The Arrow Read online

  Had. But not anymore. Gregor had done what she thought impossible. He’d destroyed her love for him. He’d ripped her heart out of her chest, torn it to shreds, and ground the scraps to dust. There was nothing left. Only the dull, numbing ache of emptiness—as if she were missing a vital piece of herself. The love she’d had for him that had filled her with such joy and hope was gone.

  A part of her hated him—but not completely. She also felt sorry for him. Sorry that he was too jaded and cynical, too molded by his past experiences with women, to recognize real love when he had a chance.

  It was his loss. Cate would not waste another moment of her life on him.

  The man Cate married would believe in her just as much as she believed in him. And it was clear that man would not be Gregor. She did not doubt that he would marry her still. But if he did, he would leave her feeling just as abandoned as her father had. Maybe not physically, but in every other way that mattered.

  Gregor wasn’t the man she’d thought. She had thought there was more to him than a handsome face. She had thought he was the kind of man she could count on, the kind of man she could trust. But he was no more the noble knight of her fantasies than her father had been. Maybe Gregor was right. Maybe she had been trying to create the perfect family to replace the one that she’d lost with him at the center, representing everything she thought a great man should be. She’d wanted him to be something he was not and imagined qualities in him that weren’t even there.

  She was about to start down the stairs when she heard men below and stopped in her tracks.

  “Damn it, someone needs to stop him.”

  Cate recognized the voice of one of the Phantoms—the big, tall blond one who looked like a Viking, Erik MacSorley. She bit her lip, still embarrassed about the black eye she’d given him.

  “We tried, cousin. He didn’t seem to be of any mind to listen.”

  Lachlan MacRuairi, she thought with a shiver, identifying the dark voice and the brigand it belonged to with ease. He sounded as menacing as he looked. Except for the facial hair—they both had unusually shaped, stubbly beards—the two kinsmen looked nothing alike.

  “We’ll make him listen,” MacSorley said. “He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. He loves the lass, and once he realizes it, he’ll never forgive himself for doing this.”

  Cate wanted to tell him he was wrong, but she was more worried about finding a place to hide if they came up the stairs.

  “And if making him listen doesn’t work?” MacRuairi asked.

  “We take him out of there by force,” MacSorley said, taking a few steps up the stairs.

  Cate was about to dart behind a trunk to hide when another voice intervened in the argument between kinsmen. “Arrow needs to figure this out on his own. If he does love her, he’ll realize it. It’s not for us to decide.”

  Arthur Campbell, she realized, the quiet voice of reason. He was right, too. Unfortunately, Gregor had proved that he didn’t love her.

  After a few more moments the men moved away from the stairs. Cate debated following them—it was dark, and she’d imagined more than one shadow in the woods on the way here—but not wanting to risk discovery, she exited the building and slid into the stables to wait.

  When it started to snow a short while later, however, she decided she’d waited long enough. It didn’t take her long to reach the edge of the village. She hesitated; the darkness of the forest ahead proved vaguely unsettling. Though she was tempted to borrow a torch from one of the village cottages, she didn’t want to draw attention to herself.

  It was a decision she would regret a short while later, when the darkness of the forest seemed to swallow her up like a snowy dragon.

  She looked over her shoulder more than once, swearing she heard something. A snapped twig. A rustled branch. Then she decided she was only imagining the sounds, her fear causing her mind to play tricks. But once she was deep in the forest, Cate realized it wasn’t her imagination. At first she thought she was being tracked by a pack of wolves. But the beasts that surrounded her were horrifyingly human.

  Cate fought with everything she had. But in the end, against five soldiers, it wasn’t enough. Forced to the ground with a knife to her throat and voices swearing to kill her if she didn’t stop struggling, she surrendered.

  Two men hauled her off the ground—none too gently—pinning her arms behind her back to face the others. They’d taken her sword, but she still had the dagger Gregor had given her in a scabbard at her waist. If she could just reach it …

  Her fingers extended toward the hilt. Feeling her movement, one of the men tugged one of her arms harder, making her groan in pain, but also aiding her cause by bringing her hand an inch closer to the hilt. She could just about reach it.

  A torch was brought forward and held to her face by a third man. She sucked in her breath, recognizing him: the man on horseback in the woods. The man who looked just like the soldier who’d killed her mother.

  “I told you it was her,” the man said. “She might dress and fight like a man, but it’s MacGregor’s bride.”

  “You were right, Fitzwarren.”

  Cate froze at the mention of his name. It couldn’t be—he was too young.

  Nay, it wasn’t the captain, she realized, but it could well be his son.

  “What do you want with me?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” Fitz warren said slyly, his eyes dropping to her out-thrust breasts with a cold, lecherous look that told her he might be like his father in more ways than just appearance. “It’s what you are going to do for us. You are going to give us one of Bruce’s Phantoms.”

  Cate froze, but she quickly tried to cover her reaction. “You don’t think that rumor is true, do you?”

  She cried out as Fitzwarren grabbed a thick tress of hair that had come loose in the struggle and twisted it hard against her scalp. “Don’t bother denying it, gel. We know it’s true. He’s been under suspicion for some time, but has proved elusive. But thanks to you, we won’t need to try to capture Gregor MacGregor; he’ll walk right through the gates of Perth Castle all on his own to secure his beloved bride’s freedom.”

  Cate was about to argue with his premise—she wasn’t his beloved or his bride for much longer—but she clamped her mouth shut. If these men thought she wasn’t worth anything to them, they would kill her. And the way young Fitzwarren was eyeing her, she would be lucky if they just killed her and didn’t rape her first.

  She shuddered with revulsion. But not with fear. Gregor had given her that at least. She wouldn’t go down without a fight. She bit back a smile of satisfaction as her fingers closed around the hilt of the dagger. The moment they released their hold, she would be ready.

  Suddenly, the other part of what he’d said hit her: Perth Castle. The same place the missive from her father had said the captain was heading. The captain who’d escaped punishment for too long.

  Gregor had said he would handle it—and maybe he would if given a chance, even with all that had happened. But Cate didn’t want him to. It wasn’t his responsibility; it was hers. She wanted to do it herself, maybe even needed to do it herself. Right now it was the only thing that mattered, and the only thing she wanted to think about. For so long, her entire world had revolved around Gregor and the perfect life they would have together that she’d lost sight of anything else. How could she have forgotten the duty she had to her mother and the other villagers? The price of living was to see justice done. Cate might never have another chance to get so close to the man responsible for their deaths, and she would not waste it.

  All the hurt, all the hatred, all the heartbreak, she turned to vengeance. Nay, embraced it. It gave her a purpose.

  Loosening her grip around the hilt of the dagger, she let it go. For now.

  Gregor woke to the sound of snoring and the stale stench of whisky-laden vomit. His stomach rolled at the smell and bile shot up the back of his throat, threatening reemergence.

  The vomit was his, he