The Viper (Highland Guard #4)(3)

She tried to push aside the fear, but it was nipping at her like a pack of hungry wolves.

Somehow she made it to the top. She stood in the crowded stairwell as the constable fumbled with the new lock on the door to the tower battlements. A guard would be posted as well. They weren’t taking any chances of her escape.

Finally, the door swung open. The sudden gust of wind knocked her back.

Dear God! It was so much colder than she’d feared. Instinctively, she jerked back, not wanting to go any farther, but the guards behind her started to walk, compelling her forward onto the roof.

The wind whipped around her, nearly tearing the mantle off her shoulders. She gathered it around her, gripping it tightly, and followed the guardsmen onto the battlements.

When they stopped, she knew the time had come. She could avoid it no longer.

Slowly, she lifted her gaze to view Edward’s punishment for the first time.

A startled cry emerged from her throat. She’d known what to expect, but her knees buckled all the same. There, built into the parapets, was her stone and iron cage in the shape of a cross.

But Christianity was the farthest thing from her mind as she gazed upon the monstrosity. The walls were of latticed wood, crossed by bars of iron and secured to the parapet wall with stone and iron. It was so small—so confining—no more than six feet wide by four feet deep. Good God, she’d barely be able to move around. There wasn’t even a bed, only a pallet to lie upon. The single small brazier would provide little comfort against the bitter cold. A crude bench was built into one corner, and in another stood a strange wooden box …

Her stomach dropped, realizing what it was. She would not even be permitted to leave the cage to use the garderobe. The box was a privy.

She staggered, overwhelmed by horror. By the fear that not even her formidable will could keep in abeyance.

Instinctively, she stepped back, but her jailor was there to prevent her. “Second thoughts, Countess? I’d say it’s too late for that. You should have known better than to defy the greatest king in all of Christendom.”

Bella was ashamed to admit that as she stood there looking at the horrible cage, knowing that she had to go in and not knowing when she might come out, she wondered if the brute was right. At that moment her beliefs, her conviction in what she’d done, wavered under the force of fear.

But only for a moment.

It was only a cage, she told herself. She’d weathered worse. Her husband’s accusations and suspicions. Being hunted across Scotland like a dog. Betrayal by a man she never should have trusted. And the worst of all, the separation from her daughter.

Her daughter would give her strength. She had to survive this to see Joan again.

She looked the foul fiend straight in the eye. “He’s not my king.” And then, head high, Bella MacDuff, Countess of Buchan, walked through the iron gate of the cage.

One

Balvenie Castle, Moray, Six Months Earlier

Bella was distracted, her mind whirling with all that she had to do before she left. The brooch! She couldn’t forget the MacDuff brooch for the ceremony.

She didn’t notice the guard missing outside her door until it was too late. A man took her by surprise, grabbing her from behind as she entered her chamber.

Her heart jumped to her throat in shock and panic, immediately sensing the danger radiating from the intruder. He was big and strong and about as pliable as rock.

But she wouldn’t be taken without a fight. She lashed out trying to break free, but it only made his hold clamp down on her tighter. She tried to scream, but his hand muffled any sound.

“Calm down,” a rough voice whispered in her ear. “I mean you no harm. I’m here to take you to Scone.”

She stilled, his words penetrating through the haze of terror. Scone? But she was to leave for Scone tomorrow. And Robert’s men were to come to her in the woods, on her way back from church, not in the castle.

Her heart pounded wildly as she tried to sort it out, tried to decide whether to believe him, all the while conscious of the steely strength of the leather-clad arm wrapped tightly around her chest. Good God, the brute could snap her in two with one hard squeeze!

They stood there like that for a minute in the semidarkness, unmoving, while he waited for his words to sink in.

“Do you understand?”

The gravelly voice did little to reassure her, but what choice did she have? She couldn’t breathe with his hand covering her mouth so tightly. Besides, he could have killed her already if that was what he intended.

With that pleasant thought filtering through her mind, she nodded.

Slowly—cautiously—he released her.

Once the air had returned to her lungs, Bella spun in anger and indignation. “What is the meaning of this? Who—”

She gasped at the sight of him. Though little light streamed through the tower window with night almost fallen, there was enough to know that she’d been right to fear him. He was not the kind of man any woman would want to be alone with in the dark—or in bright daylight, for that matter—and her heart gave an involuntary start.

Good God in heaven, could this man really have been sent by Robert?

Built to intimidate, he was tall, broad-shouldered, and packed with layers—and layers—of muscle. He was every inch a powerful warrior: solid, strong, and deadly.

But he was no knight. One glance told her that. He had the look of a man born to fight. Not on a steed of white, clad in mail, but a brute who liked to brawl in the dirt.