Authors: Stephanie Sterling
Alone in the darkness, his thoughts lingered on the pretty Cameron woman longer than he would care to admit.
After a few hours alone Roan decided to have a quiet snoop around the castle. He
wasn’t
a prisoner. He also hadn’t been fed. He’d been told nothing more than Laird Cameron would see him when he was ready.
No one had been ordered to guard his room, so Roan slipped out into the corridor. He walked in the opposite direction from the way he had been brought in. He hadn’t gone far when he heard a harsh whisper.
“Keep quiet, wench! And hurry!”
Roan’s stomach turned at the sound of flesh striking flesh and a woman’s cry. He didn’t stop to consider that he was unarmed and not in his own castle. His feet moved toward the commotion on instinct. He rounded a corner, and then stopped dead at the sight that came into view.
Isla was lying on the floor. A man leaned over her slumped figure, and started to haul her roughly to her feet.
Roan spared barely a second to take in the thin trail of blood on Isla’s cheek and the fresh bruises on her bare white arms before he spoke.
“Touch her again and I’ll kill ye.”
Roan was just as shocked by the words as they were. He hadn’t even
thought
them, they simply burst into existence.
Isla’s eyes widened in relief. She scrambled to her feet and limped to Roan’s side before her attacker could begin to react.
“Dinna let him come any closer!”
Speechless, Roan’s arms closed around Isla’s body, just as Ian and a coterie of guards arrived on the scene.
“What the hell is going on here?” Ian roared. He looked from Tavish, to his sister (clad only in her nightdress), to Roan MacRae.
“Tis just what I’d like to ken, Ian!” Tavish jumped in. “What are ye doing with my fiancé, MacRae?”
“What am
I
-” Roan choked. He froze, taking a moment to glance at the hated-filled faces staring back at him. He tried to jump away from Isla. Suddenly it felt as if she was actually burning him, but her arms were wound around his waist like iron shackles.
“MacRae! I demand an answer!” Tavish yelled, glancing in feigned horror at the other members of his clan.
“You bastard,” Roan hissed under his breath as he reached the unsettling conclusion that he was about to be murdered.
“Isla, come away,” Ian spat. He grabbed his sister by the arm and yanked her away from the outsider.
Roan waited for Isla to say something,
anything
, to explain the matter; He knew that no one was going to listen to him if he tried to tell the truth. No one would believe
a MacRae,
but surely they’d believe the girl. However, Isla made no effort to explain. Roan watched Ian take in his sister’s black eye and bloody lip. It was only a half-second later that the furious Cameron launched forward, knocking Roan to the ground.
Roan fought back as well as he was able, but it was hardly a fair fight. Tavish leapt into the fray, and soon the other Camerons joined in. Roan caught someone square on the jaw, but then a boot landed a kick in the center of his gut and he doubled over. He heard a woman scream, and then everything went black.
..ooOOoo..
“Here now, let me just -”
Isla winced as Gara dabbed at her lip with a damp rag. “Tis fine, really,” she mumbled and pushed her friend’s hand away.
“Tis nea fine!” Gara said, tears welling up in her eyes. “I should nae have left ye alone with that MacRae beast loose in the castle!”
“Tis nae yer fault, Gara,” Isla said quickly.
It’s mine
, she thought as a heavy weight of guilt settled in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t explain why she hadn’t set anyone straight about what really happened in the corridor. Perhaps it was because she knew that no one would believe her? They would send her back to Tavish again, and she could only imagine the punishment she would have to endure for refusing him a second time.
Gara dragged Isla away from the fighting and back toward her room. The other woman’s anxious chatter led Isla to a very unsettling conclusion. They thought it was
Roan
who had tried to hurt her.
Isla looked anxiously toward the door. She wanted to set things right. She just needed to work out what to do.
“Yer brothers will want to speak to ye, Isla,” Gara said quietly. Isla simply sighed and nodded.
It wasn’t long until there was a knock at the door. Ian walked in, followed by their younger brother, James.
“I’ll just go and -” Isla didn’t catch the end of the sentence. Gara jumped up from the seat beside Isla’s bed and scurried out of the room. A harsh scowl from Ian followed her as she went.
“
Twas nae
Gara’s fault, Ian,” Isla repeated for her brother to hear.
He shrugged his shoulders wearily. “I canna help but think that if only she had nae left ye -”
“Then he would have hurt both of us,” Isla said carefully, which earned a start from her brother that he tried to hide.
“Well, regardless,” Ian sighed. He sat down in the seat Gara had just vacated. “Father is talking to Tavish,” he said.
“What?” Isla choked, sitting up quickly.
“Tis okay,” Ian shushed her gently, taking his sister’s hand and giving it a reassuring squeeze. “He’ll still marry ye.”
Isla’s eyes bulged. No! She had thought she was safe from that at least!
“Tavish -” Ian cleared his throat awkwardly. “Well, Tavish is demanding father increase yer dowry,” he frowned, but gave his shoulders a helpless shrug. “He is within his rights to do so I suppose. Uncle said he’d help. He says tis his fault for letting a MacRae inside Castle Cameron in the first place,” he growled.
