Page 77 of Highlander's Sinless Nymph
There was the sound of a door clanging open and then the sound of heavy footfalls moving towards her cell. Charlotte stood up, tilted her chin, and brushed straw from her dress.
The door to her cell swung open and the Laird was revealed. He looked bigger and broader even than usual, framed in the doorway, and Charlotte suddenly realized it was because he was positively bristling with wrath.
“Sassenach,” he said. Charlotte noted that the word definitely sounded more of an insult and less of a humorous nickname coming from the angry Laird. “Sassenach, I’d have ye tell me where me son is. Does yer faither have him already? Was he captured afore ye even came back to the castle? Speak the truth and speak it quick!”
Charlotte tried to gather as much dignity and pride and courage as she had left, and faced the Scotsman squarely.
“I told you everything that happened last night, your Lairdship,” she said. “I told you that I loved your son. I told you everything that I knew. Your son is not there. I came back here looking for him, hoping to find him.”
“So ye say, but I call it all a bit too convenient; ye fallin’ in wi’ me son, havin’ him bring ye back here, ye disappearin’ and him followin’ and then ye returnin’, whilst he is nowhere to be found.”
Charlotte’s show of strength was cast aside at that moment. “What? What do you mean that Edward’s nowhere to be found?”
The Laird snorted in disbelief and smote the handle of the broadsword that he carried at his side. “Ach, do nae lie to me, lass! Do ye ken where me son is or nae?”
“I swear to you, that I don’t!” Charlotte said, her voice going high and cracking. “I would wish to know where he is just as much as you do.”
The Laird gave her a long and searching look. Then he shook his head, the fire going out of him somewhat. “I hope ye are speakn’ the truth to me, lass,” he said. “Fer yer sake. If anythin’ happens to me son, well…” and the Laird drew himself up, his face going hard and cold. “I’ll have nay think twice of takin’ yer life in payment of the debts yer faither owes me.”
Charlotte swallowed. Her mouth was suddenly as dry as it had ever been. “Please,” she said, “I haven’t done anything…”
The Laird carried on looking at her obstinately, as if he hoped that she would cave and confess where Edward was and what he was doing.
“That might be so, lass, but I’m afraid that, thanks to yer faither, ye’re a bargaining chip in a greater game now.”
Charlotte hung her head.
“If you hope to use me as some sort of leverage to get my faither to stop his attack, or to give you Edward back––if he has captured him––then you are sadly misguided, your Lairdship. He is not like you.”
The Laird’s eye narrowed. “And what is that meant to mean, lass?” he snarled.
Charlotte fixed gazes with him. “He is not a good man,” she said, her voice gentle and filled with a sort of desperate hopelessness.
The Laird cleared his throat. His scowl did not clear, but his gaze was suddenly fixed on the floor.
“You are a good man––Edward would not have turned out to have such a great heart, I’m sure, without your guidance,” Charlotte continued. “He idolizes you. But, you are in a hard position, and that makes you question the path that your own heart tells you to take.”
Charlotte took a couple of steps forward, her hands held out in a gesture of entreaty. “Please, Laird MacAlpein, do what is right. Do not kill me simply to spite my father––a man who, I don’t think, will any longer feel the sting of that particular barb. He is lost now. I think, he was lost after my own mother died.”
The Laird seemed to consider her words for a long time. Then, his face frosted over once more.
“Unfortunately, a Laird is nae answerable only to himself, but to his people too. The actions of ye and Edward have brought this situation upon us all, and now I must do what I must to serve me people.”
Charlotte felt herself crumbling. Like a log in a fire that, whilst looking tough on the outside, has been burned and eaten up all the way through its center.
“What will become of me then, if Edward has been caught trying to find me?” she asked.
The Laird looked at her with something that was very much akin to pity, but it was a momentary flash on his stern countenance.
“When yer faither arrives with his army––which will be in a matter of hours accordin’ to me scouts––I shall see if the Captain will trade ye fer Edward, o’ course,” the big Scotsman replied.
“And if he won’t?”
The Laird turned away, one hand on the doorframe. His expression was hidden from Charlotte by his hair, which swung down across his face. “Then, I’m afraid,” he said, in words that reverberated in the air like funeral bells, “that ye shall be hung from the walls, just as me dear wife was by Captain Bolton.”
26
The English army trooped across the emerald grass of the Highland fields that fronted MacQuarrie Castle like a column of marching red ants. Behind them, like the trail of some monstrous slug, they left a wide swathe of trampled grass and churned mud.
