The Runaway Highlander (The Highland Renegades Book 2) (3 page)

She passed him the cloth and looked over the contents of his offering. She wrinkled her nose for the shortest of moments, but smoothed her face into a smile.

“I suppose you’ll have to help me,” she said.

Aedan marveled at the shift in her demeanor. One moment, familiar and almost intimate, like… family… and the next moment, the valor of noblesse, and a steeled indifference. Strange woman.

“Indeed. Where would you like to begin?”

She crinkled
her mouth to one side and looked up. There was the look of his sister again. Unguarded. That was it. No one ever allowed themselves to be unguarded in his presence. He blamed his scar for that.

“Let me pour just a bit of this water over the wound and then I think I’ll have you—” she stopped and closed her eyes for a moment, “hold the wound closed so it will be easier for me to sew it.”

Aedan glanced down at William, poor man. He lay still with his eyes closed, his jaw set against whatever might come. Aedan admired the man. He was almost certain that William was a good man. Indeed, if there hadn’t been such a price on his head—on all the heads of the de Moray rebels—Aedan might have counted the man a friend. Hell, if he’d been free to choose, he might even have joined their cause.

But he wasn’t free to choose, and he needed to remember that.

“You stand over there.” Anne pointed to a stretch of the table near William’s head. She stood at his hip and poured some of the water over the wound, dabbing at the edges with the cloth. Water pooled in little crags on the table’s surface and then washed down in the cracks between the slats and onto the floor below. It mixed with what little blood had escaped.

The slow in
bleeding was a good sign. Perhaps the man would live after all. And Aedan intended to question him once Anne de Cheyne was out of the way. He had to know where Andrew and Elizabeth made camp. And he had to find them. That would finally pay off the last of the debts and he could go home.

“I’m going to start up near the top, where there seems to be the most skin.” Anne took the long thread and needle in her hand, knotted one end, and pointed toward his side. “Now, you press the wound together so I can work at it.”

Aedan put a hand on either side of the wound and pushed the skin together. William let out an animal-like yowl. “Do you have something for him to bite on?”

She looked around, exasperated, but shimmied to the far side of the room and returned with a nice leather belt. She offered it to William and he chewed the thick end, letting the other drop across the other side of his body.

Anne nodded at him, then plunged the needle into his skin and shuddered. His cry affected her, Aedan could see. Whatever her reason for doing this, it wasn’t to inflict pain.

He could only really spare a finger, so as her hand came near his, he stroked the side of it with his pointer and she looked up at him, her lips parted in a silent question.
The warmth he’d felt before returned with a force and Aedan found himself staring into this beautiful face, unable to speak or even breathe. Certainly, her beauty was arresting—he’d known that the first time he saw her—but this was something else. Perhaps the artless gaze, perhaps the wet promise of her lips and the tiny indrawn breath when their eyes met, perhaps the memory of Brighde.

He’d wanted to comfort her at first, but his touch lingering on the soft, round underside of her palm suddenly seemed the most intimate thing he could have done.

Aedan cleared his throat and pressed his lips together, giving her a gentle nod. She could do this. He hadn’t known her long, but he’d seen her resolve. She could handle a little pain.

Her icy blue eyes cooled and her mouth spread into a smile. She returned the nod and plunged the needle into William’s skin again. This time, the cry was less, and Anne finally set a pace that allowed William a bit of time before each stitch to prepare himself.

Anne pulled at the last stitch and tied the two ends together, then used one of the knives to trim the end. With a backward step, her whole demeanor changed. He couldn’t decide what it was, but as soon as the stitching was complete, the whole feel of the room changed.

“You have done well,” he said.

She
smiled tightly and took another step in retreat from William. Aedan stepped between Anne and her patient and reached for her hand, as much because he wanted to touch her again as to congratulate a job well done.

