The Runaway Highlander (The Highland Renegades Book 2) (2 page)

“You say you know this man?” the Sheriff said.

Miss de Cheyne offered a curtsy, but as she sank into it, Aedan could see a loathing on her lowered face that almost matched his own. He couldn’t remember her name, not for his life. He’d been off collecting renegades when they arrived, and he’d only been back in the Sheriff’s household once since the entourage had taken up residence.

She leaned in to the Sheriff to whisper something, her eyes flickering between Aedan and William. He kept waiting for her to stare at the scar, but she met his eyes each time. Her gaze was so quick, as though something
moved with purpose behind it. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen, but her air and sharpness made her seem older.

Everyone knew that her mother planned to match her with
Simon Alcock, Sheriff of Berwick. English puppet. Poor girl.

She’d already shown more spirit and intelligence th
an he deserved, and was far too beautiful to be stuck with a pig like Simon.

“What do you think about that, Donne?” The Sheriff clapped him on the back. “Miss de Cheyne says this man is a friend of Broccin Sinclair.”

“Who’s that?” Aedan stood and took William by the arm.

“One of those renegades down in the dungeon. According to de Moray’s wife, he wa
s the leader of the whole group, not de Moray. His title now belongs to de Cheyne, so you might say I have a… family interest.” Simon Alcock leered at the young woman in her lush blue dress.

Aedan stifled the urge to knock the fat fool’s teeth from his lecherous face.

“I did not question the man as to his specific allegiance. Only that he is one of the outlaws you seek.” Aedan entertained no desire to bow again, but the Sheriff was exceedingly wary of men who would not show proper deference, and the old man began to get that twitch in his eye. “What would you like me to do with the man, sir?”

“I can help with his care.” The girl spoke again, careful not to address Aedan directly. She was a fast learner.

Simon Alcock squinted, as though thinking required obfuscated vision. William leaned a little more solidly on Aedan’s arm and groaned. “We must do something with the man.”

The
girl stepped forward again and Aedan held his breath. When beautiful women got too close to him, he couldn’t help the response. All revulsion affected him, but women’s especially, and the pretty ones most of all. Their disgust was a constant reminder of what he would never have.

Instead of recoiling, she smiled.
“Let me help.”

The Sheriff
jumped as though he hadn’t noticed her presence until that moment. He eyed her with furrowed brows and crossed arms. “You’re not a healer.”

“I know enough to be helpful.” She approached the captive and examined his side. “It is so late and surely your
physician will be far away or asleep.”

“Or drunk in his cups,” whispered one of the guard
s by the door. The two big lunks laughed and punched one another. Aedan hadn’t considered that, not knowing Berwick well enough to have considered from where the help would come.

“Surely, Sheriff, you have another healer we can send for. A noble lady in the dungeon… it would—” Aedan stopped when the Sheriff’s
hand came up to silence him. The fat man stood, staring at the beauty before them and chewed at his lips.

“She may tend him in the
guard’s storeroom, outside the dungeon,” he finally said. The fat man leaned in and put his stubbled, sweaty cheek to Aedan’s scarred one. “I want you to watch her, closely, and report back.”

Aedan nodded, suppressing the desire to wipe away the evidence of his collusion. Instead, he took William
’s arm and led the limping man out of the giant, echoing room. The sweat that remained from the Sheriff’s face stung in the cold air of the passageway.

The girl followed, her footsteps like feathers behind him on the stone. When the door closed at last, Aedan turned to her and bowed. He gestured to the stairs. “After you, my lady.”

She nodded curtly and brushed past them. Aedan watched her lift her skirts and descend into the dungeon. She may be pretty smiles and polite words while she wheedled a plan, and a better-looking man might have fallen for it, thinking he might have a chance with her, but Aedan was wise to her ways. He’d find out her game and beat her at it.

Chapter Two

Anne nearly
retched at the smell of the heavy air that swallowed her into the dungeon. A combination of human waste, rot, and filth tickled her throat with its pungent invitation until she finally had to hold her breath against it, or risk soiling herself. She came to the first door at the base of the winding stairs and tried the handle instinctively, wanting to escape the nausea more than anything.

Behind her, the scarred man and his captive stomped into the storeroom. The door slammed closed and the wounded man fell to the floor. Anne turned to see that his captor had released him and
he was unable to stand on his own. William, she thought she remembered them calling him.

She knelt and put her hand under his arm. The fabric of her sleeve immediately stuck to her forearm with a warm, wet stickiness. She must be near his wound.

“Can you stand?” She strained to pull him to his feet, but her leverage wasn’t enough to move the giant man. His blond beard hung long and braided, in the common style of the western Highlands, practically dragging on the floor from his kneeling position. He really did remind her of Broccin Sinclair, her childhood fiancé. The news that Broc lay in the dungeon fluttered her heartbeat. While she had never loved him the way a woman should love a man, she had enough affection for the man that she didn’t want him to rot here.

