Through the pounding terror, she clung to a single thought: her father would come. Liam MacTavish would hear of this and ride with every man at his command. Thomas might have failed her, but her father would not.
The trees closed in around them, the light thinning as they plunged deeper into the woods. Elena shut her eyes against the violent motion, drawing what strength she could for whatever lay ahead.
JACOB HAD NOT TRULYleft the hunt early, not when Lord Hamilton had already called it a day—a successful one that had netted several red deer and dozens of grouse. But while the others lingered, content to draw the morning out, Jacob turned his horse onto a quieter track, choosing the ground that curved back toward the castle by way of the lower yards and the slope that ran adjacent to the orchard. It was not the shortest route, but it was the one he preferred, where the land opened and the noise fell away.
The afternoon light had mellowed into a warm gold as Strathfinnan came into view. His gaze drifted absently toward the orchard as he neared.
Between the pale blossoms he caught the faint movement of a woman’s gown, the flash of pale fabric threading slowly through the trees. It took only a moment for him to recognize Elena—and the company she kept, her betrothed.
A lovers’ stroll, then, he realized, his jaw tightening automatically.
The sight of her lingered—sunlight catching in the dark fall of her hair, her pale kirtle brushing lightly against her legs as she walked, unhurried, graceful in a way that had never sought notice and yet always found it. A memory stirred, wrinkling his brow—Elena at nine or ten years old, turning on him with great offense when he called herwee, insisting she wasn’t done growing. He had laughed then and smiled now in recollection.
“Dinna call me wee,” Elena had said, planting her hands on her hips and lifting her chin, filled with a laird’s daughter certainty and indignation. “I’m nae finished with growing.”
“Nae,” he’d teased. “Ye’ll grow nae more. This is it. Ye’ll be the wee MacTavish all yer life.”
“I dinna ken you’re as clever as ye think ye are,” she’d shot back, already turning away, always pleased to have the last word.
It had meant nothing—only words tossed back and forth, no weight to them at all—so Jacob found it interesting that the memory had come to him, had remained with him at all.
He shook his head to clear the memory and focused his attention on the castle, still several hundred yards away.
The unease came quietly, settling rather than striking. His horse shifted beneath him, ears pricking, the muscles along its neck tightening. Jacob listened past the ordinary sounds of the day—the hush of open ground, the soft rasp of grass brushing his horse’s flanks, the steady, familiar cadence of his horse’s breath. Somewhere farther off, birds called and answered one another, the sound carrying cleanly across the fields.
It was the birds that caught his attention first. A sudden burst of wings rose from the trees that flanked the orchard, startled and sharp, their cries breaking the easy calm of the afternoon. Jackdaws lifted in a dark scatter, wheeling hard before vanishing beyond the rise. The sound lingered only a moment before falling away, but in its wake came something worse, a thinning of noise, an emptiness where there ought to have been movement, small creatures rustling, birds settling back into the branches.
He leaned slightly in the saddle, listening harder now, and felt the ground answer him, not with sound, but with a faint, steady vibration that traveled up through the soles of his boots.
Horses, he thought, moving swiftly.
Jacob straightened in the saddle, swinging the steed around to face the south. Even before the first shout rang out from the watchtower, he knew something was wrong.
“Riders!” The cry carried sharp and clear on the afternoon air.
Jacob’s attention snapped back to the orchard. “Elena,” he said under his breath, already turning his horse in her direction.
The open field rushed past beneath him, grass flattened and dust lifting in pale bursts as he drove his horse forward. Ahead, the orchard marked a dark line against the lighter ground, the space between the fruit trees offering goo sight. Then the riders broke into view—hard and fast at the far side of the orchard.
They wore no colors he recognized, no single mark to claim them. Their armor was ill-matched, some mail, some leather, weapons carried loose and ready. They rode low and urgent, scattered rather than ordered, and did not take the open road to the gates as any welcome visitor would have done, but came hard through the trees instead.
Jacob pressed the mare onward, urging her faster across the narrowing distance. He saw Elena clearly then—stepping backfrom the sudden rush of riders, her hand lifting in startled instinct, her fiancé caught frozen beside her like a man who had been stripped of thought. There was a moment, painfully suspended in time, when she hesitated, seeming as if she waited for Thomas Hamilton to do something.
Jacob shouted her name.
One of the riders dismounted, moving toward Elena with chilling confidence. Thomas stumbled backward, his breath visibly catching as he looked first at the raiders, then at Elena, and then toward the castle as though searching for someone else—anyone else—to intervene. His hand wavered between reaching for her and retreating toward safety, and in his uncertainty, he did neither.
Jacob drove his destrier harder, folding low over her neck as he closed the distance. The orchard rushed toward him in a blur—branches lashing his shoulders, the uneven ground jarring the saddle—but his focus narrowed to Elena’s cry as a raider seized her about the waist.
He had his sword in hand before the first rider cut across his path.
Steel flashed as the raider swung to block him, horse thrown sideways in a deliberate attempt to slow pursuit. Jacob met the move head-on. He leaned into the saddle, blade already up, and turned the man’s strike aside with a hard, ringing clash that shuddered through his arm. He drove his horse forward at the same moment, shoulder to shoulder, forcing the other mount off balance.
The raider cursed, scrambling for control. Jacob did not give him time. He struck again—short, brutal—and the man pitched from the saddle into the churned earth.
It bought him only seconds.
“Elena!” Jacob shouted, already wrenching the reins, searching for her through the chaos of horses and men.
