Isla paused, gauging her words. "Ye cannae fault me for hoping so," she said. "Please, my family will be searching for me if I dinnae return home soon. My father, he is very ill —"
"And who is yer father?" the Laird asked quickly. His tone had dropped, and Isla felt her pulse quicken.
She nearly panicked but let the lie slide off of her tongue with almost no effort at all. "George MacMurphy," she said. "A servant of Laird MacIntosh; we live in the village just outside of the MacIntosh Castle. My name is Isla, and I have two other sisters, m'Laird. We have lived there all our lives, Laird. My father is a very trusted man."
The Laird scratched at the stubble on his chin and up his jawline. He seemed to be piecing something together.
"A lass in a gown like that is the daughter of a servant?" he asked, his voice disbelieving. "Forgive me, maid, but I somehow seem to doubt it."
He was too smart. She had taken him for a fool, a brute like her father had always said, but that was apparently not so.
With that, the Laird straightened his back. His face was hard and impassive; she could not read his expression and flinched under his stony stare. Try as she might, she could not hold his gaze. After a moment, though, it seemed as though something was loosening in his expression. The Laird brushed a frustrated hand through his dark brown hair.
Isla waited for him to shout at her, for him to rage, but he did not. He looked frustrated, his face taut with emotion, but there was something else in his eyes that she could not yet comprehend. Something had certainly cooled him off, but whether or not it had been her words, she could not tell. She could almost see the fire in him cooling like rain upon a hot stone.
She did not dare open her mouth to speak again, unsure of whether or not he would heed her. The Laird's chest stopped heaving so heavily; it had slowed to breathing so quiet that she could hear no sound at all could be heard in the dungeon. She stared down at the stone floor, unwilling to look back up at him again.
Something like the zap of a lightning strike hung in the air between them, neither one daring to say a word.
He had almost seemed like he was appreciating her body, the way his eyes traveled up her legs, her bosom, to her face, and then back down again. She shifted in the wet gown, the water reflecting what little light peered through the dungeon door. His eyes were glinting, almost as though he were hungry for her. She tried to scrutinize his face, but he must have realized, for he corrected himself almost immediately. The scowl replaced whatever needy look he had previously worn.
"Please, m'Laird," she started to say, but the man shoved the words away with a sharp gesture. She bit back her plea, feeling despair well up in her chest. He did not believe her; she was sure of it.
"I cannae be sure if yer a liar," he declared after a moment, affirming her fears. "Or if ye speak the truth. But it is still true that I cannae allow a spy to walk freely inside my walls. Until I've decided what's to be done with he, here ye'll stay!"
The distrusting expression was back on his face, but it did not hold the same strength that it had before. His eyes looked uncertain, and for a moment, they lingered too long a while on her face. Isla watched the man war with his emotions, though she was still unsure what they were. She herself possessed a heart that was gripped with fear with the tiniest glimmer of hope that he might free her.
But he turned on his heel then and strode through the dungeon threshold, slamming the thick wooden door behind him. It echoed loudly in the empty chamber, and Isla was once again left alone.
"Leave the lass be in the dungeon for now," she heard the Laird scream at the guard at the door. She flinched under the fury of it. "Let her have some dry clothes and bring her a meal. When I return, I'll decide her fate, but until then, I cannae grant her freedom."
And so that was that. Here in this damp dungeon, she would stay for who knew how long. Her fate still hung undecided.
Isla buried her head in her arms and drew her knees up high. When the tears came, she did not even try to stop them. There was no way to escape, no way to talk her way out of this one. No, she was stuck here in her family's enemies' stronghold, danger rife around every corner.
She had wanted an adventure, and so it seemed that she received her wish. As it played out in the worst way possible in front of her eyes, she vowed that if she ever saw another birthday, she would wish for a quiet day at home with her sisters.
Somehow, she doubted that she would see another year in the presence of this vengeful and angry Laird.
Chapter Five
Iain could not have believed his eyes. He had blinked hard several times on the way out of the dungeon, trying to clear his vision.
She was there; she had been there. The woman from his dreams was sitting in his dungeons right this very second.
The guardsman had paled at his expression and the loudness of the door slamming against the stonework and had not followed the Laird as he stalked back up to his bedchambers.
He could hardly believe himself. Iain replayed the scene again and again in his head; he saw himself lost for words, his mouth working for something to say and coming up with nothing. He wondered if she noticed; she had gazed at him with those reflective blue irises for such a long time. Those eyes were eyes he knew, eyes that he'd seen every single night.
Iain pulled the door to his bedchamber closed with force, startling one of the old maids that had been unfortunate enough to be in the hallway. In the solitude of his chamber, he let out an aggrieved sigh, and he finally allowed his confusion to take over.
Could she really be the woman in his dreams? How could such a thing be possible?
But it was undeniable.
He had nearly come undone completely when she finally spoke. It had been like he was standing in those ghostly pale moors again, her eyes the only true color that he could discern. Not once in years had he felt any sort of desire for any woman; no one had graced his bed since Seona's death, nor had any living woman held any sort of place in his thoughts. He had considered himself wholly done with love and desire. There had been no one who could have turned his mind.
Except this woman had.
