Chapter 16
Ciaran knew that he could not let himself sleep, not that any such thing would be possible, what with the acid self-loathing that churned in him.
Eilidh made a soft, sleepy sound from where she slept in his arms, and Ciaran felt another stab of fury and regret.
God, how had he been so stupid? How had he let himself take her? How had he dared to taste something that he knew he could never keep?
One more minute, he told himself. He would have one more minute—would soak in enough of her presence to last him a lifetime—and then he would go.
For that one minute, he let himself think about what it would feel like to love her.
To marry her, to have her at his side always.
To wake up every day with her golden hair tickling his nose; to tease her about how, even with the bulk of it braided, that hair got everywhere.
For that minute, he thought about watching her grow round with their children, about seeing her hold his babe in her arms. He thought about watching her hair go gray, about seeing more freckles appear on her cheeks and wrinkles carve into her eyes from decades of mischievous smiles.
He lived a lifetime with her in his head during that minute. And then, when it was over, he made himself let her go.
Because no matter what pretty lies he told himself, that future was not theirs to take. All he could bring to her was ruin and pain.
“I’m sorry, lass,” he murmured into her hair.
“If this was a sin, I’ll carry it in me heart like a sacred thing.
” He slipped his arm out from underneath her, careful not to disturb her rest, then tucked the blanket gently around her.
“Please forgive me. But I cannot kill that babe. And I cannot risk ye, either. I will die before I let Gordon get his hands on ye.”
He pressed a final kiss to her brow. It nearly killed him when the small gesture made her smile slightly in her sleep.
Shadowbane seemed to understand the need for silence; he did not let out so much as a single whinny of anticipation as Ciaran saddled him in the faint predawn light. In fact the horse, who normally took any opportunity to get out of his stall, seemed oddly reluctant to leave.
Or perhaps Ciaran was just projecting his own dread onto his mount.
He checked every buckle twice, and then he could delay no longer.
He mounted his horse and rode out of the stable.
He didn’t let himself look back, not even once, as he crossed to the gate that would let him past the Keep’s walls, nor as he briefly dismounted to open the way for Shadow to pass through.
If he had, he might have seen someone watching from the shadows. And if he had gone to look, he might have seen Arran McPherson watching every step he took, a fierce frown on the other warrior’s face.
Eilidh was cold. Why was it so cold in her bedchamber?
Except… she wasn’t in her bedchamber. The surface below her was too coarse and lumpy to be her bed, and these weren’t her soft, well-worn blankets.
Blearily, she opened her eyes, and for a moment, she had no idea where she was.
And then it all came crashing back. Ciaran. The stables.
Making love.
Another shiver, and she realized the source of her confusion wasn’t merely the strange location—it was the silence. The absence of the man who had made her feel all those things she’d never felt before.
Eilidh’s heart dropped to her stomach.
He’d left. He’d really left.
Ciaran was gone.
She was on her feet before she’d made a conscious decision, pausing only long enough to throw her clothes back onto her body from where they’d been scattered by the previous evening’s activities.
The moment she was halfway decent, however, she stormed back into the Keep, heading for her room, her feet given flight by the storm of dread and outright fury that burned inside her.
How dare he? How dare he make love to her and then leave her anyway? How dare he make her fall in love with him and then leave her anyway?
“To hell with that,” Eilidh muttered to her empty room as she began digging in her wardrobe for a satchel. “I’m not going to be left behind. I’m not going to wait around. It’s time to take my own blasted fate into my hands.”
She emerged from the wardrobe triumphantly, a battered leather satchel in her hands.
She quickly gathered some basic supplies—a brace of knives, some extra stockings—and dressed in her most practical clothes.
Then, she snuck down to the larder and stuffed the rest of the pack full of basic provisions, the kind of thing that traveled well.
It was good that she didn’t encounter anyone as she did so, aside from a few kitchen maids who barely gave her a second glance as they hurried to prepare breakfast. She looked positively mad, the way she kept muttering crossly to herself.
But she was too furious to keep it inside.
