Page 74 of Wed to the Highlander
She stepped toward him. Her foot slipped, and she teetered, Jamie tumbling from her arms.
“No!” Maggie screamed as she dove, skidding across the wet floor, arms outstretched. Her fingers closed around Jamie tiny ankle just as Isla dropped, her scream echoing in the void, wood splintering and crashing below.
With her infant son dangling from her fingertips, she strained to lift him. But he was his father’s son, a big boy, closing in on a stone, and she didn’t have the strength.
She tried to back up, but the rotting floor beneath her creaked ominously.
“Hang on!” Duncan shouted. “I’m coming!”
“Hurry!” she cried, feeling him slipping.
Rain lashed down. Jamie wailed, his limbs flailing.
Duncan edged forward. “Hold on, Maggie!”
“I’m trying!”
A deafening crack split the air—not thunder but the timber beneath Duncan’s feet. He lunged for the edge just as the beam gave way.
He fell.
So did Jamie, slipping from her grasp.
Maggie screamed his name, but by some miracle, Duncan caught him midair.
Despair turned to joy then terror, as, in a flash of white, both Duncan and Jamie—her entire world—vanished into the hole.
Thunder drowned out her cries as she hung over the edge, peering into the blackness. It was fifteen feet to the next floor, almost fifty to the bottom. Sobbing, desperate to know what had happened and terrified to see, she waited for another flash.
When it came, she saw horror and hope. Isla’s twisted, lifeless body lay three stories below, broken on the stone.
And Duncan, with their baby cradled in one arm, dangled from a rope.
“Thank you, God. Oh, thank you,” she sobbed.
Hands on her shoulders had her screaming again.
“It’s Hamish, mistress. This floor could give way any minute. We must get ye out o’ here.”
She let him loop a rope around her and help her to her feet, but her eyes remained fixed on the void. The next flash revealed Lachlan, with several others on the far side, pulling Duncan up, inch by inch.
It seemed an eternity before she was back on stable ground.
They urged her down to the great hall. She didn’t want to leave without her husband and her son, but with Fiona’s assurance that Duncan would come through the rear entrance by way of the kitchen, she finally relented.
There was no consoling her, though. She paced the gathering room, blanket clutched tight around her shoulders, eyes fixed on the wide doorway.
Then she heard her baby’s cries.
When she saw Duncan walking toward her—soaked through to the skin, chilled but alive—she couldn’t reach him fast enough. She threw herself into his arms and clutched their son to her chest.
“It’s over,” he said, voice hoarse. “Isla will nae torment us again.”
Jamie whimpered, his tiny fists curling against her shoulder. Maggie kissed his damp curls, murmuring comfort.
“Come to the fire,” Duncan urged.
Someone had pulled up a chair beside the hearth, brought her towels, blankets, and a mug of steaming tea. The great hall was hushed—shock from the fire, which the rain had extinguished—and horror that Isla had returned, utterly unhinged.
