Meg turned her head and looked her brother full in the eyes. “I only wish you had possessed such courage when Aisla needed you. It might have prevented all this.”
Dougal did not duck the accusation in her eyes. “Do you not think I have blamed myself a thousand times?”
Her lips twisted. “Much good that does us now. Much help to Isobel and Catherine—you know what MacNab will do to them.”
“You think I will not fight to rescue Isobel?”
“Will you? As you fought for Aisla?”
Aye, Dougal thought desperately, passionately, though no word passed his lips. I did the best I could. I failed—I was little more than a lad, and I failed. It shall not end so, this time.
“Tell me how they left Lachy alive,” he begged.
“They thought him dead, as did I. MacNab took the women and would have taken me, also, but I threatened him with a curse. I stood over Lachy’s body—I stood, Brother, and defied them. A lesson you might well learn.”
Dougal nodded, again not dodging the missile of her hate.
“What will you do?” Meg challenged with a sneer.
“Give MacNab what he wants—what he has always wanted.”
Meg lifted a brow. “And, what is that?”
“Me,” Dougal replied. “I mean to place myself squarely in his hands.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Courage, Catherine,” Isobel said to her sister with assurance she did not truly feel. “You must be brave for the sake of your child, if for no other reason.”
Catherine made no reply. She had been ill, shivering and vomiting, since they arrived at MacNab’s keep, and that worried Isobel sorely. Truly, Isobel fretted for the babe her sister carried, more than for her own safety.
At least they were together, she thought now, and at least Bertram MacNab had not put them in the vile chamber where Isobel had last been held—that where Aisla had been imprisoned and had doubtless died. The bedposts in this bedchamber held no scars, and Isobel would take reassurance wherever she could find it.
She stroked her sister’s hair, a gesture she had often employed since their mother’s death. Back then, Catherine had clung to her and wept. As the elder, Isobel strove to hide her own grief, even as she hid her terror now.
“Only think on our Viking ancestors,” she said, “or, indeed, the Scottish ones. Would those brave women weep and moan?”
“I am not weeping,” Catherine protested, sounding more herself. “I am trying very hard not to be sick. What do you think they will do with us?”
Isobel dared not answer that truthfully. Her first visit had acquainted her all too well with Bertram MacNab’s depravities. She could only hope to direct his attentions to herself, and so spare Catherine.
“Thomas will come for me,” Catherine said when Isobel did not answer, holding fiercely to the belief.
Would he? What would Dougal do when he returned home from Stirling—if he returned home—to find his wife gone? Isobel thought back to the scene at MacRae’s keep when she and Catherine had been dragged away. So many of Dougal’s warriors dead—even poor Lachlan. She remembered Meg standing over her lover’s corpse, fierce and defiant. Could she even imagine Dougal feeling that way toward her?
And Thomas, she thought, though she did not say, possessed no means to rescue his wife, just as Dougal now possessed no might. Means and might—were both not vital to the kind of battle that would be required?
She whispered, almost to herself, “Thomas and Dougal are away with the King.”
“They will return, and soon.”
Catherine’s assertion made Isobel’s stomach turn over. She knew Dougal might not return. The King might, rather, decide to punish him for past crimes, and even to sentence him to death. If so, did that mean her future lay here, a grim span of days filled with grief for him, pain and endurance? Could she even live without the man she loved? She might well survive, but it would not be living.
“Thomas will come.” Catherine repeated it like a prayer. “He will come for me and his child.”
Thomas, a bailiff’s son, not even a bailiff in his own right… He might well throw himself against the stones of Randal MacNab’s stronghold. He might also die there.
Isobel knew their only hope was Dougal MacRae, her husband, the man she would follow anywhere—the man who loved her not.
He had loved Aisla and loved her still, but he had let Aisla die here, in the precise place where Isobel now stood.
“What—?” Catherine began, only to be interrupted by a commotion at the chamber door: harsh voices, an exchange with the guard posted outside, and then the scrape of the bar lifting.
Isobel, never very devout, began to pray.
Please, not Bertram, anyone but Bertram. Please!
