Making love.
Another shiver, and she realized the source of her confusion wasn’t merely the strange location—it was the silence. The absence of the man who had made her feel all those things she’d never felt before.
Eilidh’s heart dropped to her stomach.
He’d left. He’d really left.
Ciaran was gone.
She was on her feet before she’d made a conscious decision, pausing only long enough to throw her clothes back onto her body from where they’d been scattered by the previous evening’s activities. The moment she was halfway decent, however, she stormed back into the Keep, heading for her room, her feet given flight by the storm of dread and outright fury that burned inside her.
How dare he? How dare he make love to her and then leave her anyway? How dare he make herfall in love with himand then leave her anyway?
“To hell with that,” Eilidh muttered to her empty room as she began digging in her wardrobe for a satchel. “I’m not going to be left behind. I’m not going to wait around. It’s time to take my own blasted fate into my hands.”
She emerged from the wardrobe triumphantly, a battered leather satchel in her hands. She quickly gathered some basic supplies—a brace of knives, some extra stockings—and dressed in her most practical clothes. Then, she snuck down to the larder and stuffed the rest of the pack full of basic provisions, the kind of thing that traveled well.
It was good that she didn’t encounter anyone as she did so, aside from a few kitchen maids who barely gave her a second glance as they hurried to prepare breakfast. She looked positively mad, the way she kept muttering crossly to herself.
But she was too furious to keep it inside.
“That story I told wee Jamie was stupid anyway,” she said as she hurried to the stables. “No princess worth her salt needs to wait around for the pigheaded prince to finally figure things out. I’m going to chasemyprince, damn it! I’m going to write my own story—my way.”
Grian snorted his approval as she threw a saddle over his back.
Eilidh paused just long enough to look her mount in his dark eyes.
“Ye are the only man with a lick of sense,” she informed the horse. “But even though my man is a fool, I’m going to get him back anyway, aye?”
Grian tossed his head in approval.
Eilidh led the horse out of the stall and had just thrown her leg over his back when Arran came into the stables, a worried expression on his face. That look grew even more alarmed and guarded when he saw Eilidh.
“Are ye doing something foolish?” he asked, sounding rather as though he already knew the answer.
“I’m doing something that needs to be done,” she returned.
He looked as though he was going to be stubborn about this, but Eilidh was absolutely sick of stubborn men who thought they knew best.
“Eilidh…” he said warningly.
But there was no time to argue with him.
“Arran McPherson,” she said, towering above him from Grian’s back. “I love ye like a brother, but I swear to ye, if ye do not stand aside, I will plow right through ye.”
He stood his ground, calling her bluff, and—well, yes, she wasn’t going to run Davina’s husband into the ground. But he was just one man, and the stables had doors that were too big for him to block on his own. So she bent low over Grian’s neck and urged her horse into a dash through the exit, ignoring Arran’s startled cry and his belated effort to grab at her.
She kept going, headed straight for the woods, passing through the gate. Shouts were coming from behind her—Arran’s alone at first, but then with other voices chiming in—but they were obscured by the way the wind was rushing in her ears as she and Grian bolted for freedom.
Her mind was racing as quickly as Grian’s hooves pounded the earth.
Ciaran would be heading for Gunn lands, which gave her a general direction. There were a few ways to get out of Buchanan territory if you were riding in that direction, but they all led to the same large road. That would be where she would overtake him. All she had to do was catch up.
Ciaran was a skilled rider and Shadowbane was a Donaghey-bred horse. Most pursuers would find them impossible to catch. But Eilidh was not just any pursuer, and she had one advantage: she knew the terrain in ways that he did not.
There was a rougher path, one that was rarely traveled because it could only accommodate one horse in a single line. Itwas craggy and rough and required a great deal of stamina from both horse and rider.
But Eilidh would do what she needed to do to catch up with Ciaran. And she trusted Grian with her life.
