Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
He kept moving even after the last of Torquil's men had gone.
That was the thing about a fight, the body didn't understand it was over. His blood was still up, his sword still in his hand, his eyes still cutting through the treeline for movement that was no longer there.
The clearing had gone quiet except for the creak of the overturned carriage and the distant fading of hoofbeats, and Lachlann stood in the middle of it and made himself breathe.
Then he turned to Alba.
She was on her feet, which was the first thing he checked. Standing, upright, her hands pressed flat against her sides as though she needed somewhere to put them.
Her dress was torn at the shoulder, her hair had come half-loose, and at her throat — he crossed to her in four strides and caught her face in his hands, tilting her chin up toward what little moonlight there was.
The cut was shallow. Barely more than a graze.
It had bled the way throat cuts did, more dramatically than the wound deserved, and he exhaled slowly through his nose and made himself look at it properly rather than react to it.
"Are ye hurt anywhere else?" His voice came out rougher than he intended. "Alba. Look at me."
Her eyes found his.
She was shaking. A fine, barely-visible tremor running through her, the kind that came after, when the body finally understood what the mind had been too busy to process.
"I'm fine," she said. Her voice was a whisper.
"Yer throat, ye’re hurt."
" I ken. It's nae deep." She swallowed, winced slightly. "Finn and Dougal, they were killed."
"I ken." He lowered his hands from her face slowly.
His jaw was tight. He'd seen the fallen men when he'd ridden in, had taken it in with the cold accounting of someone mid-fight, and filed it away for later.
Later was now, and it sat badly. "I should have followed sooner. The man that brought me me horse told me Torquil was watchin' ye leave, told me he had a look on his face. I should have trusted me gut from the start."
"Ye came." She said it simply. "That's what matters."
He didn't answer that.
He wasn't sure she was right but arguing the point in a clearing with her still shaking and Torquil's men not yet a mile away was not the time.
"We need tae move," he said. "He'll be back with more men once he's had that wrist seen tae. Can ye ride?"
"Aye."
He brought his horse from the shadows and lifted her into the saddle before swinging up behind her.
She was lighter than he'd expected, or perhaps he was more aware of it than usual, the particular fragility of a person who had just had a blade at their throat and was pretending they hadn't.
He settled his arm around her waist and urged the horse north toward Oban.
He told himself the arm was practical.
She was exhausted, the path was dark, and if she slipped from the saddle they'd lose time they didn't have. It had nothing to do with the fact that Torquil MacLean had touched her, had dared to put his hands on Calum's sister, and that something in Lachlann's chest had not entirely settled since.
He focused on the road.
They hadn't gone a quarter mile when he pulled up sharply.
Torchlight, through the trees to the north. He sat still and counted. One, two, three separate points of light, spread across the road in a pattern that wasn't accidental.
"What is it?" Alba asked quietly.
"Scouts." He backed the horse into the shadow of the treeline. "He planned fer this. The attack was fast, aye, but that positioning isn't fast. He had men on the roads before he ever made his move."
He turned east, toward the narrower path that ran parallel to the main road.
Alba didn't speak, but he felt her sit straighter in the saddle, felt her reading the situation with the same quiet attention she brought to everything.
They made it perhaps ten minutes before he pulled up again.
More torches. A cluster of men at the crossroads, positioned precisely where someone would need to pass to reach the port.
He turned north. Blocked.
He turned west. Blocked.
He sat still in the darkness for a long moment, his hand resting on the pommel, and worked through it methodically.
Every route to Oban, every path to MacKinnon territory, every road that would take them north, Torquil had thought it through. Had placed his men carefully, covering ground with a thoroughness that spoke of preparation rather than panic.
He'd planned this. All of it. The attack, the blockade, the net drawn tight around every exit from this part of the country.
Lachlann didn't let himself feel the anger yet. Anger was for later. Right now he had to think.
"We cannae get through," Alba said. It wasn't a question.
"Nae tae Oban. Nae taenight." He was already turning the calculation over, examining it from a different angle. "But there's another way."
"What way?"
"Loch Melfort. I left me boat there, I prefer the southern ports, the passes are quieter. We ride hard through the hidden routes, we can reach it before dawn." He paused. "From there, we sail tae Barra."
She turned in the saddle to look at him.
Even in the dark, even at that angle, he could see the particular expression that crossed her face. The one that meant she was about to argue with him and had already worked out several of her best points.
"Barra," she said. "That's days away."
"Aye. And Torquil willnae expect it. He's watching every road north because he assumes we'll try tae get ye home.
He's nae watching the sea routes south." He kept his voice even.
Calm and certain, the way he'd learned to sound when giving orders in the dark before a fight.
"Ye'll be under me protection. Ye'll be safe. "
"Calum…"
"Is in England. He cannae help ye taenight." He said it plainly, because it was plain and because she needed to hear it. "By the time he's back, this will be sorted. But right now ye need tae trust me."
"I dinnae like this."
"Neither dae I." And that, at least, was entirely true.
She was quiet for a moment. He waited, giving her the space to come to it herself rather than pressing.
She was Calum's sister. She had the same stubbornness, the same instinct to meet a wall head-on rather than route around it and pushing her rarely achieved anything except a longer argument.
"And if I refuse?" she asked.
