Chapter 23
The dark shape of ships appeared through the mist when there shouldn’t have been any there. They’d waited all night for a battle to happen from the road, but all had been quiet. And perhaps this was the reason why.
For one suspended heartbeat, neither Isabel nor Lachlan moved. The staccato boom, boom, boom of her heart hammering against her ribs was the only sound.
The wind tore across the moors, while below them the sea loch churned against the rocks.
Three galleons cut through the hazy water in ruthless formation, Longshank’s royal banners, depicting three golden lions on a red background, snapping above them as they drove toward Dunvegan’s shore.
Each ship could hold up to five hundred soldiers, less if they were cavalry.
The prisoner had sworn the English would attack after nightfall. He had claimed they would come by land under cover of darkness rather than descend upon the island before the noon meal with ships already breaching the loch.
A lie. A calculated deception.
Understanding crashed across Lachlan’s face with brutal, murderous clarity. Within an hour, the enemy would be on land. They would lay anchor and row to land, risking the arrows Lachlan’s men would surely rain down upon them.
“They wanted us watching the roads,” he growled. At the anger in his voice, Zeus leapt to his laird’s shoulders, as if he might protect him.
Isabel looked toward the road over the moors into the forest where additional guards had already been sent that morning. Men who should have been reinforcing the shoreline.
Her stomach tightened, and Isabel pressed a hand there, not wanting to lose the bit of porridge she’d had for breakfast. Sensing her unease, Freckles climbed into her bodice, her small body curling against Isabel’s heart.
The prisoner had timed the betrayal carefully enough to leave Dunvegan exposed at precisely the wrong hour, when the fog was heaviest. Below them, horns erupted across the castle, and the courtyard exploded into action.
Lachlan turned toward the stairs, barking orders before the nearest men had fully reached him. Warriors rushed toward the walls. Archers shouted from the battlements.
“Get every archer to the southern wall. Close the lower gate. Move the villagers inside the hall.”
The warriors scattered immediately. Then his gaze returned to Isabel. All the steel in him gave way to raw emotion.
Only moments ago, they had spoken truths neither of them could take back now. I love ye.
His hand closed briefly around her wrist, firm and warm despite the cold wind battering the cliffs.
For the first time since she had known him, Isabel saw fear tear through the discipline he usually wore so effortlessly.
He released her slowly and turned toward his warriors.
She watched him for a second before rushing inside to finish preparations, the phantom warmth of his fingers still against her skin.
A quarter of an hour later she stood in the center of the bailey. Lachlan was decked out in weapons. He wore not only the claymore on his back, and daggers strapped to his arms, but an axe and mace and a second sword at his belt.
“Ye must stay inside,” he said. “I beg ye.” The words carried strain she had never heard from him before.
“Lachlan—”
“If they breach the walls—”
“They will hold.” The certainty of her words left her before she could stop it.
His eyes held hers for one raw heartbeat, and she realized he was memorizing her face. As though men who rode into battle learned long ago never to trust that they’d return.
Then shouting rose from below. The English ships had dropped anchor, and their men were rowing to shore. Lachlan released her instantly, ordering arrows to fly.
“Inside, please. Protect the women and children,” he ordered again, harsher now, “Swear to me.”
“Aye, I swear it.”
And then he ran toward the fighting.
Isabel watched him disappear into the chaos below, her pulse hammering painfully against her ribs. Only hours ago, loving him had terrified her. Now the thought of losing him threatened to hollow the world clean through. Another horn split the air.
Men shouted across the courtyard. Lads ran with jugs of water. Women hurried the elderly and children toward shelter while trying desperately to keep fear from overtaking them.
Isabel forced herself toward the great hall despite every instinct urging her back toward the battlements, ushered inside by Elsa, and several other women, who put a bar up on the door, dulling the sounds of a low roar.
For one brief moment Isabel stood frozen while the sounds of battle filtered like hissing wind through the arrow slit windows.
The castle had erupted into controlled chaos. Servants hurried between tables carrying water basins and bundles of linen while frightened children clung to their mothers near the hearth. From outside came the distant crash of steel, muffled by stone walls yet no less terrifying.
She hated remaining behind while Lachlan rode toward danger. Hated it. Yet she had given him her word. So, she seized hold of the nearest task she could find.
