The Clan MacDougall Series (101 page)

No one spoke a word as they tore across the countryside. Nora was amazed that Elise had remained as quiet as she had for the child usually talked incessantly. Mayhap it was the fear that hung over them like a heavy cloak that made the child remain silent.

For now, Nora wouldn’t question the reason for the silence. She would instead be glad for it. She knew that once Elise was permitted to speak, the Highlanders would undoubtedly begin to question their offer of help.

’Twas all that Rowan, Black Richard and the others could do to maintain serious expressions and not burst out laughing at the three clumsy and terrified brothers. Horace had been complaining over the less-than-kind treatment he was being given.

For more than an hour he had been trying to convince Rowan and the other Highlanders that he was an earl. Considering the poor conditions of the farm and cottage, a claim at being a member of the aristocracy was laughable.

The Highlanders were on horseback surrounding Horace and his brothers, Donald and Nigel. The Englishmen fell repeatedly, only to be drawn to their feet again by a hard yank on the rope that was tied around each of their waists.

“Ye best calm yerselves, lads,” Rowan’s voice was low and cool. “Wolves can smell fear from miles away.”

Of the three, Nigel seemed the smartest. He thumped the back of Donald’s head with the palm of his hand and told him to quiet down for he didn’t want the wolves to feast on their dead bodies. He was thoroughly convinced, with a little help from Tall Thomas and Garret, that he’d not be allowed past the gates of Heaven if any of his body parts were missing.

Donald told him to go bugger himself. Horace accused the other two of being cowards for not fighting the Scots off to begin with. Nigel and Donald stared at him in disbelief before telling him he was a fool, through and through.

It appeared to intensify the Englishmen’s fears whenever the Highlanders began speaking in the Gaelic and so the language was spoken during most of the trek. They derived great pleasure from the Englishmen’s fears.

“I demand to know why you broke into my home!” Horace did not care if his voice carried to the ears of wolves or not. He was incensed. How dare these Scots treat him, an Englishman, in such a barbaric fashion! “I would also like to know where you are taking us and for what purpose!”

Black Richard wasn’t as amused with Horace’s outbursts as the other Highlanders were. With a slight pull of his reins, he brought his horse up to the back of Horace—who was not having much luck walking through the snow. With a flick of the reins, Black Richard’s horse shoved his nose into Horace’s back, nudging him along. Horace let loose with another string of curses.

Outwardly, the Highlanders were unmoved by his tirade. Inwardly, there was not a one of them that didn’t wish they could cut out his tongue.

Having had his fill of England and its offspring, Black Richard looked at Rowan and spoke in the Gaelic. “The sun will be comin’ up soon,” he said with a nod toward the eastern horizon. “Let’s leave them now.”

Rowan nodded his head in agreement and guided the men into a dense part of the forest. Once he found a place to his liking, he pulled his horse to a stop.

“This is far enough, Sassenachs,” Rowan told them. His voice was menacing and laced with disgust.

The light of the waning moon streamed in through the trees, casting an ominous glow on the men and their surroundings. Horace and his brothers stopped and turned their attentions toward Rowan.

“Who has sent you?” Horace asked. “I demand to know what this is about!”

As much as he tried to sound like a man of means, of good breeding and title, Horace fell quite short. Blood had crusted around the indignant man’s nose and lips and the collar of his shirt. Though he was quite tempted to run him through with his sword, Rowan resisted the urge.

Rowan ignored Horace’s demands and made a few of his own. He directed Tall Thomas to remove the ropes that had been tied to Horace and his brothers. Once Tall Thomas had remounted, Rowan spoke to the Englishmen.

“Hand over yer clothes. We’ll let ye keep yer boots.”

Horace’s eyes opened wide, but it wasn’t fear that Rowan saw staring back at him in the moonlight. Try as he might, he wasn’t able to put a word to the expression. It unsettled him nonetheless.

“Why do ye want our clothes?” Nigel asked as he began to shiver from the cold night air as it hit his sweaty skin.

“Don’t get yer hopes up, Sassenach,” Rowan told him. “Hand over yer clothes and we may let ye live. Argue it further and there’ll be naught much of ye left fer the wolves.”

The three men began undressing. Nigel and Donald were visibly distressed. Their teeth chattered and their bodies shivered. However, Horace’s countenance continued to puzzle Rowan. Black Richard picked up on Rowan’s discomfort and glanced at Horace.

After removing their clothes, Nigel and Donald slipped their boots back over their feet and stood rubbing their hands over their arms and shifting from one foot to the other.

Horace was nearly motionless save for his heaving chest. Rowan was unbothered by the hateful glower the man gave him.

“The shirt too, Sassenach,” Black Richard instructed Horace.

Horace cast an odd look his way before complying. Slowly, he pulled his shirt up and over his head.

Rowan’s first impression of Horace had been correct. The evidence was quite clear once his shirt, which had covered him to mid-thigh, was removed. Apparently, Horace was excited.
Physically
excited.

The man stood proudly with his shoulders thrown back, his chin held high, as if he were quite proud of his soft, pale, flabby belly and his protruding male member, small though it was.

Rowan thought it more resembled a large toe than a man’s organ. Rowan would have hidden his head in shame were he cursed with such an aberration of nature. No wonder the man was such an evil bastard!

“Turn around,” Rowan ordered. Though there was no fear in Horace’s eyes, Nigel’s and Donald’s were filled to tears with it. Shaking from head to toe, the two turned around.

With his eyes closed, Nigel began praying. His lips moved silently while he recited what few prayers he knew. Donald soon joined him. Horace however, remained mute. Until he’d been asked to remove his clothes, he had done nothing but complain and curse at the Scots. Now he looked like a man who anticipated the receipt of some grand and special gift.

