Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Her screams pierced the wind. She felt the sound escape her throat, dissolve beneath the raging violence of sea and storm, as if Dun Ard had decided not to hear her.
Cormac dragged her along the cliff path, one hand around her arm and the other holding the blade close enough to her throat that every stumble threatened to make her death look like an accident.
The procession broke into chaos as Father Maol's prayer came to a sudden stop, cut short by fear.
Yet, the guards who trailed all the way to the outer gate did not move.
Over her shoulder, Donaldina caught MacNicol men exchanging brief, enraging glances, their hands on sword hilts and feet anchored to the ground.
“Stop him!” she cried.
No one did. Cormac’s grip tightened until pain flashed white through her wrist.
“Keep back!” he shouted, turning his head only enough to cast the words behind him. “Any man who values Lady Donaldina’s life will hold his place.”
He used her name and her life like a shield, and the men who should have known better let him.
“Cormac,” called one of the older guards, his voice shaking with uncertainty, “this isnae the way.”
“The way?” Cormac laughed, hauling her forward. “The way was lost the moment MacIver set foot in our hall. Horses!” he bellowed toward the ridge ahead, where the path bent between two jutting rocks slick with rain. “Bring them down!”
Donaldina’s stomach turned. Horses waited beyond the ridge. This wasn’t madness born in an instant. No, it had method to it. He stood in Lachlan’s hall, bowed his head before the body, spoke of honor and protection, while men of his choosing waited with saddled horses near the cliffs.
“Ye planned this,” she snarled.
Cormac pulled her so sharply that her shoulder burned. “I planned survival.”
“Ye planned treason.”
“I planned a future,” he snapped, his mouth close to her ear. “One ye should have accepted when it was first offered.”
She twisted sharply, raking her nails along the back of his hand. He cursed but did not release her, his blade grazing her skin.
Donaldina froze. The waves crashed into Dun Ard's black rocks beneath the path, sending white spray upward in ghostly blasts.
The fall was brutal, sharp, and steep. She had been walking this trail since she was a child.
She knew where the stones loosened after rain, where moss left the ground slick underneath the foot, and where the wind came around the curve and struck at the body like a sneaky enemy from the side.
As a girl, she raced Lachlan here once and was soundly scolded for it. She remembered his hand closing about the back of her cloak, his voice stern and shaking as he told her that pride would not teach the sea to spare her.
Lachlan was behind her now, lying helpless upon his bier while another man tried to steal what remained of his house. The grief that had been bound by duty all morning split open, turning into fury.
Donaldina struck Cormac's boot with her heel.
He let out a hiss and, for a brief moment, his grip relaxed.
She yanked her arm away and lurched toward the inner side of the path.
She took no more than three steps forward when, once more, Cormac grabbed her by the waist and pulled her back against him, knocking the wind out of her.
“Ye foolish lass,” he snarled. “Must every kindness be forced upon you?”
“Kindness?” she gasped, struggling against the iron band of his arm. “Ye call this kindness?”
“I call it necessity. Yer brother is dead. Yer men are divided. MacIver comes under a King’s paper tae take ye, yer hall, yer coast, and yer name, and ye still stand there as if dignity will save ye.”
“Better dignity than cowardice dressed as counsel,” she hissed, his hold tightening even more. Tilting his head toward hers, his voice came out like a threat, cold and ominous.
“Ye were meant tae stand beside me. Had ye possessed sense, the clan would have gathered under strength, nae under some foreign-bred decree from a Lowland court. I would have ruled Dun Ard well.”
There it was. None of this was about her safety, the clan’s grief or Lachlan’s honor.
Rule.
Donaldina looked back at him and saw with perfect clarity the future he made in his own mind: herself seated beside him because her blood would make his ambition respectable.
“I would have seen Dun Ard burn before I gave it tae ye,” she said through clenched teeth.
His eyes hardened. The next pull dragged her toward the outer stones.
Her foot slipped and, for one sickening instant, there was nothing beneath her heel but wet air and the roaring white of the tide below.
With her free hand clutching wildly for balance, Donaldina let out a cry.
Her fingertips slid against the rock. Then, out of possession rather than mercy, Cormac pulled her upright once again.
“Be still,” he barked, though she felt the tremor of effort in him. “Dae ye mean tae kill us both?”
“I mean,” she said, breathless, “tae be very inconvenient tae ye.”
Even then, with death below her and a madman’s arm about her, some bitter fragment of her own temper survived. It steadied her more than tears could have done.
Then, a shout rose behind them. Cormac’s head snapped toward the ridge. Donaldina followed the movement and saw him.
Roy MacIver stood upon the higher path, black against the rain, with his sword drawn in his hand.
He must have taken the upper track from the courtyard, climbing where the rock rose steeply behind the burial way.
His cloak streamed in the wind. His hair, unbound and darkened by rain, lashed across the scar at his jaw.
He descended at once. There was no hesitation in him, no glance toward the men gathered uselessly below, no shouted question, no plea for reason.
He came down the wet ridge with the deadly certainty of a man who had long ago ceased expecting the world to be reasonable and trained himself to answer it otherwise.
Cormac dragged Donaldina backward.
