Page 9 of Warrior of the Highlands (Highlands #3)

Delusions about Alasdair MacColla? Haley’s dissertation must be getting to her, thinking she’d somehow landed in old Scotland with James Graham’s friend MacColla. Either that or she’d injured more than just her ribs. She blinked her eyes shut tight to expel the thought.

“Should we . . . should we leave her?” Jean’s hushed voice washed over Haley where she lay, dazed, in the grass.

MacColla had somehow gotten his hands on two ponies, and they’d ridden hard through the night, with Haley doubled up in front of him.

When he finally stopped at dawn, Haley had slid gratefully to the ground, hand clutched tight to her side. She was hungry and she was dying of thirst, but all she could do for the moment was lie there.

Rather than feeling open and wide above, the sky seemed to press down on her, gradually lightening but never warming beyond monochromatic shades of gun-metal.

Damp seeped into the fabric of her dress, its chill clutching her, snaking up and around her aching sides like an embrace from the grave.

Her toes had lost feeling, and the mud-soaked leather of her boots shrank tight over her feet.

Still, these seemed like quaint discomforts compared to the agony she felt with each breath. Haley was relieved simply to lie there, momentarily lightening her body’s pull on her rib cage. Curling into her pain, she was able to find the space in her torso for more than just shallow panting.

“Truly, Alasdair, we’ll travel faster if—”

“I can hear you,” Haley said to nobody in particular.

“ Wheesht. ” He silenced her like a child. “Hush, Jean. The lass goes with us.”

Travel faster if . . . you leave me? That’s right, girlie. Please do leave me. Haley shut her eyes tight. If only.

She needed to get away from these people, but with such pain in her ribs, she’d never be able to outrun the man.

“Your rest is over.” His voice was close. She opened her eyes to see him standing above her. “Are you ready?”

“You sure are pushing hard.”

“Campbell won’t rest. Nor will I.”

“Aren’t you a charmer?” she mumbled.

She ignored his outstretched hand, and MacColla made a small grunting sound. Three quick pants of air and she sat up on a sharp exhale, biting back a groan. She struggled to her knees, then her feet, and made her way to the horses.

She studied them in the morning light. They were stout little beasts, one with a mane and tail so black they seemed dyed compared to the lighter dun of its coat. The other was a shade of gray to match the drab sky.

“Where’d you get these nags anyway?” She rubbed her backside, dreading another minute of riding. Haley looked around, desperately trying to place where they could be. “I sure hope some Choate girl isn’t missing her prized ponies.”

“If you can jest, you can ride,” he said, sweeping her up and onto the saddle.

It was the creak of leather beneath her that silenced Haley. She realized that even their horse was tacked up in period garb, with such an archaic saddle. As each step took them impossibly farther from civilization, she wondered what messed-up fantasy these two were reenacting.

Or what kind of nut job would pretend to be Alasdair MacColla.

Haley glanced down at the thickly muscled legs jutting from behind her.

The man sure was dressed for the part. He even had the six-foot-long, two-handed sword MacColla was known for; one just like it had been tucked and waiting for him in a copse not far from that weird castle.

“Too bad,” she muttered. “If you were the real MacColla, you could probably tell me if James Graham were still alive.”

She felt the man grow still at her back.

“What did you say?” His voice was a menacing whisper in her ear.

Not the thing to say, apparently. “Nothing,” she replied quickly, thinking she might not know what they were about, but she did know that these two were dead serious about their little performance.

Anxiety curdled her stomach as much as her pain did now, wondering where they were taking her, and whether she’d be ready to fight, then flee, when the time was right.

As the hours passed, Haley tried to formulate a plan. She studied every hill and valley as they rode, thinking surely they’d soon approach a town.

She’d at first tried to track their movements, but found it impossible to place where they could be.

It was odd she hadn’t seen any signs of life.

No cars—not even any real roads, for that matter.

They must’ve taken her some ways out of Boston.

She knew parts of Massachusetts were quite rural, but she’d never understood just how extensive it was.

The sky grew brighter, and she was able to see the land around her more clearly now. It was strangely barren. The countryside just around Brimfield?

Making as if to stretch, she craned her neck to take in the endless stretch of land behind them.

No. Not even close.

