A Highlander’s Homecoming (28 page)

“Colm?” Patrick stepped inside the laird’s solar, a satisfied grin covering his face. “All’s in readiness as you ordered.”

“Yer certain the lad overheard you? And that the men understand their instructions?”

“Aye, it’s all as you said.”

“I want the men leaving no stone unturned here. I need to learn every dirty secret these walls have to share. Do they ken how important their task is?”

“Yer men are well aware of their assignments.” Patrick shook his head and pulled the door wide open, making no attempt to hide his irritation. “For the love of Freya, Colm, show some trust.”

His brother was right. They each had their own tasks to accomplish this night. Pat had carried out the first part of their plan and now it was his turn.

Chapter 26
 

A knock at Isabella’s door pulled her back to reality.

“A moment, please,” she called, pushing herself up to stand, her leg useless and without feeling from having been tucked under her as she sat for so long.

Exactly
how
long she’d sat, staring into the fire, she couldn’t say. But since the sun had long since set, hours had to have passed while she brooded uselessly.

Her stomach knotted as she limped to the door, her dead limb waking with a fierce prickling. What more could MacDowylt want of her? She’d already given him everything she had—her vows and with them the whole of Clan MacGahan. Surely he wouldn’t expect her to actually perform the duties of wife.

The thought stopped her in her tracks and another knock sounded at her door.

“I’m coming,” she hissed, leaning over to rub her hand up and down her calf.

Malcolm had said nothing of the sort earlier, nothing to give her any reason to suspect such an action on his part. On the other hand, he’d allowed her to believe he’d let her take Robbie and leave when he’d intended no such thing.

The new laird of the MacGahan was in for a battle if he expected to take
her
to bed.

With a deep breath, Isa straightened her shoulders and strode to the door, ready to give the MacDowylt upstart a piece of her mind as she flung open the door.

“By the saints!” she grunted as the little body slammed into hers, arms tight around her middle.

“Jamie!” She knelt, pulling the child away from her to look into his face, not believing it could actually be him. “How?”

“We have to hurry, Isa,” he said, grabbing up her hand and pulling.

“Wait.” She ran her fingers lightly over his scraped and bruised cheek. “I thought you were in the cottage when . . . I dinna ken how this has happened. I watched it burn to the ground.”

Jamie nodded, pulling at her hand again, urging her to her feet. “After Robbie left to find you, I was hungry. I was at the table when I heard the horses coming so I went outside and hid in the stable. When the fire started, the animals ran out because . . .” Here he stopped, shrugging his little shoulders apologetically. “Well, I forgot to close the gate, but it’s a good thing this time, is it no?”

“It most certainly is a good thing this time, dearling.” She gathered him in her arms, holding him close until he pushed away.

“We’ve no time for that stuff now. We have to go.” Again he took her hand with his little one, pulling at her.

“Wait. Go where? And how did you get here to the castle?”

“The MacDowylt’s men brought me here. That big one found me in the forest. Me and Robbie’s big horse. The same man that stopped Master Roland when he was so angry with me. He handed me off to one of his men and he brought me here to the castle and put me in the MacDowylt’s own chamber. And they talked to me like I was one of them and then they gave me porridge, Isa. Very good porridge.”

Against her will, Isa’s impression of the MacDowylt improved just a bit. That his men had rescued Jamie and treated him well had to say something for the man.

“And just where is it yer so anxious to take me?” she asked as the child tugged at her hand again.

“To rescue Robbie, of course.”

Oh, for the simple thoughts of a child. “I dinna see how that would be possible, Jamie. The MacDowylt has named himself laird and has his men in place everywhere.” There was even one in the hallway outside. She’d seen the man when Malcolm had left her here. “How did you get past the guard to get in here?”

“That’s just it. That’s why we have to go now. The one that saved me and another man, they were talking in the room while I ate. They dinna think I listened, but
I did,” he boasted. “All the guards save the ones on the front gates have been called to the great hall to meet with the MacDowylt himself this night. The guards and all the castle staff. The man said he worried that their prisoners might escape through the side exit, the one we use to get to the fields, but he said the MacDowylt himself had ordered it to be so and that it should be no problem because the prisoners wouldna ken there were no guards about.”

Isa paused for only a moment. It seemed too good to be true, but she wasn’t going to question her luck. As Jamie said, they had precious little time and this could well be their only chance.

Allowing him to pull her forward, she scanned the hallway in both directions. Empty, just as Jamie had said it would be. As quietly as possible, she ran with the child, to the end of the hall and down the stairs.

At the first floor, she peeked around the corner of the stairway, holding her breath in anticipation of some large man with an even larger sword waiting there. None to be seen, but she could hear the sounds of voices coming from the direction of the great hall, confirming what Jamie had overheard the men talking about.

“Come on,” she whispered, leading him toward the old storage room and the dank, dark little steps she remembered finding as a child. The passageway to the dungeon.

Her grandfather had warned her to stay away from the pit and told her it had seen its last use before he was born—that his own father had sealed it shut and shut it would stay as long as he lived.

Obviously if Roland had no problem with murdering her grandfather, he’d have no problem reopening the nasty dungeon pit.

The shortest route to the storage room lay through the kitchens, and as they stepped inside, Isa found herself slowing down, amazed at the stillness.

“Do you ever remember finding the kitchens with no a soul in them? No even one person to tend the fires?”

Jamie shook his head, tugging at her hand again. “It’s as the MacDowylt ordered. Hurry, before they finish and return.”

As he said, there was no time to linger.

