He still did not speak, but she heard a soft thud nearby as he untied her hands. Then he and whoever had been with him left, and there was only silence.
It took her a moment to find the strings tying the cloth over her head, and minutes more for her numbed fingers to untie the knots. When she pulled the cloth off, she saw through a narrow slit high in the wall that it was nearly dark outside, but sufficient light still penetrated the otherwise empty cell to let her see Sir Hugh’s body lying nearby on a skimpy pile of straw.
Laurie saw almost at once that Sir Hugh was still breathing, but although she quickly untied his hands and feet, he remained unconscious and she could not wake him. She sat beside him, dozing off and on and listening unsuccessfully for sounds to reveal something of their surroundings. The cell grew black and then dimly light again before Hugh stirred at last.
Thanking God for His mercy, Laurie touched Hugh’s arm gently and said, “Oh, do wake up!”
She saw one flinty gray eye slowly open, as if he meant to test each part of himself before deciding that he might survive.
He opened the other eye, moved his head slightly, then winced and groaned.
“One of the brutes struck you with a club,” she said sympathetically.
“He struck hard.” Hugh’s voice sounded as if his vocal cords were mired in sand. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “They put something over my head. I don’t know which direction we rode, so I do not know if we are in Scotland or England, and I’m afraid I fell asleep, so I cannot even say how long it took us to get here.”
His eyes narrowed, then focused directly on her. “Did any of those bastards touch you?”
“Just to bind my hands and to secure the cloth over my head,” she said, seeing nothing to gain by telling him about the lout who had dared to touch her breast. It would serve only to anger him, and he could do nothing about it now.
He sighed. “There is some light, at least, so I doubt we are in a dungeon.”
“Well, the walls are stone, but there is a wooden door and that narrow window high up in the wall looks like some I saw at Corbies Nest,” she said, gesturing toward it. “I think we must be in some sort of a peel tower like that one.”
“Then, unless this one is in a similar state of disrepair, our captor may be a man of substance,” Hugh said. “Did you not hear familiar voices?”
“None, but they spoke very little,” she said. “There is one good thing, though, that I should tell you. I think Sym was able to conceal himself from them. If he did, he will ride for Broadhaugh as soon as he can to seek help.”
“Excellent,” he said, but she detected a slight twinkle in his eyes.
Ruffling, she said, “Do you dare to laugh, sir? I know he is only a lad—”
“Nay, lassie,” he protested, “I cry innocence. He is no younger than Meggie’s Andrew, and if I do feel some amusement, it is because I sent Andrew on the same mission. The young rascal had a pistol half drawn when I saw it, and fearing they would shoot him if any of them saw it, I grabbed his arm and ordered him to go for help. I think that must be when the man struck me, because I don’t remember anything more. I only hope that the villains did not catch both lads.”
“I think we would know if they had,” she said. “Nothing I saw or heard suggested other than that they believed they had captured our entire party.”
“Well, do not set your hopes too high,” he advised.
“But if Andrew rode for Brackengill and Sym for Broadhaugh—”
“I did not send Andrew to Brackengill,” he said. “With my men split between the castle and Haggbeck, there are too few in either place to do us much good. I sent Andrew to Broadhaugh, too. That is what seemed amusing.”
“But why did you not send for Scrope?”
“Even if I could trust him, I do not know exactly where he is at present. Moreover, swift action is needed, and sending all the way to Carlisle would take too long. However, I do trust Janet. She may have married across the line, but she is a woman of integrity, and I am her brother. If there is aught that she can do to help us, she will. There may be one small problem, however.”
She knew at once what it was. “If both Andrew and Sym rushed off to seek help, they will not know where to find us,” she said with a sigh. “I told Sym to tell Davy, though, and…” She paused, wondering if she should say more, and deciding that she must. “Davy can get word to Rabbie Redcloak, sir, and some of Rabbie’s men are excellent hunters and trackers. If they get word of our trouble, they may be still be able to follow us. There has been no rain to destroy our tracks.”
He chuckled, winced again, then gathered himself, clearly intending to rise.
Laurie reached swiftly to stop him. “Don’t! You may be more seriously hurt than you know. You may even do yourself further injury.”
