Page 101 of Captured by a Laird
“My God,” she said, shaking her head, “you’re a cold, bloodthirsty barbarian.”
David moved with the swift grace of the lions in the royal menagerie. He stood over her, his body vibrating with emotion.
“Just remember, this cold, bloodthirsty barbarian,” he said through clenched teeth, “is all that stands between you and those who would use you and your daughters for their own ends.”
“And you’re different from the Blackadders and my family, are ye?” she said. “You haven’t used us?”
“If you’d rather put your daughters into their hands, then do it,” he snapped. “Ye know they’re safer with me. Ye should be grateful that men fear me.”
“What I fear is that you’ll bring the Crown’s forces down on us,” she said. “By the saints, David, could ye not have shown some restraint?”
“D’Orsey led the forces that took my family’s home and my father’s widow,” he said, his chest rising and falling with labored breaths. “After losing her husband of fifteen years, his head displayed on a pike for ridicule, the woman is ill with grief, and yet D’Orsey still refused to release her.”
“I understand that—”
“Ye understand nothing! A price had to be paid, a lesson given,” he said in a low, menacing voice. “Justice demands blood for blood.”
Despite herself, she took a step back. He was showing her his wounds, but he reminded her of a wild beast whose wounds enraged him and made him more dangerous.
“They cut off my father’s head and displayed it on a pike on the Tolbooth for all of Edinburgh to see.My father’s head!And you suggest my response should have been measured?” He stepped closer, his eyes burning fire. “Nay, Alison, restraint was not possible.”
He left the room without a backward glance. Alison sank to the floor, shaking.
CHAPTER 42
For the first time since their wedding night, David slept in the former laird’s bed-less chamber—and he slept just as poorly as he had that night. When he was not imagining his wife naked in their bed in the chamber above him, he was plagued by images of her face horrified by the sight of him.
Something had snapped inside him when Alison accused him of using her and her daughters and being no better than her family and the Blackadders. Perhaps it was the element of truth to her accusation that made him lose control of his temper and frighten her.
In the morning, the tension was so thick between them at breakfast that even Beatrix was quiet. It pained him to see the shadows beneath Alison’s eyes and how pale her face was against her dark hair.
He got up and left the table to spare her his presence.
A short time later a message arrived from Dunbar Castle. Evidently, word of D’Orsey’s death had traveled quickly indeed. The captain of the garrison advised him that Lady Isabella “was ill” and invited him in the most stiffly cordial terms to fetch her as soon as he may. Though he knew the illness was a pretense that her release was an act of mercy, it worried David.
He would set out at once with Will and a large guard. Robbie was out riding patrol with some of the men, so he would have to wait to see his mother when they returned.
David did not bother bidding his wife goodbye. She would be glad to see him gone. As he took one last look at her across the length of the room, he felt as if a fist squeezed his heart.
***
An unexpected swell of emotion filled David’s chest when the drawbridge at Dunbar Castle was lowered and Isabella walked across it, followed by her maid and two servants carrying a trunk. At long last, he had fulfilled his father’s dying command to free her.
He stood back while Will embraced his mother.
“Forgive me for taking so long to obtain your release,” David said, going down on one knee before her. “Robbie will be at the castle when we return.”
“I’m grateful,” Isabella said, touching her fingertips to his cheek. “I feared my sons would be grown before I saw them again.”
“We need to be gone from here,” he said, looking up at the row of guards on the castle’s gatehouse, “lest they change their minds.”
He helped Isabella mount, and none of them spoke again until Dunbar Castle was a good distance behind them.
“Are ye well?” David asked Isabella. She looked thin and drawn, but her health had always been delicate.
“I’m going home,” she said, smiling, “so I feel grand.”
“We’re not going home,” Will piped up. “I mean, we’re not going to Hume Castle. We have a new home.”
