Devil Black (21 page)

“What do you think you are about, miss?”

“I want to speak to my father.” Isobel glared into MacNab’s eyes. “You cannot prevent me. I have a right, a daughter’s right to see him.”

MacNab grinned unpleasantly. “Then see him.”

He released her, and she stumbled to the bench before the fire. “Father,” she began.

Gerald Maitland did not so much as glance at her. He sat canted to one side, his neckcloth loosened and his eyes half closed. Isobel’s heart, already beating triple time, sped further. Was he ill? Dead?

“Father, speak to me. Answer me! You must get me away out of here—we both must leave! These men are not your friends, as you think. Take me home to Yorkshire if you will, punish me as you may. But let us be gone—”

She paused, stricken by her father’s continued failure to respond. The empty cup sitting on the bench beside him gave her the answer: drunk. Her father, who never touched what he called the demon whisky and frequently lectured on its ills, had now taken so much he did not know where he was or who she was.

He could not understand the danger she faced nor lift a finger to help her.

All the breath rushed from Isobel’s body. She turned her head slowly and looked at Randal MacNab.

Once more, he smiled that unpleasant smile, the one that left his eyes cold. “Stupid girl, you have been far too much indulged. That is the error my good friend, here, has committed. But as you can see, he has now entrusted you to my hands.”

“He has not!”

“Can he say differently? Bertram!” He bellowed the name, which was the last Isobel wanted to hear, and when his son came trotting in, the cold and sleet upon him as if he had just returned from checking his borders, Randal gestured at Isobel.

“Our charge needs to learn obedience.”

Isobel looked at Bertram. His eyes, unlike his father’s, did not look devoid of emotion. Emptiness would have been much better than what Isobel saw: eagerness, anticipation, cruelty. He seized her arm and twisted. “Come.”

No fear Isobel had ever felt rivaled what assailed her as Bertram dragged her back up those stairs, past the old woman from the kitchen, past the guards and other servants, all staring. She struggled, kicked, and lashed out, injured herself on the stones, but did not break free. She did not care how badly she hurt herself. She suspected if she once more entered that bedchamber she would never again come out, but she would suffer—this man would assure it.

At the top of the stairs, when one of her wild blows connected with his face, he shouted, “Stop it!” He then released his hold on her arm and seized her hair instead. Isobel howled as the excruciating pain brought immediate tears to her eyes.

The door of the dreaded chamber still stood open. Bertram threw her inside like a bundle of sticks, and she landed hard on the stone floor and skidded. He followed her in and slammed the door behind him.

For an instant, winded, Isobel lay where she had fallen. Her scalp roared with pain and her shoulder, which had absorbed most the impact of her landing, screamed at her.

Bertram stood over her, legs spread, like wrath impersonated.

“You are wanting discipline,” he pronounced, “and I can give it.” He fumbled with the front of his kilt. “On your knees.”

“No.”

“That is a word which will never cross your lips again! When I tell you to act, wench, you will obey.” He reached down and seized her hair again. Isobel gasped as he hauled her to her knees, but she had not yet lost her fight.

“If you put any part of your vile body near me, I shall bite it,” she promised.

He struck her across the face so hard it sent her sprawling backward. She fell onto her injured shoulder, hit her head, and saw stars.

Bertram loomed over her, pointing a condemning finger. “Do not ever threaten me! You will obey, understand?”

Isobel raised a shaking hand and wiped blood from the corner of her mouth.

“You will accept me the next time I walk through that door,” he continued, “and you will prove willing. Else we will see how well you learn obedience, tied spread on that bed whilst each member of my warrior guard takes you, one after the other.”

Somehow Isobel scrambled to her feet. “You would not!”

He grinned cruelly. “Try me, lady. Try me, just as each of them will try you.”

A wave of nausea surged through Isobel, so strong it nearly knocked her down again. For the first time she realized she stood where Aisla once had—poor soul!—and Aisla had not survived.

Evil
, she thought, as Bertram took himself out through the door and slammed it shut. This time she heard a bar being lowered across it. The man personified evil, walking. And Dougal—

She quivered with longing at the thought of him. Would he tumble to where she was? Would he attempt to rescue her? Did he care enough? Oh, yes, though it might not be love but hate that brought him. Yet he would come; he would never allow MacNab to keep the woman he called his wife.

