Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Roy knew she was gone before anyone told him.
He had been listening to Hamish argue with the captain of the town watch over the northern road when the knowledge settled beneath his ribs, cold and absolute.
Something had changed.
The festival continued around him. Fiddles played. Boots struck the stones in time with the reel. Laughter rose beneath the lanterns, bright enough to disguise danger from those who had never learned how quietly it approached. But Donaldina was no longer within the square.
Roy turned toward the dancers. He searched first for the deep blue of her gown, then for the dark braid he had watched move across her back throughout the day. He saw merchants, villagers, children weaving between tables and MacNicol women gathered near the fire.
He did not see her.
“Where is Lady Donaldina?” he asked.
Hamish stopped speaking.
The guard captain glanced toward the crowd. “She was beside ye during the opening dance.”
“That was an hour ago.”
Roy moved before the man could answer. He crossed the square swiftly. The crowd seemed to thicken deliberately around him. People bowed, called greetings and attempted to draw his attention toward prizes or cups of ale.
He ignored them. Donaldina was not near the musicians. She was not speaking with the festival steward. She was not beside the old basket seller who had watched them all day with the satisfied expression of a woman already planning their children.
Roy reached the food stalls. “Mairi.”
Donaldina’s companion turned at the sound of his voice. Her smile disappeared when she saw his face.
“Where is she?”
“I thought she was with ye.”
The cold beneath his ribs sharpened. “When did ye last see her?”
“After the dancing. She spoke tae two merchants near the fountain, then—” Mairi looked around, confusion becoming alarm. “I dinnae ken.”
Roy seized the nearest guard by the shoulder. “Close every road from the town.”
The man stared at him.
“Now!” The command cracked through the music.
The guard ran.
Hamish reached Roy’s side. “What has happened?”
“She is missing.”
Roy hated the word the moment it left his mouth. Missing suggested accident, confusion or some harmless absence which might be corrected by searching the next row of stalls.
Donaldina did not disappear harmlessly, not while Cormac Gunn remained alive.
“Search the square,” Roy ordered. “Every building, stable and wagon. Nae one leaves without being questioned.”
Hamish caught his arm before he turned away. “Me laird.”
“Dinnae.”
“Ye dinnae yet—”
“I ken she wouldnae leave without telling someone.”
She might leave Roy without telling him. She had every right to do so. But she would not abandon her clansmen, her companion and half the responsibilities of the festival merely because the crowd had become tiresome.
He reached the fountain where she had last been seen. A ribbon she examined earlier lay trampled beside the stones. Roy picked it up before realizing it was red rather than blue.
His hand closed around it anyway.
“Me laird!”
A guard appeared at the edge of the square, breathing hard. Mud marked his boots.
Roy crossed the distance before the man finished calling. “What?”
“We found something near the eastern lane.”
The guard led him between two darkened stalls and along the narrow passage beyond the final row of houses. The sounds of the festival fell behind them. Lantern light reached only partway down the lane, leaving the distant woodland in darkness.
Another guard waited near the last fence. Something pale lay upon the ground beside him. Roy stopped.
Donaldina’s shawl rested in the mud.
He recognized it at once. Gray wool, bordered with blue stitching. She had worn it around her shoulders after the air turned cold. Roy remembered adjusting one corner of it where it caught beneath his hand during the dance.
Now the fastening pin was gone. Mud darkened the cloth. One edge bore the unmistakable mark of a boot.
Roy bent and lifted it. The wool remained faintly warm.
Every thought vanished except one.
Cormac.
Roy had seen the man use confusion before.
He had watched him turn funeral rites into an abduction and grief into rebellion.
Cormac understood crowds, divided loyalties and the moment in which celebration made guards careless.
This was his work, whether performed by his own hands or those of men desperate enough to serve him.
“Tracks?” Roy demanded.
The guard pointed toward the trees. “Four men, perhaps five. One horse was waiting here. There may be others farther inside the wood.”
“How long?”
“Nae long. The ground is still settling around the prints.”
Hamish arrived behind them with several armed men. Roy thrust the shawl into his hands and turned toward the nearest horse.
“Gather every rider we have.”
“We need scouts first,” Hamish warned. “They may be drawing us intae—”
Roy seized the saddle and mounted. “They have Donaldina.”
“Aye, and riding blindly may get her killed.”
Roy looked down at him. Hamish followed him into battles where men screamed beneath burning towers. He stood beside Roy among the dead and dragged him from fields he would otherwise have refused to leave. He did not frighten easily.
Yet, he stepped back from what he saw in Roy’s face.
“I will follow their trail,” Roy said. “Bring the men as quickly as ye can.”
“Me laird—”
“If they divide, send half toward the northern ridge. The rest stay with ye. Search every path leading toward the old hunting grounds.”
“And ye?”
Roy gathered the reins. “I am done waiting for Cormac tae take what matters and trusting time tae return it.”
The stallion surged ahead beneath him as Roy raced along the eastern lane into the woods.
Branches tore at his cloak, and wet leaves splattered his face.
In moments, the darkness among the trees swallowed the lantern's light.
