Page 8 of The Laird's Masked Passion
It was intolerable. It was also, most inconveniently, effective. Held against him, Elspeth could feel the violent strength of his body and the hard beat of his heart where her hand had landed against his chest. She wanted to be outraged by the indignity of being carried, a bride stolen from a raided church.
The yard beyond the cathedral had become chaos. A body lay half in shadow beside the wall. Elspeth forced herself not to look closely. Colin set her on her feet only when they reached the horses.
“Up,” he commanded.
“I can mount without?—”
He put his hands at her waist and lifted her as if she weighed nothing. Elspeth landed sideways upon the saddle with a most unladylike gasp.
“Hold the reins.”
“I ken how tae sit a horse.”
“Then dae it quickly.”
An attacker lunged from the side. Colin turned at once, placing himself between the man and the horse. The attacker’s blade glanced across Colin’s hand, drawing blood. Elspeth’s anger faltered. He had taken the cut because he had kept his body between danger and her. The attacker fell a heartbeat later. Colin flexed his bleeding hand as though it were an inconvenience.
Elspeth stared. “Ye are hurt.”
He glanced at the wound. “I have been worse.”
“What an inspiring standard for domestic happiness.”
His eyes flicked up to hers. For one impossible moment, amid smoke and screams and the ruin of the morning, she thought he might smile again. Then a woman cried out from the cathedral steps. Elspeth turned sharply.
Her mother stood near the doorway, half-hidden by fleeing bodies, with one hand pressed to the stone as if she could not keep herself upright. Elspeth’s heart tore toward her.
“Maither!”
Her head lifted. Their eyes met.
Elspeth tried to slide from the horse. “I am nae leaving her.”
Colin swung up behind her in one fluid movement. “Nay.”
His arm came around her waist, hard as iron. With his wounded hand he seized the reins.
“Me maither isnae safe!”
“Neither are ye.”
“I dinnae care!”
“I dae.”
The words struck strangely. There was no tenderness in them, no confession of concern. They were said with cold finality, as if her survival were now a fact under his command.
Elspeth twisted against him, desperate, furious and terrified. “If ye take me from her, I will never fergive ye.”
Colin’s body went still behind her for the briefest instant. Then he drove his heels into the horse. The animal leapt forward.
Elspeth cried out, reaching back toward the cathedral as distance opened between her and the woman who had looked at her with heartbreak and no power to save her. The last thing she saw was her mother’s pale face in the crowd. Then Colin’s armtightened around her, the horse thundered into the street, and St Andrews began to vanish beneath flying hooves.
Elspeth didn’t know whether she had been rescued or stolen. She knew only that the man who now held her against him was her husband, her enemy, her only protection, and perhaps the first man she had ever truly wanted to kill.
CHAPTER THREE
The first thing Elspeth understood, once the cathedral had vanished behind them, was that a horse could be a most indecent creature. It had no regard for modesty, shock, injury, or newly-made wives. It ran, and with every furious stride, Elspeth was thrown back against Colin MacKenzie as if the beast meant to prove that escape required a closeness no priest had warned her of.
