Chapter 9 #2
But when she untangled herself from her nightmares, they’d left Dunvegan far behind.
For as long as she could remember Castle Cairncross’s awkward turret jutting into the sky had been her guiding star, but she could no longer see it.
It was gone, along with everything else that spoke to her of home.
Nothing was familiar. Not the chest pressed against her back, or the saddle swaying beneath her. Not the clop of the horses’ hooves striking the road, the occasional cottage they passed or the flat gray water she glimpsed through the trees.
Even the sky looked different here.
Wherever they were, it wasn’t anywhere she’d been before. All her comforting lies vanished then, like the mists swirling over the water at the first glow of sunrise.
She straightened upright, putting a sliver of space between her back and Callum Ross’s chest. It had been ages since she’d been on a horse, and it wasn’t comfortable, sitting upright in the saddle, but a lady didn’t lounge on a gentleman as if he were a settee.
Especially not this gentleman.
She cleared her throat. “Where are you taking me?”
Silence. The minutes ticked by, but still, he didn’t answer her. Either her voice had been lost in the rising wind around them, or he didn’t intend to give her the courtesy of a reply.
But just when she’d given up, he muttered, “To Balnagown Castle, in Kildary.”
Balnagown Castle? She never heard of it, but hadn’t her father mentioned Kildary, once or twice? Or had it been Kiltearn? Killilan? She must have mistaken the name, because the village he’d told her about was only about thirty miles northwest of Inverness.
Yes, she’d certainly confused the name. Inverness was more than a hundred and thirty miles from Dunvegan. It was impossible he was taking her as far away from her home as—
“Stay here, lass.”
His voice was so low, so quiet she felt it more than heard it, a low rumble against her spine, his warm breath stirring the wisps of loose hair at the back of her neck and making her shiver.
He was a man of few words, but then perhaps a man with such a cold, forbidding stare as his had no need of words to persuade people to do his bidding.
He was the sort who issued orders, and expected they’d be obeyed.
The sort who told someone to stay where they were and found them precisely where he’d left them when he returned.
It didn’t take more than a glance at Callum Ross’s severe dark eyebrows and stern lips to see that. He gave the commands, and everyone scrambled to obey him.
It was pure foolishness to imagine she was an exception. She wasn’t, and he knew it as well as she did. Otherwise, he would have taken some measures to prevent her from leaping from the horse’s back and disappearing into the sparse wilderness along the banks of the loch.
If she’d been braver than she was, a lady with a steel-edged spine like Sorcha, she might have led him a bit of a chase.
It wouldn’t have done her any good in the end, of course.
There was no place for her to go, or any means by which to get there, and she wouldn’t get far with her feet sliding about inside Cat’s boots with every step.
Unless she chose to turn horse thief. Why, she could snatch up the reins right now, turn the horse’s head back toward Dunvegan and leave Callum Ross far behind.
What was a bit of horse thievery, in comparison to arson?
But he’d catch her, somehow. She couldn’t say how he’d manage it without a horse, but he wasn’t the sort of man who’d let his quarry slip through his fingers.
Still, if she had at least attempted a respectable escape, she’d have no reason to reproach herself for being such a coward.
But she did just as he’d told her to do. She sat atop the horse, clutching the edges of his coat with numb fingers as the one chance she’d had at escape since they’d left Dunvegan faded with every scrape of the horse’s hooves under the frozen dirt beneath them.
She remained where she was, the still waters of some loch or other spread out before her, the gray water blending into the gloomy clouds in the sky above, her brain a dull, sluggish thing in her head, and waited for whatever fate would befall her.
It seemed too much effort to do anything else.
He wasn’t gone for long. Soon enough there was a crunch of boot heels on the frozen ground behind her, then an incredulous voice said, “Who’s this, then?”
It was the shock in the voice that roused her and made her turn to look.
A tall, gangly lad with wild dark hair had stopped in the middle of the road and was staring up at her with an expression of pure astonishment.
She stared back at him, curious. He was just a boy—or, no, he wasn’t quite a boy anymore, but he was not yet a man, either. He was suspended somewhere between the two, at the mercy of long, ungainly limbs that yet only hinted at the strapping man he would someday become.
