Chapter Four #2
She resisted at first, not violently, but with confusion, uncertain of his intent. The guard lost patience quickly, tugging her forward harder than necessary and hauling her behind a screen of shrubs, away from the camp..
Jacob had no intention of waiting for a better moment, knew he would take his last breath before he allowed Elena to be assaulted.
The instant she was dragged into the cover of trees and brush, Jacob moved, creeping toward them from a wide angle.
He saw fairly quickly that rape was not the man’s intent.
He’d taken Elena only a short distance from the hollow, far enough for privacy, close enough that the camp lay within easy call.
He stopped near a tree and, possibly suspecting that Elena might not speak English, indicated that she should relieve herself behind the tree, turning his back on her with careless impatience.
Jacob moved swiftly then, to position himself better.
When he closed in, he passed by a crouching and startled Elena, her skirts billowing around her.
He put his finger to his lips and crept on, his steps silent as he approached the man on the other side of the tree.
One arm locked around the guard’s throat while the other clamped the back of his head.
He hauled him down and in, cutting off breath and movement in the same instant.
The struggle was brief and ugly, boots scraping, a sharp grunt cut off almost at once.
Jacob forced him down into the undergrowth and held him there until the resistance slackened fully.
It was not a loud killing, but it was not silent.
Elena emerged from the brush just as Jacob moved in that direction. Shock was etched starkly in her open-mouthed expression, but thankfully she did not make any exclamation.
She did, as Jacob strode toward her, breath his name in stunned relief, Jacob lifted her bound hands and cut the rope from her wrists in two swift strokes, the fibers parting cleanly beneath his blade.
“Shh,” he warned.
As the cord fell away, a voice lifted from the camp behind them and Jacob felt the margin of time collapse.
“Is my father with ye?”
He closed his hand around her wrist and turned them away at once. “Nae. ’Tis just me.”
The camp was stirring now—boots in the grass, a sharp call cutting through the low murmur.
Jacob guided her through the brush at a half-crouch, angling them away from the camp and the clearer lines between the trees.
Elena matched his pace without question, the grip of her hand as tight as his as they slipped deeper into cover.
A shout broke out behind them. Someone had found the guard.
Elena faltered only enough to look back, and Jacob tightened his hold, pulling her on. He did not press her into a full run—running made noise, and noise drew arrows. He threaded them through shrubs and low branches until the dark shape of his steed came into view ahead of them.
Without a word, he lifted Elena into the saddle and swung up behind her, settling in close.
He gathered the reins with one hand and wrapped the other firmly around her middle, securing her against him as the horse shifted beneath their combined weight.
For the first time that day, relief cut through the tension, brief but real.
She was alive, was safe, and for the moment, she was his to protect.
The voices behind them sharpened, order beginning to take shape where there had been only confusion.
They were organizing now.
Jacob turned the destrier into the thicker stand of trees where the ground narrowed and the brush closed ranks, urging her swiftly into a gallop. The raiders would follow, of course. They needed to put distance between them quickly.
THE MOMENT JACOB LIFTED her onto the horse, Elena found her body unwilling to obey even the simplest commands.
Her legs felt strange beneath her, unreliable, as though they no longer quite belonged to her, and she clutched at the edge of the saddle with clumsy urgency, half-afraid it might vanish if she loosened her grip.
Jacob swung up behind her, his arm coming around her to gather the reins, and the horse surged forward at once.
The sudden movement pulled her upright, knocking a thin, ragged breath from her chest.
For several heartbeats, that was all she could manage—holding on, breathing, letting the rhythm of the horse carry her while her mind lagged somewhere behind.
The world felt unreal, tilted, as though she were watching herself from a distance: the dark sweep of trees, the wind tearing at her hair, the solid weight of Jacob behind her holding her in place.
She could feel the strength of him in every motion—the sure press of his arm, the solid wall of his chest at her back—and still she could not quite accept that this was happening.
Jacob was here.
The thought struck her with the force of something barely credible. She had no clear sense of how he had found her, how he had come upon her in that camp, how he had moved among armed men and brought her out again.
She shuddered, the reaction delayed but fierce, and felt Jacob’s arm tighten instinctively around her, steadying her without a word.
The forest closed around them almost immediately, branches bending overhead in a dark latticework that swallowed what little light the evening still offered. She did not dare look back, though she heard a scattering of distant shouts behind them, voices angry and confused.
She realized that she was shaking. The tremors worked up her arms, into her shoulders. It surprised her how strong it was, how little command she seemed to have over it, but how strange it was that it came now, after the danger had passed.
She had yet to come to terms with the man who had rescued her, who now carried her away from danger—Jacob, whom she’d known forever—with the man who had slain one of the raiders. They were not the same person.
From behind the tree, scrambling belatedly to right herself, stunned by Jacob’s silent approach and almost too-casual command to hush, she had seen very little of the killing, only the aftermath, Jacob driving the man to the ground, and rising, facing her, his face unrecognizable in that instant.
