She remembered her few lessons with Constantine and stepped to the right to grab a pitchfork. She held it like a spear and when he reached for her with his bloody hand, she jabbed the points of metal into his forearm and drove him to the ground.
She looked around while he screamed like an alarm to whoever was outside.
And then she did what she’d learned to do best. She ran.
When she burst out of the stable doors, she paused to let her eyes adjust to the night. She moved to continue running but a memory stopped her. She had been quite ill. She reached up to touch her head. It was still sore. A man had been with her. He took her to a small cottage to have her wound seen to by an old healer. Men had broken into the cottage to get to her. She’d recognize their voicesas the same who had kidnapped her at the inn. Had they followed her? Who was the man who’d carried her to the healer? Hugh!
Where was Hugh?
To her left was a small village aglow in the moonlight. To her right, a large wood house with a single window lit by a candle from inside. Where was she?
Ahead of her was pitch black. She could run into it and disappear, but she couldn’t leave Hugh.
She turned around to face the house and ran toward it. Reaching it, she crouched in the shadows and scurried along to the lit window on the ground floor.
She had to stand on a rock to reach, but she looked inside. Her brow knit together and her breath felt short in her body.
Seated at the back of a desk, across from a man who looked more like a high-ranking soldier than a Highlander, was Hugh.
A hundred reasons why Constantine’s steward was here assailed Ismay’s thoughts. None of them were in his favor. Was he fraternizing with the people who had thrown her into a haystack?
She cursed the steward and whirled on her heel to start running, when she hit a wall made of lean, hard muscle and a throbbing heart.
Her eyes adjusted to the dim light and when she saw him, she threw herself into his arms. “Constantine,” she cried against his chest. “I knew ye would find me. I just had to stay alive until ye did.”
His arms closed around her and pulled her closer, as if she were his most precious possession. But he hadn’t tried to possess her. He had agreed to her freedom. She could leave Tor whenever she wished. It made her want to stay forever. He thought it his inherent duty to protect her, and he always would.
“Ismay,” he whispered after quickly looking through the window, “dinna make a sound.”
He broke away from her and disappeared inside the house. Should she follow?
Immediately, she heard things crashing to the floor inside. Fighting. She chanced a peek in the window. She saw Constantine tossing a man across the room and into the wall. It was the man in the military uniform. She looked around but didn’t see Hugh.
Where was Hugh?
Chapter Nineteen
The world aroundIsmay was dark, but she wasn’t afraid to lie beneath the canopy of shedding branches. How could she be afraid held tightly in the embrace of the most lethal chief in the Highlands? She didn’t doubt for an instant that Constantine couldn’t keep her safe.
His body was slightly harder than the ground and immensely warmer.
They didn’t sleep, but that wasn’t because either of them were afraid.
“It would have served no purpose to tell ye MacRae cut my hair,” Ismay told him drowsily.
Instead of answering, he ran his palm over her head, down to her shoulder where her tresses stopped. “As much as it angers me, I dinna think killin’ him fer his crime is deservin’ of death. I take so much pleasure in the sight of yer throat and yer earlobes thanks to yer short hair.”
He made her smile. Anyone who dared suggest the Lochiel was a melancholy tyrant would answer to her!
They ended up speaking about Alistar MacRae. She had finally told Constantine his name. “I thought he might hurt the others if I was there.”
“Ye dinna need to run anymore,” he whispered into her hair.
“While MacRae is alive, I should be worried. Ye see that he was at the Doomsday Inn. Think of how close he was.”
“He willna look fer ye anymore, Ismay.”
She picked up the sharp edge in his voice and looked up at him. “What do ye mean?”
