Chapter Sixteen
When he woke the next morning, Blake waited for regret to pummel him. Not because of Katrina—he could not regret her even if she stabbed him in the heart herself—but because he knew this could only bring pain.
He deserved any suffering due to come his way, but Katrina…
She deserved only joy and light, and he was not that kind of man.
But neither was bloody Brodie MacFarlane.
He felt sure that morning would bring only the sharpest self-hatred that he had ever felt, but then Katrina stirred in his arms and smiled at him, and he found that it was impossible to be sorry. No matter what happened next, he had this.
Still, they didn’t speak of it as they dressed and mounted on the docile old horse that—like Katrina—lacked the good sense to flee when given the chance.
They mounted. They rode. He tried very hard to ignore the pressure of her deliciously rounded bum against him, and tried even harder not to think of how beautiful she had been, naked and laid out before him, flushed pink from the pleasure he had given her.
It was an extraordinarily trying morning.
Frankly, it came as a relief when he sensed that someone was following him through the underbrush. They were doing fairly well at being stealthy, but Blake wasn’t called the Bloodhound for no reason.
Maybe, if he was lucky, the pursuer would be a decent challenge, someone who had enough skill to rouse his blood for some other reason than the bonnie woman in his arms.
But luck had never gone Blake’s way, so it turned out that it was just bloody Arran Lennox.
Blake downright sighed when Lennox stepped out of the bushes, sword in hand, determination on his face.
“Let Katrina go, and we can both walk away from this,” Lennox warned.
Blake didn’t bother rushing as he dismounted. Katrina, though scrambled down as though someone had lit her breeches on fire, so Blake stopped to make certain she didn’t fall.
Lennox watched this solicitousness with keen suspicion in his eyes. He didn’t lower his sword, though.
“Let her go,” he repeated.
Suddenly, Blake felt so bloody exhausted by all of this. All the fighting. It never ended. It never would end.
He lifted his own blade—a knife; there wouldn’t even be any challenge to it if he used his sword—and took a step toward Lennox, only to draw up short when Katrina threw herself between them.
“Step aside, Katrina,” he growled, just as Lennox shouted, “Katrina, get out of the way!”
It was hard to tell which one of them was more offended by this show of common ground.
She glared at them both.
“Nay,” she commanded. “Blake, ye arenae going to attack him. And Arran—” She whirled around to look at Lennox, whose expression had gone properly horrified when she’d used Blake’s given name—“Ye arenae going to attack him, either. Has he nae beaten ye enough? Ye would think your pride wouldnae withstand it.”
Despite everything, Blake felt a smirk cross his face. His pride was rather satisfied to hear his woman praise his skill.
Not that Katrina was his woman, of course.
Arran looked between Katrina and Blake, a curious expression on his face. His sword fell by a fraction of an inch.
“What the hell is going on here?” he demanded.
“What is going on,” Katrina said, a clear warning in her voice, “is that ye need to go. MacFarlane is trying to capture ye, and yet ye follow me onto MacFarlane lands? Are ye mad?”
“MacFarlane has actually captured ye!” Lennox retorted.
He was looking more incredulous by the moment, like he understood what was happening, but didn’t want to believe it.
Still, Blake didn’t lower his blade. He absolutely was not going to let Lennox take Katrina from him by force, if the man was foolhardy enough to try such a thing.
He would listen to Katrina’s order to stop only for as long as it did not risk her life.
She scoffed, like the man with the sword was no more than a little nuisance. That was likely the moment, Blake would later realize, that she truly snatched the heart right out of his chest and kept it for herself.
“Not this MacFarlane,” she said, as though it should be obvious. “Laird MacFarlane. He will attack, given the opportunity.”
Lennox’s blade dropped another inch.
“Katrina…” he said slowly. “He already has.” He swallowed hard, his eyes darting to Blake and back to Katrina. “MacFarlane has taken your brother.”
Blake never wanted to see the pain and terror that went through Katrina’s expression at Lennox’s words.
