Cameron glanced around the room for whatever else she might have grabbed on her way out the door. Och, one of a pair of taller and heavier candlesticks from the carved mantelpiece above the fireplace was gone; he had noted them the day before when stoking the fire.
“Did she say anything?” he queried, focusing back on the healer.
“She screamed like an Irish banshee!” came Tobias’s affronted response, though he winced at once from the pain it cost him. “Screamed and knocked me down and then struck me so hard I feared she cracked my skull! I had the spoon almost tae her mouth when she awoke of a sudden and gaped at me as if I was trying tae poison her! Hoyden! Fiend!”
Tobias looked so outraged, so affronted, mayhap his masculine pride bruised as well to have been bested by a woman, that Cameron felt the strangest urge to chuckle. Yet he kept his expression somber as one of the maidservants broke into sobs and crossed herself.
“It was a terrible thing tae see, Laird—terrible! Her eyes so wild. Her nightgown whirling around her. We feared for our lives, we did!”
“Did you see which way she ran? Down the hallway toward the steps?”
Now all three women looked at him blankly, Cameron deciding not to waste any more time with questions. Instead he strode to the door, a serving maid crying after him.
“She grabbed another candlestick, Laird! Like a sword she carried it, I’ve never before seen the like! Take care when you find her that she doesna strike you as well!”
Considering that very thought himself, Cameron glanced down the hallway toward the steps, but his instincts told him that she hadn’t run that way. But where…?
A low creak made Cameron look to the left, his gut clenching at the cracked door that led to a smaller, winding staircase.
Cora had shown it to him, a more private way to venture to the tower’s upper floors, not that Cameron had thought he would have need of it. Yet what if Aislinn had ducked in there thinking it would lead down—when it only went up?
His hand on the hilt of his sword—God help him, not to strike her but to parry a blow if need be—and holding his breath, Cameron cautiously opened the door only to hear a vexing creak that made him clench his teeth.
Good God, did all the door hinges in this place need oil? He saw, too, that the stairway was as black as pitch, no wall sconces lit, which was something else that must be remedied. Otherwise, how was one to safely navigate the stone steps?
Cameron did fully draw his sword now and left the door wide open for the light from the hall, where at least candles sputtered! He ducked his head beneath the low entrance and proceeded to climb the steps, his eyes quickly adjusting to the darkness even as he scanned ahead for any sight of a white nightgown.
His heartbeat seemed to pound in his ears over the stillness in the musty-smelling stairway, his careful footfalls the only other sound.
No screeches or wild outcries from a surprise attacker wielding a candlestick, which made him realize as he climbed upward, Aislinn wasn’t hiding in the stairway—at least not between the second and third floor.
Would she have ventured further to the last floor, or gone out the door he searched for now? His gut instincts told him the latter, for no doubt she had seized upon the quickest escape she could find.
With light no longer filtering from below, he’d climbed too high in the tower, Cameron had to grope in the blackness for the door latch. He would search this floor first and if he didn’t find her, he would make his way at once to the next. He had told Conall he would meet him at first light, and time was quickly passing.
Cameron pushed open the door; thankfully, no jarring creak heralded his presence. He stepped out into the hall and paused for a few moments to listen, but he heard nothing other than the whistling wind beyond the tower’s walls.
He hadn’t noticed it before, so that told him mayhap an early morning storm was brewing. A good thing, the land needed more rain, but right now he needed quiet so he might hear—
“Och, will it be that simple?” Cameron said to himself at the piteous sound of weeping coming from further down the hall. No one occupied this floor right now, no reason for any servants to be up here before dawn, so it had to be Aislinn!
He lowered his sword, not willing yet to sheathe it on the chance that a candlestick might come flying toward him—and walked as silently as he could until he reached the bedchamber that Magdalene and Gabriel had occupied a few days past.
A bedchamber where her lunatic mother had been imprisoned and died—och, Seoras had shown his cruelty once again to lodge them where the poor woman had so grievously suffered. Aislinn’s weeping had lessened, and instead Cameron heard sniffles until he took another step and a floorboard creaked—the devil take it,morerepairs to be made?
He didn’t make another move, the sound of footfalls running across the floor inside the bedchamber making him grow tense to his boots.
Was she waiting with her candlestick raised to knock him on the head when he pushed open the door? Was she hiding instead, mayhap hoping against hope that whoever had strayed to this floor would simply go away?
Cameron waited another moment, preparing to kick open the door so violently that she might drop her weapon—och, the last thing he wanted was to suffer a blow like Tobias! Yet what harm might such a forceful entry do when his aim was for Aislinn to trust him? To understand that he only wished to help her?
Sighing heavily, Cameron sheathed his sword and took a step toward the door… until it occurred to him that within a moment he would meet her face-to-face.
Stare into her stunning eyes.
Speak to her. Already he felt a fine sheen of sweat around the collar of his tunic, his palms growing damp, too.
Why was he so afflicted…why? How could a warrior triumphant in so many battles feel nearly unmanned at the thought of conversing with so beautiful a woman?
