A Highlander’s Terror_A Medieval Scottish Romance Story Page 12

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  DANGER AND THREAT

  DANGER AND THREAT

  Amabel screamed. She did it to repel the man who had leered at her and then grasped her wrist. She knew it was probably pointless – anyone out here in the woods would likely either ignore her or be another of her enemies.

  “Easy, now...” the man said. His grip on her wrist was cold and hard, and Amabel twisted her hand in his grasp, dragging it free. He swung back and clouted her across the face and she fell back. She sobbed in sheer amazement. No one had ever hit her before.

  “Tam, stop that,” a commanding voice said. “We're not here to do that, but at his lordship's bidding.”

  “Aw, c'mon, Lewis. Who'll know?”

  “If anyone finds out, he'll kill you. He's not Duke for nothing.”

  Amabel frowned. “What duke?”

  “Lord Callum,” someone said helpfully. The man who appeared to be in charge hit him. Amabel froze.

  The duke of Astley? No! Why would he..?

  “You blithering fool, Duncan,” he swore. “How're we supposed to explain that we just shouted that secret all over the woods?”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Thanks. I can use a good sorry when the duke roasts my toes.”

  The man chuckled and the man in charge glared.

  At that moment, Amabel cleared her throat. She thought she'd heard something, some rustle in the bushes. It had happened twice now – enough to make her think it might be someone. She coughed.

  She let forth a blood-curdling scream.

  “Whist!” the man closest to her hissed. He struck her again and this time Amabel felt restraint dissolve. She screamed aloud and this brought another blow. She sobbed, curling in on the pain.

  The sound of her scream had also brought horses.

  Hoof beats exploded down the path and Amabel saw hoofs enter the clearing. From her vantage on the ground, that was all she could see. Big, solid hoofs with the slender ankles of a hunting horse above them. She saw the horse wheel and rear, and heard one of the soldiers scream in fright.

  She heard someone shouting, letting out incoherent screams of rage as he attacked. She deduced that whoever it was had arrived on the horse. The clearing was disintegrating into running feet, cries and howls. She curled up tightly, afraid of being trampled as the men ran into the trees. Three of them had stayed to fight and she heard the clang of sword on sword and curled up tighter, wishing she could see what was happening.

  A man ran off, crashing through the bushes on her right-hand side. Then the leader was shouting – she recognized his voice – and engaging whoever it was with a sword. She heard the clang of a blade against a blade, and then another clang. She could see two pairs of feet and the hoofs of the horse, moving subtly to give his rider the advantage as he fought.

  She heard a yell and the crack, indescribable and resounding, of a cheap sword cracking. Then the second man ran off.

  The leader of the group seemed to decide to leave shortly thereafter, for she heard him moving light-footed through the brush. She tensed as she heard rustling there, afraid he might draw a dagger or hurl a spear at her rescuer, but nothing happened. She heard the rustle of feet retreat and then, it seemed, the man left.

  She curled up, cold, sore and afraid. She was so tired. Too tired to sit up or even to speak.

  It's shock. You're tired because of the shock. You have to move.

  She sighed. Why should she move? She was warm here. Warm and safe. If she just lay down, she would be safe. She could rest. Sleep.

  She heard the horseman dismount, his boots cracking on twigs as he crunched across the space of the forest floor between his horse and her. She heard him draw in a breath and then kneel.

  Then he let out an explosive whisper.

  “Amabel?”

  She stared. She knew the voice. It was the first word he'd spoken. It couldn't be. He wasn't here! Yet he was.

  She struggled to kneeling, and stared.

  “Sir!”

  It was Rufus. He was kneeling on the leaf mold, his tunic shining dully in the darkness, eyes horrified.

  “My lady,” he said. He reached out his big, warm hands to her and took her wrists. She flinched. He seemed to understand and released her, opening his arms. When she didn't move, he dropped them to his sides.

  “My lady,” he whispered. “You...are you hurt?”

  She sniffed, dryly. “Probably,” she said. She had meant to sound unaffected, level. Her voice came out as a small croak and she winced, clearing her throat. “Are you?”

