Highlander Enchanted(11)
“It would … please me to have you as my guest.” His words were forced.
Lord Richard stiffened. He looked Cade over with unhidden contempt.
Cade waited, sensing the noble had not been sincere about his desire to sit and regale one another with war tales. “Storms are coming. Ye willna want t’be in the forest when they do.”
Lord Richard gazed at the dark clouds above them and frowned. A crack of nearby thunder helped him decide. “It would be my honor,” the nobleman replied finally.
“Verra well. Niall, lead our guests home.” Cade strode to his horse and motioned for Brian to join him. He made a show of checking the horse’s trappings while waiting for his kinsman. “I doona trust this man,” he said when Brian drew near.
Brian nodded, blue eyes on the nobleman. “He has yer wife.” The only sign of his amusement was in his eyes. His features were stone.
“I doona know what scheme the wench is planning.” Cade finished with the saddle and opened his saddlebags to find his midday meal of bread and jerked meat soaked through. He tossed them, checked his water bladder for leaks then pulled out the oiled cloak he had neatly folded to take up less room. It was a tangled mess, too bulky to ride comfortably.
He shook it out and paused. A small satchel fell from the depths of the cloak. It was dry – and not his.
“The English lass wore one like that,” Brian said.
Cade crouched to retrieve it. After she stole his horse, he had no qualms about searching her belongings and opened it. Inside were several tightly rolled scrolls, a purse that no longer jingled, pungent herbs and a dagger.
Her claim about the royal decree returned to him, along with her determination to kill him despite never having met him before. Cade catalogued the contents mentally and rose. “Take this to Father Adam. ‘Ave him read the writs and tell us what they say.”
Brian accepted the satchel and hid it beneath his tartan.
“Go.” Cade pushed his cousin away and glanced towards the Englishmen.
Lord Richard had his hand wrapped in Isabel’s hair and her head yanked back at an angle Cade knew to be painful. Even when pale and scared, her beauty was unparalleled, her combination of quiet spirit and grace enchanting him. Lord Richard released her and hit her, this time harder, as if not caring who saw. She staggered into his horse, and he shoved her to the ground, speaking too quietly for Cade to hear the words.
Lady Isabel said nothing. She stared at the dirt between her hands, drenched and shaking, her features blank for fear of worsening her fate.
Unseillie magic trickled through Cade as he watched, and thunder rumbled in the distance. He clenched the reins of his destrier in one hand, not yet able to determine what it was about her that drew him to welcome dreaded Englishmen to his keep this day.
Aware he was staring, he mounted his horse and wheeled it away, trotting past the English without a look and joining Niall on the road.
“Yer mad, cousin,” Niall whispered. His glare was on the knights forming a line on the road. “Ye invite ‘em to our home?”
“Yea.” As the chieftain, Cade was under no obligation to explain his decisions. He usually did to his cousins, who were closer to him than brothers. But this time … he did not know what to say.
Niall’s green gaze sharpened. “Ye b’lieve the wench’s tale,” he said, surprise entering his voice.
“I doona ken,” Cade said with agitated restlessness.
“She is enchanting, but what ‘ave ye in yer mind t’do? Yer betrothed, or will be soon. Noble or no, she has no gold that I can see nor land in her purse. We doona wish the English to interfere with our clan!”
“I will ne’er allow harm to befall our kind or clan, Niall.”
Niall scoured his features. “I trust ye with my life, Cade. I want what’s good for us and our kin.”
“As do I. But I ken this is wrong, to let her leave now.”
Cade resisted the urge to turn and make sure Lady Isabel still lived. The Englishman had not thought twice about laying his hands on her, and Cade suspected she would not live long past their wedding night.
The fate of one English noblewoman should not concern him, but he was unable to dismiss her.
“’Tis odd, but so do I,” Niall said, though he sounded unhappy. “Can she be one of us?”
“Nay. ‘Tis not possible,” Cade replied. “She is no seillie.” As the leader of the seillie, a duty he inherited upon the death of his mother – the seillie queen – he alone was able to determine such.
“Then what?”
Cade had no answer.
Chapter Seven
The ride to the keep was short. The forest gave way to the Highland mores – vast, rolling plains of emerald grasses, sweet heather and shrubs broken up by tall hills and patches of woods – beneath a sky that foretold rain.
Isabel shivered in the cool breeze sweeping unhindered across the plains. No longer drenched, her clothing remained damp and her head throbbed from pain. Richard rarely struck her in front of others, and his reaction this day was a warning of what she might expect when they were in private.
He had her reins, or she would have fled him once more. Swiping at angry tears, she settled her breathing, not for the first time since leaving the stream, and looked towards the man she had traveled so far to find.