“Where
is
Roan?” she asked fearfully.
“He will nae hurt ye again!” James piped in vehemently. “He canna.”
“He canna?” Isla asked. She looked warily from one brother’s face to the other. “What do ye mean?” she demanded. “Ye have nae - he’s nae -”
“He’s nae dead yet,” Ian spat. “Uncle Douglas would nae let us rip him limb from limb. He said we’d perform the execution properly tomorrow morning, that we would nae lower ourselves to behaving in the manner of the MacRaes.”
“Execution?” The word fell from Isla’s numb lips. Her world was suddenly spinning. “Ye canna kill him!”
Ian and James exchanged a puzzled look. “Why the hell nae?” James blurted, which earned him a harsh glare from Ian.
“Isla -” he began, but she interrupted.
“What if there’s a bairn?” Isla blurted the first thing that came to her mind. She avoided looking at Ian’s face after she said this, but was able to imagine his guilty expression. For the first time in his life, he didn’t seem to know what to do.
“Isla, what are ye saying?” he asked gently.
“For God’s Sake, Ian, dinna make her say it!” James barked at his older brother. “He must have done
it
this afternoon when he found Isla out by the roadside, and gone back for seconds this evening. We were lucky Tavish caught him!”
Isla decided to play along with the story. She offered a small nod. For once she was grateful for the rash nature of her younger sibling. She didn’t know how she would have answered Ian’s question on her own. She wasn’t even sure where her own lie had sprung from! But she knew that she couldn’t let Roan die, and that she would do anything to escape from Tavish. The shadow of a very dangerous plan began to take form in her mind.
“I kenned Uncle Douglas should have let us finish him off then and there!” James raged.
“Nae!” Isla cried again.
Weren’t they listening to her?
“I dinna want him dead!”
“Nae?” James blinked in shock.
“What
do
ye want, Isla?” Ian asked, much more in control of himself than their brother.
“I want -” she took a very deep breath. “I want to marry him.”
Isla didn’t think that anything else she could have said would have produced such a completely stunned reaction from her two brothers. They positively gaped at her.
“Yer
nae
serious?” Ian finally mustered the self-composure to speak.
“Of course she’s nae serious!” James answered for her. “She’s clearly taken a knock to the head.” He pointed to her bruises. “See, obviously nae in her right state of mind.”
Isla glared at James, and waved his hand away. “I’m completely serious,” she argued. “I want to marry Roan MacRae!”
..ooOOoo..
Roan groaned and rubbed his head, squinting in the dim light of the Cameron dungeon. It was almost pitch black and both of his eyes were so bloody and swollen that he could barely force them open. He wondered why he was still alive. He knew the Cameron’s didn’t mean to let him live. He just wondered how long they would draw out his torture.
You’re innocent you fool!
A voice whispered in his head. Roan didn’t know whether to nurse that flicker of hope or to extinguish it. He’d thought that Isla would have explained things long ago. He didn’t know how long he had been unconscious, but he suspected that it was almost dawn. What had happened? Had she held her tongue? Did they not believe her? Of course, the Camerons had never really needed a reason to kill a MacRae.
The echo of footsteps in the hall was Roan’s first clue that something was about to change. The footsteps were followed by low voices and then the groan of a lock and whine of hinges as his cell door was opened. He winced as the light hit him. He squinted up from his position on the floor and made out the form of Ian Cameron, Isla’s brother.
Was that good or bad
, Roan wondered?
If the expression on Ian’s face was anything to judge by, it was definitely bad.
“Isla told me what ye did.”
“Thank God,” Roan sagged with relief.
Ian shot him a strange look and then continued. “She’s also begged us to spare yer life.”
“All right,” Roan said slowly. Something about this wasn’t quite right. If Isla had told her brothers how he’d saved her then why was his life still in danger?
“We took some convincing I can assure ye,” Ian growled. “And if ye lay so much as a finger on her again I’ll -”
“What do ye mean, ‘
again’
?” Roan interrupted, his blood suddenly turning to ice his veins. His thoughts turned slowly in his head. “What exactly did she say, Cameron?” he asked, but Ian simply scowled, so furiously that Roan braced his broken body for another beating.
“I’m here to tell ye that there are two ways yer getting out of this cell, MacRae,” he spat, as if every single word was offensive to him. Roan knew better than to interrupt. “As a dead man,” he paused, “or as my sister’s fiancé.”
“What?” Roan choked.
Ian ignored him. “Now I dinna ken how my sister can stomach the thought of letting ye within a hundred feet of her, but lucky for ye, she can. If that changes, I’ve told her to let me ken immediately.”
“I dinna touch -” Roan began furiously, but Ian once again continued as if he hadn’t spoken.
“Our Laird has given his reluctant blessing to the union. He kens how highly yer regarded by yer own Laird and dinna want to provoke outright war between our two clans,” Ian snorted.