Page 4 of Highland Hero
Emily looked wildly around, then her gaze settled on Rory. “You have to stop him. Please. I know you do not get along with my sister, but… Please.Pleasebring her home. I will make sure she never says an unkind word to you again.”
He doubted that were possible, but the look of anguish on Emily’s face was nearly unbearable. Not to mention Ian’s threatening glare. While it was true there was no affection lost—or even tolerance—between him and Juliana, she still didn’t deserve the fate of being Neal Cameron’s wife. The man was a total arse. Not only could he not hold his liquor—or his temper when drunk—he mistreated his horse, and his hounds ran from him. At a gathering three years ago, he’d raped a girl—a MacFarlane lass that Rory had an eye for—and she’d come to Rory the next day, battered and bruised. Neal had denied the rape. Worse, the lass had quickened, and Neal had refused to acknowledge the child.
As shrewish as Juliana was—at least with him—she didn’t deserve that fate. Rory set his coffee mug down and sighed.
“I will go after her.”
…
Fool. Fool,fool,fool. She had to be the biggest fool in all of Britain. Juliana yanked against the ropes that bound her hands, but they didn’t give. Instead, her efforts only seemed to tighten them. Frustrated, she let her hands drop onto the pommel of the saddle and tried to avoid making contact with the man seated behind her—an impossible feat given that the horse’s cantering rocked her against the damn bastard. And against that male part of him that felt very hard.
“Da…mm…phh,” she muttered, the words ineffective against the gag that had been stuffed into her mouth early on when she wouldn’t be quiet. “Da…mm…phh.”
“I told ye to shut your yap.” A rough voice spoke into her ear, followed by a sharp bite to the side of her neck. “Next time I will draw blood.”
Juliana seethed silently, forcing herself to still. That was the second bite Neal Cameron had given her. The next one might indeed draw blood and, if it hit the big vein in her neck, she’d bleed to death. She needed to survive.
But, dear Lord, she’d been stupid. Neal had hounded her at the festivities yesterday, although with Fiona and Lorelei beside her, she’d been able to thwart his advances. When he’d finally seemed to give up and had left with his clansmen, it was late, and she’d wanted nothing more than to get a bit of fresh air, away from the still-reveling crowd in the bailey. She’d told Lorelei not to wait up as she’d gathered her cloak. She’d only intended to sit in the quiet garden for a moment behind the castle.
She hadn’t gone very far when she’d heard a rustling and then, before she could turn around, she’d been grabbed, something foul-smelling held against her nose, and the world had gone black.
She’d awakened hanging upside down over a man’s shoulder and immediately started pounding her fists on his back and screaming, which only got her a heavy fist to her thigh and someone sticking that foul-smelling cloth under her nose again. When she’d regained consciousness the second time, she was astride a horse, bound and gagged, and they were galloping madly down the road.
And her head hurt. It was pounding in rhythm to the horse’s hooves, and she felt nauseous. Dear God! What if she needed to cast up her accounts? She’d choke to death. And she didn’t dare try to talk again.
Her situation modified slightly from hell to purgatory when the horse finally slowed and veered off the road. But soon her gown was catching on bramble and gorse, ripping the silken skirt to shreds. Not that it mattered, she supposed, since the skirt had already torn when she’d been thrown over the saddle to ride astride.
But she still felt sick. Frantically, she began twisting in the saddle to try and make eye contact. She brought her bound hands to her mouth in a gesture she hoped would communicate she needed the gag out. It must have registered, because Neal signaled the other riders to stop, and he yanked the cloth out.
“If ye start screeching again…”
He hadn’t finished the sentence when she leaned over the animal’s withers and emptied the contents of her stomach on the ground. He cursed, one of the men said something in Gaelic, and the rest of them laughed. She didn’t see anything that was one damn bit funny.
“Are ye sure ye want that one?” one of the men finally asked. “A blethering crabbit who blaws like a bairn?”
“Dùin do bheul!”
She had no idea what he said, but it effectively silenced the man. But…he had given her an idea.
“I…have been ill the last few days. You should let me go. It might be ague or the grippe.”
While his men gave her startled looks and a couple of them edged their horses away, Neal just laughed.
“Ye were just fine at the weddin’.” He smirked. “And I’m nae givin’ up me prize.”
“I am not your prize!”
He raised a brow. “I would say ye are.”
Well, she wasn’t going to win that argument out here in the woods. Wiping her mouth indelicately on her sleeve—Lorelei would have swooned at such a thing, but she wanted to make a point—she asked, “Where are you taking me?”
“Home.”
That wasn’t much of an answer, but Juliana remembered the MacGregors saying something about Cameron holdings north of Fort William. She wasn’t quite sure how far that was, since she’d only come to Scotland when her widowed sister, Emily, had been granted her English husband’s claim to land here. But anywhere was too far. She had to get away before…before… She quelled the thought.Focus on the present. Survive.
“Why did you leave the road, then?”
He looked at her as though she might be slow-witted. Daft, the Scots called it. She raised her chin defiantly. “I would think it easier for a horse to travel on a road rather than through a forest.”
