by Eliza Knight
“Then ’haps that’s what forced her away. Ye said naught.”
Beiste ground his teeth, not wanting to get into an argument with the lad, and feeling the need to rage all the same. “How could saying naught have made her leave?”
“Ye know nothing about women.” Erik shook his head and if Beiste hadn’t been on the edge of losing his temper, he might have laughed at how the roles seemed to be reversed.
But he was at the very precipice of madness and rage. Hands fisted at his side, he bellowed a war cry, punched the wattle and daub wall of the croft, leaving a massive dent, and let out a string of curses.
Who knew that the simple act of finding her gone would leave him so bereft? So angry? So lost…
Beiste grabbed up a bucket, flinging it over a hundred feet, then kicked a stone, ready to punch anyone who got in his way.
“My laird.” Gunnar’s stern voice was a wake-up call and Beiste glanced up to see his second-in-command staring him down. “We’ll find her.”
Beiste nodded, apologizing to the crofter whose house he’d just damaged, promising to see if repaired.
Only Gunnar knew the extent of his pain. Not that he’d ever told him, but the man had been around long enough to figure it out.
Another person he…cared about had gone missing. Beiste couldn’t bring himself to say how he really felt, for he’d only just realized it with the gut-wrenching that had torn through him. He was utterly, madly, deeply in love with Elle Cam’béal and she’d left him. Hadn’t believed in him.
“Stubborn wench,” Beiste growled.
Erik grunted. “Now ye’re starting to understand.”
Gunnar placed a firm grip on Beiste’s shoulder when he lurched forward to grapple the young laird.
“Best be keeping your opinions to yourself, lad,” Gunnar warned Erik.
Erik crossed his thin arms over his narrow chest. A lad, who had several years before he’d grow into a man. “I’m coming with ye.”
“Like hell,” Beiste growled. “I’ve searched half the damned countryside looking for ye. Ye’re going to stay right here and I’ll lock ye up if I have to.”
Erik narrowed his eyes, seemed on the brink of letting out a retort that would have Beiste boxing his ears, but then held his tongue.
“All right. But if ye dinna bring her back, then ye’re going to have me to deal with.”
Beiste raised his brow and the boy stood taller.
“I might only be a lad now, but one day I’ll be a man, Beiste MacDougall, and I’ve got the blood of leaders running through my veins.”
Beiste let out a fierce growl. “Ye’ll become the next Irish if ye keep it up.”
Erik knew what that meant, knew that Padrig Cam’béal had been at the mercy of the old Laird MacDougall. And while his eyes widened for a fraction of a second, then he was smiling.
“An honor. But one day, ye’ll see me as much more than that. I swear it.” And then he turned on his heel and headed back toward the castle like he owned the place.
Surprisingly, most of Beiste’s anger dissipated. Staring after the small form, head held high, Beiste felt a swell of pride.
Chapter Eight
Elle ran until her lungs were about to burst. She doubled over in the dark forest, hands on her knees, gasping for air. A good hour, or more, had passed with her sprinting as though the ghost of, well, perhaps Bjork himself, were on her tail. Scary thing was, she knew him to be alive and most likely hunting her now.
He’d not stop until he had her. He’d made that clear when he stormed Castle Gloom and then again when the men who’d come for her at Dunstaffnage had shouted for her return.
Payment for a favor long since erased by the past.
Revenge for what he thought had been stolen from him.
All of it utter nonsense.
Elle owed Bjork nothing. Until he’d forced his way into her life some few years ago, she’d only ever heard stories about him. Horror stories, but stories all the same. Bjork believed himself to be the earl of their family’s lands in Norway. The one who was to be followed, but mother’s cousin had taken the title from him in a single battle. As payment for his loss, Bjork had demanded that her mother marry him, but she’d refused, sneaking off with the men in a raid, which landed her in Ireland where she’d met Padrig Cam’béal, and thought to strengthen their alliance with Ireland. Bjork had been fighting to get her mother back ever since, constantly raiding—until he’d seen Elle as a girl of perhaps fifteen. Then he’d decided her mother was no longer his prize, but she herself.
