With Elizabeth having run off after Thomas MacGowan, who’d left the same night that she and Randolph had made… She shook off the memory. Joanna had been the one she confided in. Izzie knew that Joanna’s advice to be patient—that Randolph would figure it out—was kindly meant, but Joanna hadn’t been there. It was too late. He’d hurt her too badly and proved to her that he would never be able to give her what she wanted.
As much as she loved him, Izzie knew it would be infinitely worse to be married to him and forced to confront that unrequited love every day for the rest of her life. She’d been right in the beginning. Respect, loyalty, and affection were the most she could hope for in a marriage—to want anything more was impractical and would only lead to heartache. She would have that kind of marriage with Sir William, and with no reason to refuse him, she told Walter to send her acceptance before she’d ridden out with the handful of men he’d conscripted to escort her.
If her heart had ached and she’d had to force herself not to look back over her shoulder at the castle on the rock that would make Randolph a legend, she told herself it would get easier.
It did for a while. Of course that was because she’d been abducted. When Stephen Dunbar—she refused to refer to him as “Sir” after his barbarous actions—surrounded her handful of men with a dozen of his own, and she’d guessed his intention, she’d been too terrified to think of anything but how she was going to escape. Well, maybe that wasn’t exactly true. She might have experienced a heart-clenching moment of wishing Randolph was there before pushing it aside. The hero wasn’t going to come to her rescue this time. If anyone was going to get her out of this, it was she.
Instinctively, she realized that if she tried to oppose Stephen she could very well end up raped before she was forced to wed so she had to somehow make him think it wasn’t necessary.
It took her only a moment to burst into happy tears. “Thank goodness you have come! I thought you forgot all about me.” She said the last almost chastisingly, as if he’d somehow let her down. Stephen looked at her as if she’d grown a second head. “We must move quickly if we are to get away before my brother becomes worried and sends men after us.”
Now it wasn’t just Stephen looking at her as if she was crazed—Walter’s men were as well.
“How did you know how to find us?” she asked, then before Stephen could stop the whirlwind that she was spinning around them and think, she added, “Never mind. All that matters is that you are here now. Do you have a priest?”
Stephen recovered enough to shake his head and say, “Not yet.”
Good grief, he was actually believing this rubbish? The louse was more arrogant than she’d realized. Or perhaps Randolph wasn’t the only one who knew how to playact. Her heart squeezed, but she couldn’t think of him now.
She put her hand to her chin as if deep in thought. “I believe I can think of one, but perhaps it would be best if you let my men go first. They will only slow us down, and it would be better if they do not hear our plans.”
She may have gone a little far. His eyes narrowed. “They will go straight to your brother.”
She pretended not to have thought about that. “You are quite right. Good idea. You will just have to tie them up.”
The captain of the guard who’d accompanied her started to object, but Izzie was trying to avoid bloodshed and knew it would be easier for her to get away on her own. Walter’s men were outnumbered at least two to one, and she feared if they came with her they would try something gallant. She also didn’t want Stephen to simply try to kill them now.
Fortunately, he went along with her plan as if it had been his own. He ordered his men to tie them up, and a short while later they were riding away. Hiding her fear and pretending to be happy as they left the men behind was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. But she did it, and it paid off later when she had her chance to escape.
Stephen had gone into the church she’d picked near the coast to speak with the priest. She asked for a moment of privacy. She wasn’t surprised when one of his men insisted on going with her, but the moment he turned his back, she slipped away.
She’d chosen this church for a reason. As a child, her father had brought her and her brothers to this beach to explore the caves in the sea cliffs. They could be dangerous, depending on the tide, but fortune was with her—at least at first. From her refuge in one of the caves, she heard Stephen and his men riding up and down the beach and surrounding area looking for her all through the night. His tenacity surprised her. It also nearly killed her when the tide came in.
She’d spent most of the next morning huddled on a rock high in the back of the cave that was largely hidden from site from the beach, hoping that she didn’t have to try to swim her way out. By time the tide receded, it was already midafternoon. She took refuge in the church with the very kind priest who’d been forced to deal with the irate knight the day before—she apologized for that—ate some porridge and bread and accepted his offer of lodging for the night. The following morning he rode her to Bonkyll castle on the back of his very old mare with her hidden under a friar’s brown hooded robe that seemed to have more moth holes than cloth left.
But the disguise proved unnecessary, as they didn’t cross paths with Stephen Dunbar again. Her adventure was over late that afternoon when they passed through the familiar yett of Bonkyll Castle. She wasn’t surprised to hear from one of the guardsmen left behind that her brother and most of his men had ridden out in search of her when she hadn’t arrived as expected. She was relieved, however, to hear that Walter’s tied up men had been found and were part of the search party.
All Izzie wanted to do was take a bath and collapse in her own bed. She’d accomplished the first part and was walking across the yard with still-damp hair, from the kitchen toward the donjon tower, eager to crawl between those clean bed sheets, when the cry went out that riders were approaching.
At first she thought it was her brother. It was, but Alexander wasn’t alone. There were at least two score of men, including… Her heart stilled as she saw the familiar red and gold arms of at least a dozen of the men. A moment later their dirty, dusty, and very rumpled-looking leader came into view.
Randolph.
Just the name made her heart skitter. He looked so unlike himself—so disreputable and unkempt—that were he not wearing his surcoat, she might not have recognized the grizzled, fierce-looking warrior as the famous knight. She turned away before their eyes could meet, knowing she was too raw and emotional from her ordeal to face him right now. Why was he here? Some ridiculous sense of duty upon hearing that she was missing?
Why couldn’t he just leave her alone? Did he need to make this so hard?
She turned to address her brother, who was dismounting when she was lifted off the ground and spun around into a familiar pair of steely arms. He crushed her to his chest and buried his face in her damp hair as if he could drink her in. Despite the coldness in her heart, her body wasn’t immune and warmed instantly.
“Thank God, you are all right. I feared the worst when we caught up with Dunbar and you weren’t with him. Christ, you scared me. What the hell happened? Where did you go?”
Stiffly, she extracted herself from his arms. It didn’t hurt as much as she expected. She felt surprisingly hollow. “I’m afraid you rode here for nothing, my lord. I managed to facilitate my own rescue. Your services were not needed.”
She’d never wanted the hero—only the man.
He frowned at her cool, passionless tone. What had he expected? That she would fall to her knees with gratitude to see him?
“Sir Harold”—the leader of Walter’s guard—“said that you went with them willingly?” her brother asked.