  He sighed. “Oh, Amabel. I'm well. Here. You'll freeze. Where is your cloak?”

  “They took it,” she said. She looked at the ground uncomfortably. She was wearing a plain woolen shift, her riding cloak and overdress both gone. The men had stolen them, saying they'd fetch a pretty penny in the town some time.

  So almost vagabonds. However, not quite. They were in someone's pay.

  She shook her head to clear it. She reached up into her hairline, feeling the swelling mass of a bruise. She knew the addled sense such a bruise could result in, and decided she would try and make a conclusion about the event later. Her brain might have filled in the nonsense about Lord Callum. It was completely crazy. She sighed.

  “My lady?” Rufus said. His voice was surprisingly humble, broken. Amabel sighed too.

  “Sir,” she said in a soft voice. “Take me home?”

  Rufus stood. He reached out his hands and, this time, she let him take her fingers in his strong grip and assist her to her feet. Then, gently, he drew her to his chest.

  “You're shivering,” he said. “We need to get you warm.” he paused. “Would you...” he turned, rummaging in his saddle pack. “Would you wear this?”

  He passed her a wool tunic. She shook it out. Looked down at it. Dark brown and so soft, she thought she recognized it as something he had worn. She looked up at him.

  “Thank you,” she said. Her voice was tight with feeling. He smiled.

  “My lady,” he said. His hand rose to cup her cheek and then it fell to one side. He still smiled, that same sweet, hesitant, impish smile, as if fully unsure of welcome. However, he would not touch her without her permission.

  She sighed and shrugged on the tunic. Her teeth were chattering now, the shock letting her feel again, and she felt cold.

  She struggled into the garment, which hung halfway to her knees, and scraped her hands down her biceps, trying to fight out the terrible, aching cold.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Take me to Buccleigh? Now?”

  She had to talk to her father. She had to confront him. Now she had to make sense of what she'd heard. Why was Lord Callum on the lookout for strangers riding between Edinburgh and Buccleigh? It made no sense. His own landholdings were scattered around the nearby landscape, though she knew he did hold land close to Buccleigh.

  Which is why, she supposed, her father and grandfather thought it such an appropriate match.

  Nevertheless, I don't think they'd take such a kind view of a man whose thugs almost beat me unconscious.

  She gritted her teeth, as it seemed remembering the wound in her head worsened the ache she felt there. She felt his hand touch her shoulder and she tensed, not wanting to flinch.

  Then, gently, he led her to the horse and lifted her on. She thanked him, feeling sleepy. Why was she so exhausted?

  “At your service, milady,” he said gently. He mounted behind her, holding her safely against him as he breathed against her shoulder, guiding the horse back to the road, and whispering. “I will always find you, no matter whether you will walk away or not. My heart is tied to yours, whether you will sunder it or no. Forever.”

  She didn't even try to make sense of those words. However the gentling speech wove into her heart and that, together with the safe warmth and the comfort, sent her, almost at once, completely unanticipated, to sleep.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  RIDING TO SAFETY

&nb
sp; RIDING TO SAFETY

  Rufus held Amabel against him as they rode. He felt her warm weight press against him heavily and he sighed. He knew she was asleep.

  “Don't wake up, dear.”

  He whispered the words softly, not wanting to lose the opportunity to talk to her, to tell her all the words he knew must remain forever mewed in his heart. He loved her.

  Strange, but I fain thought I didn't know what love would feel like.

  He had no siblings, and he and his father had never been amicable. He hadn't any cousins, even. However, he did know love.

  Brothers on the field and off it. My bond to my comrades feels like this. But different. The depth of it is the same.

  He sighed. There were other things, of course, that he didn't feel for his brothers-in-arms. The things about her that set his loins on fire, for example. He chuckled, noting that.

  My poor body.

  He held Amabel close, aware now more than ever of the soft weight of her body molded to his arm as they rode. He could feel the hard curve of her breasts pressed to his arm, and the swell of her buttocks as they pushed against his loins with every inch of rise or fall in the track.

