An Outlaw's Word

by Aileen Adams

  “Who would be foolish enough to leave ye alone?” the man asked, his sour breath hot in her ear. “All on yer own, and with yer wrists bound, at that. Am I not the first to take you? Shall I be stealing ye from another man, then?”

  “You shan’t.” Another voice.

  Suddenly, a hot, wet substance covered her shoulder, her arm, her chest. She looked down at it and realized in horror that it was blood. But not hers.

  It belonged to the man who held her.

  He released her, falling to the ground with her captor’s dirk through his neck. Blood flowed freely from the wound, staining the moss, soaking into the loamy soil.

  “Are ye all right?” Her captor-turned-hero grasped her shoulders, looking her in the eye. “Are ye?”

  “I…” She swooned, her eyelids fluttering rapidly, the world going gray until an almost violent shake of her shoulders brought everything back.

  “Stay with me,” he ordered. “We need to get him further away from the road, then find a new place to make camp for the night. I cannot have the both of ye slowing me. Understand?”

  She nodded, the shock of what had only just taken place rendering her mute.

  A man who had only just been alive, his hands on her body, his breath in her ear, was now dead. And his blood soaked into her garment, soaked through until she felt its wet warmth on her skin.

  There was no time to think about it. There might never be a time when the memory of what had just taken place would not send shudders of revulsion through her.

  “Take his feet.”

  She held out her hands, still bound. “I cannot.”

  He grunted, shaking his head, but untied her just the same. She shook her hands out, rubbing her chafed skin, wincing as the blood began flowing through her numb fingers.

  Blood. Like the blood which soaked into her kirtle…

  “Come, now. His feet.” There was no denying him when he barked at her that way. It was easier to turn her thoughts away from horror and turn her attention to following orders. A relief, really.

  She did as she was told and helped carry her attacker deeper into the woods, where they covered him with fallen branches and leaves. It was difficult work, especially when she had been on the verge of collapse only minutes earlier, but the fear of discovery gave her the strength she needed.

  She looked up at her captor when they finished. “What is your name?”

  He looked at her, his face slack with surprise. “Quinn.”

  “Thank you, Quinn. He was going to…”

  “Ye need not tell me what he was, going to do,” Quinn was quick to assure her. “And as I said before, I must protect ye if I expect to earn a reward for ye.”

  Her heart sank. She’d made a mistake in thinking he’d done what he did out of goodness. He merely wished to keep her alive, and in his possession long enough to collect his ransom.

  “Come. We must find another place to spend the night.” They returned to the spot where the killing had taken place, where Quinn had dropped the rabbits which he’d been bringing back to her.

  Rabbits which he’d hit over the head with the limb he’d found.

  That was all it took to make the darkness close around her.

  11

  “Ye cannot truly have done this,” Quinn groaned, nudging Ysmaine with his toe. “Lass. Wake up. Wake up.”

  She would not. She had fainted, both the strain and the exhaustion must have been too much for her to bear.

  He lifted her with a sigh, testing her weight in his arms. She was little heavier than a feather, in spite of her solid frame.

  After draping her over the back of her horse, he mounted his own and started off.

  The man deserved it. There was no question. Anyone willing to do what he’d had in mind deserved to die, no matter how pitifully. Slinking through the woods, taking advantage of a defenseless woman.

  Quinn winced at how similar his own situation was. He was holding a woman captive, one who he’d wanted to steal from at first. And it wasn’t as though he hadn’t looked at her with the eyes of a man who hungered for a lass’s touch.

  Though he would not have forced himself on her. Men did not behave that way. He certainly never had.

  Someone would have put the wretch out of his misery, even if that someone had not been Quinn. And every day in which the man had breathed air might have meant pain or death for anyone he’d encountered. In the end, Quinn might have done a good deed by sparing those unseen victims.

  He had spared Ysmaine, at least.

  She was still soundly unconscious, still hanging limply over the saddle. She’d kept her head about her when he’d needed her to.

  In fact, she had not behaved as he would have imagined a woman in her situation would have done. She had not lost her head, had not screamed overmuch. She asked too many questions, but they were intelligent questions.

  She had hardly complained.

  And even with the dead man’s blood fresh on her garment, she had aided in concealing him from discovery. She might have run away then, once her hands were no longer tied.

  Instead, she had done as he’d commanded without shedding a tear.

  Another clearing, this one further from the road than the first, and nearer a stream. This time, he led the horses straight to water first before tying them off. Then, he built a fire and skinned the rabbits.

  All the while, she was within his line of sight. He would not leave her alone again.

  When the rabbits were impaled on a long branch, roasting on the fire, he roused her from where he’d left her leaning against a gnarled, old birch. “Ysmaine. It will soon be time to eat.”

  She did not stir, had not stirred since the moment her eyes closed, in fact. He frowned, suddenly concerned. Was she so deep in shock and exhaustion that she would not awaken even to the scent of roasted rabbit which was now spreading through the clearing.

  Crouching, he studied her placid face. Smooth, unlined, unmarked. Perfect, in fact.

