Page 70 of Highlanders for the Holidays
Chapter 6
Any senseof chagrin Page may have felt over having been caught in the midst of loving her husband fled at the sight of Iain sprawled on his face on the stable floor. The man hit him hard enough to leave him for dead, and then he dragged her out of the stable, screaming in protest.
Unlike the night before, all work had ceased. Her husband had declared this a day of celebration so everyone was at the bonfire, half a league away—purposely built to keep the fire as far from surviving structures and new construction as possible.
“We cannot leave him there!”
The man—dressed in MacLean red—jerked her arm so hard it made her squeal.
“He’ll be fine,” the stranger said, “I merely cracked him on the head, but if ye make me go back, I’ll make certain he won’t rise again.”
Page’s relief was palpable. “You have no idea what you have done. My husband will come searching for me the very instant he wakes. Hewillfind you,” she warned, and then she wished she hadn’t made such a boast. The last thing she wanted was for the man to go back and make sure Iain was dead.
“He won’t find you ’til ’tis too late.”
Page had a sinking feeling down in her gut. “Too late?”
She couldn’t place the man’s accent—not precisely. He wasn’t Scots. His accent sounded strange to her ears—and yet vaguely familiar as well.
“Because your father is going to kill you,” he explained.
Page was genuinely confused by his claim. Her father had had very little to do with her for ten years and more. “My father?”
“Aye. Your father.”
“Hugh is here?”
“Aye.”
“With you?”
“Not precisely.”
“He has come to kill me?”
“Does it matter?”
Page bristled at the man’s question. “Of course it does!”
What child ever wanted to believe her father could do such a thing?
Hugh FitzSimon had never loved her overmuch, but Page could not see him come to murder her in cold blood. And still … he’d been quite willing to discard her—never mind that he’d changed his mind and then wanted her back. To Hugh, Page had never been aught more than chattel, and still, it made her heart wrench that her father might want her dead. But why? What could he hope to gain?
She was not a son, and therefore she would never inherit her father’s demesne. In terms of politiks, it was far more reasonable to assume he’d pass his legacy to a bastard son. Had not King Henry’s illegitimate son, Robert of Gloucester benefited just that way?
“Who are you?” Page demanded to know. The years may have mellowed her, but she would not so easily cow.
“Someone with a vested interest.”
At Aldergh, they’d had a kitchen maid with that very accent. She remembered her father smacking the woman on the arse quite a lot. In fact, there were quite a few evenings when he’d summoned her to his room—to bring him sweets, he’d always claimed. Only now she wondered, what kind of sweets?
“A vested interest in what?” Now that they were far enough away and Iain wasn’t in immediate danger, Page dragged her feet, planting her heels.
The man pulled her along across the field, against her will. The light of the bonfire and ringing of voices diminished behind them as he dragged her in the direction of the woods. A sliver of a moon lit the night sky, but it lay hidden behind a bank of puffy white clouds, giving the landscape a grey, otherworldly light.
With every step, Page expected to hear Iain calling after her, but the sound of his voice remained absent from the hillside and the merriment fell further and further away.
The man pinched the back of her arm, jerking her forward when she tried to sit. “What I have to gain is not important for ye to know.”