Throughout the years, her mother had always assured her he was a long way away. Oh, how wrong she’d been. The man would stop at nothing. Decades of losing had not stopped him. And now, she was certain, he could taste his victory.
Elle closed her eyes a moment, listening to the sounds of the forest, and hoping to catch just the slightest hint of a trickle of water. Her mouth was parched, body covered in slick sweat despite the autumn temperatures. Dizziness licked at the edges of her body. She flexed her hands, having fisted them tightly the entire way. They were tingly, nearly numb. And then she heard it. A slight trickling sound. With one last deep breath, she jogged toward the sound of the burn. She pulled the sword from her back, kneeling before the rushing water to dip her hands in its cool depths. She drank greedily, then scooped up water to splash over her neck and face.
Elle was tired. But she had to keep going. Had to find the bastard. Had to save her brother.
And not be captured by anyone else in the process. That wouldn’t do. That would defeat her entire purpose.
“Well…if I believed in ghosts, I might have said ye were one.”
Elle startled, jumping to her feet. Standing behind her was Bjork, an army of men behind him. He looked much the same. Savage. His hair was sandy in color streaked with gray. Scars marred his cheeks, meeting with the wrinkles of his eyes. His beard was long and woven into a braid that reached near to his chest. His clothes were thick leather, wool and furs, and blood streaked. The sun glinted off his weapons from head to toe. The man was a nightmare. Fierce and evil in his appearance as he was on the inside. She wouldn’t be surprised to see that when he smiled, blood from his latest victim dripped from his teeth.
Elle squared her shoulders, willing the trembling of her hands, the knocking of her knees, to quell. She held her head high. “So, ye found me.”
“How could I not? Ye crashed through the forest like a lame bull.” His grin widened and he opened his arms wide. “A bull to be sacrificed, and I the altar.”
Elle worked hard to return his smile, as though she didn’t care about his words or the threat that laced them. “Ye’re too generous.”
He grunted. “I am never generous.”
And didn’t she know it. “Release my brother. I will surrender myself to ye under those terms.”
Confusion flashed on Bjork’s face for a fraction of a second. “Your brother?”
“Erik. Release him. Dinna be coy. I know ye have him.”
At this, Bjork raised a brow. “I didna even know ye had a brother. Family news doesn’t travel fast.” He stepped closer to her. “Tell me about this brother.”
Elle felt her chest tighten. Her vision became blurred. She was tempted to accuse him of lying, but the steel in his eyes, the firmness of his words…she knew in her heart he was telling the truth. Still, she raised the sword, pointing the tip toward him.
Bjork raised his brow and chuckled. “As I see it, I’ve an army and ye’ve none. Even if ye swiped at me with that sword, ye’d not win. Ye’re in no place to make any negotiations.”
Elle swallowed. He had a point, but she refused to let him see that he scared her or that she believed he was right.
“Ye dinna scare me, Bjork.”
To that, he laughed all the more, a sound that grated down her spine like the edge of a blade. He slowly walked forward and while she wanted to step back, there was nowhere to go but into the burn. To swim from him. And that was
what she did.
*
Beiste was tearing apart his room—and he knew it was all for naught. The lass had taken the sword, he was certain of it. She’d meet that Viking bastard along the road and he’d not be able to save her.
“Son.” Again that same ghostly voice he’d heard when he was bathing in the sea.
Beiste jerked around, completely in denial as to what he was seeing. His father, well, an apparition that looked like his father, stood right before him. “Ye’re not real.”
Beiste stormed toward the door. He had to leave the castle now or else darkness would fall before he could track her steps.
“Son. Ye must go to her.”
“What do ye think I’m doing?” Beiste snarled at the vision.
“Making a mess,” the ghost said with a shrug and a nonchalant glance around the wrecked chamber.