The question remained: would Dougal come in time?

Slowly she walked to the bed, a fourposter, the frame carved of dark wood which, when she inspected it closely, chilled the blood within her. For each of the four posts bore chafe marks as if rope had been threaded around them and had bitten deep.

Isobel believed it then: Bertram would follow through on his threat, carry out his vile plan as he had done to Aisla in this very chamber. She had suffered here unspeakable hurt and humiliation. Had she died in this room? Had her last breath tainted the air?

Isobel’s heart went out to her, poor lass, alone and frightened beyond the bounds of sanity. But her backbone stiffened. She had no intention of repeating Aisla’s fate. She would, first, die fighting.

Yet what options did she have? She went to the door and tried it, even though she had heard the bar drop. It held fast against her. She needed either a weapon or a plan. How much time did she have before Bertram MacNab marched back in and reasserted his demand for obedience?

She went to the window, pulled aside the drapery, and looked out. Early dark cloaked the countryside and obscured the ground below, but she could see enough to tell it would be a vicious descent. Fifty feet of sheer wall fell unbroken to the cold, rocky turf. Yet the wall itself, built of stones rough cut, had gaps between them for toes and fingers, and the ground below was just that—grass with a stone wall beyond, not a paved courtyard. The breath caught in her throat. Dangerous, oh, yes, but possible, if she had the courage. And she would take her chances any day in the wild countryside before testing the cruelty in Bertram MacNab’s eyes.

“I will escape him,” she told the deepening darkness, “or die trying.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“You do realize your wife may well be dead,” Lachlan said gloomily. “MacNab might have been forced to silence her, or she may have fought a bit too hard.”

Dougal shook his head. He had no doubt his wife would fight against her abductors, but he thought Randal MacNab must be canny enough to keep her alive for a time. Isobel had become a pawn in a dangerous game, the best weapon MacNab now had to his hand. “You forget her father is there. Surely his presence will serve to protect her?”

Even as he spoke the words, Dougal took little comfort in them. There were ways and ways of making a woman suffer. The prospect of Isobel enduring any of them turned him sick inside. But he thought he would know if Isobel no longer lived: had he not felt it the moment Aisla died, like a sword plunged into his soul?

But...he had loved Aisla; at best, he desired Isobel. It was different, was it not?

Lachlan remained unconvinced. “You may launch an all-out attack on MacNab’s keep only to recover a corpse. ’Twill be war, Dougal, and costly. You do know that?”

“My men are prepared to fight.”

“By throwing themselves against MacNab’s walls?”

“It is not the only way.” Dougal, brooding, stared into the fire. He and Lachlan stood beside the hearth in the great hall while, outside, his warriors organized for the trek to MacNab’s stronghold. “I may, instead, offer him what he wants.”

“And what is that?” Lachlan slanted a look at him.

“Single combat,” Dougal replied.

Lachlan drew a breath, and his gaze sharpened. A number of emotions chased their way, one by one, across his face. “Would you dare, after what happened the last time?” He broke off abruptly.

Dougal returned his look, unflinching. “You know nothing of what happened before, Lachlan. Nothing.” Slowly he raised his hand and touched the scar on his cheek. Deeply puckered, it made a crater of memory, regret, and shame.

He saw Lachlan’s eyes narrow and wondered again how much Lachy guessed about what had happened eight years ago. But no, even Lachy considered him a coward, rather than what he was in truth—a failure.

“You must care for Isobel a very great deal,” Lachlan ventured. “Dare I say, even, you must love her? I know how you felt for Aisla.”

From somewhere, Dougal summoned a harsh laugh. “How many times must I tell you I do not believe in love? ’Tis a fool’s pursuit! Yet would I allow that bastard to keep from me aught that is mine?” The last four words rang with conviction.

“Aye, well.” Lachlan backed off. “When do we act?”

“Tonight. By a miracle, the clouds have cleared, and the moon is out. We will bait the badger in his own den.”

