Chapter Thirty-Five
“Open the gates, MacNab!” bellowed Dougal MacRae. “Open to me! You have something that is mine!”
The filthy weather had cleared at last, and a weak sun had now sunk into the horizon, stealing all light.
In the dense gloom, the stones of MacNab’s stronghold looked dark and forbidding.
Surrounded by the handful of men left to him, Dougal knew himself to be utterly vulnerable.
If MacRae let him in—and he would—there existed a good chance Dougal would never ride out again.
At his side, Thomas sat his horse, looking grim and uneasy. No fool, he. The man knew the odds. Yet he had been the first to declare himself ready to ride into the monster’s lair.
“I am no warrior,” he said, “but I am willing to die for the woman I love. My life is nothing without her anyway.”
Those words hung in Dougal’s mind and played over and over again.
Aisla, the woman he had always loved, had died here in MacNab’s hands.
Dougal could no longer say what he felt for Isobel.
He still believed himself incapable of the fine emotion called love, but the idea of failing her made him go cold and hollow inside.
He could not fail her, but curse him if he knew how he could win.
The gates opened like the doors to hell and he and his small party rode inside. MacNab’s warriors ringed the forecourt, all armed. Dougal knew Rab and his warriors had slain more than a few during the assault on his keep, yet these put on an impressive display.
Hate burned in his heart; it brightened when he saw Randal MacNab strut toward him.
“Welcome, neighbor,” MacNab said. “Kind in you to call.”
“Curse you, MacNab. I am in no mood for games. I ha’ come for my wife.”
“Your wife? Have you lost her, then? And what makes you think I have her? Och, wait. Would that be the lustful, red-haired wench who has been entertaining my warriors? Or her sister, with the swollen belly?”
Beside Dougal, Thomas grunted. Dougal hoped he would not lose his head, and his life. This was Dougal’s battle to fight.
“What do you want?” he asked, looking Randal in the eye. “What price have you set on them?”
“What will you pay? Perhaps you should come in, and we will talk it over.” Randal smiled, a terrible thing to see. “And, lest you have any doubt your wife is the wench in question, I ha’ something inside to show you.”
“I demand to see her!”
“I think not. Part of her, perhaps.”
Dougal’s stomach plummeted. He exchanged looks with Thomas as they dismounted, cautioning the man to contain his ire. If only Dougal could manage the same.
“Leave your army here,” Randal sneered, eyeing the small group of warriors at Dougal’s back. “You will not need them.”
Dougal nodded at his men and, with Thomas at his side, entered his enemy’s walls.
The air inside smelled dusky and singed, the way he imagined it might in Hades.
Randal led them to the great hall, where the bastard Bertram waited.
The man stood in front of the fire, juggling a small object in his hands.
“Ah!” said Bertram with a ghastly grin, “our erstwhile neighbor. Pray tell, MacRae, how went your audience with the King?”
Dougal did not deign to answer Bertram. “Where is my wife—our wives?” he amended with a glance at the silent Thomas. He spoke to Randal, his anger a banked fire. “If you have harmed either of them—”
“Define ‘harm,’ ” Bertram commanded. “It can encompass so much; there are so many ways to inflict pain.”
Thomas gave a strangled growl and started forward. Dougal seized his forearm in a grip of iron. His own anger barely under control, he said, “You cannot just seize a man’s wife. There are laws in this land.”
Randal threw back his head and laughed. “You, to cite the law to me? ’Tis a crime to steal a man’s wife? But no crime to steal his betrothed?” The older man’s face grew hard. “You cost us a fine estate that would have come to my son on the death of the wench’s father. Now you shall make up for it.”
“How?” Dougal’s heart sank. Half distracted, still trying to identify the object with which Bertram played, he scowled at Randal.
Randal smiled again, and this time it looked cold as the north wind. “I am a kind man at heart, MacRae. I will let you ransom your women, and let bygones be bygones. Forget the sins of the past.”
Dougal gritted his teeth. Some things could never be forgotten, yet his heart told him now was no time to assert that truth. He needed Isobel back again. “Name your price.”
MacNab pretended to think about it. He exchanged a look with his son and feigned indecision, even though Dougal knew this scene had been planned weeks ago.
“The price I require is: the whole of your lands.”
Dougal’s mouth went dry and his heart clenched so hard he thought he must fall down.
“Do it,” said Thomas, beside him. “Agree. Get them out of here.”
Aye, it seemed the canny response. But Dougal said, “Wait! Those lands have been in my family for generations. My ancestors bled for them. They are not mine to give.”
“They are.” No uncertainty tainted Thomas’s voice. “Just agree.” Softly, for Dougal’s ears alone, he added, “These men have no honor. You can break the agreement later and fight it out.”
