by L. L. Muir
“I think Laird Gorgeous—” Oh, my hell! She turned her face so he couldn’t see just how embarrassed she was. “I mean, Laird McKinnon needs a nap. What do you think?” Bree refused to look his way. Even when he laughed himself silly.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Bree woke with a start. She’d been having a nightmare about Angeline, stuck inside the tent with snakes while she and Heathcliff tried to find the opening.
She sat up and her head brushed against the drooping white cloth. Angeline was still fast asleep on the pillow beside her, and the soft growling that filled the tent was coming from Laird Gorgeous. Their three pillows were set in a triangle and he still lay where he’d begun, on his back. His turban had tumbled to the side and his dark head of hair nearly covered the pillow. She was going to miss that hair.
Bree needed to stop doing two things: imagining running her fingers up his chest and through his hair, and thinking of him as Laird Gorgeous. She closed her eyes and groaned when she remembered saying the words out loud. When she opened them, his dark eyes were open. And staring. At her.
Well, at least he wasn’t laughing anymore.
The clock on the mantle began to strike and they remained frozen, eyes locked, while they counted the hours. One. Two. Three. Four. And then a pause before Bree could breathe again. They’d slept for two hours. The sleepless night before had cost them two hours. They had eight hours left.
He grinned and moved his hands. She realized he was twiddling his thumbs and what that meant. He’d been thinking about midnight. And damn it, so had she!
They both glanced at Angeline while at the same moment someone began pounding on the door. The little girl rolled over and blinked.
The pounding didn’t stop, which meant it wasn’t Bree’s heart making such a racket. And as much as she might have wanted someone to come to her rescue days ago, she was ticked their little moment was ruined. It looked like Heathcliff was worried about more than just getting interrupted. He crawled past her with a pretty menacing frown on his face, like he was psyching up to face the coachman!
“The note said midnight.” She crawled after him. “It’s only four, right? It’s not dark yet, so your clock can’t be wrong.”
“The clock isna wrong,” he said as he helped her to her feet.
He pulled her into his arms and pressed his lips to hers, but before she could get her hands around his neck, he was backing away.
“Ye owed me a kiss, lass. Ye ken the truth of it.” He smiled, but it was forced. Then he headed for the door. She followed in his wake since her hand was locked around his forearm.
“Don’t answer it,” she whispered.
“I must, lass. I’m laird here. I may be needed.”
“You won’t leave us here alone, will you? I can’t face midnight alone! And what if the coachman—?”
Heathcliff patted her hand, then peeled her fingers off his arm.
“I will be right here with you come midnight, lass. I swear it.”
He turned to go, but she could tell he wasn’t eager to see who was pounding on the door.
She thought about staying put, pretending she wasn’t scared out of her mind to find out that their time was up, that the old guy had decided to move up his watch so he could get to bed earlier. Her grandpa used to do that, when she and her cousins were staying over on New Year’s Eve. He’d move the clocks forward so they’d all go to bed sooner. They’d be the only ones whooping and hollering on the front porch, racing each other to the cars for the one time a year when they were allowed to honk the horns.
Then, after they’d been in bed for a while, they’d hear fireworks and horns going off all over the neighborhood. They’d just assumed the neighbors celebrated a lot longer than normal, not that they’d been tricked by their beloved Grandpa.
If the coachman had really decided to come early, she was going to be pissed.
Pissed beat scared any day, and she marched up behind Heathcliff ready to rip someone a new one. The man standing inside the entryway wasn’t the old coachman though.
“I’m sorry to be bothering ye, Laird McKinnon. Truly I am. But we all thought ye would wish to ken what was happening down at the inn, sir.”
“And what is happening down at the inn, Charlie?”
The guy noticed Bree and tried not to look surprised, but failed miserably.
“The inn, Charlie?”
“Oh, aye. An old gentleman is there, deep in his cups o’course, so what he’s sayin’ is likely nonsense. We ken that. But—”
“And what is he saying?”