He followed the damaged earth, the broken ferns, the fresh hoofprints.
Mud flung across roots where a horse had been urged too hard through the narrow path.
Roy did not look back. Donaldina was somewhere ahead of him in the darkness, carried by men who believed distance would protect them from what they had done.
What they failed to understand was that he had crossed battlefields searching for the dead.
He would tear the woodland apart to find the living.
The horse did not slow. Donaldina lay bound across the front of the saddle, trapped between the hard leather pommel and Cormac’s body while the forest rushed past in fragments of darkness.
Branches struck her shoulders. Wet leaves caught in her hair.
Each violent stride of the horse drove the saddle against her ribs until breathing became a separate act of endurance.
The forest seemed endless. Moonlight passed thinly between the branches, silvering the path for a moment before vanishing again. Cormac’s men rode before and behind them, their cloaks moving like shadows between the trunks.
She tried to count the turns. She forced herself to remember what she could.
Roy would follow.
The thought came without invitation and settled within her with dangerous comfort.
He would find the shawl. He would understand why she left it. He would see the torn ground, the hoofprints and the broken ferns. He had crossed a battlefield searching for Lachlan. He would not abandon her to Cormac.
She closed her eyes briefly against the sting of wind. She would not depend entirely upon rescue. She knew too well what happened to women who allowed hope to become obedience. But beneath her fear lived another certainty now, one she could no longer pretend was merely trust.
Roy would come because she mattered to him. And she intended to remain alive long enough to be found.
The trees finally thinned, and a low building emerged from the darkness, crouched beneath pines whose branches nearly concealed its roof. Moss covered the old stone walls. One shutter hung broken beside a narrow window, striking softly against the frame whenever the wind moved through the clearing.
It was an abandoned hunting lodge.
Donaldina remembered Lachlan mentioning such a place years ago, built by their grandfather and deserted after the northern road shifted. Few people had reason to come so deep into the woodland. Cormac had chosen well.
The horses halted before the lodge. Donaldina was dragged from the saddle with so little care that her knees struck the ground. Pain shot upward through her legs. She twisted at once, trying to gain her feet, but one of Cormac’s men caught her beneath the arms.
“Release me!” The gag made the demand almost unintelligible.
Cormac dismounted. Mud darkened his boots and one side of his cloak. His face appeared pale beneath the moonlight, drawn with exhaustion and triumph.
He removed the cloth from her mouth. Donaldina drew in a desperate breath of cold air.
“I shall see every one of ye hanged,” she snarled.
Cormac smiled without amusement. “Inside.”
Donaldina planted her feet. Two men seized her arms. She fought them along every step, forcing them to drag rather than lead her through the doorway.
The lodge smelled of damp stone, old smoke and rotting wood. A fire had been lit in the central hearth, though it gave more smoke than warmth. Rough blankets lay near one wall. Sacks of grain, water skins and weapons were stacked beneath the windows.
He drew a knife. Donaldina held herself still as he cut the ropes around her wrists. The hemp fell away, revealing swollen skin and streaks of blood. She rubbed her hands together, restoring sensation one painful finger at a time.
Four armed men remained inside the lodge. Others stood beyond the windows and door.
“What dae ye imagine this achieves?” she asked. “Roy will follow.”
“MacIver,” Cormac spoke the name as though it were poison. “Everything returns tae him, while I spent years building order within Clan MacNicol.”
Donaldina stepped closer, though every instinct warned her not to place herself within his reach.
Cormac turned away, pacing before the hearth.
“The clans were ready tae accept me. The council understood Dun Ard required a man who kent its people. Then MacIver arrived beneath the King’s decree, carrying foreign soldiers intae our hall and claiming authority through a marriage promised eight years… He took everything.”
“Nae,” Donaldina said quietly. “He revealed what ye were willing tae take.”
The words seemed to wound him.
“There is one way tae save the clan.”
Donaldina already knew what he would say. Still, hearing it spoken made revulsion crawl across her skin.
“Marry me.”
She looked directly into his eyes. “I would sooner die than marry ye.”
The room became silent. Even the men beside the walls seemed to stop breathing.
Cormac’s face changed. The careful councilman vanished. So did the aggrieved protector and the man pretending his ambition served the clan. Rage remained, naked and trembling.
He seized her arm. Donaldina gasped as his fingers closed over the bruises left by the abduction.
“Then ye will stay here,” he declared. “Days. Weeks! And ye will remain me prisoner until yer people learn obedience.”
He released her with a shove. Donaldina stumbled but remained upright. She folded her injured hands before her so that no one would see them tremble.
“Ye misunderstand me clan,” she said. “And ye misunderstand Roy.”
Cormac smiled. “He will come raging through the forest. That is what I expect.”
Donaldina’s heart struck hard against her ribs.
Cormac had set a trap.
She looked toward the narrow window. Through the crooked shutter, the forest appeared dark and quiet under the night.
Somewhere within it, Roy was coming. Cormac thought this would make him predictable, but Donaldina knew better.
His rage might lead him to the lodge. But his love would make him careful enough to bring her home.