Page 25

T wilight hovered on the horizon as William finally emerged from the thick of the forest and Creagdoun came into view. Despite his desperate prayers, he hadn’t caught up with MacGregor. And as much as he hoped the man had simply disappeared into the mountains, in his heart he knew better.

As far as MacGregor was aware, William and the rest of the men had fallen in Glen Clah. He’d be expecting his own men to arrive so they could take the castle. And although that plan had been thwarted, it didn’t mean MacGregor hadn’t managed to breach Creagdoun’s defenses.

He wouldn’t need to breach them. Because everyone within the castle believed MacGregor was simply Malcolm MacNeil, and the gatehouse wouldn’t be secured against him. The bastard would just ride in, unchallenged.

And take Isolde hostage. His only hope was that MacGregor’s plan was not to draw any attention to himself until his men arrived, and only then capture Creagdoun’s mistress. If so, she was still safe, until MacGregor realized his cause was lost.

There was no telling what that knowledge would make him do, and William’s gut clenched as a thousand horrifying scenarios flooded his mind. He had to get to Isolde. Had to protect her. But how the hell could he do that, without alerting MacGregor that his strategy had failed?

He bore left, along the path beside the loch that led to the gatehouse. But his horse reared as a furtive shadow among the trees up ahead caught his eye. He pulled up short, primal warning spiking through him, and from the cover of the trees Alan MacGregor emerged.

William leaped from his horse, drawing his sword as he advanced on the other man. MacGregor pulled back his lips in a mockery of a smile and tossed a woolen and bloodied shawl at his feet.

Isolde’s shawl. His heart slammed inside his chest, squeezing the air from his lungs.

Isolde’s blood .

Wildly, he glanced around, his grip tightening on the hilt, but there was no sign of her. Was she hidden in the undergrowth, injured?

Worse ?

“Isolde.” He didn’t recognize his voice, but even the rasping sound against his throat couldn’t stop his mind from seeing graphic, ravaged images of Isolde, his beautiful bride, lying crumpled on the sodden ground while the blood seeped from her body.

God, the blood. He couldn’t look at her shawl again, and not just because he needed to keep his focus on MacGregor, who’d drawn his sword and was inching closer.

It was because the blood-soaked shawl was stark evidence of how she’d already suffered at the hands of Alan MacGregor, because he, her own husband, had failed to keep her safe.

Why didn’t she answer? The reason crouched in the darkest corners of his mind, but he wouldn’t go there. Couldn’t. Instead, he glared at MacGregor. “Where is she?”

“Yonder,” the bastard said, which could mean anything and nothing. “She won’t come running to ye, Campbell, no matter how ye shout her name. But know this. I enjoyed her well enough before the end.”

Nausea surged through him, burning his throat, and for a horrifying moment, all he could see was an endless abyss of impenetrable blackness. A high-pitched buzzing filled his ears, threatening to take him under, just as the sea had once taken him under.

But this time there was no Isolde to drag him from the depths.

There was no Isolde.

Isolde .

Her name echoed through his head, and he sucked in a harsh breath, forcing the crucifying fog aside, and for an elusive moment he saw her smile in his mind’s eye.

Don’t leave me, mo chridhe.

But she did not reply.

MacGregor still stood before him, and the image of Isolde shattered like glass inside William’s mind. The deadly shards embedded into his flesh and tore through his chest before ripping his heart into a thousand bloodied chunks.

He would avenge her honor, her life, and God help him, he didn’t care if it cost him everything.

Their swords clashed, and a cold ferocity whipped through him as MacGregor retreated beneath his attack. There would be no prisoner taken this eve.

The other man grasped his hilt with both hands, and blood trickled from his mangled ear although William had no recollection of how that had happened.

“Creagdoun is mine,” MacGregor panted. “I don’t know how ye escaped, but my men will be here shortly, and the castle restored to its rightful bloodline.”

William slashed, and blood bloomed along MacGregor’s biceps. “Ye forfeited that right when ye attacked Dunstrunage three years ago. Yer men aren’t coming to yer aid, MacGregor. They’re lying dead in the glen. Did ye really think Campbells would fall for yer trickery?”

MacGregor stumbled on a root as he retreated, but finally the smirk on his face had gone. He lunged, missed, and William plunged his sword through the man’s gut.

MacGregor collapsed, wheezing, blood oozing from his mouth. Malevolence filled his eyes as he caught William’s glare. “’Tis almost worth dying, knowing I was the one who took yer woman from ye.”

William thrust his sword once more, and this time it found its fatal mark. MacGregor fell back, lifeless, in a malignant pool of his own blood.

He staggered back, and the icy facade that had sustained him during the last few moments dissolved like snow before a forest fire.

Isolde. He had to find her.

Whatever was left of her.

With a tormented mixture of tenderness and reluctance he picked up her ruined shawl. It wasn’t an omen. She might have escaped. He clung onto that slender thread of hope as he yelled her name until his throat was raw, frantically combing every inch of the undergrowth as the darkness in his heart spread across the land.

But there was no sign of where she had fallen, nor splatters of blood. What had MacGregor done with her?

Despair raked through him. He sank to his knees, his fist clenched around the shawl as he pressed the bloodied wool against his chest. Blindly, he stared at the mighty silhouette of Creagdoun as it loomed against the orange-streaked sky.

How fiercely proud he had been of calling the castle his own. How gratifying it had felt, to install Isolde there as its mistress, and how many grand plans he’d made to ensure Creagdoun, and his Campbell lineage, would prevail.

