Chapter 3
Now ye’ve done it.
The exquisite creature standing before him would not stop trembling, though he had adjusted his grip, turning her hand over so he could better see the stains on her gloves.
He could not blame her, he supposed. This whole ordeal must be very terrifying for her.
Arran found himself staring at the context clues; this woman was hoping that this day was going to end up wholly differently than it had.
“Did ye hear me, lass?” he asked, attempting to soften the gruffness of his voice.
As it was, she stood in front of him in her wedding gown.
Arran had not chosen the sorry bastard’s wedding day as an invasion date, but he certainly was not sorry that he had.
If only he could explain to the woman in front of him that he was sparing her from a lifetime of misery.
If she knew the true nature of her betrothed, then at least she would feel grateful to have been spared that.
“I… I…” she stammered.
On second look, the state of her wrists hinted that perhaps she had exactly the knowledge of her betrothed that he would rather spare her from.
His thumb brushed over the reddish stain on the satin, the fabric clinging to her skin; the blood was dried between the fabric and her skin, which told him that these wounds were recent. Very recent.
She did not answer either of the questions that he had asked, so he was not going to repeat himself. She looked about two breaths away from passing out.
Behind her, Neil Payne, his man-at-arms, stood with a very impatient look on his face. It was beyond obvious that he wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. They were here to avenge Arran’s sister, and there was no point in tarrying.
They did not have time to be sidetracked by the woman between them, and Neil gestured with his head in the direction of the stairs that would lead them up into the main part of the house.
Arran could not explain the exact reasons why he could not just walk away from the woman in front of him, but he simply could not.
Something in him would not allow him to abandon her.
“Are ye… cold?” he asked, knowing full well how foolish it likely sounded to her. He spoke through his clenched teeth as he struggled to contain his anger long enough to even say those few words.
The woman was tall and willowy, like she ought to have been a most graceful dancer.
She had a delicate bone structure, everything about her imbued with refined English elegance, but there was something defiant and full of fire in the way that she turned her blue eyes back up at him, as if she was mad at him for daring to ask how she was.
She pulled her hand once more, and it slipped out of his grasp.
“I… I am fine, thank you. I will just be on my way now,” she said insistently, despite the way that she was presently trembling in front of him.
He watched with the eyes of a predator as she attempted to sidestep him, thinking that she could pass around him and continue running once more in whatever direction it was that she was going. The lass was strong; there was no way of denying that. He admired her courage.
“Is the Earl yer betrothed?” he asked, unable to keep the venom from his voice as he turned with her, tracking her every movement. “Is that where ye are going? To meet him?”
She flinched at his words as if he had greatly offended her.
Her answering laugh was almost bitter as she shook her head.
“I would rather throw myself into the cooking pot,” she scoffed.
“Listen, kind sir, I have no objection to this… attack. As long as you do not hurt any of the innocent servants inside. I am sure that you have your… reasons… and I certainly have mine. I need to go. Now.”
There was an urgency in her voice that almost allowed him to let her go… but, unfortunately, if she was what he thought she was, then she would be all too valuable for him to lose. A potential bargaining chip—that was what he told himself.
“Then where are ye going? Who did this to ye?” he demanded.
He needed to hear it from her, in her own words; he wanted the confirmation.
He moved to grab her wrist once more and then thought better of it and grabbed her upper arm instead.
A brief moment of panic overtook her as she realized that she was caught.
He could see it before it turned into something else that he could easily recognize: the hatred, the fear of being trapped.
“You see a bride taking advantage of an attack to run away on her wedding day. Who do you think did this?” she snapped bitterly and yanked her arm away from him so forcefully that she nearly toppled over sideways. It did not take much effort for him to catch her around the waist.
“We daenae have time for this,” Neil muttered, already moving backward and into the manor.
But Arran couldn’t help himself; he pulled her closer to him by the waist. “Ye arenae going anywhere. Ye’re mine now.”
Victoria did not even take one full step before the hand around her waist was yanking her backward.
“Unhand me!” she yelped.
The warrior’s arm banded around her was nearly enough to take her breath away, and that was before she was manhandled up and over the giant’s shoulders.
Larger than any man that she had ever met among the ton and twice as broad; she tried to struggle, but the hold that he had on her made it useless.
Being confined to her room for so long was certainly helping nothing at all; Charles had seen to it that she was at her weakest for her wedding day and, most probably, for her wedding night.
“Do not ignore me!” she wheezed. “Unhand me!”
She had a distorted view of the world as he carried her through the hallways that she had been trying to find her way through moments ago.
Mercifully, there was not a single sign of her sister anywhere.
She could only hope that Melody had gotten out of here and was running to the stables right about now.
She had to hope that her sister was keeping her wits about her and being as careful as she possibly could be, given the current circumstances.
The walls swayed as she was jostled around, and she felt smaller than she ever had before.
A small part of her could admit that she did not hate it as much as she likely ought to.
At least she knew that whatever was coming next, she would be out of the Earl’s manor, and that was all that she had been wanting for weeks now.
She might not be wholly free, but she would just have to find another way to access her freedom somehow.
Fresh air and the sounds of the ongoing attack surrounded them as she was carried toward a large horse and flung over the back as though she were a sack of grain. She huffed indignantly as she attempted to right herself; her ribs hurt where the ledge of his broad shoulders had dug in.
“Stay,” the green-eyed man barked. For a moment, there was enough authority in his tone for her to actually consider doing what she was told.
The handsome man was very clearly not used to anyone challenging him. It made her impossibly curious about who he was and why he was actually here.
