by Paula Quinn
“Nae, his daughter was burned alive—”
“Oh, Mailie!” Her mother returned to her with fresh tears in her eyes.
“Mae,” her father said with a gentle smile, but less affected, “he saw yer kind heart and told ye gruesome tales to gain yer pity.”
“But she might be not dead!” she argued, feeling queasy and light-headed. She had to make him understand. “Sinclair claims to know where she lives—”
“We’ll talk aboot this later, my love.”
“Where are the others?” she demanded, feeling the sting behind her eyes once again. “What happened to me?”
He told her about the horse striking her head and her nearly drowning. She’d remained unresponsive all the way back to Camlochlin, where she was put into the care of her mother. She’d almost drowned four days ago.
Four days.
“The others have, hopefully by now, found yer abductor and put an end to him. After that, they will find Sinclair and—”
“Put an end to him?” She lifted her hands to her mouth. Had they killed Lachlan? She couldn’t move. She wanted to rise from her bed and go find him…find him alive, but nothing would move. She was almost sure she wasn’t breathing. She didn’t care. “They canna kill him,” she managed on a strangled cry.
“Why no’, Mailie?” her father asked, moving closer. “Why can they no’ kill him?”
She didn’t answer. What could she tell him? That if Lachlan was dead, she didn’t want to continue on? That they had started a family with two orphans and had been living happily while he and her mother suffered over her?
“I’m Lily’s mother now.”
Tristan turned to his wife. “Isobel,” he mourned. “I fear her recovery is no’ complete. She’s talking nonsense.”
“Faither.” Mailie lifted her runny eyes to him. She had to make him understand. “Sinclair tricked him. His daughter is dead but I have to find her.” Her thoughts scattered in her exhaustion. How could she be tired when she just woke up? She’d almost died. She wished she had. “’Tis he who needs fergiveness.”
“Who is he so that I may fergive him?” her father asked on a quavering voice.
“He is Lachlan…” Och, Lachlan, ye canna be dead. “The Dragon…”
Her father waited for more, but she was already dreaming of her tenderhearted beast.
Tristan left his daughter’s room with his heart dragging at his feet. Would she ever fully recover? He’d heard of people near drowning and never fully recovering. He should never have let her go to Inverness. He was responsible for this. It broke him in two.
“Mayhap we should consider taking her to one of the hospitals in Edinburgh,” he suggested to his wife.
“Let’s give her a few more hours before we decide.” She reached for his cheek. Her eyes, so much like Mailie’s, burned like summer unleashed. “Ye brought her back to me, my knight. Now trust her in my care, aye? She is strong. Give her time.”
He loved Isobel Fergusson with his whole heart. He would give up his life for her without hesitation. But if Mailie showed any signs of her condition worsening, he’d take her to Edinburgh.
He found Luke in the sitting room with Tristan’s parents, Callum and Kate.
“She said he is called Lachlan the Dragon,” he told them, disheartened. “She speaks as if she cares fer him.” He looked at his wife and shared a moment of pain piercing both their hearts. Had they lost their daughter to madness?
Luke spoke up. “Perhaps he treated her well. Ettarre has been well cared fer. There were no bruises on Mailie’s wrists or ankles, proving she hadn’t been bound.”
“That means nothin’.” Tristan raked his fingers through his hair, wanting to rip out every strand. “She thinks she loves a dragon. She thinks she has children. Dead ones, live ones. I dinna know. This concerns me.”
“What if she is in her right mind?” The question came from Tristan’s father. “What if her thoughts are simply muddled from bein’ asleep fer four days?”
“Faither,” Tristan said, “are ye suggesting my daughter could truly want to protect a man who kidnapped her?”
“Stranger things have happened,” Callum told his son with a smile, then winked at his wife. “All I’m sayin’ is listen to her when she wakes again, and pray ye didna order the death of the man who holds our Mailie’s heart, whoever he is.”
Tristan paled and turned for the exit. “She’ll ferget him. She’ll ferget all of this.”
