Chapter Ten #2
Jamie bit back the string of curses that sprang onto his tongue.
Aargh! Save him from stubborn, headstrong women!
He glanced at Bryn and Martin who had been watching this exchange with pale faces and wide eyes.
They looked terrified, and who could blame them?
Who would want to be caught in the middle of a blazing row between the Lord of the Isles and a MacFinnan spellweaver?
“Lads,” he said in as even a voice as he could muster. “Thank ye for keeping company with Lady Elise this far. Ye can return to the keep now.”
“I’ve already told you!” Elise snapped. “I’m not going back to the keep. I—”
“Ye can go back to the keep,” Jamie continued, speaking to Bryn and Martin and ignoring Elise’s outburst. “Because I will keep company with the Lady Elise from here.”
That shut her up. She blinked in surprise. “Oh. Right. You will?”
“Aye. If that is agreeable to ye?”
She met his stare and for a moment neither of them spoke or looked away. There was…something in her gaze. Not anger. Not annoyance. Something deeper. Something that made his mouth go dry and his heartbeat rachet up a notch.
“Yes,” she said softly. “That would be agreeable to me.”
He pulled his gaze away from her with an effort. “Tell Andrea that we will be back before nightfall,” he instructed Martin and Bryn.
The two lads nodded, then looked to Elise uncertainly. She gave them an encouraging smile. “Thanks for bringing me this far.”
They smiled at Elise, gave nods to Jamie, then turned their mounts and moved away at a trot. To be honest, they looked relieved to be getting out of here. Jamie watched them go for a moment before turning back to Elise.
Now that he was alone with her all his anger evaporated like morning mist and he only felt relieved.
Relieved that she was whole and unharmed.
Relieved that she was by his side again.
It was laughable how much he hated it when he wasn’t in her company.
It was even more laughable how different he felt when he was.
Even when they were arguing he felt…alive.
“Well?” he said, giving her a crooked smile. “Shall we?”
“Sure. Um. Thanks,” she said softly.
She was looking at him that way again. That way that made his heart pound.
“Ye are welcome,” he said just as softly.
They set off, riding side by side. Neither of them spoke, and Jamie made no comment on their journey or what their goal might be.
He was content to follow her lead. That in itself was something of a revelation.
He’d been trained since childhood for leadership and was used to being the one in charge, the one making decisions.
But he didn’t need to be that way with Elise.
With her he could just be Jamie. Not chieftain of Islay.
Not Lord of the Isles. Just Jamie Donald, a man like any other.
He watched her as they rode. Her eyes scanned the landscape constantly and she kept standing in her stirrups to look around before seating herself again with a huff. Her lips moved as though she muttered words under her breath.
After several minutes of this, he ventured to ask, “What exactly are we looking for?”
“I’m not sure exactly. It’s more of a…feeling.”
“And do ye have that feeling right now?”
She shook her head. “No. Not here. But there’s something somewhere…I just can’t put my finger on it.”
Jamie accepted this in silence. They rode for several miles through settlements that hugged the coastline where the locals came out to gawk at their laird and the MacFinnan spellweaver riding through.
Jamie called out greetings and Elise waved, and Jamie was sure gossip about the laird and the spellweaver would soon be racing through the villages like wildfire.
Elise led them farther south until they left the settlements behind and entered wilder, more sparsely populated parts of the island. Here their only company were sheep that stopped their grazing to stare at them and the tough Highland cattle that could brave this terrain all year round.
Jamie glanced at the sky. The sun was lowering towards midafternoon, and they would soon have to turn around if they wanted to make it back to the keep before nightfall. He opened his mouth to tell Elise as much when she suddenly pulled up her horse.
She stared into the distance, to where the coastline blended into the horizon like a hazy fog. Her nostrils flared and she suddenly went rigid.
“What is it, lass?” he asked, one hand going to the hilt of his claymore.
“There,” she breathed. “It’s there.”
*
Elise drew a deep breath, allowing the cold sea air to fill her lungs.
It calmed her a little, helped to ease the sudden thundering of her heart.