“I wasn’t certain, at first, that you’d done this before. But in the end…” Aedan initially stopped to turn his head, but he couldn’t be certain if there really had been a movement, or if he was just being paranoid.

But the blinding pain on the side of his head put the questions out of mind. As he fell against the shelves, he reached out for Anne, not wanting to leave her to the savagery of this fugitive. William took one more swing at Aedan and black crept from the edges of his vision to the center, no matter how hard he fought it.

Chapter Three

Anne couldn’t breathe as she watched Aedan collapse to the floor. Suddenly, the plan seemed not to be her most brilliant. He’d been so gentle with her, so kind, and how had she repaid him? By distracting him so a wounded fugitive could bludgeon him with a heavy helmet.

William leaned on the table, holding his wounded side and heaving. He could have passed for her brother, she thought, with his high cheekbones and sharp-edged jawline. She and Broccin had been confused for siblings before, so it shouldn’t surprise her. Their European lineage gave them a unique look in her part of the Highlands. Or, as her mother often said, their Viking lineage. Even curled over himself, the large blond man could have passed for one of their Viking ancestors, just like Broc. Just like her brother. And her father.

Oh heavens above. Her father. He would be ashamed of her, participating in something so unladylike as an escape. She took a breath and was about to remind William of the second half of their plan when he did what she’d been threatening to do ever since she saw his wound. As he finished heaving, Anne felt the creep of the threatening urge crawl up the back of her throat. She swallowed against it and covered her nose.

When she composed herself enough to look back, William was unwrapping one of the rolls of linens.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Cleaning this up.” He paused, putting a hand on the table and closing his eyes, swaying. “The pain is great, my lady.”

“We don’t have time. If you lose any more of your stomach, then you lose it, but we can’t stop. Who knows how long Aedan will be out.”

“I didn’t kill him, did I?”

Anne hadn’t even considered that as an option. She hadn’t seen him move. Dropping to her knees, she caught another whiff of the sour mess on the floor and covered her nose and mouth, fighting off the nausea.

She felt the side of his head where William had made contact. A large lump had formed, and there was a tiny bit of blood, but not so much that it flowed. Still. Anne held out a hand for the roll of bandages that remained in William’s hand.

The linen covered most of his scar as she wrapped it around the wound. Tiny breaths escaped his lips and before she stood, Anne slid her hand along the smooth side of his face. “I
’m sorry, Aedan,” she whispered, hovering over his face. She ran her thumb along the bottom edge of his lip and her own mouth pursed for the briefest of seconds. Aware of William watching, she released Aedan’s wounded head and surprised herself with the fact that she wanted to stay.

Leaning most of her weight against the shelving, Anne pulled herself to her feet, a tiny spinning feeling rumbling in her
stomach. She paused to collect her wits, but the spinning wouldn’t stop. She didn’t like leaving a wounded man behind.

“He is alive, but we can’t risk him waking.”

William slung one of the clean tunics over his head and cried out as he pulled it fully on. The color of a rooster’s gobble, these clothes were made for the English. The mere sight of her enemy’s uniform made her fists clench. But this truly was the best of their options.

He took one of the long spears from the shelves and slung the belt around his waist that he’d used to stifle his pain while she sewed him together.

“Don’t forget to take that bundle of extra cloth. You’ll need to change those bandages often. After all this exertion, you’re going to bleed. And quite a bit, I’m afraid.” Anne leaned against the shelves, still blocked from her exit by Aedan’s prostrate posture.

He groaned as he stretched for the bundle. The poor man, having to travel like this, but what choice did he have? He couldn’t stay in the dungeon, or their plans for escape would be thwarted. She couldn’t help him truly, or risk being implicated herself. This was the only way.

Anne inhaled deeply and stepped over Aedan’s body, blocking William’s ability to get to the door. “Now.” She straightened her skirts and dropped her shoulders. “Do it.”

