Page 16 of Proven By The Highlander (Highlander Forever #15)
CHAPTER 16
S he struggled with all her might as her attacker dragged her away from the cove, and she could feel hot breath on her face as the man breathed heavily with the effort. It was man, too… something about the brute strength of his arms, the weight of his body as he dragged her physically up the embankment, away from the waterside, where the monster was already disappearing… she tried to scream again, hating the way his hand muffled it, only to hear the rasp of a familiar voice in her ear, low and urgent.
“I’m not going to harm you, you blasted fool, just be quiet?—”
She wrenched her head away with one final jerk, and gasped. “Caelan?”
The sound of his name seemed to startle him just enough to allow her to wrench herself free, and she spun around, her terror giving way instantly to pure rage.
“I thought you were going to murder me! What the hell were you thinking?—”
“Hush!” Caelan started forward, his face so wreathed with anger that for a moment she was struck dumb. The man was physically trembling, his jaw tight and his eyes blazing, and for a moment she remembered how frightened she’d been when he’d woken up beside the fire and reached for his weapons. He had them on him now, too — she’d felt the jab of the metal sheath of his dirk against her side when he’d hoisted her up the hill and away from the Monster. But there was something different in his bearing now. “Hush, or I’ll hush you.”
She narrowed her eyes, torn between anger at being spoken to that way and a genuine fear that he’d make good on his threat. “What’s wrong with you?” she hissed instead, needing to vent her fury but unwilling to antagonize him more by shouting. Not when he looked that angry. “Grabbing me like that?—”
His eyes widened with shock and outrage. “What’s wrong with you ?” he demanded, his voice shaking with suppressed feeling even as he worked visibly to keep his volume down in the silent night.
It was fair enough, too. Out here, their voices echoed surprising distances across the placid waters of the Loch… she pictured the search party out there, hearing raised voices echoing across the water.
“I can’t believe you were stupid enough to get so close to that beast. It was about to eat you?—”
“Nessie?” She would have laughed in his face if she hadn’t been so blindingly angry. “Are you kidding? She eats fish . She’d no sooner eat me than she’d eat the rock I was standing on.”
“Don’t call it that,” Caelan snarled, his face dark with feeling. “Don’t call the Monster that ate my brother by that ridiculous pet name.”
She took a deep breath, realizing that of the two of them, at least one needed to maintain a cool head. There was no excuse for grabbing her like that, true… but from his perspective, she could at least see what his reasoning was. He thought the Monster was a dangerous beast, prone to eating people with no warning. It made sense that he’d reacted the way he did — he’d probably thought he was saving her life. “Fine,” she said, the anger and shock still burning in her. “Fine, I won’t. But don’t you dare grab me like that again. Deal?”
Caelan looked at her for a long moment, then exhaled. “Deal.”
He ran a hand through his long hair, which was darker in the moonlight than she remembered it from that morning she’d woken by the fire. His hands were still shaking. For a moment, she was confused — was he still angry with her? Then she realized that it wasn’t anger that was making him shake like that. It was fear. Fear for her — concern that she’d been in danger. It was almost enough to banish her own anger with him… at least, until he spoke again.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” he added, narrowing his eyes at her with fresh suspicion. “What are you doing out here?”
Leanne hesitated. Her heart was still racing, and she’d all but lost track of what she’d come here for in all the emotion of first finding Nessie, then being grabbed unexpectedly by what she’d thought was a total stranger. “I might ask you the same question,” she pointed out, folding her arms across her chest and raising a challenging eyebrow. “You told me you were a man of the Watch.”
“I am,” he snapped, squaring up to her. “I was, and I will be again, once they’ve seen the error of their ways.”
The wind stirred the air between them, and she shivered, realizing how warm her skin was compared to the cold night air. Nothing like a whispered shouting match to really get the blood pumping.
“Your turn. Why are you out here?”