But as he left the large manor house, he remembered his daughter’s tears, the way she’d spoken her captor’s name, as if her heart were about to burst forth and return to him. What if his father was right?
Mailie sat at her window and looked out at the darkening landscape. She could do it. She could fly out of Camlochlin on her own trusted mount and make it to the Black Isle in a pair of days or so. She could do it. She’d done it before.
And almost died.
She swallowed back a wave of grief as it washed over her, threatening to pull her under, and this time she wouldn’t make it.
He wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be.
Nichola and Abigail were with her in her room, and Ettarre lay at her feet. Her cousins had filled her in on all the details, as they’d heard them, about what had happened after she’d been found. Adam and Daniel hadn’t known exactly where to look for the man who’d taken her. She’d come from the Black Isle. That was all they knew.
Unless Colin had found this emissary they told her about. Mailie’s heart thumped dully in her ears. He was likely the man who had made the bargain with Lachlan. He was the only man besides Sinclair who knew who her abductor was and where to find him.
Had they found Lachlan and killed him? She wouldn’t accept it. Mayhap Colin hadn’t found the emissary.
She hadn’t known Lachlan for a fortnight, but she felt as if she’d been waiting for him forever. He’d not only captured her heart, he had changed it. He changed everything she’d ever wanted and gave her what she needed to be truly happy. A man who would do anything for her, who forgave her for all the inaccurate things she’d called him, and took her and her little family as his own.
“He would fight back,” Mailie told them with hopelessness staining her voice. She prayed to God that William wasn’t there to see.
Abby paled, and twisted the folds in her skirts. “Is he skilled?”
Mailie nodded and closed her eyes. It was Abby’s husband, Daniel, and her brother Adam who led the charge. Mailie understood what either loss would cost her cousin. She didn’t want to live knowing the man she loved took them—or any one of her kin.
She closed her arms around Ettarre and pulled her near. She needed her to help her get through the hardest night of her life.
Later, after she gathered what was left of her heart and pulled herself together, she let her cousins help her dress. With only Ettarre at her side, she made her way down the hall to her father’s solar like a soldier going off to war.
She wanted his forgiveness. She wanted him to know that she’d fought back at first. She’d fought back hard. But time with her captor revealed a character not unlike one of Arthur’s own knights. Her father didn’t have to agree with her, but she wanted him to trust that Lachlan MacKenzie was worthy of her love.
She wanted to go to her father and remember why she loved him so much she’d measured every other man by his standard.
He’d given the order to kill Lachlan. She wanted to forgive him, whether Lachlan was alive or not.
“Faither?” she asked, peeping her head around the door. “May I speak with ye?”
He bounded from his chair beside the hearth and rushed to take her arm. “Daughter, ye should be abed. Ye’ve only just come back to us this morn.”
“Nae,” she said, letting him lead her to a chair. “I’ve spent too much time away from them.”
“Away from whom?”
“From my children.”
He cut her a worried glance. “My darling daughter, ye received
a hard blow to the head. I think mayhap we should—”
“I am in my right mind, Faither,” she assured him in a soft, steady voice. “Ask me to recite a passage from Malory, or an author I have recently discovered called Perrault. At least hear me, and then decide. I fear the time that passes.”
He nodded and poured them a bit of whisky before he sat. She was reminded of Lachlan in his study with his cup. Her throat burned and her eyes filled with tears.
“He is Lachlan MacKenzie, laird of the Black Isle…” She bit down on her tongue to keep from utterly falling apart at speaking his name. “Earl of Cromartie.”
Her father said nothing but his eyes gleamed in the firelight and his jaw tightened.
Mailie held her course.
“When he first took me, I hated him. I considered him a monster, and he is scarred as one. I tried to escape so many times. I even struck him, but he always held his temper.” She told him about Will and Lily and how angry her captor was when she brought them to his castle. “Lily…” She brushed away more tears. “She took such good care of Ettarre. She—och, Faither, he isna a monster.” She told him about Sinclair, keeping back her sobs, and his promise of having information on Lachlan’s daughter. “He needed me to get her back. He took me to save her…and yet, in the end…he was willin’ to possibly give her up fer me.” She couldn’t go any further and buried her face in her hands, weeping until she began to believe that her body existed just to house her tears.