It had been Jacob—unmistakably—but not the Jacob she knew.
Not the boy who wandered the ridges, not the man who had strode into the hall of Strathfinnan just last evening and stolen her breath.
The expression on his face moments ago had been stripped of everything familiar.
In that moment, Jacob’s face had been a mask of pure, raw fury, stripped of humor or restraint or anything she might have called familiar.
What stared at her was something she had no name for, something made of instinct and reckoning and brutal certainty.
Once again, Jacob’s arm tensed around her middle, not abruptly, but with quiet purpose, fixing her more securely against him as the destrier stretched into a long, ground-eating stride.
A moment later, she felt the brief, solid touch of his cheek against her hair, close enough that she caught his breath, warm and steady despite the pace.
“Ye’re safe now,” he said near her ear, his voice low and even, sounding beautifully like the Jacob she had always known. “I’ve got ye.”
Elena gasped for the relief she felt and laid her hand over his at her waist. She drew in a deep and calming breath. She was safe.
“Where is my father?” she asked. Her voice sounded strange in her own ears, strained and scraped thin by everything that had happened. “He must be coming. My brothers as well. And your father—my God, Jacob, did they lay siege to Strathfinnan?”
“Nae,” he answered gruffly. “Nae that I’m aware of. These are naught but rabble. Thieves and braggarts, nae an army.”
“My mother is safe?”
“I imagine she is. My guess, they were looking for a hostage, meant to ask a ransom. They were never going to hold the castle, but a noble daughter.”
Elena’s mind filled the gap with every rumor she’d ever heard about kidnappings along the border.
English. Or miscreants paid by the English.
They knew the worth of a chief’s daughter or lord’s lady, or whomever they might get their hand on.
Opportunists. The English and their coin-hungry mercenaries knew the value of a woman with the right blood.
The right hostage could empty a clan’s coffers faster than any harsh winter or the cost of battle.
She shook her head to divest herself of the imagery associated with that.
“But where is my father? Why are ye alone?”
“Yer da was still on the hunt with Lord Hamilton and the others—I wasnae going to take the time to find him and risk losing yer trail.”
He’d simply acted, had come to her rescue, one against many, while her own betrothed had crumpled in fear while she was taken. Thomas had been at her side when the raiders burst from the trees, and the memory of his response even now threatened to blister her insides with anger and shame.
She turned this over in her mind, the stark contrast between Jacob’s response and Thomas’s, knowing Jacob could have chosen caution, could have run for help or trusted the men on the wall to act in time.
But he had done none of that. He had acted, and in acting had made her feel both more valuable than she had ever felt in her life.
Presently, Jacob's chest radiated warmth against her back, his arm a steady lifeline around her middle. Something in the way he held her, something about this closeness, stirred a peculiar sense of recognition, which was odd since her mind knew they had never shared such proximity before.
Jacob leaned in slightly, pressing further against her back, forcing her to go low over the destrier’s neck as they passed beneath a low branch.
“We need to keep moving until they give up pursuit,” he said close to her ear. “We’re safe for the moment, but we’re nae beyond their reach yet.”
Elena nodded, and then wondered, “Shouldn’t we be going west?” she asked when the mare angled slightly to the right, the direction pulling them deeper into unfamiliar country. “Back to Strathfinnan?”
His chin grazed the top of her head as he shook his head. “They’ll expect us to make for it. If we ride that way, we’ll draw them straight behind us. We’ll keep east for now—the forest will give us cover. When they lose the trail, we’ll angle back.”
She absorbed his explanation in silence, supposing it made sense, and certainly not willing to question any decision made by Jacob.
In the space of half an hour, Jacob had shown her more of himself than she had learned in all the years she had known him, about his decisiveness, his competence under pressure, his willingness to act alone—without fear—and the ruthless efficiency with which he did so.
A chill crept up her arms, and she was sorry the early afternoon had been warm enough that she’d had no need of a cloak.
Jacob must have noticed. Elena wondered what, if anything, escaped his notice.
“It’ll warm once we crest the rise,” he said, his voice calm, unhurried. “We’ll leave the wind behind.”
Without slowing the horse, Jacob shifted behind her, and she felt him reach between them, his large knuckles scraping warmly against her back. A moment later, heavy wool brushed her arm and shoulder as he drew his breacan around her from behind.
“Help me,” he said quietly, guiding one edge forward into her hands while his other arm remained steady and on the reins and he returned his hand to her middle.
She did as he asked, shifting until she was almost sideways, to work more of his plaid from his belt and then drawing the heavy wool over her shoulders until they were both under the same blanket.
The warmth followed quickly, thick and enclosing, cutting the bite of the wind that had gnawed at her bones since the ride began.
The night lay ahead, long and uncertain. She did not know if or where they would stop, or what safety would look like when they did. But wrapped in his plaid, carried by the destrier’s steady pace and Jacob’s sure hands, Elena felt the tension ease at last.
For the first time since being seized from the orchard, she realized she was no longer afraid.