Page 49

T he air around Hamish had gone unnaturally still.

Aside from the long grasses at the edges of the pathway rustling in the wind, there was no sound and no movement. Even the dark clouds hanging over the ruins of Castle Varrich had settled in place, as if they were holding their breath, waiting for something.

For Cat.

He’d made his way to the bottom of the hill and then back up again. He’d peered around every corner and behind every rock, searching for a bright flash of red hair or the skirts of a spring green dress tossing in the wind, but it was no use.

There wasn’t any sign of a small lady in a navy-blue coat with a handful of dock plants clutched in her fist.

It was as if Cat had disappeared entirely.

“Impossible.” Ladies didn’t simply vanish into the air. “Impossible.”

He repeated the word in his head a dozen times as he hurried to the pathway and began to make his way down the hill for the second time, but his heart refused to hear it.

Nearly half an hour had passed since she’d left him at the top of the hill. Since then, he’d asked himself a hundred times why he hadn’t accompanied her.

Could she have stumbled on the pathway and tumbled down the hill? Cat had the climbing instincts of a mountain goat, but anyone could slip. If she’d ventured off the pathway and lost her footing near one of the rocky outcroppings, she might have hit her head.

His mind darted from one nightmare scenario to the next, all of them ending with her broken and bleeding at the bottom of some out-of-the-way ravine, but perhaps she’d simply paused to take in the view and lost track of time.

Yes, that would make sense.

No doubt she was just around the next corner. “Cat? Catriona!”

There was no answer.

She wasn’t around the next corner, or the next one, or the one after that. He kept on, his heart climbing deeper into his throat with every step, until it threatened to choke him.

Where was she? Had she returned to The Golden Coin, or—

“It’s not safe, ye ken.”

Hamish frowned. It was a man’s voice, and he sounded damned pleased with himself, his every syllable dripping with smug satisfaction.

“. . . a wee little bit of a thing like you wandering around out here all alone.”

He froze, the hair on the nape of his neck rising. Wee little bit of a thing? There could be no doubt who that was.

He started forward but then paused at the crunch of footsteps over loose rocks and the man’s voice, speaking again. Hamish couldn’t catch what he said this time. Something about The Golden Coin, and—

Rory’s treasure.

A deafening roar filled Hamish’s ears. It was some moments before he realized it was the thud of his own heartbeat.

“. . . may have slipped through my fingers, but you won’t be so lucky.”

His every muscle pulled taut, and his chest heaved as panic and fury choked him. Some blackguard had cornered Cat, and he knew all about Rory and about the missing treasure.

“I’m not a crack shot, ye ken, but handy enough with a blade.”

The threat and the menacing tone in which it was spoken made the blood thundering through Hamish’s veins run cold. He had to get to Cat now, but where was she?

He waited, straining to hear anything—another word or another footstep—that would give it away. The man’s voice was close, but he couldn’t see—

“Now be a good lass and do as I say.”

Below him. They were below him.

Slowly, he lowered himself to the ground, taking care not to make a sound. He dropped flat onto his stomach and shimmied forward, using the toes of his boots to push himself along, the dirt sinking into his fingernails until the ground disappeared underneath his hands, giving way to empty space.

He was on top of a rock ledge, above them, but not at the proper angle to see them.

He crawled toward the edge, one torturous inch at a time. Closer, then closer still, nearly there, just a little further, until . . . yes! The top of the man’s black knitted cap appeared, a tangle of dark hair sticking out from underneath the flat brim.

He squirmed closer until the cap and the dark hair gave way to a slash of thick eyebrows, a pair of mean brown eyes, and a scraggle of dark beard, the mouth hidden among the untidy hair twisted in a snarl.

Those eyebrows and that filthy beard. He’d seen this villain somewhere before, but he couldn’t recall where he’d—

Wait. It was the man from The Golden Coin, the night he and Cat arrived in Tongue! He’d been in the dining room when they entered and had stared at Cat until she’d grown so uncomfortable she’d retired to their bedchamber.

It hadn’t been mere admiration, then, but something far more sinister. The man must have recognized her that night and had been keeping his eye on her since. There was no chance he just happened to be here at the castle ruins at the same time they were.

The blackguard must have followed them here from the inn.

He wasn’t one of Clan Mackay’s men, by the looks of him. He wore a filthy, ill-fitting brown coat and the dark pantaloons of a common smuggler. He was carrying a dirk in his right hand with a thick, wooden handle and a long, curved silver blade with a wicked point at the tip.

