Page 9 of The Laird’s Guardian Angel (Highland Lairds #3)

8

A s quietly as she could, Calliope ran from door to door on the castle's upper level, checking handles and looking for a way out. For all she knew at this point, even the poor maid who'd bid her to bar her door had perished at the hands of whoever was below stairs. Whoever was giving chase.

Murderer.

Her eyes blurred with tears, and her heart was pounding so forcefully against her chest that it was bound to alert the enemy to her presence. As if the pounding of her heart, cracking against her ribs, was somehow sending out a pulse against the stone walls.

She just needed to get out of here before it was too late. Every second that she didn't find escape was a second they were closer to her.

At last, at the end of the corridor, there was a small door, and when she opened it, narrow stone steps led down into the darkness. Where she had no clue, and she definitely didn't care. Especially when she could hear doors opening and closing somewhere behind her. Whoever was looking for her had yet to see that she was there in the darkened corridor.

Calliope slipped into the stairwell and closed the door behind her. She pushed the dagger into her boot. She hitched up her skirt, looping it through the braided belt at her hips to keep it from tangling with her feet. With both hands pressed to the cool stone walls of the stairwell, shuddering at the softness of old and new cobwebs, pretending that spiders didn't exist. She hurried as much as she dared in the dark so that she didn't end up falling down to her death. She refused to die. Not today. Not like this.

She would not be a victim.

At the base of the stairs, she pushed against a door, coming into what was obviously the kitchens with the large hearth at one end and all the cooking accouterments and the scents of last night's supper still lingering in the air.

The kitchen was empty of staff who'd likely fled when the enemy infiltrated the walls, especially now that their Chief was dead. And she couldn't blame them; they weren't skilled fighters, and why should they try?

The Chief was dead.

Except she was the Chief now, wasn't she?

Though she was a stranger, and none of them trusted her. Why should they? In fact, she thought with a heavy, cold dread, what were the odds that the day she arrived, their Chief was murdered. She'd have to be an idiot to think they wouldn't put two and two together and come up with the very wrong answer that she was somehow involved, which she wasn't. Far from it.

Oh, how she wished for her mother. Lady Mary was calm, cool, and level-headed in all things.

Even her escape from Scotland had been carefully planned. Not once had she looked scared. Nor really that excited. She'd been unflappable, purposeful.

But no one expected her to die so young, least of all Calliope. The formidable way her mother had lived made it seem like she was invincible, that she'd be alive to one hundred.

There was no time to dwell on it now, no time to fret about the past, what could have been, or what she wished for. Survival was paramount, and she had no one to rely on except herself.

Calliope spotted a door beside a table full of cooking supplies with a darkened window above it. The door had to lead outside. She pushed against the wood, finding that the door didn't budge. Was it blocked from the other side? At first, she feared that someone had purposefully locked her in here with the enemy, only to realize more logically the staff had blocked the enemy from being able to give chase.

Which meant there was no use trying to go through the door, she'd only be wasting her time. Calliope was quick-witted and clever, however, so she pulled a stool over to the working table with the window above it, climbed on top, pushed open the shutters, and peeked through. No one waited on the other side to run her through. So, she put a leg through the open window. Straddling the ledge—how very unladylike of her—she managed to wriggle her way out, falling to the cold ground in a heap and rolling onto something slimy. Oh, for the love of… Undoubtedly, she'd landed on something she didn't want to name. Refuse from the cooking. Garbage.

It smelled of blood and guts and grease. Calliope gagged as she pushed to her feet. She glanced toward where the door was; sure enough, it had been blocked by several barrels. But she didn't have time to look. Running was paramount. Like right now. So, Calliope picked up her feet and did just that until realizing she had no idea where she was or where she was running to, only that it was away from the castle and the evil men chasing her.

In the dark, the area was full of hulking black shadows. Calliope blinked to let her eyes adjust, trying to gain her bearings. It had been daylight when they'd arrived. There'd been a courtyard, many outbuildings, a long stable, and then the keep. To the sides of the keep, pathways led around perhaps here to the back, which is where she suspected she was now—the rear of the castle. But she couldn't recall from memory at all where it led.

If she could get to the stable, she might be able to steal a horse, but getting out of the gates with an enemy lurking seemed not only impossible but dangerous. She'd have to make the journey on foot and pray she wasn't set upon the way.

Instead of running around toward the front of the keep and the gates, she ran in the opposite direction, through the herb and vegetable garden, past a small barn that stank of cows and pigs. She didn't have to run long before she came to a wall made of stone and twice her height. Edging along the expanse of it, she prayed for a gate she could simply open up and run through, but there was no such thing. Why, oh why, did her father have to be so well-versed in fortifications?

