Until the Knight Comes (30 page)

There, where she’d seen the fox.

And where her every instinct told her she’d find Hugh Alesone’s men.

A certainty beyond all doubt when, after hurrying through a long, narrow passage, she came to the rotted remains of an ancient ironbound door.

Watery gray light streamed through gaps in the door’s moldering wood and she instantly recognized the hollowed, cave-like inside of the outcropping beyond and the clatter of hooves and weaponry, the upraised voices and clumping feet of a gathering of men.

A large gathering of men.

Loud and angry.

And they’d be even more riled when they saw her. But it couldn’t be helped, so she squeezed through the largest opening in the ruined door, then hitched up her skirts and scrambled out from the jumbled pile of rocks.

“The blessed saints—’tis herself!” Ewan the Witty’s booming voice echoed off the swirling mist.

He grabbed her, his fierce grip righting her when she slithered on the mud-slicked ground. “The Bastard’s own whore come to pay her respects!”

“Who would’ve guessed the likes of that?” another put in, eyeing her from beneath the dripping pine boughs. “The lady and her shadow, a-falling o’er us now—after all our stumbling and groping through these God-accursed hills.”

“Devil-damned is more like it.” Ewan snatched the rushlight from her and tossed it into a dark-watered tarn where it disappeared with a
zish
and a plume of oily smoke.

“I’ll own there’s one scrawny-necked fool amongst us who ought to thank his Maker he did not send us false . . . this time,” he snapped, addressing his men, but glaring at her from under shaggy, down-drawn brows. “I’ve had enough of that one and his fool red fox chasing us into bogs and brambles!”

A red fox?

Mariota bit back a gasp of surprise, disguising it with a cough.

“My being here has naught to do with Wee Finlay.” She stood as straight as she could with Ewan’s fingers digging into her arm, correctly guessing which man bore the big one’s wrath. “And I know nothing of a fox.”

She lifted her chin. “I came because your quarrel is not with those at Cuidrach, but with me. I will not see others suffer when I am the one you seek.”

“Ho!” Ewan the Witty snorted. “Noble words for a murderess.”

The others glowered and leered, one even reaching to pinch her breasts, much to the amusement of the rest.

Only Wee Finlay didn’t laugh.

Small and stunted as Mariota remembered him, he stood with the horses at a nearby burnside, feeding them oats and watching as they cropped the tussocky grass.

He took a few steps forward, thrust out his chin. “Whether she dirked Hugh or nay, she didn’t steal your damnable lute. That was the fox, I’m telling you. The selfsame one that led us here.”

Ewan patted his sword hilt. “Be glad the glen folk finally counted the alewife’s ravishing as a good enough sacrifice for the Each Uisge,” he charged, his eyes narrowing on the little man. “I swear I’d toss you to the beast myself were it otherwise—and I might yet!”

Mariota gasped, and the big man wheeled on her, seized her arm again.

“Do not think we’ve no need for you. Not after traipsing this far.” He jerked his head, glowered at Kintail’s great peaks rising so darkly out of the mist. “If you would hear the truth, after all this time and trouble, it matters nary a whit to me
who
rammed your blade into Hugh the Bastard’s heart! ’Tis the lute I seek and naught else.”

The words spoken, he thrust her toward another man and looked on with approval as that one hoisted her onto a waiting garron, then bound her hands.

“We all ken how many wenches spread their wares across Hugh’s bed.” He smirked, stepping close to smooth a hand down her thigh. “Truth be told, were I you, mayhap I’d have had done with him, too!”

“I did not kill Hugh Alesone.” Mariota sat ramrod straight in the saddle, willed herself not to feel his fingers edging beneath her skirts. “But I can take you to the lute,” she vowed, looking him in the eye. “Your man spoke true—I ne’er stole the lute. But I know where it is.”

The immediate flare of greedy excitement in his eyes justified the lie, so Mariota drew a deep breath and braced herself for one more.

“It is still in Assynt . . . hidden.”

