Page 80 of In Bed with a Highland Brute

Eloise pulled back her foot and kicked him once in the rear, forcing him to stay down as she crawled on her knees, trying to pull herself to stand.

I have tae run. I have tae get away from here. Fast!

She wished she now had that dagger on her hip she had so often carried. No matter what Murdoch had said about how useless it could be, it had saved her more than once, and now, it could have been the very thing that saved her life.

Murdoch. What will he say when he finds out?

She pushed herself to stand as she remembered Murdoch’s face the last time they had stood here. It had broken him, to stand where Lillie had died. What would happen to him now if Eloise were to die here too? She so feared his broken heart that she barely noticed one of the hooded men had recovered until he grabbed her ankle.

He pulled harshly, knocking her down to the ground where she inhaled soil, spitting it out repeatedly. He crawled over her, his hand taking hold of her hair, he forced her to her feet then spun her around, so she faced the cliff edge.

The other hooded men rolled away, moving to his feet and rubbing his injured rear.

“Now, ye die,” the man behind her hissed in her ear. “Move.”

She tried to dig her heels into the earth, but he was too strong. Pushed to the very edge of the clifftop, the toes of Eloise’s court shoes hung out over the edge of the grey stone. A distance beneath, the ocean raged, foaming at the mouth like some hungry demon.

“Say goodbye,” the man urged in her ear.

Without of options, Eloise closed her eyes and thought of those she loved. She saw Scarlett in her mind, and her nephew too, then she saw Avery and Callie together. Her heart broke when another entered her mind.

She saw Murdoch above her, revealing the smallest of smiles as he moved toward her for a kiss.

I will never see him again.

“Murdoch! Murdoch! Ye have tae stop this.”

He didn’t listen.

After Murdoch had left a hasty message with one of the menservants to find his friends, he’d set out to the stables and found the first horse he could. Harper had followed all the way, pleading with him to stop this. At one point, she’d tugged on his arm, trying to halt him from getting on the horse and he’d thrown her to the floor. It didn’t matter that she was a woman anymore, weaker than him and more likely to injure.

She is a murderer. She killed Lillie and she’s trying tae kill Eloise too. That changes everything.

He slowed the horse at the bottom of the cliffs, as Harper continued to bellow behind him. She was falling back now, unable to keep up with his pace.

The horse snorted high into the air as Murdoch brought the two of them to such a sharp halt. The horse could not possibly gallop up such a steep bank covered in rocks, so he was forced to leave the animal with two other horses, whose reins had been dropped on the stones nearby.

“Eloise!” he called, desperate to have some answer form her as he leapt down form the saddle.

The other horses were strangely reassuring, as was Harper’s mad chase of him. It made sense – he was searching in the right place.

“Eloise?” he shouted her name repeatedly as he clambered up the rock, taking the steeper section for it would be the fastest, even though he had to practically climb in sections, with his roughened hands pulling at the stones and his fine jerkin from the wedding ceremony catching on the jutting outcrops.

He heard voices beyond. Sounds of pain and grunts, then Eloise screamed too.

Murdoch stumbled to the top of the embankment, not bothering to glance back and see how far Harper had fallen behind.

I’m a fool. I should have seen it before. What did Clyde say about her? All the warning signs were there!

He sprinted toward three figures by the cliffs, their bodies strangely murky in the growing grey light as the day began to fade.

“Eloise!” he shouted, coming closer to her now as their figures came into focus and he saw her position.

She had been pushed out onto the very edge of the clifftop. With her chemise buffeted in the wind and her stays tightly drawn around her body, she was not fully clothed. Her red hair was wild, trapped around her face as she clawed at the man behind her who had a tight hold of some of those tendrils and was using that grasp to force her to the very edge.

“Release her now,” Murdoch bellowed, reaching for the sword in his belt. He pulled it out as one of the hooded men who had hold of Eloise turned to face him. He retrieved his own sword and advanced toward Murdoch.

Fine. Then he dies fer what he has done.