Devil in Tartan (Highland Grooms #4)(49)

He squeezed her hand, and Lottie wanted nothing more than to crawl onto his lap and put her head on his shoulder and feel his arms around her. She’d feel safe there. At ease. The pain in her head would go away and her heart would stop racing.

But then his hand suddenly jerked free of hers and he straightened in his seat. “Put on your hat, aye? And tuck your hair as best you can into it.”

“What—?”

“Be quick,” he said quietly.

She followed his gaze toward the entrance. One of the men from the private room had sidled in, a sword at his waist. Had he been wearing one before? He was scanning the crowd, clearly looking for someone. As she donned the hat, the second man from the private room entered the inn and went in the opposite direction of the first. “Perhaps they’ve come to fetch us?” she asked with a hopefulness she did not really have as she tucked errant strands of hair beneath her hat. Two more men wearing swords entered the inn and stood near the door, as if guarding it.

“They’ve come to fetch us, all right, but I donna think it is with the intent of making a fair offer for your whisky.”

One of the men began to make his way slowly through the crowd, studying every table, every group standing about, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

“Aye, you’re right. They mean us harm,” she murmured breathlessly, as her heart was suddenly pounding in her chest.

“When I stand, put yourself behind me,” Aulay said. “We donna want to draw notice.”

Lottie had been through enough in the last few days to know better than to ask a lot questions. The moment Aulay stood, she slipped in behind him, her hand clutching the back of his coat.

“Stay close,” he said, and began to push through the crowd, his head down, moving toward the counter that separated the kitchen from the rest of the inn. When he skirted around a timber that braced the ceiling overhead, Lottie stole a glance at the men. The four of them had fanned out and were pushing through the crowd with determination.

Aulay startled her by suddenly reaching for her hand, yanking her in front of him, then pushing her through an open door. She stumbled into a kitchen. The man who had pointed to the private rooms earlier was filling tankards and setting them in front of a serving woman. He began to shout in Danish at Aulay and Lottie, gesturing toward the door.

“Pardon,” Aulay said, and pulled Lottie along, darting past a woman plucking the feathers of a chicken, past chickens very much alive but in a crate, past a side of beef hanging from the rafters. Around two barrels of ale and another man who cursed them as they spilled out into the mews behind the inn.

Aulay dragged Lottie into his side with an arm around her waist, hurrying her along, forcing her to run. They turned into another alley, this one quite crowded with the townspeople going about their day.

“Where is your pistol?” he asked, glancing backward.

“Here,” she said, her hand in her pocket.

“Give it to me—I might need to fire that one shot, aye?”

“Alas, I have already fired that one shot,” she said, and handed him the gun. “It’s empty.”

“You fired—when? Never mind.” He slipped the gun into the pocket of his greatcoat just as they turned another corner and entered a busy market street.

“Donna look up, but we’ve company.”

She gasped. “Are you certain?”

“Quite.” He dipped under a row of embroidered linens that had been hung for display and tugged Lottie into a darkened alley. He pulled her into a building, where the scent of horses was quite strong—it was a stable. There was only one horse that she could see, and it snorted at them as Aulay looked around. There was a small alcove at the front of the stable, a deck above it where bales of hay had been stored. Aulay pushed her into that alcove, turned her about and put her back to the wall, then held a finger to his mouth, indicating she should be silent.

That was impossible—her heart was beating so hard that she was gasping for breath. Her anxiety was not eased as she watched Aulay creep along the wall to the door. He kept himself against the wall, but bent his head around the frame to peer outside. Almost instantly, he jerked backward and sprang to where she was. He pushed her down into the hay, then lay before her and pulled enough hay around his body to shield them from sight.

She was pressed against him, her heart pounding so erratically in her chest that Lottie was certain Aulay could hear it and feel it. She heard a pair of boots scuff against the stone outside the stable, heard them pause at the open door, and held her breath. She expected to be caught at any moment, to feel the steel of a gun or knife press against her neck. Her pulse throbbed in her ears, and she had to keep swallowing down the breath she wanted so desperately to gasp into her lungs. She could hear nothing but the horse moving about, munching on straw. She was certain her heart would explode in her chest at any moment...but then she heard the boots on the stone again, moving away. The footfall was moving down the alleyway.

Aulay slowly came to his feet. He held out his hand to her and pulled her up. Lottie was panting, she realized, and a bead of perspiration was slowly sliding down her temple. She swallowed. “What do they want?” she whispered shakily.

“You. The whisky.” His expression was quite grave, and Lottie suspected there was more he wouldn’t say, but she knew. Those men wanted her whisky and they wanted her, just as her father had warned. She felt faint. She struggled to release her breath, she struggled to draw more in. She clutched at his arm, as she tried to force air into lungs that seemed to have collapsed on her.