by Sophia James
The ladders further up surprised him, built from stone and from sea-smoothed wood, circling up into the cliff, the rope they sported as handles strong and knotted. For purchase.
Waving his men on, he took the lead, his anger at the situation he now found himself in fuelling his pace. Huntworth and Glencoe were bumbling fools and king’s men, yet they had almost managed to breach the keep at Ceann Gronna. He could afford to tarry no longer for if they got to Isobel Dalceann first...?
No, he would not think like that.
The water below them surged into the rock face, the remnants of spray hurling upwards, soaking their mail and tabards.
Another hundred yards. He could hear the shouts of battle from here, the triumphant cries of force quelling what little was left of the resistance of strong walls. His feet raced across the remaining distance and he used the strength of his body to break down the flimsy gate guarding Ceann Gronna to the south.
And then they were in, running along the stone cellars and the bottle pantries before rising up to the service passages and the kitchen beside the Great Hall.
They dealt with resistance as they went, easily and quickly, the astonished faces of the Dalceann men holding no weight against them.
Already he had caught a glimpse of those wearing the colours of Glencoe on the battlements above through the stained-glass windows. His heartbeat faltered in an unexpected panic.
God. Where the hell was she? A group of serving maids pressed together beneath the high table, their faces blotched red in fear, and he signalled to his men to leave them be.
Beyond the hall he heard raised voices and the running of feet. The private chambers of Ceann Gronna were dressed in large tapestries, the unicorns and magical beasts portrayed behind chests of oak and brass. Windows let in the light through narrow lattices. Isobel’s own room he recognised from the last time he had been here, more frugal than the others, two painted linen hangings keeping draughts at bay.
Nowhere. She was nowhere to be seen, though a woman’s shout had him turning and there she was, between Andrew and Ian, back to the wall as she beat off a group of mailed enemy streaming in from the belfry.
No lightweight defence, either, her blade dancing in the slanted sunlight coming from a wide door, catching her hair, which swirled in effort, a raven-black curtain of silk shot through with the darkest of red. A pain of want sliced through hesitation, an easy pathway against all the reasons of why he should just turn and leave her here to the destiny of her rebellion. The breath he took congealed into stillness, every sinew in his body understanding that he needed to take care, for even the slightest of mistakes would consign her to the afterworld, the beleaguered standards of Dalceann spilling through careless hands into death. He saw her sword dip and the muscles of her arm slacken, her neck bare and exposed.
‘Nooooo.’ Shaking his head, he let her gaze touch his, eyes reddened from fear or exhaustion, he knew not which, a mark of charcoal curled on to her forehead in a stripe.
He knew the instant she registered that it was him beneath the helmet, for her pupils widened, bitter anger and unslaked rage threaded with another emotion.
Disbelief.
Her fighting hand was awash with thickened blood, her mail torn above the elbow and the skin exposed, the remnants of a thin white kirtle soaked in red.
She wore no gauntlets or helmet, no protection to ward off danger. The arrogance of such actions winded him with fury.
* * *
The stone behind was cold and smooth—her last tactile memory, perhaps, before she left this world for the next one.
Her arm ached, too, the wash of red making it harder to hold her sword; she knew she should never have removed the gauntlets.
They had broken through and flooded into the castle just as she had sat down for a rest. She had not had the time to gather her gloves or headgear, but had been caught in the flight downstairs to the solar where she now fought back against the wall and as many of the enemy that could fit into the small round room before her.
A mistake. Better to have fled for the passages to the sea and taken her chance that way, water allowing one a death that she had heard was gentle.
She had meant to do it such.
But here they would not take her alive, either, the heavy points of steel slicing through the air with a deft quickness. If she should relax her guard and tip her throat up to the blade...
‘Nooo.’
A keening cry of fury rent the air around her, turning the hairs on her arms up into panic as her eyes caught sight of the only one she had thought never to see again.
Marc!
Here.
In the mail of King David, sword tipped red.
A traitor and a betrayer; a man who would leave the keep of Ceann Gronna with secrets in his head to return a brace of months later and use them against those who had only been kind.
A payment of death for the gift of life. She could smell the sea spray on him as he jostled closer, his eyes cold with the knowledge of retribution and deceit. Drawing her sword up, she tried to use it on him, but Andrew got there first, his blade swinging through the air to be met by a parry and a feint.
He didn’t stand a chance. It was like watching a child against a war-toughened knight, the sun catching silver as Marc used the blunt end of his scabbard and rammed it down across Andrew’s head. He might have lived, she thought, had not the soldier behind finished the job, his blade ending that which Marc had begun.
She screamed his name even as his blood seeped on to the flagstones of the inner solar, small streams of it tracing along the dents of mortar to pool into red against the wall.
The heart of her sorrow clawed into grief and horror and then acceptance as Marc again lifted his blade.
This time it was for her.
She did not even try to fight him or place any resistance against such an ending. It was over. The king had won.
