Angus crawled out of the moat and coughed up muck and slime. Shivering uncontrollably, he glanced up to see a horse and rider thundering toward him like a phantom through the mist.
He thought of Gwendolen suddenly and wondered if this was to be the end of his life. If it was, he could at least say that he had discovered joy—and yet, at the same time, he was filled with bitter, raging anger.
Had she truly poisoned him? Had it all been a corrupt affair? A false dream?
He knelt breathless on the muddy bank, his mouth hanging open, watching the rider grow closer and closer. His enemy drew his sword and held it high. Angus felt a chill in his guts, then scrambled out of the moat. He roared like a vicious animal, waved his arms about, and dashed toward the oncoming beast.
The horse spooked and reared up. The rider fell to the ground in a pounding heap of flesh that thumped hard on the ground.
The instinct to survive bashed about in Angus’s muddled brain. Mad with shock, he bolted forward before the bald-headed warrior had a chance to recover. He kicked him in the chest, grabbed the sword from his hands, and leaped onto the horse.
“Yah! Yah!”
Wildly and recklessly, Angus galloped across the dark field toward the forest. Leaning low into the wind, he heard the warrior cry out in fury and knew that his pursuers would not be far behind.
***
Angus crashed through the underbrush while sharp stinging branches whipped at his cheeks and arms. He knew these woods like the back of his hand. He knew where the footpaths and cart roads were, and which ones to avoid. He galloped insanely until the horse grew winded, then he wheeled him into a thick sheltering copse to rest for a moment.
Tilting his head back, he looked up at the canopy of leaves above. It seemed as if all the birds and creatures of the wood knew he was here and had gone silent.
Suddenly the poison in his system stirred anew. He dismounted and staggered toward a tree trunk, where he retched into a patch of ferns.
Dizzy and sick, he leaned his forehead against the tree and shut his eyes. He didn’t want to believe it—that Gwendolen had given him the poisoned wine—but he had watched her pour it, hand it to him, and drink tea instead.
Part of him clung to the possibility that she had not known of its foul component, but then he thought of Raonaid’s predictions and how she had tried to warn him.
But she had not been right about everything, he told himself. He was not dead this morning. He had swung by the neck in a noose, but had somehow survived. Raonaid had been wrong about that, unless Murdoch caught up with him in the next few minutes and affected the future.
He had to keep moving.
Pushing away from the tree, Angus returned to the horse—but God, oh God…Gwendolen was still back there. He had left her and all the members of his clan behind.
And what about Lachlan? In all likelihood, he was dead. Murdoch wouldn’t allow Angus’s cousin and Laird of War to survive, only to later rise up and plot against him…
He rested his head against the horse’s neck, while every desperate quaking impulse in his body compelled him to go back. He needed to know that Gwendolen was safe. He couldn’t just leave her there.
Nausea poured through him, and he surrendered to the fact that he was in no condition to fight for his clan or rescue his wife—if in fact, she evenneededrescuing, which he was not entirely sure she did. He didn’t know what to believe. Part of him hated her, and he hated himself, too, for becoming so entranced, so trusting and vulnerable, that he did not realize he was drinking poisoned wine.
The other part of him wanted to fall to his knees and weep for the loss of her, whatever the cause.
Only one thing he knew for sure: Kinloch did not belong to the MacEwens. It belonged to the MacDonalds, and this was not over. He just had to get his strength back.
A crack of light pierced through the treetops. Feeling more determined than ever to stay alive and see this through to the end, he mounted the horse and melted deeper into the forest. There was only one place left for him to go now. It was time to revisit an old friend—and say a prayer that this particular friend wouldn’t also be inclined to tie a rope around his neck and toss him off a roof.
Because he certainly had good reason to.
***
It was a fate worse than death.
Gwendolen pounded with both fists on the locked door, shouting and screaming—first at her brother who had given the order to lock her away in Angus’s chamber, and then at anyone who might hear her and come to her aid.
When no one came and she confronted the possibility that Angus was, at that moment, being executed, she resorted to smashing furniture against the door and breaking the window. She was too high up in the tower to jump out, but she screamed her lungs out, hoping someone,anyone, would hear her. But minute after agonizing minute passed, and she was left alone, powerless to save her husband, and blaming herself for his untimely doom.
She had been the one to poison him.
Because he had trusted her not to betray him.