But it didn’t matter who he was. All that mattered was that he had Cat at his mercy, with one massive arm wrapped around her neck, the blade of the dirk against her throat, and an ugly look in his eyes.

Hamish had seen that look before. The man wouldn’t hesitate to use that dirk on her.

Every instinct screamed at him to leap off the ledge and tackle the man to the ground, but if he was a smuggler, then he knew how to use a dirk, and Hamish had no weapon.

He did have the element of surprise, but if he should miscalculate, or fail to take the man down with one blow, there was no telling the chaos that would erupt, and Cat would be right in the middle of it.

No. He couldn’t let that happen.

He needed a weapon. A large, loose rock would do the job, but he’d have to go search for one, and all it would take was a scrape of his boot, or a pebble toppling over the edge of the ledge to give away his hiding place, and there was no way he was leaving Cat here alone at the mercy of that villain.

“Now then, lass, ye just hand over that bag, and you and I will get along fine, ye hear?”

Bag? Hamish shimmied a little closer to the edge of the ledge, taking care to keep his head down. Cat was standing directly beneath the ledge, almost entirely out of his sight, but he could see the edge of one of her arms and her hand with the strap of a leather bag hooked around her fingers.

The hems of the brown cloak pooled in the dirt and rocks at her feet. Beside her were a few large, dark-colored stones piled on top of each other.

It looked like the remains of a cairn.

A marker, then, but for what? Rory’s hidden treasure?

No, it couldn’t be. It didn’t make any sense.

Why would Rory build a cairn to mark where he’d buried the treasure? Marking the place with a cairn would only draw attention to the hiding place. It was as good as inviting someone to come and take the treasure.

“No. I won’t hand anything over to you.”

At the sound of Cat’s voice, he jerked his attention back to the scene unfolding below him. She hadn’t made any attempt to free herself from the man’s clutches, but her chin was raised, and her expression was haughty, even with that dirk to her throat.

Foolish, beautiful, brave, ridiculous lass!

She’d never been one to shrink away from a challenge, even when she should have. Like her father, Cat had more bravery in her than was good for her.

“If you want the bag, you can take it yourself,” she added.

Dear God. Why, of all the things she could have said, had she chosen to say that ? Nothing would give that blackguard more pleasure than to manhandle—

“Do you think I won’t, lass?” The man threw back his head in a laugh and pressed the blade tighter against the tender skin of her throat.

Hamish tensed, one eye on the dirk in the blackguard’s hand and the other on Cat.

Waiting was the hardest thing he’d ever done, but he’d only get one chance at this. So, he stayed where he was, his breath ragged, every second seeming to last a lifetime.

Damn it, he had to find a weapon, but where? If only he had some monkshood! But there was a disappointing dearth of poisonous plants around.

The best he could do was stinging nettle.

Stinging nettle. It wasn’t the dangerous weapon monkshood was, but the man wouldn’t be expecting a stinging nettle attack.

It was far from a perfect plan, but it was all he had.

He glanced around him, and yes, just there, a little to his right, there was a tangled patch of weeds and grass, and among them the pointed leaves of stinging nettle.

Slowly, he backed a few inches away from the edge of the ledge, then slid across the dirt to the patch of nettle. There wasn’t as much as he would have liked—just a few plants, but they’d have to do.

He seized half a dozen stalks in his fist, ignoring the sting, then slid back to the edge of the ledge, the pebbles shifting underneath him, and peered over the side.

By this point, the man had snatched the bag away from Cat. He’d shoved her to her knees and clamped one meaty hand on the back of her neck and was looming over her as he struggled with the bag with his other hand, his face contorted with eager greed.

But greed never did pay off, did it?

The villain hadn’t seemed to notice how light the bag was, or how limp.

So limp it looked as if it were empty.

Anyone could see there was no fortune in gold coins hidden inside that bag. It wasn’t the treasure, and that blackguard was going to find that out soon enough.

A roar of rage tore through the silence and echoed around them.

Now, in fact.

“What the devil is this?” The man tossed the bag aside and held out his hand.

Cat and Hamish both leaned closer, then Cat let out a gasp.

There, in the center of the villain’s palm was a small gold signet ring set with a red stone. Not ruby or garnet, but jasper, and there was something carved into the face of it.