  Her breathing was soft, steady. She was alive, at least.

  He touched her cheek. She was still warm. “Ysmaine.” He tapped her face. “Wake up.”

  She stirred, but nothing more. Her eyes remained closed. He sat back on his heels, at a loss.

  As before, the trickling of the stream worked its way into his attention. He knew what he had to do.

  Though she would not like it.

  “I’m sorry for this, truly, I am,” he grunted as he lifted her. It was a short walk to the stream, which was rather wide and deep enough to serve his purposes.

  “If ye didn’t hate me before, lass…” He chuckled as he stepped into the stream and crouched down to lay her in the water.

  Her body went rigid before her limbs began flailing in all directions. “What? What is this?” she screamed, splashing them both in her struggle.

  He stood, still holding her in spite of the way she thrashed. “I needed to wake ye,” he explained.

  “Are you out of your mind?” she demanded, still kicking. “You might have killed me!”

  “I doubt ye would have drowned in that slight bit of water,” he snickered. “And ye needed a bit of washing up, at that.”

  He stood her upright and coughed into his fist to conceal his laughter. She dripped from her hair to the hem of her kirtle. “I ought to slap your face for this,” she hissed, wringing out her braid.

  “Aye, slap the face of the man who saved ye from…” He gestured behind him, as though to indicate the man whose body they’d buried.

  She went silent. In fact, she seemed to shrink a bit as the fight left her and the plain truth of her situation became clear. She looked down at the bloodstained kirtle. “This could use more washing, at that,” she whispered, pulling the soaked cloth from her skin.

  “Ye can wash it here, now, and wear a tunic of mine until it dries,” he offered. “That and a blanket from the horses might serve.”

  “You trust me to do that? Without being tied to you?”

&nbs
p; He grimaced. “I’m trying to do ye a kindness, lass. Ye need not remind me that it may not be in my best interest to do so.”

  She blushed and turned her face away. “Thank you. Yes. Please. I need to get this blood off of my kirtle. And myself.”

  “I will give ye your privacy, though do not stop speaking as ye work,” he added, turning his back. “I want to know where ye are at all times. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  The rustle of cloth as she removed the garment. He gritted his teeth against the images this called to mind. Oh, how he wanted to look behind him, to see what he had only been able to imagine up to then.

  It had been far too long since he’d had a woman. Had he known he would be in close quarters with a lass, and one as lovely as Ysmaine, he might have purchased the time of a woman beforehand in order to work out his desires.

  Though he was not a liar, least of all to himself. He could not pretend he would not have wanted her just the same.

  “Did he harm ye?” he asked. “I do not remember asking ye that before.”

  “Nor do I,” she confessed. “I do not believe either of us was thinking clearly then.”

  “Are ye well, then?”

  “Yes. I believe so.” There was an edge to her voice, however. Plain enough that he was not certain whether he could believe her.

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes. I am.” She sounded stronger. “You did not give him much time, did you? I was still there, after all, and still bound.”

  “He would have left ye that way. Bound, I mean.”

  She let out a cross between a groan and a whimper. He wanted to turn but could not. “I’m sorry, lass. I shouldn’t have said it.”

  “It matters not. He’s dead.” Splashing, and plenty of it.

  “Is the blood coming out?” he asked.

  “As best it can. I would rather burn the thing than wear it again, but I have nothing else to wear. Because…”

  “Because I wouldn’t allow ye to bring your belongings with us. I know.”

  “I only thought it bore repeating.”

  “I do not need to be reminded.”

  “Just the same.” More splashing. “Do you have any soap? The smallest bit would do.”

  “I do not carry it with me, lass.”

  “How do you wash blood away from your clothing and skin without it?”

  “Do ye think I’m in the habit of covering myself in blood?” He turned his head to the side, just enough to catch the briefest hint of her in the corner of his eye. “Is that what ye believe?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she muttered. “You seemed very skilled at killing, is all. You did it very quickly.”

  “I was in the army, if ye remember. We were trained to kill quickly. The other fellow will not give ye time to make your peace with God before ye kill him. He’ll kill ye first, no question about it.”

  She was quiet for a time, though the splashing behind him did not cease.

  “I’m glad you know how to do such things quickly,” she decided. “And I’m finished washing. Can I have your tunic, please?”

  Later, she joined him by the fire. Even wrapped in a horse blanket, she was lovely. Her hair was wet, loose of its braid, hanging halfway down her back in glistening curls. He told himself not to look, but he could not help but spy her bare calves and ankles.

  “The rabbit is ready,” he said, willing himself to pay attention to the meat rather than other hungers.

  “I did not even know you’d skinned and prepared the rabbits,” she admitted, sitting on a stump near where he crouched in front of the flames. “I missed everything.”

  “Ye did. It’s no wonder I dunked ye into the stream, is it?”

  She shook her head but remained silent as he handed her one of the rabbits on a smaller stick, that she might handle it without burning herself.

  “I draped your garments over that branch,” he said, nodding in the direction of her drying kirtle.

