Chapter 10
As they plodded through the forest, Drummond glanced over his shoulder at Lord Stewart. The man’s face was set like stone. He hadn’t said a word since they found the last sign of his daughter.
Lachlan didn’t blame him.
They’d uncovered a bit of cloth ripped from Elspeth’s chemise amid several wolf carcasses. The soiled linen was now tucked into Drummond’s sleeve. It was stiff with blood, but he bore it as if he were a knight-errant, wearing the evidence of his lady’s favor.
They didn’t find any sign of Elspeth’s body. Not even drag marks to show she’d been pulled, kicking and screaming, to some other location. Drummond was glad of it. There were some things no father should have to see, and his ally was teetering on the edge of control as things were.
But there was so much blood in the clearing with the dead wolves, it seemed unlikely Elspeth escaped. Especially since only a single set of footprints left the clearing.
Male footprints.
Drummond was coldly furious. This had gone far beyond an annoying inconvenience. Rob MacLaren had upset all his plans. Though Alistair Stewart was united with him now by their supposed shared grief, eventually Elspeth’s father would remember he blamed Lachlan’s carelessness for allowing the abduction to happen in the first place.
Now that Elspeth was dead, there was no salvaging this disaster. They were just following the trail to its end so they could kill Rob MacLaren.
Slowly, if Lachlan had anything to say about it.
Then he saw something on the game trail that made him hold up his hand to signal a stop to their dreary column. He dismounted and squatted in the dirt before the new set of footprints.
“What is it?” Stewart asked halfheartedly as he dismounted and handed off his reins to his retainer. After sending men back with the MacLaren’s stallion, they had only two extra men riding with them.
“Looks like MacLaren met someone here.” A big someone judging from the monstrous size of his boot print.
Then Drummond noticed something else that made his heart leap with hope.
“Alistair! Quick! Have a look at this!”
Elspeth’s father shrugged off his lethargy and joined Drummond on the path. Lachlan pointed to another imprint, the shallow outline of a small, feminine slipper.
“She’s alive,” Stewart whispered as if he feared daring to speak it aloud might make it untrue.
Lachlan peered ahead on the trail where two sets of masculine prints led off through the forest.
“Aye, but the men must be carrying her, because that’s the only one I see from her.”
“She must be injured,” Stewart said gruffly, trying unsuccessfully to keep the sob from his voice.
May God strike me blind if I ever become so maudlin over my offspring, Drummond thought. It’s not as if a man can’t always sire more.
“If she is, we’ll return the hurts she’s suffered a hundredfold,” Drummond promised. “But if they are carrying her, that bodes well for us. They must travel slowly. And chances are good that the fellow MacLaren met has a camp or a hovel of some sort nearby. They can’t be far ahead.”
The men remounted without another word and trotted down the trail, gazes glued to the ground ahead of them in the hope of seeing another slim footprint.
***
“Hurry, Angus!” Rob said as he shouldered the pack of provisions his friend had prepared. “I dinna know how much longer we have before they find us.”
He strode out of the house, dragging Elspeth along by the wrist. “Step lively, girl, or I’ll throw ye over my shoulder again.”
Angus lumbered after them. “The only trouble with leaving now is we haven’t the current with us. It’ll make for a nasty start.”
“D’ye mean to say it’s impossible to sail to Lochearnhead now?”
“No, just slow. We’ll have to row till the wind and water changes. And we’ll no’ be making much headway at that. Then when the current comes about, we must keep our wits about us, ye ken, for that’s when the each uisge rears his head.”
“A water horse?” Elspeth asked, owl-eyed.
“Aye, it came here to Loch Eireann from—”
“Spin your tales later, Fletcher,” Rob interrupted. “Now we row.”
“Angus, ’tis no’ too late for ye to help me.” Elspeth dug in her heels and made it difficult for Rob to drag her along. “Ye’ve been naught but kindness itself to me. My father will be grateful. Honestly, he will.”
“Keep quiet, wench.” He picked her up by the waist and half-carried, half-walked her toward the shore. She pummeled his arm with her fists.
Angus frowned, and Fingal seemed to sense his master’s disapproval. The deerhound bounded alongside Rob, yipping and growling.
“There’s no need to be so harsh to the lass, is there?” Angus asked.