She felt her father’s tender hand on her shoulder. She took it in her own and looked up at her shining example, whom she betrayed. “I tried no’ to fall in love with him, Faither. Fer yer sake, I did my verra best, but he won me with his kindness and chivalry. Ye know I wouldna love a monster,” she cried.
“Mae—”
“He told me,” she went on, not giving up, choking on her sorrow, “that if he met ye, he would fall at yer feet and plead yer mercy, knowing the pain he caused ye.”
He moved away from her and returned to his chair. He turned his glistening gaze toward the hearth fire, then his voice came soft, broken from the despair in her voice, “Fergive me. Fergive me, Mae.”
She wanted to scream and pull out her hair. Lachlan couldn’t be dead because of her father. She rushed to his chair and fell at his feet. “I do, Faither.”
“How was I to know, Mailie?” he asked, bending his face to her when she rested her head on his knee. “I thought only of revenge when I saw ye.”
“I understand.” And she did. It made it no easier, but she did.
“I have to go back, Faither. I have to know what happened. Mayhap it isna too late.”
“Ye’re no’ well enough to go,” he said. “I’ll send Luke and—”
“Nae. If he is gone, I must get Will and Lily and bring them here. They will no’ go with Luke…and the villagers will no’ let strangers take them. I must go. I will go, Faither.” She looked up at him, meeting his loving gaze with a determined one of her own. “I will no’ be stopped in this.”
A hint of a smile passed over his mouth. “Ye’re so much like yer mother.”
She was happy he’d listened. She didn’t want to fight him on this, but there was more…
“Ye should know that Lachlan was—is a colonel in the Royal North British Dragoons. He is supremely skilled, and his stamina rivals that of any man I’ve ever known. We have likely lost—”
“Nae.” He rose from his chair with a look of horror she’d never seen him wear before. “Adam and Daniel—” He choked back a groan. “I sent Duff and…Colin. Could he fight Colin?”
“I dinna know,” she said, weeping for Lachlan, for all of them. “Mayhap.”
Her father hurried for the door. “Isobel, find Luke and tell him to saddle the horses!”
Chapter Thirty
Lachlan sat back in a cushioned bench inside his new solar and stretched out his legs before him. He looked down at Lily, sleeping with her head in his lap. His heavy heart seemed to plunge into darkness even further, stirring a groan from deep within. He held it back.
It had been five days since she left. Five torturous days of missing her, wanting to find her, talk to her, tell her what she meant to him. He fought his thoughts and tried to trust that she loved him too, that she would return.
But if she had had any plans of returning, she would have done so by now.
Mailie wasn’t coming back. Lily knew it. She’d gone back to picking at her food and waking at all hours of the night. He’d taken care of her, carrying her back to bed after she arrived in his, sitting with her at her bedside, or here in the solar. Everywhere else reminded him of Mailie.
He didn’t mind doing it. He was Lily’s father now, and he wouldn’t give her up.
How could she leave Lily? He’d had hope in her but with every hour that passed, hope faded and anger took its place.
He’d considered that her father would not allow her to return—that she wanted to return, but couldn’t. But if what Lachlan knew of Mailie was the truth and not some elaborate scheme to win his trust so she could run, then she would defy her father—as she had constantly defied him. If she loved Lily and Will the way her tender expressions suggested, she would defy her father and do whatever it took to come back. Today would be the sixth day. Where was she?
He ached for her. His eyes ached to see her, his ears to hear her, his hands to touch her. He’d never felt this kind of pain and anger over the same person. He mourned Mailie’s loss. But she was alive, choosing not to be with him.
