“Ye could simply send me home to Fletcher.”
“And let ye languish there? Nay. Ye’re ruined. Ye’ll be even more ruined when I’ve finished with ye, but I’ll keep ye as long as I have a use for ye. Then ye’ll disappear.”
Bile rose in Caitrin’s throat again. “Disappear?”
“Ye dinna expect me to keep ye around when ye’re old and fat?” He laughed at that and Caitrin cringed.
He glanced at the fighting then turned back to her thigh. Caitrin pawed at the floor as far as she could reach around her, looking for something, anything, she could use to bash him over the head. She found nothing.
He scratched faster now. He’d seen the tide had turned against his men, yet instead of going to fight with them, he was determined to continue to mutilate her. Each new slice stung, then bled. Catrin tried again to buck him off, but this time he turned and punched the side of her head. “Be still!”
Her world narrowed down to pain, dizziness, and nausea.
Then suddenly, the weight on her leg disappeared and Jamie’s outraged shout penetrated the haze. “It was ye!”
****
Jamie finally shed the layers of reserve he’d built up over the years when he glimpsed MacGregor through the partially open doorway, cutting the fabric of Caitrin’s dress. The rage in him boiled to the surface, making him want to slay the man more than anything in this life. More than his own life. But he couldn’t help Caitrin right away. First, he had to deal with MacGregor’s soldiers, or there would be no one left to help her. His berserk attack on the guards at his back galvanized the Lathans and Uilleam to turn on their captors.
They seemed to take Jamie’s frenzy as their own and quickly evened the odds.
MacGregor bodies littered the ground by the time Jamie regained his senses enough to realize his men could handle the rest of their guards. He burst in to the croft, banging the door against the wall hard enough to rattle dishes in the cupboard.
The thin lines of red marring Caitrin’s breast made cold sweat break out on Jamie’s face and chest. In contrast, raw, blistering fury rose to scald his throat at the sight of MacGregor hunched over Caitrin, blade poised above her body. His vision tightened to a pinpoint focused on the tip of the blade in MacGregor’s hand. Even to his own ears, his growl sounded animalistic as he advanced. Caitrin lay trapped beneath Alasdair’s weight on her leg, but before Jamie could haul him off her, the pattern of bloody cuts on her chest brought back the memory he’d spent years burying deep.
“It was ye!”
He grabbed Alasdair by the throat, heedless of the blade in the man’s hand. As he hauled him to his feet, prepared to take a swing at him that would knock him across the room, he exposed Caitrin’s thigh. Jamie roared. Instead of hitting him, Jamie hoisted the big man off the ground by the neck and shook him.
Alasdair fought free, scrabbling to get his feet back on the ground. He dropped the thin blade and grabbed Jamie’s shirt, tearing it open down the front as they fought. Jamie had no doubt MacGregor would kill him if he got the chance. He didn’t intend to let him.
But a blow to the head stunned him and he dropped to his knees. MacGregor picked up the dirk he’d set aside for the thin blade he’d used on Caitrin and held it to Jamie’s throat. “Tell me how to find the secret way into the Aerie or while ye watch, I’ll take a whip and flay all the skin from her.”
Jamie fought to get his body back under his control, but his head still felt muzzy.
“What makes ye think there is another way in?” he asked, stalling as his vision cleared.
“Yer damn courier, Ewan, died with the secret, but ye’ll tell me or watch her creamy skin peel off.”
Ach, Ewan! Dead? The thought of him being tortured and dying under MacGregor’s hand sickened Jamie. And told Jamie if he didn’t defeat MacGregor, they were doomed. Since he was now willing to admit to killing one of their men, he had no intention of letting them live, letting them return to the Aerie. Not one of them. Perhaps not even Caitrin. Suddenly the world snapped into focus, and Jamie wrenched the knife away from his neck and out of Alasdair’s hand. It slid across the floor. He head-butted Alasdair in the gut, then surged to his feet and waded in, swearing with each blow he landed. Then he grabbed MacGregor by the throat, lifted him off his feet and squeezed.
“God damn ye to hell. Did ye do to Ewan what ye did to Caitrin? And the same to all the women in the pubs in St. Andrews? No wonder they refused to talk. What kind of monster are ye?”
MacGregor was turning purple, gasping and making thin sounds, as though trying to answer Jamie, or begging to be released, but Jamie would have none of it. He did lower the man to his feet. He didn’t intend for him to die just yet. Not until he’d answered some questions.
“Who taught ye to do this?” He shook Alasdair again, and as he did, the comb fell from Jamie’s open shirt front to the floor and slid to the wall.
Alasdair’s eye’s widened as he looked from the comb to Jamie’s face, and back to the comb again.
Jamie had no doubt he recognized it. He loosened his hold on Alasdair’s neck. “Ye ken that comb. Talk.”
Alasdair shook his head, gasping for air.
“The elders sent Caitrin home to her father rather than leave her at Lathan where she might be the next victim of whoever killed the owner of that comb. Talk!”
Alasdair coughed. Jamie tightened his hold. “But the killer never came into the Aerie, did he?” He gave Alasdair another little shake and was rewarded by Alasdair’s attempt to turn his head and form the word “nay.” He did neither well, with Jamie’s fist around his neck. “So ye attacked her in the woods outside the keep, did ye?”
He released MacGregor and shoved him against the wall. “Ye’d best find yer voice if ye want to keep breathing.”
