Page 60 of Highlander's Runaway Seductress
“Would any of ye be able to take Ben and I into the town?” Amelie asekd. “We want to explore a bit. Well, this is goin’ to be home, aye? I would like to ken it.”
“Sure, Miss,” Rauri held up his hand. “I’ll take ye.”
“Thank ye,” she said, then stepped aside as the man led out a majestic stallion and hitched it up to the carriage.
“We’re all set,” Rauri said. “May I help ye in?”
“I’d prefer to ride up top,” Ben said. “I daenae plan on stayin’ much longer, I think it would be best to see all I can and hold the memories dear to me heart when I do leave.”
Amelie found no problems with that. She felt that she was going to be too occupied with thinking of Damien anyway to hold a conversation with Ben, so she agreed. After Rauri helped her into the carriage and Ben on top, they took the pathway down the hill.
The carriage paused as Rauri spoke to the guard there, who called a few others to lower the drawbridge and when it was in place, drove over it. Amelie gazed out the window and dreamed of what Damien would say when he got to see it with her.
She did not notice when the view changed from the town to the woodland. When she did realize it, Amelie wondered if they were only passing through a section of it to get to another part of the town, but when the woods grew deeper, she was concerned.
Just as she was about to ask Rauri where they were, the carriage stopped and a body, Rauri’s bloody figure, fell onto a snow-covered bush.
Amelie’s eyes grew wide and she shook her head—had she seen right? Looking again, Amelie saw that her eyes did not deceive her. It was Rauri’s body.
Horrified, Amelie scrambled for the door and yanked to pull it open, she dropped to the wet snowy ground and ran around the carriage, to see Ben there with a bloody knife in his hand.
“Ben!” she gasped. “What are ye doin’?”
He turned to her, and his gaze was empty, icier than the snow and crystals around them. He crouched and wiped the knife on the snow.
“I’m doin’ what I need to do. If Damien hadnae decided to forfeit the silver, I wouldnae have been pushed to this point. Even worse, that damned boy should have gotten the hint and stayed away. Do ye ken how hard it was for me to take him into that forest? If he had any sense he should have left, but nay, he dinnae.”
Utterly confused, Amelie began to back away from Ben as terror began to grow inside her.
It was him. It was Ben who had taken and hurt Damien, and it was him who had made her think that the man had run off—all for the money!
Now, he had killed someone. He wanted the money, clearly. How wouldthisget him the money he wanted?
Ben stepped closer to her, brandishing the knife. “Daenae ye run lass, I daenae want to hurt ye and I will if I have to, but ye are my way to get what I want.”
Amelie panicked, turned and ran—only to get a few steps away. Ben had grabbed her and dragged her back, placing the knife at her throat.
“I told ye nae to run—now, ye’ll have to pay the consequences.”
24
The Dolberry castle was grander than Damien had excepted, but he had imagined nothing less from the Laird. He hoped the guards who had gone ahead of him had already notified the Laird about the danger that was lurking inside his walls.
He could only envision the horrified look on Ben’s face when he saw the man he had tried to kill was alive. One of the soldiers led him up through a side-door and up to a second level. The corridors were small and the walls grittier here.
Damien wondered how old this part of the bastion was as he knew that parts of this castle were over five-hundred-years-old—spanning back to the time of Robert the Bruce. The soldier led him to a room where he heard a voice inside, deeper and rougher than the others.
After knocking and getting permission to enter, they went in and Damien swallowed at the sight of Laird Dolberry. The man’s aged face was set hard as his eyes flicked and landed on Damien, he stopped in his tracks.
Bravely, Damien’s held the man’s cutting gaze until it mellowed.
“I take it that ye are this Damien Glogow me daughter mentioned,” Laird Dolberry said gruffly.
“Aye, yer Lairdship,” Damien replied. “I am, and I need to tell ye, the man ye have here, Benjamin McLowe, is a blackguard and a liar. I told him that I dinnae want the two-thousand sterlings reward money and I ken he injured me so he could swindle ye into givin’ him the silver.”
The Laird did not look surprised. “I suspected somethin’ was off with that man. He couldnae keep his lies in order. I told Amelie just about the same but I daenae think she believed me. She kept insistin’ that he was a good man, how he had saved her life from a woman that had been fixated with ye.”
“And now that ye ken, how are ye goin’ to deal with him?” Damien asked.
