Chapter Eighteen
Constantine neared Tor Castle and threw off his unused weapons and travel bags and quickened his steps the rest of the way to the doors.
He no longer cared about the warnings blaring through his head that he should not care again.
Nor did he care about what others thought of him offering his heart to another.
He had waited long enough to see her and to see that she was safe. The man her mother had promised her would come after her. Now was more important than ever to make certain Ismay was safe. He could not get home quickly enough.
But before he reached the doors, Hilary MacDonald burst from the castle. After she made certain her betrothed still lived, she cried to Constantine that Ismay had left.
At first, he was certain he didn’t hear her right. Then he prayed he hadn’t.
“What did ye say?” he asked numbly.
“She’s gone, Lochiel.”
Before she said another word, Alison’s parents left the castle to meet him.
When he saw them, Constantine assumed if Ismay had any reason to leave, it had to do with these two, who were supposed to have left days ago.
He stormed toward them with rage in his eyes. Lady MacMillan stepped back and covered her neck as if he meant to rip it out. “What did ye say to her to make her leave?
“Lochiel,” Lady MacMillan dared to bite out. “Yer dear Miss Drummond didna run away because of us. She left because she got wind of a man searching for her close by. Ye were not here once again to protect the woman in yer life.”
For just an instant his eyes darkened on her.
Leave it to her to point out another failure.
He felt something rise up in his belly. Lady MacMillan hated him.
He didn’t blame her, but he was sick and tired of the enormous weight of guilt he carried.
If Alison’s mother had such hatred in her heart against him, there was no longer any reason for her or her husband to visit.
“I told ye both to leave Tor. If ye are not gone by the time I return, I will use force to evict ye.” He slipped his hard gaze to Bethia next. “Ye go with them.”
Without another word, he turned to cast his cousin a glare only slightly less dark. “What happened, Hilary? Where did she go?”
“I dinna know where she went, cousin. She found out that bastard MacRae had been at the Doomsday Tavern. We planned on not letting him inside the castle, but she ran away in the night.”
Constantine felt his knees quake beneath him. She left in the night. He covered his face with his hand. “Did anyone go with her?”
“Not that I am aware of,” Hilary told him. “But Hugh seems to have disappeared the same night.”
Hugh? Constantine’s guts seared inside him. If the steward hurt her, he would kill him. “What night was it? How long ago?”
“Three nights now.”
Constantine thought he was going to be sick. They were three nights ahead of him. According to Hilary, no one knew in which direction she traveled.
She’d found out that MacRae was at Lewis’s tavern.
So then, Constantine reasoned, it was definitely MacRae he had met near Clumes.
But that meant MacRae was moving farther away.
Still, Ismay didn’t know. She was afraid and she ran.
Rather than leap on his horse and guess the way she went, he thought about it for a quarter of an hour, fighting off Lady MacMillan’s words in his head.
He hadn’t been here for Ismay just as he hadn’t been here for Alison.
The urgent need to find her helped him battle the guilt. Where was the nearest convent? Did Ismay know about it?
After thinking on it, he saddled his fastest horse and took off, riding northeast. He didn’t go far when he suddenly stopped short. Dangling from a low branch before him was a parchment waving in the cool breeze. He rode closer and looked at the writing.
L,
Go southeast.
H
Constantine read it again. It had to be from Hugh. The steward was one of the few living at Tor Castle who could read and write. Still, it could have been written by some other traveler. But the L it was addressed to had to be Lochiel, and southeast was the way Ismay was traveling.
Constantine turned his head to look that way. It was the direction of Ben Nevis—and his house. Was Ismay heading to the house he’d built? Was she mad to try to go alone? She knew the man she almost married was on her tail. How did she know he wasn’t also going that way?
He whirled his horse around and flicked the reins. Just let her have arrived there safe and sound, he prayed as his mount’s hooves tore up the dirt behind him.
He stopped at the first inn he came to, near Torlundy and asked the innkeeper if he’d seen a lad with burnished autumn hair.
He didn’t want to waste time traveling the wrong way because he was wrong about a missive he’d found.
The innkeep had in fact given a lad of that description a meal and a room.
So then, Constantine’s heart rejoiced, she had come this way, for certain.
Without wasting any time, he started out again, traveling around the forest without stopping, until he came to the abandoned ruins of Inverlochy Castle. Would she stop here on her way to his house? Was Hugh traveling with her?