“Edward?” she whispered, sounding as small and as lost as he’d ever heard her.
Blake no longer cared that Lennox was watching.
He sheathed his knife and stepped toward her.
Lennox surged forward, then stopped when he saw that Blake had only moved to put his hand on Katrina’s shoulders, offering comfort, not aggression.
Blake felt as big as he ever had when Katrina accepted that comfort without hesitation.
“We have to go after him,” she said, her eyes pleading. “We have to get him back.”
Blake shook his head. “Nay,” he said. “That’s what the laird wants, lass. He has no need for your brother; he wants ye. MacFarlane willnae hurt your brother. We need to plan, nae to rush.”
Katrina looked doubtful, but Arran scoffed in outright disbelief.
“Ye cannae really believe that,” he protested.
But Blake was confident, and he wouldn’t see Katrina frightened into a trap. “He has no reason,” he told Lennox, striving for calm.
“As if that would make it the first massacre that MacFarlane committed without reason,” he snarled.
Blake’s hand was back on his hilt before he’d given it permission to move. He fixed his feet, however, not moving from Katrina’s side.
“I am getting sick of people throwing wrongful accusations,” he snapped, clinging to the leash on his temper with both hands.
“And I am to believe ye when ye say it isnae true?” Arran returned. “How about this? Why dinnae ye search the old ledgers, see what ye find in the letters that are hidden deep within MacFarlane Keep? Why dinnae ye see what ye find pertaining to the old Lennox land deeds, aye?”
“Lies and distractions,” Blake scoffed… but something in Lennox’s eyes gave him pause. Surely Laird MacFarlane wouldnae kill an entire clan, would he?
Blake wished he were more confident in that thought.
“I may no longer be a mere foot soldier,” Lennox said, arching his brow. “But such talk is still dangerous, aye, MacFarlane? But here is what I have learned—staying silent is far more dangerous.”
Blake worked his jaw. When he had first recognized Arran, back at Callahan Keep, he had seen the man’s potential to disrupt the balances of power that kept the Highlands moving.
But he hadn’t seen this—he hadn’t seen that Arran would survive his attempt to disrupt that power.
He’d worried, then, that Lennox would end up in an unmarked grave, though he hadn’t been able to say for sure why the idea had bothered him.
Now, though, he was worried about what else he might not see coming. What else he might have missed.
“Stop!” Katrina threw up her hands, dislodging Blake’s hold on her shoulder. “I dinnae care about any argument between ye! We need to rescue my brother.”
There was another moment of understanding that passed between Blake and Arran, this one only slightly less fraught. They were in clear agreement, however: Katrina could not be permitted to go anywhere near MacFarlane Keep, not if the laird was getting desperate enough to abduct the MacAllan heir.
“Ye will stay here,” Blake heard himself say. “I will retrieve your brother.”
As soon as he said it, he liked the idea.
It was a plan that kept Katrina out of harm’s way.
There was no way Lennox would leave her undefended, so Blake would know where to find that slippery wee bastard.
He hadn’t decided what he meant to do about Lennox and his order to retrieve the man…
but he did know that Katrina’s needs came first.
It was a good plan. A great plan!
So of course Katrina, the obstinate minx, was shaking her head in refusal.
“Nay,” she said. “Nay, I cannae just wait around while my brother is a prisoner. I need to free him.”
“Woman,” he growled, “if ye really think that I am going to let ye waltz into what is verra clearly a trap—”
“Then dinnae,” she interrupted in a pert, unbothered tone that promised all kinds of trouble. “Arran, I’m going with ye.”
“Fine with me,” Lennox said, and just like that, they were on opposite sides again.
“Ye arenae going anywhere,” Blake said, totally focused on Katrina—
Which was why he scarcely saw it coming before Arran’s fist collided with his face.
He stumbled back a pace, only just catching himself before he fell. Lennox was on him again in an instant, one arm holding Blake back while he used the other to strike at him.
Lennox wasn’t fighting at full form. Blake recognized it immediately, saw in Arran the way a man held himself when he was guarding injuries. Blake pressed the advantage, sending the air out of Arran’s lungs in a rush with one swift punch to his middle.