“I’m looking for you,” she snapped, gratified by the look of shock that flashed across his handsome face, just for a moment. Shock, confusion, and something almost like hope… what did that mean? She ignored the beat her heart skipped for the time being, narrowing her eyes.
“I wanted — I thought I’d see you again, when you left me at the Keep, and then I got there and nobody knew who you were.”
For a moment, he had the good grace to look a little abashed. “Aye, I thought you might be annoyed when you found that out,” he said softly. “My apologies for the half-truth.”
“Half is generous,” she said, scowling. “Why did you lie?”
“I’ll remind you that you’d very recently climbed out of the blasted Loch,” Caelan pointed out, sounding irritated. “I felt you had enough on your plate without my whole sorry tale added to the load. Is that it?” Something abrupt about the way he moved on, as though he didn’t want to entertain the subject further. “You came to find me in the middle of the damned night and nearly got eaten by a monster because you wanted to tell me off for blurring the truth a little?”
“I wanted to see you again,” she said, scowling. Again, that flicker of strange emotion in his eyes.
“What do you mean by that?”
“There’s a search party trying to find you,” she said, fighting the urge to shake you. “When I told the Laird about meeting you, he dispatched men to track you down. They want to bring you to the Keep and lock you up, stop you from attacking the Monster.”
“Laird Donal said that?” Caelan’s face was black with rage and he took a few jagged steps up and down the embankment, his body shaking with anger. “Laird Donal is willing to lock me up instead of facing the truth about that creature.” He uttered a tragic, mirthless little bark of laughter that made her feel more sorry for him than she had all evening. “Well, let him try it. They haven’t found me yet.” He narrowed his eyes at her, scanning the deserted area around them with vivid suspicion. “You’re not with them, are you?”
“They wouldn’t let me go with them,” she said irritably, feeling another pang of frustration with that stupid conversation. “Bunch of arrogant jerks. Thought I’d slow them down.”
“Joke’s on them,” he pointed out, something like a smile twitching at the corner of his lips despite the seriousness of his expression. “You’ve found me twice, now. That’s more than anyone in the Keep has done for years.”
“I wanted to see you first. Before they could. I wanted—” But she broke off, confused by his demeanour. He’d uttered an uneasy little laugh and taken a step back from her, lifting one hand awkwardly to fidget with his hair. “What?”
“I’m just — it’s not what I was expecting,” he said, his gray eyes searching her face intently.
What was he looking for? She stared back at him blankly, not sure what he meant, not sure how to proceed. Damnit, she’d practiced for this moment, hadn’t she? She’d rehearsed so many excellent arguments on her ride along the shore… and now, face to face with the man she’d been hunting, she couldn’t remember a single one. She opened her mouth to launch in anyway, hoping she’d figure it out as she went — but before she could speak, she saw Caelan’s eyes go wide and he lifted a finger to his lips, turning his head to listen intently. She fell silent, held her breath, tuned in to the gentle splashing of the waves and the low murmur of the wind in the trees… then heard what had caught Caelan’s attention. The sound of low voices, and the dull thud of hoofbeats against the dirt.
The search party. It had to be. Who else would be out in such large numbers this late at night? She hadn’t seen so much as another living soul on the road — people around here preferred traveling with the sun to see by. Caelan’s expression was unreadable as he stared at the road beyond her, and she could almost see him running calculations in his mind, deciding on the best course of action… and then, with a muffled and barely audible curse, he lunged forward and grabbed her hand.
Well, she thought faintly as he pulled her along with him, this was a step up from being grabbed and picked up. Maybe by dawn, they could work out a system by which he actually used his words with her. But right now, the last thing she wanted was a three-way confrontation between Caelan, the search party, and her, the woman who’d come along despite being explicitly told not to… and if that meant hiding with the fugitive, then that was what she was going to do.
She only hoped that wherever he was taking her, they’d get an opportunity to talk a little bit more about what she’d meant when she said she wanted to speak to him alone. Because she was beginning to worry that he, like the search party, had gotten the wrong idea about her motivations regarding him…