“Like hell I will!” Victoria attempted to argue, surprised by her vulgarity. “I am not yours. I do not belong to any man!”
Her protest might have had more of an impact if her body had not been so weary that she was struggling to push herself up to where she could at least sit on the horse properly.
Meanwhile, the horse itself saw fit to embarrass her a little more as she tried to encourage it to move with a light tap of her heels.
It did not budge at all; the beast was not about to obey her and race off to freedom with her.
The man watched her closely, and she could have sworn that there was a hint of a smirk on his face, but the expression was there and gone before she could truly think about it.
“Ah, but ye are, lass. Ye will be mine until I say otherwise.”
“For what purpose?” she gasped, her outrage flushing her skin with a feverish heat.
Oh goodness, what does he mean to do with me?
Had she exchanged one brute for a different kind?
She had heard—or, rather, read—countless stories of wild barbarians who did not hesitate to take whatever they pleased from the conquered, adding women to their harems, not caring for honor or propriety.
Yet, she conceded, none of those characters would have paused to inspect the injuries on her wrists or bothered to ask if she was cold or hurt.
“To protect,” the man answered, as if that explained anything to her at all.
Still, it was a minor relief that he was not about to carry her off and make violent love to her. Acquaintances of hers would swoon over the notion of being kidnapped by a handsome warrior, and she had been guilty of thinking that once, but the past weeks had changed her idea of what thrilled her.
“Protect me from what?” she huffed as she managed to sit herself partially upright on the man’s massive horse.
How was she ever supposed to commandeer such a creature?
She could barely sit astride the saddle without feeling dizzy from the distance between her and the ground.
“I hardly see how trading one captor for another would be protecting me from anything! If you were any kind of gentleman–”
“And where would ye have gotten that idea, lassie?” the man interrupted with a sly grin.
He looked almost sinister, but in a way that she could not easily tear her eyes from.
She was at a total loss for words and found herself floundering.
The man leaned closer to her, his grip on the reins of the horse tightening.
If he thought that he was going to get up here with her… he could not possibly be serious.
“And be careful about insultin’ me, lass, it might nae end well for ye.”
She wanted to berate him for threatening her right back, and yet she could not seem to summon the words. She was trapped, transfixed under that forest-green stare.
“Me Laird!” another kilt-wearing man said in a huff of breath.
What did they feed their men in Scotland for all of them to be as large as they were? The gentlemen she encountered in the ton were all rather… soft in comparison. In a crowd, she would have been able to spot the Scots above their English heads with ease.
She knew plenty of men who had all done their duty in the militia, training to fight as their country commanded, and even a few who had actually gone on to use that training on various battlefields.
The spares and expendable sons who, unable to use their position as heirs to charm, had loved to regale her with tales of those glory days when she was trapped in conversation with them.
But compared to these warriors? She was rethinking quite a few things.
She ought to be more frightened than she presently was.
That much was for certain.
But all she felt was flustered.
The man did not tear his eyes from her until the last possible moment, with that same ghost of a smirk on his face, as if he knew something important that she was not understanding.
“We cannae find him, me Laird,” the other man said.
The green-eyed warrior’s whole demeanor changed. He straightened his spine, his shoulders squaring as the muscle in his jaw feathered in apparent irritation. “What do ye mean?”
“The Earl, he is nowhere to be found. We are searchin’ the manor once more just to be sure,” the messenger said, easily catching his breath as he spoke.
“Daenae harm any in the place; we’re nae here for them,” the Laird, presumably, answered as he turned toward Victoria once more. “Tell the men to retreat; somethin’ tells me the Earl will come to us.”
He said Earl as if it were the filthiest word that he had ever heard in his life.
Victoria thought back to Charles asking the footman to prepare his horse.
The coward had been fleeing, which meant he had wanted her to be tied up and left to the mercy of whoever was invading.
If the footman had not disobeyed, and these Scottish warriors had not been so…
reasonable, what might have happened to her?
For a man who did not want anyone even looking at her, it seemed Charles had been all too willing to just let the attackers have her.
Unless he thought they simply would not bother with her.
She wished she could say she was surprised that Charles had taken the coward’s way out, but she was not. It was probably part of some game, some chase, some thrill, where he hoped to return to find her still tied up where he left her, while simultaneously saving his own skin.
He must have taken off in the direction of his hunting lodge. Should she tell the man that? He very clearly did not wish Charles well, but whatever business he had with him was none of her concern.
“So, I am to be used for blackmail? Bait? Hm, my lord?”
The man’s upper lip curled in distaste. “Laird.”
The man mounted the horse behind her, leaving no room for her to maintain modesty or personal space as she was wedged between the pommel of the saddle and the man’s massive, muscled torso…
as well as his loins, which pressed flush against the swell of her backside.
Did he truly have to be so close and so warm?
Certainly, it was indecent for her to even be able to know that about him.
“Just… Arran,” he continued. “Ye can call me Arran.”
She squirmed, attempting once more to put space between herself and the man behind her as her face started to feel like it was absolutely on fire.
She had never been this close to any man other than Charles, and those had not exactly been good memories for her.
Experiences that she would have much preferred to forget entirely.
“And what do you plan on doing, Arran?” she muttered. “This is immodest! I demand a carriage, or at the very least my own horse!”
Arran chuckled humorlessly and shook his head. “This will be far easier to keep ye in line.”
“I–”
“Daenae fash, lass; nay harm will come to ye.” He leaned down until his warm breath tickled the curve of her neck. She was trapped, could not even wiggle in the cage of his arms without risking touching him more than she already was. “But ye will be coming with me.”