Page 22 of The Highlander's Runaway Nun
He strode toward the door, his boots striking hard against the floor. Behind him, Laura called, her voice laced with worry.
“Bradley! Wait, daenae leave like this!” her plea followed him into the hall, sharp with fear and sorrow.
But Bradley drowned it out, his steps resolute as his anger burned brighter with each passing moment. He could still feel the scar beneath his fingertips, the proof of her father’s cruelty seared into his mind. The thought of it festered like poison, feeding the dark promise he had spoken aloud. He would have his reckoning, and no protest from his wife could turn him from it.
Bradley moved through the castle like a storm, his cloak whipping behind him and his boots ringing on the stone as if he sought to shake the keep itself awake. Each step hammered thememory of the scar into his mind, the pale line he had traced upon Laura’s back that would refuse to leave him in peace. Rage tightened his chest until his vision narrowed, and he found himself muttering oaths under his breath at the thought of a man who would harm his own bairn and keep walking free. A man who harmed his own daughter like that, he thought, had no right to live untroubled; such cruelty deserved a reckoning swift and certain.
He rounded the corridor toward the western wing without pausing, the torches throwing long shadows that he did not notice, and came at last to the narrow door of Alan’s chambers.
The wood creaked as he pushed it open with a force that made the latch groan, and the room smelled of leather and oil and the faint tang of metal where weapons were kept. Alan lay half-awake on a pallet, his hair tousled, a half-empty mug on the low table beside him, and he blinked up at the rough figure filling his doorway. Bradley’s jaw was set like iron as he stepped inside, the urgency of his wrath lending him speed he had seldom shown.
“Alan,” Bradley said, his voice all hard command, “sit up and listen to me.”
He did not wait for him to rise before he continued, each word sharp as a blade.
“I want ye to watch Ethan Gilmour, aye, the man who calls himself Laura’s faither, and learn his habits, his comings and goings, and every man who keeps him company.” Bradley’s toneleft no room for argument; it was an order shaped from a man who would have no delay in justice.
Alan swung his legs off the pallet and rose, rubbing sleep from his eyes yet already alert to the gravity in Bradley’s voice.
“Aye, Laird, ye ken I’ll do as ye bid,” he replied, the loyalty in his words steady as his stance.
He swung his boots on and reached for his cloak, fingers already finding the straps as he prepared to move. “Tell me what ye need to ken, and I’ll come back with answers.”
Bradley stepped closer, the heat in his chest coiling tighter with each beat, and he fixed Alan with a look that brooked no misreading.
“I want to ken where he sleeps, who visits his hearth, which roads he walks, and whether he sleeps with a sword near his hand,” he said, his voice low and dark as the loch at midnight.
He pictured in his mind the man who had thrown a young girl from a horse as punishment, the cruelty of that memory stoking a white-hot resolve within him.
“Nay one can harm me wife and get away with it,” he finished, each word a vow forged in fire.
Alan’s face hardened with the seriousness of the task, the easy grin gone from his mouth, replaced by the sober expression of a man who knew how to keep secrets and gather them.
“I hear ye, Laird,” he said, and there was no question in his tone; the duty was accepted as if it were a blade passed into his hand. “I’ll slip to the mainland by night if I must, watchin’ from the shadows, and I’ll report back with what I find.” He gave a curt nod, a guard’s promise sealed without flourish.
Bradley paused a heartbeat, watching Alan’s silhouette against the flicker of the lamp, letting the steadiness in the man’s eyes calm the tempest that roared inside him for a moment.
He thought of Laura asleep in their bedchamber, of the tremor in her voice when she spoke of forgiveness, and of the scar he had traced like a brand upon his own resolve. The surge of possessiveness that had first risen as protectiveness now bore a colder edge; he would see justice, not merely make a show of vengeance. He would plan, gather facts, and then set the reckoning in motion with a hand both sure and clean.
“Mind ye, nay rashness. Do this in secret, Ethan must nae ken,” Bradley said finally, though the words came out rougher than he intended, a tether thrown to steady Alan’s zeal.
Alan acknowledged that with a short, solemn grunt. Bradley’s mind already began to map out the next moves, who might be moved to help, what men could be trusted, and how the castle’s own resources might be used without alarming the wrong ears.
Alan moved to the door, cloak gathered, boots set for leaving, and he paused for one last look back.
“I’ll go ready me supplies now, Laird. Ye’ll have yer answers soon,” he said, the promise a quiet thing, deliberate and unyielding.
Bradley watched him go, the corridor swallowing the man’s figure as the latch clicked softly closed behind him, and for a moment the Laird stood alone with the echo of his vow.
Alone in the quiet, Bradley let the fury settle into cold purpose.
Ethan Gilmour wouldnae slip from me reach, and nay man who harmed me wife will escape the shape of me justice.
Bradley strode into his study, the candlelight flickering across the aged maps that lined the wide oak table. His eyes narrowed as he traced the borders of Ethan Gilmour’s lands with his calloused finger, each ridge and valley a mark of power and greed.
Rage bubbled anew in his chest, the image of Laura’s scar seared in his mind. He muttered under his breath, swearing that no man who dared lay a hand on her would sleep soundly again.
The maps blurred for a moment as he clenched the table’s edge, knuckles white with fury. He imagined the years Laura must have borne such cruelty in silence, and it gnawed at him like arelentless wolf. His jaw tightened. The thought of Ethan living free under his roof was unbearable.
