Chapter 21
By the time they passed through the village at the base of the mountain, Gillian began to have misgivings. He’d not come for her. She’d wanted him to come for her. Prayed for it. Not to lock her up but to tell her he was wrong, to beg her forgiveness for his pigheadedness.
But he did not come. As the day wore on, Gillian began to wonder if she was wrong. He was only trying to protect her, and she had been making that a rather difficult task for him. Uncertainty and frustration warred in her breast, leaving her frustrated and despondent by the time night fell.
She was still tormenting herself when they stopped for the night.
Camp was set up, and Rose checked Gillian’s arm and hand dressings.
They settled down around the fire. Sir Evan disappeared into the darkness to check the perimeter.
He hadn’t spoken a word to her all day. Not that he was ever especially talkative, but she couldn’t help but feel he disapproved of her decision to abandon his master.
Gillian didn’t know what to think anymore.
There was no right or wrong. It all felt wrong if they weren’t together.
She lay on the ground, a rolled plaid braced behind her to keep her from rolling onto her right arm in her sleep.
In her mind she went over and over everything that had happened, and sorrow settled over her like a blanket.
She loved Nicholas. And yet he would imprison her for what she was.
She should have shown him—taken him to the dollhouse so he could see the doll appear and disappear for himself.
She should have tried harder. But what good would it have done?
The anger sparked again. He thought she was insane.
Not merely dotty anymore but a madwoman.
Then she thought of his eyes and his dusky skin and his arms around her, his laughter and teasing, and the emptiness yawned wide in her heart. Tears scalded her eyes.
Beside her Rose lifted her head, sharp eyes scanning the darkness.
“What is it?” Gillian whispered.
Before Rose could answer, all hell broke loose.
Gillian was no stranger to raids, having lived on the borders since she was ten.
However, they’d always had the tower to run to for protection, where they could light a signal fire and wait for help to arrive.
Here they didn’t even have a fire. Sir Philip had ordered them doused after they’d eaten, so they would not attract attention.
There was no moon to shed light, and everything was a dark mass of confusion—screaming and yelling, the clash of metal, the report of guns, gunpowder and smoke flavoring the air, the meaty thwack of fists hitting flesh.
Gillian struggled to free herself of her blanket, her heart pumping, her arm hampering her ability to move quickly.
Isobel screamed somewhere to her right. Gillian jerked toward the sound.
She was grabbed beneath the arms and hauled to her feet.
“Come on.” It was Stephen. He led her toward a copse of bushes and boulders.
She stumbled, her breath sawing in her lungs.
He caught her, trying to help her up, but then he sagged to the ground.
Gillian stared dumbly at the dark crumpled shape of him, a horrified scream rising in her throat. Someone yanked her around.
A face was thrust into hers. It stunk of garlic and sour ale. Gillian whimpered and tried to twist away. Another man was behind her. He fingered her braid, pulling roughly on it. Gillian screamed and struggled. A torch was thrust in her face, and the bearded visage of a filthy man peered at her.
“That’s her,” another said. “He said her arm was broken. Let’s go!”
She heard the Gaelic shout for retreat. A horse raced at her, and Gillian was thrust up into some one’s arms, wrenching her broken limb.
Pain radiated through her. She screamed.
A gloved hand clamped over her mouth, muffling her cries of distress.
Her stomach pitched queasily from agony and her captor’s stench.
As they galloped through the darkness, the pain dimmed to a dull throb.
Gillian fell silent, trying to determine where they were going.
It was dark, but it appeared they headed northeast, back toward Kincreag.
She could see little of her abductors in the darkness, but she was aware of a great many men, outnumbering Gillian’s party several times.
How many men had died? What of Stephen and Sir Philip?
What of her sisters? Sir Evan? She prayed he’d gotten away and returned to Kincreag.
Nicholas would come for her. Once Sir Evan told him, nothing would stop him from protecting her.
Tears burned tracks down her cheeks. That’s all he’d ever wanted to do—protect her.
Dawn lightened the sky, and Gillian was finally able to see.
A man at the front of their party was familiar, and as the light grew stronger, she realized with a sinking heart that it was Sir Evan.
But the longer she stared, the more she realized something was not quite right.
He was not bound, nor had he been disarmed.
