Page 12 of A Highland Healer Captured
Bucket: Stubbornly full.
Skylar gathered the mat and cloak over one arm, lifted the bucket with the other, and swallowed hard. She doused the fire in a careful circle, the steam lifting in a hiss, and then she snatched up her satchel, cinched the cloak, and stepped into the corridor.
Silence met her again.
If this was a trick, she’d look the fool. If it wasn’t, she’d be daft not to take the opening.
It’s… empty?
Her heart thudded once, hard. Then twice, with sudden wild hope. Had they truly left her? Had Zander Harrison, devil of Strathcairn, kidnapper, and brute, simply gone?
“Not likely,” she muttered, but her feet were already moving.
Daisy stood where she’d been tethered last night, reins coiled neatly around a shattered column. The mare’s ears pricked as Skylar approached. “Good lass,” Skylar breathed, stroking the velvety nose. “We’re away, ye and I. Quiet now.”
She loosed the reins and set her boot to the stirrup in one swift, practiced motion, muscles singing with relief as she swung up. They could make for Edinburgh as they must only be half a day’s ride from —
An arrow hissed past Daisy’s ears, and Skylar flinched so hard she nearly tumbled over Daisy’s rump. The shaft split a fissure in the keep’s broken wall and quivered there, like a small, proud flag.
“Mornin’, mistress,” called a cheerful voice. One of Zander’s men melted out of the shadows by a tumble of stone, bow in hand and a grin like a fox. He wiggled the fingers of his free hand in a jaunty wave. “Mind the masonry.”
Skylar’s jaw dropped. Her fury rose like the tide. She turned Daisy in a sharp circle and found that the previously empty courtyard now brimmed with men. Two lounged on the fallen lintel like cats. Another leaned against a half-collapsed buttress, picking his teeth with a sliver of wood. Someone atop the wall lifted a hand in lazy salute.
And straight ahead, as Daisy came about, her reins went taut in a fist.
Zander stood there, bridle leather looped over his fingers, as steady as the ruined stones around him. He looked infuriatingly awake, infuriatingly dry, and infuriatingly pleased with himself. A shadow of a smile carved a notch at the corner of his mouth.
“If ye truly meant to escape,” he said, tugging Daisy closer until mare and man nearly touched, “ye ought to have tried it in the dead of night.”
“I did,” Skylar snapped. “Ye tackled me to the ground, remember? I’ve the bruises to prove it.”
His mouth quirked. “Then try a subtler hour next time.”
Skylar gaped at him, speechless for a heartbeat, then found her tongue. “Ye — ye bloody— yer all just bloody —” She could not choose between barbarians, demons, or oafs, so she chose all three in a scalding stream of Gaelic and Highland curses.
The trees might have blushed, but his men did not. Laughter pealed out from the stones, long and unkindly delighted.
Skylar’s ears burned scarlet. The humiliation stung worse than the lost chance. “Ye left me alone!” she accused. “Ye made it look like ye’d gone!”
“We did go,” said the archer with the fox grin. “Just… not far, Lady Skylar.”
Did they all ken who I was as well?
Zander released Daisy’s reins and he dramatically sighed as if bored, “Ye’ve two choices now,” he went on, voice even. “Ride yer own mare as part of me line. Or ride with me again.”
She blinked. She had expected taunts, not options. “Me own,” she said at once, chin tilting high. “And I swear —” She stopped herself and pasted innocence on like a veil. “I swear I’ll nae try to flee again.”
“Aye?” Zander’s eyes were half amused, half skeptical. “I prefer honest enemies to lying allies.”
“Then call me neither,” she muttered.
“Good,” he said. “Form up.”
His men did, as smoothly as water finding a riverbed. They melted from stone and brush and ruin, falling into place with lazy competence that made her molars grind. Daisy tossed her head once, but Skylar steadied her, set her jaw, and rode into the ring Zander left open for her. When they moved out between the toppled gateposts, she watched for gaps like a hawk watches for mice. There were none. Of course there were none.
They were too good at this.
She told herself she’d take the small victory anyway. Told herself that she’d won back a bit of dignity by sitting her own saddle. But the back of her neck prickled. The hair there seemed to know the difference between liberty and a longer leash.
