Chapter Twenty-Six
“At least I am still alive,” Isobel told herself, in an effort to battle the panic that had overtaken her mind: alive, imprisoned, and far more terrified than she had ever been.
Terror, she knew, made a poor companion, especially in her present circumstances. A weakening emotion, it might render her helpless when the moment to act arrived. She would do better to feel anger, indignation, determination—anything that might empower her.
And yes, she felt all those things: anger at her father, that he had allowed his friend MacNab to snatch her like a bundle of goods, that he did not intervene now to set her free; indignation that Randal MacNab should arrogantly decide he could get away with such a deed; determination to free herself, if no one else would help her.
And longing for her husband... She could scarcely let herself think about Dougal, the pain was so bright. He would be furious over this, she knew—his wife in the hands of his enemies—but why? She feared he would feel anger that MacNab had got one over on him, not distress for her own sake.
Her new prison, and she did not mistake it for anything else, was a well-appointed bedroom twice the size of her chamber at MacRae’s keep.
It had a fine curtained bed, a chest for the clothing she did not possess, and an upholstered bench in front of the fireplace.
She wondered if Aisla had inhabited this room before her and how much suffering it had seen.
It had been Aisla’s former husband, Bertram MacNab, who escorted Isobel here: she had not liked the barely veiled eagerness in his eyes.
Whatever he and his vile father planned for her, she knew to her toes it would be unpleasant.
She meant to fight them to her last breath.
If she could not escape any other way, she would jump from the window, and if she could find no other weapon she would set fire to the bed.
But first she supposed she should attempt to employ reason.
Marshaling her wits and determination, she marched to the door and tried to yank it open. To her surprise it was not locked; the man standing guard—a huge fellow armed with not one but two swords and wearing MacNab tartan—turned to look at her in a reproving manner.
“I wish to see my father,” she told him. She had managed only a glimpse of her sire when Bertram MacNab dragged her in, kicking and struggling. He had been standing beside Randal in the doorway of a chamber off the great hall, and though she called to him he had not responded.
“You are to stay here,” her guard pronounced. “My orders,” he grinned, “until young master comes.”
Isobel liked neither the grin nor the implications. Her stomach clenched, and she struggled to look imperious. “I wish to see my father. I have that right! You can either take me to him or bring him here to speak with me—I do not care which.”
“Get ye back inside and wait,” the man advised. “I take no orders from you.”
Isobel looked him in the eye, stiffened her back and screamed. She had a good set of lungs when she chose to use them, and this was a shriek worthy of an eldritch delivering a curse. It bounced off the stone walls of the corridor and reverberated painfully.
The guard flinched and drew one of his swords. “Stop that! Foolish wench!”
Isobel sucked in a breath and screamed again, louder.
People came running—first two more guards and an ancient servant, a woman who looked like she worked in the kitchen. Isobel wanted to see but one face, her father’s, so she screamed on.
The guard with the sword raised his free hand to strike her. She ducked, wove between two of the other men, and ran for the stairs.
“Catch her!” someone cried, and swore.
Isobel did not hesitate. She reached the top of the stone stairs, knocked the serving woman aside, caught her foot in her skirt, and nearly tumbled all the way down.
She caught herself with the help of the balustrade and charged down with at least five people following her.
“What in hell is this commotion?” Randal MacNab stood once more in the doorway of the chamber off the hallway. Like a small battering ram, Isobel bashed her way past him, her eyes wild.
The room, a chamber similar to the solar at MacRae’s, looked pleasant and comfortable. Two benches flanked the fire, and on one of them her father rested. Bertram MacNab she saw nowhere.
“Father!” Isobel started forward, but Randal MacNab reached out and nabbed her shoulder, his grasp anything but kind.
“What do you think you are about, miss?”
“I want to speak to my father.” Isobel glared into MacNab’s eyes. “You cannot prevent me. I have a right, a daughter’s right to see him.”
MacNab grinned unpleasantly. “Then see him.”
He released her, and she stumbled to the bench before the fire. “Father,” she began.
Gerald Maitland did not so much as glance at her. He sat canted to one side, his neckcloth loosened and his eyes half closed. Isobel’s heart, already beating triple time, sped further. Was he ill? Dead?
“Father, speak to me. Answer me! You must get me away out of here—we both must leave! These men are not your friends, as you think. Take me home to Yorkshire if you will, punish me as you may. But let us be gone—”
She paused, stricken by her father’s continued failure to respond.
The empty cup sitting on the bench beside him gave her the answer: drunk.
Her father, who never touched what he called the demon whisky and frequently lectured on its ills, had now taken so much he did not know where he was or who she was.
He could not understand the danger she faced nor lift a finger to help her.
All the breath rushed from Isobel’s body. She turned her head slowly and looked at Randal MacNab.