“Me, harsh?” Rob said. “Of the two of us, which is trying to do the other damage just now?”
The pounding of distant hooves made all their heads turn. A group of men on horseback broke through the trees, plying their whips.
“’Tis my father!”
“That’s why I’m harsh to the lass, Angus. She brought this down on us. Now come on.” He scooped a squirming Elspeth up and over his shoulder and ran the rest of the way to the longboat tied up at Angus’s dock. Fingal loped after them, his tongue lolling, his mouth lifted in a doggie smile as if pleased to go for a pleasure sail.
“Please, Rob,” she begged. “Let me go, and I’ll convince them no’ to follow ye.”
“I said quiet!” He hustled her into the boat, and the deerhound scrambled after. While Angus hoisted the big striped sail, Rob untied the lines. He gave the hull a shove and leaped aboard as the wind caught in the canvas and boat quickened.
The riders drew nearer. Rob counted four of them—Drummond, Stewart, and two retainers. He unshipped the forward set of oars and put his back into the long strokes.
“Father!” Elspeth waved her arms over her head. Fingal barked as though in sympathy.
“Sit, lass, before ye fall,” Angus ordered. Rob was mildly irritated that she obeyed his friend without question, perching on one of the bench seats, meek as a dove. The dog settled beside her, obviously deciding she needed his head in her lap. “And ship those oars, Rob.”
“But—” Rob began.
“When we’ve land beneath our feet, I’ll be pleased to follow your orders. Now that we’re sailing the loch, ye’ll answer to me,” Angus said pleasantly but firmly. “We canna go the way ye wish for the now. No’ if we want to get away quick and clean.”
A crossbow bolt thudded into the hull a hand’s span north of the waterline, as if to punctuate Angus’s point.
“Bloody fool!” Rob glared at the bowman kneeling on the shore. He might have easily hit Elspeth with the bolt. “Get into the cabin,” he ordered her.
There wasn’t exactly a cabin on board. Angus’s boat was too small for that. Rob meant the portion of the deck covered by a wooden roof. There was room to sit upright beneath the low covering and space to lie on the pallet Angus had prepared, but it was little more than a place to get out of the wind and weather.
But it would still protect Elspeth if there were more crossbow bolts headed their way.
When another bolt tore through the sail, Elspeth obeyed without a word of protest.
Fingal followed but stopped when she disappeared into the enclosed space. Obviously, the cabin was forbidden to deerhounds, but Fingal turned several circles outside the open forward end of the cabin and plopped down to guard his newly chosen favorite person.
“Very well, Angus,” Rob said as the boat’s prow turned east.
The boat seemed to lift in the water once it fell in line with the prevailing current. The waves divided before the prow like a pair of wings, poised for flight. The men on the shore fell swiftly astern.
“We’ll have it your way,” Rob said.
“’Tis no’ my way,” Angus said with a laugh. “’Tis the way of the loch, and ye gainsay that at your peril.”
***
“They’re getting away!” Lachlan fitted another bolt to his crossbow.
Stewart put a restraining hand on his shoulder.
“Dinna shoot, Lachlan. I understand how ye feel, but ye canna be sure ye’ll no’ strike my daughter.”
The stripe-sailed craft disappeared around a rocky point jutting into the narrow loch.
“But how can we catch them now?” Drummond gnashed his teeth in frustration. They’d been so close. “This loch flows into the River Earn and then to the Firth of Tay. We can’t outrun a river on its way to the sea.”
“My daughter’s alive,” Stewart said with a quick glance skyward that Lachlan recognized as a silent prayer of thanks. “That’s enough for now.”
“Is that what ye want to go back and tell your wife, Stewart? Our daughter’s still in the hands of a madman, my dearest, but she’s alive?”
“Beggin’ your pardons, my lords,” the Stewart retainer spoke up, “but do ye know for certain the MacLaren intended to sail east?”
“We saw him go that way, didn’t we?” Drummond said. Stewart’s man was altogether too outspoken. If the fellow answered to him, Lachlan would beat that out of him in short order.
“Aye, but will he keep going east?” the man asked.
“How can we know the mind of a madman?” Lachlan demanded. “Of all the stupid—”
“Wait, Lachlan.” Stewart held up a hand to signal quiet. “Calum here grew up on the loch. He may know a thing or two about the sailing of it. What are ye thinking, lad?”
