Page 26 of Highlander’s Evil Twin

“Connor, please don’t touch me! Please. You can’t!”

“Tell me why,” he demanded, his teeth gritted together, his jaw clenched. She saw his eyes darken with rage.

“Because...because…I am pregnant!” Heather cried out.

He stopped. The look of disgust was hard to miss. He looked her up and down, still holding her firmly. He knew she was telling the truth as her hands came over the slight swell to her abdomen protectively. Then, instinctively and with anger, he pushed her away from him with some force. She stumbled back, slipping on the wet grass. She couldn’t stop the movement, her balance was completely gone, and she caught her foot on trailing weeds and tangled, falling backwards, rolling down into the moat where she lay still.

The sky crackled in fury above, lightening ripping through the clouds with rain cascading down like sheets of water flooding the already sodden ground. Connor hauled himself back up on his stallion, his figure foreboding, haughty, and arrogant. He cast a backward glance at Heather as rain soaking into the ground around her created a rising puddle. She lay completely still, unaware of the water pooling up around her face and that icy temperatures were clawing at her skin.

For a moment, Connor almost silhouetted against the backdrop, watched as rain danced upon her skin and her clothes billowed in the breeze. Left out here for a few hours, and he knew it would not take long for her to succumb to the cold. Or, she could drown. The dip she had fallen into regularly flooded and he liked the idea of her drowning there. Soon, she would be out of his life and even better, Hiram would be grief-stricken. He might never recover from the loss of his wife and baby.

“Goodbye bitch,” he said, and turned his horse around, galloping back to the stables and safety.

14

“Where’s Heather?” Hiram walked into the lounge. His large frame took up the doorway and water ran through his hair, dripping down the back of his neck. He looked at Connor and his mother, who were having afternoon tea, sitting by a raging fire that made shadows dance around the room.

“Isn’t she in her room dear?” His mother barely glanced at him. They were playing chess and her focus was on the antique pieces in front of her.

“You look soaked, Hiram. Best go and get dry. You’ll catch your death like that.” Connor pointed to the puddle of water disappearing into the carpet.

“She’s not in our room. Someone must have seen her?” he demanded.

“Did you check if she had taken a horse out? Maybe she went to join you but took shelter from the storm?” His mother moved the knight triumphantly and gazed at Connor, warmth emanating from her eyes.

“Yes, I think she was near to the stables. That was hours ago though. Maybe she went riding or waited the storm out there.”

“She wouldn’t.” Hiram gritted his teeth. This was going nowhere. He was worried. He felt rising anguish and left them to it; they were obviously not interested. He ran from room to room calling for her. Frustrated, he asked the servants, but no one had seen her.

“If Connor has touched her, I will kill him,” he kept repeating to himself.

Hiram had never felt fear like it. The pain of losing her crept into his being and ripped away at his core. What would he do if she had gone? What if she had fallen, or if that bastard had hurt her?

Hiram went back outside. He tried the stables, but all the horses were there. There was no sign of the stable lads, but he checked each stall in case. He’d searched the castle from top to bottom, even checking with his sister, but no one had seen her at all. She had to be out in the grounds. For the first time in his life, he wished their grounds were less expansive, as she could have been taken ill and not able to move. What if she had lost the baby? Fear clutched his heart and he pushed himself on. He had to find her. He headed to the little maze; she spent a lot of time there. It was a cleverly designed route with twists and turns and secret little places in which to sit. He ran around each section calling her name. Nothing. Despair invaded his senses. She had gone. There was nowhere else.

Surely she wouldn’t have tried to cross the moors on a day like this. The rain had started falling again. There’d been a brief respite, but now large puddles joined dot to dot across the landscaped sections. It would be much worse in the area outside of the grounds, he knew. It often flooded the moat as water unable to seep into the ground at the top would run down into the moat and it would pool, and in the past had become deeply filled. There’d been times it had flowed like a river. But she wouldn’t go there.

Even so, he had to check, running through the gateway and edging along the rain-soaked ledge, searching in desperation. His voice was whipped away by the chill breeze and already, the evening was drawing in, the temperature dropping substantially. As he scanned the area, his heart sank; it was impossible for her to vanish. Misery held him tight. There was no sign of her. He couldn’t lose her, he couldn’t! He continued walking, desperation driving him forward. In the distance he saw a dark shape clutched by a gorse bush and as he ran towards it, he recognized it as Heather’s shawl. So, she had been out this way. He searched the expanse of moors and then headed to the deep drop of the moat. Then, he saw her. Lying in water, her head almost under, but in the deepest part of the moat her torso had already disappeared. He ran, sliding down the bank, churning up mud and running through the rising pool of water until he was at her side.

He lifted her head gently. She was unconscious, or dead? He felt her skin. She was cold to the bone. He was shaking so much that he couldn’t even feel for a pulse. Her head dropped back, exposing her soft white throat and he could see her top had been ripped. In an instant, he noted fresh new bruises on her delicate skin and swallowed hard, fearful as to what had happened. He picked her up and she lay heavy in his arms, water dripping from her clothes, running along the bottom of the moat until he made it to a more gradual slope which took him up the side and back to the flat ground easily. She wasn’t moving at all. Tears mingled with raindrops and he felt his heart hammering in his chest. His precious wife and baby. He couldn’t lose them. Running, he carried her into the castle and up to their room, calling for the servants to get the doctor.

“Hurry! “ he shouted, as they stood wide-eyed at the vision of her lifeless in his arms.

As he lay her on the bed, wrapping her in all the blankets, he saw her eyes flicker, her face pale. He kissed her forehead.

“Heather, come back to me. Heather, can you hear me?”

Slowly, as warmth spread through her body, she felt life coming back to her, but couldn’t move. Her energy had drained away and she began to shiver profusely, unable to ascertain at first what had happened. As the doctor finally entered the room, Hiram stepped back to let him see to her. He stumbled out of the room, slid down the wall and sat on the corridor floor outside, and began to sob quietly.

She was able to sit up now. Energy had returned to her limbs and the servants had helped her to change out of wet clothes and she was now wrapped in warm robes and tucked up in bed. Her hair, still slightly damp, hung in waves around her shoulders. She looked and felt haunted though. She couldn’t quite remember what had happened. It was just on the peripheral of her memory, something bad, ominous, lurking in the wings of her mind. She sipped hot soup and the warmth flooded through her. She was so, so tired. Exhaustion tugged at her consciousness and every now and then, she could feel herself tuning out and slipping away.

Hiram hovered constantly. She knew inside he was worried and wanted to help her but she couldn’t seem to voice the words or the feelings. So, instead, she focused on the soup followed by a warming drink of milk. As the time passed, she grew too hot, too confined under the blankets and robes. Hiram climbed into bed, having stoked the fire first so that it cast a rosy glow around their quarters. Her strength returning, she slipped from the bed and took her warm robe off. She gestured him to let her be. She felt too warm now and took her thin gown off too, standing naked in front of him, no longer embarrassed. As she turned to face him, he gasped and scrambled out of bed, turning her, seeing for the first time the angry bruises. She looked down, slightly bewildered by the look on his face and then, in that second, seeing the bruises, it all fell into place. Connor’s attempt to touch her, to rape her...she had almost become another of his victims. Heather shivered uncontrollably, her teeth chattering as those terrible moments came back to haunt her. She remembered it all. It was the pregnancy that had saved her.

“He stopped because I told him about the baby,” she recalled.

“Connor did this?” Hiram felt anger surge within him. Hot angry tears filled his eyes and he could barely see, for the emotion was choking him. “He knows?”

“Yes.”