The Laird’s Runaway Bride (Charmed by the Sassenachs #1)

Chapter 18

18

The cold wind tore at Arran’s skin, the sound of galloping hooves filling his ears. Yet, all he could focus on was the MacAllan keep in the distance, how close they were drawing towards it, and how desperate he was to reach it before they inflicted any harm on Amelia he knew he could not undo.

Several of his men, led by Gregory, rode around him, galloping at full speed towards the MacAllan keep. When he had realized that Effie knew more than she was telling, he had interrogated her until he was sure he had wrung every drop of information she had to give him, and then left her in the company of several of his guards to make sure she did not flee. She might yet be useful to them, and he wanted to keep every option clear.

“Arran!”

Gregory’s voice cut through the air beside him. Arran glanced around for the barest moment, his jaw clenched tight. All he wanted was to keep going, to keep driving forward, but Gregory raised a hand to slow him. Reluctantly, he pulled on the reins, and slowed the horse down, the other men following in his stead and dropping to a canter, then a trot.

Gregory swerved off the main path and into a thicket of trees that hid the men and their horses from the main path. Arran, catching his breath, pushed a hand through his hair.

“What is it, Gregory?” he demanded, impatient. He was distinctly aware that every moment they wasted was another when the Laird MacAllan could have been doing God only knew what to his young wife, and he refused to stand by and allow it to unfold.

“We need to rest the horses,” he warned him. “We’ve been riding all night. It’s near morning, whatever they’ll do to her…”

He trailed off. Arran shuddered at the thought of what all of this might have led to. What if they had already hurt her? He could barely stand the thought of harm coming to her, the weight of it pressing down on him, making his stomach twist.

As he turned his head away, he saw something, out of the corner of his eye. He leapt from his horse, and made his way back towards the road. Sure enough, preserved in mud, carriage tracks were visible. He dropped to his knee, and reached out to touch them. They gave way under his fingertips, the mud still damp. Whatever had left this, it had been recent.

Gregory strode over to see what he was looking at, and, when he saw the marks in the mud, he knelt down next to him.

“What do ye think?” he muttered. He knew Arran was a damn good tracker, and trusted his instincts above all else.

“That this set of carriage tracks has only gone one way,” he murmured, shaking his head. “Whatever they carried out of here, it hasnae yet returned…”

He lifted his head, casting his gaze along the road, towards the Keep.

“Which means that they haven’t brought her back to the Keep yet.”

Gregory looked slightly surprised.

“Ye’re sure about that?”

Arran nodded.

“Aye. There’d be tracks coming in both directions if the carriage had already passed back through here, and ye ken how MacAllan only travels by carriage, never by horse.”

“Aye, because he couldnae heft his fat arse on to the back of one if he tried,” Gregory muttered. Arran let out a bark of laughter and though he could find little mirth in the situation, he needed whatever break he could get.

“If we wait here, we’ll be able to waylay them before they reach the Keep,” Arran added. Much as he wanted to ride right up to the Keep and storm it, make them pay for what they had done to him and to Amelia, he knew that patience was the winning game; it was the only way he would get her back, and all that mattered to him in that moment was holding her in his arms again.

Gregory nodded, knowing better than to question Arran, and he turned back to the waiting men to give them their instructions. Soon, they had all spread out across the road, some waiting on the left side, others on the right. As the sun began to rise, casting a sickly greenish glow over the land, they waited in silence, ready for the moment that MacAllan and his men would show their faces and they would be able to hand Amelia back her freedom, as she well deserved.

Arran’s ears were pricked for every noise in the forest that day; the sound of the leaves brushing against each other, small animals scrabbling up the trunks of trees, one of his men clearing their throat. He felt as though every inch of his body was alight with awareness, every part of him tuned to whatever note Amelia was playing. He had to find her. He had to…

All at once, he heard it; the sound of hooves trotting on the road, along with the squeak of a carriage wheel. It reminded him, all at once, of the day of his wedding to Amelia, when he had kissed her in the carriage, the wanting need that had consumed him, even then, and that drove him now. He glanced over at Gregory, making sure the other man had heard it, and Gregory nodded, planting his hand on the hilt of his sword. Arran did the same, his heart thudding against his chest.

Sure enough, a few moments later, the carriage rounded the corner towards the waiting ambush. A single horse and rider pulled it along, but a couple of guards rode along the side, their eyes fixed ahead, looking tired and indolent. If they had been riding all night, he supposed they must have been exhausted, which would make this attack all the easier.

“Now!” Arran roared. And, in the blink of an eye, the half-dozen men spread out over each side of the road sprang into action.

Arran dived before the horse of one of the guards, causing it to rear and whinny. It nearly threw its rider, and Arran sprang towards him, dragging him from the saddle and tossing him to the ground. The horse bolted out in front of the carriage, nearly tipping it over, and the driver ground to a halt.

But the guard was on his feet again in a matter of seconds, and he had rounded on Arran as the carriage screeched to stop, nearly tipping over with the intensity of the sudden movement. The guard had his sword in his hand, but Arran was faster, drawing his and lunging towards him. The guard managed to deflect Arran from landing a killing blow, but the snarling blade glanced off his arm, drawing a spurt of crimson blood that stained his cloak and sent him howling to his knees.

