Page 68 of Highlander's Sinless Nymph
The two of them held each other, there in that abandoned room. Charlotte could not help but feel that what he had so recently discovered was slipping from her grasp, even as she tried to hold tighter to it.
The following morning, Charlotte awoke, feeling more or less herself, and realized that being betrothed and married to a stable boy whom she did not know, would not do at all.
She stared at the ceiling of the bedchamber, but all she saw was Edward’s face. The face of the man that she loved. Her heart was wrung with a sort of glorious sadness at the realization, and at the fact that he loved her too.
I cannot stay here.
It seemed, almost, that she had reached a decision in her head whilst she slept. She had realized that she did not want to be the wedge that drove Edward and his father apart. It was as clear as anything that she had ever seen, that the two men loved each other deeply––despite the fierce argument they had had.
The combination of a number of things––not wanting to antagonize the clan as a whole, not wanting to marry the stable boy, not wishing to be the wedge driven between Edward and his father––were what drove her to make one of the hardest decisions that she had ever had to make.
I must leave. I must run away.
She did not allow herself much time to dwell on leaving, did not let herself ponder overmuch the fact that she would miss Edward more than any other person that she could think of.
“I’m sorry,” she kept saying under her breath. “I’m sorry.”
Through sheer open guilelessness, she was able to get everything that she thought she might need to survive out on the open moorland. Provisions from the huge castle kitchens, and a horse from the stable-master.
At least for a few days. Time enough to figure out where I want to go, and what I want to do…
She rode straight out the front gates, between the gate guards who did not so much as ask where she was off to. The only bit of luck that she acknowledged was in not seeing Edward. Charlotte had known that, if she had seen him, she would not have been able to leave. Her love for the Highlander would have held like an anchor.
Do not think of him. Otherwise you won’t carry on.
She rode away from the castle, trying not to feel too guilty about how Edward had gone through so much to deliver her there. She told herself that if she was not at the castle, surely her father would have no need to go there. Surely, this way, she could help the MacQuarries avoid having their land sacked.
With every fall of her horse’s hooves she had to urge herself to not look back. Even if she had though, her tears had all but blinded her. She hoped, by the time Edward realized she was gone, that she would be far enough away for him to have real trouble in tracking her.
If he is even inclined to follow me.
A not insubstantial part of her hoped that he would.
23
Disaster befell Charlotte halfway through the second day of her ride. Of all the directions that she could have ridden, it was sheer dumb luck that took her southwards, right into the arms of some of the outriders of her father’s army.
Charlotte crested the top of a long, green slope and spotted the red-garbed scout at the same time as he saw her. The idea of fleeing did not occur to her startled mind until the rider had galloped over to her and taken the reins of her mount in his hand.
“Good God!” the young man said, his eyes popping as he took a closer look at Charlotte, bending down in his saddle so that he could peer under her hood. “You’re––you’re Miss Bolton, aren’t you?”
Charlotte did not reply, but her expression told the truth as explicitly as if she had confirmed it verbally.
Without even asking her leave, the scout began towing her horse back the way he had just ridden.
“Wait, where are you taking me?” she asked, shaken from her shock at seeing an English person out amongst the Highland hills.
The young man looked over his shoulder at her, a frown of puzzlement on his freckled face.
“Why, back to your father, miss,” he said, as if explaining something obvious to a child. “He is with the rest of our troops, only an hour or so back down the trail.”
“Wait, what?” exclaimed Charlotte. “Myfather?Troops?”
The man’s expression of bemusement only broadened.
“Yes, Miss Bolton,” he said, in a tone that was so condescending that Charlotte would have been affronted had her head not been in such a whirl. “Captain Bolton is leading our men to MacQuarrie Castle. He heard from Mr. Hirst about what happened to you.”
Charlotte’s blood turned to ice in her veins. Her heart seemed to stutter in her chest. She gulped.