“Bring every spare cloth you can find,” she ordered one servant. “Tear the older linens if you must.”
Another young lad rushed through the hall carrying an armful of arrows nearly too large for him to hold. Several slipped from his grasp and scattered across the floor. Isabel immediately bent to help gather them.
“Take these to the south tower,” she told him, forcing steadiness into her voice. “And if they require more, send word at once.”
The lad nodded quickly before hurrying away again.
Around her the hall filled with fear held barely in check, but Isabel refused to surrender to it. If she could not stand beside Lachlan with a sword in hand, then she would hold together every piece of the castle she could reach from within these walls.
Another runner appeared moments later shouting for water and linen for the wounded. Isabel turned immediately, gathering supplies. She did not know Dunvegan’s stores as Lachlan did, but she knew how to look at confusion and force it into order.
With the lads gone, and everyone busy, she was determined to take the supplies herself. And a bow and arrow, just in case she needed it.
Lachlan reached the lower courtyard just as the first English soldiers breached the shoreline path and the battle struck him all at once.
Warriors shouted across the walls while arrows darkened the sky overhead. Beneath the cliffside and castle, the sea loch crashed against the shore, flinging white spray high enough to mist the lower stones and rowboats of the English.
The prisoner’s lie had done precisely what it had been meant to do.
Too many Scottish warriors remained stationed inland. Too many defenses were still being reorganized when the ships appeared through the mist. The English had struck Dunvegan where she stood weakest, with the shore exposed and the noon meal half-prepared behind the walls.
Rage burned through Lachlan’s chest.
“Hold the gate!” he roared.
His men answered at once, shields locking together as English soldiers forced their way up the narrow rocky beach. Arrows fell from the walls in dark, swift arcs, sinking into the English. Men screamed. Blades rang. Boots slipped on wet stone and blood.
Lachlan dove into the fray. His sword cut through the first Englishman who broke past the shield line. He caught the next blow on his blade, turned it aside, and slammed his injured shoulder into the man’s chest hard enough to send him staggering back into those behind him.
Pain flared along his shoulder, his leg twisting painfully reminding him that less than a moon cycle ago he’d been laid out, nearly dead.
He ignored it.
But Isabel’s face rose in his mind with brutal clarity. The feel of her wrist beneath his fingers. The fear in her eyes when he had ordered her inside. The love she had finally given him without armor, without pride standing between them.
He would keep the battle at bay. Not one of the bloody traitors would reach her, he swore it.
Then he saw him. The bloody bastard Kerr.
The man walked through the commotion as though the field belonged to him, tartan snapping in the wind, sword drawn, English soldiers parting around him. A Scot amongst English steel.
A traitor wearing his own blood like a disguise.
Lachlan’s grip tightened around his sword as he bellowed, “Kerr!”
Kerr turned with a slow smile. “MacLeod. I wondered how long it would take ye.”
“Ye brought the English to my lands.”
“Only enough of them to make a point.”
“Ye betrayed Scotland, your own blood.”
Kerr laughed, as though honor itself amused him. “Scotland is ruled by weak men pretending loyalty is strength.”
Lachlan advanced a step. Kerr’s gaze flicked past him, climbing to the walls, searching. Searching for Isabel no doubt.
Murder surged through Lachlan’s blood, hot and immediate. “She is beyond your reach.”
“For now.” Kerr’s smile thinned. “Imagine my surprise when I learned where the lady had fled. She should have remained at Inverlochy.”
“Would she have made an easier target for ye there?”
Bitterness carved deep grooves into Kerr’s face. “Why should Comyn gain the Bruce’s favor?” he spat. “Why should lesser men be rewarded while others are denied what they deserve?”
Lachlan understood then. Ambition. Resentment. A bruised man’s pride dressed up as politics. Kerr had sold Scottish lives because another man had been promised Isabel. Had killed his own countrymen for such a foolish plot.
“I intended to take the lady for myself,” Kerr said.
The words moved through Lachlan like a blade beneath the ribs. Kerr would die before he laid a hand on her.
“Ye will never touch her,” Lachlan growled, the Wolf rising in his throat.
Kerr’s lips curled into the semblance of a smile. “We shall see.”
Their blades collided with enough force to jar Lachlan’s wounds.