Chapter 4
Isabel let out a frustrated sigh, and admittedly, had to stop herself from picking up a gold unicorn, the animal of Scotland, and flinging it at a wall to watch the shards burst and sprinkle the floor at her feet.
The search of her uncle’s room was less successful than her rifling of his solar, leaving Isabel still completely in the dark.
Even Freckles came up empty-pawed. Schemes this hidden from view meant something far more dangerous than she had originally thought.
She stood very still, her gaze sweeping the stone walls as unease coiled in her chest. There had to be a secret chamber in the castle that she didn’t know about.
A place where he could hide his most important letters and ledgers without worrying she or someone else might stumble across them.
A shiver went skating over her spine, her uncle must be planning something.
Isabel left his bedchamber as disappointed as she’d entered it and returned to the great hall.
She hoped to distract herself with attending to the household, ordering dinner, checking the rushes on the floor, anything really to keep her mind from whirling.
But the moment her foot left the last stone stair, there was a resounding bang at the front door of the castle, and the birds who’d snuck in to live in the rafters fluttered their wings and tweeted with urgency.
Freckles popped her head out of safety with a sniff and a squeak.
Both wolfhounds stood from where they’d lounged by the hearth, the hair on the backs of their necks on end as they growled low in their throats.
Isabel curled her fingers up her sleeve where she kept a dagger strapped to her forearm, it was meant for a raid, but raiders didn’t tend to knock.
The servants around her wrung their hands and exchanged nervous looks.
A skeleton crew of soldiers had been left behind to protect the castle, but most of them were on the battlefield.
Whoever was now banging on the door had gotten past their guards, either by permission or by force.
Isabel nodded for one of their servants, Miles, to see who was at the door, feeling a little like she sent a lamb to slaughter, she gestured for two soldiers to follow closely behind him.
Miles hesitated before the door. His shoulders rose and fell as he took a deep breath and then lifted the thick bar that held the doors locked in place. He opened it a crack only at first, and then wider, while the rest of them held their breath.
Isabel allowed herself to exhale upon seeing young Lucas, her uncle’s messenger, though having him here did not bode well either.
“My lady, I’ve come with news from your uncle,” Lucas said with urgency as he hurried into the great hall, practically tripping over his adolescent feet. His face was pale, his hair windswept, and there were smears of dirt and other things on his skin she didn’t want to identify.
A ripple of fear wrapped biting fingers around her heart, the worry wound up her spine meeting the weight that always seemed to sit heavily upon her chest. But her shoulders remained straight, her voice calm as she asked, “What is it?” She noted that he did not have a missive in his hands, no wax seal for proof his words were from her uncle.
Lucas skittered to a halt in front of her and shoved his hands through his hair in an attempt to straighten himself up. “The battle has been lost, my lady.”
“Lost?” The floor beneath Isabel seemed to move then, and she pressed her toes into the soles of her shoes to ground herself.
“Aye, my lady.” Lucas winced, but his eyes remained dry, even though his chin wobbled. “It has been lost. The English have been victorious this day. There is a chance they will come here, the English, my lady, and your uncle bids ye prepare for that.”
Isabel clenched her teeth to keep from gasping. This was the purpose of her remaining behind, wasn’t it? To protect the castle. Yet, still, she had never truly believed it would come to that. How na?ve she’d been.
“He also bids ye prepare for wounded soldiers. They will be coming soon. I have ridden hard. They are behind me by about an hour or two.”
Isabel nodded, licked her suddenly dry lips. “Please let my uncle know we will be ready for him, but before ye go, get something to refresh yourself from the kitchen. Ye must be starved.”
But Lucas shook his head and started to back away to the door, this time he did trip, but Miles kept him from falling by snatching his elbow at the last second.
“No time, my lady, I must return to the Bruce.” And then he was gone, his words of warning lingering in the air.
The servants who had overheard the message all seemed tense and fearful, but Isabel was never one to dwell on fear. She was a woman of action. They would need to prepare as her uncle had suggested, not only for a possible siege but to tend to the wounded. And they only had an hour to do it.
She started issuing orders for food and water to be gathered and hidden in case of siege.
For doors to be secured, for weapons to be placed not only in the great hall, but on the battlements for their few guards to have easy access, and even themselves if it came down to it.
They took sheets and tore them to create linens for the wounded, gathered lye soap and whiskey, thread and needle.
She tried to ignore the panicked whispers as her servants grew fearful, but failed, hearing the word hostages flit around them like an embodied spirit.
While Isabel herself had been lucky to not yet have been involved in a siege, her servants had several years ago. They knew all too well what to expect.
Isabel shuddered to think what they had endured, and what might possibly be in her future. She sent up another prayer for her uncle and his men to be swift on their mounts in returning to Caisteal Dubh.
Preparing the castle for the onslaught of wounded and a possible siege was a distracting chore for Isabel, but her mind kept wandering back to her uncle and what the defeat meant not only for him, but for Scotland.
Her searches for answers earlier that day seemed silly in comparison to what was about to happen. The likelihood of a marriage when all of Scotland was on the brink of destruction was also moot.
Worried murmurs went through the servants like the ripple of water in a river swarm horde of wasps, and traveling across the moors. Though who it was, was still undetermined.
Isabel ran up the stairs, her skirts heavy and cumbersome around her feet.
She lifted them, not caring who saw her ankles as she rounded the stairs until she reached the turret.