Ewan the Witty’s brows shot upward. “Say you?”

Mariota nodded.

But her stomach turned over at the doubt on his face, the way he’d sneered the two words.

She gripped the saddle horn to keep her fingers from trembling, sent a silent plea to the saints that he’d believe her.

Even a quarter of the journey back to Assynt would give Kenneth time to send a man for reinforcements from his uncle.

And so long as the supposed gleam of gold winked at her captors, they wouldn’t dare harm her.

But as Ewan and his men continued to leer at her, she couldn’t help but shudder, and pray she hadn’t made a grave mistake.

Exactly two and a half hours later, Kenneth stopped pacing the parapet walk, unclenched his fists, and rammed an agitated hand through his hair. Wind whipped his plaid and his breath came harsh and uneven. But worst of all, a host of unwanted terrors looked him full in the face, each one daring him to challenge their existence.

And he couldn’t.

Already, he’d stretched his patience longer than he had nerves and his gut told him that further waiting would be pointless.

The woods were empty, utterly still and unmoving.

Ewan the Witty and his men were gone.

And that could only mean one thing.

They had Mariota.

Heart in his throat, he wheeled around, his men’s familiar faces and even the stone-slabbed paving of the wall-walk spinning before his eyes.

“No-o-o!” he cried, reaching the stair tower in three quick strides, bursting into its shadowy depths before Sir Lachlan or any of the others could catch him.

He took the downward-winding steps two at time, then raced into the hall, bumping into trestle tables, even tilting one over in his haste to reach the storeroom—a supposed haven whose door stood ajar. The sight filled him with tight, hot dread, a throbbing heat that cut off his breath.

All but sliding into the room, he collided with Jamie’s broad back, his worst fears screaming to life. A horrible, ear-splitting wail the likes of which he hadn’t known himself capable—and wasn’t!

For the piercing cries weren’t his own, but Cuillin’s.

The old dog sat against the far wall, howling his heart out, his wails echoing around the little room . . . a room vacant of the one person Kenneth had hoped to find there.

He took a backward step, gripping the edge of the door for support. “She’s gone,” he said, the words a statement.

A truth confirmed when Jamie turned around, expelling his breath in a defeated sigh. Their eyes met and Kenneth flinched at the pallor of the younger man’s face, the dark smudges of shock already visible beneath his eyes.

Kenneth’s fingers tightened on the door. “It canna be . . .” He let the words tail off, feeling his blood chill.

Jamie raised shaking hands and grimaced. “I . . . I dinna ken how it is possible,” he stammered, glancing at his dog. “On my soul, no one crossed the threshold and she sure as the Devil didna come out. I only heard Cuillin whimpering and thought he resented being locked in. But when his whines turned to howls, I opened the door and—”

“She was gone,” Kenneth finished for him, and Jamie nodded.

He looked so miserable, Kenneth reached out and squeezed his arm. “She cannot have left this room,” he said, but the absurdity of the denial only increased his disbelief, the scalding pain gripping his chest.

His gaze flicked to the window but he immediately dismissed the impossibility of the slit opening providing an escape—even a half-starved bairn couldn’t wriggle through such a narrow space.

And the only person who’d been with her sat slumped at the little table, a disoriented look on her face, her dark eyes bleary and bloodshot.

But he had no comfort for her.

Not with the reason for her grogginess so apparent—an empty wine flagon stood near her elbow, and another lay tipped on its side by her feet.

Most telling of all, only one cup appeared used.

The second looked suspiciously untouched.

Kenneth’s frown darkened, some deep, long-forgotten
something
nibbling at the fringes of his memory.

“Dear saints, where is my lady?” Nessa pressed trembling hands to her temples and searched the men’s faces. “Pray tell me you took her away?”

Took her away.

Kenneth stared at her, his heart stopping.

“Nessa, you are an angel on earth!” He leaned down to kiss her mussed hair, threw an arm around her shoulders and hugged her. “You just gave us the answer.”