Turning his attention to the other guard, Arran rushed over to join Gregory, who was standing beneath the rearing horse. He gazed up at the creature for a moment as though frozen to the spot, and Arran pushed him out of the way at the last moment, in the split-second before the beast’s thundering hooves crashed down on the spot he would have been standing.

Without so much as taking a breath, Arran grasped the saddle and pulled himself up behind the rider. Kicking his feet free of the stirrups, he lifted him from the saddle, and tossed him to the muddy road below. He dug his heels into the sides of the horse and sent it careening off towards the Keep in a panic, the other guard’s horse fast catching up with it, and then turned his attention to the carriage.

One of his men had cut the tie between the driver’s horse and the carriage, leaving them stranded, and he swung himself up on to the door and threw it open. He prayed, for a brief moment, that she would be inside, that he had found her, that he had not started this fight for nothing…

Then, all at once, he saw her.

Amelia’s back was rigid, pressed to the seat. Her mind had been racing from the moment she had heard the commotion outside the carriage. She had no idea who might have tried to waylay them; if they were seeking her out to kidnap her from the very man who’d stolen her from her husband, or if it was some random attack that she was to be caught in the middle of. Perhaps if it spared her the fate that was waiting for her when she made it back to the Keep, it would be a mercy.

When Amelia laid eyes on Arran, she felt, for a moment, as though she were dreaming. His dark eyes, his long hair, the intensity of his sharp gaze as he looked at her. It was exactly how she had remembered him. But, as Donald sprang to his feet, his advisor drawing back into the carriage with a grimace of fear, she knew that he was real.

“Amelia, with me!” he called to her, and he reached his hand out to hers. She tried to take it, but before their fingers could touch, Donald forced himself between the two.

“Dinnae think of laying a hand on her, you brute!” he bellowed, drawing a small knife from his belt. The glint of metal flashed in the early morning light, and she gasped as he swung it towards Arran with a wild desperation.

He managed to lunge out of the way in the split-second before it made contact with his body, but Amelia’s heart stopped. She could not stand to see him hurt, not on her account. It would have destroyed her to watch him take harm because of her. Something in her screamed at her to fight; to fight for herself, for her husband, for the freedom she had tasted a small piece of before it had slipped through her fingers again.

“Get away from him!” she exclaimed, and she dived towards Donald, knocking the knife out of his hand, and throwing him against the seat that he had kept her perched on the entire ride back to his keep. She grabbed the knife before she could stop herself, and swung it above her head, planning to bring it down right then and there in a fit of pure anger.

Before she could, she felt Arran’s hand catch her wrist. She turned to face him, breathing hard, and there was a softness in his eyes that soothed her in an instant.

“Dinnae cut him,” he murmured. “He’s no’ worth the guilt.”

Still panting, she dropped the knife down by her side again. Donald’s hands were raised above his head, and he was trembling pathetically.

“Please, dinnae hurt me!” he begged, and Arran put his arm around Amelia.

“Give us no reason to, and ye’ll never hear from us again,” he told him, his voice dripping with an open threat. “But if you so much as look in her direction once more…”

He leaned over and planted a kiss on Amelia’s lip, a firm embrace that sent a shiver down her spine. It spoke to how much they wanted and needed each other, how willing they were to fight for what they both knew they deserved.

“Then I’ll make haste in killing you.”

With that, Arran pushed open the door to the carriage, and helped Amelia out. She was still clutching the knife, and she had no intention of letting it go. Glancing around, she saw that the guards had been dealt with, and it was only a handful of his men who waited outside the carriage. She drew in a deep lungful of air, and realized that she was shaking. Arran still had his arm tucked around her, pulling her close to him, as he led her to his horse.

“What happened to Fern?” she gasped suddenly, and he smoothed a hand down her back, a comforting touch.

“She’s back at the Keep,” he assured her. “I sent one of my men to find her in the forest, when I realized what had happened to ye…”

“It wasn’t me,” she promised, the words tumbling from her mouth with a desperate haste. “It was Effie, she was the one who told me to?—”

“I ken.”

His words dripped with anger, and she wondered exactly what punishment would be waiting for Effie now that her safety had been secured, or what punishment may have been doled out to her already.

As Arran helped her on to the horse, she tried to push those thoughts from her mind. She knew that what mattered was that he had come for her, and she was safe in his arms once more.

He pressed a kiss into the side of her neck once they were on the horse, and she felt his warm breath on her ear. Pressing herself back into him, she half-turned her head so that she could look at him to speak.

“I didn’t know if you would come for me,” she murmured. “I thought… I thought perhaps you would think I had left of my own accord.”

As his men took to the road behind him, he planted another kiss against her lips. This one was commanding, almost demanding, as though he was proving to her, once and for all, that he wanted her, and nothing would get in the way of that.

“I would never let you go that easily,” he replied, brushing his nose against hers. Her heart danced in her chest. To be wanted by a man like this—no, to be loved by a man like this, it was the most perfect thing in the world to her. She could never have imagined, when they’d first met, that he would be able to make her feel the way she did, but she was glad she had given him the chance to find out.

A moment later, he grasped the reins, and turned on to the road that led back to the Keep, once and for all.