Beiste’s gut wrenched. He missed his father with a passion and here his mind was playing tricks on him. “Why are ye here? To tell me things I already know? To rub the guilt I feel deeper into my soul?”
“Guilt?”
“Aye.”
“Guilt for what?” His father gave him the same look he often gave him when he wasn’t satisfied with an answer.
“For surviving,” Beiste shouted. “For living when everyone else has died.”
The ghost of his father waved his hand in the air. “Och, but that is the way of things. The lass, she yet lives. For now.”
Beiste narrowed his eyes. If this apparition knew so much, then he was going to demand a few answers. “Why does she care so much about that damned sword?”
“I gave it to the Irish.” His father shrugged as if it were common knowledge. “It belongs to Erik.”
“Erik? Why?”
The ghost looked like he was sighing—if a ghost could breathe. “Erik, is…well, it doesn’t matter. She went to save him.”
“He is here!” Beiste bellowed.
“Hmm. Fate has played ye both a nasty set.”
“What does that have to do with anything? Ye’re wasting my time.” Beiste’s insides clenched. He had another chance to speak to his father and this was how he was using it? Lord, but he needed to tell him how sorry he was for not being there to protect him. “Apologies, Father. I should have been there for ye. Should have saved ye. And now all this. I am frustrated. I am…”
“Scared.”
“Nay!” Bloody hell, warriors didn’t get scared!
“’Tis all right to be scared sometimes, lad. But ye’re a powerful laird. A good leader. A strong fighter. Ye have heart, even if ye’ve tried to keep it buried all these years. Go, save her. Bring back the sword and present it to Erik, just as it was supposed to be.”
None of this made sense. “Tell me the truth or I let them both go off with the Viking.”
The ghost let out a raspy laugh. “Ye’d do no such thing. But I’ll tell ye anyway, even though it is not my place. I have sworn an oath. Telling ye will likely mean I’ll be punished somehow. Erik, he is—”
The room shook a little, the floorboards trembling beneath his boots. And then his father was lifted, writhing, and sucked back through a tunnel not of this world, until there was nothing left of him and the room stopped shaking.
“What the bloody hell?” Beiste ran his hands through his hair, unsure if what he’d just witnessed had been a true phenomenon or if he was breaking down. Going completely mad.
Blast it all. He stormed from the room, back down to the bailey where his men waited. Erik glared at him from the stairs of the keep, staying put as Beiste had ordered him to do.
Beiste leapt onto his horse and, without looking back, ordered his men to gallop through the gates. They were able to easily find Elle’s tracks toward the woods. She’d run with no care for anyone following her, which only increased the sense of dread overcoming him. The lass had to be out of her mind.
Anyone could follow her. Animal, outlaw, Viking…the thought was terrifying.
A short time later, they’d made it to the burn where signs of a struggle marred the dirt. That was where the tracks stopped.
“They’ve crossed the water.” Beiste squinted his eyes, studying the ground across the way. There was no sign of anyone, but that didn’t mean they’d not been there. “We cross.”
They forged into the water, the center growing deeper until the soles of their boots glided over the top. They were lucky that the water had not swelled as much as it normally did with the rainfall they’d had the week before. On the other side, he did, in fact, catch sight of a few tracks, but it appeared that whoever had her—and he was leaning toward Bjork—meant that they were trying to cover their steps.
Well, they could try, but they’d not win.
Chapter Nine
Elle breathed hard from her nose, trying not to gag. A dirty rag had been stuffed into her mouth. Her wrists were bound painfully behind her back, but at least her ankles were free. She sat astride a frightfully large warhorse, at Bjork’s back.
Because of her hands being tied behind her back, another rope had been tied around her waist and the nasty Viking’s, connecting the two of them, entirely too close. He rode hard and her thighs burned from the exertion of trying to hold on to the horse. Her face felt battered from how many times she’d hit it against his back. She had no way to brace herself against the speed and roughness of their ride.
All the while, she kept thinking of Beiste. Of how he would react when he found her missing. Would he be angry? Relieved? Sad? Delighted?
