Highland conquest, p.7
Highland Conquest, page 7
Cain’s gaze flicked across to the arched alcove where the stairs began. Was Ella awake? It was still early, slightly past dawn. He’d walked up the circular tower steps as far as his father’s chamber where he’d stationed a rotating guard last night in case the lass thought she could sneak out. Perhaps, unlike Cain, she had succumbed to sleep immediately and slept deeply all night. He glanced at his brother when he realized Gideon had grown silent.
“She tried to leave only once, before midnight,” Gideon said. “Thomas stopped her.”
Cain frowned, meeting Gideon’s amused gaze. “How?”
“She opened her door, stepped out with her kitten, and took ten st—”
“Ye arse, how did Thomas stop her?”
“Ooooooh,” Gideon said, a broad smile irritating Cain. Unlike Joshua, Gideon was the peacemaker, so his teasing had caught him off guard. “He told her that he was stationed there to make certain she did not leave, and that food would be brought to her in the morning. She turned around, without a word, and climbed back up to the tower chamber.”
“Has anyone brought her food yet?”
“Merida stopped Joshua from taking it up and said she’d take it up after dawn,” Gideon said, his smile thinning out. “I think he has become interested in her.”
“He bloody hell better become disinterested fast,” Cain said, his hand squeezing into a fist.
The rivalry between the oldest and second oldest had always been fierce, with Cain being the one in charge as the firstborn and Joshua being excellent at starting wars. They would always have each other’s backs, though, in and out of battle. Loyalty to one another flowed through their blood.
“I already talked to him,” Gideon said. “The last thing we need is a civil war over a lass.”
“I would win,” Cain said. He always won.
“Speak the devil’s name and ye summon him,” Gideon said under his breath as Joshua strode briskly into the great hall, saw them, and came directly over.
He smiled and nodded to Gideon before meeting Cain’s angry gaze. “Have ye seen the Sutherland lass yet today?” Joshua asked. “She is looking quite lovely in that blue gown Merida found for her. Although I still prefer those tight trousers.”
Cain stood, his chair scraping back across the stone floor. Gideon leaped up, ready to break up what was about to escalate. “Ye were told not to go up to her chamber,” Cain said. He did not need Joshua interfering in his strategy to gain Ella’s trust.
“I have not gone up to her chamber. In fact, I just returned from giving your wedding banns to Pastor John.” Joshua made a show of stepping around Cain to flop down into the chair he’d vacated.
Cain spun on his heel. “And yet ye saw Ella this morn? She has not yet come down.”
“Ho, she is right now, stuck in the process of coming down,” Joshua said, making Cain and Gideon look to the steps. “Not that way.” Joshua pointed toward the entryway. “She is climbing down from her window.”
“What?” Cain didn’t wait for further explanation but ran toward the entryway. He heard Gideon curse as he followed.
“I thought to assist, but ye told me to keep away from her,” Joshua yelled from his seat.
Cain grabbed the rough stone of the broad doorway as he rounded the corner, surging out into the morning air and turning immediately to the right where the tower rose four stories straight up. There were a half dozen soldiers underneath staring up, their arms out as if preparing to work together to catch the lass. “Let me through,” Cain commanded.
“Joshua said he would tell ye,” Keenan said, the men parting.
He looked up the smooth curve of the tower. Ella was halfway down, with what looked like strips from a blanket braided together and wrapped in a crossed hold around her back while her booted feet stepped down the curved granite. The blue gown was tucked around each leg, but part of it still hung down. Meow. The kitten was somewhere on her person and quite vexed.
“What the bloody hell are ye doing?” he yelled.
She stopped, one hand at her back where she held the rope as easily as if she sat on a swing. She frowned down at him. “Coming to breakfast.”
He stood below her with the rest of the onlookers, heart pounding in his chest. One slip and she could drop to the hard dirt of the bailey below. “We have stairs inside.”
She took another step down the wall, and his arms rose as if to catch her. “Stairs that are guarded.”
“Merida was about to bring something up.”