The door swung open, revealing not Bertram MacNab but his father, Randal. Isobel had no way to know which way Randal’s depravities might lie—to cruelty, surely, and the ruthless use of power. But would he carry out the threats his son had made?
Somehow, Isobel got to her feet, her arm curled protectively around her sister’s shoulders.
“Sir,” she began before Randal MacNab could speak, “this is an outrage! My sister is ill, and as you can see, she is with child. I demand you release her at once.”
“You demand, do you?” Randal’s mud-colored eyes, so like his son’s, inspected the two of them with disparagement. “And, wench, why should I do that? My good friend your father asked us to recover his daughter. Shall he not be doubly pleased with both?”
A spark of hope lit Isobel’s heart. “Is my father here? Or on his way?”
“No.” MacNab smiled grimly. “But I am empowered to act as his agent in this matter.”
Isobel thought swiftly. “Fine. Well, send Catherine home to him.”
“Send the both of us,” Catherine said.
Randal shook his head. “And then what would I have with which to bargain? Mistress MacRae, I have a score to settle with your husband.”
“What score?”
MacNab tossed his head. “A thousand injuries, over any number of generations. Blood for blood—’tis how we do it here. Or, coin for coin.”
“Coin?” Isobel repeated, foundering.
“I mean to ransom you,” Randal said, “and the price will be high.”
Isobel drew a breath. “Ransom me, if you will. Let my sister go. She means nothing to Dougal.”
And I, too, mean little enough to him. Yet, it matters not what happens to me—I will pay any price for Catherine’s sake.
“I shall think on that,” Randal said, and Isobel knew he lied. She had just shown him her weakness and he would use it against her any way he could.
“When your husband arrives,” he went on, “I shall permit you to observe the negotiations.”
Again, Isobel’s heart clenched. “He has journeyed to see the King.”
“Aye, and he has returned again, curse his black heart! Och, well, if James is too lily-livered to do the job for me, I shall take care of it myself.” He waved a hand at the room. “Meanwhile, enjoy your accommodations. As you see, there are no windows through which you might climb.” He bared his teeth. “In fact, there is no way out at all.”
He went out, and Isobel heard the bar slam down across the door, outside.
Catherine began, “Well, if he means to ransom us—”
“He does not,” Isobel said with certainty, “at least, not at once. He will inflict hurt any way he can.”
Catherine stared at her. “But he said—”
“Trust no lie coming from that monster’s mouth. What he says matters not at all.”
Isobel paced the chamber for what felt like hours. Catherine, exhausted, dozed fitfully. The room, cold and bleak, offered no way to tell day from night, but Isobel counted the moments and Bertram did not come to tie her or Catherine to the bed and unleash his vile appetites. She tried to be grateful for that.
Weariness nibbled at her before she once more heard someone at the door. Her heart dropped, and Catherine, who had at last slept soundly, lifted her head.
“What is it?”
Isobel shook her head and curled her fingers into fists as the door opened. She would fight as hard as she could, and for as long as she could.
Bertram MacNab stood in the doorway, a leer on his face and two guards at his back. Hate seared through Isobel, so fierce it made her lightheaded. She moved and put herself between Catherine and the monster.
You shall not touch her
.
Bertram gestured at her. “We need one of you. You choose.”
Catherine scrambled to her feet to stand beside Isobel. Isobel felt her sister’s fingers catch hers, and hold.
Courage
…
“Why?” Catherine asked. “What do you—”
“I will go,” Isobel cut her off. She did not know what MacNab intended, but better her than Catherine, who had a babe to protect.
“No!” Catherine cried. “I demand you leave us together! I—”
Calmly, Bertram stepped forward and slapped Catherine across the face so hard she fell down. When Isobel stooped to lift her, she saw blood at the corner of Catherine’s mouth.
“Sister?”
Catherine, bless her, looked angry rather than cowed. Rage glinted in her eyes.
“Let me go,” Isobel begged. “I will return.”
“No!”
“Catherine, please!”
Unhappy, Catherine subsided. Isobel turned to Bertram. “Take me.”
His leer widened, and his eyes inspected her with what she very much feared was anticipation. Would these three haul her back to her previous prison, tie her to that bed where Aisla had no doubt died, be the first three to rape her?