Or rather his ill-famed father had—however unwittingly.

Like a dark cloud from the past, one of that scoundrel’s most notorious deeds rose from the dredges of Kenneth’s mind—an oft-heard tale of how his father had used a secret passage cut beneath Eilean Creag Castle to sneak into the Lady Linnet’s bedchamber and spirit her away.

Kidnap her right out from under the Black Stag’s nose!

Clear as day, Kenneth saw Duncan MacKenzie at Eilean Creag’s high table recounting his horror upon learning his lady wife had been seized—and as clearly, he recognized what had happened here.

“Beshrew me—she’s slipped out on her own!” The certainty of it near split his head. “Sakes, she somehow persuaded Nessa to drink more than was wise, then left through a secret passage!”

He whirled around, fair knocking Jamie aside to get a better view of the wailing dog. “
He
saw her go. Like as not through that very wall—”

He broke off abruptly as the vertical crack in the wall grew in clarity, its telltale seam making his pulse pound, his blood roar in his ears.

In especial when Cuillin began sniffing and scratching at the wall, the distress in the old dog’s eyes leaving no doubts to where Kenneth’s lady had gone.

“By the Rood, ’tis true!” He knelt beside the dog, wrapped an arm around him and squeezed. “What did she say . . . she would look after Cuillin? Hah! It would seem he looked after her.”

Hope and purpose welling inside him, he pushed to his feet and ran his hands up and down the rough crack, prodding its seam with the dirk she’d left on the table.

“We can only pray we understood him in time,” Jamie said, putting his own hands to the wall.

And Kenneth agreed.

Anything else was unacceptable.

Chapter Sixteen

“B
y the Powers of Heaven—it is so!”

For a seemingly endless moment, Kenneth stared into the depths of the secret passage, his entire body tensing with instinctive, elemental dread. The neck opening of his tunic choked him and he swallowed hard, both believing and disbelieving the evidence of his lady’s escape.

The fears making his heart stand still.

Images flashed across his mind—her warmth and softness, her passion. Memories that stretched from the very first moment he’d glimpsed her silhouetted in the tower window to the last time he’d seen her and how her green-gold eyes had lit with joy when he’d walked into this very storeroom and she’d thought the siege was over, the danger passed.

How it’d torn him to pieces to tell her she’d guessed wrong.

He drew a sharp breath, closed his eyes.

She might be Archibald Macnicol’s daughter, but she wasn’t a warrior, couldn’t wield steel against stiff-necked, hard-bitten men.

Seasoned fighters who lived by blood and sword.

Men without scruple, by their style.

And she hadn’t even taken the dirk he’d given her.

“May the Fiend flay the bastards,” he seethed, his fingers tightening on that dirk now, fury gripping his vitals.

Rage swept him, but he had no breath for further speech. He saw only the yawning darkness before him, felt his world tipping into the empty, gaping void.

Behind him, Nessa gave a choked cry and Cuillin’s howls turned to sharp, excited barks. Somewhere outside, the other castle dogs took up his barking. And somewhere inside Kenneth, whatever warmth had existed in his life vanished as if it’d never been.

He clenched his jaw against the cold. Saints, not even battling fierce North Sea storms had chilled him more. But so soon as the first great shudder struck him, he knew what had happened, recognized the truth with soul-ripping clarity.

With his lady’s disappearance, the sun had ceased to shine.

And he’d been plunged into icy darkness.

He stiffened, could almost feel ice coating his skin, freezing the blood in his veins. Somehow his fingers still pressed the cold stone of the angled wall and he caught a whiff of his lady’s scent lingering in the opening. Anything but comforting, that one slight trace of her undid him so thoroughly, he scarce noticed Jamie loom up beside him, torch in hand.

Hot and smoking, the torch flames danced in the chill air blowing up from the passage and Kenneth blinked, the unexpected flare of light jarring him to his senses just as Jamie pushed past into the stairwell.