But even with the sorry state her home was in, her eyes still welled with tears as she saw her father’s chair at the table as if it were waiting for him to arrive. Her mother’s colorful tapestries still hung on the walls, depicting the battles that had made the McDougal name famous in all of Scotland. She could remember the sound of the thread moving through the heavy cloth as her mother had told her stories of her father’s great battles.
It was an era that was long gone, yet it felt just like yesterday.
“Come,” Katherine said sharply, tugging on Ainslee’s arm. “Do ye wish for him tae see ye?”
She didn’t. Summoning a breath, Ainslee followed her cousin past the great hall and to the steps that led to the dungeon, the air growing damp as they descended the stairs. When she and Liam were younger, they used to play in the dungeons, reprimanded continuously by their father for doing so.
As she had grown older, Ainslee had quit wanting to go into the dark place, and as of right this moment, she did not wish to be there either.
A guard was sleeping at his post as they reached the bottom, the air heavy with unwashed human bodies and the dankness of the stone underground. They stole past him, and Katherine picked up her skirts as she led her to the cell at the end of the short hall.
“Here.”
Ainslee could barely make out a man chained to the wall, his chin tucked into his chest and his body hanging loosely against the manacles that held his wrists as if that were all that was holding him upright.
“How long?” she choked out.
“Five days,” Katherine whispered. “I dinnae think he has been anywhere but here.”
“I must get in there,” Ainslee said, forgetting about hiding her voice with the raspy one she had perfected for times like this. “I must examine him.”
“Then we will need these,” Katherine stated as she produced a set of keys from her pocket. Ainslee watched as Katherine inserted the key into the lock and turned, the grating sound filling the air. They had to push the door open, and Ainslee hurried in, the smell of a festering wound assaulting her senses. She would be lucky to find this prisoner alive.
Her hand reached out and felt for the pulse in his neck, surprised as she found a faint one.
“He’s still alive.”
“What are ye doing here?”
Both women turned to find the guard that was sleeping now at the cell door.
“I have been summoned tae treat the prisoner,” Ainslee rasped, drawing to her full height and staring the man down. “I demand that he be moved tae another room so that I may examine him.”
The guard laughed. “I dinnae take orders from ye, lass.”
“Then ye will lose the laird’s prized prisoner,” she shot back, placing her hands on her padded hips. “And I can go back tae mah warm hut.”
The guard swallowed. “Wait here.”
Ainslee waited until the guard’s footsteps faded before she eased the tension in her shoulders. Her eyes fell back to the prisoner, trying to figure out how he had survived all this time.
“Ye must be a tough one,” she whispered. He would need to be to outlast her brother’s torture.
3
The first thing Arran felt was a coolness on his forehead, chasing away the burning intensity that had been there. Slowly, he became aware of his surroundings. His eyes flew open, finding that the dungeon was gone, and he was staring at the wooden slats of a ceiling above.
Arran moved his hands, clenching them against the softness of a feathered mattress.
So, he wasn’t dead.
But as his surroundings came into focus, so did the pain in his body. Arran struggled to lift his arm off the mattress, frowning at the white bandages that encircled his wrists. The sudden movement caused him to groan as pain shot through his arm, from his shoulder to his fingers, and Arran let it fall back to the bed. He certainly was not dead. A corpse did not have this sort of pain coursing through his body.
Where was he? There was little doubt in his mind that he was still in the McDougal keep. The laird may have saved his life by bringing him there, but he was not about to turn him over to his clan.
This meant that McDougal had a plan for Arran, and it wasn’t going to be a good one. If the tables were turned, Arran knew he would have his enemy in the dungeon until it was time to behead him in front of the clan that had suffered so much at his hands and those of his men. He would put his head on a pike and display it until the skin rotted away and nothing but a skull was left. It would be a merciful death given the pain that Arran’s clan was going through, but the laird would be dead and there would be a measure of peace to be found.
Arran doubted that was McDougal’s plan for him. McDougal enjoyed showing off and torturing his prisoners.