And while she hadn’t seen Broc in many years, she imagined that he would look just like William Campbell. Perhaps without the braided beard, although word was that Broc had taken up with Andrew de Moray and had been living with his renegade band that had been striking weak English posts since the incursion.

He could be anyone.

She had to get to him. Perhaps her father could intervene. But first, she had to know why he was here and how she could help.

And she needed William
Campbell to make that happen.

Before she realized what was happening, the wounded man’s body fell away from her and he landed on his fee
t. The scarred man, Aedan, had hold of him again.

“He’s losing blood.” Aedan lifted William’s arm and found the wound that had been pressing against Anne’s dress.

“Can you put him on a flat surface?” Anne looked around the room for the first time. “Is there a table?”

The storeroom, as the Sheriff had ca
lled it, was really more like an armament hall. A long, thin room, it sat just wide enough for the three of them to stand shoulder-to-shoulder between shelves that held helmets, mail, boots, and jerkins lining one wall, then weapons of every kind lining the other. About ten feet into the dark room, a thick, short table stretched between the shelves.

Aedan grunted as he laid the ma
n’s torso across the table. His legs dangled over the end, but Anne could easily see the extent of his wound. The man’s shirt lay torn from below his shoulder nearly to his waist, hanging open to reveal an oozing, bloody wound at his side just under his arm.

Anne
pulled at the soiled material until it ripped even farther. She held the pieces apart with her fingertips and studied the wound. Blood dripped thickly from the wound and his skin pulled at jagged edges.

She took a deep breath and froze. Her insufficient dinner felt as though it might come up again.

Edging her out of the way, Aedan took the shirt and ripped it from the man’s torso in one swift movement. He released the remains of the garment and only then did she realize that he breathed in urgent silence at her elbow.

“Thank you, sir.” She stepped back. “I hadn’t thought to…”

He sighed loudly and grasped the end of the shirt again. He lifted the captive only slightly and pulled the tattered fabric out from underneath him, then held it up to Anne. She nearly reeled at the scent alone.

“Don’t you want to stop the bleeding?” A note of taunting flirted at the edges of his voice. He shook the shirt under her nose.

Anne froze. She hadn’t even thought. Surely, if he had such little faith in her healing knowledge, he would push her out of her opportunity to help Broc. To help Scotland.

“Of course, sir.” She wrapped the shirt several times around her hand and pressed it to the wound.
The captive winced and hissed a curse. It wasn’t long before she could feel the same warmth as had soaked her sleeve. Unthinking, she recoiled, taking the rag with her.

Another loud expelling of breath feathered against her cheek as Aedan reached past her, taking the shirt from around her hand, and
pressing it back on the wound. The intimacy of his breath on her skin almost made her hold back, but she had to convince this man that she knew this craft. She just had to have a moment alone with William.

“Not too much pressure,” she said.

Aedan’s eyebrows raised and he stepped back, allowing the bloody fabric to fall away from the wound. William howled.

“Why not?” Aedan asked.

She pressed the shirt back against the wound and placed her other hand on William’s chest, hoping it would calm him even a little.

“The man is in pain.”

“The man is bleeding to death.”

“I am trying to stop that.”
Anne steadied William’s moving body, locking her elbow and leaning hard against him, but his moaning intensified.

“
I’m not sure you’re doing any good.” Aedan shifted from side to side, making disapproving noises at her every move.

She lifted the cloth and looked at the wound again. It seemed to have slowed bleeding with William on his back, but that left the issue of how to stitch it up. It was extremely clean,
but wide. She’d never stitched a wound before and wasn’t sure where to begin, even. Perhaps it would be like stitching cloth.

She tore her eyes away from the gore, tr
ying to keep her stomach from losing its contents everywhere. “I need some supplies.”

Aedan stopped shifting and went for the
exit. “What do you need?”

“Whatever you can find.”

He remained at the door, searching the room for something. “Are there no supplies here?”

With her stomach roiling, Anne reached out for support, but her hand fell on William’s hip bone and he yipped like a puppy beneath the pressure—far as it was from the wound.

I can do this. I can do this.

“I’ll search here,” she promised.
“But we need hot water and a clean knife. It must be very sharp. With all haste, please.”

With a gruff noise, the door closed behind him. The momentary shift of air brought a touch of reprieve. Having never been this close to a wound before, she hadn’t known how it would
upset her stomach. Her weakness was nearly as disagreeable as the blood-soaked cloth she continued to grip in her hand.

Anne took a deep breath through her mouth, stifling any more nausea, and leaned over William to take her opportunity at last.

“You don’t know me,” she began in a whisper, in case any guards walked by. “But I know of you and I know one of the men you seek here.”

“How did you know?” William groaned and opened his eyes. “That I was coming to rescue Broccin Sinclair.”

Anne’s heart flipped. So Broc was here, after all. He could help her, certainly. “I didn’t. I mean, I don’t. I only knew Broc as a child.”