Fight with what? A handful of warriors and no legal right? The old snake would make him sign a paper. That he did not doubt.
“No time to waste,” said Bertram, his eyes gleaming. “Perhaps this will persuade you.”
He tossed the object he had been juggling so playfully. By instinct, Dougal caught it and cradled it in the palm of hand. A curious thing—small, narrow and tapered, with a bloody stump at one end and a delicate nail at the other. In dawning horror he realized it was a finger.
Dougal’s world tilted around him, sickeningly, and went dark for an instant.
“I am sure you recognize that,” Bertram leered. “No doubt you ha’ seen it often enough, wrapped round your cock. Do you doubt it belongs to your wife?”
Dougal launched himself at the grinning face, his control snapping abruptly. What had they done to her—the bastards, the bastards! He would kill Bertram MacNab slowly and then feed his heart to his misbegotten sire…
He managed three damaging blows before he was hauled away by a number of MacNab’s guards who stepped forward from the shadows.
Too late now to feign indifference or disbelief.
When they released him, he stood trembling with rage so powerful he had to consciously fight it down.
Nay, he did not doubt from whence they had taken the grisly trophy.
Had he not marveled a score of times, as she caressed him, that such a slender being could contain so much fire and courage?
Isobel! All at once his longing for her had a power that should have moved mountains.
Randal shot his son a look. “Bring her. Her husband should harbor no doubt. And she should witness what he does or does no’ think of her, and his lack of honor.”
Bertram, now trickling blood from one corner of his mouth, went, and Dougal retrieved the grisly treasure from the stones, where it had flown. A treasure it was. They had taken this from her by force, in terror and pain. How his Isobel must have felt—the same hurt and loneliness Aisla had endured.
He had failed Aisla. He could not fail Isobel now, not at any cost.
Had he believed in anything, he might have prayed; he would call upon the devil, if he thought Satan might respond. Beside him Thomas, dead pale, stood like a rock.
And then she was there, hauled in through the far doorway by the vile Bertram, her feet dragging on the ground.
She looked twice as pale as Thomas, near to fainting, her clothes in disarray and her hair streaming down, a bright curtain.
But her eyes found Dougal’s and held, burning with will and another emotion Dougal identified with a sudden rush of humility.
“Take your hands from her!” he barked, and started forward to free her from Bertram’s grasp. To his surprise, Bertram released her. She half fell into Dougal’s arms; his eyes and hands both searched her avidly. He found her hand and lifted it in his own.
They had not even bandaged her wound, the scunners. It showed as a blackened blight, doubly marred by cauterization, and he felt his gorge rise.
“What ha’ they done to you?” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it reverently. Tears flooded her eyes, but she did not speak.
“You agree,” Randal MacNab said smoothly, “this is, indeed, your wife?”
Dougal rounded on him. “You will pay for this—in hell, if not sooner to me!”
“No doubt. But you will pay first. Agree to my demands, and you can take your wife and her sister home.”
“Demands?” Isobel whispered. Dougal heard it in her voice—she was spent, her courage unraveling. But it held her still.
Randal ignored her. “I have a scribe standing by—a lawyer, in fact. We shall make this legal, aye, so there can be no question later—no reneging by you, black devil that you are.”
“You would ransom me?” Isobel questioned, her eyes clinging to Dougal’s. “What does he ask?”
“Your husband will sign over to me and my descendants all his lands in exchange for your freedom and that of your sister.”
“No!” Isobel cried before anyone else could speak. She straightened her spine and drew away from Dougal. “Go to the King, Husband. Make complaint. It is illegal, what he does here.”
Dougal’s lips twisted. “He has destroyed my credibility with the King. Besides,” he swallowed hard, “how long would that take?” How could he leave her and Catherine in these monsters’ hands the while? What condition would she be in, if he did manage to get her away through legal means?
“But your lands…” she whispered, eyes still holding his, “they mean everything to you. Everything.”
“Aye.” The blessed land, the waters, the sky above both, remained as vital to him as breath, blood of his blood and bone of his bone.
But, he realized with an impact that shook him, this woman might well be just as vital to him.
He refused to fail her.
He never knew, later, what Isobel saw in his eyes, but it caused her to catch her breath and round on MacNab. “I demand a few moments with my husband, alone.”
“You demand?” Randal sneered.
“And that my sister be permitted to see her husband before any agreements are made—or signed.”
“What right have you, wench, to ask for anything?”
Isobel’s chin came up. “You will grant my request,” she pronounced, “or I shall bid my husband leave me here. And then, sir, what will you have?”