Page 105 of Claimed by a Highlander
“He—”
“Get out!” she shouted.
Sybil had to make him go before the tears welling in her eyes spilled down her face. Once she started weeping, she feared she would never stop.
She tried to shove him out the door, but it was like pushing on a boulder. She dropped her arms and turned her face away from him. If she looked at him, into the face of the man she had recklessly given her heart to, she would lose control.
“Please, Rory,” she choked out, “just go.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt ye,” he said before the door clicked shut behind him.
She heard each footstep as he walked away, then she collapsed on the bed and wept for the lost dream she should never have believed in.
Suddenly, she remembered the priest and the message from her uncle. She did not have to stay here. There was a ship waiting for her at Inverness.
With shaking hands, she changed into warm clothes for her journey.
CHAPTER 36
Rory’s back ached from sleeping on a bench. Before the other men sleeping in the hall awoke, Rory rose silently and again climbed the stairs to their bedchamber. He prayed that after a night’s rest, Sybil would be less angry. With his heart in his throat, he rapped lightly on the door. Sybil did not answer.
He did not want to wake her, but he longed just to see her, to watch her in her sleep.
When he eased the door open, the room was empty, the bed not slept in. He stepped inside and turned slowly. Her shoes, which she usually left beside the bed, were gone, as was her cloak from the peg by the door.
His heart stopped in his chest. She’d left him.
God help him, was she out there alone? It was not safe for her to leave the castle. Sybil did not know these lands, had no kin or friends to give her help or protection. Yet she had wanted to be away from him so badly that she had gone anyway.
He ran down the steps, crossed the hall filled with snoring MacKenzies and Grants, and hurried to the stables.
“Have ye seen my wife?” he asked the stable lad.
“The lady asked me to saddle a horse for her,” the lad said. “She said you’d follow her soon and that it was a game ye were playing.”
A game?“When was this?”
“Too early for riding, if ye ask me,” he said. “Sky held no more than a hint of dawn.”
Rory saddled and mounted Curan and headed to the gate, where he learned she’d used the same ruse to persuade the guards to open the gate. Ach, that lass could persuade a river to flow upstream if she set her mind to it.
“Lady Sybil told us she was not going far, and that the laird”—the guard paused and waggled his eyebrows—“would know where to find her.”
Rory closed his eyes. Without actually saying so, Sybil had managed to convince the guards that he and his bride were meeting for an outdoor tryst. If he found her quickly, no one would be the wiser.
“That wife of yours had such a fetching way about her when she said,Don’t spoil our fun.” The older guard tilted his head and batted his eyelashes in a ridiculous imitation. “Ach, brought back sweet memories from when the wife and I were newlyweds.”
Christ above. “How long ago did she leave?”
“The sky was glowing pink with the coming dawn,” the older guard said.
The guard was a damned poet. Rory clenched his jaw to keep from shouting.
“In truth, we didn’t expect ye to keep her waiting.”
“How long has it been?” Rory asked.
“An hour, perhaps more,” the other guard said.
