Page 84 of Devil Black

“I am not weeping,” Catherine protested, sounding more herself. “I am trying very hard not to be sick. What do you think they will do with us?”

Isobel dared not answer that truthfully. Her first visit had acquainted her all too well with Bertram MacNab’s depravities. She could only hope to direct his attentions to herself, and so spare Catherine.

“Thomas will come for me,” Catherine said when Isobel did not answer, holding fiercely to the belief.

Would he? What would Dougal do when he returned home from Stirling—if he returned home—to find his wife gone? Isobel thought back to the scene at MacRae’s keep when she and Catherine had been dragged away. So many of Dougal’s warriors dead—even poor Lachlan. She remembered Meg standing over her lover’s corpse, fierce and defiant. Could she even imagine Dougal feeling that way toward her?

And Thomas, she thought, though she did not say, possessed no means to rescue his wife, just as Dougal now possessed no might. Means and might—were both not vital to the kind of battle that would be required?

She whispered, almost to herself, “Thomas and Dougal are away with the King.”

“They will return, and soon.”

Catherine’s assertion made Isobel’s stomach turn over. She knew Dougal might not return. The King might, rather, decide to punish him for past crimes, and even to sentence him to death. If so, did that mean her future lay here, a grim span of days filled with grief for him, pain and endurance? Could she even live without the man she loved? She might well survive, but it would not be living.

“Thomas will come.” Catherine repeated it like a prayer. “He will come for me and his child.”

Thomas, a bailiff’s son, not even a bailiff in his own right… He might well throw himself against the stones of Randal MacNab’s stronghold. He might also die there.

Isobel knew their only hope was Dougal MacRae, her husband, the man she would follow anywhere—the man who loved her not.

He had loved Aisla and loved her still, but he had let Aisla die here, in the precise place where Isobel now stood.

“What—?” Catherine began, only to be interrupted by a commotion at the chamber door: harsh voices, an exchange with the guard posted outside, and then the scrape of the bar lifting.

Isobel, never very devout, began to pray. Please, not Bertram, anyone but Bertram. Please!

The door swung open, revealing not Bertram MacNab but his father, Randal. Isobel had no way to know which way Randal’s depravities might lie—to cruelty, surely, and the ruthless use of power. But would he carry out the threats his son had made?

Somehow, Isobel got to her feet, her arm curled protectively around her sister’s shoulders.

“Sir,” she began before Randal MacNab could speak, “this is an outrage! My sister is ill, and as you can see, she is with child. I demand you release her at once.”

“You demand, do you?” Randal’s mud-colored eyes, so like his son’s, inspected the two of them with disparagement. “And, wench, why should I do that? My good friend your father asked us to recover his daughter. Shall he not be doubly pleased with both?”

A spark of hope lit Isobel’s heart. “Is my father here? Or on his way?”

“No.” MacNab smiled grimly. “But I am empowered to act as his agent in this matter.”

Isobel thought swiftly. “Fine. Well, send Catherine home to him.”

“Send the both of us,” Catherine said.

Randal shook his head. “And then what would I have with which to bargain? Mistress MacRae, I have a score to settle with your husband.”

“What score?”

MacNab tossed his head. “A thousand injuries, over any number of generations. Blood for blood—’tis how we do it here. Or, coin for coin.”

“Coin?” Isobel repeated, foundering.

“I mean to ransom you,” Randal said, “and the price will be high.”

Isobel drew a breath. “Ransom me, if you will. Let my sister go. She means nothing to Dougal.” And I, too, mean little enough to him. Yet, it matters not what happens to me—I will pay any price for Catherine’s sake.

“I shall think on that,” Randal said, and Isobel knew he lied. She had just shown him her weakness and he would use it against her any way he could.

“When your husband arrives,” he went on, “I shall permit you to observe the negotiations.”