A dull ache seeped through his chest, corroding all it touched, engulfing him with a despairing inevitability.

What did any of it matter if Isolde wasn’t here to share it with him?

Once, he’d wanted nothing more than to know who he was so his wild MacDonald woman could call him by his God given name.

But now he’d give anything to hear her call him Njord. Because when he had been no more than her stranger from the sea, he’d had everything.

If only he’d been able to see it.

Now she was gone, and he would never hear her voice again, never hear her laughter. Never have the chance to tell her the only reason he’d coaxed her into wedlock was because he couldn’t face the thought of life without her by his side.

Instead, he’d let her believe it was because they were already betrothed, that a contract had been signed. That it was their destiny to unite their clans.

All those reasons were true, but none of them was the truth.

He’d rushed their wedding because he’d fallen for her from the moment he’d first seen her.

And his determination to get his way, no matter the cost, had destroyed her as surely as if he’d plunged her own claymore through her heart.

“William.” The word slashed through the gathering gloom, but he didn’t turn around. He heard the horses, knew the men who had fought by his side in the glen had arrived. But what did it matter?

He had arrived too late to save Isolde, and the men weren’t needed for there was no danger facing Creagdoun.

Alasdair came to his side and gripped his shoulder. “Ye found MacGregor.”

It wasn’t a question.

“William, man, what is it?” There was an urgent note in Hugh’s voice, as though he suspected the worst. “What did MacGregor tell ye before ye put an end to his misbegotten existence?”

He couldn’t speak but instinctively gripped Isolde’s shawl tighter as if, somehow, that possessed the power to bring her back.

“Lady Isolde?” Alasdair sounded uncertain as both he and Hugh stared at the shawl. “No, William. MacGregor was playing with ye. How could he have done anything to her, when she was safe within the castle?”

Aye, she should have been safe within the castle. Reluctantly, he glanced up at the dark shadow of Creagdoun, as doubt stirred deep in his soul. Isolde was stubborn, but she wasn’t ignorant of danger. There was no reason why she would’ve been outside the castle walls. How then, had MacGregor accosted her?

The shawl was proof that he had. But maybe she’d escaped. He’d cling onto that slender hope. And if it turned out to be a false hope, he’d bring the dogs back here and search all night until he found her.

In silence they returned to the horses, and as they approached the gatehouse it was a grim satisfaction to note the portcullis was lowered and that doubtless archers were stationed at every arrow slit. MacGregor wouldn’t have found an easy conquest here, had his plan to ambush them at Glen Clah succeeded.

Once the gate was raised, they rode through into the courtyard, where dozens of torches blazed, and the castle inhabitants gathered, their cheers of victory and relief echoing off the stone walls.

A hollow victory. But that was his own guilt-ridden burden to bear. As he dismounted, the crowd parted, and his heart slammed against his ribs as Isolde walked—no, ran —towards him.

“Ye’re alive.” She stopped short in front of him, not touching, just gazing at him as though he were an apparition. The air lodged in his throat, burning, and he couldn’t move a muscle as his paralyzed mind took in the fact that she was here . “William, I thought ye were dead.”

“No.” His voice croaked, as if it had been a thousand years since he’d last used it. God, it seemed like it had been a thousand years since he’d last seen her, but he couldn’t reach out and pull her into his arms, in case she was merely an illusion of his fractured mind and would vanish if he tried to touch her. His fingers clenched on the shawl that he’d brought with him. Somehow, it felt more real than the woman standing before him.

She gave a short laugh. “Aye, I can see that, William Campbell. Ye frightened me half to death, and that’s a fact. Ye know, I suppose, Alan MacGregor has been masquerading as Malcolm MacNeil?”

“MacGregor’s dead.” His gaze roved over her face, where bruising and streaks of blood marred her skin, but she didn’t appear to be mortally injured. He released a ragged breath, but it did nothing to relieve the smoldering rock wedged within his chest. “He claimed to have—”

But he couldn’t say the words. Because that reality could too easily have proved to be true. And just because it hadn’t happened today didn’t mean it couldn’t another day.

He wouldn’t always be able to defend her against his enemies. And every time he left Creagdoun, the fear of losing her would consume him.

Isolde glanced at the shawl in his hands and the question thundered through his mind.

How had MacGregor been in possession of it?

“Serve supper,” he heard Isolde tell the servants. “The laird and I will have ours in our chambers.”

There was a flurry of activity, and as the courtyard emptied, she cast him an anxious look. “Come, William,” she said, almost as though she were speaking to a child. “Ye must be famished. We shall eat alone in the comfort of our chamber so we might speak more easily.”

She held out her arm, indicating he should follow her, but she didn’t touch him. Not that he blamed her. If not for him, she’d be safe on her beloved isle, where no one would dare raise their hand against her, let alone subject her to the obscenities MacGregor had intended for her.

Only rare good luck had saved her from such degradations. How could he live with himself if he forced her to endure a life where every day might be her last—because of his name?

As they went up the stairs and along the passage to their chambers, the fear that had gripped him from the moment he’d discovered the identity of the traitor in their midst, the fear that had scorched his reason when he’d found MacGregor on the forest’s edge, now sank deep into his bones, polluting every particle of his being.

There was only one way to ensure she didn’t live every day of her life under the mantle of dread, and he recoiled, rejecting it outright. He wouldn’t do it. Couldn’t.

But the answer was clear, regardless.

If he wanted to set her free from the bleak future that thudded through his mind, he had to send her back to her isle.