“I was hungry.” She yelled the words succinctly as if rebuking the wall. With a big inhale, she continued to step down while leaning back, letting out the long rope she’d braided as she went. She’d been busy last night.
Each step down seemed to take forever as he waited, his own arms out and ready. But she continued without fault, stubbornly lowering herself until the tips of Cain’s fingers could reach her.
Meow, the kitten called, but he still didn’t see it. “I will catch ye,” he said, his thick arms out and ready.
“I am fine on my own.”
He caught her around the waist anyway, pulling her into his arms, her back against his chest. “God’s teeth, Ella,” he cursed, guiding her feet to the earth and turning her toward him. “What the hell were ye doing?”
Ella’s face was flushed with exertion, and mutiny shone in her eyes as she shoved away from him. “Dawn came up faster than I anticipated,” she said, her words almost like a snarl, and she yanked her braided hair around to her shoulder. The front of her bodice moved, and the kitten’s head popped out the top.
Cain looked up at the open window above and then to her. “Ye wished to escape while it was still dark.”
Her hands perched onto the curves of her hips. “I wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of climbing out if I knew everyone was going to see me. I might be a slow climber, and apparently unable to judge the sky, but I am not an idiot,” she murmured, her cheeks flushed from exertion or embarrassment. She glanced away. “Well, maybe I am,” she added under her breath.
The kitten, its small head popped out of the valley between Ella’s breasts, reached a paw out to bat at a stray curl that lay along the curve of her cheek. “I must have fallen asleep for much longer than I thought,” she said, not looking at him. “I swore it was closer to three in the morning when I first climbed out. The blasted clouds were blocking the start of the sunrise in the east.”
The woman was brave, clever, and strong. She was also used to berating herself. Cain glanced at the men who were still gathered, their expressions somewhere between amused and shocked.
Keenan looked…damn interested. “She is certainly not frightened of high climbs.”
“Go on,” Cain ordered, and they turned away reluctantly, walking toward the morning training session that Bàs would begin once he returned from the Sutherland chapel.
Cain ignored Gideon and Joshua, who stood at the keep doors, anger at her risk still strumming through his veins. “Ella,” he said and waited until she lifted her gaze to meet his. He wanted to curse at her for risking her life, to demand she promise to not try to escape by insane means, and to threaten that he’d tie her to her bed tonight. The look in her eyes said she expected all of that.
He glanced at the windows way up the tower and then back at her. “Ye are a clever and brave prisoner.” He scratched his bristled chin and slid his gaze along the height again. “Most of my men would not have even attempted that climb, let alone with Puss stuffed down their tunic.”
“Boudica,” she said.
“Boudica?” As dawn flooded the courtyard with misty light, he could see the darker flecks in Ella’s gray eyes.
“The puss,” she said. “I call her Boo, short for Boudica, the great Celtic warrior woman.” She gently pulled the small kitten from her bodice, its round eyes wide as if it knew how lucky it was to still be alive. Ella set her down, and the kitten immediately started stalking a grasshopper, apparently forgetting its fear.
Damn, if the cat had made her lose her focus, Ella could have fallen. He made himself take another deep breath before speaking again. “I will be nailing the tower windows shut today.”
She shrugged. “I am very good at finding ways to escape.”
Cain’s face tightened as his eyes moved to her circular scar. “Is that why ye were branded on your face with the Sutherland crest? So if ye escaped, someone would return ye?”
Ella turned on her boot, traipsing back to the great hall. She looked like she would crash right through Gideon and Joshua, but they parted quickly to let her enter. Cain stopped with them, watching her walk through into the great hall where Merida greeted her.
“Have a guard posted below the tower,” Cain said.
Gideon crossed his arms. “I thought ye were nailing the windows shut.”
“Aye, but she probably has a way to work nails out.”
“Blast, brother,” Joshua said. “Ye aren’t nearly as furious as I thought ye would be.”