“That he’ll be laird of the manor come mornin’, yer lairdship. And so we thought someone should come up and check...on yer health, so to speak. “
“And ye drew the short straw?”
“Aye, sir. But I must say I’m happy to see ye hale and healthy and...” He looked over at Bree again and blushed. When Angeline wandered out of the parlor, the poor guy’s eyes just about popped out of his head. “Cor!”
“Do ye need some time to warm yerself, Charlie?” Heathcliff’s hands balled, then relaxed, then balled again. He was dying to leave.
Charlie seemed to notice the same thing. “Nay, yer lairdship. I’m fine to head back—”
“Will you saddle my horse? He’s in the barn, not the stables. I’ll join you directly and we’ll go see what bile lies in this man’s belly, aye?”
“Oh, aye, yer lairdship. But I’ve already saddled yer horse. I’ll just wait outside.” He bowed to Bree. “Yer ladyship.”
The way Heathcliff shook his head at the boy, and the frown on his face, sent little daggers into Bree’s chest, right around the vicinity of her heart.
A second later, the boy was gone and the door thundered shut, then Heathcliff stalked toward her.
“It’s all over, isn’t it?” Bree said as she backed away from him.
“I hope it will be, aye.”
Hot tears escaped her eyes.
“Brianna, when the dust settles, no matter what we learn, my feelings for ye are true, lass. But...” He closed the distance with one big step and took her hands.
“But? But what?”
“But ye and Angeline must go with me now.”
“We can’t take Angeline out in that cold!”
His fingers moved up around her wrists and he shook his head sadly. “Nay, lass. Ye must come with me, up to yer chamber, the pair of ye. I must lock ye inside for your own—”
Bree started to laugh. It was the only choice she had, really. If she allowed herself to cry, she’d get hysterical, and Colbys never got hysterical.
“You think I’ll run off with the silver? Or your daughter?”
“I admit I once worried ye might take the child, I acknowledge that. But I’d only just met ye then.” Over his shoulder, he said, “Come, Angeline.” Then he released one of her wrists and led them toward the stairs.
“You’ll regret this,” Bree said, but she went along willingly. There was no reason to upset the little girl. “If the coachman tells you I’ve had nothing to do with this, it won’t make a difference, not if you can’t trust me right now.”
“Brianna, no matter what the man says, I’ll return here, release ye, and give ye leave to go...or stay, but I must place the pair of you behind lock and key, to know that ye are safe from any who might come and try to sneak ye away. That is all. It has naught to do with trust. And I must hurry, now, to face this enemy away from my home, to keep him from me doors. To keep him from ye. Angeline is not the only one I fear might be taken from me, lass. Trust me. There is nothing in this wide world that can change that.”
All Bree could think of, while he led her to the chair, was what a pity their final kiss had been so rushed. She was numb. The room was cold.
“Come, Cherub. My Angeline. Come quickly now.”
He bent down and kissed the child on the forehead, then came back to kiss her, but she turned her head. She didn’t want a kiss from this guy. She’d already had her farewell kiss from t
he man she’d been playing house with, but this was not him.
He kissed her head and the heat from it burned down through her brain, past her neck and toward her heart. But by the time the icy organ had a chance to warm, the door was closing, and that little flame of hope was gone. The lock clicked louder than ever before.
What if the coachman was her only hope of getting home again? Or had Heathcliff already thought of that?
Like a child, she ran to the door and gave it a thump. Then she pressed her ear to the wood and listened to the sound of his footsteps on the stairs. She and Angeline kept watching out the window, but never saw the horses pass.
There was only silence.
And eventually, through that silence, she imagined the ticking of the clock above the mantle in the parlor. If they tried, they might be able to hear the delicate chimes. They might be able to listen to each hour as it passed and welcome the New Year.
Instead, she built a nice crackly fire—with the girl’s help of course. She didn’t even care if they heard Heathcliff’s return.
