It’s working. I’m getting them out. I’m setting them free like I promised I would.
“Your turn, Betty,” Jonah told his sister. “Hold the bairn tight, now.”
Betty was so pale that her face shone in the moonlight, but she nodded. On one, she began to run as well.
She was just inches from the perimeter gap when it happened. They were so close to freedom – and then the bairn began to cry.
In an instant, torchlight flared, and suddenly arrows were pinging around them. They’d been spotted. Ivor and Jonah ran forward to join the women and heard shouts just outside the walls.
“They spotted us,” Jonah cursed. “There must be six of them.”
“Dinnae worry,” Ivor replied, holding up his sword. “We can fight them off. Together, we’ll—”
Suddenly, another scream pierced the night, coming from the direction of the castle.
It was a woman’s scream.
Eithne!
Ivor glanced at the oncoming soldiers and then back at the castle, the indecision tearing at his heart. He caught Jonah’s eye. The boy glanced behind them, where Betty and Myrna were smart enough to have already started to run. All Ivor and Jonah had to do were keep the soldiers away long enough to give them time to get back to safety.
The woman in the castle screamed again, the sound echoing through the night like a flash of lightning.
“Go,” Jonah said, his own sword drawn. He didn’t look like a weak young boy then. He looked like the man that Ivor had always seen inside him. “Help her. I’ll give the lassies time to escape.”
“Ye’ll never survive six of them alone,” Ivor grunted. “We stand together, or ye die.”
Jonah looked him full in the face, and Ivor realized that the boy was alreadyfullyaware of this.
Brave fool.
A third scream.
“Go!” Jonah roared as the first soldier launched himself at them. Jonah parried the strike. “Go and help her!”
Ivor knew that he had no choice. Praying to God to send protection to the lad and the fleeing women, he turned and ran back to the castle and back to Eithne. He only hoped that he wasn’t too late.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The Dagger
Rory MacDuff had won at last. The prosperous farmland of Kinnear was his. The remnants of the clan were his. And now, as he’d dreamed for so long, the eldest daughter was his, as well.
It was all worth it, he thought as he walked toward the room that had once belonged to Killian Kinnear.Every movement, every death.
He’d loved Eithne with all of his heart for so many years now that there was no other way this could have gone. Oh, she’d fled – but he knew that here was where she wanted to be. It wasn’therfault that the accursed mercenary had gotten to her and messed with her head. She was only a woman, a soft, innocent creature.
Rory would have to punish her, of course. It was his duty as her new Laird and as her husband. She had spat upon him, and she would suffer for it. But she would soon learn that every bruise, every broken bone, every mark he left on her body was just a sign of how much Rory loved her.
He imagined her, swollen with his child as she would be soon enough, and the thought made him harden. Yes. Rory had worked hard for this. And now he would take his reward.
Rory reached Killian’s room –hisroom, everything in the keep washis– and pushed open the door. He didn’t bother knocking. Why would she want privacy from him now?
And there she was, perched on the bed, those impossible crystal blue eyes wide and wary, that astonishing white-blonde hair loose around her shoulders.
“Eithne,” he said, her name like a breath of pure satisfaction. “At last. Have ye decided to accept what’s happening here once and for all?”
She looked at him, focused on him, and Rory saw with a thrill of victory that she was at last truly and utterly broken.