Despite everything, he felt something ease slightly at that. She was still herself. Whatever Torquil had put her through in the last hour hadn't taken that.
"Then I'll put ye back on this horse and take ye anyway," he said, "because I'm nae lettin' Torquil get another chance at ye, and that's exactly what will happen if we stay here arguing."
"Ye cannae just say that."
"Fight me all ye want, Alba." He lowered his voice, not threatening, just final. "But ye're comin' with me. That's the end of it."
She held his gaze in the dark for a moment. Then she faced forward.
"Fine," she said. "But Calum will hear about this."
"Good. He can thank me when he daes." He turned the horse west, away from the roads, away from the torches, toward the rougher country and the hidden ways he'd ridden since he was sixteen. "Hold tight. The path gets narrow."
She leaned back slightly as they picked up speed, settling her weight against him with a pragmatism that had nothing sentimental about it.
Simply a woman who was exhausted and cold and had decided that falling off a horse was a worse outcome than accepting the support available.
He tightened his arm around her and didn't say anything about it.
The hours passed.
He kept them moving steadily, watching the treeline, reading the land by memory and instinct.
The paths he took were not on any map. He'd learned them young, had ridden them in the dark before, knew where the ground was soft and where the rock held firm and where a horse could push to a canter without risk.
She didn't complain. Not once. She asked one practical question about direction in the second hour, and after that was quiet, her head dropping gradually until it rested against his shoulder.
He noticed but did not remark on it, and kept his eyes on the path ahead, and tried not to think about the fact that Calum MacKinnon's sister was asleep against his shoulder.
That some part of him, the part he'd been managing very carefully for longer than he wanted to examine, found the weight of her there entirely natural.
That was Torquil's fault. The attack, the night, the proximity. It was the circumstances making everything feel weighted with significance it didn't have.
He told himself that for the better part of an hour.
The sun was beginning its descent toward the horizon when the cove appeared below them, the water catching the last of the orange light, the familiar dark wood of his boat tied at the far dock.
"There," he said.
She stirred, lifted her head. He felt the moment she registered where they were, the slight straightening, the quiet exhale.
He dismounted first and reached up to help her down. Her legs nearly gave when her feet met the ground, and he caught her with both hands, holding her steady while she found her footing.
She'd been in the saddle for hours without complaint, he had noted that too. He filed it alongside everything else he'd been noting about her since the ballroom.
"Easy," he said. "Take a moment."
"I'm fine." But she didn't step back immediately, and he didn't let go until he was certain she meant it.
"When did ye last eat?" he asked.
She thought about it. "The ball."
His jaw tightened.
He guided her along the dock, his hand at her elbow, the familiar sounds of the boat settling him. The creak of wood, the lap of water, the smell of salt and rope.
James appeared on deck before they'd reached the gangplank.
His eyes moved over the scene with the swift, thorough assessment of a man who'd been Lachlann's right hand for ten years. Taking in the torn dress, the cut at Alba's throat, the state of them both, and his expression went carefully neutral.
"Laird MacNeil. We didnae expect ye back so soon."
"We need tae sail. Now." Lachlann was already guiding Alba up the gangplank. "Prepare the cabin below. Food, water.."
"Aye." James fell into step. "Right away."
The boat rocked as they boarded.
Alba gripped the rail, adjusting, and he kept a hand at her back as he led her across the deck and down the narrow ladder below. She managed the rungs carefully, her hands steady despite the trembling he could still feel running through her.
The cabin was small. It was always small.
This was a fast boat, built for movement, not comfort. But it was clean and private and the chest at the foot of the bed held two good wool blankets.
"It's nae much," he said.
"It's perfect." She sat on the edge of the bed with the particular care of someone whose body had reached its limit. "Thank ye."
He crouched in front of her so their eyes were level.
She looked exhausted — genuinely, deeply exhausted, the kind that went past tiredness into something more. And there was still a smear of dried blood at her throat that he hadn't seen clearly until now.
He should say something practical. The crossing time, the water jug, the blankets. Something that gave her what she needed and kept him on the right side of a line he'd been very aware of all evening.
Instead, he reached out and brushed a strand of hair back from her face.
He hadn't meant to. Or rather, he'd meant to, but hadn't decided to, although his hand had already moved.
"Ye're safe now," he said. His voice came out quieter than he'd intended. "Naethin' will happen tae ye here. I give ye me word."
She looked at him.
Her eyes, at close range, were the same sea-blue as her brother's, but they held something different in them. Something he'd noticed at the ball, across a crowded room, and had been working to not notice ever since.
"I ken," she said. "I trust ye."
He stood.
"James will bring food. Blankets are in the chest." He moved toward the door. "Rest."
"Lachlann."
He stopped.
"Thank ye," she said.
He turned back.
She was sitting with her hands in her lap, looking at him with an openness that was somehow worse than any argument she could have made.
He stood there for a moment with several things he didn't say pressing at the back of his teeth.
"Ye dinnae need tae thank me," he said finally. "Get some rest."
He closed the door behind him.
He stood in the passage for a moment, his hand still on the door, listening to the sounds of the boat. The voices on deck, the footsteps, the water against the hull, until he was certain his expression had settled into something unremarkable.
Then he went to tell his crew to set sail.