Page 36 of Sighs of the Highland Wind
In the split second that Kenna took her eyes off him, however, Douglas lunged forward and grabbed her, then pulled her against him, his hands holding her upper arms in an iron grip. Kenna screamed in pain, but she was close enough now to raise her knee and drive it viciously into his groin. He doubled over, moaning in pain.
Sure that he would be unable to catch her, Kenna tried to dodge past him, but somehow he managed to reach out a hand to grasp her arm again. This time he was weakened, however, and his grip was not so tight. Kenna shook him off but slipped on some of the food on the floor and fell headlong onto the flagstones.
She tried to scramble away, but then she felt her attacker crawl onto her back, his weight crushing her and pressing her to the ground.
“You will pay for that,” he growled. “You will pay very dearly.”
But Kenna had not given up. She knew that her attacker was weakened, and it hardened her resolve to fight back. She would fight until her last breath to save her life and her maidenhead, and she was certainly not about to surrender now.
Douglas tried to turn her over, but he could not do so without moving away from her. For a few seconds, he raised himself on his left elbow while he used his right to try to prise her off the ground, but she resisted him. Eventually, he resorted to pulling Kenna’s hair so hard that she screamed.
“Shut up!” he shouted in her ear. “Or I will really have to hurt you!”
“If you hurt her, it will be the last thing you ever do,” said a deep voice from the shadows.
Maxwell was restless. Ever since Kenna had left the room, he had been fretting, and when he reasoned that enough time had passed for her to do her errand and come back again, he decided to go after her. This was easier said than done, however, since she had locked the door behind her, and the only way he was going to escape was by breaking it down.
He thought about this for a moment since, if he tried to do that, he would give himself away. However, if she were in danger and could not get back to her chamber, he would be trapped anyway, so going after her seemed to be the lesser of two evils.
Maxwell could not run in the confines of the small room, so he took two long strides toward the door and kicked it with as much force as he could muster. The door shuddered on its hinges and began to splinter but did not give. He repeated the maneuver, and this time it fell outward, hanging from one hinge.
He sped down the passageway just as the doors along the corridors began to open as other servants who had been roused from their sleep began to emerge grouchily from their chambers. All they saw, however, was a fleeting glimpse of Maxwell’s back as he hurtled down the corridor and then down the stairs to the kitchen.
His heart was hammering as he thundered down the stairs and rushed along the passageway, and when he saw Kenna lying on the ground crushed under Douglas’s weight, he saw red.
After threatening to hurt him, he pulled Douglas’s arm up toward his shoulders and then hauled him up and away from Kenna, holding him securely by the front of his shirt. Douglas struggled fiercely to escape, but Maxwell tightened the grip around the neck of the shirt so that it began to strangle him, and he stopped.
Maxwell looked into the other man’s eyes as if he was trying to bore a hole in his head. Douglas gazed back at him, his eyes full of fear.
“You never learn, do you, Dougie?” Maxwell spat. “I thought you might have learned from Lachlan’s death, but you did not. I suppose you are just too stupid.”
“Are you going to throw me down the stairs too?” Douglas was trying to put on a show of bravado, but his voice was trembling. “You killed my brother, you beast, and he was doing nothing to you.”
“Must I say this again?” Maxwell asked angrily. “I didnotkill Lachlan! He was my best friend, for God’s sake! What happened was an accident. I was trying to save an innocent young woman from being raped. You saw it, yet you continue to insist I am a murderer.”
“Are you sure you were not seeking to avenge yourself on Lachlan for pushing you out of a tree when you were boys?”
Douglas’s voice was sly, his expression a sneer.
“That was an accident, too,” Maxwell said irritably. “I bore no grudge against him for that.”
“Really? Are you sure about that?” Douglas asked spitefully. “My brother was a very good liar.”
“I am not wasting any more time on you,” Maxwell growled. “Goodbye, Dougie.”
Then he pushed his erstwhile friend away so hard that he skidded and fell backward on the kitchen floor in an action that was eerily reminiscent of his brother’s death. Dougie sat rubbing the back of his head for a while, and by the time he was able to stand up to raise the alarm, Maxwell was long gone.
“I don’t know how to get out without alerting the guards,” Kenna said anxiously.
They were standing in a shadowed alcove out of sight of the guards, watching them carefully.
Maxwell grinned. “I do. Lachlan showed me one of the escape tunnels, but we are going to need some light. The tunnel we need runs under the stables.”
“I can get that for us,” Kenna assured him.
She went to the stable first and took a blanket from a peg in one of the stalls, then a lantern. When one of the guards approached her, she smiled at him, and they talked for a few moments, then he laughed and went back to his post.
Kenna beckoned for Maxwell to come to her, and he did, keeping to the shadows as he joined her.
