Page 103 of Stealing Sophie
“All this has happened because of me,” she insisted. “I can help solve it.”
“It is also because of my actions. I will resolve it while you wait here.”
“Wait here while Sir Henry kills you and my brother? I will not!”
“My love,” he said, “he will not have the chance. I promise you.”
“Then you must kill him before he kills you.”
“When did you become a bloodthirsty wee nun? Go inside. Please listen, Sophie lass. Worrying about you would be a great distraction for all of us if you were there.”
“Sir Henry may not negotiate for Rob if I am not there. Besides, I intend to tell him that I wanted you to take me that night. That I planned to marry you, not him, all along.”
“And you think he would believe it?” He stood over her, bending nose to nose. “Stay here, and safe.” He lifted her chin with a finger. “Will you do that?”
Her eyes clouded gray as a storm. “Well. Since you wanted to marry my sister and not me, why should you care what I do?”
She was the one he wanted, all he had ever dreamed of wanting. He knew that now. “I care,” he only said. “You know I do.”
“Connor, please. I need to help my brother. My clan,” she whispered.
“And I need you to be safe. I must go. The lads and I have much to do tonight.”
“I heard you talking—what bridge?”
“The bridge to my heart. It has been breached.” He bent to kiss her. She turned her cheek to him stubbornly, so he kissed that. “Stay inside,” he said.
“I cannot promise.”
“Did the nunnery teach you nothing about obedience?”
“They did, and Sister Berthe further taught me to obey only as it pleases me.”
“A fair lesson. I ask only for common sense. Your brother would ask the same of you. I will find Rob, I promise.”
She looked up, her eyes limpid, beautiful. “See that you keep your word, Kinnoull.”
“I always do.”
He walked away past the kitchen garden, with its pale green sprouts and flowering buds bursting out of nowhere.
Connor moved quicklyalongside the other men, all of them accustomed to Highland miles and rocky slopes. The healing wound in his side ached, though the snug bandage helped. He would not favor it. The night’s work had all his attention.
The skies dimmed toward twilight as he descended one hillside and climbed another. Glancing down at the road still under construction, he did not see the soldiers who had been working there for days. He frowned, slowing to a stop, as did Andrew, Thomas, and Roderick.
“Where have they gone?” he asked.
In answer, Thomas motioned ahead toward the glen floor and the new stone bridge in the distance. Connor led them along a high drover’s track that skimmed the tops of the hills without dipping into the glen; it was the quickest route to the bridge and the far end of Glen Carran, which verged on Kinnoull lands. Up there, they moved swiftly with grim determination, soon reaching the pass between the hills.
Now they headed down toward the streams that rushed through the glen. Brimming with spring rains and melting snows that fed the river and streams, the watercourse nearest their path flowed fast and full. In the growing darkness, hidden by shadows, Connor and the others ran on steadily.
Slowing for a breath, he looked down and saw that they were well above, but closer now, to the stone bridge in the glen valley. The downhill route was clear, though he noticed a few men clustered on a nearby hillside; if he and his companions descended now, they might be seen.
From his higher vantage point, he could also see Kinnoull House. Its façade, part manor house, part castle tower, glowed in the last glimmer of the sun like a jewel. He looked away, disinclined to yearn for what was irretrievably lost.
Better, he told himself, to study the group of men positioned halfway down the adjacent slope, half-obscured by terrain and boulders. Guards in scarlet and white stood with muskets, two men sat on the rocks, and a man in gray stood by. Campbell.
The men on the rocks moved, tried to stand, but were pushed down. Connor recognized Neill, his hands bound behind him. The other man, equally bound, was long-legged and fair-haired, lifting his head proudly. Rob MacCarran of Duncrieff.
