Seton threw him a black glare. “It’s pitch-black out here, thick with mist, and well past midnight. After nearly twelve hours of riding, with only a few hours’ break to fight a damned battle, my horse is a little tired. Hell,I’ma little tired. Are you going to tell me why we are killing ourselves to get back to camp tonight rather than enjoying a much deserved rest with the others?”
Robbie set his mouth in a hard line. “I want to get back.”
“That’s bloody obvious; the question is why. Are you worried about the lass?”
“Douglas won’t let anything happen to her.” He said it almost as much to himself as he did to Seton. Robbie trusted Douglas with his life—and had done so more than once. But it was Robbie’s responsibility to see to Rosalin’s safety, and he didn’t like delegating it to anyone else. Even a trusted friend.
“But?”
Seton knew him too damned well. “But hell if I know. Something just doesn’t feel right.”
It was a testament to their long partnership that the explanation not only satisfied him, it also seemed to make Seton nearly as anxious to return as he.
Robbie wasn’t like Campbell. He didn’t get feelings about things. The implicit trust of Seton’s reaction surprised him. It probably shouldn’t have, but it did.
The closer they drew to camp, the worse the feeling grew. By the time they passed the first sentry it was probably two or three in the morning, and Robbie was stretched to the breaking point. Every rustle of leaves, every gust of wind, every hoot of an owl or sound of nightlife grated against nerves that were already frazzled and on edge.
“Everything looks all right,” Seton said in a low voice.
It did. The sentries were at their posts. The camp was dark and quiet. The faint scent of peat from the fires wafted through the air.
Then why the hell did he feel like he was about to jump out of his damned skin? Why did he have to fight the urge to race through camp like a madman and tear open the flaps of the tent to assure himself that she was all right?
When they turned the corner around the Great Hall and the second row of tents came into view, he was about to heave a sigh of relief when he caught the flicker of something in the trees.
“What’s that?” Seton said.
Robbie didn’t take the time to answer. He snapped the reins and kicked his mount forward, plunging into the darkness toward the light. A moment later he heard the sound of a soft cry that sent a torrent of ice rushing through his veins.
The man came out of nowhere.
After hours of tossing and turning, telling herself there was no reason to be scared, and certainly no reason to hold her breath like a terrified child every time someone walked past the tent, Rosalin finally found sleep only to wake up a few hours later with a pressing need that could not be ignored.
Everyone is abed.There is no reason to worry.No one will harm you. But just knowing that Robbie wasn’t here lent a new vulnerability to her situation. She hadn’t realized how much his presence reassured her. How instinctively she knew that he would protect her. Without him, she felt like she was sitting in a den of hungry lions without a sword and shield.
After attending to her business in a matter of a couple of very relieved minutes, she was making her way back to the tent when a man stepped out from behind a tree to block her path.
Her heart jumped, and she let out a startled cry that strangled in her throat. The candle dropped to her feet.
He loomed over her, a dark, forbidding shadow. He wasn’t exceptionally tall, but he was thick and heavily built. The pungent scent of drink accosted her as he bent down and picked up the candle.
“What do we ’ave ’ere,” he slurred, holding it up to her face, “a new whore?” The burr of his accent was so deep, it took her a moment to realize he was speaking English—the Northern English common at the Borders.
Her blood turned to ice. She opened her mouth to protest, but he’d already slid his arm around her waist and jerked her up against him.
“Let me go,” she said, trying to push away.
“What the ’ell?” He pushed her up against a tree and lodged his forearm against her throat. “You’re fucking English.”
Holding the candle close to her face, he gave her the first clear look at him and the cold, black eyes that looked at her murderously. It was the face of nightmares. A thick scar sliced through his heavy brow across a squashed nose and disappeared beneath the edge of a thick beard. The legacy of a sword or battle-axe blade, it gave a menacing edge to an already brutish appearance. When he opened his mouth and sneered, his big, yellow teeth reminded her of a boar’s tusks. That was what he looked like—a big, ugly boar, with thick, wiry black hair and a flat squashed nose.
But it was his heavily lidded eyes and the way he was looking at her that sent chills racing through every corner of her body. She struggled to free herself, but it only made him lean in harder, pressing the forearm laid across her neck and cutting off her breath.
His face was so close, she could smell the sour scent of whisky on his breath. “Who the ’ell are you?”
“Hostage,” she managed to get out in a soft breath. “Boyd.”
She wasn’t sure whether her words had penetrated the drunken haze.
