Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Aidan’s Camp.
Not far from Duntulm…
The encampment was quiet, save for the crackle of low-burning fires and the restless shifting of horses tied beneath the dripping pines.
The rain hadn’t stopped for days, turning the ground into black sucking mud.
But Aidan barely noticed the cold seeping through his boots.
The heat of his unabated hatred kept him warm.
He paced the narrow stretch between the fire and the shadowed trees, his boots squelching in the mud, his hands clenched so tightly that his fingernails cut half-moons into his palms.
Only half his plan had succeeded. His men had, as planned, stopped Halvard’s men from reaching Duntulm Castle.
Without the letter that was meant for Laird Kenneth, the ongoing enmity between Halvard and Kenneth would continue unabated, just as he wished.
But what an unholy debacle his entire plan had turned out to be.
Instead of his men leaving nothing behind but corpses and then melting into the mist, Kenneth had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere and put paid to Aidan’s plan.
Instead of his crew leaving Halvard to place the blame on Kenneth for the death of his men, his own crew been slaughtered.
Even worse, the lass had somehow slipped through his clutches and been taken to the castle at Duntulm.
Selene.
A soft English ornament who had no business in Highland affairs, who should have been intercepted, delayed, or, preferably, removed long before reaching Kenneth’s cursed lands.
Her death would have been the very thing to stir up trouble between Kenneth and Halvard.
Yet here she was, alive and apparently thriving under the protection of the one man Aidan wanted—more than anything—to see broken.
The thought curdled in his throat like bile.
“She was sighted,” one of his men said as he approached, rubbing rain from his beard.
“In the village to the west. She helped with the flood.” His tone suggested disbelief – as if English ladies weren’t meant to smear themselves in mud and muck like the rest of the world. “Looked right at home, they said.”
Aidan stopped pacing. “At home?”
The man hesitated. “Well… they said she didnae appear afraid. Or bothered. And she rode with him. Shared his saddle.” A pause. “It seems she is close tae Kenneth.”
The fire popped sharply. Aidan’s skin prickled with heat and cold all at once.
“And?” he said, although he was already tasting poison.
“And they stayed together in the night. He kept her close in a tumbledown ruin of a cottage.” Another nervous pause. “They seemed…cozy.”
Cozy.
Aidan would have laughed if he was used to laughter. Instead, he wheezed like a trapped rat.
So, the English girl, with her soft voice and softer face, had nestled under Kenneth’s wing. Fate, it seemed, had a delightful sense of cruelty.
He stared past the fire toward the direction of the distant castle.
From where he sat it was barely a shadow in the rain-soaked darkness.
It was close enough. He’d chosen this place to set his camp for its vantage point, for the ability to watch the comings and goings on his enemy’s land.
He hadn’t expected the sight of her riding in days ago to twist his gut like a hook.
“She shouldnae have reached him,” he said quietly.
The man shifted. The heat rising from Aidan was far more dangerous than the flames. “We did what we could, me laird.”
“Clearly that wasnae sufficient tae meet me commands,” Aidan snapped, though his voice stayed low and menacing. Measured. “She was meant tae be a message. A complication. Halvard’s little English trinket, his sister-in-law. She was nothing and nobody.”
But Eilidh hadn’t been nothing.
She had not been a complication.
She had been everything he couldn’t protect, everything torn from him while Kenneth walked away with blood on his hands. The Brute of Sleat. The man who had robbed him of the only thing in the world he’d cared about. Eilidh.
Aidan exhaled slowly through his teeth.
His spy continued. “And now she walks at his side. Eats at his table. Shares his hearth.”
Anger pulsed under Aidan’s skin like a second heartbeat.
This foreigner is being welcomed ontae the land that should have been Eilidh’s.
Another man stepped closer. “What are yer plans, me laird?”
Aidan lifted his gaze to the dark bulk of the distant castle as moonlight flickered off the wet leaves like shining fragments of ice.
Kenneth MacDonald had taken Eilidh from him and from the world. Taken her future. Her laughter. Her innocence. Her life.
If Aidan could not yet cut that man down without the proof of Eilidh’s murder as demanded by the king – and without which he risked everything he owned, including his life – perhaps justice would come another way.
A cruel idea slid into place, chillingly precise.
“Mayhap,” he murmured, “fate has dealt me another opportunity instead.”
The camp fell silent around him.
He could picture Kenneth’s face clearly. The stoic control. The protective stance around the Englishwoman. He considered the possibility – however small – that she meant something to him. He toyed with the idea, turning it over and over in his mind.
“If Kenneth has taken a lass under his protection,” Aidan muttered, his voice sharp as a deadly blade, “then he has presented me with a way tae cause him pain.”
One or two of the men exchanged uneasy glances, but none dared question him.
Aidan stepped closer to the fire, its light carving harsh lines across his features.
“Eilidh’s blood cries out fer vengeance,” he whispered. “And if I cannae yet kill the man who caused it, then I will take what he cherishes.”
He smiled then, a thin, cold, stretch of his lips that held not a jot of humor.
“Mayhap Kenneth’s English lass is exactly the key me vengeance cries out fer.”
He gazed toward the castle once more, rain dripping from his hair, storm winds echoing his fury.
Let Kenneth try tae protect her.
Let him watch her slip through his fingers.
Let him feel helpless and broken, just as he caused me tae feel.
Only then will justice begin.
Only then will Eilidh rest.