With her hand still on the door, Seonaid asked, “So you’ll be marrying him now?”
Flora drew back, shocked. “No!” She calmed. “I have no intention of marrying anyone.”
Again, Flora got the impression that the woman thought her a fool. As if no woman of sound mind would ever refuse Lachlan Maclean.
“Even after what happened?”
Flora shook her head emphatically. “As you said, it was an emergency. It changes nothing.”
Seonaid gave her an appraising look. “He wants you.”
Flora blushed. “Well, I don’t want him.” But the woman’s sharp gaze read the lie. Flora lifted her chin. “Even if I did, I still would not marry him.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple,” Seonaid said mysteriously.
Neither did Flora. Still, it was odd to have this woman echoing her own thoughts. There was something strange about the laird’s wooing of her. From the beginning, she’d sensed both a calculation and an urgency. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve never seen the laird pursue a woman with such intensity. Let alone one who claims not to want him. You are very beautiful, but he has had many beautiful women. I wonder if there is another reason, that is all.”
Initially, she thought the woman felt sorry for her, but now Flora wondered whether Seonaid might have another motive for voicing her suspicions. “Why are you telling me all this?”
She shrugged. “He wants you, but he will not wait forever. He is a very virile man.” The authority in her voice made Flora’s chest ache. “And when he’s done chasing what he cannot have, I’ll be waiting.”
Long after the woman left, Flora heard her voice. And the warning that had twisted Flora’s heartstrings in knots.
Chapter 11
Seonaid’s posset proved as potent as her warning, and it was another day before Flora felt well enough to rise from bed and return to her room under Morag’s watchful eye. The first thing she did was request that a tub be sent up. The salt from the seawater was irritating her skin, which had begun to itch.
By midmorning, clean, fed, and dressed in a gown that had appeared on the chest the day before while she slept, she almost felt like a new woman.
Almost.
But not everything could be washed away with lavender-scented bathwater. The knowledge of what he’d done to her, for one. Snippets of memories haunted her, teasing the edges of her consciousness with an unexpectedly powerful tug of emotion. She’d lain naked with a man. Even if she couldn’t recall the details, it was hardly something she could forget—though she desperately wished she could.
But he’d saved her life. That was one thing she’d never forget. She owed him…something.
She tapped her fingertips in a rolling motion on the stone sill as she gazed out her window to the sound. From this vantage point, escape looked like such a simple proposition. The water appeared placid and the distance to the Isle of Mull barely a stone’s throw away. How had it gone so terribly wrong?
Since neither the laird nor his sisters had been to see her, she still didn’t know exactly what had happened. Their absence disturbed her more than she wanted to admit. Even though he’d abducted her, and she had every right to escape, she felt in some way as if she’d let them down in her attempt to do so.
It was irrational, but true nonetheless.
Turning from the window, she sighed, more confused than ever. If anything, her attempt at escape seemed to have made the jumble of emotions tangled inside her even worse. Lachlan Maclean had kidnapped her, wooed her with curious intensity, sparked her passion, refused to release her, and then rescued her. She didn’t know what to think. In some ways, she feared him more than any man she’d ever met. He held a strange power over her that she couldn’t dismiss or ignore.
There was, however, one thing she knew she had to do. No matter how uneasy the prospect of confronting him made her, she needed to thank him. He’d saved her life.
Opening the door, she expected to see Alasdair back at his post, but was surprised to find the corridor empty. If anything, she’d thought the guard would have been doubled. She frowned, not knowing quite what to make of it, and hurried down the corridor.
Considering the ordeal she’d been through, she felt remarkably well—until she started to go down the stairs. A wave of dizziness overtook her, and she had to grab the stone wall to keep from taking a tumble. When it had passed, she resumed stepping down the stairs, suitably chastened and a bit more careful.
Focused as she was on the narrow stone steps, it wasn’t until she reached the great hall that she noticed how unnaturally quiet it seemed. The boisterous sounds of life that she’d grown accustomed to over the past few weeks had dimmed to silence. She passed a few serving women, but they quickly turned their heads to avoid her gaze.
It soon became apparent why. Exiting the keep, she glanced into the courtyard and saw a gathering of what looked to be every man in the castle before their chief. Though she heard only the tail end of his speech, it was enough for her to realize what was happening. The men were being reprimanded and punished for allowing her to escape. “Fail duty,” “possible attack,” and “confinement in the dungeon” left no doubt.
A not insubstantial pang of guilt needled her. No wonder no one would meet her gaze. It was because of her that these men were being punished. And she’d learned enough the past few weeks to understand that the worst punishment of all was for a Highland warrior to be shamed before his chief.
But the dungeon…