Isa snatched up a lantern hanging by the fireplace and lit it before heading back into the tiny cubby where they’d find the entrance to the storage room. Together they lifted the heavy wooden door and climbed down into the dark.

She paused at the bottom of the steps, trying to get her bearings. It had been well over twenty years since she’d been down here.

“This is no place for a wee lass to be playing,” her grandfather had said when he’d found her peering into the black abyss of the dungeon. If you fall into the pit, you’ll be stuck until someone comes down and hears you calling. It’s too deep for even a grown man to climb out.”

She’d done as he asked and left this place at the time, more because of the forbidding black depths she’d seen and the hideous smell rising up through the bars of the metal grate.

The smell. That was the key.

“Sniff the air, Jamie. We look for a stench something like a garderobe.

“I ken what you search for, Isa. It’s over here.” Jamie ran into the dark, away from the glow of her lantern, his awkward limp exaggerated by the shadows. “Look,” he called excitedly. “I’ve found it here but I canna move the barrel that blocks it.”

Following the sound of his voice, she reached the spot and set her lantern on a nearby crate.

“Bollocks,” she muttered, putting her shoulder against the large barrel. What was she going to do now?

God, but he hated dark little holes.

Robert tried to lick his lips, but his tongue felt glued to the roof of his mouth, sticky and heavy. Lack of food and water were making themselves felt. That and the ever-worsening wound in his side.

He should have eaten last night instead of wandering out to stare off into the night. Ah, but that had led to Isa coming out to find him, and for the night they’d shared he’d gladly starve to death.

No! He was a long way from starving. He’d done without food for far longer periods of time. Food and water. He wasn’t about to give up now.

He needed to stand, to move around through the black. That should convince him his cell was larger than it seemed.

Using the rough stone wall for support, he dragged himself to his feet while holding his chest, panting as he did so. He moved slowly, one heavy step after another, finding no corners. That told him he was either in a space so enormous he’d not yet traversed one wall or, more likely, he was in a round hole.

From the feel of the wall, this place had been hewn directly from the rock, giving even more credence to the round hole theory. In spite of that, he knew there had to be openings of some sort in here somewhere. He’d heard the scurried scratching of small animals. Rats, likely. Filthy, disgusting, disease-carrying rats.

“At least I’ve no call to fash myself over that,” he muttered, continuing to follow the wall around. From the burn and swelling in his old wound, he knew it wouldn’t be diseased rats that would bring about his death. No, he could thank the Faerie Magic for the fate awaiting him. A fate he didn’t intend to give in to until he’d found a way out of this place and delivered Isa safely into the care of his family.

More scratching, a scraping from somewhere in the dark. Cocking his head to the side, he listened intently, but heard nothing more. The silence pounded at his ears, and he felt as if the walls were pressing in on him.

Had to keep moving. Had to keep up the pretense of more room than he knew what to do with.

The dark confined space had obviously disoriented his brain. It had sounded as if the noise came from the ceiling, but rats didn’t live on the ceiling. That was impossible.

Unless he were already hallucinating. Or his cell mates were bats.

Or Faeries.

And where were the damned Fae when he really needed them? “No a fucking Faerie to be found down here,” he yelled into the darkness, stumbling to one knee with the effort.

As if in answer to his angry call, a pale yellow light seemed to flicker into the darkness, from above, directly ahead of him.

Now wouldn’t that be just his luck? To piss off some wandering Faerie.

As if there were anything left they could do to him.

“Take yer best shot, you Faerie bastards,” he called, lurching toward the light.

“Robbie? Are you down there?”

Isa?
He shook his head, struggling back to his feet. Not possible. She was prisoner somewhere in the castle proper.

“Robert MacQuarrie!” the disembodied Isa demanded. “I ken you have to be down there. I hear you moving about. Answer me, dammit!”

“Isa?”

He stumbled toward the light, looking directly up into it. Her face, her beautiful face hovered above the grated opening.

“Isa?” He whispered this time, fearful of speaking out loud lest the apparition disappear.

“He’s there! Help me get this open.”

“Look, Isa. There’s a rope just up there.”

He’d swear that was little Jamie’s voice. Now that was impossible. He must be hallucinating because Jamie had been burned alive in that . . .

His throat tightened and he fought for air, feeling as if he might be reduced to blubbering like some dainty girl at any moment.

That infernal scraping sound again!

He looked up to see the grate disappearing as it was dragged away from the opening.

“Stand back so I dinna hit you with this. I’ve tied it off on this end, but you’ll have to climb. Please tell me you can climb, aye?”

For Isa? Anything.

Whether this was hallucination or reality no longer mattered. He was going for it.

He pulled on the rope, testing, hoping it would hold his weight. Then, one hand after another, he lifted himself up the long rope, ignoring the searing pain in his chest.

When he reached the top, hands grabbed at his clothing, helping him over the edge. For a long moment he lay there, catching his breath.

“Come on, Robbie, on yer feet. We’ve no time.”

He pushed to his knees and looked up. There before him, like angelic visions, Isa and Jamie waited.

Had he died in that hole?

Allowing them to help him to his feet, he decided not to look back down. Just in case.

He reached out and pulled Jamie to him, hugging the boy tightly. “How?” he asked, looking over at Isa.

“Later,” was all she said, her face pinched with anxiety as she urged him forward.

His legs didn’t seem to want to cooperate, and it was all he could manage to drag himself up the narrow wooden steps and out into the kitchens. By the time they made it across the big room and out the door, he was panting with the effort. Isa situated herself next to him, and draped his arm over her shoulder, helping to support his weight. He didn’t want to lean on her, but he could think of no other way.