Chapter Six
Elspeth heard the men outside her window the next morning.
They were preparing to leave for the castle they called home.
They wouldn’t be here to eat what she prepared.
She wanted to scream. She couldn’t follow them and kill them surrounded by dozens or even hundreds of others.
It was perfect here. Why did they want to leave so badly anyway?
She could have killed them together—or close enough.
In a few days or a sennight, they would have been too weak to stop her once they suspected.
A neat, quiet death—and then she could have gone to this Tor Castle, where many Camerons lived without any of them knowing who she was.
The only consolation was that she would get to kill the one who had caused everyone’s misery. Including, it seemed, his own.
She dressed in her breeches and tunic from the day before and lifted her arm to give herself a sniff. Her borrowed clothes didn’t stink…yet. If she was going to stay here…with him, she was going to have to sew more clothes for herself.
She looked around for a comb but there was none. It didn’t matter. She would not be able to run it through her knots anyway. It left her with tears in her eyes at what she was going to have to do. Even this sin of vanity she would pile on the Camerons.
Resigned, she tied her tangled hair at her nape, pinched the balls of her cheeks and headed for the bedroom door.
She stopped when she reached it. What if she was locked inside again?
A prisoner, forced to escape by any means necessary.
She turned to look at the windows, then the hearth.
She swallowed and said a silent prayer never to have to escape through the chimney. But she would if she had to.
Not wanting to find out, but needing to know, she reached out for the latch and gave the door a pull.
It opened. Her heart resumed beating.
She knew everyone was outside, so she hurried to the front door and pulled it open.
A cool morning breeze washed over her, along with the gazes of four men.
Jamie was the first to smile at her. Ewen gave her a bow from his saddle. Steafan narrowed his eyes on her, his smile fading. Logan’s expression didn’t change at all when he saw her. In fact, he looked uninterested in her. Good! The feeling was entirely mutual!
She gave him her best glare, but it was short-lived when he pulled a woolen mantle from Steafan’s saddle bag and went to her with it.
It took every ounce of mettle she possessed to keep her stunned expression hidden. When he wrapped the mantle around her shoulders and tied the ends into a knot, she nearly burst into a foolish smile.
She kept her expression as passive as his.
He hated her but he concerned himself with keeping her warm. His words invaded her thoughts. I’ll no’ have this lass cause any harm to my kin, nor will I have them cause harm to her. Why would he care if his kin harmed her?
“Miss Woodburn.”
She looked at Steafan, still scowling. “If any harm comes to him—”
“Steafan,” Mr. Cameron scolded, quieting his beefy cousin.
Steafan would cause her the most trouble. She would have to think of a way to kill him quicker than poison.
“Will ye no’ put Steafan’s worries to rest?” Jamie asked, still smiling. “Assure him ye willna harm Logan.”
“Of course,” she did as he suggested, bowing her head. “Nae harm will come to Mr. Cameron by my hand.”
“There, Steafan, ye see?” the angelic warrior said, sunlit curls tossed around his forehead by the breeze.
Steafan nodded, a little reluctantly, then seemed to forget about her.
Ewen gave her a pleading look before he bid them farewell and turned his horse northwest.
She hated that they all loved him so much. She hated her plans to kill someone who others would miss and mourn. She wished Logan Cameron were an unmerciful tyrant.
Jamie’s farewell smile to her was so full of calm serenity that told him nothing would go wrong, that it almost made Elspeth doubt herself.
When her three ‘almost’ victims rode off, she turned to have a look at the warrior who was left. Her gaze dipped to his left arm hanging at his side. No one would believe that he wasn’t helpless, that he couldn’t be taken down with only one arm, in any fight.
But she had seen him swing that deadly right arm of his. She doubted any enemy would have a chance against him.
Would he ever use his skill and strength against her? The thought of it frightened her. She’d been struck before, but never by the likes of Logan of Lochaber.
She raised her gaze to find his fastened on her. “I can defend myself just fine, lass.”
Och, she knew it. “Do ye think me foolish enough to raise a weapon against ye, Mr. Cameron? At least, while ye are awake.”
“Ye are verra sure of yerself, lass. But yer passion wanes and when the time comes, ye willna be able to put a blade in me. How many ways are there to kill a man?”
