Page 2 of Claimed By the Enemy Laird

Alasdair put his black horse at the slope. His horse was bigger and faster than her grey mare, and he had the angle on her.

She saw him when he was halfway up the field. Her head whipped round, and for a moment she sat frozen on the mare’s back. Then she flattened herself along the mare’s neck and drove her straight for the trees.

Alasdair swore, let the reins run loose and drove his black horse on at full gallop. The mare was quicker than he had thought, and she was running flat out with a light woman on her bare back. Clods of earth flew up from her hooves. If Iona reached the wood, he would lose her among the trees. He would be hunting his own bride through the thickets until dark, and riding home to tell his people a Dunmore lass had made a fool of him.

The gap closed. Then his horse stumbled in a rut and it opened again. She looked back over her shoulder, and he saw her white face and her open mouth before she drove the mare on harder than ever. She had nerve. He gave her that.

Then the stream was in front of her. The mare saw the water and stopped dead at the bank, throwing her head up, and Iona had to haul her round to try it again. It cost her a few strides. They were all he needed. Before the mare could gather herself to jump, Alasdair was there beside her.

He leaned down and took the bridle under the mare’s chin. The mare slewed round, blowing. Iona Dunmore twisted on her back and looked up at him, and her eyes went up the tall length of him, past the black hair, straight to the white scar along his jaw, as everyone’s did.

“Let go of my horse,” she said.

“Good day to ye, Iona Dunmore.” He smiled at her, because he knew it would make her angrier, and he wanted to see what she did when she was angry. “Ye left before the end. Murdoch will be hurt. He reads very well.”

“I ken how it ends,” she said.

“Then ye ken ye’re promised to me.”

“I’m promised to nobody.” Her voice shook with temper, and two spots of colour burned high on her white face. “Ye killed my brother. He was a boy. He never lifted a sword in his life, and yer men cut him down like a dog in a ditch, and ye think I will go home with ye and pour yer ale?”

Alasdair’s jaw tightened under the scar. He had heard his name said in that tone by every Dunmore voice since he was a boy himself. It had never before come from a mouth he had been thinking about kissing since the moment she turned her head.

“Ye’ll come back to the hall,” he said.

“I willnae,” she said.

“Ye will. On yer own horse, or on mine.”

She kicked the mare. It was a good try. The mare plunged, and the bridle wrenched in his fist, and Iona came half off sideways and caught herself on the mane. Alasdair let the bridle go to the nearest of his riders, put an arm round her, and lifted her clean off the mare’s back. He set her across his own saddle in front of him, face down over his horse’s withers.

She fought him. She fought the whole way back up the field, kicking, twisting, her fists beating at his knee, her hair everywhere. She called him a murderer and a thief and a Highland brute, and some other things he had not known a lady would know. He kept one flat hand on her back so she would not slide off under the horse’s feet, and said nothing, and rode in at the back gate with her like that past the stable boy, who sat down on his stool again very suddenly.

Murdoch was waiting at the kitchen door.

“Did ye finish the letter?” Alasdair asked him.

“I had got as far as the King’s displeasure, my laird,” Murdoch said. “The lady appears to have taken the rest as read.”

Alasdair set her on her feet in the yard. She swung at him at once, open-handed, and he stepped back out of reach, and she stood there with her apron twisted round her hips and her chest heaving, and glared at him.

Then she turned and went into the hall ahead of him, without a word. He followed her in.

Torquil Dunmore had not moved from his chair. He was a big man gone soft at the middle, with a grey beard cut close to the jaw, and when his daughter came and stood in front of him with rushes in her hair, he only sighed.

“Father.” Her voice cracked on it. “Father, ye cannae.”

“Iona,” Torquil said.

“He has come here with his men. He dragged me back over his horse like a sack. In front of the stable boy. And ye sit there?” She went down on one knee by his chair and took his hand in both of hers, and Alasdair, by the door, looked away at the hearth. “Ye told me what they did to Coll. Ye told me yerself. And now ye’ll give me to the man who did it?”

“It isnae my giving, lass.” Torquil’s voice was as soft as ever. “It is the King’s. Ye heard the letter. If I refuse him, he takes my land and gives it to someone who willnae refuse him. I have no men to set against the Crown. Nobody has.”

“Then fight him anyway.”

“And lose everything yer mother built here? Every soul in this hall?” He drew his hand gently out of hers and laid it on her head, on the red rope of her hair. “Ye have always been the strong one. Do yer duty, Iona, and endure. That is all any of us can do now.”

She stayed on one knee for the space of a breath. Alasdair watched her shoulders go rigid. Then she was up off the floor so fast that the rushes scattered, her fists knotted in her apron.