He was right. Cain let a grin bend the side of his mouth upward as he looked again at the height. Ella had known nearly as soon as she climbed out that she had miscalculated the timing of dawn. She hadn’t the strength to climb back into the room, but she could probably have lifted the kitten over the windowsill. Doing so would have left her dangling four stories up, all alone, knowing that she would be recaptured. If she had let go, she would have died from the fall.
“I just learned something very important about Ella Sutherland.”
“That she cannot tell the time,” Gideon said, making Joshua chuckle.
Cain rubbed the knot in his chest that was starting to relax with Ella safely on the ground again. “Aye, but also…Ella Sutherland wants to live.”
Chapter Six
Cain followed her upstairs to her prison room after gathering some boards. Ella watched the obvious strength in his back as he hammered the nails in, his wavy wheat-colored hair skimming the edge of his tunic. The muscles in his bared calves contracted as he worked to cover every part of the third window. Bam! Bam! Bam!
Finished, he turned. His pale blue eyes, legendary to those few who had seen them and lived, stared at her, his jaw firm. She held her breath as he walked past her, leaving the room without a word, the door remaining unlocked.
She dropped her face into her hands. I am so stupid. Even Jamie would call me a fool.
Ella paced in her tower chamber, the windows nailed shut, making the air more stagnant. Groggy from waking suddenly to realize that she’d lost a chunk of the night by falling asleep, she hadn’t taken the time to determine what time of night it was. With the courtyard below empty, she’d assumed everyone was still asleep.
Damn. She deserved to be captured for her folly, and she should have been reprimanded and ridiculed. Her father would have laughed in her face before knocking her to the ground. Curse Cain Sinclair for doing neither. Instead, the devil of Girnigoe had sought to save her, his classically strong features pinched in what looked like authentic concern for her wellbeing. Even the scars from his brutal past had made him look ruggedly handsome rather than threatening. Mo chreach. Surely, his kindness was a trick.
With her view cut off, there was little to do but give in to her lack of sleep. She woke to the sounds of laughter and music filtering up from the great hall below as the celebration around George Sinclair’s rigid body began. Ella had been to wakes before where there was more drinking and laughing than tears and mourning. It was a way to work out the sorrow and remember the good about a person rather than their death.
She pushed upright on the small bed, little Boo purring. The kitten yawned and stretched out upon the new cover Merida had brought up with breakfast. In exchange, Ella had to endure a scolding for not being more cautious with her life. Ella still had the key to the room, but she knew there would be a guard somewhere on the steps. Even the one who smiled kindly at her was too large to push by. If she only had a weapon. Of course, Cain hadn’t returned her daggers or her bow.
Think. A woman’s strength is in her reasoning brain. Her mother’s favorite bit of advice still echoed in Ella’s memory. She glanced up at the peaked ceiling. I surely disappointed you with my reasoning brain this dawn.
She ran fingers through her loosened hair along her scalp as if trying to rid herself of her anger, which was apparently muddling her mind. Where would there be a weapon? Anywhere in this blasted huge castle. Her fingers stopped, and her head popped upward.
“The devil’s old bedchamber,” she murmured. It was directly below her. If the guard was at the bottom of the stairwell, toasting his old chief, she might be able to sneak into George Sinclair’s chamber. The battle-crazed warrior would have weapons everywhere, maybe even a secret tunnel leading out of Girnigoe. Dunrobin had a couple of them.
Ella stood, wishing she had her trousers and tunic back from being laundered. “If I can scale a wall in a gown and stays, I can sneak into a bedchamber,” she said to Boo, who batted at a ball of rags Ella had torn the night before.
Tonight would be the perfect time to escape if there was an exit from the room. All the Sinclairs would be well into their whisky, toasting the bastard who had slaughtered so many Sutherlands. It seemed to be early afternoon, the muted light coming in from the small open windows way up high in the tower peak. Reaching under the bed, she dragged out a few ropes she’d abandoned last night because they were too thin to hold her. She tied them tightly around her thighs so the skirt wouldn’t rustle or hinder her. She’d learned the art of silence as she grew under her father’s suspicious eye.