Then everything slowed: the heavy pull as she was knocked back behind Marc the Betrayer, the head of a soldier she did not know rolling like a ball over and over and over.
Nothing made sense.
Ian was dead, for she had seen him fall, but others sent by David lay there, too, entwined together under the blade of the man whose silver coin she carried around her neck.
His own private army, she thought, as she tried to reconcile why she was still alive and all the rest were dead, save the soldiers she had seen him arrive with. A double crossing, perhaps, with the thought of profit at stake and a hidden cache of gold for the taking?
There was silence save for the heavy breathing of men in chain mail who stood to listen to the battering ram on the front gate, sweat running down their faces.
Then more of David’s soldiers, as the oaken doors to the Great Hall were forced apart and a sea of burgundy and gold streamed into Ceann Gronna unhindered.
* * *
‘She is mine. I claim her.’ Marc had his knife in hand as he raised it in intent, just as he had done once in the forest above Kirkcaldy.
No protection in this, though. All she could feel was the hatred.
When she turned to fight him he ripped the bib of her mail upwards, fingers clamped about the coin at her throat as though he had known it to be there, the chain hanging from either side of his palm as he raised it in the air, silver hidden in his grasp.
‘The Dalceann witch is mine. I claim her in the name of David and in the name of the Underlord.’
A cheer went up, loud and resounding, and a tunnel of darkness came towards her as Marc the Betrayer pressed down against the exposed side of her neck with his war-hardened fingers.
* * *
She was unconscious, for at least the time it would take to get her from the solar to the room he had used last time he was here. Once there, he laid her on the bed, then opened the hidden safe, giving his followers the gold to take to the room he would use. ‘Guard it well,’ he said. ‘Some of you remain in the corridor to guard this room, too.’ They nodded in
acquiescence.
He closed the door behind them, allowing the fall of heavy slats across pinioned hardwood to secure the entrance.
His breathing was rough and he was sweating, the drops running into his eyes with their stinging saltiness.
Thank God. A little sanctuary. A small window of time before the questions came. He would need to be ready and Isobel Dalceann would need to hate him if this was to work. No soft redress or whispered explanation. Her life hung in the balance; even the slightest perception of complicity would kill her and his men. His actions here and in the solar had to look like a hostage taken in the heat of battle under the direct orders of a king.
Shaking her awake, he slapped the cheek without the scar and let her go when she exploded into fury.
She was strong, he would give her that as she went for him, talons out and teeth bared.
‘You...you...bastard.’
Her breath barely allowed her the saying of it and she lunged again as he moved away, holding out his hand in a small warning.
‘Stay back.’
‘Why?’ Her voice broke as she continued. ‘Because you want to kill me, too? Or because you would bed me?’ She screamed the last words, her breasts beneath the heavy mail heaving in wrath.
‘I draw the line at raping women,’ he returned and liked the way she drew herself up at that. A fighting Isobel would be so much easier to protect than a frightened one.
‘I highly doubt that you have the morals to draw a line on anything.’ She snarled the reply.
‘You might be surprised, Lady Dalceann, at just what I do hold true.’
The knife was out before he had a chance to see it, whistling past his ear with all the expertise of one well trained in its use. An inch to the left and he would have been dead. In pure instinct he knocked her throwing arm hard and she fell roughly against the stool by the window, catching her head against the stone overhang.
‘I hate you.’ Not even anger was left in the flatness of her voice.
This time she stayed down.
‘Good.’ He turned to the door, collecting her knife as he went, the fury in him demanding a release from the room that held so much in deceit and so little in truth.
Outside he turned the heavy key and pocketed it, leaving eight of his men on guard in the corridor.
‘Let nobody in or out,’ he instructed. ‘I shall be back in less than an hour.’
Striding away, he found a small overhang on the battlements hidden from any view and leant back against the solid and limed Ceann Gronna stone. The wind off the Firth was in his face, fresh and exhilarating, and he tipped up his chin to feel it better.
The coin she had worn around her throat was wrapped into the flesh of his palm, as warm as it had been when he had taken it from her, and he opened his fingers to look.
She had made an ornament of it and threaded it on to plaited silver. His coin. His memory? A thousand thoughts piled in upon the first one. Why the hell would she be wearing such a reminder of him?
Lifting his other hand, he slammed it hard against the stone until tears ran into his eyes. Andrew was dead and Ian and a number of other faces he remembered from the clearing in the forest. He could not have saved them all and saved her as well, but she would never understand such a thing.
The acrid smell of smoke covered everything.
Chapter Eight
The shaking surprised her, for she seldom allowed emotion to rule her the way it was doing now. It ran in tremors from her teeth to her fingers and down into her stomach and legs. No control over any of it.
Clutching at the stool, she raised herself with
her good arm, walking to her bed and sitting down. Her head ached and where she had bitten through her bottom lip the swelling throbbed as she tasted blood.
What was happening outside? Had they killed everyone? Would they bury Andrew?
