The Mad, Bad Duke (Nvengaria #2)(114)

Of course, his faction immediately denounced her and offered a reward for her death or capture. This need not worry you, because I will find and punish the perpetrators, and once I mop up Sebastian’s resistance, she will be safe. But I cannot send her to her father, nor can she continue here because the palace, as usual, is rife with treachery.

I remember visiting you at Castle MacDonald before my father’s death, and what I remember most is not the spectacular views or the excellent fishing, but the fact that it is extremely difficult to reach. I think it an excellent place to tuck my little cousin, and she could have no better protectors than you and your Highlanders.

I am sending a guardian with her—Baron Valentin, a good man who is loyal to me and to Princess Penelope.

Keep Zarabeth safe for me, my friend, and when Alexander and I have suppressed things here, I will have you return her to Nvengaria. Penelope would be happy to see you, and you’ve also made a friend of Meagan, the Grand Duchess of Nvengaria, who has melted the ice-floe that is Alexander.

I beg you to keep Zarabeth safe.

By my hand,

The Twentieth of September, 1820

Damien

Imperial Prince, Nvengaria

Postscript: Penelope sends her love.



* * *



October 1820

Ullapool, The Western Highlands, Scotland

Egan barreled out of the tavern onto the dock. A curtain of rain soaked the wooden pier and the stone buildings, heightening the fishy, briny smell of the harbor. Rowboats were just breaking through the rain and mist, a blue-coated captain standing in one’s bow. To the west the harbor closed in a series of rolling hills, leaving a gap that led to the open sea and wind-whipped waves.

Egan frantically tried to make out the other passengers, desperate to see Zarabeth. He’d been told her ship had broken up off shore, but he refused to believe he’d failed her already. She would be on one of these boats pulling in, laughing that she had become wet, none the worse for wear.

Egan hadn’t set eyes on Zarabeth for five years but hadn’t forgotten one strand of her black hair, her deep blue eyes, and her sweet face with its slightly pointed chin. She’d been a beautiful young woman when last he’d seen her, poised to take her world by storm.

So beautiful he’d forced himself to walk away.

Sailors leapt onto the docks from the rowboats, then reached back to haul out the drenched passengers. The boat with the captain contained three men in the garb of faraway Nvengaria but no sign of Zarabeth.

Egan’s blood ran cold as the captain approached him, his eyes weary in the rain. “Are ye Himself?”

“I’m Egan MacDonald. What happened, man? Tell me and be quick about it.”

“We lost a mast, and the hull cracked open. I thought we could limp into harbor, but the ship broke up just outside. My first officer, he put the young lady into the first boat, but …” He cleared his throat. “We lost sight of it in the mist. We searched …”

Pounding rain soaked Egan’s bare head, but he scarcely felt it. “Where?” he shouted at the captain. “Where did ye go down?”

“By the Devil’s Teeth.”

Egan’s heart burned. The Devil’s Teeth were razor-sharp rocks below the mountain called Ben Duncraig. Ships or fishing boats that ran up on them were shredded into useless bits of lumber.

Egan turned away, calling for a horse. The captain tried to stop him. “There’s no point, man. The boat will have been washed out to sea.”

“If she were dead, I’d know.” Egan grabbed the bridle of the horse the hostler brought him and scrambled into the saddle.

A hand on his ankle stopped him. He looked down into the grim eyes of one of the Nvengarians, a man with a granite-like face, black hair, and a hard mouth. “I will go with you,” he said in heavily accented English. “I was sent to guard her.”

“I can move faster on my own,” Egan told him, squarely facing the man’s intense gaze. “Zarabeth saved my life once. I’ll not leave her t’ die.”

Before the man could say more, Egan urged the horse forward and charged from the docks for the road that ran along the shore.



* * *



I am here! Please help me!

Zarabeth silently shouted the words as she clung to the black rocks, the pounding sea threatening to drag her back into its depths. Her boat had cracked in two, icy waves tossing the pieces far north of the harbor mouth.

She’d clung to what broken boards she could find until rocks had swirled out of the fog. Then she’d reached for them and clung to them desperately.

The first officer had gone down and not come up, or at least Zarabeth had not been able to see him through the mist and rain. Either way, she could no longer sense his anguished thoughts, and she knew he was dead.

Zarabeth was terrified at the same time she was furious. She’d traveled from the tiny land of Nvengaria across the length of Europe, through the German states to the North Sea, and endured a hazardous ocean journey to land here on the west coast of Scotland. She’d come so close to safety, so close to seeing Egan MacDonald once more. But now she would die.

What use was magic now? One of Zarabeth’s charms, a piece of gold wire twisted over a stone, dangled coldly between her breasts. It had been made to ward off an enemy’s physical attack. Well, that had worked in the literal sense. The first officer had slipped when he’d tried to put his hands around her neck, and an instant later the boat had crumbled to nothing beneath them.