Chapter 19
Ailis yelped as she heard the snap of the laces, the tension pinging apart. Something was running up the back of her gown, but it wasn’t his fingertips carefully unfastening knots. Indeed, if she wasn’t mistaken, only a blade could make the laces come apart that fast.
“Did ye just… use a dagger?” she snapped, glancing over her shoulder at him.
He held the knife up. “This way, I didnae touch ye at all.”
Before she could protest or call him any number of the rude things that danced on the tip of her tongue, he whirled around. To make it all the more infuriating, she couldn’t protest too much; he had done exactly as she had asked, even if he had done it his way.
Why are ye so angry with him? she wondered as she slowly, shakily, peeled off the sodden dress and let it drop to the floor in a sad, wet heap. Ye’d be dead if he hadnae come to ye when he did.
She swallowed past the lump of guilt in her throat. Perhaps that was exactly why she was so angry with him, because she couldn’t turn that anger on herself without admitting how stupid she had been.
Just dipping her feet in the water or wading in up to her waist would have been enough to shock the fear out of her head, but she had kept wading in until the water was too high.
By that point, she had been forced to swim, or try to.
Then, the current had gotten hold of her, threatening to drag her out to sea, and…
it had taken everything she had just to keep her head above the surface. Her nightmare made real.
Shaking off the thought, she pulled on the thick, woolen shirt. It smelled a little musty, but it was warm and dry.
“I’m dressed,” she muttered, sitting back down on what she discovered to be a flat rock draped in blankets.
It was still a little exposing, having her bare legs out for him to see, so she tugged one of the blankets from underneath her and pulled it over her legs. That done, she huddled back into the delicious heat of the fleece, wrapping it tightly around her.
Only then did she realize that Killian must have been cold too; he was just bearing it better than she was. He had been in the water wearing far less than her, and he was still wearing less than her, his bare chest dappled with discolored hexagons. A sure sign that he was frozen to the bone.
Pouting, she extended one end of the huge fleece. “I daenae want to be blamed for yer death, either.”
“Ye daenae mind me bein’ close to ye?” he asked, sounding sincere.
She shrugged. “Nae if it saves yer life, like ye saved mine tonight.” A contrite smile curved her numb lips. “Thank ye, by the way. I ken I havenae said it yet.”
“Ye’re welcome,” he said as he sat down beside her and folded the end of the fleece around himself.
They lapsed into awkward silence for a while, the pop and spit of the fire the only sound aside from the percussion of waves hitting the cliffs and the patter of rainfall striking the rocks outside the cave mouth.
Yet, Ailis found herself relaxing against Killian’s side, the warmth of him overcoming any desire to keep a polite distance between them.
“What were ye thinkin’?” he asked a short while later. “Runnin’ away like that?”
She would be lying if she said she hadn’t been expecting that question. Meanwhile, she was curious to know how he had learned that she had fled in the first place. She was grateful, of course, but who had raised the alarm?
“I wasnae thinkin’,” she admitted. “I… panicked. I was standin’ there in me weddin’ gown, with flowers in me hand, and…
Paisley said somethin’ about Fraser, and I started thinkin’ about him and Skye and the clans, and…
I couldnae breathe. So, I ran, and I didnae stop runnin’…
and then I got here, and… I remembered how the cold stopped me from thinkin’ about…
me fear, and I thought it could do the same again. ”
Despite her insistence on not being touched, Killian’s arm slipped around her beneath the comfort of the fleece.
She didn’t shrug him off, for though he was a partial cause of her earlier panic, he was also giving her the reassurance she had been craving.
Reassurance that might have stopped her from running off in the first place.
“I’ll protect ye, lass,” he said quietly. “I’ll protect ye as I mean to protect me braither, yer niece, and me clan. Ye daenae need to throw yerself into bitterly cold water; just come to me instead.”
She glanced at him, brow furrowed. “I cannae. Just tonight, I wanted to, but I cannae.”
“Why nae?” he asked, his expression calm. Infuriatingly calm.
“Because bein’ near ye is just as likely to make me feel worse,” she answered.
“All ye do is confuse me, and… I daenae ken if I can trust ye, so how can I believe that ye’ll protect me?
In the woods, when me braither came, ye asked him if he had Fraser with him.
Ye asked him that after he asked for me to be returned.
