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He drew up short. “What has that bloody dog to do with you singing to a bunch of drunken peasants as if you were on the damned stage at Crow Street?”
“When I went after him, they took me for a serving girl. I tried explaining, but it only made them more insistent.” She flushed, dropping her gaze to her clasped hands.
Unexpected fury reddened his vision. “They didn’t hurt you, did they?”
“No. Rogan”—she pointed to the harper—“stepped in before it came to that. He asked if I could sing, though whether he hoped I’d succeed and distract them or fail and make them more enraged, I’m not sure.”
“If you’d stayed put instead of running after that blasted dog—”
“Well, if you’d been here—”
“I was trying to secure you a carriage. Onwen can’t continue to carry both of us. Forgive me for chivalry,” he said, glaring at her.
“Chivalry?” Hands on hips, she glared right back. Why couldn’t he have been forced to abduct a nice biddable woman instead of this harridan? It would have made his life so much easier. “Is that what you call kidnapping me in the middle of the night, forcing me to wear putrid clothes, dragging me about the countryside, and making me sleep in a closet?”
“Let’s not forget saving your ungrateful skin.”
She flung herself away with a frustrated groan. “No, we can’t forget that. Though I’ve yet to see hide nor hair of these villainous murderers you seem so convinced are after me.”
The door opened. Three men shouldered their way into the room.
Furious, Brendan gestured toward them. “Elisabeth Fitzgerald? Let me introduce you to said murderers. Satisfied?”
Elisabeth’s shoulder ached, a stitch cramped her ribs, and her heart pounded in fear.
Brendan remained oblivious to her labored breathing. Each time she stumbled, he yanked her to her feet. Never slowing. Unheeding of her pleas to rest. A moment only for her to get her wind back.
The men had barreled through the tavern, sending tables and tankards flying, hampered by the cramped room and the shoving and cursing of those they knocked over in the chase.
Grabbing her hand, Brendan had dragged her through the kitchen to the screams of serving maids and a cleaver-brandishing cook. Out the back door into the yard, careening through the mud and filth. Into the safety of dark alleys. Ducking in and out of empty lanes. Emerging near the lake, where the darkness gathered against the shoreline and every fish jump or ripple of wind-pushed water against the rocks seeming loud as a cannon blast.
Her legs throbbed and her chest was on fire. She couldn’t seem to pull enough air into her lungs. She stumbled, her ankle twisting beneath her. Brendan’s hold almost wrenched her arm from her socket as she fell.
“Just a little farther,” he urged.
“To where?” she pleaded, hobbling and wincing. “I can’t run anymore.”
Bent double, hands on his knees, Brendan sucked in great deep breaths while casting a desperate look around. The lake on one side. High hedges opposite and a stone wall. He jerked his chin toward an iron gate. “Through there.”
“And then what? On foot, we’ll never escape them. We can’t walk to Dublin. It would take weeks.”
Weeks more time she’d be trapped with Brendan. Weeks longer she’d be unable to send word of where she was and what had happened. Weeks when Gordon would be assuming she’d run off with another lover.
The pain in her chest expanded.
Two men rounded the bend, slowing to a trot. The third stepped from the hedgerow farther ahead. Effectively trapping her and Brendan between.
Three on one. And they were a big three. Meaty. Broad-shouldered. Flat-nosed and squinty-eyed. Brendan didn’t stand a chance by himself.
He shoved Elisabeth behind him. Slid a knife from his waist, holding it as if he actually might know how to use it. A reminder that the changes wrought by his years away weren’t all visible. Brendan might act the joker, but it was only an act. Anyone who trusted too much in his nimble charm would regret it.
“Look, he’s got himself a little knife.”
“Oooh, I’m scared.”
“Are ye thinking you can be stopping us all, Douglas?”
The men jeered, their faces empty of any emotion save contempt and brutality.