Once more, he smiled that unpleasant smile, the one that left his eyes cold. “Stupid girl, you have been far too much indulged. That is the error my good friend, here, has committed. But as you can see, he has now entrusted you to my hands.”
“He has not!”
“Can he say differently? Bertram!” He bellowed the name, which was the last Isobel wanted to hear, and when his son came trotting in, the cold and sleet upon him as if he had just returned from checking his borders, Randal gestured at Isobel.
“Our charge needs to learn obedience.”
Isobel looked at Bertram. His eyes, unlike his father’s, did not look devoid of emotion. Emptiness would have been much better than what Isobel saw: eagerness, anticipation, cruelty. He seized her arm and twisted. “Come.”
No fear Isobel had ever felt rivaled what assailed her as Bertram dragged her back up those stairs, past the old woman from the kitchen, past the guards and other servants, all staring.
She struggled, kicked, and lashed out, injured herself on the stones, but did not break free.
She did not care how badly she hurt herself.
She suspected if she once more entered that bedchamber she would never again come out, but she would suffer—this man would assure it.
At the top of the stairs, when one of her wild blows connected with his face, he shouted, “Stop it!” He then released his hold on her arm and seized her hair instead. Isobel howled as the excruciating pain brought immediate tears to her eyes.
The door of the dreaded chamber still stood open. Bertram threw her inside like a bundle of sticks, and she landed hard on the stone floor and skidded. He followed her in and slammed the door behind him.
For an instant, winded, Isobel lay where she had fallen. Her scalp roared with pain and her shoulder, which had absorbed most the impact of her landing, screamed at her.
Bertram stood over her, legs spread, like wrath impersonated.
“You are wanting discipline,” he pronounced, “and I can give it.” He fumbled with the front of his kilt. “On your knees.”
“No.”
“That is a word which will never cross your lips again! When I tell you to act, wench, you will obey.” He reached down and seized her hair again. Isobel gasped as he hauled her to her knees, but she had not yet lost her fight.
“If you put any part of your vile body near me, I shall bite it,” she promised.
He struck her across the face so hard it sent her sprawling backward. She fell onto her injured shoulder, hit her head, and saw stars.
Bertram loomed over her, pointing a condemning finger. “Do not ever threaten me! You will obey, understand?”
Isobel raised a shaking hand and wiped blood from the corner of her mouth.
“You will accept me the next time I walk through that door,” he continued, “and you will prove willing. Else we will see how well you learn obedience, tied spread on that bed whilst each member of my warrior guard takes you, one after the other.”
Somehow Isobel scrambled to her feet. “You would not!”
He grinned cruelly. “Try me, lady. Try me, just as each of them will try you.”
A wave of nausea surged through Isobel, so strong it nearly knocked her down again. For the first time she realized she stood where Aisla once had—poor soul!—and Aisla had not survived.
Evil, she thought, as Bertram took himself out through the door and slammed it shut. This time she heard a bar being lowered across it. The man personified evil, walking. And Dougal—
She quivered with longing at the thought of him. Would he tumble to where she was? Would he attempt to rescue her? Did he care enough? Oh, yes, though it might not be love but hate that brought him. Yet he would come; he would never allow MacNab to keep the woman he called his wife.
The question remained: would Dougal come in time?
Slowly she walked to the bed, a fourposter, the frame carved of dark wood which, when she inspected it closely, chilled the blood within her. For each of the four posts bore chafe marks as if rope had been threaded around them and had bitten deep.
Isobel believed it then: Bertram would follow through on his threat, carry out his vile plan as he had done to Aisla in this very chamber. She had suffered here unspeakable hurt and humiliation. Had she died in this room? Had her last breath tainted the air?
Isobel’s heart went out to her, poor lass, alone and frightened beyond the bounds of sanity. But her backbone stiffened. She had no intention of repeating Aisla’s fate. She would, first, die fighting.
Yet what options did she have? She went to the door and tried it, even though she had heard the bar drop. It held fast against her. She needed either a weapon or a plan. How much time did she have before Bertram MacNab marched back in and reasserted his demand for obedience?
She went to the window, pulled aside the drapery, and looked out.
Early dark cloaked the countryside and obscured the ground below, but she could see enough to tell it would be a vicious descent.
Fifty feet of sheer wall fell unbroken to the cold, rocky turf.
Yet the wall itself, built of stones rough cut, had gaps between them for toes and fingers, and the ground below was just that—grass with a stone wall beyond, not a paved courtyard.
The breath caught in her throat. Dangerous, oh, yes, but possible, if she had the courage.
And she would take her chances any day in the wild countryside before testing the cruelty in Bertram MacNab’s eyes.
“I will escape him,” she told the deepening darkness, “or die trying.”