Again she whispered a prayer in her mind, not, strangely enough, to any deity, but to the devil, Devil Black MacRae.
Please, please, please…
“Come,” MacNab growled.
She went with her head high, but her treacherous legs threatened to go out from under her. Down the corridor they went, past the chamber where Isobel had been confined before, down the stairs to the great hall, where Randal MacNab stood waiting with another man.
Isobel saw it was dark outside the windows—night. Had she and Catherine been here so long? Dawn had just been breaking through the filthy storm when they were dragged in.
She tried to focus on Randal. The man beside him, squat and ginger-haired, looked nervous. He had a roll of fabric tucked under his arm.
Randal addressed Isobel abruptly, while still her senses swam. “What part of you will your husband recognize?”
“Eh?”
“We need a token to show him, to prove our intentions when he comes.”
“If he comes,” Bertram put in. “The Devil Black likes to play the dangerous villain, but we all know his heart is white.”
“He will come,” Randal told his son. “’Twill be a point of pride with him. So, Mistress, what will your husband recognize? This man, here, is a surgeon.” He grimaced. “Well, so, he is a barber, which is nearly the same thing.”
Isobel gasped, and for an instant the room went dark around her. They could not mean what they said!
The ginger-haired man unfurled his roll of fabric; it contained an array of knives arranged small to large.
“Come now,” Randal told Isobel. “What token?”
“You are mad!”
Bertram laughed, a strange, high-pitched giggle.
The ginger-haired barber looked at Isobel uneasily. “Her hair?” he suggested. “’Tis bonny hair. Surely her husband will recognize—”
“Yes,” Isobel said through a throat constricted by terror.
“Na, na!” Randal waved a hand. “Perhaps a finger.”
“A strip of flesh off her arse,” Bertram suggested, “or a nipple. Sure, he will know her nipple.”
Isobel’s legs failed her, and she sank to the floor. “No,” she mumbled.
Bertram nodded to the guards. “Bring the other wench. I told you, Father, the best message we can present to them, when they arrive, is the babe cut from her womb.”
“No!” Isobel struggled to her feet. “You shall not harm her! Use me!”
Randal MacNab nodded at the barber. “Take a finger. No doubt her pretty hands have been all over him.”
“A lock o’ hair—” the barber suggested again.
Randal glared at him. “You will do as you are told, man, if you wish to keep that wee bit cottage over your eight—is it eight?—squealing children’s heads. And that wife o’ yours—she is ill, is she no’? A shame to force her out into the winter snow.”
The barber, avoiding Isobel’s eyes, reached among his knives and selected one. “Hold her.”
In the end it took four strong men to hold Isobel and another to stretch her hand on the hearth stones and pin it there. She struggled and fought with every drop of her strength, but they bore her down until she could only watch the barber move, like something in a dream, slow and deliberate.
She did not want to scream, but the sound tore from her—not when the barber’s knife severed the smallest finger on her left hand, but when he pulled an iron from the fire and cauterized the bleeding stump.
Then, even before her eyes rolled back in her head, she bellowed like a banshee, “You shall pay for this! He will come! I tell you, the Devil Black will come!”
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Open the gates, MacNab!” bellowed Dougal MacRae. “Open to me! You have something that is mine!”
The filthy weather had cleared at last, and a weak sun had now sunk into the horizon, stealing all light. In the dense gloom, the stones of MacNab’s stronghold looked dark and forbidding. Surrounded by the handful of men left to him, Dougal knew himself to be utterly vulnerable. If MacRae let him in—and he would—there existed a good chance Dougal would never ride out again.
At his side, Thomas sat his horse, looking grim and uneasy. No fool, he. The man knew the odds. Yet he had been the first to declare himself ready to ride into the monster’s lair.
“I am no warrior,” he said, “but I am willing to die for the woman I love. My life is nothing without her anyway.”
Those words hung in Dougal’s mind and played over and over again. Aisla, the woman he had always loved, had died here in MacNab’s hands. Dougal could no longer say what he felt for Isobel. He still believed himself incapable of the fine emotion called love, but the idea of failing her made him go cold and hollow inside.