“That story I told wee Jamie was stupid anyway,” she said as she hurried to the stables. “No princess worth her salt needs to wait around for the pigheaded prince to finally figure things out. I’m going to chase my prince, damn it! I’m going to write my own story—my way.”
Grian snorted his approval as she threw a saddle over his back.
Eilidh paused just long enough to look her mount in his dark eyes.
“Ye are the only man with a lick of sense,” she informed the horse. “But even though my man is a fool, I’m going to get him back anyway, aye?”
Grian tossed his head in approval.
Eilidh led the horse out of the stall and had just thrown her leg over his back when Arran came into the stables, a worried expression on his face. That look grew even more alarmed and guarded when he saw Eilidh.
“Are ye doing something foolish?” he asked, sounding rather as though he already knew the answer.
“I’m doing something that needs to be done,” she returned.
He looked as though he was going to be stubborn about this, but Eilidh was absolutely sick of stubborn men who thought they knew best.
“Eilidh…” he said warningly.
But there was no time to argue with him.
“Arran McPherson,” she said, towering above him from Grian’s back. “I love ye like a brother, but I swear to ye, if ye do not stand aside, I will plow right through ye.”
He stood his ground, calling her bluff, and—well, yes, she wasn’t going to run Davina’s husband into the ground.
But he was just one man, and the stables had doors that were too big for him to block on his own.
So she bent low over Grian’s neck and urged her horse into a dash through the exit, ignoring Arran’s startled cry and his belated effort to grab at her.
She kept going, headed straight for the woods, passing through the gate. Shouts were coming from behind her—Arran’s alone at first, but then with other voices chiming in—but they were obscured by the way the wind was rushing in her ears as she and Grian bolted for freedom.
Her mind was racing as quickly as Grian’s hooves pounded the earth.
Ciaran would be heading for Gunn lands, which gave her a general direction. There were a few ways to get out of Buchanan territory if you were riding in that direction, but they all led to the same large road. That would be where she would overtake him. All she had to do was catch up.
Ciaran was a skilled rider and Shadowbane was a Donaghey-bred horse. Most pursuers would find them impossible to catch. But Eilidh was not just any pursuer, and she had one advantage: she knew the terrain in ways that he did not.
There was a rougher path, one that was rarely traveled because it could only accommodate one horse in a single line. It was craggy and rough and required a great deal of stamina from both horse and rider.
But Eilidh would do what she needed to do to catch up with Ciaran. And she trusted Grian with her life.
She led her mount toward the smaller path, and for several hours, she had to focus enough on making sure to guide Grian safely that she had little time to think of anything else.
In the few spare moments that she could let her focus wander slightly, she sent up prayers to anyone that would listen—God, Fate herself, the Old Folk—that she would catch up with Ciaran in time.
She had to find him. They belonged to one another. They belonged with one another.
She forced herself to continue past the point of exhaustion.
She stopped only when Grian stumbled, and she realized that, in her haste, she had pushed him too far.
Foam was thick on his flanks and his sides heaved with every breath.
She realized with another jolt that the sun had started to dip back down toward the horizon. They’d been riding all day.
“I’m sorry, lad,” she murmured to her horse, patting his neck and letting him slow to a walk as she looked for a place to stop.
It didn’t take her long to find a secluded burn with a burbling stream nearby, and she practically dropped from the saddle as Grian began drinking in great, breathless gulps.
Eilidh, too, needed water; she’d emptied her canteen ages ago, and she’d only eaten a quick handful of dried apple. She had ignored the needs of her body while they’d been riding, but her hunger and thirst roared now, as if understanding that it was finally time to demand satisfaction.
She ate and drank greedily, her legs scarcely holding her up as she leaned against Grian’s warm shoulder. She pulled the shawl from her bag around her shoulders, holding it tight as she felt the heavy hammer of sleep drop mercilessly atop her.
Eilidh wasn’t sure what woke her. A sound? A sense in the air? But unlike that morning, there was no disorientation, no moment of confusion. She jolted into instant awareness, as if she hadn’t been sleeping at all.
It was the only thing that saved her life, as the dark figure standing over her raised a blade poised to strike.