Chapter 35 #2
“That Simon will not stop until every MacLeod is dead, but that he hasn’t the energy to come stalk us. It must be Neil, or another clansman with initiative.”
“It doesn’t sound good.”
“It isn’t. I want to leave before hell descends,” he said, “Tomorrow, at first light, if we can.”
She supposed she could have asked him if he thought the forest would work.
She might have asked him if he thought they would get to keep the horse they’d been riding, and if they could take the Fergusson gelding as well to tie Bentley to.
She could have even speculated about the possibilities of finding themselves in a nest of Fergussons once they left the keep and if Patrick thought she would be an asset or a liability. But that wasn’t what she asked.
“Do you,” she asked, “speak any Latin?”
He went still, then slid his hand up into her hair and kissed her. “Amo, amas, amat,” he began. He paused. “Amamus.”
We love
.
She looked into his eyes. “Then you understood—”
“I did.”
“And you—”
“Aye,” he said, leaning down to kiss her. “Aye to it all,” he breathed against her mouth. “Aye, to it all.”
That was good enough for her. If she were going to give herself to anyone, it would be to him. They were married enough apparently for the both of them.
And war was about to knock on the downstairs door.
She surrendered to kisses that simply took her breath away. Touches followed, ones that she’d felt before, but never in a way that made her feel as if she might expire from the intensity of the feelings they stirred in her.
He pulled her even closer.
She was about to say something. Really, she was. And it would have been a really good something.
It was interrupted by the door bursting open.
“Fergussons,” Angus squeaked. “My father calls for you!”
“Bloody hell,” Patrick snarled. He looked down at her in the torchlight coming in from the hallway. “Now, they’ve really gone too far.”
She would have laughed, but he was up and halfway to the door before she realized that it might just be the last time she would see him. She sat up, rearranged her clothes, and gaped at him.
“Patrick—”
He looked at her. “Knife in your hands at all times,” he said briskly. “I’ll return.”
“But—”
He strode over, kissed her hard on the mouth, then turned away. “I’ll be back, Madelyn. We have unfinished business, you and I.”
He made it sound like a threat. So much the better, if it kept him alive.
Hours later, while she was standing in the great hall with her back to the fireplace and a dead Fergusson clansman’s knife in her hand, the door opened and Patrick came inside. She stared at him in horror. He was covered in blood.
But as she watched him move, she realized that most of it couldn’t be his. Either that, or he had more stamina than anyone she’d ever seen.
Not that she’d seen many bloody people.
She realized, quite suddenly, that she was babbling inside her own head.
It was terrifying to think what might come out of her mouth if she opened it—and she an experienced, collected trial lawyer who had dissected so many witnesses over her six years at DD&P that she’d acquired a reputation for ruthlessness—she might not be able to stop the flow of drivel.
Patrick handed her two large pieces of plaid. She didn’t ask him where he’d gotten them. She suspected they might have been liberated from a dead Fergusson clansman.
“We’re leaving,” he said. “We’ll fetch Bentley. Tie his hands, gag him, and bind his eyes. Rip up what we’ll need.”
She tried, really. Her hands were shaking so badly that she dropped her knife several times on the trip across the great hall.
By the time she, her knife, and three strips of cloth made it to the dungeon, Bentley was up and Patrick was clipping him quite smartly under the jaw.
Bentley slumped to the ground with a groan.
Patrick tied his hands behind him, blindfolded him and gagged him for good measure. Then he hefted Bentley over his shoulder and looked at her.
“We’re off.”
“How do things look?”
“A rout for the MacLeods. I’ve done my part. Let’s go.”
She didn’t have to hear that twice. She kept her fingers crossed that the forest would actually work, then followed Patrick out of the keep. He put Bentley on the Fergusson horse, mounted the horse he’d rescued her on, then pulled her up behind him.
“Hold on,” he said.
She held on. Though he didn’t exactly gallop out of the courtyard, he didn’t linger, either.
How Bentley remained on top of his horse was obviously some kind of guy mystery she didn’t want to solve.
She held on to Patrick, said a prayer or two, and kept her eyes closed.
Whatever was out there to see was surely stuff she didn’t want being deposited in her subconscious.
She felt the air change when they reached the forest. Patrick swung down, then held up his arms for her. She held tightly to his hand and stood with him next to the horses and the unconscious windbag.
They were being watched.
Madelyn felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Patrick’s sword came from its sheath with a fierce hiss. Before she could think to pull her little dagger out and hold it in front of her, Patrick was fighting off Neil Fergusson.
“You’ll not escape so easily this time,” Neil snarled.
“I’ve no stomach for slaying any more of your kin,” Patrick said. “Be off with you and spare yourself.”
Neil snorted. “My blade will taste MacLeod blood today,” he vowed. “For the insults to my family, you’ll pay dearly.”
“Insults?” Patrick asked. “And what of the one you did to my woman?”
“MacLeod whore,” Neil spat.
Madelyn wondered if Patrick might have heard that just one too many times. He spared no effort to show Neil how his patience had ended.
“I’ll kill you,” Neil promised, stumbling backward finally, his chest heaving, “and I’ll take your body with me, just as you’ve done with my kin, so yours will have nothing to bury.”
Patrick lowered his sword. “How was that?”
“Your body,” Neil spat. “That your kin will have nothing to bury. You never return any of our dead. I won’t return you.”
Madelyn frowned. She wasn’t sure what Neil was getting at, but maybe it was something that was too deep for her.
Patrick didn’t seem to think it was anything Neil needed to be worrying about—and this she discerned by the way he ceased using his sword and used his feet instead.
Poor Neil. He was no match for whatever degree black belt Patrick held.
Neil’s sword went flying. Then Neil went flying.
And then Neil disappeared.
Madelyn stood still, gaping in astonishment at the place where Neil Fergusson had lain, sprawled unconscious, not a moment before. She looked at Patrick.
“What happened?”
“Either we went forward or he went somewhere entirely new.”
“Spooky.”
“To put it mildly.” He put up his sword, then mounted, pulling her up behind him. “Let us see where our good forest has taken us.”
“I shudder to think.”
“Have faith, my love. It could be better than we dare hope.”
She was going to take his word for it, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to look for herself.
She assumed the position she’d assumed as they left the medieval MacLeod keep— that of her head plastered against his back to the right of his sword, against his back, her eyes closed, her arms as tight around his waist as she could get them and not permanently wear the indentation of his sword in her bosom.
They rode for quite some time. Longer than she would have supposed.
Longer than she was comfortable riding.
And then they stopped. She sniffed. It smelled like fire. Granted, the fireplace flues hadn’t been all that advanced at Malcolm’s keep, but there hadn’t been this much acrid smoke in the air.
She opened her eyes and looked around Patrick’s shoulder.
And she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.