Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
For one suspended instant after the guard’s cry, the hall seemed to forget how to breathe, then all was motion.
Duncan was on his feet at once, with Iain rising with him.
The easy warmth of the evening vanished as though it had never existed.
Chairs scraped sharply against the floor, servants drew back in alarm, and the candlelight, which only moments before had seemed soft and festive, now threw restless shadows against the walls.
“Elaina, Catriona,” Duncan’s voice cut through the confusion with an authority that admitted no delay.
He turned to them both, and though his countenance was composed, she saw the steel beneath it at once.
“I need ye tae go tae yer rooms. Lock yer doors. Dinnae open them for anyone unless it is me or Iain.”
“Duncan,” Elaina began.
“Go,” he said again, and she knew that they had no time to spare.
Her heart was beating so violently that she could scarcely feel the ground beneath her feet, yet it was not fear for herself that struck first. It was the sight of Duncan reaching for his sword, followed by the knowledge that he was about to walk directly into danger while she was commanded away from it.
He looked at her only once before turning. It was a single glance, swift and full of meaning. There was reassurance in it, and apology, and a tenderness so brief that she might have doubted it if she had not known him as she did.
Then he was gone. Iain followed without hesitation, already issuing orders to the guards nearest the doors, and the sound of boots and shouted commands rose around them with dreadful speed. Catriona seized Elaina’s hand.
“Come,” she urged, and the brightness so natural to her was now wholly displaced by alarm.
They ran. The corridors of the castle, so familiar by day, seemed altered now by urgency and shadow.
Torches burned low along the walls, their flames guttering in the draught stirred by distant movement, while the echo of raised voices drifted through the stone passages in fragments.
She could hear commands, warnings and the sharp ring of weapons being drawn.
They reached the corridor leading to their chambers, and for one foolish, desperate instant Elaina thought perhaps they might yet reach safety. Catriona’s door came first.
They appeared so suddenly and so silently, that she stopped at once, her whole body going still.
Neither wore Grant colors. The torchlight caught upon hard faces she did not know, upon rough wool and leather darkened by the night. She saw that their blades were already drawn. One of them smiled, and it was pure malice.
Elaina stepped back. The first man moved at once, swift as a striking hound, and caught her by the arm before she could turn. She gasped, twisting against his hold, but the second was already behind her, cutting off retreat.
Catriona opened her mouth, but was immediately held back by the other man, who swiftly covered her mouth before she could scream for help.
“Let us go,” Elaina commanded, though the demand was wasted on them.
The man gripping her arm only tightened his hand until pain shot through her.
“Yer laird is occupied,” he mocked her. “So ye may spare yerself the trouble of crying fer him.”
Elaina’s pulse thundered in her ears.
“He is too far away tae hear ye. Too busy defending his fine castle tae come running after ye now,” said the other, with a cruel satisfaction that made her blood run cold, as he shoved Catriona into a room, warning her to stay quiet with the tip of his sword.
Elaina fought them then without any illusion of success, because she could not bear not to. She twisted, struck out, tried to wrench free, but one of them caught both her wrists in a brutal grip, while the other pressed a hand over her mouth.
“And once we take ye tae Laird MacKenzie,” the first man murmured near her ear, “ye shall finally get what ye deserve.”
The words chilled her more deeply than the steel at his side.
They dragged her backward, not toward the main stair, nor toward any passage she knew, but toward a narrow stretch of wall between two ancient hangings.
There, to her astonishment, one of them pressed his shoulder against the stone.
A concealed door gave way with a dull groan, opening upon a blackness so complete it seemed to swallow the torchlight whole.
Elaina stared, feeling horror rising fast in her throat. She had lived within these walls for weeks and had never known this place existed.
However, there was no further for her to think.
They forced her inside. The air within was stuffy and damp, heavy with the smell of earth and age.
The passage was so narrow that her shoulder brushed rough stone as they dragged her along it, stumbling again and again over uneven ground.
Water dripped somewhere in the darkness.
The torch one of them carried sent wild, leaping shadows over the walls, revealing only fragments, alcoves like open mouths in the stone.
The farther they went, the more remote the castle seemed, until all the sounds above were lost to silence.
Duncan.
The thought came with such force that for an instant it nearly undid her.
She saw him as he had stood in the observatory, with the sunset on his face and his mother’s ribbon in his hand.
She heard again his voice when he had told her he loved her and she felt the tenderness with which he had kissed her only an hour before.
It seemed impossible that so little time could have divided that happiness from this terror.
She tried once more to wrench free and the man at her side cursed under his breath, hauling her so roughly that she struck the wall and cried out against the hand still smothering the sound.
“Walk,” he snarled.
She obeyed only because she had no choice.
The darkness pressed in around them, and with every twisting of the hidden way, a dreadful certainty began to settle in her heart.
She did not know where they were taking her.
She did not know whether Duncan would discover what had happened in time, or whether he would search the castle only to find her vanished as though the stone itself had swallowed her whole.
And deep beneath the fear, beneath the pain and the frantic pounding of her heart, there came another thought… what if that was the last time she would ever see him?
The passage sloped downward. A gust of colder air met them from somewhere ahead, carrying with it the scent of wet leaves and river water. There had to be an exit nearby, which meant they were leaving the castle grounds.
Duncan, even now, might still be searching above, or still believing her safely behind a locked door while she was taken farther and farther from him through shadows he did not know existed.
Elaina shut her eyes for one brief instant. Then the hand over her mouth tightened and they dragged her onward into the darkness.