Her heart lurched to think that he might not even care. That he might whisper, good riddance, and never think of her again.
She feared that anything that had grown between them might have only meant something to her. Been in her head.
Och, to think that she’d railed at him, that she’d had the audacity to stare him down and think him a failure when she was the one tied to the back of a horse, her brother nowhere in sight. She’d given herself up to Bjork for no reason. And she’d pay for that foolishness the rest of her days, which she’d determined wouldn’t be many.
This man, who’d killed her family, harmed her people, was now going to take her life. Even if he let her live, she’d be a prisoner. Aye, he wanted to take her to wife, he’d made that perfectly clear when he’d lifted her onto the horse, tying her so tightly to him that her breasts were crushed along the sides of his spine. But, to be his wife, that was a death sentence in itself (as it was, his current wife would be killed so that Elle could replace her, if the woman hadn’t been smart enough to run away already).
Nay, Elle would not live. Either by his hand or her own, she was not long for this earth.
And then she’d give her blood oath to the fairies. Just as they wanted. Perhaps, as they’d planned all along. Perhaps, they’d known her fate and that it wouldn’t matter.
Her eternal life would begin soon. She was determined that it would. She could not live this way. Not with a demonic tormenter.
“I… I need to stop,” she mumbled around the cloth, but her words came out sounding like, “Eh… neee tttttt sawwww.”
No matter, she breathed in deep through her nose and shouted the inaudible words over and over, until Bjork did, finally, call his mount to a halt. But the glower he turned to give her was unmerciful, vicious. He untied her and pushed her off the back of the horse. Elle landed on her arse, a jarring pain shooting up her spine. The men laughed and she crawled to her knees, then her feet, despite the pain, fearing that she’d mess herself if she didn’t find relief soon.
“Go,” Bjork said. “Right there.”
“Naaayy,” she shouted around the gag. She would not debase herself that way. Besides, then he would see she still had a weapon, the dagger strapped to her thigh. She might be completely hopeless and planning her own death, but there was still a tiny chance of hope given that steel pressed to her leg.
Bjork nodded to one of his men, not even bothering to take his own future wife to privacy. What was she expe
cting? He’d likely share her with all his men on their wedding night—if not before. Why would he bother to wait for such a thing? She’d try to find a way to do away with herself before then. Even though she’d promised the old Laird MacDougall she’d never take her own life. She was certain, in this circumstance, he would agree.
Lucky for her, the man who escorted her into the trees to relieve herself, cut through the rope at her wrists. He turned his back, grunting for her to get it done. She was surprised at his decency, but hurried to do her business before he decided to emulate his master’s crudeness.
Her escort muffled a curse just as she finished, grabbed her by the arm and tied her to a tree. “Stay here.”
“What? Where are ye going?” she cried out, wriggling against the ropes.
He jabbed a finger toward her face, his eyes soulless black pools. “Shut your mouth if ye want to live.”
Elle clamped her mouth shut, not at all disillusioned that he wouldn’t take her life.
The Viking ran back toward the men. Then she could hear it, the sounds of riders approaching.
And she was tied to a tree…
Saints preserve her! She would not be taken by another hoard of whoresons!
Elle wrenched at the ties. He’d not done them as tightly as he could have in his hurry to return to the fray. She wriggled, rubbed, yanked, until they were loosened enough for her to squeeze one hand through. Then she untied her still bound wrist and tossed the rope to the ground. She hiked up her skirt, grabbed her dagger, and prepared to run. To defend herself.
But, what if it was Beiste that had come?
Indecision warred within her. She decided to creep back toward the horses to get a look before she escaped and then her better judgment grasped hold of her. She’d not made it five feet before self-preservation had her turning around. Beiste could handle himself if he met up with Bjork. No need for her interference. She’d only get herself killed, besides.
With that thought in the forefront of her mind, Elle ran in the opposite direction.
Straight into Beiste’s arms.
