Page 117 of Enchantment of a Highlander

“I’ve been wanting this witch for years,” MacDougall continued in a gravelly voice. “Years.” He settled back in his seat and stared out at the drunken revelry going on before them. “King James and his weak stomach dinna agree with killing a child, but a witch is witch. And children grow to adults.”

Alec pressed a cup of whisky to his lips.

And did not drink.

Temptation didn’t lace the heady vapors, not like it had before. The darkness held no place where Celia was concerned.

His chest ached to even think of her down in the dungeon, afraid and in the dark, blaming him for having put her there.

He pushed himself toward the torment within, reveled in the pain. The feeling part of him pushed the darkness away.

He should have kept her safe.

He should have kept her protected.

But he had failed.

His gaze swept the room once more. Some men had left. Over fifty now remained, all in various stages of intoxication.

Still able to fight.

He balled his hand in a fist.

“Her mother took too long to confess because of her. It was long and arduous for both of us.” MacDougall gave a sigh, deep and heavy, as if it were weighted with regret. He tilted his head back with his drink.

No sooner had the cup been clapped back onto the table than it was filled again.

Alec knew the woman’s name. Fiona.

She hadn’t been Celia’s mother, but she’d cared for her as one. He could imagine Celia as a young girl in the dungeon, her face set with the same determination it held when Duncan was sick, relentless in her attempt to heal the only woman she’d ever known as mother.

MacDougall rubbed his forefinger absently over his lower lip. “The only way I could finally get her to confess to her crime was to threaten her daughter.”

Her daughter.

Celia.

MacDougall looked out at the band of drunk, rowdy men, his eyes seeing something different than what lay before them, something Alec did not want to see. “I couldna touch the little witch, of course, but I made her watch her mother go in the flames and stay until she was ash.”

Alec gripped his cup so tightly it would have shattered had it been glass.

He wished it were glass and that it would break into long shards he could use to cut this bastard’s throat. Alec’s breathing was ragged now.

He needed to control himself before MacDougall noticed.

“I hear when people are starving, the smell of bodies burning is like the scent of roasting meat.” He drew a long, deep sip from his cup. “I’ve often wondered if the starving girl salivated as she watched her mother burn.” MacDougall looked to Alec, his expression pensive before he shrugged his fur-laden shoulders and turned his attention toward the crowd of soldiers once more.

Bile singed like acid in the back of Alec’s throat.

Celia, his Celia.

What she’d been through, the torment she’d suffered at the hands of this beast.

Alec gritted his teeth against words thick and painful in his throat.

Damn it, time moved too slow.

Every second that passed, she was down there, alone.