The Hairpin
The long ride and a night spent on cold rock took a toll on Shona. She felt stiff and sore as she supped oatmeal from a wooden bowl handed to her by one of Mungo’s men. He’d provided no spoon so she did her best to lap the stuff up. It wasn’t the best porridge she’d tasted, but its warmth brought comfort. It appeared Morley wasn’t planning on starving her to death.
Despite her abductor’s assurances, she’d lain awake all night worrying he might succumb to the male urges Jeannie had warned her about. She’d plotted a hundred ways to escape—all impossible. Now her head ached with the futility of it and her stomach was in knots. She put down the bowl and tried to stand, but the rock walls seem to close in on her. Mungo appeared and helped her up. “Eat hearty, lass,” he advised with a grin. “’Tis yer wedding day.”
The porridge rose in her throat. “I’m going to be sick,” she warned.
He hurried her out of the cave. The cool morning air brought relief as she filled her lungs, but a grey mist hung over the rock, rendering it difficult to see anything beyond. She’d heard the rain during the night; droplets still clung to bushes and the rocks were slick.
Voices from below indicated some of the men had already gone down to ready the horses. “I wish to go home, Mungo Morley,” she declared. “Yer plan will bring the wrath of the Mackinlochs down on all our heads.”
“I’m nay worried about a greybeard wi’ one hand,” he replied.
She kept the truth to herself. The less he knew, the better. Despite her disdain for the idiot, she edged closer to him when Ailig appeared out of the mist. Mungo might be daft, but his brother was evil. She had few doubts this mad scheme was his idea and began to wonder about her uncle’s accident. Last night’s cruel words about her father’s death played on her mind. Was it possible this perfidy went back further than anyone imagined?
“Take her and let’s away,” Ailig growled.
She squealed a useless protest when Mungo hoisted her over his shoulder like a sack of grain and slid down the path. He set her on her feet near the giant rock. “Go on. Two minutes before he comes.”
Fuming and sick at heart, she edged behind the boulder and saw to her needs. The mist cleared as she emerged. Mungo led her to his horse. Just before he lifted her into the saddle, she felt for the hairpin. An involuntary sob broke forth when she realized it was gone.
As she had rightly surmised, six men rode with the Morley brothers. It confirmed her opinion the fools had no more sense than a lump of peat. Obviously, Ailig was ruled by a desire for vengeance and not by any reasonable plan to hold the lairdship of Clan MacCarron. However, if they succeeded in usurping the chieftaincy even briefly, people she loved might be killed in the confusion, and that didn’t bear thinking about. Instead she fretted about the lost hairpin, one of the few precious things of her mother’s she owned. It was preferable to dwelling on what might have been with Ewan Mackinloch.
As the morning wore on, Mungo’s boasting about his suitability to be laird turned her blood cold. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine she was gathering heather on the sunny moorland. She might even have dozed, but was startled awake when the party reined to a halt outside a small ruined church.
Mungo lifted her down from the horse. “Here we are,” he crowed.
She looked at the crumbling stone walls of the ancient church then back at him. “Are ye serious?”
But something else was wrong. It took her a moment to realize Ailig had disappeared. “Where’s yer brother?”
“An errand,” he replied. “None o’ yer concern.”
*
Ewan and his men dismounted in a clearing below Conger’s Rock. They’d ridden hard since dawn, their dispositions not improved by having spent the night out in the open in the pouring rain.
They’d left five men to butcher the deer carcass, and Ruadh seemed content to leave them to it. Ewan had woken from a fitful doze in the middle of the night to discover the hound asleep against his back.
He hated the smell of wet dog, and damp wool bothered him even more, but it would be a good while before the early morning sun dried his plaid. He supposed he should be grateful the rain had stopped.
Walter went down on one knee in the grass. “They left their horses here.”
The men fanned out to search for signs as to where their quarry had gone.
Ewan walked over to a large boulder, clenching his fists when he caught sight of a small piece of fabric caught on a thorn bush growing behind it. He reached in and pulled it free, fingering the tenuous link to Shona. “She was here,” he shouted.
Walter nodded to a narrow path. “There’s a cave up yonder. Probably where they spent the night.”
Ewan felt better knowing Shona hadn’t slept out in the rain, but… “Let’s take a look.”
They sprinted up the trail. The small opening Walter pointed out was easy to miss. They bent to crawl through and entered a large cavern. The smell of smoke and sweaty men lingered in the air, unsettling his empty belly.
Walter kicked over pieces of charred wood. “Campfire.”
Ewan gritted his teeth as he surveyed the cave, anger boiling in his blood. He didn’t want to think about what Shona might have endured here, far from home and alone.
A wet nose nuzzled his hand. Ruadh whimpered and pawed the ground. Ewan hunkered down to see what had caught the dog’s attention. At first he saw nothing in the dim light, but then his fingers touched metal.
He traced a fingertip over the delicately enameled butterfly, then clutched the hairpin in his fist, filled with an urge to bellow out his rage against the man who’d removed the precious object from his bride’s hair.
He took the kerchief from his gambeson and held it to the dog’s nose. “This time we need ye to do it right, Ruadh. Where is she?”
He straightened and hurried after the hound when the animal bolted, praying they weren’t off on another wild deer chase.