  “Thank you. It was… difficult to wear the man’s blood.”

  “I know. I remember all too well that feeling.”

  They sat in silence, both of them eating, both of them wrapped in concerns of their own.

  12

  It was a relief to wear a clean kirtle again. To be clean. Free of the blood of another.

  Quinn left her on her own at the stream’s edge the morning after that first night by the fire, when she had quickly fallen into a deep slumber once her appetite had been sated.

  He was beginning to trust her. She wanted so badly to run, but the time had not yet arrived to make an escape. She needed to earn more of his trust, first. To lull him further, so that he would not be watching or listening for her at all.

  When she was alone, she could check the wound on her thigh.

  He’d done it. The man Quinn had killed. With the dirk he’d been holding as he touched her. When Quinn had speared the man’s neck with his dirk, the man had jerked in response. He had sliced through her kirtle and into her leg.

  It looked like any ordinary wound, like the wounds she had earned as a child while playing in the woods or by the river. It had stopped bleeding in the night, thank the gods, though it was still tender and would require care when she rode.

  “Ysmaine?” he called out from where he’d been working on covering what was left of the fire.

  “I am still here,” she called back with a roll of her eyes. She finished braiding her hair before pulling on her stockings and shoes, then returned to the clearing.

  He helped her onto her horse. She winced, and he made a sympathetic noise. “The riding is a bit much for ye, is it not? You’re not accustomed to it.”

  “Yes. A bit much.” As long as he didn’t know about the wound she’d been inflicted. Why was it so important to keep it from him? She couldn’t say. All she knew was that he couldn’t think her weak.

  He mounted his horse. She stared at him.

  He had not tied her hands.

  “You’ll be wondering why I haven’t tied ye,” he observed, raising an eyebrow. He was rather handsome, she thought again, and wished she hadn’t.

  “I had hoped you had forgotten all about it.”

  He favored her with a smile, but a faint one. “I think it is past time for us to come to an understanding. I only ask that ye listen and stay still while ye do.”

  “I will.”

  He nodded. “All right, then. We rode throughout the first night and throughout yesterday, did we not?”

  “We did. It was exhausting.”

  “And yet we covered little ground. Why is that?”

  “Because we were moving so slowly. We weren’t on a real road. Because you could not risk our being found by other riders.”

  “Because…”

  “Because I was tied, your captive, and others may have tried to help.”

  “Aye to all of it. At this rate, we’ll never reach France. We will not even make the next harbor.”

  “What do you think we ought to do, then?”

  He fixed her with a cold stare. “It’s important to ye to get to France, is it not?”

  “Yes. Very.”

  “And it is important to me that I collect the ransom for ye. But if this is to happen, and to happen soon, we must travel along better roads. Faster than we have before. This means I cannot tie ye, as we will attract attention. And I need to trust ye to not scream for help the first time we pass another rider.”

  She nodded slowly, pretending to be thinking this over. There was no thinking needed, of course. She wanted him to trust her, and this was the perfect chance to earn that trust.

  “All right,” she agreed. “I will remain silent as to why we are together, and I will stay with you. You can trust me. I only wish to reach France and settle my business there.”

  He held out a hand for her to shake.

  She took it, squeezed as tight as she could. Met his gaze, held it.

  And so, they started out.

  She held out her
arms to him for help in dismounting. The pain was worse than it had been the day before, along with the stiffness in her arms and legs.

  But she had made it through the day with both hands free, leaving her to control the reins. This was a good thing, even if her palms were terribly chapped and beginning to blister.

  Anything was preferable to the sensation of being unable to control the horse, and at least she could now feel her hands, rather than succumbing to numbness.

  Quinn seemed almost friendly as he built a fire. “Cherbourg, is it?” he asked.

  “Yes. That is where the Marquis lives.” She eased herself to the ground with an audible groan, keenly aware of the pain in her thigh from the wound. Would that she had something with which to ease it; she’d availed herself of healers in the past, but they had not yet passed through a village.

  “We would most likely find a ship in Burghead, on Moray Firth,” he decided, feeding the fire with small twigs to help it grow, unaware of her pain. “I’m not overfamiliar with France or Cherbourg, but if we are going to find a ship to take us there, Burghead would be the closest harbor.”

  “You would know more of these things than I would,” she shrugged. “Until now, I had never traveled further than Inverness.”

  “Truly?”

  “Why would I?” she asked. “I had no need to. As a young girl, I lived with my parents. Once they were… gone… I accepted tutoring and governess positions whenever I could, but they were always near Fraser land. It is not easy for a woman with no protection to stray far from home. At least when I was within my clan, I knew I would be protected if there was a need for it.”

  “What possessed ye to leave that protection, then?”

  “A letter from the Marquis.” She would not explain why she was on her way to France. He did not need to know, just as he clearly did not think she should know why he behaved as he did.

  It had puzzled her throughout the day, ever since their encounter with the brute in the clearing, in fact.

  The man Quinn had killed was an entirely different type of man. He’d seemed to enjoy her fear, had found pleasure in it. It was a game for him.