Meg found him a short time later, while he donned his weapons and downed a mug of whisky. His men awaited him in the forecourt, their mounts restless beneath the moonlight.

“So,” she said as she broached him, like a ship in full sail, “you have found the courage to go after her?”

“Hold your tongue, Sister. I need none of your mettlesome opinions.”

“You shall have them anyway. I hold my tongue at the bidding of no man.”

“A sad truth! Yet I warn you, I am in no mood for your haranguing. Have you finished speaking your spells? Are the gods—or the devils—on our side?”

“Curiously, they are.” She tipped her head, and the firelight slid off the length of her unbound, black hair. “The Spirits are strong with us, this night.”

“Good. I go to discover how badly MacNab wants the return of his cattle, and whether he is willing to trade for them something I hold even more valuable. I will return with Isobel or, as our forefathers used to say, on my shield.”

“Lachlan says you mean to challenge Bertram MacNab to single combat.”

“Lachlan has a terrible great mouth.”

Meg’s lips curved in a wry smile. “He is under my enchantment, so tells me everything.”

“Poor sod!”

Meg’s dark eyes met Dougal’s grey ones. “Brother, do you have any idea how I have hated you—hated you deep and strong—for failing to go to Aisla’s rescue when she needed you? She was my dearest friend and, I dare say, the last person I have ever loved.”

“Aye?” They had that in common, then.

“She was my opposite, to her bones—sweet and gentle, deserving of any sacrifice, the kind of woman for whom a man might well lay down his life. So why did you fail her then, yet propose to sacrifice yourself now for that red-haired Southern hoyden?”

Dougal lifted a brow. “You do not like my wife?”

“That is the second curious thing of the night—I do. I find I like Isobel enormously, if not as I did Aisla. Isobel has fire and courage, she possesses a sense of humor. Yet she is not Aisla, and it makes me wonder why you would bestir yourself for her.”

“Aisla died many years ago. Do you not think I have learned something since her death? Do you not think I am changed by her death? Besides, Isobel is my wife, as Aisla never was. I have a right to protect her.”

“Then go and get her, and this time, Brother, do not measure the cost. And should Bertram MacNab fall during the ensuing encounters, ’twill make of the world a finer place.”

Dougal nodded—’twas another point on which he and his sister agreed—and went out.

****

The wind that surged across the dark countryside and round the stones of MacNab’s keep had chased the clouds far to the east. Isobel would have preferred rain, sleet, and darkness, even if they made the descent she contemplated more dangerous. She had rifled her bed and tied the linens into long ropes of fabric she then grounded to the foot of the wooden chest beneath the window. She donned her cloak—which Bertram MacNab had torn from her and hurled into the corner when first he brought her in—with fingers that shook. She refused to hesitate long enough to contemplate her terror.

She hoped, and doubted, the hastily-constructed rope would prove long enough. Her mind, which seemed to have cleared like the sky beyond the window, told her it would likely fall short. Her true difficulty, she knew, lay in her injured shoulder, which burned with fiery pain every time she moved it. Would it fail her? Could she ignore the pain long enough to scramble down the wall to that beckoning green turf below?

And if she fell but did not die, if Bertram MacNab found her, what would he do then? Would he drag her inside, bent and broken as she might be, haul her back to this hated room to tie her to the bed and carry out his dreaded scheme of discipline?

The very idea got Isobel over the window sill and scrabbling with her toes for gaps between the outer stones. The wind seized her like cold fingers seeking to pluck her from the wall. She clutched the linen rope, and her shoulder shrieked in protest. She gasped, set her teeth, and endured.

A glance over her shoulder told her the ground looked much farther off from her new perspective. The stones, still wet from the previous bout of sleet, proved slippery, and rough enough to tear her fingers. The thought came into her head she might well slip and die.

Then anger flared again. Better to perish while attempting to escape than to suffer what Bertram MacNab threatened. She began to edge her way down the rope, pinned against the wall by the moonlight, and prayers crowded her brain. She had not attempted to pray since shortly after her mother died, when she became convinced that God, if he indeed existed, failed to listen. But now she asked fervently that no member of MacNab’s guard should come round the corner and look up, for then she was surely done.