He aimed a confounded smile at her. “Were ye not weeping because I didna take yer life?”
“I fergot ye were a cold-hearted dolt,” she told him scathingly. “Let me be more clear. If ye dinna feel like a monster, then ye are even madder than I thought.”
His smile widened. “I think ye do want me to kill ye.”
“If that is what ye want, how can I stop ye?”
“Call me brother. That will stop me.”
Her expression went dark on him. “What did ye say?”
“Call me brother or Roddy the way ye used to and I promise not to kill ye.”
Her eyes poured into him and filled with tears once more. She would not call him brother ever again. He was no one’s brother. No one’s son. He was nothing. “My brother died six years ago. Ye are nothing but a monster from my worst nightmares.
“Nae, Ellie,” he told her, his smile going cold. “But I can be.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“He appeared tobe leadin’ his horse aroond the mountain,” Ewen told Logan while he tried to get his breath after running down the mountain.
“Once we lost sight of him, we saw nae point in stayin’ up there,” Ealar let him know. “We couldna lend ye aid unless we came doon.”
Logan nodded, then, forgetting his brother’s reasoning, pointed to the northern west mountain range. “He could be headin’ toward Torlundy.”
He didn’t want to say what he truly feared.
His father said it for him. “Or Tor Castle.”
And then he said nothing else, handing over the reins to his son.
“Ewen, Jamie and Steafan take the roads along the ooter edge of the mountain,” Logan commanded. No one questioned him. They never had and he always brought them home to their kin. “I will take the road to Tor directly. My father and brother will go with me.”
Without another word, he spun his horse around and rode off. There was no time to lose. He had to find Elspeth.
His horse had been fed and given water. Most of all, the beast was well conditioned, thanks to Logan riding it every day. They rode this path together a thousand times, the path home. Logan didn’t push his horse up the hills but let it move forward at its own pace.
When he reached the crest, he turned back to see his father and Ealar riding upward, toward him.
“If he rides to the castle, we should kill him,” Ealar said, reaching him, the wind blowing his obsidian hair across his face like warpaint.
“Aye,” Logan agreed. He was sorry to agree because they were speaking about Elspeth’s brother, whom she thought she had lost once already, but Roderick Woodburn had dared set foot on his land, in his front yard, his house, twice now. If he was caught, they would kill him.
They rode all day without gaining a clue about where Roderick had taken her—alive, Logan prayed.
Finally, in a tavern in a small village in Achintee, they met a man who recognized Logan’s father.
After paying homage to the Lochiel of Lochaber, he told them that he had seen that man and woman—och, she was thinner than a veil. “They rode through…stopped here to eat. I remember her because her eyes were the bonniest shade of blue I have ever seen. There were wheels turnin’ in her head, and ye could almost see them in her eyes.”
Logan smiled for the first time in hours. That was her—likely thinking about a way to stop her brother.
“Did she appear to be hurt in any way?” he asked the patron. “Afraid?”
“Nae. I heard him call her Ellie. I assumed he was her husband.”
Logan felt such relief that she was neither hurt nor in threat of harm that it made him want to shout for joy. Roderick wouldn’t call her such an endearing variation of her name if he posed a threat to his sister. Not presently, at least.
“Why are ye looking fer them?” the patron asked.