He gaped at her for a moment longer, dark eyes wide, before turning to Callum. “Yer bringing someone to the castle?”
Callum didn’t deign to offer the lad more than a grunt in response, and a terse, “Fetch the boat, Brodie.”
He didn’t speak harshly, but the command had the boy nearly tripping over his long limbs. “Aye, Ross.”
“Sit, stay, fetch …” she muttered to herself as poor Brodie scrambled to obey. They were all mere pawns to Callum Ross’s king, to be manipulated according to his whims. It was a lowering thought—
Wait. Had he just ordered the lad to fetch a boat?
She gazed out at the gray water curling along the edge of the shore, and from there to the small white cottages that lay like sleeping sheep along the coastline behind them, then turned to Callum. “Where are we?”
He was watching Brodie, who was manfully attempting to drag a small fishing boat from the tall grasses a few paces from the water, and didn’t spare her a glance. “Kyleakin.”
Kyleakin! If they were in Kyleakin, that meant the gray expanse of water in front of her was Lochalsh, and the village she could just glimpse on the other side of the water was Kyle of Lochalsh, on the mainland.
Only then did it truly sink in what was happening.
He was taking her off Skye! Away from her home, her sister, and everything she knew and loved. It wouldn’t take more than an hour to reach the shores of Kyle of Lochalsh.
One hour, and her home and her sister would truly be left far behind.
Dear God, Sorcha. What had become of her last night? Had she gone back to the castle to search for her, only to find it dark and empty? Sorcha would have been frantic, once she realized Freya wasn’t there.
Ah, she couldn’t bear to think of it.
Was it possible Sorcha hadn’t made it back to the castle at all? Those men who’d chased her through the woods last night must also have chased Sorcha. Her sister knew those woods better than anyone, but she was one small lady, and there’d been more than a dozen men in that mob.
Had they caught her? Or had she made it back to the castle, only to find them waiting for her? What had Sorcha been doing, out at Mr. Stewart’s farm? She and her sisters knew better than to trust any of the men in Dunvegan.
One question after another spun through her head until she was dizzy with them, but there were no answers for her. She was going in circles, only to find herself at the same dead end, every time.
That was where this would end, if she allowed Callum Ross to take her away from Skye. She’d agreed to leave the castle last night, yes—she’d had no other choice—but she’d never agreed to this.
If she left Skye now, she might never find her way back again.
Meanwhile, the boat was waiting.
Some strong emotion seized her then, something that was both fury and panic at once.
It kindled like flames in her breast, and the timidity that had kept her quiet began to singe and curl at the edges.
How had she ended up here at the water’s edge, one short boat ride away from abandoning her sister, and leaving Skye behind her?
“Come on, lass. Down you go.”
If Callum Ross had chosen any other time to seize her waist and attempt to drag her from the saddle, things might have gone differently. Another moment, and the spark of rebellion might have died a quick death, but as it was, those massive paws closing around her waist set the spark aflame.
What happened next was … well, she didn’t plan it.
It just happened.
“No!” The word tore from her throat, raw and bloody, and before she even realized she’d opened her mouth, other words came tumbling out after it, a veritable barrage of them, each one louder than the last and throbbing with fury. “Release me this instant, you … you … barbarian!”
Barbarian? Goodness, where had that word come from? Surely, that wasn’t the word she’d meant to say?
The boy, Brodie, must have been as shocked as she was, because he froze, dropping the rope that tethered the boat to the shore. “She just … did she just call you a—”
That was as far as he got. His voice was drowned out by the deafening shriek that rushed like a streak of flames from her lips. “I’m not going to your blasted castle! I’m not going anywhere with you!”
But no one was as shocked as Callum Ross.
He must have been dumbfounded indeed, because the man who hadn’t so much as flinched when she’d feigned a stumble and sent a whole tea tray’s worth of dishes crashing to the floor, the man who’d eluded a torch-wielding mob and taken the blade of a dirk to his knuckles without so much as a twitch …
He dropped her.
