Amelia’s back was rigid, pressed to the seat. Her mind had been racing from the moment she had heard the commotion outside the carriage. She had no idea who might have tried to waylay them; if they were seeking her out to kidnap her from the very man who’d stolen her from her husband, or if it was some random attack that she was to be caught in the middle of. Perhaps if it spared her the fate that was waiting for her when she made it back to the Keep, it would be a mercy.
When Amelia laid eyes on Arran, she felt, for a moment, as though she were dreaming. His dark eyes, his long hair, the intensity of his sharp gaze as he looked at her. It was exactly how she had remembered him. But, as Donald sprang to his feet, his advisor drawing back into the carriage with a grimace of fear, she knew that he was real.
“Amelia, with me!” he called to her, and he reached his hand out to hers. She tried to take it, but before their fingers could touch, Donald forced himself between the two.
“Dinnae think of laying a hand on her, you brute!” he bellowed, drawing a small knife from his belt. The glint of metalflashed in the early morning light, and she gasped as he swung it towards Arran with a wild desperation.
He managed to lunge out of the way in the split-second before it made contact with his body, but Amelia’s heart stopped. She could not stand to see him hurt, not on her account. It would have destroyed her to watch him take harm because of her. Something in her screamed at her to fight; to fight for herself, for her husband, for the freedom she had tasted a small piece of before it had slipped through her fingers again.
“Get away from him!” she exclaimed, and she dived towards Donald, knocking the knife out of his hand, and throwing him against the seat that he had kept her perched on the entire ride back to his keep. She grabbed the knife before she could stop herself, and swung it above her head, planning to bring it down right then and there in a fit of pure anger.
Before she could, she felt Arran’s hand catch her wrist. She turned to face him, breathing hard, and there was a softness in his eyes that soothed her in an instant.
“Dinnae cut him,” he murmured. “He’s no’ worth the guilt.”
Still panting, she dropped the knife down by her side again. Donald’s hands were raised above his head, and he was trembling pathetically.
“Please, dinnae hurt me!” he begged, and Arran put his arm around Amelia.
“Give us no reason to, and ye’ll never hear from us again,” he told him, his voice dripping with an open threat. “But if you so much aslookin her direction once more…”
He leaned over and planted a kiss on Amelia’s lip, a firm embrace that sent a shiver down her spine. It spoke to how much they wanted and needed each other, how willing they were to fight for what they both knew they deserved.
“Then I’ll make haste in killing you.”
With that, Arran pushed open the door to the carriage, and helped Amelia out. She was still clutching the knife, and she had no intention of letting it go. Glancing around, she saw that the guards had been dealt with, and it was only a handful of his men who waited outside the carriage. She drew in a deep lungful of air, and realized that she was shaking. Arran still had his arm tucked around her, pulling her close to him, as he led her to his horse.
“What happened to Fern?” she gasped suddenly, and he smoothed a hand down her back, a comforting touch.
“She’s back at the Keep,” he assured her. “I sent one of my men to find her in the forest, when I realized what had happened to ye…”
“It wasn’t me,” she promised, the words tumbling from her mouth with a desperate haste. “It was Effie, she was the one who told me to?—”
“I ken.”
His words dripped with anger, and she wondered exactly what punishment would be waiting for Effie now that her safety had been secured, or what punishment may have been doled out to her already.
As Arran helped her on to the horse, she tried to push those thoughts from her mind. She knew that what mattered was that he had come for her, and she was safe in his arms once more.
He pressed a kiss into the side of her neck once they were on the horse, and she felt his warm breath on her ear. Pressing herself back into him, she half-turned her head so that she could look at him to speak.
“I didn’t know if you would come for me,” she murmured. “I thought… I thought perhaps you would think I had left of my own accord.”
As his men took to the road behind him, he planted another kiss against her lips. This one was commanding, almostdemanding, as though he was proving to her, once and for all, that he wanted her, and nothing would get in the way of that.
“I would never let you go that easily,” he replied, brushing his nose against hers. Her heart danced in her chest. To be wanted by a man like this—no, to belovedby a man like this, it was the most perfect thing in the world to her. She could never have imagined, when they’d first met, that he would be able to make her feel the way she did, but she was glad she had given him the chance to find out.
A moment later, he grasped the reins, and turned on to the road that led back to the Keep, once and for all.
19
As Arran and Amelia lay beside each other in their bed, she breathed a sigh of relief.
When they had taken her, she had been fearful that she would never find herself in this place again. That she would never, as long as she lived, feel such comfort in this man’s arms again. But now she was here, she knew she should have had all the faith in the world that he would come for her. She would never doubt him again, not as long as she lived, and, as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in close, a small smile curled up her lips.
His arms were snaked around her like a vine, as they had been from the moment the two of them had been alone together once more. Mairead had insisted on drawing her a bath and allowing her to wash and change before she settled in for the night, apparently horrified by the news that one of their own—Effie—had turned against her and shared news of her with the MacAllan clan.
But now, with his face pressed into her hair and the sound of his slow, steady breathing against her ear, she felt at peace. Even more so than she had before. She had felt, for a moment in time,what it would have been like to be pulled from his arms, and she never wanted to go through it again, not as long as she lived.
