“Nay,” barked Gregor. “The lass will obey any demand of ours—or Ogilvie’s—if we use his life as a bargaining tool. Bind his hands behind his back. And for God’s sake, do it securely.”
Somehow, I could see now, Kade had felled the second of his attackers. He and Hayes stood some distance away, their swords still raised to each other’s, circling.
“Ride, Kade!” Wilkie yelled.
Kade, in a lightning-quick movement, grasped a knife from a holster strapped to his boot and flung it at Hayes, where it embedded into Hayes’s thigh, causing him to hop and curse loudly. Kade took his split-second opportunity and mounted his horse, heaving himself into the seat in one fluid motion. His horse reared and whirled, lunging into a hell-bent run.
“Ride him down!” yelled Dougal, and Hayes, pulling the knife out of his thigh with a growl and tucking it into his own belt, leaped into action. But Kade was gone, galloping in the race of his life to reach Kinloch, alert Knox and summon the Mackenzie army.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WERODEATAPUNISHINGPACE. I, in front of Gregor, the Ogilvie warrior whose reward would be granted, in one way or another, by keeping me close. Wilkie rode the horse of one of the fallen men, his wrists bound behind him, and the wound on his upper arm still bleeding. His legs must have ached with the effort of gripping the horse as we galloped south through daylight and darkness and daylight once again. I caught brief glimpses of sleep, slumped against the warrior whose hold on me did not tire. We stopped twice, to drink from small streams we passed. We were not given food. And Wilkie said not a word, barely looking in my direction. Dougal rode his horse next to Wilkie’s and just behind, occasionally bumping his horse against Wilkie’s in a gratuitous attempt to dislodge him.
And if the question raged in my head, I could only imagine what was going through Wilkie’s mind: Kade. Had he reached Kinloch, to notify Knox of our predicament and to deploy the Mackenzie troops? Or had Hayes cut him down?
The landscape and the cut of the hills in the distance began to look familiar, and such was the grueling pace we kept, by the second nightfall we reached the Ogilvie keep. There was no sign of anyone following us. No army.
And then we were entering the gates of the Ogilvie keep.
Aye, there was a settling limitless remorse as we slowed and rode through the gates amid crowds and vaguely familiar faces. How had I lived almost two decades among these people and felt not a single welcoming sentiment? I saw curiosity, recognition, even glee, but I was not a prodigal daughter returning home. I was a disenfranchised foreigner-turned-servant who’d gone virtually unnoticed until the scandalized day of my departure. Word had obviously spread since then of my crime, my desertion and, finally, my unlikely heritage. The final detail giving me, at last, a value.
And I could see it in their faces now, as they swallowed up our party. They touched my bare legs, patting me and attempting to remember an hour, along the path of our half-connected lives, in which we might have shared a work detail, or a laugh, or a sunset. I felt very little. My only awareness was of Wilkie and how close his horse was to mine, and I was thankful that we were kept together until we reached the entrance of the manor. The thought of being separated from him now caused a cold chill to chase up my spine.
Our weary horses came to a stop.
The warrior who held me dismounted, then he grabbed me with his dirty hands and slid me back into his unwelcome, coarse embrace. Wilkie swung one leg over his horse and jumped to the ground, staggering but not falling. And Dougal followed him, liking his small power over a bound and rugged Mackenzie: clearly a position he was enjoying and making the most of. He was almost a head shorter than Wilkie, but he pushed Wilkie forward, toward the large and opening door ofthe Ogilvie manor. Wilkie seemed to hardly notice him, acknowledging him only as one might acknowledge a small and annoying bug that buzzes around until it can be squashed.
In fact Wilkie seemed almost eerily disengaged. Either that, or so focused that his attention appeared muted, or disguised. Our gaze met only once or twice, and I could read there that the possibility of being forced to watch me be taken by one of these men was threatening some hidden barrier within him. I had no doubt that if his hands could only somehow be freed, he’d have the strength and compunction to cut a very quick and decisive path through Ogilvie’s army. A raw and ragged fury clung to him like a shimmering aura.
We were led into the great hall of the Ogilvie manor, surrounded by much commotion. Only vaguely aware of the details of the presentation of us, I could nevertheless tell that there were other visitors being greeted. They were warriors, and the tartan of their clothing identified them—I was almost certain—as Campbell clan.