All day, as she had ridden first with Bryn and Martin and then with Jamie, something had been irritating her senses.
A sensation had ridden the air, an odd discordant feeling like the string of a guitar played out of key.
She hadn’t been able to pinpoint what it was, but it had pulled her onwards, tugging at her MacFinnan instincts as surely as an invisible string.
But now the sensation was so strong that it made her pulse race and raised the hair on the back of her neck. Something was close.
Jamie drew his claymore, resting the huge sword across his knees. He didn’t question her, for which she was grateful, but just nudged his horse into a careful walk in the direction she’d indicated.
The farther they rode, the stronger the sensation became. She was sure what they were looking for lay just beyond the next rise.
“Careful,” she whispered to Jamie. “It’s close.”
He glanced at her and nodded. A stand of stunted pines grew along both sides of the road here, obscuring the view. A perfect place for an ambush.
Jamie had noticed this too. Putting a finger to his lips for silence, he pulled up his horse and dismounted, indicating for Elise to do the same.
They left the road, turning inland and slipping into the darkness between the trees, leading the horses by their reins.
A thick carpet of dead pine needles covered the ground, deadening all sound and sending up a faint smell of mold and rot.
The air beneath the trees was unnaturally close, which only heightened the sensation that danger lurked nearby.
But no danger presented itself and they reached the edge of the pines without seeing anything untoward.
Yet Elise’s feeling of unease only increased.
The air felt thick and heavy, like she was walking through treacle.
Beyond the pines lay a scrubby landscape of scraggly bushes and trees, none of them much taller than Jamie, that sloped down towards the sea.
He glanced around, surveying the landscape. “We’ll leave the horses under the cover of the trees and approach on foot.”
She nodded and they set out, hurrying from cover to cover in case unfriendly eyes might be watching.
Finally, they reached the start of the long slope down to the coast and Jamie hunkered down, indicating for Elise to do the same.
Here the sense of unease was so strong that it was all Elise could do to keep her racing pulse under control.
Her instincts screamed at her to get out of here, that she and Jamie were in danger.
Slowly, carefully, the two of them crawled on their bellies through the brittle autumn grass and looked out.
The slope descended steeply, not quite a cliff but a gnarly hill covered in thick clumps of tough grass and thornbushes.
As it leveled out it led to a wide, horseshoe bay with a pebble beach littered with driftwood and dead seaweed.
Out in the water, held between the arms of the bay, lay several flat, sandy islets also strewn with driftwood and seaweed.
It was a desolate and unforgiving place. And it was also empty.
There was no sign of life. No sea birds in the sky. No seals hauled up on the islets. And certainly no pirate base or evidence that any human had ever been here.
Elise gaped. “What? I…I don’t understand.”
Her senses were still tingling, her instincts screaming at her that danger lay all around, but that was at odds with the evidence of her own eyes.
“Ye are sure this is the right place, lass?” Jamie asked.
She nodded. “I’m sure.” Wasn’t she?
Jamie looked around. He was poised and alert and his grip on his sword didn’t loosen. “Stay here. I’m going to take a closer look.”
Elise grabbed his arm. “No way! You are not going down there alone! Weren’t you the one lecturing me about putting myself in danger?”
He studied her for a moment and looked as though he was about to argue, but then thought better of it. “All right. But dinna do anything stupid, aye?”
Elise shot him a quick grin. “Me? Stupid? When do I ever do anything stupid?”
A tiny smile curled one corner of Jamie’s mouth. “I think it best if I dinna answer that question.”
Together they left their hiding place and began a slow, careful descent of the slope.
Despite the fact that there was nothing in sight except the empty, storm-wracked beach and the gray ocean, Elise’s uneasiness did not abate.
That crawling feeling between her shoulder blades like ants marching across her skin only increased as they stepped out into the open.
She could feel unseen eyes watching her.
Yet they made it down to the beach without incident.
The wind was stronger here, slapping into Elise’s face as though it was annoyed at her intrusion.
She held her hair back from her face to keep the whipping threads from her eyes as she turned in a slow circle.
There was nothing to see, nothing that would indicate why her instincts had sent them to this place.