William’s brown eyes flickered back and forth between hers, searching. What for, she wasn’t certain, but she hoped that her sincerity would convince him.

“I mean to help rescue him if I can.”

He glanced at the door as soon as she uttered the words. Wrinkled concern covered his face. “Do you know of the plan?”

“What plan?”

William shifted and covered his bare chest with his far arm. It must have been some kind of signal. She lifted her left arm in a diagonal position across her own chest, mirroring him.

“We’ve had more men captured this winter than ever before. Many are jailed here in Berwick, awaiting no trial, given no quarter.”

“And Broc is one of them?”

“He came to rescue Andrew de Moray, when he was captured in a raid near the border. Since then, we’ve had two dozen men captured and imprisoned. The Sheriff’s cells are bursting with us.”

Anne pictured the dank, smelly dungeon that
laid just two walls beyond where they sat in semi-darkness, with only a low-burning torch to give them light. She imagined the dungeon to be darker, even, than this. Disorienting. Frightful. And Broccin lay in that awful place. Perhaps she never loved the man, when he was a boy, but she certainly wouldn’t wish this fate upon him.

Only the English deserved that.

William laid back, eyes closed, breathing through some kind of pain or spasm. Suddenly aware that Aedan would be back in a moment, Anne urged him onward.

“You say there’s a plan?”

William nodded. “I was to be the last one captured. There is a man in the guard who is sympathetic to us and I have been given leave to pay him for a key and lead the escape.”

Anne fluttered her fingers against the cloth. This would never do. William was certainly in no place to lead a rebellion, and they must have taken whatever purse he’d had on him, because she saw nothing.

“And now that you’ve been wounded, what is the plan?”

He winced a smile and reached for her hand, pulling it toward the wound and pressing down. “I’ll heal in the dungeon. Then we’ll make our escape.”

“That could be weeks.” Anne allowed her eyes to wander the room as she considered what could be done. Far down the shelves, her eyes lighted on a pile of wrapped cloth that would work for bandages, hiding behind a row of helmets, stuffed into a corner.

She pressed harder on his wound and he cried out. “See, you’re in no position to do anything right now. How far is your camp?”

His brows narrowed and he jerked his head. “How did you know there was a camp?”

“There’s always a camp.” She took his far hand and put it on the blood-soaked shirt. Careful to avoid his legs, Anne squeezed down the length of the room and grabbed a few rolls of bandages.

She took one of the shirts from the pile of requisitions and tied a bundle together, leaving one of the rolls out. “I’m going to leave this here next to your good arm.”

Anne
placed the tied bundled shirt next to William’s body where it would be invisible to Aedan from the door. Perhaps even from a close distance. Arm’s length distance.

“What is it?”

“A bundle of bandages, for the road.”

He caught her wrist as she squeezed past him. “For what?”

She lifted the bloodied rag from his wound and replaced it with a clean shirt. Thankfully, it didn’t soak through with blood as quickly as she’d expected it might.

“For the road,” she repeated. “Because we have a new plan, and I don’t think you’re going to like it very much.”

*****

Aedan’s arms were so full of supplies he imagined they might need, he fumbled for a moment or two with the door
before he could get it open. He should have just left it open in the first place, and likely would have, if he hadn’t been so concerned about what ideas the Sheriff’s men might have gotten if they’d come across Anne de Cheyne without him there to protect her.

Whatever Highland hill she’d been born on, he was certain it was nothing like the danger and bus
tle of the city. Especially one ruled by a corrupt magistrate with Simon Alcock’s history.

Naiveté
was only so appealing before it became dangerous, and in a place like this, innocence could get you killed. Or worse.

Aedan needed to extricate himself from her as quickly as
he was able. Just this door and a few stitches, and he’d be free of her.

The door latch gave a heavy click when he finally managed enough leverage to force it to open. The storage room was darker than the hallway and it took him a minute to adjust.

A pile of white linen rolls sat on the table. Thankfully, she’d found more because the two he’d managed to scrounge up wouldn’t be enough to wrap a man fully. Anne stood in the same posture and place she’d been when he left. Leaning against the table, holding what looked like a clean cloth to William’s side.

The blood-soaked remains of
the shirt lay at her feet. Aedan shifted the mess to the wall with the edge of his boot, trying to keep the blood away from her dress. On one of the empty shelves, he set down the bowl of hot water, the knives, the needle and thread, and the two rolls of linen strips.

“I think the bleeding has stopped.” Anne removed the mostly clean cloth from the wound and showed it to him, looking up for approval.

He almost smiled. Something about the turn up of her eyes reminded him of Brighde. Perhaps that was what made him trust her, as well. A childlike desire for his approval had endeared his sister to him from the moment she’d opened her eyes. His heart warmed at the memory and he found one corner of his mouth turning upward of its own volition.

“That’s good news.” His gruff tone erased the
Brighde-esque moment from her face and solidified her requisite determination. He still couldn’t decide what had so set her mind toward this task, but she was fierce in her persistence.