Chapter 9 #2
But did she hear him right? She wiped her wet face on her skirt and looked up at him, almost afraid to ask. She sniffed. “Did you say you would get my, um . . . treasure back?”
***
Sir Thomas and a small regiment scoured the moor for the Laird MacLaren. “I saw him fall.” He rounded on his man. “You didn’t kill him. He has survived.”
“I was certain he was dead, my lord. Someone must have taken his body or, if he was alive, helped him from the field.”
Thomas glared at the ground as if it had swallowed MacLaren to stop him from finding him. “You were always a step ahead, but in this, you will not evade me, MacLaren.”
A soldier called out, “Sir.”
“What is it?”
“We found something.”
Thomas’s pulse warmed at the thought it was Iain. He had to be certain the man was dead once and for all. He sloshed through the mud. “What?”
The soldier handed Thomas a white trinket. He turned it around in his hand. “Mayhap this belongs to MacLaren. Mayhap I will return it to his sister.”
He smiled at the thought of Maeve thanking him for the trinket. She was a beauty, and he oft thought about her on cold lonely nights.
Thomas pushed the egg into his coat and mounted his horse. A messenger galloped onto the other side of the moor.
“Follow!” he ordered his men.
His men, some on foot, some on horseback, followed Thomas to the approaching messenger.
Pulling his horse up alongside Thomas’s mount, the messenger handed him a missive. “From Lord Cumberland, my lord.”
Thomas read the letter. He and his troops were to go to Aberdeen immediately. He turned and gazed at the place where MacLaren fell. Aberdeen can wait until I have found MacLaren dead or have killed him for certainty.
He gave the messenger a sharp nod of his head, and understanding, the man galloped back the way he had come. Thomas scrunched up the missive and poked it into his pocket along with the stone egg. He turned his horse north. “We ride to Inverell.”
***
Iain gazed into Abigail’s blue eyes, so clear now that they were free of tears, but also so hopeful. He didn’t want to disappoint her, but her treasure was just a thing. His family was his life and he needed to make sure they were safe.
“Aye, I’ll find your trinket, but not this night. Once we get to Dorpol, I will send word out to find yer grandparents, and then I will take my men and find Thomas and yer treasure.”
She lowered her head. Iain hoped she wasn’t going to cry again. He could put up with anything, pain, loss, even someone shouting at him, but he never knew what to do when a woman cried.
One thing he didn’t want was to hold her again. He had done so without thinking earlier, and the pleasure he felt at her warm breath touching the exposed skin below his neck had him pulling her closer. As soon as she was out of his arms, they felt empty, and the sense of loss confused him.
No, he couldn’t risk becoming involved with the likes of her. Not when he was all but promised to another woman. Fiona was Scottish and having the MacKinnons as allies would strengthen his clan.
His gaze took in Abigail. The lass was too different. He tilted his head. Too mysterious.
A gunshot sounded in the distance, and a shout rang out over the moor.
Iain recognized Thomas’s voice and snapped his head up.
A regiment of English soldiers, Thomas in the lead, raced toward him and Abigail.
He threw himself on her, grimacing at the sound of her face being buried once more in the moor soil.
Her cry was thankfully muffled.
“Shh,” Iain whispered into her ear.
The horses galloped past them, and Iain let out a breath of relief. They weren’t after him and the lass. He waited until the foot soldiers ran past before he let Abigail up.
“I’m sorry, but if they caught us—”
“I know, I know, they’d kill us.”
“Aye.”
This time, Iain unbuckled his tartan and handed the copious material to her.
She wiped at her face and glared at him. “Do you have to keep pushing me into that stagnant, putrid mud?”
“I had to hide ye.”
“You could have done that without half suffocating me.” She pulled more of the material to her and kept wiping. “I need a shower.”
Iain gave her a quizzical look and tipped his head back to look at the sky. The clouds were nearly all gone. “I don’t think it will rain, although I see why ye would want it to.”
Her eyes narrowed at him as he flicked a spot of dirt off her cheek. Her mouth formed an O, and his heart missed a beat at the thought of kissing those luscious lips.
He sat up, gazing in the direction the English had gone. Abigail tugged at the tartan to continue wiping away what mud she could.
An orange-yellow light rose above the trees and Iain growled. Thomas had found the blackhouse and set fire to what remained of it after the last blaze. He hoped he and Abigail hadn’t left any tracks that would lead them back to the moor. He jumped up.
“Quick,” he said, holding out a hand to Abigail.
She looked at him questioningly.
He nodded to the fire and she looked in that direction. She gasped and took his hand, letting him pull her up.
They gathered their belongings and Iain guided her east, away from the moor and away from Thomas and his men. He hoped he could find horses to get them to the nearest port.