Page 16 of Taken By the Heartless Highlander
“Devil’s spawn, ye will be silent!” Lucas shouted. He moved to stand at the base of the pyre, dropping his voice enough that only she could hear it. “Are ye ready to accept me?”
She simply looked ahead of her, not dignifying him with an answer. She wondered where her brother was, whether he might be fighting to save her even now, she prayed that he was safe.
She could not believe this would be her fate at four and twenty, merely because she had refused to marry a madman.
“I am innocent,” she stated firmly, but there were no friendly eyes in the crowd as she looked around at them. He had poisoned everyone against her in a few short hours.
Lucas walked back into the center of the clearing, master of all he surveyed, drunk on power.
“The witch has been conquered!” he cried triumphantly. “No more shall our maladies be treated by her poisons, unholy tinctures, and earthly remedies! God alone can heal the sick, not this devil woman. We shall see her burned and her sins absolved so that she may be purged of the evil in her blood and find her deserving place in heaven where her soul belongs.”
He turned to Keira, an unholy light dancing in his eyes. He reached out an arm, and Gareth, one of the men most loyal to Lucas in the village, stepped forward and handed him a torch that had yet to be lit.
“Do ye confess?” Lucas cried, turning in a full circle as he addressed the crowd. “Even the laird who took her in has sent her back to us in revulsion at her unnatural magicks!”
“I wouldo say that’s quite correct,” came a deep voice from behind him.
* * *
There were shocked gasps all around as Laird MacAllen pushed aside the gathered crowd and made his way toward Lucas, his sword in his hands and murder in his eyes.
Lucas turned, and in an instant, all the power and confidence he had just wielded evaporated as though it had never been there.
Keira’s heart leaped in her chest at MacAllen’s fury as he sliced his sword through the air, cutting the torch that Lucas held in two.
“Ye are a man of God! How can ye treat a simple healer in this way?” MacAllen thundered, and Lucas, like the rat he had always been, dropped the remains of the torch and sprinted away, pushing through the crowds in terror.
“Burn her!” Lucas screeched. “This is the devil’s soldier; burn her!”
MacAllen moved to pursue Lucas but as he did so there were more angry cries from the villagers all around him.
Gareth ran forward, another torch held high. “Ye heard him! Do it now!”
Keira felt dread swamp her as MacAllen was almost pushed to the floor by a group of villagers who were hastily lighting their torches. He rallied quickly, but Keira could only focus on the flames leaping up on all sides.
As MacAllen pushed several of them aside, Gareth dropped his unlit torch with a snarl. His gaze was fixed on the laird and he launched himself at him, his hands grabbing for his neck.
Despite Gareth’s bulk, he barely wrong-footed MacAllen enough to make him step back a single pace. MacAllen pushed him aside as though he weighed nothing, as the other man fell heavily to the floor.
Gareth was not defeated, however, and sprang to his feet just as MacAllen turned to Keira to cut her down from the pyre.
“Behind ye!” she screamed as she watched Gareth pull a dirk from his belt and lunge at MacAllen.
The laird turned effortlessly, watching the man trying to fight him with almost brutal disinterest.
“I dinnae wish to hurt ye;” he said as their blades clashed in mid-air, “I have nay quarrel with ye if ye leave her alone.”
“She’s an evil witch,” Gareth bellowed before he lifted the knife above his head with two hands and brought it down hard toward MacAllen’s chest.
MacAllen’s face was impassive and still, but the arc of his sword did not waver. In an instant, there was a gurgling growl as MacAllen speared Gareth through the heart with his sword.
Keira closed her eyes, trying not to look at the gory spectacle. The crowd, all of whom had been paralyzed watching the two men fight, now began to disperse in a panic.
Keira tried to get a glimpse of where Lucas had gone. She scanned the crowd desperately, terrified he would go back to her cottage and hurt her brother and sister.
Then, a movement to her right caught her eye. As she looked, she felt a scream burst from her throat. MacAllen turned at the sound, his sword raised, but he was too far away to do any good.
A member of the crowd who had taken Lucas’s words to heart had approached the pyre with a burning torch.
