Chapter 5
“For God’s sake, Callum, what have you done to Freya MacLeod?”
Callum turned from the fireplace to find Keir standing in the doorway of the drawing room, his brows drawn down in an uncharacteristic scowl. “Done? What do you mean? I didn’t do anything to her.”
Aside from breaching her hems, but that didn’t count, as it hadn’t been at all titillating.
“No?” Keir raised an eyebrow. “Then why did I just see her scurrying down the hallway like a criminal fleeing the gibbet?”
“I haven’t the vaguest idea. The lady is afraid of her own shadow. How should I know what I said? She appeared out of nowhere an hour or so ago, babbling some nonsense about Dundee cake and orange marmalade, and insisted I take tea with her.”
“Tea? I don’t see any tea.”
“No, but I daresay you saw the remains of the tea on the floor of the entryway. She stumbled and dropped the tray.”
“No. I came down the back staircase. But how strange. And you didn’t say anything to frighten or offend her?”
“Not that I’m aware of, no, but I doubt it would take much to send Freya MacLeod into an attack of the vapors.” Perhaps he’d sat too close to her on the settee or examined her ankle with too much enthusiasm. God only knew what had set the girl off.
Keir dropped onto one of the worn settees. “It didn’t seem odd to you that she sought you out this afternoon?”
“It did, in fact.” It wasn’t as if he’d endeared himself to Freya MacLeod, grabbing her as he had in the drive yesterday. She’d given him a wide berth ever since, only to appear out of nowhere this afternoon and invite him to tea.
And it hadn’t been until he’d refused her invitation that she’d stumbled …
But there was nothing in that, surely.
Except there’d been that odd little thrust of her chin, right before she’d dropped the tea tray, and that expression in her eyes just before she’d fled the drawing room, that flash of fire, and now he thought of it, hadn’t she kept glancing over his shoulder, toward the window?
He turned to Keir, suspicion sneaking up on him. “You said you saw her hurrying down the hallway just now. Did she seem to be favoring her right foot, by any chance?”
Keir frowned. “No. She appeared perfectly able-bodied to me.” “How curious.” Quite a miraculous recovery, that.
“You must have said something to her, Callum. Keep in mind that we’re here to keep the ladies safe, not frighten the wits out of them.”
“I assure you, I didn’t.” He hadn’t exchanged more than a dozen words with her, and all of them so banal he could scarcely remember them now. “Nothing that would send a lady of any sense into a headlong flight down the hallway.”
A headlong flight on an injured ankle, an ankle without a hint of redness or swelling …
Something was wrong here. Perhaps he’d been too hasty, dismissing Freya MacLeod as he had. Her family was renowned for their trickery, after all. Wasn’t it possible she was wilier than she appeared to be?
“Nothing that might offend a lady of delicate sensibilities?” Keir pressed. “Did you glower at her? One of your glowers could send a timid lady fleeing for safety, and I’ve rarely come across a lady as timid as Freya MacLeod.”
Timid, was she? She’d appeared so at first glance, yes. As little as an hour ago he’d dismissed her as a spiritless, docile little thing, and the least diabolical of the three MacLeod sisters, but now …
Now, he wasn’t so sure. “Perhaps she’s not quite as timid as we think.”
“It’s a pity about the tea.” Keir rested one booted foot on a nearby ottoman. “A thick slice of Dundee cake sounds like just the thing.”
“Never mind the cake. That stumble of hers, Keir. She claimed to have hurt her ankle, but I’m beginning to suspect she feigned the entire thing.”
“Why would she? What does Freya MacLeod have to gain from feigning an injury?”
What, indeed? Something told him they were about to find out. “I can’t be sure, but something’s amiss. I’m certain of it.”
Keir didn’t appear to hear him. He was staring out the window across from the settee, his eyes wide. “Ah, Callum?”
“Perhaps she’s every bit the hellion her sister is, and we didn’t see it.”
“Callum, I think—”
“She claimed she was going to her bedchamber to rest, but—”
“She hasn’t gone to her bedchamber.” Keir jerked to his feet and strode across the drawing room to peer out the window.
“What? How do you know?”
Keir rapped a knuckle against the glass. “Come and see for yourself.”
Callum rose and strode to the window, squinting through the glass in the direction Keir was pointing. At first, he didn’t notice anything amiss, but just as he opened his mouth to ask, he saw her.
