The Rogue: A Highland Guard Novella (The Highland Guard) Read online

  Walter nodded. “I hope not, but it seems likely.”

  “I’ll kill him.” Randolph’s voice left no doubt that he meant it. “I’ll find her,” he told Walter. To his uncle, he added, “I’m taking Lamont.” It wasn’t a question, but Bruce nodded as if it had been. Ewen “Hunter” Lamont was the best tracker in the Highlands. If anyone could find her, he could.

  I will find her, damn it.

  “That is gracious of you to offer, Randolph, but it isn’t necessary. I can—”

  Randolph took the lad by the arm and held him up almost off the ground. “I’m going.”

  Wisely, Walter just nodded.

  Randolph started to move off before something niggled. He turned back. “You mentioned a betrothal.”

  “Aye. With Sir William de Vipont, Lord of Langton. She told me to accept him right before she left. I just sent the missive yesterday.”

  It was strange how a body that was burning could turn instantly to ice. She’d agreed to marry someone else? Randolph’s chest twisted for one long painful moment before he turned to his uncle. “I’ll need MacRuairi, too.” The former pirate was nearly as good at tracking as Lamont, and despite being from the Isles, he was one of their best riders. Then he explained to a clearly confused Walter, “She isn’t going to marry him.”

  Walter frowned. “Yes, she is.”

  “No, she’s not. She’s going to marry me.”

  Randolph didn’t realize Hawk had come up behind him. He could practically hear the bastard laughing. “I thought the lass rejected you, Randy.”

  Keenly aware that everyone in the Great Hall was watching, Randolph spoke loudly so that they would all hear. “She has to marry me. I ravished her, and I have every bloody intention of doing so again when I find her.”

  The shocked hush that descended over the Hall was almost comical. The reputation that Randolph had so carefully built since his return to his uncle’s fold had just been shattered.

  But for the first time in eight years, Hawk smiled and gave him a nod of unmistakable approval.

  Izzie didn’t die of heartbreak. Although for a few days it felt as if she might. By the time Walter had arranged for men to escort her home, she was glad to leave Edinburgh Castle—and Sir Thomas Randolph—behind. His angry declaration of love had been the final nail through her heart. That he could utter the words she so longed to hear as if they meant nothing and with such obvious insincerity was proof of his lack of feeling. He would tell her whatever she wanted to hear to prevent her from refusing him and save his pride and reputation.

  Still, she wouldn’t have embarrassed him by making her refusal public. She’d said nothing of the incident, but the men who’d overheard their argument had obviously not been so closemouthed. It had been the talk of Edinburgh—which is also why she’d left. She grew tired of the stares and whispers and hoped that with her gone, the talk would die down.

  “That is the woman who refused Randolph?”

  With Elizabeth having run off after Thomas MacGowan, who’d left the same night that she and Randolph had made… She shook off the memory. Joanna had been the one she confided in. Izzie knew that Joanna’s advice to be patient—that Randolph would figure it out—was kindly meant, but Joanna hadn’t been there. It was too late. He’d hurt her too badly and proved to her that he would never be able to give her what she wanted.

  As much as she loved him, Izzie knew it would be infinitely worse to be married to him and forced to confront that unrequited love every day for the rest of her life. She’d been right in the beginning. Respect, loyalty, and affection were the most she could hope for in a marriage—to want anything more was impractical and would only lead to heartache. She would have that kind of marriage with Sir William, and with no reason to refuse him, she told Walter to send her acceptance before she’d ridden out with the handful of men he’d conscripted to escort her.

  If her heart had ached and she’d had to force herself not to look back over her shoulder at the castle on the rock that would make Randolph a legend, she told herself it would get easier.

  It did for a while. Of course that was because she’d been abducted. When Stephen Dunbar—she refused to refer to him as “Sir” after his barbarous actions—surrounded her handful of men with a dozen of his own, and she’d guessed his intention, she’d been too terrified to think of anything but how she was going to escape. Well, maybe that wasn’t exactly true. She might have experienced a heart-clenching moment of wishing Randolph was there before pushing it aside. The hero wasn’t going to come to her rescue this time. If anyone was going to get her out of this, it was she.

  Instinctively, she realized that if she tried to oppose Stephen she could very well end up raped before she was forced to wed so she had to somehow make him think it wasn’t necessary.

  It took her only a moment to burst into happy tears. “Thank goodness you have come! I thought you forgot all about me.” She said the last almost chastisingly, as if he’d somehow let her down. Stephen looked at her as if she’d grown a second head. “We must move quickly if we are to get away before my brother becomes worried and sends men after us.”

  Now it wasn’t just Stephen looking at her as if she was crazed—Walter’s men were as well.

  “How did you know how to find us?” she asked, then before Stephen could stop the whirlwind that she was spinning around them and think, she added, “Never mind. All that matters is that you are here now. Do you have a priest?”

  Stephen recovered enough to shake his head and say, “Not yet.”

  Good grief, he was actually believing this rubbish? The louse was more arrogant than she’d realized. Or perhaps Randolph wasn’t the only one who knew how to playact. Her heart squeezed, but she couldn’t think of him now.

  She put her hand to her chin as if deep in thought. “I believe I can think of one, but perhaps it would be best if you let my men go first. They will only slow us down, and it would be better if they do not hear our plans.”

  She may have gone a little far. His eyes narrowed. “They will go straight to your brother.”

  She pretended not to have thought about that. “You are quite right. Good idea. You will just have to tie them up.”

  The captain of the guard who’d accompanied her started to object, but Izzie was trying to avoid bloodshed and knew it would be easier for her to get away on her own. Walter’s men were outnumbered at least two to one, and she feared if they came with her they would try something gallant. She also didn’t want Stephen to simply try to kill them now.

  Fortunately, he went along with her plan as if it had been his own. He ordered his men to tie them up, and a short while later they were riding away. Hiding her fear and pretending to be happy as they left the men behind was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. But she did it, and it paid off later when she had her chance to escape.

  Stephen had gone into the church she’d picked near the coast to speak with the priest. She asked for a moment of privacy. She wasn’t surprised when one of his men insisted on going with her, but the moment he turned his back, she slipped away.

  She’d chosen this church for a reason. As a child, her father had brought her and her brothers to this beach to explore the caves in the sea cliffs. They could be dangerous, depending on the tide, but fortune was with her—at least at first. From her refuge in one of the caves, she heard Stephen and his men riding up and down the beach and surrounding area looking for her all through the night. His tenacity surprised her. It also nearly killed her when the tide came in.

  She’d spent most of the next morning huddled on a rock high in the back of the cave that was largely hidden from site from the beach, hoping that she didn’t have to try to swim her way out. By time the tide receded, it was already midafternoon. She took refuge in the church with the very kind priest who’d been forced to deal with the irate knight the day before—she apologized for that—ate some porridge and bread and accepted his offer of lodging for the night. The following morning he r