He settled his hand on Lily’s head and stared at the wall, covered in frames with art his children had painted these last few days. It kept them busy and inside the castle, where he wanted them while he waited for the MacGregors. He could have left them at Ruth’s, but they were his—and Ruth was here, refusing to leave him once again. He smiled down at Lily’s sleeping face in his lap, her dark hair tumbling over her small cheek. He loved them. He’d kill for them.
He expected Mailie’s kin to have arrived sooner. There were many towns and villages to search on the Black Isle. If they still didn’t know who or where he was, it could take a few more days to show up. They were last seen in Fortrose farther north. They must have begun their search in Cromartie and were working their way south.
They hadn’t collected his name and whereabouts from Graham, then. Why not? Had Graham joined his lord in hiding?
Lachlan had had time to take the children and run, but there were likely MacGregors scattered everywhere, and he couldn’t take the chance of fighting in front of the babes. Besides, he wouldn’t run from this. He considered riding to Skye to find her and bring her back, but he couldn’t leave Will and Lily alone. He wouldn’t. Not when there was danger about.
And what if Mailie didn’t want to return with him? He wasn’t sure he could face that truth just yet, so he stayed where he was.
He’d face the MacGregors sooner or later. He hoped when they arrived that her father was with them. He would seek mercy but take what he deserved for stealing Tristan MacGregor’s daughter. He wouldn’t kill them if they left Will and Lily alone, but he wouldn’t let them kill him either. His bairns, including Annabel, needed him. He’d see to them and then he would hunt down Sinclair, find Annabel, and put Mailie out of his thoughts.
He slept for an hour and then rose and went to the kitchen. He found Ruth heating some water for tea. She knew he’d be awake at this ungodly hour and was here to lend an ear if he wanted someone to talk to. He usually didn’t.
But now, he sat at the table and ground his teeth. “I thought she loved me…loved us.”
“Ye kidnapped her from her kin, Lachlan,” she told him gently. “I dinna think she would have ever forgotten that.”
He nodded, knowing she was right. He looked around the kitchen, remembering Mailie there, cooking and giggling with Ruth, reading stories to the children.
“The heather is dying,” he muttered and lowered his gaze to his hands clenched into fists on the table.
“Lachlan.” Ruth’s tender voice broke through his anguished thoughts. “Ye are no’ the same man. Ye will never be the dark Dragon of the Black Isle again, d’ye hear?”
“Aye.” He smiled, relaxing his hands. He would never go back. Being a father again had made a man out of the monster. Even if his worst fears came to pass and Mailie never returned, she had been correct about that, and he’d always be grateful to her for bringing Will and Lily into his life.
“Go back to bed, Ruth.” He stood from his chair. “Ye do enough fer me.” He pulled her under his arm and bent to kiss the top of her head. “Have I told ye how grateful I am fer ye?”
“There’s no need to tell me,” she said, sniffling. “I know.”
“Good.” He moved to go. “I’m going fer a run. We need more wood.”
“Lachlan,” she pleaded. “Dinna go oot now. The sun is barely up.”
He knew her fears and tried to soothe them. “I dinna need the sun. I know the land. They do not. If they are oot there, I have the advantage. I willna live this way. If they are coming, I pray they make haste so this can be over with.”
“Ye underestimate them.” She took hold of his arm to stop him. “They are savage and merciless. I’ve heard tales—”
“Aye, tales,” he said, covering her hand with his. “No savage, merciless men raised Mailie MacGregor, Ruth. Let her be the rod by which ye measure them.”
“Is that what ye’re hopin’ fer from them? Mercy?”
“Aye,” he called out, leaving the kitchen. For their sakes as well as his. However Mailie felt about him, he loved her. He would do his best not to take any of her kin from her.
He stepped into the hall and thought he heard Ettarre pounding down the stairs—Mailie’s voice calling after him.
Ghosts. He was used to them.
He checked in on Lily one more time, kissed her head, and then climbed the stairs and entered his old bedchamber, where Will slept. He moved to stand over the bed and looked down at the lad. What if the MacGregors killed him? What would become of the children? Ruth. Ruth would care for them. But he wanted to do it. He wouldn’t be robbed of this again.
