CHAPTER 8
The Highlander, who was pacing the small room like a caged animal, came to an abrupt halt and swept his gaze over her, which did nothing to calm her nerves.
“Ye can’t take that,” he said, pointing at the basket. “We’re on horseback.”
Sudden panic made her limbs weak and her throat tight. She had to persuade him to let her bring the basket.
“Surely, ye cannot expect a lady to go on a long journey without a second gown, extra stockings, and”—Margaret turned to put her body between him and the basket while she fumbled for what else she could say was in it—“and…other things a woman needs.”
He heaved a sigh and gave her a lopsided smile. “All right, princess.”
With his easy smile and that twinkle in those deep blue eyes, fringed with impossibly long dark lashes, this Highlander was far too good looking to trust. Handsome men were the worst.
While she was shamelessly staring at him like a girl half her age, he took the basket from her before she realized it.
“By the saints, lass, what do ye have in here? Rocks?” he said, hefting the basket.
She barely managed to stifle a gasp as Ella began to wiggle beneath the blanket. Moving quickly, Margaret leaned over the table to blow the lamp out.
A steel grip clamped around her arm. “I hope ye weren’t planning to slip out in the dark and escape.”
“This is my friend’s home,” she said. “I don’t wish to risk setting it afire by leaving a lamp burning.”
“Just who is this friend?” he asked.
“He—” She stopped speaking because the Highlander was no longer listening for an answer. With her heart sinking, she followed his gaze to the wriggling blanket covering the basket.
“Sh-i-t-e,” the Highlander said on a long exhale.
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God grant him patience, did the lass have a dog in there? Ladies like her were fond of those wee snappy ones with sharp teeth. Finn whipped off the blanket before the damned thing could bite him.
A bairn with curly blonde hair, rosy cheeks, and enormous blue eyes stared up at him. He was so stunned that words failed him. Slowly, he dragged his gaze from the apparition to Lady Margaret.
“What in the hell is this?” he asked. “No one told me there would be a bairn. They said you were barren.”
She winced slightly at the word barren, but he was too upset at the moment to apologize.
“Whose bairn is this?” he asked.
“Mine.” Lady Margaret picked the child up and clutched her to her chest. “She’s mine.”
“I meant, what man does she belong to,” he pressed her. “Who’s the father? Is it your husband, Drumlanrig?”
“He’s not my husband any longer,” she said. “And Ella is not his.”
Then the child was the result of an affair. An adulterous affair. This must be the true reason her husband discarded her.
“Who is the father, then?” he asked.
“She’s mine alone,” she said, and pressed her lips firmly together.
“Ach, ye haven’t told him, have ye?” he said. “A man has a right to know.”
“You’re a kidnapper, and ye judge me?” she said.
“’Tis wrong to take a child from its father.”
“Sometimes,” she said, rubbing her cheek against the child’s curly blonde head, “’tis the only right thing to do.”
“O shluagh,” he said, calling on the faeries for help as he ran his hands through his hair. “’Tis bad enough I have to take a highborn lady unaccustomed to rough travel. I cannot take a bairn as well.”
“You’ll not take me without her,” she said, and the iron in her voice surprised him. “If ye try, I promise ye I’ll fight every moment of every day to get back to her.”
That would surely make for an unpleasant journey. And if Lady Margaret did manage to escape, she would be in danger until he found her again. Damn it.
“Besides,” she said, “’tis to your advantage to bring her along.”
“To my advantage?” He gave a dry laugh. “I cannot wait to hear this.”
“The men my brother will send to search for me will not be looking for a woman with a child,” she said.
“Why not?” he asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.
“Archie doesn’t know about her,” she said. “No one does.”
“How did ye manage to keep your daughter a secret from your family as well as the father?”
“Ella has been living with a woman here in the village,” Margaret said. “Everyone believes she’s her daughter.”
“Well then, this problem is solved,” he said, relief pouring through him. “Ye can leave the wee bairn with her.”
“The woman died suddenly…of a fever,” she said. “That’s why I had to rush here in secret at night from Holyrood.”
The faeries were surely laughing at him in their faery hills tonight.
What in the hell was he going to do? He shuddered at the prospect of tearing the child from her mother’s arms and carrying a screaming and wailing Lady Margaret off over his shoulder.
And then the lass would give him no end of trouble with her attempts to escape.
He glanced down at the child. Though he knew next to nothing about bairns, even he could see this one was too young to be left on her own. He could leave her on the doorstep of one of the neighboring cottages, but he had no way of knowing if the family would take good care of the wee thing.
He was tempted to walk out the door and not look back, but there would be grave consequences if he did.
Moray and the Gordons would lose the leverage they needed to force Archibald Douglas to release the young Gordon chieftain.
And then, once the lad came of age and returned to rule his clan, he’d hold a grudge against Finn for the next fifty or sixty years.
Finn would have to leave Scotland and never return.
“Shite!” What choice did he have? He spewed a long string of Gaelic curses interspersed with a few more shites until he noticed that Lady Margaret’s eyes were wide with alarm and she was holding her hands over the bairn’s ears.
He did not mean to frighten her—at least not more than he needed to.
“All right, ye can bring your daughter, but only”—he paused and pointed his finger at her—“if ye promise to give me no trouble.”
Lady Margaret broke into a smile that made him feel as if he’d just walked into a valley filled with sunshine and birdsong. Jesu, the lass was dangerous.
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Margaret peered into the darkness, afraid that someone would see them—or hear the Highlander muttering more colorful Gaelic curses.
She could feel that Ella was frightened, but she neither cried nor whined as any other child of three would do.
Instead, she merely sucked her thumb and held tightly to Margaret’s hand.
“It will be all right, sweetling,” she leaned down to whisper, and hoped she was right.
“Must we take this damned basket?” the Highlander asked again from the other side of the horse.
“Aye,” she said. “Ella cannot sleep without it.”
The Highlander had already tried to persuade her to leave it behind, but it would comfort Ella to sleep in it and the child had lost everything else, so Margaret held firm.
“All I wanted was to get this journey over with,” he said under his breath as he tied the basket behind the saddle, “and now we’ll be traveling at the pace of a peddler.”
Margaret sucked in a startled breath when the Highlander suddenly appeared behind her. He stood so close that she felt the heat from his body. He lifted her and Ella onto the horse.
When he swung up behind her, she was suddenly surrounded by brawny male Highlander.
A blade of grass could not have fit between them anywhere.
The hard muscles of his thighs rubbed against hers, his breath ruffled a loose strand of her hair on the side of her face, and her backside was pressed against his…
She would just have to do her best to ignore him.
“One peep from you as we leave the village,” he whispered in her ear, “and the bairn stays behind.”
Margaret refrained from pointing out that she’d been quieter than he had. She’d learned long ago that men resented being told of errors in their thinking.
They rode into the black night and left the village behind. Despite the uncertainty and dangers that lay ahead, when she felt Ella’s heartbeat beneath her palm, a wave of happiness spread through her. She and her daughter were making their escape.