Or, well, not dropped her, precisely, but his hands went slack around her waist. It was only for an instant, no more than the time it took for her to draw a breath and release it again, but it was enough.
Enough time for her heel to connect with his stomach.
“Oof!” His breath left his lungs in a startled whoosh, and Cat’s half boot flew off her foot and went sailing into the shrubbery at the water’s edge like some exotic black bird.
Brodie watched it fly in an arc over his head, his mouth falling open.
If there’d been any softness to Callum Ross’s midsection, she might have gotten further than she did, but alas, landing a kick to the layers of muscle there was rather like kicking a stone wall.
Still, it was enough. A bit of writhing and a squirm of her hips was all it took.
For one moment, one glorious instant, she was free.
She might have remained so if she hadn’t been missing a boot on one foot and hadn’t just crushed the toes of the other on Callum Ross’s torso.
And that was to say nothing of his arm, which was not only as muscled as his stomach, but longer than any man’s arm had a right to be.
But like so many rebellions before it, hers was doomed to failure.
She didn’t make it more than a half dozen steps before that long arm curled around her waist. With one dizzying lurch everything tilted underneath her, and the ground disappeared from under her feet.
The world tipped on its side, then went upside down in a blur of brown packed dirt road and gray sky.
It wasn’t until her forehead bounced against the broad plane of his back that she understood what had happened.
He’d thrown her over his shoulder! Of all the savage, barbaric—
“See Titan’s taken care of,” he called to Brodie, nodding at his horse as he strode toward the water’s edge with her bouncing against his back as if she weighed no more than a rag doll.
She was gasping for breath by this point, stunned by the quickness with which he’d scooped her up, and rather flabbergasted at her own daring.
“Give me the rope. Quickly lad, before she bolts again.”
Bolts! He meant her. He was talking about her as if she were his horse!
How had it come to this? She hadn’t done anything wrong, yet she was being dragged away from her sister and her home as if she’d committed some unspeakable crime.
The panic that was never far away from her came crashing down on top of her with a vengeance then, stealing the breath from her chest. Every rational thought flew from her head as the panic gripped her, writhing like a serpent in her belly.
Slow, even breaths. If only she could manage a half dozen breaths, she could keep it at bay, and all might yet be well.
One, two, three … yes, that was better.
And it was, but not for long. Her lungs rebelled on the fourth breath, freezing to a halt in her chest. She dug her fingernails into her palms to shake the panic loose, chase it away, but it was no use. It had her in its grip now, and it was squeezing, squeezing …
There was no way to escape it. It was sucking her down into the cold darkness, just as it had done once when she was a child and went swimming in Loch Dunvegan with her sisters.
One moment she was splashing in the cool water, and the next the tide had caught her, and the water was closing over her head.
This was just like that had been, a slow, numb descent, her lungs clamoring for air, her chest burning.
She couldn’t catch her breath. She couldn’t breathe—
An arm pressed into her side, warm and impossibly hard. “Easy, lass.”
It was the low rumble of his voice that brought her back to herself.
Or no, not his voice, but the vibration of his back against her chest when he spoke.
It was oddly comforting, that deep rumble, the one comforting thing she’d discovered about the man, like the hum of the carriage seat beneath her when she used to ride to Uiginish with her mother and father and sisters, to stroll around the point on a sunny day.
How had he known? Had he sensed her panic, the way her body had gone rigid against his? She opened her mouth to ask, but then closed it again without saying a word.
It didn’t matter. Perhaps there was some kindness in him, but she couldn’t afford to trust Callum Ross. He’d taken her from her castle, the only home she’d ever known, and from her sister, and given the chance, he’d take her farther away still.
He was a kidnapper, or, well, a napper of young ladies. Was there such a thing?
What did it matter? She had no choice in this, any more than she did anything else. In the five short months since her father’s death, she’d become powerless, a burden to be passed from one hand to the next at the whim of men who knew nothing about her hopes, her fears or her dreams.
First the smugglers, then the villagers, and now Callum Ross.
And she was at his mercy.