None of his careful planning had helped in the end—the opposite, in fact, as she was trapped.

Calliope glanced up at the battlements, half expecting whoever had chased her up the stairs to be pointing downward toward her so far away now. She could barely make out the high walls, and with every movement, she couldn't be sure if it was a man or just visions playing out in her mind.

There was only one way she was getting out of here: by climbing. Calliope gritted her teeth and thanked her stars she'd actually practiced climbing more times than she could count. An avid climber of trees and walls, this was not where she thought her hobby would lead her, and yet she was grateful for this small rebellion she'd been keen to advance her skills.

Reaching through the bottom of her hem to grab the back of her skirt and pull it through her legs, up toward the apex of her thighs, she tucked it into her belt with the front of her skirts, creating pantaloons. If her mother only saw her now…

Perhaps, in this instance, her mother would eschew propriety and etiquette for survival.

With that thought in mind, Calliope reached up and grabbed hold of the stone, her fingers brushing against the mortar. Next was finding even just the tiniest foothold for her boot. She'd always been sensitive to her little feet, but now, when she needed them to balance on the smallest grooves and anomalies in the stones of the wall, she was grateful.

She hauled herself up, her body shaking from the exertion and the rush of fear and nerves that this evening had brought her. Just as she'd taught herself early on, she drew in a deep, slow breath, trying to calm her racing heart and mind so she could focus on the task at hand.

She'd made it halfway up the wall when the rock she gripped with her right hand came loose.

"No," she groaned low and under her breath as she started to lose purchase with the rest of her limbs, reaching wildly with her right to correct the issue and finally gripping into the hole where the rock had come loose and fallen.

There was no time for falling. Only climbing.

Concentrating so hard that her head was starting to ache, Calliope continued her ascent until, at last, her hands touched the top of the wall. Using her upper body strength, she pulled herself up to sit on the wall, needing not only to catch her breath but also to see what she was dealing with on the other side, which currently looked like a gaping black hole.

Her heart was pounding, her damp hands shaking, legs trembling. Her breath was erratic, and she was on the verge of hysterical tears.

She had a moment's panic where she wondered if this wall, only twice as tall as a woman, might lead toward a cliff on the other side, which she would rather toss herself into than return to the keep filled with murderers.

She blinked into the dark, trying to make out what was below.

Thankfully, it was not a cliff—but it was a moat. Nay, not a moat, an actual living body of water. A loch, as she'd heard her mother call them. Like the lake that churned near her childhood home in England, only Scottish lochs held monsters.

Her mother had told her stories of Scottish lochs and the fiends that dwelled within the watery depths as if her heart needed more reasons to pound beyond purpose.

Calliope stared down into the dark, watery depths. Climbing she was excellent at. Swimming, not so much. She knew the basics, but she was no expert, and if the current was strong, she'd be swept away.

Then again, being swept away was better than being beat to death at the hands of the vicious men inside her father's castle. As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she could hear them. The shouts, the banging against the kitchen door that had been barred from the outside. They'd be through it in seconds and spot her sitting on top of the wall.

No time to waste. Go!

Calliope swung her legs over the side, crossed herself, drew in a deep breath, and jumped.

The water hit her like ice bricks smashing against her flesh and bones. She almost cried out, except her head was underwater, and to do so meant drowning. She settled for screaming internally as she flailed her arms and legs, pushing herself to the surface.

The pantaloons she'd fashioned out of her skirts came undone, the water soaking into the fabric threatening to drown her. There wasn't time for drowning, just as there wasn't time for falling from her climb. Using every ounce of energy she had left—which wasn't much, she forced her limbs to project her toward the opposite side and the heavenly land.

When her hands touched the sodden grasses on the opposite side, she heaved herself onto the side, sobbing as she did so. She was desperately tired, terrified, and turned around.

In the distance, she could hear the men shouting. But they'd never guess she'd climb the wall. Of that, she was certain.

Being at the back of the castle didn't help her figure out what way to run at all, and given the quickening chill of night, she was in danger of catching her death if she didn't freeze first.

Calliope managed to climb to her feet. She wrung out her skirts and stared up at the starry sky, looking for some sort of sign.

"Which way, mama?" she whispered out of desperation. "Please, help me."

Just then, there were shouts coming from her right. Oh, heavens no. How had they figured her out?

Left it was.

A renewed sense of energy, or perhaps it would be best to call it a will to survive, burst through her, and she ran toward the woods and away from the shouting. Hopefully, she was running toward the Sinclairs.