Her breath stalled and her body hiccupped to get her going again. She covered her mouth with her hand.
He smiled at her.
It made her blood boil. “Ways ye wouldna know, soldier.”
His smile widened until he broke out with laughter. “Ye surely are a menace, Miss Woodburn.”
More to ye than ye will ever know until ’tis too late.
She followed him back into the house, suddenly feeling as if the place had gotten smaller. Or was it that Mr. Cameron seemed so big?
He wasn’t. His shoulders were wide, but no wider than other men’s shoulders. His were straightened by youth and sleek muscle. He wasn’t burly like Steafan, but longer, leaner, gracefully lithe, and built for speed, like a cheetah in its prime.
She shifted her gaze away from him, ending her thoughts of him, and looked toward the Main Hall. “Did ye bake bread?”
“Aye, and there is hot porridge to eat with it. I am goin’ huntin’. I’ll be back when—”
What? She gave him a venomous glare and folded her arms across her chest. “So that is it? Ye are going to just leave me here with no defense?”
“All the cookin’ knives are at yer disposal.”
She dropped her hands to her sides and balled them into fists. “Use caution with yer words or I will use one on ye.”
“Did ye speak to yer other masters this way?” he asked her calmly.
“I didna wish to kill them the way I have wished fer too long to kill ye,” she retorted.
The warmth left his face and was replaced by dark sulking. “Then ye should enjoy yer time away from me even more.”
She watched him leave, torn between her rumbling belly and hurrying to catch up with him.
He was correct, she should enjoy her time away from him, but she didn’t want to be alone.
She hadn’t been alone since the night she wept over her parents’ dead bodies.
There was nothing darker or more terrifying in those moments than the knowledge that she was suddenly alone in her life at the age of seventeen, that there was no one to help her, and no one had.
After she was taken, there were always other servants, cooks, chambermaids, laundresses and more wandering around her. But she had always been lonely.
Still, being alone was different.
Abandoning the bread and porridge, she ran after him. “I’m afraid of being alone,” she confessed, looking up at him when she caught up. So what if she told him the truth about things? He wouldn’t live long enough to use any of it against her.
He didn’t ridicule or refuse her when she kept her pace steady with his. He didn’t ask anything at all. Did he not even care what her life had been like because of him?
She had a dozen things to say to him, but she remained silent by his side or behind him when he spotted a hare in the bush and told her to stay back.
He took aim with a pistol that looked like the one Jamie brandished. He was about to shoot when her belly rumbled and the hare took off.
Elspeth gasped. That was likely supper. She slid her gaze to him, hesitating to avoid his ire.
But he chuckled and then laughed out loud. She was stunned. He was like no master she had ever had before. She hated to admit he was her master, but it would be over soon—and he really wasn’t so terrible.
“Was that supper?” she asked with regret.
“There are plenty of other hares to have fer supper. Dinna lose yer faith in me, aye?”
Was she expected to have faith in him, then? Did he forget who she was? Should she remind him?
She found that she didn’t truly want to. Not right at this moment. At this moment, she wanted to watch him stalk on his long, muscular legs toward another hare.
He took aim and shot. She jumped and then closed her arms around herself and looked away from the dead hare. She didn’t like the deafening boom of pistols. Not many men in the houses she served had them, and if they did, they were only used in battle. She had never gone hunting with a man before.
“Were ye not worried that I would take yer horse and escape?” she asked him as he collected the hare.
“My horse would have thrown ye the moment ye set yer arse in the saddle.”
She scowled at him. Was he telling the truth? “So, yer horse loves ye too then?”
He shrugged while he tied the carcass with a thin rope and then let it hang from his hand by its feet.
“I dinna know if horses feel love fer people, but I raised him. My father would let no one ride my horse but me. Everyone else is foreign to him. Never try to ride him.”
She nodded and studied him while they walked. “Are all Camerons like yer horse, making friends with no one?
“Of course we have allies,” he said flippantly. “We are a large clan but we would not have survived withoot the aid of our friends.”
She wondered who those allies were. Did they aid in killing Protestants? She glared at him through the corner of her eye. “I’m sure any friend of yers would be an enemy of mine,”
He nodded. “Most assuredly.”