Page 16 of Promised to the Forbidden Laird

Then they reached the great hall. The doors stood open, one hanging crookedly where a struggle had damaged its hinge. Inside, tables had been overturned to form makeshift barriers. MacNicol warriors crowded near the dais, with Cormac at their center.

Lachlan’s bier was gone. The absence struck Roy harder than he expected.

For an instant, he saw Lachlan as he had last known him: with mud upon his face, rain dripping from his hair, laughing because their supper burned and declaring that no Highland army had ever been defeated by poor porridge.

Then the memory faded, and in that instant, Cormac saw Donaldina. His face shifted. Up to that moment, he had been giving orders, trying to rally his men into a basic defense. But when he saw her, he lost all composure. A look of desperation took over his face. It was the expression of a man witnessing his power slipping away.

“She is with him!” he shouted. “MacIver has turned her against her own clan!”

Donaldina moved into the hall.

“Nae man turned me against ye. Ye accomplished it without assistance.”

The words traveled farther than a cry. Men shifted uneasily behind the barriers. Cormac glanced around and saw that they had heard her. Roy saw the exact moment he realized he was losing them.

Cormac vaulted the nearest overturned bench as Roy moved. Three men closed in on them. Roy struck the first man with his shoulder beneath the ribs, sending him over a table. He turned the second man's blade, hit his wrist, and heard the sword drop. The third man hesitated, giving Roy a chance to pass.

Across the hall, Donaldina moved away from the councilors to speak to the men on the dais. Cormac was the first to reach her, grabbing her injured arm. She cried out in pain. This sound removed all other thoughts from Roy’s mind. Cormac then pulled her backward, twisting her against him as he pushed toward the courtyard doors.

“Retreat!” he shouted to the men nearest him. “Take the western road! Bring her!”

Donaldina swung at him with her free hand. Cormac quickly pulled her arm up, and pain flickered across her face before she regained control. Roy’s vision blurred as he hurried across the hall without paying attention to the distance. Cormac saw him coming and drew his sword with one hand, still holding Donaldina with the other. “Come closer, and she bleeds.”

Roy stopped. Donaldina’s breath came quickly. Cormac’s grip had caught the bandage upon her forearm, staining the white linen red. Roy looked at the blood, then at Cormac.

“Release her,” Roy snapped, staring at the blood blooming beneath her bandage, right where Cormac’s hand gripped her.

Cormac backed toward the courtyard. “Order yer men away from the gate.”

“Nae.”

Cormac tightened his grip. Donaldina flinched.

Roy kept his voice level. “Ye have already failed tae take her once today. Dae ye intend tae make humiliation a habit?”

Anger coursed through Cormac just as Roy intended. The sword dipped slightly. Donaldina stomped firmly on his foot, prompting Cormac to curse and shift his gaze toward her.

Roy closed the distance. Grabbing Donaldina by the waist, he pulled her sharply aside, while his sword clashed with Cormac’s blade, sending the man stumbling sideways. Donaldina tipped against Roy’s chest, and he pushed her behind him.

Cormac recovered and swung. Roy met the blow. Steel cracked through the hall. Cormac attacked with fury, each stroke too wide and too heavy. Roy turned them aside, advancing with every exchange. The man possessed skill, but anger overshadowed the discipline needed.

Roy drove him across the threshold and into the courtyard. Rain swept between the walls. The gates stood open now, raised by men who had abandoned the battlements once fighting erupted within. Beyond them, horses waited. Cormac’s remaining followers were already mounting.

Roy pressed him back again. Cormac’s heel slipped upon the wet stones. Roy’s sword came to rest beneath his jaw. For a moment, neither moved. Roy could finish it. One thrust, and Cormac Gunn would cease endangering Donaldina, dividing her clan or speaking as though her life were an object to be administered by men.

The temptation was clean and powerful.

Then Donaldina called his name. “Roy!”

He looked toward her. She was standing in the hall doorway, with one hand pressed to her wounded arm. Her face had gone pale, and blood darkened the cloth beneath her fingers.

It was no more than a glance. Cormac seized it. He struck Roy’s blade aside and drove his shoulder hard into Roy’s chest. Roy wobbled on the rain-slick stones, trying to steady himself. Before he had a chance to regain his footing, one of Cormac’s men swiftly stepped in between them, making Roy dodge a desperate sword strike.

“Cormac!” Hamish shouted.

But Cormac was already running. He crossed the courtyard, caught the reins of the nearest horse and dragged himself into the saddle. Hamish started after him, but Cormac’s followers wheeled their mounts through the gates, with their blades drawn to cover their retreat.

Roy pursued as far as the archway. An arrow struck the stone beside his head and shattered. Another buried itself in the timber of the gate. By the time the MacNicol archers reached the walls, Cormac and his men were disappearing into the rain, their horses vanishing one by one into the mist beyond Dun Ard.