An instant later, a figure stumbled into view. It was Fergus, her tormentor from earlier.
“What’s this, my bonny? Did you fall from yer wee perch? Is that the noise I heard?”
He leaned his face into Abby’s, and the smell of stale whisky turned her stomach.
Moving her hands back and forth above her head, she continued to work the little blade against the knot that held her.
“All strung up here, you are, yer wares finely ondisplay like market day in Edinburgh. Makes a man hungry, it does, to taste a sample of what’s to come.”
“Leave her alone, Fergus. I’ve warned you before.” Dair’s voice sounded positively evil coming from the shadows.
“Pfft,” Fergus dismissed him. “You can watch if you like. I’ll show you how a real man does it.”
He walked behind her and grabbed her skirts, lifting them and pressing his erection up against her bottom, obviously surprised when he encountered the riding pants. “What the hell?”
The extra moment was all Abby needed. The blade broke through the knot and her hands were free. Without a thought, she ran.
Fergus ran, too. Much faster than she’d have expected from a drunk. He tackled her from behind, bringing her down with a jarring thud.
“I likes my women to be lively,” he said, as he pushed up to stand over the top of her. A drunken grin split his face and he grasped the hem of his plaid to lift it upward, revealing his swollen manhood.
Beyond him, Abby could just make out the figures creeping in their direction. Dair and Simeon. They’d want to take him without any noise. All she had to do was keep Fergus distracted until they reached him.
Clutching the little knife in her hand, she remembered her encounter with Jonathan in another forest, seven hundred years away. If it had worked once, it could work again.
She rolled to a crouch, and the man in front of her laughed.
“Aye, lassie, I like the idea of you on yer knees even more. Fergus has a surprise for you.”
“And I have a surprise for you, too.” She lunged forward, slicing the little knife downward toward his thigh.
“You whore!” he hissed, spittle flying from his mouth.
Unlike Jonathan, Fergus moved. The blade sliced along the side of his leg, but didn’t imbed in the flesh. Instead of falling to the ground as Jonathan had, he drew back his leg and kicked.
Abby rolled to protect herself, taking the full force of the blow in her side rather than her face. Pain, white-hot in its intensity, blazed through her chest, driving the air from her lungs as his foot connected a second time.
“You’ll pay for that, you little—”
His voice abruptly silenced in a snap and a gurgle. Abby could only assume her husband’s kinsmen had reached her tormentor.
“Can you stand?”
Dair lifted her to her feet, even as she fought to catch her breath. It felt as if the knife she’d held had been driven deep into her side with each breath she took, and only when Simeon picked up the weapon from the ground beside her was she sure she hadn’t stabbed herself.
Within minutes, Simeon returned, the other prisoners he’d freed slipping past them to melt away into the inky night.
Dair took her hand to pull her forward and the pain nearly doubled her over. He ran his hands quickly down her arms and around her middle.
“Ribs,” he announced. “We’ll need a mount. She won’t be able to keep up on foot.”
“Leave me,” she panted. “Go find Colin. See to him. These guys won’t harm me. They want me for a ransom.”
Simeon snorted his reply before disappearing into the dark.
“Obviously, my kinswoman, you have no concept of what yer husband would do to us if we left you behind.”
Gently, Dair lifted her into his arms, but evengentlyhurt like hell.
