Page 8 of Highland Crown
“Nay, Habbie. Not a thing, curse ’em,” she wailed. “The dogs blew it up rather than giving us our deservingshare. And what purpose does that serve, I’d like to know.”
“If any of them boats land nearby, I’m thinking the lads’ll be taking it out of their hides.”
“Well, that blast was a fine show, to be sure,” she remarked. “What do ye think they had in there to go to such trouble?”
“French gold and Old Boney’s crown, no doubt. Wouldn’t want that lot to fall into the wrong hands.” Habbie laughed. “Though maybe they was carrying a weapon or two.”
Illegal in the Highlands, Isabella thought.
“And maybe a keg of powder or two?”
“Ye could be on to something, woman. Wouldn’t be the first smuggler to run too close to the Head.”
Isabella frowned at the man lying motionless in the sand beside her. A smuggler.
The sound of others calling from the beach drew the villager’s attention. “Come for us if anything washes ashore. Don’t be dragging any crates out of the sea by yerself.”
“Of course, ye fool. I’m too auld to be doing anything like that.”
Isabella didn’t know if it was safe yet to let out a breath of relief. The sailor or the smuggler or the passenger or whoever this man was, remained unconscious. But beneath her palms, she could feel his beating heart. He was not giving up.
She watched Jean make her way back down.
“Thank you,” Isabella said. “Now can you please help me drag him up to the cottage?”
“Best look at him again. The blasted cur looks dead enough to me.”
“He’s not dead. He—”
The words caught in her throat as a hand shot up and long, viselike fingers clutched her windpipe, squeezing hard.
Isabella gasped for air, stunned by the attack. She tried desperately to yank herself free of the deadly grip. She tried to claw at his face but couldn’t reach. Her nails dug into his wrist, but he wouldn’t let go. His eyes were open but unfocused. He was intent on murder, and there was nothing she could do to stop him.
Her lungs threatened to burst. This was the end, she thought. Her destiny was not to die beside Archibald and his rebel comrades in Edinburgh, but here, alone, her life choked out of her in a storm on a Highland shore. Jean would surely push her body into the sea, and her killer’s body would soon follow. Maisie and Morrigan’s faces flashed across her mind’s eye. The two would need to survive without her, Isabella decided, feeling herself losing consciousness. They had each other, and they were no longer children but strong women. They would need to be.
But her end didn’t come so quickly. Unexpectedly, the man released his grip with the same suddenness that he attacked her. Isabella fell backward onto the stony beach, coughing and trying to force air back into her chest.
One breath. Her lungs protested. Another breath. She was breathing. Breathing. She held her bruised throat.
Jean was crouched beside the man’s head, proudly waving a good-sized rock in her hand.
“This time I’d say the sea dog reallyisdead.”
CHAPTER4
O, Woman! In our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light quivering aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!
—Sir Walter Scott, “Marmion,” Canto VI, stanza 30
