Page 30 of Sins of the Highlander

“Come.” He gripped her wrist and led her to the stairs, indicating she should climb down ahead of him. “And no more tricks. I’d better not catch you losing any bits of your wardrobe again. Or else.”

Fury made her eyes glitter.

That was better. Anger he could take. Her disgust made his chest ache.

“Or else what?” she asked through clenched teeth.

“Or I’ll make sure you lose all of it.”

Chapter 10

As they plodded through the forest, Drummond glanced over his shoulder at Lord Stewart. The man’s face was set like stone. He hadn’t said a word since they found the last sign of his daughter.

Lachlan didn’t blame him.

They’d uncovered a bit of cloth ripped from Elspeth’s chemise amid several wolf carcasses. The soiled linen was now tucked into Drummond’s sleeve. It was stiff with blood, but he bore it as if he were a knight-errant, wearing the evidence of his lady’s favor.

They didn’t find any sign of Elspeth’s body. Not even drag marks to show she’d been pulled, kicking and screaming, to some other location. Drummond was glad of it. There were some things no father should have to see, and his ally was teetering on the edge of control as things were.

But there was so much blood in the clearing with the dead wolves, it seemed unlikely Elspeth escaped. Especially since only a single set of footprints left the clearing.

Male footprints.

Drummond was coldly furious. This had gone far beyond an annoying inconvenience. Rob MacLaren had upset all his plans. Though Alistair Stewart was united with him now by their supposed shared grief, eventually Elspeth’s father would remember he blamed Lachlan’s carelessness for allowing the abduction to happen in the first place.

Now that Elspeth was dead, there was no salvaging this disaster. They were just following the trail to its end so they could kill Rob MacLaren.

Slowly, if Lachlan had anything to say about it.

Then he saw something on the game trail that made him hold up his hand to signal a stop to their dreary column. He dismounted and squatted in the dirt before the new set of footprints.

“What is it?” Stewart asked halfheartedly as he dismounted and handed off his reins to his retainer. After sending men back with the MacLaren’s stallion, they had only two extra men riding with them.

“Looks like MacLaren met someone here.” A big someone judging from the monstrous size of his boot print.

Then Drummond noticed something else that made his heart leap with hope.

“Alistair! Quick! Have a look at this!”

Elspeth’s father shrugged off his lethargy and joined Drummond on the path. Lachlan pointed to another imprint, the shallow outline of a small, feminine slipper.

“She’s alive,” Stewart whispered as if he feared daring to speak it aloud might make it untrue.

Lachlan peered ahead on the trail where two sets of masculine prints led off through the forest.

“Aye, but the men must be carrying her, because that’s the only one I see from her.”

“She must be injured,” Stewart said gruffly, trying unsuccessfully to keep the sob from his voice.

May God strike me blind if I ever become so maudlin over my offspring, Drummond thought. It’s not as if a man can’t always sire more.

“If she is, we’ll return the hurts she’s suffered a hundredfold,” Drummond promised. “But if they are carrying her, that bodes well for us. They must travel slowly. And chances are good that the fellow MacLaren met has a camp or a hovel of some sort nearby. They can’t be far ahead.”

The men remounted without another word and trotted down the trail, gazes glued to the ground ahead of them in the hope of seeing another slim footprint.

***

“Hurry, Angus!” Rob said as he shouldered the pack of provisions his friend had prepared. “I dinna know how much longer we have before they find us.”