“Just that we may wish to bide here a bit,” Calum said. “Mad Rob was delayed on the way here, what with the wolves and all. He may have intended to reach this place early enough to sail west.”
“Then why did he sail east?” Lachlan said with a sneer.
“This loch is like a little sea. It has a tide of its own that turns every half day or so,” Calum explained. “If the MacLaren means to make for Lochearnhead, they’ll have to sail past this point again tonight.”
“And why do ye think he means to make for Lochearnhead?” Lachlan demanded.
“The MacLaren told ye to collect yer bride at Caisteal Dubh, did he no’? It puzzles me that at every step he’s gone in the wrong direction,” Calum said, staring at the spot where the boat had disappeared around the point. “But if he means to sail the length of the loch, going west, he’ll reach his stronghold much sooner than we could, even if we headed that way this instant.”
The Stewart nodded thoughtfully. “That makes sense. Lochearnhead is just a day’s ride from Caisteal Dubh.”
“Even if they do sail past us again, what can we do about it except watch them go by?” Lachlan said. “Ye dinna want me to shoot at them for fear of hitting Elspeth.”
“Actually, my lord,” Calum said with a grin Lachlan would have loved to knock off his face. “I have a couple ideas we might try.”
***
Elspeth was weeping. She wasn’t being hysterical or obtrusive about it. She was trying to stifle her sobs, but Rob heard them in any case.
He couldn’t see her, since the cabin opened forward and he was standing near the bow, but he could imagine her with her hand covering her mouth to muffle a cry, her slim shoulders shaking.
It would have been easier to ignore wailing than those hitched breaths and soft moans.
They pounded at his heart as surely as an opposing army slams a battering ram into a castle gate.
Fingal pointed his nose to the sky and howled.
“Ach, I canna bear it either,” Angus said from his place at the tiller. “Can ye no’ make her stop, Rob?”
“She’s probably just tired,” Rob said, sure that wasn’t the cause of her weeping. If he admitted she wept because of him, he’d have no way to hide from his guilt. “She passed a long, weary night.”
“Aye, and so did ye,” Angus said. “Why do ye no’ join her? Mayhap it will settle her.”
“And mayhap it will set her to keening,” Rob said, knuckling his eyes. Angus was right. He, too, had passed a weary night. “A woman is chancier than the weather.”
“Aye, there is that.”
Angus rummaged in his sporran and came up with a greasy packet. He unwrapped the cloth that held the cooling sarnies. He offered one to Rob, but Rob declined with a wave of his hand. The pallet in the cabin called to him louder than his stomach complained, but he didn’t want to share that small space with a weeping woman.
“Weel, in a few hours the tide will turn, and I’ll need ye to spell me at the tiller once we come about,” Angus said, licking the extra grease from his fingers and helping himself to another sausage. “I think ye should rest in the cabin for a bit.”
Rob would sooner face another wolf pack. “The cabin is occupied.”
“The lass is a wee thing. She doesna take up much room, ye ken.”
A loud sniff came from the cabin.
“I’ll make do here.” Rob settled himself on the curved hull and leaned against the mast. When he first devised this plan to take revenge on Drummond, he hadn’t reckoned on having to deal with the man’s bride. Before he met her, Elspeth Stewart was merely a pawn in his game with his enemy. Only a thing, a parcel to be stolen and used in his struggle with Drummond.
Now she was a real person. A real person who was crying her eyes red because of him, not because of the fiend she was set to marry. Drummond would undoubtedly break her heart a dozen times once the knot was tied. Instead, she wept on account of Rob’s misdeeds.
Truly, there was no justice in the world.
“Ye traveled all night, Rob. Ye’ll be no use to me if ye’re bone tired,” Angus said. “So as captain of this vessel, I order ye to join Lady Elspeth in the cabin.”
“I’d sooner wrestle a kelpie.” Rob knew Angus believed in those malevolent river spirits as thoroughly as he assumed the existence of the water horse.
“I can arrange that,” Angus said darkly. “How would ye fancy swimming to Lochearnhead?”
His friend had set his feet, and there was no budging Angus once he’d done that. Unless Rob wanted another dip in the frigid loch, he had to join Elspeth in the little cabin.
He rose and made his way to the prow of the boat like a man destined for the stocks.