Page 3 of Sins of the Highlander

Then he leaned down and scooped Elspeth up with his other arm and dropped her belly-first across his kilted lap.

She was too astonished to be afraid. All the air fled from her lungs with a whoosh. Her head and arms dangled on one side of the restive stallion, and her legs kicked on the other. She couldn’t rail at the man, since she was busy fighting for breath, but she struggled to free herself from such an undignified position.

“Hold still, lass, lest my hand slips and I lop off a bit of your groom.”

Now fear sliced into her. She froze and looked at Lachlan. The madman’s blade had slid up to his chin. Her bridegroom hadn’t taken his black-eyed gaze from Mad Rob’s face.

“I’ll be going now, Drummond,” Rob said in the same reasonable tone a man might use to discuss cattle or the weather. “If ye’ve the stones for a fight, ye may collect yer bride at Caisteal Dubh. But dinna show your face till month’s end. Come for her sooner or try to follow us now, and I might have to kill her.”

Elspeth couldn’t look up at her captor’s face, but she heard a wicked smile in his voice.

Kill her reverberated in her mind.

And all she’d thought she’d lose when she woke this day was her maidenhead.

The madman wheeled the stallion around, and Elspeth hooked an elbow around his knee lest she fall as the kirk and the people in it ran together in a blur of colors. Her mother keened like a lost soul over the din of shouts. The stallion clattered back down the aisle and shot out into the crisp November air, making a beeline for the distant forest.

With every jarring stride, Elspeth’s ribs took a pounding. Then she felt both the MacLaren’s hands at her waist. He lifted her without slowing the stallion one jot, controlling the beast with his knees and will alone.

“Can ye ride astride?” he shouted.

“Aye.” She threw one leg over the horse’s neck and settled herself before him, matching his rocking movement to keep her seat. She dug her fingers into the horse’s mane. Trying to leap off at this speed would mean a broken neck. There’d be another chance to escape later.

For she must escape. A month, even a night, with this madman would mean ruin.

Lachlan Drummond would surely come for her. He’d be obliged to, according to the contract between him and the House of Stewart. And her father and his men with him.

She twisted and glanced under MacLaren’s arm. Men were milling before the church, not giving pursuit, clearly taking Mad Rob’s threat to kill her seriously.

Once they reached the trees, a shout went up behind them. Rob pulled the stallion to a stop. Elspeth gasped a shuddering breath as his arm around her waist tightened. They turned to see her bridegroom and her father mounting up to follow.

“Apparently, they hold your life less precious than your honor, lass,” the MacLaren muttered. “Hamish! Tell the lads to lay the trails. Now ride.”

A half-dozen other horsemen appeared from their places of concealment in the trees. They circled the small clearing, obliterating any betraying tracks, and then they all hied off in different directions to confuse Drummond’s men and cover Mad Rob’s escape.

Elspeth and her captor rode wildly over hill and down dale, eeling through copses of spindly trees. The MacLaren’s horse was hill bred. Not as showy as the palfrey Elspeth had ridden to her wedding, but hardy and deep chested and apparently willing to run till it dropped if the man on its back demanded.

Shouts of discovery rose behind them. The men in pursuit must have split up, and someone followed their trail. Elspeth’s heart nearly burst from her chest with hope.

“Hi-up!” Mad Rob bellowed at the stallion, and it leaped into a burst of speed as if being chased by a thousand demons but feared the man on its back even more.

The MacLaren leaned forward. Elspeth bent over the horse’s neck, Mad Rob’s hot breath searing her nape, and held on for her life. They dodged trees, leaped over fallen trunks, and splashed through a burn in full spate. The world ripped by her in a green blur.

Her pearl-studded snood peeled off as the wind whipped past them. Her long brown hair uncoiled and fluttered behind her. She hoped it was flying in the MacLaren’s face, but a quick glance back showed it waving over his shoulder like a banner.

When they reached a rise, Mad Rob paused long enough to look back. A dozen horsemen were in pursuit.

“Drummond is a better tracker than I credited him,” he muttered.

Elspeth drew several gasping breaths, trying to still her pounding heart after their mad dash. She squinted at their followers but didn’t see her father’s dun mare in the pack.

“Your horse carries two,” she said. “Surrender, and I’ll convince them to spare you.”

“Drummond wouldna know mercy if it bit him on the arse.”

“Ye’ll never outrun them.”

“Then we’ll go to ground.”