Out of breath, she pressed her hands to the cool stones, the setting sun making the moving throng on the horizon seem stealthy and frightening.
“Do ye know who they are?” she asked, breathlessly.
Garrick, her uncle’s most trusted wall guard, shook his head, his long black beard peppered with gray blowing in the breeze. “No’ yet, my lady. But if ‘tis your uncle, they should raise the standard soon.”
Isabel squinted her eyes as she peered out over the landscape.
It was impossible to tell at this point who was racing toward them, and her heart hammered a rhythm she was certain matched every hoofbeat.
Zounds, they could be set upon or saved within a matter of minutes, and how mad not to know which.
“Och, there ‘tis,” Garrick said, his voice visibly relieved.
As relieved as she was no doubt to see Robert the Bruce’s standard waving in the air.
They were still too far for her to count heads, but she was certain there were not as many men returning with him as had left.
Her heart clenched to think of all the women who’d lost their men this day, the children now without a father.
Tucking those painful thoughts away, Isabel ran back down to the courtyard, ordering the guards to open the gate, and moments later her uncle and his men thundered through with the wounded draped over horses and a few groaning in wagons.
At the head of the line beside the Bruce rode a warrior slumped over his horse.
A warrior whose reputation was lethal enough that no one would have believed him to be among the wounded and yet had still joined their ranks.
How the enemy could have taken him down was a question for the gods.
With shoulders broad enough to block a door, his frame was built for battle.
All the blood had drained from his face, leaving his pallor gray.
But his eyes, they were a startlingly blue, bright as a summer sky, and remained alert, watchful. Unyielding.
Dark hair, near black, clung damply to his temples, and there was something wild about him, something untamed that no matter how grave the injury, could not be quieted. Even slumped in the saddle, he commanded the space around him. She’d seen other warriors look upon him with awe, even her uncle.
Isabel sensed his power from where she stood.
An unsettling pull of something both dangerous and impossible to ignore.
How mesmerizing that a man in such a dire state could dominate even the air around him.
A giant, if she’d ever seen one, he might, in fact, have been the largest man she’d ever seen.
She recognized this warrior—had seen him before but never met him.
As if sensing her, his gaze lifted and found hers.
Even in his pain, there was nothing weak about that look.
Bold. Assessing. He had the audacity to linger over her body as if she were standing before him in nothing but her chemise.
Heat rose unbidden to her cheeks, then lower, settling somewhere unfamiliar.
The Wolf of Skye, she was certain, though the wolf sigil on his tartan was barely visible with all the blood and muck of battle.
But what drew her eye most was the spear lodged clean through his thigh. His kilt was blood-soaked, the colors lost to dark crimson, and still, despite the brutality of the wound he looked every bit as dangerous as before. Perhaps more so. How was he still conscious?
Isabel shivered, and could not say whether it was his size, his reputation, or the sight of the brutal wound that had her trembling. Maybe it was simply his ability to stare at her with an obvious desire despite the enormous pain he must be in.
Around her the servants had gone quiet, their whispers threading through to pluck at her ears. “That’s Lachlan MacLeod. The Wolf of Skye.”
The Wolf of Skye. One of the most fierce and dangerous men in her uncle’s army. The one men spoke of in lowered voices. A man as feared as he was revered.
According to the servants, he was a legend, a hero, and the phantom that haunted many an English soldier in the dead of night. He was also one of her uncle’s most trusted warriors.
She frowned, unhappy with herself for thinking only of her own situation when she should be worried about the wounded. In particular, this man—the Wolf of Skye—who might not make it through the night.
She’d seen men die with lesser wounds. Isabel crossed herself.
Her uncle snapped her out of her thoughts with a sharp command. “Isabel, help the wounded.”
All at once the sounds around her funneled back into her ears. The cries of pain, the cries of worry from those who’d been left behind.
“Help this man first,” her uncle said, pointing to the Wolf of Skye.
Isabel nodded, and all she could think about was that very soon, she’d have to touch his bare thigh.
That removing his tartan, to work would reveal more of his muscled skin.
That anything she did to help him would either contribute to his imminent death or cause him more pain.
There was no other outcome for him, she was certain, though she would do her best to help Chief Lachlan MacLeod, no matter the outcome, even if that was easing his passage into the afterlife.
She had been born and bred to be the lady of the castle, and most were trained to keep their warrior husbands and his soldiers alive.
But her skills went above and beyond the norm.
She’d been trained in the arts of healing by one of the healers who’d worked many years with her uncle’s father.
She’d taught her the right combination of herbs.
How to use honey and moss. That Mother Nature provided when men needed her most. Isabel only hoped the things she’d learned wouldn’t disappoint her uncle in the end.
Because if the Wolf of Skye didn’t pull through, she worried that she might be blamed for the loss of the greatest warrior her uncle had at his disposal.
Mortal injury or not, Isabel was suddenly aware of the weight that had just been pressed on to her shoulders.
The fate of Scotland in her healing hands.
“Careful,” Isabel cried as four of the guards who’d been left behind carefully removed the injured warrior from the saddle. His bellow of agony sent gooseflesh racing along her limbs. There would be more shouts like that one to come, and she dreaded every decibel.
As she stepped forward, prepared to direct the men where to carry Lachlan MacLeod, Isabel couldn’t help but worry what this foretold about the future.
And more imminently, when would the English be breaking down their walls?
But there was no time for these thoughts. And she didn’t need the distractions. There was a man she’d have to save, however impossible the task.