William’s lips pursed and he looked from his hand to her face to the door. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“It’s the only way I’ll be able to stay and let you back in to the castle.” And down to see Broccin in the dungeon. “They have to believe that you escaped and I had no part of it.”

He seemed to focus on everything but her face, shifting from one foot to the
other. “If there was a way for you to claim that you’d become overwhelmed and fainted…”

She couldn’t help the laugh that escaped. Her mother would see through that in a heartbeat. Until her response to a deep wound, Anne had never so much as been squeamish about anything. She certainly wasn’t prone to fainting.

Too bad she couldn’t exchange places with Elena just in this moment. She was fantastic at fainting. On cue, even.

“You must do it.” Anne
dropped her shoulders and waited for the blow. Instead, William grabbed her arm and pulled her from the room, grunting each time he used his right arm.

If she’d
wanted to overpower him, it wouldn’t have been much work. One good shot to his covered wound and he would likely go down. Instead, she allowed him to drag her up the stairs, past the closed door to the hall, and down the long corridor that led out of the castle.

As they
came to the end of the open, lit ground, William stopped and leaned against the wall. Anne dangled from his grip as though she might have been made of paper. She couldn’t risk doing too much, for fear of hurting the man all through.

She expelled a long breath as he heaved against the dark stone. “You’ve got to hit me and make a run for it.”

He eyed her until a noise down the corridor caught his attention. He pulled the both of them around the corner and into the shadow. “Someone’s coming.”

“All the better to do it now and be off.”

William’s jaw clenched and he tightened his hand around the spear. “Very well.” He took a step toward her and set his countenance. “I’ll make it look like I had to hit you to escape.”

The noise
sounded near the great hall again. This time, a door closed loudly and footsteps rang down the corridor.

She shuffled a bit to create noise and William took a cue from her, clanking the edge of his spear against the wall. He closed his eyes and pulled back his arm to strike.

But the blow never landed. Instead of the bursting pain, Anne felt… raindrops? No. She shook her head. Sweat? She didn’t quite know, but it rolled down the side of her face and continued to fall. Was it a tear? Was it blood? Was it raining? She didn’t have time to find out before another hand had her by the arm and a series of blows sounded near.

Anne opened her eyes to find two guards pummeling William and her tall, ample-bosomed, wild-eyed mother dragging her away.

“Bring him,” Milene de Cheyne ordered. Her tone could not have been more commanding if they’d been in her own home. Clearly, she felt herself the mistress—
in loco parentis
—of this house already.

All Anne could do was stare back at William with apologetic eyes and pray to the Good Lord that he wouldn’t be executed for attempting escape.

*****

More than anything, Anne couldn’t believe the ruse had worked. The Sheriff himself had comforted her when they first entered the great hall. He was bleary-eyed and smelled of soured ale and rotten meat, but he believed her.

William’s fate was not revealed to her, but the fact that he wasn’t beheaded, stretched, or stabbed in front of her was reassuring. He would be taken to the dungeon, of course, but beyond that, she had no idea.

The Sheriff had said, at one point, that he needed the renegades alive. She hoped
that meant all of them.

It had grown so late, Elena snored in her chair by the fire. Anne would normally have woken her sister and attempted to entertain her enough to get her to bed, but this night, she needed to hear the rumblings of discussion happening around the large room.

The Sheriff had been conferring with two of his captains and Anne’s mother practically since they received the Sheriff, groggy from having been asleep. Try as she might, Anne couldn’t understand anything they said, and Aedan still hadn’t been seen. Tightness spread through her stomach at the thought.

She remembered the moment where she’d had his head in h
er hands and she’d touched those chiseled lips. Anne rubbed her thumb and finger together, absently.

One of the soldiers scuffled nearby and brought
her attention from her memory to her predicament. Still no Aedan, no resolution, no discussion of whether she would be interrogated as an accomplice or cared for as a victim.

The soldier’s noise caught her notice again and this time, she g
lanced up at him. A gentle pair of brown eyes stared down at her, fixed on her face long before she’d noticed.

