Amanda Scott (3 page)

When the footsteps below passed and faded in the distance, and her companion moved, a temptation to grab him and order him to stay still nearly overwhelmed her. She was glad she had resisted when he turned and murmured in barely audible tones, “There were five of them.”

Just as quietly, she said, “I heard only four.”

“Aye, but I could see them, Waldron and four others.”

“Then only one waits elsewhere.”

“They must have left him to guard their horses.”

“Whatever he is doing, we cannot get out of the cave the way we came in.”

“We don’t know that,” he said. “We know only that he’s not with the others.”

“So you think we should go back through that passage.”

“I would willingly consider any other suggestion, mistress, but surely leaving that way would be wiser than following them, or do you disagree?”

She could not argue that, but neither could she deny the instinct screaming at her that they were safe where they were. “We could just stay here until they leave,” she said.

“Nay, mistress, for as safe as it feels now, I ken Waldron fine, and he’ll not leave whilst he believes we are still inside this cavern. Once they reach the end of yon passage and return to wait outside, we’re sped.”

“But we’ve no light. And in any event, how can we get down again?”

“We’ll get down the way we got up,” he said.

And to her further astonishment, he shifted his weight as he spoke and moments later, she was alone on the ledge and could hear nothing to indicate that he had been anything more than a spirit beside her.

The blackness consumed her, weighing so heavily that she wanted to cry out to him to make certain he had not abandoned her. Her body felt as if it had turned to stone, so resistant that she feared she would be unable to move and wondered briefly if someone hundreds of years in the future would find her—or the mound of dust she had become by then—still lying on that ledge. When he hissed from below, he nearly startled her of her skin.

“I dare not show a light,” he whispered, “but if you slide to the edge and over, I shall hear where you are, and if you fall, I believe that I can keep you from suffering any injury. But try to find a foothold or two as you ease your way over the edge, until I can grasp your feet.”

“But I cannot see a thing,” she protested.

“The only other choice is for you to remain hidden here whilst I try to escape and summon aid for you,” he said reasonably. “If that is what you’d prefer—”

“No! I’ll do as you say.” She did not even have to think about it, because the decision made itself. She ached for sunlight and freedom.

Second thoughts assailed her as she inched to the edge, but knowing that haste was essential, she forced herself to lie on her stomach and dangle her feet and legs over the precipice into space.

Her skirts caught on the rough rock face but she ignored that detail, focusing on finding blind footholds until she rested on her forearms and elbows with only her shoulders and head still above the ledge. The rest of her felt perilously heavy.

“Just a bit farther, lass, and I’ll be able to reach you,” he said.

Wondering how on earth he could know such a thing, and muttering a brief prayer that the Almighty would not let her fall on him, and either kill or injure him, she pressed her toes to the face of the wall and eased herself lower. When her foot slipped, she gasped, but a strong hand caught and steadied it, and moments later she stood beside him on good, solid earth.

“Where’s the torch?” she whispered.

“Yonder, but ’tis useless to us, because we’ve no way to relight it. It would be too dangerous to do so in any event.”

“But how can we see where we are going?”

“You may follow my lead, lass. The floor of this passage seems even enough if we just trust ourselves. I’ll keep one hand on the wall to our right and hold your hand with the other if you like. Now, come.”

She did as he suggested, knowing nothing better to suggest and certain that at any moment they would hear their pursuers returning. His hand was warm and strong as it enfolded hers, and she gripped it tight, putting her right hand on his right hip a moment later, taking care to avoid the bare skin of his waist. He was right, she decided, in believing that fear lent one powers that one did not ordinarily possess.

He moved as though he could see perfectly, and although at first she found herself stumbling in his wake, resisting both his speed and direction of movement, after bumping against one wall and then the other a couple of times, she discovered an awareness in herself of their proximity even though she could not see them. After that it became easier to trust both his movements and her own.

Only once did she hear voices behind them, but the sound came from a considerable distance. She refocused her attention on her own progress and, in less time than expected, saw the dim, distant glow of daylight ahead.