“You stay here,” she whispered to Boo, scratching the playful cat. The kitten blinked at her but went back to chewing on the end of the rag while kicking it with her back paws.
Ella moved to the door and pressed her ear to the oak. Her goal was to arm herself and discover a way out if possible, returning once it grew dark and the Sinclairs were snoring away in their own slobber.
With a fortifying breath, Ella turned the key she’d left in the lock and listened for the slight click of the latch moving within. She could relock it from the outside, but she hoped to be gone for only a few minutes and might need a quick reentry.
The laughter was louder in the stairwell and would hide any stray sounds she might make. The night would be quieter, but she wasn’t ready to attempt escape without at least one weapon and Boo. And she would find Gilla in the herd of black horses where Cain’s brother, Gideon, had likely put her. That required the cover of darkness and drunken guards.
Ella peeked around the curve of the granite block wall. No guard in sight. Hugging the interior edge, she stepped down slowly, peeking as she went. After three more turns, she spotted the grand inset door that guarded the threshold of the chief’s chambers. Her heart pounded hard like when she’d sneak around Dunrobin at night, hiding from her father’s guards.
Sliding flat against the door that sported a horse carved into the hard wood, Ella pressed the lever. The latch released, and the door swung inward. Thank the Mother Mary. She slipped inside, shutting it with barely a click.
Ella released her breath and turned to face the room, the dusty air heavy with a musty tang. Dwindling daylight from two pairs of large windows illuminated the room, one set on either side of the rectangular space. Even though it was large, or maybe because it was large, the room seemed spartan with only a trunk at the end of an oversized bed, a privacy screen with a water basin and jakes, and two sets of bookshelves filled with volumes and various trinkets, which were probably stolen from conquered clans.
A set of padded chairs sat before the cold, brushed hearth sporting a heavy wooden mantel, the only adornment being a small portrait of a lady. A broadsword was mounted above a hanging tapestry. Not only would she struggle to get it down, but the length and weight made it fairly useless against a trained warrior. No, she needed daggers or a bow and quiver full of arrows.
She turned in a tight circle, her eyes scanning everything from the thick double beams above her head to the odd-looking chess game set between the two chairs. Her gaze came full circle back to the tapestry hanging across most of the far wall. It was another scene of the four apocalyptic horsemen riding down from Heaven.
She snorted softly, walking over to the carved chessboard where she sank down to study a knobby piece of wood sitting in the king’s spot. Without disturbing it, her gaze followed the uneven grooves carved into the wood to represent a frowning face and crown. She peered next at a tall piece of wood that was perhaps a bishop with a pointy hat. The pawns looked like simple blocks, one set painted white and the other set black. And yet the wooden horses, which represented the knights, were exquisitely formed and carved, nothing like the rest of the set. She stared at the white knight. Cain.
A burst of laughter from down below snapped Ella upright. Curiosity would slow her down. She hurried on the balls of her feet to the chest, finding only folded linens and lengths of woven wool that George Sinclair likely wrapped around his hips. Belts and holsters sat to one side but no knives. Damn.
She closed the lid and looked at the large bed, its frame made of whole tree trunks. The size of it could hold six people across. It was luxurious with a multitude of pillows and numerous quilts and several furs. Turning in a tight circle, she frowned. Where are your weapons? Her gaze latched onto the thick pillows on the bed. Even with the door locked at Dunrobin, Ella slept with a sgian dubh under her pillow. Perhaps George Sinclair did, too, in case enemies got past his drawbridges, walls, and ridiculously lethal sons.
She pulled back the top layers of goose-down pillows to the flat tick, careful not to scatter them. Ella smiled. “Thank you, you rotting devil,” she whispered and picked up the two weapons, a six-inch sgian dubh and an eight-inch mattucashlass, which was more lethal because of its two sharpened edges. Both were well balanced, and with a few practice throws later in her room, Ella should be able to hit her target. Kenneth had spent many years making sure she could use any short blade she encountered.
