Page 67 of Devil Black

“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.

Haste and the weakness in her right shoulder nearly caused her to fall not once but thrice. She stretched her ears, listening beyond the roar of the wind for a shout from above or below. If Bertram entered the bedchamber he would be quick to haul her back up. She heard nothing but the wind that enfolded her, and her own desperate breathing.

And then she came to the end of her rope. A terrified look told her the distance below her feet remained greater than she had hoped—a drop of perhaps twenty feet yawned beneath her. She hung for several, endless moments, whimpering at the pain in her shoulder, toes reaching desperately for secure holds, and then she fell.

She hit hard, struck her head, and once more saw stars, as she had in the room above. But she had landed flat on her back, and the turf made a cushion. For an instant she stared up at the high window—incredibly high—that made a tiny, lit square in the wall with the linen rope dangling pale against the stones. She struggled to breathe and assess herself and then, spurred by the sharp fear of discovery, scrambled up and ran.

Before the descent, while still inside, she had tried to determine direction. She knew Dougal’s lands lay east and thought she could guess a likely path. Now panic licked at her and she merely fled, directionless, wanting to lose herself as swiftly as possible in the nearest inky darkness.

She ran hunched over, wracked with pain and afraid to pause. The moon spotted her shadow before her and she knew how visible she must be. Surely MacNab had men on patrol and the odds of failing to meet one now were poor indeed.

She never paused until she reached a stand of dark pines, where she fell to her hands and knees, her lungs pumping like leaky bellows. Her heart, beating double time, cried for mercy, and her shoulder roared at her so fiercely she almost missed another pain stabbing deep inside her belly, low and relentless.

What now? she wondered, as she fought her way to her feet, once she had breath enough to stand. Did MacNab’s warriors ride these woods? Would she hear approaching horses, with the wind soughing in the trees? She blinked as phantom rays of moonlight flickered between the branches. If she chose the wrong direction now, the mistake could prove fatal. She might wander miles into unknown country, or back into MacNab’s hands. Yet staying here might prove just as deadly.

The next minutes and hours proved a confusing nightmare as she dodged trees, boulders and fallen limbs, following nothing more than blind instinct. In her mind she carried a picture of her husband’s face—guarded, shadowed, the magical grey eyes half-veiled—and it was that which drew her. When at last she reached a narrow track, cutting like a sword blade across the dark turf, she followed that also, too close to exhaustion to fight her way any further beneath the trees.

In the end, the wind betrayed her; she did not hear the party of mounted men coming up behind until it was too late. At the last moment she whirled and saw the cluster of riders looming over her, nothing more than black shapes silhouetted against the moon.

A number of images flashed across her mind: being dragged back to MacNab’s keep, the dreadful chamber where Aisla had suffered before her, the fourposter bed, scarred by pain.

She turned about and ran, knowing she had no real chance and that a mounted man could bring her down the way a fox ran down a hare. The track made a narrow gleam of moonlight; she lifted her skirts and pounded along it.

A cry came from behind her, almost lost in a gust of wind. She heard the fierce rhythm of hoofbeats, stumbled and almost fell, picked herself up somehow, and thought she heard her name on the cold air.