Automatically, now that she could see, she let go of his hand and moved to walk beside him.

“Stay back, lass,” he said. “I doubt he’s standing at the entrance, but if he is, he’s more likely to see two of us moving toward him than one. And tread as lightly as you can. This passageway echoes noise, as you’ve heard for yourself.”

She almost argued with him, because the daylight was enticing and she did not want to plunge herself again into the shadows behind him, but she guessed that his warning arose from some masculine notion of protecting her. Experience had taught her that if that were the case, he would resist any argument she made, so she stifled her protest, did as he bade her, and they soon reached the arched entrance.

Moving slowly, barely concealed behind jutting boulders, he peered outside.

“Well?” she muttered. “Do you see anyone?”

“Nay, but it will take an act of faith for us to walk across that clearing.”

“Go,” she urged him. “You said he’ll be watching the horses.”

“He’ll be watching for approaching horsemen, too,” he said. “I’ll wager that he’s positioned himself near the entrance to the glen so that he can spot riders, if there are any, in Glen Mòr.”

Memory of the narrow entrance to the wee glen from the hillside above the river Mòr told her he was likely right. “How are we going to get out of the glen then?” she asked. “Can we overpower him, do you think?”

Amusement touched his voice as he said, “Do you mean to divert him the same way you diverted Fin Wylie, the lout who came to fetch us?”

“It might work,” she said. “But I’m sure we can climb a tree as easily as we climbed that cavern wall, and most trees hereabouts have summer foliage dense enough to hide us.”

“If it is all the same to you, I’d prefer to leave these men far behind us.”

“Aye, well, it will certainly be better if we can get to Chalamine,” she agreed. “We’ll both be safe there.”

“Are you ready to cross the clearing?” he asked.

“Aye,” she said, ignoring the shiver of fear that stirred at the thought. Then, as much to bolster her courage as for any other reason, she said, “Shall we run?”

“Better to walk briskly but quietly,” he said. “I reserve running for when speed counts more than grace or silence. Presently, extreme silence seems best.”

Again she knew he was right and followed willingly as he led the way across the clearing and into the thick growth of trees beyond.

“My horse is gone,” she noted. “Yours, too, if you had one.”

“I’m not surprised,” he said. “They are both fine beasts, and they’d not want them to wander off or bolt for home without us.”

“We should not talk anymore until we locate that watcher,” she said.

“Aye.”

Despite the danger, Isobel felt near euphoria at being in sunlight again. The woods offered concealment and thus safety, but it was not long before she recalled how narrow the passageway was that lay just beyond the second clearing. How they could safely pass the man who was likely watching there, she could not imagine.

As they crossed the second clearing, Michael bent his head close to hers and murmured, “If you’d like to take cover behind one of those trees, I’ll see what I can see before we go farther. No sense risking both our lives until we know where he is.”

“It might be wiser for me to go back and watch the entrance to the cavern for our pursuers,” she said.

“Perhaps so,” he said, looking at her directly for the first time since they had emerged from the cavern. “However, whilst I cannot deny that your reasoning has been perfectly sound from the outset, I’m thinking we may not have much time to make decisions. So putting more distance between us now than necessary . . .” His voice trailed to silence, but he held her gaze. She saw that his eyes were a clear cerulean blue, almost exactly the same color as the sky above them.

She said, “Go then, but hurry. We dare not hope that searching the passageway will occupy those horrid men much longer.”

He disappeared as she was speaking, and she turned to keep her eyes on the direction from which they had come. Realizing that any tree she might choose to hide behind would serve to hide her from one direction but could do no more unless she climbed it, she looked for a better hiding place and decided on a willow thicket alongside the burn. Near the gently murmuring water, she would not hear them as easily, but they would likewise be much less apt to see her.

