Chapter Twenty-One #2
Was she mad? Was Constantine on his way?
Was he alive? She prayed that he was and then began to cry because she didn’t know.
Even if he was alive, how would he find her?
She hurried to the window, but the shutters were locked.
What should she do? There was no way out.
She would have to wait until they left. She would escape him once they left.
She would run back to Tor or to the house below the great mountain. Aye, she would hide there.
*
Constantine tightened the leather strap crossing one shoulder and then did the same on the other side as he stormed toward the stable.
The sound of Ismay’s voice screaming his name before she was taken away would forever haunt his memory. He’d heard her as if she were in another time or place. He hadn’t been able to move or even wake up as the knife wound in his belly had gushed forth his lifeblood.
“It has been less than a full day since ye were wounded, Chief,” Lewis said, keeping up with him.
Constantine gritted his teeth wondering if Lewis thought he was too simpleminded to know how long it had been since that bastard Ewen MacKintosh stabbed him.
Why was his cousin trying to stop him anyway?
Didn’t Lewis know—didn’t they all know that he loved Ismay MacPherson enough not to care about her name, her deeds, her kin, or his life?
Hadn’t killing MacKintosh’s son when he tried to abduct her proven it?
Would killing every MacKintosh left alive prove it?
How about Alistar MacRae? John MacBain? The Chattan chief? Would killing them all bring her back?
Thanks to Hilary, he’d learned, through buckets of tears, that her betrothed, John MacBain had taken Ismay under orders from the Chattan chief, who ordered the attack on his castle on the advice of Lady Majorie MacPherson, Ismay’s mother.
Which meant, the man he was going to kill, Chief of the MacRaes of Beauly had her.
But where had he taken her? Back toward Beauly, most likely.
“Let us accompany ye,” Lewis practically begged. “Geoffry is oot of his mind because ye are goin’, and goin’ alone.”
“Nae,” Constantine ground out. He tried to sound more angry than in pain. If Lewis knew how badly his wound pained him, he would lock him inside and not let him go. “I want Fionn to stay here and look after Lachlan.”
Aye, MacBain would pay for getting Lachlan run through. According to the castle physician and a local healer, young Lachlan was close to meeting his Maker.
Constantine couldn’t let himself think on it overmuch. If he did, he might be tempted not to leave his cousin’s side. Joan had promised to stay by his bedside. Constantine had to trust her to look after his cousin. He had to find Ismay.
“Ye and Geoffry are to find MacBain. I dinna care what it takes or how many men ye bring with ye. Find him. If Lachlan dies, then MacBain dies, as well. Do ye understand?”
“Aye, Lochiel, but—”
Just before he entered the stable, Constantine stopped walking and turned to face him. “Lewis, I need to do this. I have to find her. If I bring anyone else and MacRae gets wind that we are close, he might harm her. I can find him and get right on top of him before he knows what has hit him.”
Lewis’s lips curled into a smile. “The Ghost Cameron.”
Constantine mustered up a slight smile and nodded, then gave him a hefty pat on the shoulder and continued into the stable.
He thought of all the men from the Confederation lying dead behind the castle, dragged outside by the Camerons and MacDonalds when the fight was over.
Angus MacKintosh, the Chattan chief was a fool to think he would see victory after attacking Tor.
Constantine had taken down twenty men before he’d fallen.
He knew riding would be risky. His wound was stitched, wrapped, and repaired as much as it could be in so short a time. If it reopened and bled, he might not make it.
As his horse came charging out of the stable, Constantine didn’t think about dying. He’d been wounded before, close to death, and he’d lived. This time, more than any other, he would not allow himself to die. At least, not until he found her and she was safe from MacRae for good.
He would travel toward Beauly and catch up with MacRae along the way.
In the meantime, he tried not to think about her screaming his name in terror.
Instead, he remembered how his name sounded in her breathy whisper while he made love to her.
Her meaningful, bonnie smile eased his fierce heartbeat and helped him think clearly.
A night had passed since she’d been taken from the castle over the shoulder of John MacBain. He pushed thoughts of Hilary sobbing out of his mind. MacBain was going to pay—with his life if Lachlan died.
Even with that terrible thought, memories of Ismay’s saucy temper brought a smile to his lips as the wind snapped his hair behind him like a war pennant.
Och, Almighty. She makes me happy. Dinna let her be taken from me, he prayed silently.
Aye, not even Alison had made him so constantly happy and good-natured.
He’d been younger and more battle-hardened, with war coursing through his veins.
He was older now, twenty and seven. He had seen the terrible consequences of battle until it had turned his blood cold. Now, he wanted peace, and not just from war, but from the weight of shame and guilt. He was afraid though, that when it came completely, he wouldn’t know how to live in it.
Ismay made him want it though. She helped him understand that he no longer deserved to walk in regret. A new beginning was here.
Please, please let her live.
He rode alongside the River Lochy northeast until he came to the outskirts of Gairlochy on the southern shores of Loch Lochy.
Constantine was from Lochiel and almost everyone in Lochaber knew him. That included people in Gairlochy, so when he questioned them about a stranger traveling with a lass with fiery-red hair, many had claimed to see her.
He started off toward the Gairlochy Inn, where they believed she was, but with the inn in his vision, he felt his blood escaping through his wound.
He looked down at it dripping into the earth and then felt himself falling.
He slipped from his saddle and landed with a thunk on the hard ground.
Nae! He raged as the dark threatened to overtake him.
He had to get up. He had to protect Ismay!
“There, now, Lochiel…”
A familiar voice sounded in Constantine’s ears. One of his men at Tor? Nae, he told himself as he was hefted up and carried away.
“Let’s be off, then.”