Page 25 of The Last Debutante
“If you harm her, I will kill you!” Mrs. Moss shrieked, despair twisting her features.
“I’ll no’ harm her, madam,” Jamie said impatiently.
“But... but you can’t take her like this!” she argued tearfully, and gestured wildly at Miss Babcock. “She’s in her nightclothes!”
“I’ve a funny trunk we found on the side of the main road. I reckon it’s hers,” said Duff.
Jamie had had enough. “Bring her, Duff.”
He struggled alongside Robbie out of that cottage, Aedus trotting before them, his nose to the ground. Mrs. Moss’s wailing cry rent the air, competing with the angry shouting from Miss Babcock as Duff carried her bodily out the door.
With Robbie’s and MacKellan’s help, Jamie was able to put himself on Niall’s back—but the pain was almost more than he could bear. It felt as if the lead were still in him, moving about, tearing tissue and organ from their roots. This ride over the hills would be a lesson in searing pain. Jamie sucked in a deep breath and glanced back. Duff had a furious Miss Babcock firmly in hand.
“Here, then,” Jamie said, gesturing to his saddle. “If we run into trouble, you’ll need your hands free.” If the old witch was able to summon help, the Brodies would delight in a reason to engage the Campbells.
Duff put the kicking, struggling Miss Babcock before Jamie. He wrapped his arm around her, holding her firmly, while Mrs. Moss shrieked that he would regret this action.
“There will be an army of Brodies at your door!” she shouted.
“Bring whom you like,” he snapped. “But bring a thousand pounds.” With that, he set Niall to lead, feeling the sickening swirl of pain with each jolt.
“Mamie, don’t fret, you mustn’t fret!” Miss Babcock cried hysterically. “I shall write to Charity and she will bring help!”
Mrs. Moss sent up another wail of agony to the heavens; it was almost as great as the wail of pain Jamie felt climbing up his throat.
Nine
DARIA FOUND ITimpossible to think, smashed up against Campbell as she was. She was in her bedclothes, for heaven’s sake, beingkidnappedand carried across the mountains of Scotland by a band of rough men. Her plight grew more dire as the landscape through which they moved took her farther from any meaningful society. Fromcivilization.
It was the height of indecency. The feel of his body, hard against hers, dwarfing hers, was entirely unnerving. She felt the muscles in his legs move to guide the horse, felt the strength in the arm he had banded around her middle to hold her still. There was nothing she could do—she was entirely powerless against him, his wounds notwithstanding. And what difference would it make if she could somehow fight her way free? There were three more brutes with him. She was barefoot—how far could she run?
Daria alternated between intolerable anger and horrifying apprehension. She glanced to her right, to the man Mr. Campbell had called Duff. He kept his gaze straight ahead, his expression inscrutable. Behind her were the other two men—one of them quite cheerful, keeping up a steady stream of that wretched language they spoke. Behind him, Daria’s trunk was being dragged. She could hear it bouncing and cracking against rocks and debris in the road.
For the first time since she’d left England, she could feel tears building. She swallowed hard—she would not, wouldnotcollapse into a maidenly display of angst. She would let him see nothing but determination to kill him at the first opportunity. He had ruined her with this, had ruined her reputation, herlife. How would she ever live this down? Any gentleman worth his pedigree would avoid her if word of this abduction got out. The last debutante of Hadley Green would indubitably become the last spinster of Hadley Green! If she hadn’t been between a pair of iron thighs and an iron arm, Daria would have kicked herself for having sought this adventure. Yes, she had longed for something other than waiting for life to find her, butthis?
Thiswas disastrous.
Daria couldn’t help but expect the worst. She was reminded of Captain Mackenzie, Lord Eberlin’s closest friend and the captain who had brought her to Scotland—and the one who had swept Charity off to Edinburgh, which, incidentally, would give some credence to Lady Horncastle’s assertion that Captain Mackenzie was a man of questionable morals, a fact that she averred with the authority of someone who had examined all the sea captains and should know.
Nevertheless, Mackenzie had told a harrowing tale at a supper at Tiber Park one evening of a French heiress who had been kidnapped and held for ransom. She had complained about her accommodations aboard the ship to the point of distraction for all the crew, and when the money was finally delivered, the heiress was returned to her family dead. Fever, the crew said. And they claimed that the bruises around her neck were not from being strangled, no, but the unfortunate effect of their having lashed her dead body down to keep it from rolling about.
Daria shuddered. She would remember to bite her tongue if she thought to complain about her accommodations.
Mr. Campbell’s arm tightened a little more around her.
Why didn’t he speak? He was exasperatingly silent! Daria forgot her fear and blurted angrily, “I cannot understand your reasoning for this, in truth. Do you intend to hold me in your cottage? I warn you, it is quite close when a stranger occupies a room. You will find it as tedious as I did; have you thought of that?”
Beside them, Duff snorted and looked the other way.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Campbell, for taking an innocent woman from her grandmother. I’ve done no harm to you.”
“He is laird,” Duff said.
Daria was startled that the big man spoke to her and jerked her gaze to him. “I beg your pardon?”
“Laird. No’ Mr. Campbell, aye?Laird.”
“At a time like this, you would instruct me on forms of address? Whatever I might call him has no bearing on the fact that he has willfully and unlawfully taken me from my grandmother. It is indecent!”