* * *
An hour later, Bree found herself nodding off in the chair she’d placed in front of the door—not to listen for anyone’s footsteps, but to keep him from coming in the room once he returned. She rolled her head to get the kinks out of her neck and noticed it was starting to get dark outside. Angelinewas playing with her doll near the fire. The light from the flames were barely brighter than the dying sunlight.
A chill snaked up her back, then her heart stopped when the bedroom windows slowly opened by themselves. Outward! The shutters had been left open to take advantage of any bit of sunshine, and now the windows bumped against them as if pushed by a slight draft from within the room.
Bree planted her feet and pushed on the arms of the chair, but she couldn’t get up. It was if her body was suddenly cemented to the chair. She couldn’t get up to shut the window.
She opened her mouth, to call out to Angeline, but no sound came from her mouth. Surely that meant she was dreaming. But the cold air rushing into the room gave her goosebumps. And the creepy shiver she’d had a minute ago was now full-blown chills from the cold air. Her teeth knocked together and it brought her back to that snow-covered road where she’d nearly frozen to death. It was like it was happening all over again. But this time, there was a child who would freeze much quicker than she had.
The child.
Angeline turned from her play and faced the open window, her face lit with joy, oblivious to the cold that could literally kill her. But it wasn’t just joy lighting her face; a bright light moved between the open panes of glass. A swirl of clouds. A shadow here and there. A hand of white fog grabbed onto the wall and pulled a larger piece of itself inside, like a big man pulling himself out of a car.
And suddenly it was a man, or at least it had the face of one. A little abstract, still swirling, looking right at Angeline. A foggy arm stretched toward her, beckoned her to come.
Bree screamed her name. There was nothing to hear. She fought against the chair, but it was like someone was sitting on her. Someone huge.
The doll slipped from the girl’s hand, forgotten. But as the white arm enfolded her, she turned in its embrace and reached toward the bed, stretching toward the little scroll resting on her pillow, rolled and unrolled a dozen times by her pale little fingers, the yellow ribbon tied lovingly back into place.
But the white figure never noticed. It threw Bree a mocking grin and then poured itself back out the window, taking a still-straining Angeline along with it.
Noooo! She could only mouth the word.
The windows slammed shut. The shutters followed. The crack of the wood was like a gunshot in her ears, a gunshot that echoed every time her heart beat. Bree struggled against the chair again and again, screamed in silence over and over. And only when her voice broke through the spell was she able to get to her feet and lunge for the window.
A cloud could not hold up a child twenty feet above the ground!
Crying hysterically, she pulled at the latch, unlocked it, and ripped at the frame that would not open. She ran to the fireside, snatched up the poker and ran back. She beat at the wood frame, then bashed in the glass. The shutters suddenly gave way, bounced against the outer wall and back again, knocking broken glass into Bree’s face and torso. But the spell was broken along with the glass, and she pushed it all away to look down into the shadows of snow on the ground below.
Nothing. Blessedly, nothing.
Her heart soared, then plummeted. Angeline was gone—taken, but by what?
Bree remembered the look on the girl’s face when the window had opened. She’d been thrilled. She’d recognized this...thing, somehow. She’d gone happily into its arms, only protesting when she couldn’t retrieve her scroll.
“Wake up,” she told herself. Then she said it again, then a hundred more times. After all, there was nothing else to say. “Wake up!”
This wasn’t real. None of this was real. She’d wake up in a minute and Heathcliff would be knocking on the door, ready to apologize for not believing her. Angeline would be tucked against her, spoon-style. The room would be cold, but the fire could be stoked in no time.
Any minute now, the stinging in her face and hands would fade. The blood on her fingers would disappear. She wiped her sleeve beneath her chin to soak up the tears tickling her there, but it came away bloody. Any minute, the cream sweater would be white again.
