Page 4 of Highlander of Steel
“I willnae tell anyone ye were here if ye… just put me down and be on yer way,” Ailis wheezed, kicking out her legs and smacking him in the back.
They had made it down the hallway, away from her brother and niece’s chambers, headed toward the stairwell that spiraled all the way down to the lowest floor. If they managed to get to the entrance hall, Ailis figured the guards on duty would put a stop to this immediately.
“Sir, I’m of—” She was about to tell her kidnapper that she wasn’t of any value, if he was hoping to get a ransom out of her, when the door to Murdock’s room burst open.
Her brother’s pale blue eyes went wide at the sight before him. Evidently, he had been expecting to see her alone, sneaking out to slip some food to the prisoner in the dungeons. He certainly wouldn’t have expected to see her over a man’s shoulder, in the midst of being kidnapped.
“Halt!” Murdock roared.
The kidnapper glanced back for half a second and took off, his arm wound around Ailis like a vise. All shecould do was hang on as he bolted down the staircase with her.
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“Halt and face me!” Murdock’s breathless voice pursued Ailis and the stranger down the stairs, footsteps echoing.
But the dark-haired man with the wintry blue eyes was agile and swift, even with the added weight on his shoulder. He didn’t miss a step, and what was more, he seemed to know exactly where he was going.
The guards will stop him soon.
Ailis was certain of it.
All of her protests were bounced away by her kidnapper’s shoulder against her stomach. She couldn’t have unleashed a yelp if she had wanted to; it was difficult enough just to breathe.
At the bottom of the stairwell, the stranger swerved away from the short hallway that led to the entrance hall. With the confidence of someone who had a map in their brain, he ran to the right and made for a passageway in the wall.
In the torchlit gloom, he hastened through a labyrinth of corridors, with no hesitation in any turn he made. And though Ailis couldn’t see much, her neck aching every time she tried to lift her head to determine their location, she had an inkling of where they were headed—to the disused courtyard at the rear of the castle.
Mama’s favorite place.
Ailis had first heard of it from her mother’s old lady’s maid, Gladys. The only person who seemed inclined to build a picture of the woman she had never had the chance to meet. Since then, Ailis had sought out that very courtyard when she needed a dose of freedom, knowing that no one would ever bother to look for her there.
The man burst out of a familiar door and into that same courtyard—a small, sheltered square, with a dead hawthorn in the center and a solitary bench tucked against one wall. The flagstones were a patchwork of moss and lichen. Weeds poked out of the cracks in the ground, nature reclaiming that lost corner of the castle.
“Sir, I assure ye, this is a waste of yer time,” Ailis managed to gasp as the man slowed his pace.
Up ahead, a curved gate, about as tall as Ailis, usually barred any exit from the courtyard. She had tried to get it to budge many a time in her younger years to no avail.
That night, however, the gate swung up as the kidnapper kicked it. He ducked under, with her still over his shoulder, ignoring her remark entirely.
There’s still a world outside the castle.
The thought surprised Ailis.
Seeing the exterior of the walls was somewhat jarring to her jostled mind. It had probably been a year since she had been permitted to walk—escorted, of course—beyond the confines of Castle Ainsley.
“How did ye do that?” she whispered, staring back at the gate, which had swung back into its closed position.
Instead of replying, the man put his fingers to his lips and whistled.
Brigands? More kidnappers? An army?
Ailis’s heart lurched at what that sound might lure out of the woodland that bordered the rear of the castle.
More to the point, why weren’t the archers shooting at her kidnapper? Where were the guards who shouldhave been watching from the spired towers that were set back from the forgotten courtyard? Why was no one raising the alarm?
She would have assumed it was because no one cared, but Murdock would at least raise the alarm for the sake of the clan’s honor.
Just then, a gigantic horse, with a velvety black coat, came trotting through two oak trees. A war horse, certainly, with stocky legs, a thick neck, and a back as wide as a feasting table.
