?”

He looked at her as if she was a half-wit and she hoped she hadn't overdone it. “We do.”

“Then perhaps it was the plum. They are equally delicious. Do you have those as well?”

His veneer of politeness was wearing thin. Talk of food, furnishings, and music had permeated her two interrogations—much to his impatience.

“We've sent a message to your father, but he has yet to respond. Why is that?”

This was dangerous territory. Her value would diminish considerably if the English discovered that her father wouldn't come for her.

“Perhaps he is away? Has your messenger returned from my husband?”

He frowned. “Not yet.”

There was another knock at the door, but Christina was used to the constant interruptions. In the hour he'd been trying to question her today, a steady stream of men had moved in and out.

A young soldier entered and handed him a missive without explanation. Lord Seagrave must have been expecting it because he opened it and read it quickly. The devious smile that turned his mouth piqued her curiosity.

“Have the men gone?” Lord Seagrave asked.

“Nay,” the young knight said. “Should I send them in?”

Christina stood, not hiding her eagerness. “I can return to my…chamber.” The small, windowless room in the tower hardly qualified.

He gave her a hard look. “We're not finished. Stay here, I'll be only a moment.” He left her alone, closing the door behind him.