“I said
turn around,
Sassenach,” Rowan told him calmly.

Horace finally did as ordered, keeping his hands at his sides, breathing deeply in and out through flared nostrils.

Rowan had hoped the man would have ignored his orders or tried something foolish so that he’d have the opportunity to kill him. There was still time for the fool to make a fatal error in judgment, but Rowan doubted the idiot would even try. As far as he was concerned, Horace Crawford was a coward.

Not once in the past hours had the man begged for mercy to be shown to his brothers. He also had not once asked after his wife. His lack of inquiry as to her safety did not go unnoticed by Rowan or any of his men. Were the roles reversed, Rowan was confident that he would have fought to his own death to protect his wife and brothers and at the very least he would have been worried sick over her. But not Horace. It was easy to surmise that the only one that Horace loved was Horace.

“Do no’ move until dawn breaks,” Rowan spoke to the Englishmen’s backs. “We have shown ye more mercy than ye deserve this night, Sassenachs. Do no’ tempt yer fate.”

Moments later, Rowan and his men broke away and went pounding through the forest, leaving two terrified young men quite literally shaking in their boots. The other man was enraged. He was left naked and humiliated and he swore he would someday exact his vengeance on the Highlanders who had left them for dead.

“A
gain?” Daniel asked incredulously, before sighing heavily and rolling his eyes. Strawberry blonde curls bounced around the little girl’s face as she nodded in affirmation.

“But, lass, ye just went not more than three miles back.”

“But I has to go!” the child pleaded and wriggled around on the saddle in front of him.

Daniel let loose a frustrated sigh as he pulled rein and wondered what he’d done to anger God in such a manner.

“What is it now?” Wee William barked when he saw Daniel stopping again for what seemed to be the hundredth time in the past hour.

“She has to go.
Again,
” Daniel answered, at a loss for any plausible explanation as to how someone so wee as this child would need to pee as often as she did.

“Again?” Wee William shook his head and stared down at Nora. “I swear there isn’t a rock nor a tree that child hasn’t went behind in the past six hours!”

“I’m sorry William, I truly am.” Nora hoped the smile she offered would somehow soften his growing irritation toward her little sister. She slid down from Wee William’s lap and pulled Elise from Daniel’s horse and went in search of yet another tree.

As they ambled through the low brush Nora looked for a suitable tree that was far enough away from the men yet close enough that she could keep an eye on them. These constant stops were wearing their already thin patience to a near translucent state.

“Elise! You must really try to not be such a bother!” Nora scolded the small child as they walked behind an old oak tree.

“But I has to go, Nora.”

“But do you have to go so frequently?”

“I always has to go when I’m ascared,” Elise said solemnly.

“Scared, not
a-
scared,” Nora corrected her. She couldn’t fault her sister for being frightened for she was just as nervous and just as afraid, but for quite different reasons. “Tell me why you’re scared and mayhap we can do something to help you not be so.”

“The men,” Elise offered. “They’re so big!” she spread her arms wide and nearly toppled over in doing so. Nora righted her and bade her to continue.

“And they talk funny, I don’t unnerstand what they’re saying. And they have lots of big knives!”

Nora resisted her urge to giggle, knowing full well it wouldn’t do to embarrass her sister. “They’re speaking Gaelic, and if you listen closely you’ll find it sounds rather pretty.”

Elise’s blue eyes stared up in disbelief.

“And those knives are called swords, you know that. You saw father make many of those.” Their father had been a blacksmith up until the lung fever took his life. He made everything from pots to broadswords. Elise was only four when he died, so Nora supposed she might not remember much of the blacksmith shop.

“I miss papa.” Elise’s eyes began to water.

“I miss him too,” Nora said as she tried to smooth down the strawberry blonde ringlets. “I miss him every day. But papa wouldn’t want us to cry, now. He’d want us to be brave.”

“I wanna go home.”

Nora let out a heavy sigh. “I would love to go home too, Elise. But I told you, we had to sell the blacksmith shop as well as our home.”

The money from the sale of both had barely gotten them through the first year after their father’s death. It was one more reason why she had agreed to marry Horace. The fear of starvation and freezing to death will often make a person do things they’d rather not do. There were very few appealing options available for women in such dire straits.

“Can we buy it back?” Elise asked hopefully.

“Nay, we cannot.” As appealing as the thought was, it was impossible. Thinking of her father and the life they were leaving behind was bittersweet. Nora had many fond memories of her life in Penrith, her life before Horace Crawford.

A sudden sense of foreboding flooded over her. What if the Highlanders hadn’t buried Horace and his brothers well enough? What if a hunter stumbled upon them and realized Nora was missing? Would they assume that she had killed them? She shuddered at the thought and prayed that the scavengers and wolves would get to the bodies first and leave them unrecognizable.

“How did you hurt your eye?” Elise asked rather quietly.

Nora debated between telling the truth and lying. Elise was an innocent six-year-old little girl, far from home, and frightened.

“Did the big men hurt you?”

“Nay!” Nora exclaimed. She took a deep breath before answering. “Do you remember Horace?”

Elise nodded as she scratched the tip of her nose. “He is your husband and he doesn’t like me and John.”

“No, he was not fond of any of us.” Nora took a deep breath and let it out slowly. To say Horace wasn’t
fond
of her was an immense understatement. She was certain he despised her.

“So how did you hurt your eye?”

Nora chewed her bottom lip for a moment before answering. “Horace did this to me. But you needn’t worry overmuch.” Deciding it best to leave out the part about the Highlanders bursting into their home and carrying Horace and his brothers off into the dark winter night, Nora continued calmly. “Neither Horace nor his brothers will be bothering us ever again. They’ve been sent away and shan’t be coming back.”

“Did they go to heaven like our mammas?” Elise asked.