  He smiled to himself. He would reach Buccleigh in a state of hopeless arousal at this rate. There is nothing I can do about it. He would just have to hope that, once she was safely lifted from his horse and in the care of her relatives and friends, he could calm himself.

  He sighed, breathing in the perfume of her hair where it rested on his chest and knowing that he would probably not be able to find rest.

  He wished he could have her, could know her. Could hold her and kiss her and squeeze her fingers and tell her all the words inside his heart. However, he must be silent. She was not his.

  The path widened and the light shone brighter here. He realized he could distinguish the path more clearly because it was no longer a path, but a road. The path through the forest had been earth, packed by the passage of horses and the boots of mankind. However, this was a cobbled roadway. Heading east.

  Right. We're almost there now, he told himself. Almost to Buccleigh.

  He rode out of the clearing. He had no idea how far ahead he still had to go. The night was cold now and even with his cloak over them both, his arms wrapped round her waist wrapping them both, it was cold.

  The sky was clear today. It'll be freezing out. And there'll be frost, also, tonight. He sighed.

  They would be lucky to reach Buccleigh tonight. With bad luck, they'd face a slow death on the road from cold.

  “Sir?”

  Rufus stared. Now the trees were animate and talking to him. He sighed. It was the head injury. Making him see things. Not see things, hear things. He was too tired to quibble semantics.

  He rode on.

  “Sir. Wait?”

  He stopped.

  “Fine,” he said with doleful resignation. “If you're a tree, talking to me, Lord have mercy and let me die of cold right now. If you're not, I do blessed well wish you'd come out. It's disconcerting.”

  He paused. Just as he was about to conclude that it had been his imaginings and he was going truly insane, something rustled.

  “Sir.”

  A boy appeared. He was perhaps fifteen; it was difficult to tell in the pale starlight. He was wearing a long tunic and was barefoot. An aching bruise scored the side of his white face. His arm was hanging at an odd angle and Rufus thought someone must have broken a bone in his shoulder, somewhere high up. He moved the arm and Rufus revised his judgment, guessing it instead to be mostly bruised.

  “Yes?” he asked, more gently this time. If he left him out here, the boy would freeze, certainly.

  “Sir. Please, help! The lady...oh.” He stared up at the pale countenance, just visible from under the swathing cloak. He recognized Lady Amabel, clearly, for he stared, throat working, then he sobbed. “She's well.”

  Rufus nodded. “She's certainly alive,” he said gently. “You're a servant in her retinue?”

  “I'm a stable hand,” he said with some apparent affront at being mistaken for a page or footman. “I was riding with her ladyship. Can you help?” he added.

  Rufus nodded. “They took your mounts?”

  The boy nodded mutely.

  “Right,” Rufus said with a sigh. “You can ride with her,” he said reluctantly. “I'll get going.”

  He slid off the horse, steadying Amabel as he did so. He heard her sigh a long breath and wished the youth had stayed where he was for a moment – how dare he risk waking Lady Amabel?

  “Oh, milord!”

  Rufus sighed. “That's Sir Rufus to you, lad. And mind you take a good seat back from her. I'll not have you waking the lady...she's worn out and needs rest.”

  “On my word,” the boy said. He scrambled lithely up into the saddle and took a seat behind Amabel. He was clearly terrified to harm her, for he hesitated to reach forward to grip the reins, and Rufus, trying to hold her steady, sighed softly.

  “Hold her up, boy.”

  The youth bridled at the diminishing terminology but did as he told him.

  “We'll wrap her warmly. Here. You too,” he said and, mouth hard-set, teeth clamped against chattering, he shrugged out of the thick fur-lined, woolen cape, handing it up.

  Then, trudging along in the darkness, the three of them headed onto the road.

  “You stayed to help her?” Rufus asked, indicating the slumberous lady with his head. She had slipped forward a little and he reached to steady her, barely trusting himself to touch that sweet thigh.

  “Yes, sir,” the boy said, aghast. “I'd do anything for the Lady Amabel. Else I'd lose my life.”