But the room just got colder and colder. Nothing covered the window. The fire gave up the fight. The darkness deepened around the cloud of her breath. She couldn’t quite find the energy to wrap up in the blankets. She couldn’t find a reason to care.
Heathcliff would be back. She needed to wake up before he found her this way.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Heathcliff returned alone. By the time he and Charlie had reached the inn, the old man was gone. Tracks had led out of town, away from the castle road, but Heathcliff had hurried home all the same. Darkness was gathering fast on another moonless night and he couldn’t wait to get back to that room, to unlock that door one last time.
He urged Macbeth around the East side of the castle to get a glimpse of the chamber window as he made his way to the barn. As he turned the corner, however, there was no warm orange glow to the shutters as he’d expected. At first, he worried he’d not left enough wood and Brianna might be cursing him for leaving her in short supply yet again, but as his vision cleared, he noticed the odd angle of one shutter against the stone, the broken frame of the window, and then the fact that there was no glass in the window at all.
A great ball of fear struck him in the chest.
“No!” His gaze dropped to the snow piled deep directly below the chaos. Small shards of glass stabbed into the snow’s crust. He jumped from the horse’s back and looked closely. No blood. No disturbance to the snow other than a crusty edge formed by the wind.
Why? Why would she have need to break the window? His thoughts ran wild as he ran to the rear door of the kitchen.
Good lord, might she be gone? Might the old man have caused the distraction at the pub so that he might come for the child?
He needed light.
“Brianna!” His bellow echoed through the high stone ceiling. “Brianna!”
Embers remained in the kitchen’s fire, so he stuck in a torch kept for emergencies. It immediately flared to life and he ran.
“Brianna! Angeline!”
No signs of snow or dirt on the stairs. Nothing.
His harsh breath grated against his ears while he strained to hear something from above.
Long strides later, he reached the door, both anxious and afraid to open it. He turned the handle, prepared for anything. But the door was locked.
He saw the old ring hanging in the stone wall and hung the torch there. Then he pulled the key from his pants pocket. Brianne hadn’t realized she’d dropped it days before, thankfully, so he hadn’t needed to wrest it from her in order to lock the
m in.
For all the good it did.
He turned the lock and pushed the door wide. When no one attacked him, he retrieved the torch and walked inside.
There was nothing left of the fire. The chill air poured through the broken window. He held the torch high and turned about. There, by the wall. Brianna!
Relief washed the pain from his chest and he took a deep breath.
“Brianna. I’m here. ‘Tis alright now.”
She sat hunched with her arms around her knees, her hair a mess, the sleeve of her once white sweater streaked with something dark. She rocked forward and back. Near frozen, poor thing. But that dark stain?
A fire? Had there been a fire? If so, they would have need to break the window! And where was Angeline?
“Brianna, love.” He would go to her as soon as he knew the child was safe. “Where is Angeline?” He held the torch toward the window. Its light fell on the bed. There was nothing there but the wee scroll. The doll lay forgotten before the hearth. There was wood aplenty.
“Angeline?”
There was no answer.
The bed! The last time Brianna expected trouble, she’d hidden the lassie beneath the bed. He grabbed the edge of it and lifted.
“Are ye under there, cherub?”
But the floor was bare.
Brianna whispered. He understood none of it.
Surely she wouldn’t have let Angeline grow cold out of spite for being locked in the room. He was mad to have even thought it. She was likely using her body to keep the child warm. God’s teeth, but he should have never locked them away.
“Brianna? Tell me what goes on here. Are ye still angry with me? For certain, you did not think to punish me by allowing yerself to freeze,” he said lightly.
He walked to her then. He had to get them into another room before he started a fire. He touched her shoulder and urged her to turn into the light. She resisted, but he could tell she had no child in her arms.
“Cherub?” He walked to the bed again and felt the length and breadth of it expecting the lass was there, sleeping too deeply for his voice alone to rouse her, a bump too shallow for him to see beneath the heavy blankets.