She’d made that drive along the Mass Pike before, cutting through gently rolling hills whose charming farms were nowhere to be seen here.

Shifting made her realize just how stiff she was. Each step of the pony’s short gait was agony. Though she refused to admit exhaustion to her captors, Haley was desperate to stop.

“Alasdair?” Though the girl’s whisper was meek, it shattered what had been a slow and silent slog through the countryside.

“Jean.” There was a warning in his voice that piqued Haley’s curiosity.

“But I must,” she whispered.

Finally. Haley chuckled low, thinking the girl probably needed to pee as badly as she did.

“Jean, can you not make it a wee spot longer? There will be Campbells surely riding in our wake. I must get you to safety. And then I’ve a mind to turn about and have a taste of their anger without two lasses to hold me back.”

“But . . .”

“Och, fine.” MacColla pulled the pony to an abrupt halt. “We break, but just for a moment, aye?”

They dismounted, and she watched as the man escorted his companion to a small thicket. Haley sneered. Of course the girl was incapable of walking the thirty yards into the trees to do her business alone.

Haley took care of herself, then sank gratefully to the grass to take inventory of her various aches and pains, noting all those parts growing numb from the damp and cold. She shifted, nudging away from a stone jabbing sharp into her backside.

The hours of endurance had given her much time to contemplate disastrous scenarios—broken ribs, a smashed spleen .

. . Clearing her throat, she spat lightly into her palm and studied it.

Clear. Part of her feared the sun might bring to light the grisly pale pink of mingled blood.

But however much her ribs might feel like ragged blades in her chest, she knew there was no way anything was broken.

She wouldn’t be able to ride, or even move, if something had been.

She wiped her palm on her dress, her movements slow and deliberate. In that moment, a torn something seemed no less painful to her than a broken something.

The sound of their voices gradually reemerged from the trees, coalescing into coherent snippets of conversation. Though at first their whispers had been a dense and rapidly flowing Gaelic, MacColla and Jean spoke increasingly in English.

She couldn’t begin to guess who these people were or what it could mean that they spoke perfect Gaelic. Their English threw her too. It was thick and strangely accented, like no Scottish brogue she’d ever heard. Islanders, perhaps?

Just more confusing items to add to her growing list. She needed to figure out who the hell they were. At the very least, it might help her when she felt fit enough to make her escape.

Haley put her hand to her belly. Willing her diaphragm to rise, she breathed in as deeply as she could, nudging at the edges of her pain. Its acuteness had crested, dulling into something her body could reasonably handle.

“But who is she then?” he asked. “You can’t be certain there wasn’t another prisoner—”

“I was the only one, Alasdair.”

Bickering lovers? Haley mused about the peculiar pair, wondering how a simpering girl could inspire the love of such a commanding force as this man.

She felt another small twinge of jealousy. Where were all the suitors lining up to take care of Haley ?

And where did a girl like that meet a man like him anyway? A helpless waif and a man calling himself Alasdair MacColla. Gooseflesh pebbled her skin. Why that name?

And why had they taken her?

Haley retraced her steps. She’d been contemplating a gun she’d suspected had belonged to James Graham.

It was a far-fetched theory, but she couldn’t deny the certainty she felt in her gut.

She’d discovered a weapon that could rock history as everyone knew it.

Something that would prove Graham didn’t really die when the history books said he did.

And then she gets abducted by a man claiming the name of none other than Graham’s famous compatriot, the warrior Alasdair MacColla.

Not likely.

The two events had to be linked somehow.

A rival academic? Who else would speak such perfect Gaelic? She couldn’t tamp down a shiver of excitement, thinking that this MacColla’s interest only corroborated her theory.

Sensing him near, Haley turned, and was taken aback at his closeness. She mustered as great a dare in her gaze as she could, despite needing to tilt her chin up to meet his eyes.

He was handsome in the light, and it was off-putting. It’d been easy to imagine him as some mangy beast in the dark, with his soiled kilt and wild hair. The caricature had made him easy to size up, easy to place.

But the day had brought to light strong features. Large, brown eyes. A wide mouth. A rugged, square jaw. His thick, dark eyebrows exaggerated a high forehead. Wild hair hung loose from either side of a ragged part, coming to rest on wide shoulders.