  Rufus nodded. He felt a grim smile twist his mouth. She does that to people, he wanted to say. She makes you devoted. Steals your soul.

  He didn't say it, though. He simply nodded and walked onward.

  The youth said nothing for a long while. Rufus sighed.

  “You know, I'm glad you came,” he murmured. The young man's toes were turning blue and he winced, seeing it.

  “Why?” he asked. His voice was chattering with cold but he managed to keep it commendably still. “Why're...you...glad. Sir?”

  “Because I don't know where in the devil we are. You're from here, so I trust you know the way to a nearby town? Is anywhere closer than the castle, the Duke of Buccleigh's landholding?”

  The youth nodded, making Rufus feel weak with sudden relief.

  “There is? How many miles? In which direction?”

  He heard Amabel stir and thought his anxious voice disturbed her. He coughed, lowering his tone. “Please?”

  “The town is that way,” the young man said confidently. He pointed to the left. “Place called Astmorland.”

  Rufus let out a long sigh. Whew.

  “Is it far?” he asked.

  “Mile, half a mile?” the boy shrugged.

  Rufus did a rapid mental calculation. That would take them roughly half an hour. Mayhap less.

  “That closer than or further than Buccleigh?”

  Again the boy made a scornful noise. It was subtle scorn, but it was there. Rufus reined in the impulse to box his ears. After all, the boy was all that was standing between Amabel and a slow death on the road.

  “Yes,” the boy replied. “Buccleigh's a good five mile on.”

  “Right,” Rufus nodded tightly. “We're going to Astmorland.”

  They went left.

  It took twenty minutes. During that time, Rufus went through the entire catalog of marching tunes he knew. He hummed them under his breath, vaguely, more of a rhythm of breathing rather than an actual tune. I don't want to wake the lady.

  Within the last five minutes, he was humming tonelessly, starting to notice he couldn't feel his toes. His fingers were long numbed. He was desperate. If they didn't reach the town soon, they would die. He was just thinking of what he could do...perhaps get them all down off the horse and huddle under the bush somewhere...

  Lights. There, up front.


  He stared. There, perhaps five minutes away, was a village. Spread out on the hillside, he could see a cluster of houses with lights in the windows still. He thought he might actually cry of relief.

  “You're right,” he called to the boy. “Thank you!” he felt his heart soaring. “And thank Heaven too. This is a miracle if ever there was such.”

  The boy grinned. “Aye, seen plenty o' them, sir. Reckon finding you was one, back then.”

  “Aye,” Rufus nodded grimly. “I've seen plenty o' them too.”

  He led them down toward the gate.

  “Who goes there...?” A sentry called out dully, voice aching with sleep. Rufus felt a moment's pity for him, borne of his own vigils. Then he coughed, irritation replacing the pity rather fast.

  “It's Sir Rufus Invermore. And a wounded lady. And some fellow by the name of...”

  “Brogan, sir. Brogan Brodley.”

  “Exactly. Him too.”

  They paused. “Occupation?” the sentry croaked.

  “Oh, for...” Rufus breathed. “Occupation is defending the royal peace. If you make me stand out here and freeze myself, I'll take that as breaking the aforementioned peace and have your head.”

  “Very well, very well,” the sentry grumbled. “You know the way, sir. Cannae have strange bods abroad at this hour of the night. Bad for the town, so 'tis. Very bad. Dangerous, sir.”

  Rufus sighed. “I know.”

  He heard the man sliding back the bolts as he carried on explaining how dangerous an act he was now doing, and then he was walking on, leading the horse behind him into the town.

  “Thank you,” he said with the faintest taint of irony.

  “Good, fine sir.”

  Rufus rolled his eyes. “Inn?” he said. His brain was weary with the cold and forming sentences was becoming increasingly harder. “Where do I find the inn? The nearest inn. Before I freeze.”

  “Oh! There! Across the street. First on the right. Round arch into the front delivery yard. Can't miss it.”

  “Thank you,” Rufus forced through chattering teeth. Then he, the youth called Brogan Brodley, and the lady Amabel were walking down the street of the small, cobbled and brightly lit town, into the inn.