He was dressed in the tattered black uniform of the castle guard. Not one of the knights that still frequented even the Sheriff’s court, but a common, expendable soldier. He seemed abnormally well-cut for the guard, who were
typically slow of wit and foot. And rather than the dull, drunk leer that typically greeted her when she tried to meet the eyes of the other guardsmen, this man had furtive, cautious eyes.

The longer they kept their gazes locked, the longer she felt like
he was trying to speak to her. When a commotion started on the dais, he shook his head nearly imperceptibly and offered her a smile. Anne glanced up to see her mother on the Sheriff’s arm, descending the stairs toward her.

Anne reached for her sister’s arm and pulled Elena away from her chair. But her sleep was too deep and she sank back into her snoring. Looking around, Anne found no other distraction
and before she could escape, the Sheriff and her mother stood in front of her.

Milene de Cheyne wore the same
dark green gown she’d worn at dinner, meaning that wherever she’d been when she’d come to Anne’s rescue, she hadn’t been in her room. She often wore this dress when she tried to look her best. The deep, rich color of the velvet made her eyes sparkle, and the gold braiding high around her waist and neck accentuated her assets, as she called them.

Something about her posture, the
tight, high tenor of her laugh. This was no ordinary conversation, and it wasn’t about what happened in the dungeon. The countess was far too bright-eyed and wide-mouthed.

This was about Anne. The Sheriff looked hungry, the Countess smug. Anne felt sud
denly like a pudding.

“My darling daughter.” Milene released the Sheriff’s arm and knelt at Anne’s knee.
“I’m so glad you are unharmed and unmolested after your horrific ordeal.”

“Yes, we’re quite pleased with
this outcome.” The Sheriff clapped his hands on his generous belly and sucked on his teeth. Anne would have preferred his attentions back on his mother. But something had obviously happened to move those attentions from her to her daughter. Lovely.

“
I am of course grateful to the Countess for thwarting the escape of the Highland devil. And even more grateful to her for rescuing you, my dear.” His voice, slimy as his face, gave her an oily feeling deep inside. She wanted nothing more than for him to stop talking.

“I am grateful as well.” Anne held up a hand to stop him blathering and mustered a loving look for her mother. “I am not certain what the man intended to do with me, but I must admit being glad never to discover it.”

“This is of particular concern to the Sheriff, now.” Milene’s batting eyelashes distracted Anne from the words at first. But it wasn’t long before they sunk in and her whole body tensed.

“Why now?”

“Our deal has been struck, my dear.” The glee in her mother’s whisper mirrored her giddy look. She squeezed Anne’s hand.

“It is out of great love for yourself that I am so pleased of the outcome of the most unfortunate…er…kidnapping.” His round face red
dened. Perhaps at the similarity between the act and the light it brought to their age difference.

Her stomach roiled. Her mother couldn’t have done this to her, she just couldn’t. Even the Baron de Montrose would have been preferable and he had pustules all over his bald head and down his back under his clothing, most like.
At least he was loyal to the Scottish crown.

Anne dug her fingernails into her mother’s hand. “Sure
ly you jest, mother. I thought you were well away from being prepared to strike any kind of accord.”

Days away. Days that Anne could have used to turn her mother’s eye toward better prospects.
Of course, with the Sheriff in her debt for the returned prisoner, wouldn’t it be just her luck that her mother would use it for her own ends?

Milene de Cheyne drew in her chin and considered for a moment before she spoke. She had a long face, like Elena, and a strong, straight jaw, which her brother Raleigh had inherited. But it was the pretty blonde, wavy hair and bright green eyes that Anne shared with her, and every one of her mother’s family.

It was the most oft-exploited feature of that family, as well. Anne hated it. She would much rather have the more common red or brown hair of her countrymen. It would put her that much farther removed from the manipulation that came so easy to her mother.