Page 15 of Taken By the Heartless Highlander
In that instant, she made the choice that she would never beg this man. She would not give him any more of her dignity than he had already taken from her.
“It was foolish of ye to return here, child,” he said as she was pulled roughly backward by the men on either side of her as they bound her hands behind her back.
Lucas was almost entirely in shadow, his blue eyes looked black in the darkness.
“We only wish to help ye,” he said, his hand lowering to cup her chin, making nausea rise in her throat. “Renounce yer sins, and ye shall be free. Ye wouldnae wish for harm to come to yer family for their association with ye. God kens all. He will ken if ye have taught them any of yer magic.”
Keira struggled against her captors, keeping her mouth shut as he leaned down toward her, saliva pooling in the back of her throat.
Lucas was a handsome man, but just then he looked almost demonic with rage. As he glared at her, she gathered the saliva in her throat and launched it into his face, watching with satisfaction as it ran down his cheek.
“Leave us,” Lucas muttered.
To her horror, the men holding her released her and walked out of the church. She lost her balance and fell forward onto the floor. Without her hands to stop her, she landed face-first, feeling the cold slap her skin. She wondered if it would be one of the last sensations she ever felt.
“Ye ken what I want.” Lucas’s voice was low and intimate in the darkness. “Give me what I want, and all of this will be over.”
He crouched before her, taking her chin in his hand again and pulling her up to face him as he wiped the saliva from his face.
“Ye ken I wouldnae wish ye to go through this, Keira. Ye and I are a pair ye see, and it pains me to see ye suffer. Give me what I want.” He looked at her then with a smile as though he expected her to relent.
“Never.”
With a snarl of disgust, he dropped her head unceremoniously to the floor.
“Bring wood and oil,” he screamed, “we will build a pyre and burn this witch for her crimes.”
Keira listened to his boots march away.
So this is how it ends. I am to be burned at the stake for not wishing to marry a man I loathe. And there is no handsome laird to come to me rescue now.
* * *
Dawn was breaking over the far horizon as Keira stood on the pyre they had built, a plank at her back, her wrists tightly bound and immobile.
She looked around at the villagers, these people who she had once thought of as her friends, who now stood waiting for her to be burned alive.
The only sin she had ever committed was to care for the sick and the wounded.
She thought back to the forest and Laird MacAllen’s kind eyes as she had tended to him. If he were the last person she helped, she could live with that knowledge. She was glad that she had met him and grateful that he had tried to help her.
She cursed herself for not heeding her brother’s warnings about returning to the village. It had seemed essential to return to her cottage at the time. It contained everything she had ever done, every piece of her life she had built. She could not just abandon it.
She had believed they would have more time and could have fled at dawn. As she watched the sun rise slowly in the distance, she knew she had never made such a terrible misjudgment in her life.
She watched Lucas walk amongst the villagers, talking gently with each one and handing out the torches as though they were treats at a fayre.
“Lucas!” she shouted.
He turned to her, walking to the center of the clearing and holding his hands aloft for silence, clearly believing she had finally come to her senses.
Does he honestly believe, after all of this, that I would ever agree to be his wife?
“What sins do ye expect me to recant?” she demanded.
“Witchcraft!” he spat, “worshiping the devil, ungodly magic, and bringing a dead man back from the grave!”
“Do ye honestly believe him?” she shouted to the crowd. “I have only ever helped ye! He is mad.”
