Page 125 of Captured by a Laird
David nodded. Then he gave the signal, and the Hume warriors headed out. When David started to go with them, Alison clung to his arm. Had he lost his senses?
“Ye can’t go,” she said. “You’re too badly injured.”
“Ach, I’ve fought in worse shape, lass,” he said. “Wait here. This won’t take long.”
He strode down the stairs with his men, leaving Alison to stare at the drops of his blood on the stone steps.
CHAPTER 50
“Ye rode alone into the castle knowing ye could be killed and almost certainly raped,” David said between his teeth. The more he thought about it, the more furious he became.
“Aye, it was a bold plan.” Alison smiled at him as she dabbed a healing ointment on his injured hand. “But we Humes are known for that.”
Calling herself a Hume softened his anger for a moment, as his clever wife had known it would.
“Ach, this hand is bad,” she said. “Does it pain ye something terrible?”
“Hell no,” he said, though it throbbed like the very devil.
“My plan did succeed,” she said. “We both survived, and we have Blackadder Castle back.”
The Blackadders were already in disarray due to the fire when David and the men who had come through the tunnel caught them by surprise inside the hall. In a matter of moments, the Humes had taken control of the keep. The rest of the castle did not take much longer. More Hume warriors, who had been hiding in the trees by the stream, poured in through the gate, which the Blackadder guards had opened to let their people escape the fire.
Walter fought to the death, knowing there would be no mercy for him, and he died by Brian’s sword. Most of the Blackadders, however, saw how it would end and laid down their weapons.
“I’m glad ye released most of the Blackadders,” Alison said, as she wrapped a long linen strip around his hand. “With the deaths of their wicked lairds, they’re no longer a threat.”
She had persuaded him to release them, of course. But he had ferreted out the men who attacked the village, and they were no longer walking this earth but burning in everlasting hell. He could not remember much after that until he woke up starving a couple of hours ago.
“Must I wear this?” he asked, as Alison tied a goddamn sling around his arm.
“You’re trying my patience, love,” she said. “You’ll sit there and do as I tell ye after worrying me so. Ye fell like a stone when it was all over. Three days I waited for ye to wake, ye wretched man.”
Worrying her? Alison was not going to divert him from what she’d done. The image of Patrick choking her while he hiked up her skirts filled his mind’s eye again, and he pulled her onto his lap with his good arm.
“How could ye endanger yourself like that?” he asked, his voice rough with emotion.
“How could I not?” she said. “What would your brothers, the girls, Isabella, and I do without ye? You’re the center of our family, the one who binds us together. Beatrix and Margaret knew that. Why do ye think they ventured out on their own to bring ye home?”
David had never expected to find himself encircled by love and family. And it was all because of Alison. She had given him everything he had longed for and never believed he deserved.
“Without you, I’d be like Patrick Blackadder, a man with nothing to live for but hate and vengeance.” He tucked a stray strand of her midnight hair behind her ear. “Ye saved me, Allie.”
“Ach, you were never like that vicious and self-serving man,” she said. “Everything ye did was to protect others. Love was always the reason, even if you didn’t know it.”
She always saw the best in him. He would strive every day to become the man she believed he was.
“There is something I did that I would like to change,” he said.
She tilted her head. “What’s that?”
David had struggled with what was best to do. He needed to consider the future of his brothers as well as his stepdaughters.
“I’ll destroy Beatrix and Margaret’s marriage contracts with my brothers, if that’s what the lasses wish,” he said. “When they’re of an age to marry, I’ll let each lass decide.”
His gift to his brothers would be to have wives who came willingly to their marriage.
“Thank you,” Alison said, touching her fingertips to his cheek. “When the time comes, I hope that they chose wisely, for I would like nothing better than to know my daughters had fierce Hume men to love and protect them all of their days.”