“Well then!” a man’s voice called out on the road just outside the castle. “Look who it is!”
Constantine turned and set his eyes on Alistar MacRae. He was searching for Ismay.
“Has yer search led ye here?”
“It has,” MacRae confessed with a smile. “The wench would come running to the shelter of a castle—even an empty one.”
Constantine disagreed. He should thank MacRae, for he was reminded that Ismay would never trust the chief of any castle. He recalled how much persuading it took to get her to go to Tor with him. She hadn’t stopped here.
“I thought ye were returnin’ to Beauly?” Constantine asked him.
“I received word that my Ismay was seen farther south. What brings ye here, Lochiel?”
He knew who Constantine was. That meant he’d asked about him. “My steward robbed me while I was away fightin’. I’m told he was seen in Inverlochy.”
MacRae frowned. “He deserves fifty lashes fer robbing ye. ’Tis what I will give my betrothed.”
Constantine stared at him long enough to make the Beauly chief tremble in his plaid. “Should I deliver her to ye if I find her first?”
“I would be in yer debt,” MacRae managed. “Remember, ye will know her by her fiery hair. Careful she doesna bewitch ye with her tresses. I myself had to cut them off, before I lost the ability of my good senses.”
“Ye cut off her hair?” Constantine asked him in a low, steady voice as memories of her autumn-hued hair falling over her eyes or pinned up with bonnie pearl clips.
But by social standards, short hair for women was their shame. Constantine would kick out anyone’s teeth who dared shame Ismay, starting with this worm.
Constantine would deal with him before he crossed into Ben Nevis territory.
“As any man has the right to do to his betrothed.”
She was not his betrothed. Not as long as Constantine lived. He smiled, controlling himself—just barely—to keep his hands off MacRae’s throat.
“Though…” MacRae looked off and away, as if he was remembering her. … “it didna stop her from flicking her viperous tongue.”
Constantine fought the urge to smile, proud of her and her viperous tongue.
Where are ye headin’ now?” Constantine asked him, eager to follow him until he had him in a secluded area.
“South.”
“Well then,” Constantine turned his horse toward the open gate.
But after an hour of following MacRae southwest, he caught up with him again.
“Lochiel.” MacRae looked sincerely startled to see him.
Constantine dismounted, then walked around his horse and yanked MacRae out of his saddle.
“Ismay is nae longer anythin’ to ye. Do ye understand?
Ye cut off her hair. Ye were so cruel to her that runnin’ into a world completely unknown to her was better than stayin’ with ye.
And here ye are chasin’ her still, as if she were an animal.
I’m goin’ to end it all fer good. I’m goin’ to repay ye fer everythin’. ”
His fist cracking MacRae’s jaw was satisfying. But it wasn’t enough. Clutching MacRae’s plaid with one fist, he slammed the other into flesh and bone over and over until MacRae was barely recognizable.
When he was done, he leaned down, his lips close to MacRae’s ear. “If ye ever go near her again I will kill ye. I vow it.”
He left the chief of Beauly bleeding in the dirt and started on the road back home toward Ben Nevis.
“Aye, I saw him,” confessed a red-cheeked patron at the Trapped Deer tavern. He grinned at the merk in Constantine’s hand. “But they dinna take lads, so I’m guessin’ he was a she.”
Constantine heard only four words. His tongue felt like it was swelling up when he spoke. “They dinna take lads? They take lasses?”
The patron nodded, keeping his eyes on the shiny merk. “Aye, lasses. They carried her off and put her in the carriage.”
This couldn’t be! She’d been kidnapped? Nae! Nae! He had to find her. “Where did they take her?”
The patron shrugged his shoulders. “I canna be certain, but I think they were headed south.”
Constantine paid the patron and sprang from his seat. He stopped before he hurried out. “Who is the proprietor of this establishment where women are absconded in the night and taken away?”
“Ewen Campbell. I am told.”
Constantine nodded. “Thank ye.”
The patron looked into his hand and smiled. “Nae. Thank ye.”
Constantine searched for her day and night, hoping, praying she was safe in his house.
Once, he was haunted by Alison but now Ismay alone invaded his thoughts.
Her smile and her laughter. The way she hadn’t let her childhood keep her in some prison of her own making.
As he had done. She was understandably mistrusting.
But she trusted him, and it made him feel important and worthy again.
When he slept, he dreamed of her. He laughed in his dreams. He loved her in them and relished in the freedom of it.