Page 20 of A Virgin for the Vicious Highlander
“Where are ye headed, M’Laird?” Lennox called, catching up to him.
“To find that infuriatin’, reckless wee lass,” Murdoch replied savagely. “Ye ride on back to the castle. Ensure nay one leaves until I return. Och, and find the guards who saw her leavin’ the castle. I want ‘em punished for this.”
Lennox hesitated. “Yer betrothed is missin’?”
“Stopcallin’ her that!” Murdoch snapped. “Do as ye’re told, or else I’ll see to it that ye’re punished alongside those useless guards.”
Lennox dipped his head. “Aye, M’Laird. I’ll see to it.”
He rode off as swiftly as his horse would carry him, heading back up the winding road to the castle gates, following the prints that Murdoch and his stallion had left in their wake.
Meanwhile, Murdoch veered off the path, slowing his horse’s pace, scanning the dense snow for Cecilia’s footprints. The freshly fallen snow had not concealed them yet, the edges glittering in the low light, guiding him to wherever she was going.
What were ye thinkin’? Are ye so careless about yer life that ye’d… keep wanderin’ where ye shouldnae?
He thought back to the story she had told him about her life, how she had been in the convent since she was ten years old. He had thought her strangely worldly, behaving in a way one would not expect from a novitiate or a nun, but there were also things about her that suggested an overwhelming naivety. An innocence that would surely see her dead if she was not more careful.
It was I who ventured away from the castle, though. It was I who needed to be elsewhere because I couldnae keep me temper in check.
If he had been better able to control his mind and body, using his discipline instead of relying on his sculpting for peace, he would have been there to stop her. He would not be riding after her now, uncertain what he might find. Orwhohe might find her with.
He put a hand on the hilt of his sword as he approached the tree line and ventured into the silence of the forest, peppered here and there by the coo of roosting doves and the chirrup of robins picking fat red berries from the holly trees.
“Curse ye, lass,” he muttered, squinting his eyes in the gloom to try and pick up her trail.
Much of the snow could not pierce the canopy formed by fir trees and yew trees, her footprints less defined, dispersed by the prints of other creatures and concealed in places by the dense underbrush. But he was as skilled a tracker as he was a pirate, and he had been a remarkably talented pirate.
He followed her faint footprints deeper into the woods, noting where moss had been flattened and twigs had snapped underfoot, listening for any movement. He also listened for voices, his hand never leaving the hilt of his broadsword.
What seemed like both an eternity and no time at all passed by in that otherworldly place, the scent of the fir trees earthy andfamiliar in his nose, mingling with the rot of fallen leaves and the crisp, inexplicable perfume of snow.
At last, he came to a small glade, thick with snow. Cecilia’s footprints cut in a perfect arc across the clear circle, and as his eyes followed the tracks, he found her.
She was huddled in the hollow of a yew tree, her knees pressed to her chest, her cloak wrapped around her. Murdoch could hear her teeth chattering from where he was, but that was not the only sound that reached his keen ears. There was a softer, more mournful sound. A whimper that did not sound human.
Murdoch dismounted his stallion and approached with caution. It did not appear that Cecilia had seen him yet, and he did not want to frighten her. Not at that moment, at least.
His footprints joined hers in the snow… and he noticed a third set of prints for the first time. Far, far smaller, andcertainlynot human. His eyes knew that track all too well, which was perhaps why he had not paid attention to it before, assuming it was just another forest creature going about its daily business—they belonged to a very small dog.
“M’Laird!” Cecilia gasped, seeing him at last.
At the same moment, a little furry head poked out of her cloak. Strange eyes peered at him—one gray, one brown—while triangular ears twitched this way and that, listening intently.
As Murdoch took a step closer, the puppy mustered all of its courage and started barking at him, its growl not loud enough to scare a butterfly off a flower, much less a grown laird about to take a lass back to his castle.
“Do ye have any idea of the trouble ye’ve caused?” Murdoch said coldly, addressing both the dog and Cecilia.
What he did not show—what he would never show—was his relief.
CHAPTER 9
“I sawthe puppy from the window,” Cecilia explained, her face so numb it was difficult to speak. “He was out by the road. A t-tiny thing. By the time I got to where he h-had been, he had run toward the woods. I followed his tracks u-until I found him again. Poor thing was so lost and tired th-that he let me pick him up and tuck him under me cloak. The trouble was, I c-couldnae find me way out again. I’d come too far into the woods, and the sun was goin’ down and…”
She stared up at Murdoch, knowing she probably deserved some of the tongue-lashing she was about to receive, but what else was she supposed to do? Leave the puppy out there to die? It was not in her nature. It never had been. In fact, it was the very reason she was so often put on sheep and goat duty, because Mairie knew that no one would keep a closer eye on the animals than her.
“His m-maither must have abandoned him,” she added, waiting for Murdoch to saysomething. But he was just staring at her as if he could not decide what to do with her.
All the while, the cold in her bones seeped deeper, and the puppy kept barking, trying to wriggle out of her grasp to presumably attempt to bite Murdoch.
