Page 3 of Romancing the Scot
They’d spotted her. Grace turned and raced down the hall. Taking the stairs, she tripped at the bottom and tumbled out into the alley. They were coming after her, their tread heavy on the steps.
Instantly, the battling street urchins were beside her, pulling her up.
“Hide me,” she cried out to the wide-eyed boys.
Without another word, they took her hands and began to run. They raced through a warren of alleys and boatyards, between gray stone buildings and rotting timber shanties. Grace was like a stolen trinket in the hands of experts. She could hear her pursuers behind them, shouting and cursing at the obstacles the boys were throwing up every chance they had.
The boys pulled at her, keeping her going as they bounded across rickety wooden bridges and into the shadows beneath low arches. Soon she began to tire. She felt the helplessness of a forest animal running pell-mell ahead of a raging fire. Still, they forged on, her young crew crying out to her, encouraging her. Stinking alleyways filled with refuse became passages to freedom, if only she could make herself run faster.
Smoke from cooking fires, derelict houses, and backs of shops crowding her on every side became a watery tapestry of blurred colors and shapes and smells. Somewhere in the edges of thought, Grace wondered how her pounding heart continued to function. A hot, jagged blade of loss had lodged itself in her chest. Tears coursed down her face. Tears for her father and for the other men who lay dead around him.
But she pressed on, struggling to keep up with her gallant helpers.
As they followed a crumbling wall along a narrow canal, the shouts behind them rang out louder. The killers were almost upon them.
“This way.”
She hurried with them, up a set of slimy steps and into a sunless alley. They crossed a cobbled road and out onto a long pier lined with buildings. As the other boys ran on to draw off their pursuers, one pulled her into the low side doorway of a warehouse.
Grace looked around her. The place was filled with barrels and crates of all sizes. Planks were stacked along the walls, and a smoky fire burned at the far end of the barn-like structure. Just outside two large open doors, a loud and boisterous crowd of men stood and smoked. She could see a ship tied to the wharf beyond them.
The boy motioned to a large open crate on a cart. “Hide in here till they go.”
He pulled aside a tarp to reveal a huge basket. Without hesitation, she climbed in and sat.
“I’ll be back,” he murmured, covering her and sliding the top of the crate into place.
“Thank you,” she whispered in the dim light.
Her relief was short-lived. Running footsteps passed her hiding place. Calls and responses. Two men stopped beside her crate. The voices were muffled.
“Search everywhere,” the leader said in English. “We can’t let her get away.”
Grace held her breath, praying the boy had escaped.
Other voices reached her. She hoped it was the workers coming back into the warehouse.
Almost immediately, the sounds of hammering and sawing began. Cart wheels rolled heavily across the stone floor. In the distance, a crash and curses. A shout came from somewhere above her, and another answered.
The cart jostled as someone climbed onto it.
Terrified that she was about to be discovered, Grace stifled her cry for help. The killers could still be nearby.
“Seal it up.”
The concussion from the hammer nailing down the top of the crate stunned her for a moment. Then the reality of her situation seized her. The thought of dying in the hold of a ship at sea had to be a far worse fate than fighting for her life here in the open. Panicking, she struggled to push back the tarp.
“Wait. I’m here. Wait!”
Chapter 2
Baronsford
The Borders, Scotland
Five days later
“My property must be protected, Greysteil, and I employ my bailiff and gamekeeper to do that.”