“Calm yourself, lass. I’ve naught amiss with me save a lump on my head. It aches like the devil and will doubtless continue to do so, but I do not mean to die yet, if that is what’s troubling you.”
“I never thought you would die; I just think you should move slowly,” she said with careful dignity. She did not want him to know how terrified she had been, first when she had thought him dead and then again when he had failed to regain consciousness quickly.
He did not reply at once, clearly focusing his energy instead on raising himself to a sitting position. As he leaned back gently against the wall, he said, “I suppose it is too much to hope that they left us water.”
“None,” she said. “Does your head ache worse now that you are sitting?”
“Not noticeably. You lied to me, Laura.”
A prickling sensation shot up her spine. “Did I?”
“Aye, when you said you did not fear that I would die.”
“I never…” Her words trailed to silence when he grinned at her. He looked much more like his usual self.
“Lassie, give it up,” he said. “Your thoughts are written plain on your face for anyone to see. They always are. You are safe enough, though. I doubt that I have strength enough to beat you.”
“You wouldn’t! Not for being worried about you—that would be daft.”
“More than daft,” he agreed. “Come here, lass. I feel a chill, and it is your duty to warm me, so that I do not sicken in this gruesome place.”
Warily, she obeyed, uncertain of him in this odd humor. But when she sat beside him and he put an arm around her, drawing her close, she leaned her head against his shoulder with a grateful sigh.
“If you must know the truth,” she muttered, “it frightened me nearly to death, seeing you so.”
“I’ll warrant it did,” he said quietly. “It would have frightened the wits out of me had our positions been reversed. You are a remarkable woman, you know.”
“Pray, sir, do not talk nonsense to me. I am naught of the sort.”
“You should not contradict me. It is most unbecoming. I know of only one other woman who would greet our present circumstances with anything remotely akin to your equanimity, and she would be striding tiresomely back and forth, demanding that I get up and do something about it.”
“Your sister?”
“Aye. Janet would not allow such a situation to terrify her, but she would not greet it calmly either. Did they ever tell you what she said when she found Quin in that cell at Carlisle?”
“No, what?”
“She taunted him. Told him that she’d disobeyed him again and that there was naught he could do about it since he was too weak even to stand up. She even swore at him and told him to get up and walk since she couldn’t carry him. She told me about it herself, even boasted of her impudence, the cheeky wench.”
Laurie tried and failed to suppress an unexpected bubble of laughter at the picture his words painted in her mind. “She didn’t!”
“She did. She said she did it to stir him to action, because they had too little time for coaxing. I think she did it just because she knew she could get away with it and could say exactly what she wanted to say for once.”
“Aye, well, I warrant she said it then, but I do not believe that Janet the Bold would have left him there even if she had not had others with her to help,” Laurie said. “Nor would she demand that you get up now and do something when there is clearly nothing that either of us can do. You must regain your strength, and we must learn more about our situation. It would be foolhardy to waste our energy.”
“My sister is overbold, however, and she rarely shows proper respect to the men in her family. I tell you, she would insist that I do something.”
“Perhaps, but if she spoke to her husband the way you describe, I think she must have believed it was necessary,” Laurie said. “They say she loves him dearly.”
“I reckon she does, at that, so you may have the right of it. For a Scot, he’s tolerable enough. It does annoy me, however, that I find myself presently dependent upon his goodwill and his ability to follow a trail.”
“I doubt that Sir Quinton has as much skill as Rabbie’s Bairns have,” Laurie said with a smile. “We would be wiser to depend on Sym’s going to Davy first. They will tell Lady Scott and Sir Quinton what occurred, but Davy will get word to Rabbie Redcloak.”
“I suppose that means that Davy Elliot is one of Rabbie’s Bairns,” Hugh said with a wry grimace. “Oh, do not fear; I suspect that most of those men in Tarras Wood are his followers, but that does not matter a whit to me now. We must just hope that someone finds us soon and sets us free.”
“Until they do, perhaps you would do better to sleep if you can,” Laurie suggested. “If you would like to use my lap as a pillow, you may.”
“I’ll not turn down such a generous offer, lass.”
