Chapter Eighteen #2
He finally reached the home that he’d built below Ben Nevis. He wasted no time leaping from his moving horse and running toward the door.
He went through every room. She wasn’t there.
Hugh wasn’t there. There was no sign of them.
He ran his hand down his face and tried to think clearly.
Was he ahead of her? Should he wait? What if she wasn’t coming here specifically?
He rose up, not thinking about his weary body or his even wearier thoughts.
He’d been so busy trying to run from her and from what he was beginning to feel for her, that he hadn’t realized how much he enjoyed having her in his life. He wanted her back in it. He would tell her that he didn’t want her to leave. His kin already loved her.
Hugh was with her. His steward wouldn’t hurt her. He was helping her. Constantine didn’t care why. He was glad Hugh was watching over her.
He got back up in his saddle. He didn’t care what it took. He would find her and he would make certain she never felt the need to run again.
But first, he had to find her.
*
Something cold hit her face. Ismay opened her eyes and gasped at the icy water up her nose.
“Wake up, wench!” A man’s voice commanded. His tattered boots crunched the dry hay under his feet.
The dry hay that poked her in the back since she’d been thrown into it the night before. She tried to remember what happened. She had been kidnapped. She had jumped from a moving carriage. The memory of it pulled a moan from her lips and her hand to her head.
“I said up!” the oaf, whom she noted was bald when she sat up, shouted at her.
“Who are ye?” she asked him quietly. She realized with a sickening twist in her belly that she was still afraid of them. “What do ye want?”
He stormed toward her. She gritted her teeth not to cower before him.
“Who do ye think ye are to ask me questions?” He raised his hand behind his head to strike her.
Nae. She was sick and tired of fearing men. Constantine and his cousins were not like these bad ones. And why should she be afraid? Didn’t she have two hands and decent enough wits in her head to fight back? She did when she was eight.
Dipping her eyes, Ismay saw what she needed. She reached out and snatched the hilt of a dirk sticking out from under his belt.
Instead of his palm hitting her face, it met the steel of his dirk. He screamed, staring in horror at his blade going through his palm and coming out the other side. She scrambled under him as he fell to his knees.
She looked around for another weapon to use against him. She was in a barn. There was lots of hay.
“Ye bitch!” he screamed at her.
She remembered her few lessons with Constantine and stepped to the right to grab a pitchfork. She held it like a spear and when he reached for her with his bloody hand, she jabbed the points of metal into his forearm and drove him to the ground.
She looked around while he screamed like an alarm to whoever was outside.
And then she did what she’d learned to do best. She ran.
When she burst out of the stable doors, she paused to let her eyes adjust to the night.
She moved to continue running but a memory stopped her.
She had been quite ill. She reached up to touch her head.
It was still sore. A man had been with her.
He took her to a small cottage to have her wound seen to by an old healer.
Men had broken into the cottage to get to her.
She’d recognize their voices as the same who had kidnapped her at the inn.
Had they followed her? Who was the man who’d carried her to the healer? Hugh!
Where was Hugh?
To her left was a small village aglow in the moonlight. To her right, a large wood house with a single window lit by a candle from inside. Where was she?
Ahead of her was pitch black. She could run into it and disappear, but she couldn’t leave Hugh.
She turned around to face the house and ran toward it. Reaching it, she crouched in the shadows and scurried along to the lit window on the ground floor.
She had to stand on a rock to reach, but she looked inside. Her brow knit together and her breath felt short in her body.
Seated at the back of a desk, across from a man who looked more like a high-ranking soldier than a Highlander, was Hugh.
A hundred reasons why Constantine’s steward was here assailed Ismay’s thoughts. None of them were in his favor. Was he fraternizing with the people who had thrown her into a haystack?
She cursed the steward and whirled on her heel to start running, when she hit a wall made of lean, hard muscle and a throbbing heart.
Her eyes adjusted to the dim light and when she saw him, she threw herself into his arms. “Constantine,” she cried against his chest. “I knew ye would find me. I just had to stay alive until ye did.”
His arms closed around her and pulled her closer, as if she were his most precious possession.
But he hadn’t tried to possess her. He had agreed to her freedom.
She could leave Tor whenever she wished.
It made her want to stay forever. He thought it his inherent duty to protect her, and he always would.
“Ismay,” he whispered after quickly looking through the window, “dinna make a sound.”
He broke away from her and disappeared inside the house. Should she follow?
Immediately, she heard things crashing to the floor inside. Fighting. She chanced a peek in the window. She saw Constantine tossing a man across the room and into the wall. It was the man in the military uniform. She looked around but didn’t see Hugh.
Where was Hugh?