Anguish made her swallow, the bile of memory bitter in her mouth.
Betrayed and forsaken, the future hewn out before her in uncertainty. She had heard that they hanged people like her, traitors to a king, stretched across the public places and disembowelled alive.
Her fingers went of their own accord to the silver coin at her throat before she stopped them. The trinket was as lost as her dreams, stupid dreams of love, family and accord. Once she had imagined Marc would come back riding through the mist to save her, and now...?
He was the king’s commander brought to Ceann Gronna because of his knowledge of the place. Fourteen days and the keep was gone. He would pay for such a treachery, she swore that he would.
How?
The wheels of her mind turned quickly, but as another thought struck her she moved to open the stone that concealed her safe.
The gold had been taken!
It was Marc’s doing, she was sure of it, the lure of treasure a heady reward for sacking the Dalceann keep.
Traitorous and greedy! The disappointment that flowered under anger was enough to make her throw the stool against the wall, shattering a ewer in the process. The fragments of tiny shards littered the floor and she liked the sound of crushed pottery beneath her boots as she walked across them.
* * *
He returned just as dusk was falling, the tasks of war after victory taking longer than he had thought they would.
He had replaced the coin that he had taken from her neck with a tooth he had found in the back room of a little-known goldsmith, after scouring Edinburgh. It was exactly the sort that would invoke the old magic of a sorceress, the clasp engraved in some ancient language and the sheen of it yellowed. Just another protection, a further proof. He would unveil it when he needed to. In the courts of Philip he had been long tutored in the art of showmanship and its uses, and superstitions were easily manoeuvred.
She was asleep when he entered, her chain mail bundled at the bottom of her bed, and there were pieces of blue pottery vase all over the floor. He nudged as many as he could beneath the bed as he walked and shook her awake.
Her dark eyes opened instantly, hooded in hatred. He lit no reed and the fireplace in the chamber was empty, leaving the room so cold he could see his breath.
Hell. The heart of all this was eating at him with its wrongness, but he made himself reach into his jacket and pull out the rope.
She shot upwards at the sight of it but it was far too late. He had the bindings around her wrist before she could even struggle and with little effort turned her over to fasten them behind her back.
She lay still then, panting. He felt his hands on the outline of her bottom.
‘You are my captive, Lady Dalceann, and the king’s enemy. One wrong move and...’
I cannot save you. He had almost said it. The idea of such a mistake made him stiffen.
‘And I will die.’ She finished the words herself, her tongue licking away the dryness from her lips. The long line of her neck was pale in the oncoming evening, the pulse of blood beating fast against skin. Placing one finger against the warmth, he listened. Too hot and too rapid. His glance took in the wound on her arm. Untended for how many hours?
Not quite as easy as he had hoped, then, as he tore back the sleeve and applied a salve he always kept on him.
Rising, he removed his surcoat and pulled off his tunic, leaving only the hose. He saw in her eyes
exactly what she thought he might do to her next. So easy to play the villain when a woman looked as this one did. The scar on her damaged cheek was raised and her lashes were so long and thick the shadows of them almost met it.
‘I can tie you to the bed, too, if that is what is required,’ he warned.
Imagining her shackled thus, but in much more pleasant and sensual surroundings, his cock rose and he knew she had seen the movement when she began to kick.
‘No.’ The word was so fearful he swore beneath his breath. If his men were to burst through the door and find her like this, he doubted that he would be able to moderate their reactions, for Isobel Dalceann was so very beautiful.
‘Keep still.’
The power of her body angered him and he threw a blanket that lay on the chest across her, covering temptation.
She was a witch even bound and hurt. Every story he had ever heard of her had been true.
* * *
He would rape her tonight, in the dark. The very thought of it made Isobel sick. Already he had removed his clothes, the tight engorgement in his hose letting her understand the way his thoughts had wandered.
She tugged at her bindings under the cover, a useless pursuit as the struggle tightened the ropes instead of loosening them. She imagined him removing her lad’s pants and entering her from behind, his visage unseen, breaking the last of any trust left between them.
Why had she ever dreamt of him, hoping that he might come with an army to save her? This betrayal made everything worse.
Moderating her breathing so that he would not realise how scared she was, she watched as he laid a tapestry ripped from the wall on the floor next to the door. The yellow threads of the unicorn’s eyes met hers and she remembered stitching the piece when she had been younger, before the war arrived at Ceann Gronna.
What did he mean to do with it now? She saw he placed his knife and sword beside the fabric. Both weapons had been cleaned and burnished with oil for protection, each blade razor sharp. Beside them lay another bolt of rope, neatly turned and looped, stronger even than the cords around her wrists.
Folding his tunic into a square, he simply lay down, arms behind his head as a pillow and eyes closed against the room. His body in the dim light was muscle honed and bronzed, the sizeable scar she had noticed before at Ceann Gronna when he was ill running up the left side of his ribs.