And when he shouted an order to one of the kidnappers, the air left her all at once.
He was not a prisoner. He was the leader.
Gillian couldn’t believe it. Nicholas trusted him. She’d trusted him.
They rode on, betrayal turning Gillian’s fear to bitter anger.
Excepting their party, there wasn’t a human in sight for miles.
The landscape was austere, barren, craggy rocks jutting up from the lichened ground and rough bracken.
They topped a rise, and in the distance rose a hill with a tree atop it.
An enormous ancient oak, its black branches twisted and gnarled, reaching for the sky.
A body dangled from a branch, swaying in the breeze.
A woman dressed entirely in black stood on the hill beside the body, waiting.
A hanging tree. Fingers of panic climbed Gillian’s throat and held tight. A hanging tree. This was not a mere kidnapping for ransom. Sir Evan meant to hang her.
The thick stink of decay hung like a cloud around the hill. As they neared, the birds feasting on the body scattered. The dull face of the woman in black was suddenly animated, and she ran at them, shrieking, “Go away! Leave this place!”
The horses grew skittish, jerking their heads and rearing, eyes rolling, shying from the tree. No one else paid attention to the woman. They didn’t even look at her.
“Cut it down,” Evan ordered.
One of the men dismounted and started for the tree—passing right through the woman as she ran about, screeching mournfully.
Gillian gasped. The woman was a ghost. Gillian had not yet grown accustomed to seeing them.
“What’s wrong?” her captor asked, his arm tightening around her waist, his other hand hard on the reins to control his frightened horse.
“Nothing.”
The body hit the ground with a sickening thwack. They kicked it down the hill. A rope was thrown over the thickest branch, and a noose was fashioned.
Gillian was weak with fear, her heart laboring painfully. Her neck craned all around as she looked for some sign of Nicholas or her sisters. But there was no one. Just the ghost woman.
Her captor dismounted, leaving Gillian atop the horse. Sir Evan rode his horse beside hers. “Are you ready, Mistress MacDonell?”
He said it so normally, just as he always spoke to her. She could only stare at him for a moment, hoping in her heart he was the same Sir Evan. And perhaps he was. His square-jawed face was stone. His pale blue eyes were cold and empty as he regarded her. They’d always been so.
“You pushed me off the cliff,” she said.
“Aye.”
“Oh my God . . . why did you address me as Mistress MacDonell?”
He grabbed her horse’s reins. “Because there can only be one countess, and the first isn’t dead.”
Sick dread hit her hard. Catriona had been trying to kill her, except she wasn’t a ghost at all. And Nicholas was alone with her at Kincreag.
“Nicholas will kill you for this.”
His frigid eyes never flickered. “He’ll never know. If he’s not already dead from poison he’ll believe you murdered for witchcraft—just like your mother.”
“Why? Why would you do this? Nicholas was good to you! He trusted you!”
“The countess pays better.” As they climbed the hill, Sir Evan’s eyes lighted on the noose, and a small smile curved his normally granite mouth. “And I like the work.”
Gillian’s horse shied from the tree, rearing on its back legs.
Evan tried leading it to the noose from several angles, but it refused.
This caused some consternation among the men, who were trying to decide why the horses didn’t seem to like the hill.
Gillian could have told them a ghost flew at them every time they came near, screaming at them to go away, but no one asked her.
Finally Evan ordered her off her horse. Her bearded captor dragged her down and led her up the hill, to the noose dangling from the tree limb.
Gillian couldn’t catch her breath. She dropped her weight back, bending her knees, but he just picked her up.
He set her down behind the noose. She stared into his face, her eyes beseeching him to help her.
He never met her gaze. He removed the sling that held her right arm immobile and pulled her broken arm around behind her.
She screamed out, the world fading as pain ripped through her.
“Dinna fash,” someone said. “Soon there will be no more pain.”
Gillian sagged against her captor until the pain receded.
Then she pushed away, standing rather wobbly but under her own power.
The ghost had stopped her mindless shrieking.
She stood beside Gillian, peering intently into her face.
Her skin was brown and as wrinkled as a walnut, and her graying black hair stood out around her head.
“Dinna fash,” she repeated. “Just go to the light, aye, and it will be well.”