“Stay where ye are, MacIver!”
MacIver did not. He moved faster than any man should have dared upon that path. Donaldina’s breath caught despite herself, half in fear that he would fall, half in astonishment that he did not.
Cormac shifted the knife higher against her throat.
MacIver slowed. Only then did she understand the terrible difficulty before him.
He was close enough now for her to see the gray of his eyes, but not close enough to strike without risking her.
One wrong movement, one reckless lunge, and Cormac needed only the smallest pressure of his hand.
“Let her go,” Laird MacIver said calmly.
Cormac laughed, though his hold had grown damp and uncertain against her gown. “Yer commands mean naething here.”
“I gave nae command,” he utter, taking one careful step forward. “I offer ye the last courtesy ye are likely tae receive.”
Donaldina felt Cormac’s chest rise sharply against her back.
“She is bound tae this clan before she is bound tae ye.”
“I am bound,” she said, each word forced between clenched teeth, “tae nae man who drags me like stolen cattle along me own cliff path.”
Laird MacIver's gaze shifted to her. It was enough to make her uneasy.
There was something in his eyes; he didn't see a promised bride or the means to carry out a royal accord.
No, he saw Donaldina MacNicol herself, enraged, afraid, and still refusing to give up the dignity that others were trying to steal from her.
With a curse, Cormac pushed her away from him, possibly meaning to turn the knife.
Donaldina lost her footing. Laird MacIver moved.
She saw only a flash of steel. His sword struck Cormac’s blade with a hard ringing sound that cracked through the storm.
The knife flew from Cormac’s hand, spinning once before striking rock and skidding toward the path’s edge.
He staggered back, snarling, his boots slipping on the uneven ground.
And then she fell, her eyes closing as if ready to succumb to her sorrowful fate.
But then, an arm caught her around the waist and pulled her back with a force that stole the breath from her lungs.
She clashed against Roy MacIver’s chest, hard enough that pain burst through her ribs.
His other arm came around her, drawing her away from the cliff before the wind could claim what Cormac had nearly delivered.
For a moment, she could not think. There was only the hard line of his body against hers, the smell of rain-soaked wool, leather, steel, and something warm beneath it all that belonged only to living skin.
His heart beat beneath her cheek, fast but controlled.
One hand held his sword outward, the other remaining locked around her waist.
He had her. No man had ever held Donaldina MacNicol so closely without permission and lived unrebuked by her tongue.
Yet the rebuke did not come. She was too aware of Cormac in front of her, too aware of the cliff behind her, and most dangerously, too conscious that MacIver's grasp did not feel like possession, but more like a barrier.
Cormac scrambled across the stones, reaching toward the fallen dagger. Roy shifted at once, placing Donaldina behind him without releasing her fully. His arm slid from her waist to her wrist, keeping her near his back as if the shape of his body alone could deny access to every threat.
She should have pulled away, she meant to.
Her pride awakened, bruised and frustrated, ready to remind him that she was no weak lass to be rescued from peril.
However, her knees were less compliant than she would have liked, her fingers had become cold, and the spot where Cormac's blade touched her throat continued to burn as though the metal was still there.
Laird MacIver did not look at her. He was watching Cormac.
“Take another inch toward that dagger,” he growled, “and I will remove the hand that seeks it.”
Cormac froze, crouched upon the path, his face twisted with humiliation.
“Ye have nae authority over me.”
MacIver’s sword angled lower. “Test how much I require.”
Now, the guards had started to move closer, their courage returning in the convenient way of soldiers who waited till the threat had chosen a different foe. Donaldina noticed their shame-filled expressions and felt no gratitude.
Cormac saw them, too. His mouth curled.
“Cowards,” he spat. “Ye would let a MacIver lay claim tae Dun Ard? Tae her? Tae Lachlan’s seat?”
“She isnae a seat,” MacIver corrected.
The words struck Donaldina strangely. She looked up at him, seeing the rain pouring down the leather guard at his wrist and the sword remaining steady despite his pale knuckles around the hilt.
Cormac stood slowly, keeping his gaze locked on the dagger among the rocks, but MacIver raised his sword toward his chest.
“Step back,” he ordered.
Cormac’s eyes glittered. “Or?”
MacIver’s voice lowered. “Or I decide whether I kill ye or let ye live.”
The storm seemed to pause around them. Donaldina looked from one man to the other. Cormac, whom she had known for years, stood bare now of all pretenses, with his ambition sharpened by resentment, protection curdled into ownership, and his loyalty nothing but a cloak wrapped over hunger.
Laird Roy MacIver, whom she did not know at all, stood between her and the cliff with a sword in his hand and violence held in check by some discipline she could neither trust nor dismiss.
He came under a royal decree that might legally take away her freedom.
He crossed her brother’s funeral like an omen.
His name was tangled with Lachlan’s death in every whisper Dun Ard possessed.
And yet he reached her. He struck the blade aside. He held her as if keeping her alive mattered more than any claim the King had written.
Donaldina drew a shaking breath, tasting salt, rain, and the ghost of fear. She could not decide which man was the greater danger.
She only knew that one dragged her toward the sea, and the other did not let her fall.