That he did not argue told her his head ached more than he would admit. He eased himself back down again, and when he laid his head in her lap, she stroked his brow, trying to smooth the frown away. She was glad to find that, although his skin felt warm, he was not feverish.
“Your hand is cool,” he said, “and your lap makes a soft pillow.”
“Go to sleep,” she said, not wanting to discuss what it felt like to have his head in her lap. The horrid cell was no place to think about the feelings and emotions that just touching him stirred within her.
He shifted to his side, trying to get more comfortable, and one large hand rested briefly on her knee and slid upward, stirring more tension in her body.
Restlessly, he turned again to his back and gazed up at her. “Are you sure that my head is not too heavy for you?”
“Just sleep,” she muttered.
He shut his eyes, and she felt him relax. His head was heavy on her thigh, but she did not mind. Leaning her head against the stone wall, she closed her eyes and tried to think of something—anything—other than their present dilemma.
His hands on her breasts felt surprisingly smooth this time, not as rough as they had felt the first time. They were naked, and they lay beside each other on a soft bed of lush grass in Tarras Wood. Slanting rays of pale sunlight penetrated the green canopy overhead. Birds sang, and a brook babbled nearby, but conscious only of his touch, she barely heard those sounds.
Maybe Tarras Wood was heaven, she thought. A chuckle stirred in her mind at the sacrilege, and then he touched her again, and the chuckle turned to a gasp of pleasure. She forgot the woods, the birds, the brook, everything but the magic of his touch. His hands stroked lightly up and down her body, and wherever they touched her, sparks leapt to flame until her whole body was burning for him.
He kissed her shoulder, then her breasts and belly, his hands still moving gently, cupping a breast when he kissed it, then stroking her belly and moving lower as his lips moved lower. He touched her in places she was sure no other man had ever touched a woman. Surely, her father had never done such things to Blanche. Still, the things he did did not shock her. They seemed right and wonderful.
He did not speak, not a word, but she did not care. Had he spoken, she would not have known what to reply. Her thoughts were focused on the movements of his hands and lips. They moved over her body like warmth from the sun.
That he was hungry for her was evident from the increasing urgency of his touch. He would take her soon. She knew that, and she welcomed the taking. She would belong to him as she had to no other man, and he would be hers. The thought no longer dismayed her. It, too, seemed right, and she silently urged him on.
His body shifted, looming above her, but his weight seemed oddly centered on her right thigh, even though he had not lowered himself yet to claim her. He seemed to hover, stretched long and large above her, smiling down at her, his smile warm and inviting, teasing her; but the weight on her thigh was heavier, making the muscles cramp. It hurt, and that was not fair. The thought of that unfairness brought the woods crashing down and set the flames of Hell dancing all around her.
Startling at the sound of wood crashing against stone, Laurie jumped, and the fierce cramp in her thigh forced a cry from her lips before full awareness set in. Hugh’s hand was resting between her legs, where it ought not to have been, but that was the least of her worries. The orange glow flickering on the walls around her came not from the flames of Hell, as she had feared, but from the flame of a torch held high by the burly man who had flung open the door to the cell.
“What the devil?” Hugh sat up, and evidently did so too quickly, because he shut his eyes tight and put a hand to his forehead.
“Ye’re to come with us now, the pair o’ ye,” the man with the torch said gruffly. “And dinna be thinking ye can play off any o’ your tricks, Sir Hugh Graham, for we’ve orders to bind your hands again. If ye dinna cooperate, we’ll take the lass first and let the lads above play wi’ her a bit whilst we teach ye manners. Then we’ll take ye along up to play with, as well.”
“I’ve no wish for trouble,” Hugh said quietly. “My head aches, and I want only to know who is responsible for this outrage.”
“Turn and face yon wall then,” the man with the torch said. “Put your hands behind ye wi’ your wrists together. Lass, ye come to me, and be quick about it.”
Getting stiffly to her feet, Laurie repressed a cry when a sharp pain shot through her thigh. She had no idea how long she had slept, but it was dark outside, and her stomach was growling with hunger. Striving to retain a semblance of her normal dignity, she said quietly, “I had begun to think you meant to starve us.”