Lennox, to his credit, kept clinging to Blake.
He aimed a kick that Blake had to dodge.
Lennox reached for the knife in Blake’s belt—the one that Blake had been studiously ignoring, because it would annoy Katrina if he killed Lennox or even just maimed him a bit—and Blake knocked his arm aside, then froze as he caught up with his own thoughts.
Katrina. She should have been screaming and senselessly putting herself in danger by trying to intervene in the fight.
But there was only silence.
Blake punched Lennox harder, knocking the man back a few steps so he could look around. And sure enough, on that damned horse, racing away as fast as its ancient hooves could carry her—
“Fuck!” Blake snarled, startling Lennox into a moment of hesitation. “Katrina!”
He didn’t even wait long enough to see how Lennox swung back. He took off running, full speed, racing after the horse.
Blake was fast, and he was strong, but he could not outrun a horse. Fortunately, this particular horse didn’t seem to know it could go faster than a trot, no matter how much Katrina prodded at him.
He ran until his lungs burned. Katrina eventually gave up on the horse and tried to run herself, while the nag went to nibble a patch of greenery.
Blake could see light ahead that signaled the end of this forest path. He knew this land, and he knew that if she emerged from the trees, she would be in view of a nearby patrol tower.
He didn’t have enough breath to call for her to stop, but he caught up with her no more than a dozen paces before she would have emerged from the trees, grabbing her arm and sending them both tumbling to the ground.
She let out a cry of pain and alarm, and he regretted that, but it would have hurt her far more to get filled with arrows because some overeager guard saw a strange figure in breeches bolting through the territory and mistook her for an enemy soldier.
“Get off of me!” she cried, thrashing and kicking against his grip. She caught him with a knee distressingly close to his bollocks, but he held on to her, because to let her go was to put her in danger. “Let me go! I have to rescue my brother.”
“Lass,” he gasped through the pain. “Stop. Stop!”
She kicked at him again and he pinned her to the ground, wrists above her head, her legs held down by his own. It was a wretched parody of their embrace the night before.
“Katrina!” he snarled, pressing her down until she couldn’t fight beyond glaring at him—which she did with as much intensity as she could muster. “Listen. There is a patrol just beyond those trees. If they see ye, ye will be lucky if they just abduct ye.”
She stopped trying to resist his grip, though her eyes remained wary as she listened.
“Ye cannae just go charging blindly into MacFarlane lands,” he said, his voice breaking on the words. “Ye will just get yourself killed.”
He couldn’t bear it. He could not bear watching her die while he looked helplessly on.
Not again.
A tear trickled from the corner of her eye, drawing a track as it dripped toward the ground.
“I cannae leave my brother, Blake,” she said. “I have to help him. Ye ken.”
He did. He truly did.
With a sigh—and the knowledge that he could always tackle her again if she tried to run—he rolled off her until they were seated side by side.
“It’s dangerous,” he said, not looking at her. “Ye could be killed.”
“If my brother dies because of me, I might as well die, too,” she said.
He clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ached.
He would do anything to save her… but he could only imagine what it would feel like if his siblings hadn’t just died but had been lost due to something he’d failed to do.
He gathered his resolve before he could lose his nerve, grabbed her arm, and hauled her to her feet.
And then, his MacFarlane tartan like a white flag of peace, he marched them beyond the line of trees.
The reaction from the guard tower was almost instantaneous, and, even in the circumstances, Blake felt pleased to see that the men he had trained weren’t growing lax in his absence. They rode out immediately and soon met Katrina and Blake midway across the field.
“Captain MacFarlane!” one of them greeted—Davies, Blake thought his name might have been. “We werenae expecting ye.”
Blake just grunted in response to that. He couldn’t do anything to disrupt the words that came out of his throat like shards of glass.
“I have a prisoner, as requested by the laird,” he said, holding her tight against him. “Send word to his lairdship at once that I have Katrina MacAllan.”