Page 61 of Abducted By the Highlander
“Aye.”
“I trust Darragh with my life.”
“I know that.” And that was why he wasn’t sharing his revised traveling plan with Symon.
“I don’t trust Fergus.”
Hugh grunted. Fergus was no longer a problem.
“What I’m saying,” Symon kept his voice low, “is I don’t think Lady Roisin will be safe once we reach Fergus’s camp.”
Hugh didn’t respond. Although it was interesting that Symon had reached that conclusion.
“I know ye’re hatching something. Just want ye to know I’ll have yer back. We saved Lady Roisin and Grear from the bandits, and I’m willing to save them from Fergus, if it comes to that.”
There was an odd constriction in Hugh’s throat, and he turned his head to look at the man who had been by his side from the first day they’d met. He couldn’t tell Symon the truth, but he could acknowledge what Symon was offering.
“I’ll remember that.” His voice was hoarse. Clearing it didn’t help dislodge the blockage. “Good man.”
“Christ, don’t go weeping on me now, Sergeant.” Symon grinned, and Hugh cracked a reluctant smile. “It’ll work out, ye’ll see.”
Aye, it would work out. Roisin would return to her protected life on her isle where she would never be in danger again and that would need to be enough for him.
*
Wrapped up ina blanket next to Grear on the floor of the cave, Roisinwatched the shadows shift and fade across the ceiling as dawn broke. And she was still no closer to a decision.
The same doubts plagued her now as they had last night when Hugh had dropped her handkerchief.
Why would he have kept it all this time, if she meant nothing to him?
Ecne, bundled under the blanket between her and Grear, licked her nose, and she wound her arm around him, but her mind would not still, and just as it had for most of the night, it replayed all the conversations she and Hugh had ever shared.
“I always intended to return to Eigg to see ye. I wasn’t simply spinning ye a pretty line to see ye smile. But it wasn’t to be.”
He’d said that to her the day she’d given him the portrait. She had hugged that confession deep inside her heart, so sure that nothing could stand between them. How could it when he was as committed to her as she was to him?
But when she discovered he hadn’t sent her letter and, worse, had let her believe he had, everything she’d imagined and dreamed and built around him had shattered. There could never be a future of any kind with someone she couldn’t trust. With someone who, most certainly, had forgotten about her the moment he’d left Eigg and only recalled her existence when they had met once again in the forest.
She hadn’t believed his ludicrous tale of being in contact with the earl. How could she? The earl had banished him.
Had he, though? Hugh had never told her that. She’d simply assumed it because why else would he have chosen to live as an outlaw?
She sighed and scratched Ecne behind his ear. If Hugh had wanted to gain her favor, after she’d overheard the damning conversation between him and Darragh, all he needed to do was show her the handkerchief. To prove he had never forgotten her, and his promises to return to her had been more than pretty lies.
But he hadn’t. And when it had dropped to the ground, he’d appeared appalled and fisted the delicate lace as though he wanted tomake it vanish before she remarked upon it.
Were those the actions of a man who would say anything, do anything, to get his way?
All night the question had haunted her. And she could only think of one answer.
No, they were not.
But if that were true, it meant he hadn’t simply flung another outrageous lie in her face last night when she’d told him she was leaving with Innis. Only a man coldly determined to have his will obeyed would have cited the earl’s involvement in his schemes.
Or a man who was telling the truth.
She squeezed her eyes shut, but it didn’t help ease the incessant thumping in her head. If she accepted the truth that Hugh had always intended to return to Eigg for her, she had to accept the truth that he’d been in communication with the earl. And if she accepted that, then she had the choice of later today arriving at the earl’s manor and doubtless within days being with her sisters or leaving with Innis and returning to Eigg.