It wasn’t terribly late, but the evenings came on quickly this far north, especially in the winter, and Castle Cairncross was surrounded by thick wood on three sides, with the village of Dunvegan on the fourth.
The towering pines and oaks cast long shadows over the drive, and with darkness descending, Freya MacLeod was nearly indistinguishable from her surroundings in her dark blue cloak, the hood drawn up to cover her bright head.
“Where the devil does she think she’s going?” He turned from the window and met Keir’s gaze. “You don’t think she’d attempt to go to the village?”
The woods were potentially treacherous, but the town posed far more of a threat, as the villagers, with few exceptions, did not look upon the MacLeod sisters with a friendly eye.
They were so unfriendly, in fact, that Hamish had warned them not to permit either of the sisters to venture into the village unaccompanied.
Or at all, if it could be helped.
She wouldn’t risk going into the village alone, this close to sunset. Not without a good reason. What, then, had prompted this sudden flight into the darkness?
There was only one answer that made any sense. “When was the last time you saw the other chit? Sorcha?”
“I haven’t seen her since I retired to my bedchamber earlier this morning. Did you see her this afternoon?”
“Yes. She was up on the roof then, tending to those birds of hers.”
But that was an hour or two ago. Good Lord. There was no telling the mess Sorcha MacLeod could get into in several hours, and as for Freya, she wasn’t as innocent as she appeared, despite those wide green eyes.
She hadn’t hurt her ankle at all. When he’d refused the tea, she’d feigned a stumble and a twisted ankle to get him away from the door, so Sorcha could sneak out of the castle!
The devious little chit had tricked him, and she’d done a damn good job of it, too.
As it turned out, Freya MacLeod would dare. She had dared, and now she was nearly at the bottom of the drive, only a few steps away from vanishing into the woods.
Not such a timid little mouse, after all.
The hair on the back of her neck was prickling.
She hadn’t made it more than a dozen steps before that telltale prickle made her stop in her tracks. Her neck only ever prickled that way when someone was watching her.
Had one of the men seen her from the window? If so, which one? Were the eyes following her blue, or a deep arctic gray?
God, not the gray. The blue would be bad enough, but the gray … so cold, those eyes. Even his long, thick lashes couldn’t hide the glint of ice there.
But his hands were warm. So warm, she’d swear she could still feel the touch of his fingers against the bare skin of her ankle, as if he’d branded her. She’d been so startled at the brush of those warm fingers against her skin she’d nearly kicked him in the chest.
Silly of her, really. Despite his cold eyes, Callum Ross was a human being. Presumably his blood pumped through his veins in much the same way hers did. Still, human or not, he wasn’t the sort of man a lady wanted chasing her through a dark wood.
She ventured a glance behind her, just to see if—
Oh. Oh, no.
She froze, her feet rooted to the pathway. The front door of the castle was open, and on the top step stood Callum Ross, with Keir Dunn next to him, and they were both watching her as she hovered at the edge of the woods.
Both pairs of eyes, gray and blue, yet it was Callum she couldn’t look away from, Callum who sent her heart into a frenzy, beads of sweat blooming on her hairline.
She’d never encountered a more frightening man in her life.
Even from this distance he looked like a giant.
His head with those wild dark locks was nearly as high as the door frame, and his shoulders as wide, and as she stood there, poised on the edge of flight he was staring right at her, that cold gray gaze of his penetrating the cage of her ribs like a shard of ice embedded straight into the pulsing muscle of her heart.
Dear God, that glower. It was darker than the deepest corner of Dunvegan Woods.
He opened his mouth and shouted something, his deep voice echoing among the trees, but it was too late now. She’d made her decision, and there was no going back.
The only way out of this was through it.
So, she turned and fled toward the woods without a backward glance, but there was no outrunning the burning sensation on the back of her neck, as if that frigid gray gaze held the power of a thousand winters.
One step, another, a half dozen more, and she was nearly there …
She was panting by the time she plunged through the tree line, the woods closing behind her like a door slamming shut.
She ran blindly then, the sharp edges of the branches snatching at her as she passed, tearing at her cloak, the tree roots at her feet threatening to trip her with every step, and send her headlong into the shrubbery lining the pathway.
Was she headed west, toward the smoke?
She hardly knew, but a wise lady didn’t stop to assess her direction when two furious lairds were on her heels. She’d just have to hope instinct would take her the right way, and that despite the great disparity in the length of their legs, that she would manage to outrun her pursuers.
If she could only find Sorcha before they reached her, all would be well.