Page 124 of All Scot and Bothered

“I meant when I shot ye with my arrow back in the glen.”

“What glen?” Chandler’s forehead furrowed. “I’ve never been shot by an arrow in my life.”

The stab of alarm turned into a knife of terror twisting in Ramsay’s guts. He had been a fool to leave her. The hope he hung his entire soul on was that he’d not yet heard a gunshot.

“Run,” he said as he bolted for home, desperation turning his feet into agents of Icarus. “They’ve already found us.”

CHAPTERTWENTY

Cecelia swam in a soupy fog, weightless and boneless. She might have been a blob of jelly for all she could tell. Was she awake? Locked in a dream?

Or a nightmare.

Every now and again, an image would be summoned from the miasma of darkness, adding to the primal scream locked wherever her chest belonged.

Were these images memories? Or were any of these strange things happening right now?

Glacial eyes melted into a lake of lust. Brutal hands caressed her gently as they made love beneath the stars.

We have not yet spoken of love.

Pain pierced where her heart should be. Tears leaked where her eyes should be. Her vision refused to clear.

Blood also leaked from a man’s leg as someone stitched it closed. Voices were harsh. Male. Excitable.

Fire. She remembered fire. She’d thrown pages into said fire and it had burned them all up. Pages with herhandwriting. But the book? Had she burned the codex? Surely not.

Phoebe hid in the loft and locked the hatch as she’d bade her to.

Did they find her? The enemies she’d let in the house?

Why had she done such a stupid thing?Whohad she let in the house? Why could she not remember?

Jean-Yves was on the floor at Elphinstone Croft. Still. So still. Had they killed him this time? Oh God!

The pain in Cecelia’s chest became a torturous flame. It singed her with shame. Her face hurt, too, this wound sharp and throbbing.

She’d been hit. Again.

Where was Ramsay?

Had she shot someone?

Is that who bled from the leg?

Awareness returned to her body incrementally, and she realized that the blood in her veins did not reach the arms tightly tied behind her. The ground below rocked softly, clack-clack-clacking in her ears.

A train. How had she gotten on a train?

Where was Ramsay?

“I do believe she’s awake.”

Cecelia knew that voice. She’d thought it belonged to a friend once. But who?Who?What was wrong with her?

“Should I give her another dose?”

Winston! Henrietta’s butler… Hadhebeen an enemy this entire time?