He was away only a few moments before he reappeared and looked anxiously for her. When she stood, he motioned for haste, and when she joined him, he said, “He is on a rock some distance below the passage into the glen, staring off across Glen Mòr. Occasionally he looks right or left but never behind, so I’m guessing he expects trouble to come only from the west or from Glen Shiel. If we hurry, I think we can make our way uphill and away to the east without attracting his attention. If we can get over the ridge before the others come, we should be safe enough.”

“But what if they—?”

“They will waste a good bit of time searching that cave for us, I believe, because they will tell themselves that we had no chance of slipping past them and must be hiding behind a boulder or in some crevice. Eventually, though, they will sense the cave’s emptiness and will come to confer with their sixth man. So I suggest that we waste no more time before putting this place well behind us.”

Again, his logic left her with no argument to make, so she followed him warily through the narrow entryway until she could see the man on the boulder.

As Michael had said, the lout fixed his attention on the opposite hillside with only an occasional glance east or west. How she would have liked to see Hector Reaganach just then, leading an army of Lochbuie men!

As it was, she dared not say a word even to ask Michael what help he thought might come from Glen Shiel. They were too close to the watcher to talk, and had to move as silently as possible.

Michael moved like a cat, and a ghost cat at that, because his steps dislodged no stones and crackled no dry leaves or twigs. She exerted herself to move as silently, but her feet slipped from time to time on the steep slope, and she kept looking back over her shoulder, expecting the watcher to hear them.

He did not turn.

Michael moved with deceptive speed, too, angling higher on the hillside, away from the glen floor, and she wondered if he had any idea what sort of terrain lay beyond the ridge. Although not as imposing as the Cuillin of Skye or the Five Sisters of Kintail, jagged, craggy peaks that one could see easily from the ridge top, the landscape beyond was nonetheless forbidding, steep, and rocky. Surely, he did not think they’d be safe on a high crag, so where did he think they were going?

Following him easily enough, she held her tongue with uncommon patience until the uneven landscape hid them from the watcher below. But when she knew that her voice would not carry beyond the ravine they had entered, she said, “I thought we were going to make for Chalamine, sir. ’Tis only a few miles south of here, and we’ll both be safe there, I promise you.”

He stopped, looked beyond her, and then, clearly satisfied that the man below could neither see nor hear them, took a seat on a nearby boulder. Smiling ruefully, he said, “I will do what you think best, because this is country you know better than I do, but if you will recall, you did tell them where you live.”

The memory of that declaration struck hard, but even so, Chalamine had always protected its occupants.

“’Tis a sturdy castle, sir, and my father is a powerful man.”

“Where does Chalamine stand exactly?”

“On a promontory at the head of the loch in our glen.”

“Then it lies lower than ridges surrounding it, does it not?”

“Aye,” she admitted, her quick mind grasping the problem. “They’d simply make camp on one of those ridges and keep watch until you left, wouldn’t they?”

“Or until they devised a plan to get inside.”

She glanced at the sun, saw that it was past the meridian, and sighed. “They still have hours of daylight to search for us, too.”

“Aye, so we need to move on, but do we continue east or go over the ridge?”

“That man is watching the west end of the glen for men from Glenelg, but do you know why he keeps glancing east toward the road down into Glen Shiel, sir?”

“I have been staying with a friend on Loch Duich,” he said. “Mayhap the watcher fears my host will send men to search for me.”

Her eyebrows shot upward. “Who is your host?”

“Mackenzie. He was a friend of my father’s.”

Mackenzie of Kintail was a friend of her father’s, too, and of the Lord of the Isles and Hector Reaganach. His primary seat was Eilean Donan Castle, strategically located on an islet where Loch Duich met Loch Alsh and Loch Long.

“It may be even harder to reach Eilean Donan safely from here than to get to Chalamine,” she said. “Those men were clearly up to mischief at the cave, so what demon possessed you to follow them there?”

“I’m afraid you have that backwards,” he said.

“They followed you?”

“Apparently so.”

“But what were you doing there? This is my father’s land, and I have never heard about that cave, so how could a stranger learn of its existence?”