She heard Lysander scoffing at Catarina’s words. “Just tell the lass she’s been kidnapped, Cat. It’s not as if she’s not going to find that out anyway.”
Nora gaped at his words.
Kidnapped?
Och, this was a fine mess, now wasn’t it? Out of the pot and straight into the fire she’d landed.
And all because Ryan MacAren was a devil!
The wagon lurched as Viktor climbed up on it. She heard the others mounting and tying her mare and Ewan’s stallion to the wagon.
Kidnapped. The word rang in her head as she turned back toward Ewan.
Her irritable companion would be even more so once he awoke and learned of this new fix.
It was all her fault she was sure of it. No doubt the group had recognized her as the niece of the king of England and had sought to use her for ransom.
Now what was she going to do?
Five
Ewan came awake to a pounding in his skull so fierce that for a moment he wondered if he’d been kicked by his own horse. But as he tried to move and realized his hands and legs were tied, he began to suspect something much worse than that.
Blinking his eyes open, he found Nora sitting beside him. Her face pale in the dim light of the wagon, she was staring at the door as if wishing she could splinter it with her thoughts.
The wagon lurched, slamming his ribs hard into the floor. Ewan ground his teeth against the pain.
“Where are we?” he growled.
His question startled her. She jumped and turned around to face him. Relief was etched into her delicate features. “You’re awake.”
“Aye. Why am I tied? Did you do this?” he asked even though he knew the very idea was preposterous.
Then again, with her, most anything was a possibility.
She looked offended by that. “It was our friends. I think they drugged you during the meal, then they brought you inside and trussed you up.”
“And what were you doing while they did this to me?”
“I thought you were ill.” He noted the way she avoided answering his question.
“Didn’t you find it strange that they sought to tie me?”
She shifted about as if agitated. “I didn’t know about that until I got inside the wagon myself.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I tried to leave.”
“Then?”
She held up a small piece of cloth that had been laying beside him. “I ungagged you.”
That was not what he wanted to hear. Surely she had done something other than blithely submit to their capture.
“How wonderfully considerate of you. Did you not think to remove the rest of my bindings?”
“Aye, but they are too tight. I would need a dagger to loosen them.”