And I cannae help but wonder if ye’d have given me back to him if Fraser had been with him. ”
A dark laugh rumbled in Killian’s chest. “When are ye goin’ to realize that ye belong to me now? I wouldnae have given ye back if he’d brought a whole bloody army, and if Fraser had been there, I’d have taken him back and kept ye.”
“More bloodshed?” She shot up to her feet, a shudder running down her spine.
She hadn’t seen much of the fight in the woods, but she had seen plenty of the aftermath. All of that blood soaking into the earth. It was probably still there, camouflaged by the autumn leaves.
Hugging herself as the draft from the cave mouth chilled her skin, she paced back and forth in front of the fire. Her shadow danced across the walls, wavering with the flicker of the flames as if it shared in her agitation.
“There’s nothin’ I wouldnae do to protect what’s mine,” Killian told her flatly.
“Stop sayin’ that!” she snapped, hugging herself tighter now that she had lost his warmth. “Stop muddlin’ me mind, Killian! Stop sayin’ that I’m yers, when we both ken that the weddin’ is just another tactic—another way of ye provokin’ me faither.”
Killian sighed. “It’s a tactic for peace, but that doesnae make ye any less mine.”
“So ye admit it?” she shot back. “It’s just a means to an end, grisly or otherwise?
Confusin’ me, kidnappin’ me, kissin’ me, has all been part of a plan to make me malleable, right?
Ye wanted to soften me up so I wouldnae refuse to play a part in yer scheme?
Och, and I daresay I’ve helped ye along the way, bein’ the damsel that needs rescuin’?
Ye must’ve thought ye were lucky when I went missin’ tonight and ye saw another chance to rescue me and make me beholden to ye! ”
“I thought I’d lose me damn mind!” Killian suddenly roared, rising from the rock, the fleece sliding off his broad shoulders.
He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her closer to him, his eyes blazing as he stared down at her. His chest rose and fell with harsh breaths, his face contorted with more emotion than she had yet seen from him.
“I’ve got the entire castle turnin’ over every damn stone for ye,” he continued.
“And I didnae give that order because ye’re a captive.
I gave that order because I couldnae bear thinkin’ of somethin’ bad happenin’ to ye.
I couldnae tolerate the thought of Murdock snatchin’ ye or ye willingly handin’ yerself back to a life of cruelty.
When I saw ye in the water, lass… I’ve never kent terror like it.
It was a thorn in me chest, pressin’ deeper as ye struggled. ”
She blinked up at him, stunned by his response. It was the very last thing she had expected to hear, and to make it all the more astonishing, he seemed fervently sincere.
“I ken what ye think, and I ken how it might look, but I didnae steal ye from yer home for revenge or to provoke anyone,” he went on. “It shames me to admit it, lass, but I wasnae thinkin’ about me braither the moment I met ye.”
“What?” she rasped.
He turned his gaze down to the fire. “I planned to get information from ye and leave ye in yer room, but then yer braither came along,” he replied.
“I saw yer fear. Heard it. And all I could think was, I have to get her out of here. There was nothin’ else.
If someone had made me choose between Fraser’s freedom and yer liberation at that moment, I’d still have thrown ye over me shoulder. ”
More platitudes. More empty sentiments to make me play me part. It has to be.
She was no one of merit, or so she had been told. Her father and brother thought her a fool, a useless creature who was only worth punishing, a troublesome thing without value. So, how could she have made Killian feel so protective of her after meeting for a matter of moments?
“Regardless of what tomorrow brings to the clan and means for the war, I’ll never let ye go,” he said fiercely.
She swallowed thickly. “Our families might kill each other. Indeed, ye almost killed me braither.”
“Aye, and yer faither killed mine, but it’s nae about bloodshed or revenge,” he told her.
“I want this chance at peace, with ye. And nay matter what may come, ye’ll still belong to me.
It willnae be our families, but our family.
Ye as me wife, and yer niece raised as ours so she never kens an ounce of the cruelty ye suffered. ”
At the mention of Skye, all of Ailis’s misgivings faded into the ether. Killian hadn’t forgotten about the little girl, hadn’t forgotten what she meant to her.
Here was a man who would treat Skye with kindness so she would never feel small or ignored. Here was a man who would teach that girl to swim if she asked, rather than consider her a nuisance who needed to be confined to her room.
“Can I touch ye?” Killian whispered, even though his hand was already holding her arm.
Slowly, Ailis nodded.
“Good,” he replied, before his lips stole her breath and worries away.