Page 86 of Promised to the Forbidden Laird

“Nae long. The ground is still settling around the prints.”

Hamish arrived behind them with several armed men. Roy thrust the shawl into his hands and turned toward the nearest horse.

“Gather every rider we have.”

“We need scouts first,” Hamish warned. “They may be drawing us intae⁠—”

Roy seized the saddle and mounted. “They have Donaldina.”

“Aye, and riding blindly may get her killed.”

Roy looked down at him. Hamish followed him into battles where men screamed beneath burning towers. He stood beside Roy among the dead and dragged him from fields he would otherwise have refused to leave. He did not frighten easily.

Yet, he stepped back from what he saw in Roy’s face.

“I will follow their trail,” Roy said. “Bring the men as quickly as ye can.”

“Me laird⁠—”

“If they divide, send half toward the northern ridge. The rest stay with ye. Search every path leading toward the old hunting grounds.”

“And ye?”

Roy gathered the reins. “I am done waiting for Cormac tae take what matters and trusting time tae return it.”

The stallion surged ahead beneath him as Roy raced along the eastern lane into the woods. Branches tore at his cloak, and wet leaves splattered his face. In moments, the darkness among the trees swallowed the lantern's light. He followed the damaged earth, the broken ferns, the fresh hoofprints. Mud flung across roots where a horse had been urged too hard through the narrow path.

Roy did not look back. Donaldina was somewhere ahead of him in the darkness, carried by men who believed distance would protect them from what they had done.

What they failed to understand was that he had crossed battlefields searching for the dead.

He would tear the woodland apart to find the living.

The horse did not slow. Donaldina lay bound across the front of the saddle, trapped between the hard leather pommel and Cormac’s body while the forest rushed past in fragments of darkness. Branches struck her shoulders. Wet leaves caught in her hair. Each violent stride of the horse drove the saddle against her ribs until breathing became a separate act of endurance.

The forest seemed endless. Moonlight passed thinly between the branches, silvering the path for a moment before vanishing again. Cormac’s men rode before and behind them, their cloaks moving like shadows between the trunks.

She tried to count the turns. She forced herself to remember what she could.

Roy would follow.

The thought came without invitation and settled within her with dangerous comfort.

He would find the shawl. He would understand why she left it. He would see the torn ground, the hoofprints and the broken ferns. He had crossed a battlefield searching for Lachlan. He would not abandon her to Cormac.

She closed her eyes briefly against the sting of wind. She would not depend entirely upon rescue. She knew too well what happened to women who allowed hope to become obedience. But beneath her fear lived another certainty now, one she could no longer pretend was merely trust.

Roy would come because she mattered to him. And she intended to remain alive long enough to be found.

The trees finally thinned, and a low building emerged from the darkness, crouched beneath pines whose branches nearly concealed its roof. Moss covered the old stone walls. One shutter hung broken beside a narrow window, striking softly against the frame whenever the wind moved through the clearing.

It was an abandoned hunting lodge.

Donaldina remembered Lachlan mentioning such a place years ago, built by their grandfather and deserted after the northern road shifted. Few people had reason to come so deep into the woodland. Cormac had chosen well.

The horses halted before the lodge. Donaldina was dragged from the saddle with so little care that her knees struck the ground. Pain shot upward through her legs. She twisted at once, trying to gain her feet, but one of Cormac’s men caught her beneath the arms.

“Release me!” The gag made the demand almost unintelligible.