Chapter Seventeen
If he expected her to go back to her room, he was sadly mistaken.
She wasn’t letting an opportunity like this go.
She already assumed the horn meant trouble was arriving, and that could only mean the Highland Rangers, although if that was the case, then everything Langston had portrayed with the captain had to be false.
She was going to find out, and she only had the cloak to cover her, but it would have to do.
She was going to sneak out, get to the top of the steps, and look down.
She was going to find out the truth; just as soon as her legs would support her sufficiently, and she had her breathing under control.
Whatever emotion Langston had started within her, her body wasn’t willing to let it go.
She felt like her legs had the consistency of a sapling atop a bog, her belly was pulsing with heat, followed by cold, and the tulips weren’t doing anything except chafing and rubbing and making her wonder why women had to be cursed with breasts before they had a child, anyway.
Lisle paused at the door to the antechamber and watched her own hand shaking on the handle. She didn’t know if anything like this was affecting Langston, but if it was, and he still managed to look calm, cool, and perfectly in control, then he was a much better actor than she already suspected.
The antechamber didn’t have anything in it except the same chair and table and painting.
Lisle’s legs were still a bit shaky, and she had to wait another span of time before she thought they might support her enough for stealth, all of which was stupid, and feeling more so the longer she tarried.
She shook her head as she rubbed at her own knees, and even that felt erotic and sensitizing.
How had Langston managed to look so diffident and cool? It didn’t make sense.
She stopped her own questions, her eyes wide. Maybe he didn’t suffer anything like this. Maybe it really was all a bargain, and he was just paying it. What had he said…something about how he used it, and then paid the penalty easily, without regret and remorse?
She was going to make herself ill with thoughts such as these, but they were helping with one thing.
Her legs were gaining strength, and her belly had decided to settle back into one place.
She couldn’t do a thing about her breasts.
They still felt heavier, and enlarged and sensitive to the brush of the cloak across the tulip cups. There must be something wrong with her.
She opened the door handle, dropped to her knees, and crawled over to the banister, all of which probably looked as ridiculous as it felt, except there wasn’t anyone or anything in the main foyer to see.
Lisle went to her feet and took the steps at a pace that resembled a run by the time she reached the bottom, all of which made her painfully aware of her chemise’s shortcoming as bosom support.
She wrapped the cloak more securely about herself.
This was worse than the first morning, when everyone had disappeared.
She knew the horn meant change, or hide, or run, or any number of other maneuvers, but to find no proof made her grit her teeth and approach the main, massive door to shove one side open herself, since there wasn’t a servant, in Highland kilt or not, in sight to assist her.
The door was just as well oiled and maintained as she suspected it would be, and despite being more than two stories in height, it opened easily.
Too easily, as Lisle stumbled out onto the front steps, gaining her feet in time to see the last of a column of men on horseback going over the rise leading to Langston’s big lion-statue-guarded gate.
The glee that sight gave her was tempered by the realization that the door had latched when it closed behind her, it was darker than before, and she was outside in a chemise, with only a Monteith cloak to shield her. She didn’t even have on socks.
Lisle picked her way around the right side of his keep, thanking her luck that Monteith kept his property as well groomed as he did, and that his stone walks were as smooth and perfectly fitted as they were.
Her bare feet were very aware of how it felt more like a cool, stone-lined bog than castle grounds.
She didn’t stay on the stones, although they were the easiest to see.
The path they made meandered back and forth, and she had to take the closest route to another entrance.
Lisle shivered, wrapped the cloak closer about her, and wondered whether anyone saw her running about outside they’d let her in…
assuming, of course, that there was someone in the castle to see her.
They had all disappeared the other morning.
What if they’d all done the same thing now?
She could be wandering about all night. She shivered again.
She could always try to find the access way that the army of men had used.
They’d all appeared in the hall outside the chapel yesterday, and they probably hadn’t gone through the front doors to do so.
That gave her hope. She was going east. She’d be at the chapel soon.
She could even climb the beam and see what he really had hidden in there, too.
Lisle shook her head at her own nonsense. She wasn’t dressed for such an adventure. She didn’t think her legs would support her climbing to a beam that appeared to be three stories high, either, and she certainly wasn’t in the mood to do anything so adventurous.
Lisle stubbed her toe, went to her knees, and while she rubbed at both her toe and her knee, she wondered how she could get so soft in such a short time.
She was used to running about the MacHugh estate, bathing in the loch, and walking leagues around the properties in search of something edible that might still be growing in the ground.
This softness was ridiculous. She patted the ground in front of her toe for the offending object, and when her hands closed on it, she gasped.
It was a key; a very large key. She instinctively knew where it went.
She looked up, guessing by the windows that were three and four stories high that she was directly below his rooms. She knew she was right.
It was the key to the connecting door between their chambers.
He really had tossed it out into the shrubbery.
“Well!” She spoke it aloud and slid the key into an inner cloak pocket. Such a thing might come in handy later.
Lisle got back to her feet. She was probably in luck that she was wearing a dark green cloak, and that it was a soft-black kind of night, with mist starting to creep about, and the moon still not making an appearance.
If it was anything other, she’d probably end up hearing tales about a castle waif, or banshee, or any number of other creatures roaming about the grounds, and that, only if there was anyone watching.
Lisle shivered again, rubbed at her arms, wrapped the cloak more securely, and started walking again.
This time it was her nose, and then her forehead, smacking into a wall that shouldn’t be there.
Lisle had been walking, running the tips of her fingers along the golden-cast stone for lack of other guidance, and there was this wall.
She rubbed at her face and looked up, although in what light there was, it was impossible to see the full height of the obstruction.
She wasn’t at the chapel yet, or if she was, it was connected to the old castle walls at some point.
That made sense. Mist was swirling about with each step, coating her feet and ankles and chilling everything it touched.
The moon came out, finally starting to assist, and making it very easy to see that the wall belonged to a stairwell, and that there were stairs snaking about the outside of the keep to join up with the wall at some point.
Lisle checked it with her eyes, and then she was climbing it, although with the slight rise of the steps, it wasn’t much of a climb.
The stone here was slick, smooth, and had a buffed quality that had her wondering if he paid craftsmen to polish his stairs, too.
It was also slick with damp that the night was causing.
Lisle counted more than three hundred steps, all flat and long and with a rise of less than a finger-length between them. That was odd. Everything was.
The stairwell turned into the top of the outer wall, right beside one of the towers.
Lisle stood, framed in one of the crenellations, and looked out over the countryside, bathed with a soft hue of moonlight; long, disjointed fingers of mist that looked to belong to a banshee hand; and spikes of foliage that was the forest all about his grounds.
She caught her breath. She had never seen anything so darkly beautiful, nor so frightening… just like its master.
Lisle shook her head to stop the images.
It didn’t help to rail about her imagination.
It had gotten her in enough trouble back in school, when everything was unimaginative and dull and coated over with lecture and punishment.
Lisle had always had a following of other girls, under the covers, at night.
The tales she’d told had them all giggling, shivering and begging for more.
All of which did absolutely no good out on a castle wall in the middle of a moon-filled night, when she was supposed to be in her own chamber sleeping.
Lisle sighed and turned, and barely caught the scream from sounding as a shape loomed out at her from beside the tower.
She couldn’t do a thing about the way her heart froze and her legs wavered, sending her to the stone walkway before she could stop any of it.
She didn’t even feel the bruising as she landed and started to scramble backward until she was stopped by a stone side.