And it was confirmed as soon as the crowds allowed for us to be received and presented to Laird Ogilvie and his guests: Laird Campbell and ten or more of his highest-ranking officers. They were all seated around the grand table and rose as soon as our party entered the room.
“What is this?” Laird Ogilvie roared, confused and obviously displeased to be interrupted in the middle of what was quite clearly a tactical meeting. I had no doubt they were planning their attack on Ossian Lochs here and now; the tension and anger in their faces as well as their full military dress made me guess that the time for their rebellion was drawing near.
The men rose to their feet as our party approached their table to stand before them.
Ogilvie’s eyes bored into me, then Wilkie, a mixture of emotions playing across his face. Greed and triumph, certainly; a stunned temporary surprise at my sudden arrival; and also a fierce unease—which he accompanied by glancing once at Campbell—as though wishing that this presentation could take place elsewhere and not where Campbell could witness it. After all, Campbell wanted to claim Ossian Lochs and all its resources even more fervently than Ogilvie did. Campbell most likely knew nothing of my tattoo, and Ogilvie, to be sure, would want to keep it that way. Alliance or no alliance, these were underhanded men, both of them. And as Ogilvie glanced at Campbell once more, it seemed more than clear that he was reading there a certainty: if Campbell learned of my tattoo, he would have no reservations about claiming me for his own if given half a chance to do so.
And I didn’t like the way both men—and many more—were staring at me. I wished feverishly I could cover myself, half bared to them as I was. The tunic I wore had dried in the wind but had ridden up to the tops of my thighs under my captor’s jostling and very insistent hold.
Ogilvie’s familiar hunger lurked close to the surface of his expression, and I contemplated the look of him after so many weeks away. He was a big man, as tall as Wilkie yet much less defined. He preferred to exercise his leadership at the table, rather than in the yards. This, and his fondness for food and ale, had softened him. His hair was an even brown, kept shiny by the mistresses whose attentions he insisted on nightly, and more thanone at a time; it was these ranks I’d been called to join but had refused. Although he was possibly in his late thirties, Ogilvie had not yet taken a wife, too absorbed in the pleasurable variety his title allowed him. His eyes matched his hair and sparked with the lively heat of his many and varied conquests.
To see him again now, after all that had passed in my absence, was somewhat jarring, and I felt an unfamiliar sentiment seep through me which I finally was able to identify: hatred. Here was the man who had stolen much happiness from my life in recent years. He’d purposefully punished me, I could now see clearly in retrospect, in an attempt to break down my resistance. And I had suffered greatly for it. Only since my escape had I fully grasped the extent of my past unhappiness, bestowed almost exclusively by the man I faced now. I could feel my own loathing color my expression as his eyes met mine, but this did not appear to faze Ogilvie. Maybe he was used to being looked at in this way.
“Gregor. Dougal,” he greeted his men. “You have returned my wayward servant to me. Well done. I shall meet with you later this evening to give you your rewards.” His gaze landed on Wilkie. “And what am I to make of this? Mackenzie? Have you killed more of my men? Is this why my officers bind your wrists and present you as a prisoner?”
“He claims she is his betrothed,” Dougal replied.
“Is that so?” Ogilvie surveyed Wilkie once again with a measuring study; he may have been wondering if Wilkie knew of my inked mark, and if he, too, wanted me for that reason. “What of it, Mackenzie? You’re trying to claim my servant as your own?”
“She’s mine now, Ogilvie. Let us go and your life will be spared.”
Ogilvie looked at Campbell, and they both laughed. It was a laughter that stoked the horror of our situation several degrees higher: a laughter of dark intention, bitterness, revenge.
Campbell’s hatred was clear in his voice, and it was only then that I remembered fully the truth of this showdown: Wilkie’s and Campbell’s fathers had taken each other’s lives. The bad blood of the past was clearly festering and raw, and right here in this very room. “Trust a Mackenzie to lay a claim on something that isn’t his, to take interest in affairs that are not of his concern and to offer threats he cannot enforce.”
“Aye,” agreed Ogilvie, but his smile faded when Dougal continued his report.
