Emily tried to smile, but didn't quite make it. "Goodbye, Cait."
At that moment the horses started moving, but the warrior her captor had called Drustan did not release Cait.
"You must let Cait go now that you have me."
Her captor said nothing.
She pinched at his thigh, but it was like trying to pinch a stone. "I said, you've got to let my friend go."
"Nay."
"Yes."
"Silence."
"I will not be silenced. Let her go, or I'll start screaming so loudly, they're bound to hear me all the way back at the keep."
"One sound like that and I will gag you."
She gasped.
His hold on her tightened… a warning squeeze she wasn't about to ignore. She had no desire to be gagged.
Her situation was dire enough. Her plan hadn't worked. Instead of releasing her friend, the warrior had kidnapped them both. What kind of man was this Highland laird that the prospect of stealing another laird's wife was not enough vengeance to take?
She had to make one last attempt to change his mind, as futile as it might be. "But if you don't leave one of us behind, who will tell Talorc that it was the Balmorals that did this thing?" she asked, desperately.
"The boy who was guarding you had opportunity to see our plaid before we knocked him asleep," the warrior said in a tone that discouraged further questions.
She didn't see what she had to lose. "You left that poor boy senseless? What if wild animals get him? Then who will tell? What if wild animals had gotten me on my way back to the holding if I had been your messenger? I suppose that wouldn't have mattered to you, me being English and all."
Her captor did not bother to answer. The horses gradually picked up speed until the war party was galloping away from Sinclair land at a speed that made Emily's head spin. She prayed for the safety of the unborn baby in her friend's womb and then prayed the man holding her would not drop her.
Several hours later, after riding rigidly in her captor's arms, she was praying for the strength to withstand just one more minute of this torture before disgracing herself and crying like a baby. When she thought she could not take another moment of the pain in her back from trying to sit away from the man carrying her, he raised his hand in a silent command to halt.
He swung down from his horse, bringing her with him. But he let her go immediately as if he could not stand to touch her. Foolishly offended by his rejection, she groaned in pain as she straightened her back, sure the moisture burning her eyes was from that pain alone. Truthfully, it was all she could do not to sink to her knees in weak relief. She walked gingerly, making her way to her friend's side to check on Cait's condition.
"Are you all right?" she asked with concern.
Cait smiled wearily. Emily was obviously in pain and trying to hide it. She was only human after all and the ride had been a punishing one… even for Cait. And she was a femwolf. "Yes. Drustan held me very gently and took care that I was not jostled by his horse."
The warrior's consideration made her feel strange. She knew their plan was to keep her in retaliation for Susannah, but he was not being cruel to her. In fact, he'd been more careful with her than her husband had ever been.
But if he could be so careful of her, why had the clan been so careless of Susannah? A femwolf left to hunt alone, especially when she was in heat, was fair game for an unmated werewolf and well they should know it.
"You on the other hand look as if you were forced to ride balancing on a mace," Cait added.
Emily grimaced, her heart-shaped face pinched and pale with exhaustion. "You are not far from the truth. The effort to sit forward and maintain my balance has left my back feeling like it will never straighten completely again."
"Why did you not relax against Lachlan? Surely he could withstand your weight if Drustan could withstand mine."
Emily looked askance at her. "Relax against him?" she asked incredulously.
Cait shook her head. Was it Emily's Englishness or the fact that she was a human that made her so prim? Cait would never have spent such a grueling ride trying to maintain propriety, but then she was a wolf and they were taught from the cradle to be more practical about their bodies than the human members of her clan tended to be.
"How did you know my captor's name?" Emily asked. "Have you seen him before?"
"No, but he's obviously the leader and he spoke possessively about Susannah, so I'm guessing he is the laird of the Balmoral clan… Lachlan. He could be her brother, but if I'm to be kept by Drustan, I can't help thinking he's Susannah's brother. He has not said." In fact, he hadn't said a single word since she'd called him that nasty name.
"Oh."
"Do you want me to ask if I am right?"
"No. I'm sure you are. It was a clever guess, but I was too busy trying to think of ways to escape to work it through. I should have figured out he was the laird anyway. It's obvious now that you say it."
Cait had to smile at her friend's chagrin. "Do not be too hard on yourself."
"I'm so smart I got both of us kidnapped. If I hadn't, I could have raised the alarm and gotten your brother's warriors in pursuit all the faster."
Cait felt badly that Emily had been kidnapped, too, but considering the way she and Talorc got along, Cait didn't think the other woman being left behind would have been an improvement. Especially if she didn't succeed at escape. And, in her condition, she had very little hope of doing so.
"By the time you had walked back to the keep, we would have been too fat ahead to do me any good. Remember, we had ridden a fair way before the laird was prepared to release you. As it is, Everett has raised the alarm, I'm sure."
"I hope you're right and that no wild animals got him."
"He is no unprotected human." Cait grimaced at her slip, but Emily didn't seem to notice.
She was too busy looking around her. "Why did we stop here, do you think?"
"To get in the boat."
"Boat?" Emily asked, going pale. "What boat?"
"The Balmoral clan live in a fortress on an island. Once we are in the boat, it will be much harder for my brother to rescue us."
"There will be no rescue, lass," Drustan called in a hard voice from a distance away.
Emily gasped in shock even as her whole body shook with fear at the prospect of being dragged onto a boat. "How did he know we were talking about that?"
"He could hear us."
But Emily shook her head. "We're too far away and we've been speaking in undertones. He must have made a clever, guess."
Cait looked as though she were going to argue. "Emily…"
"What?"
Then Cait shook her head. "Never mind. Do you speak Latin?" she asked in that language in a bare whisper.
"Yes."
"I'm hoping they don't."
Emily understood immediately. In case one of them did have particularly good hearing, it wouldn't hurt if she and Cait spoke in a foreign tongue. She would ask another time how her friend had learned Latin. It wasn't an uncommon accomplishment for women of her status in England, but she'd always heard the Highlanders lived near barbarianism.
Though, so far, that belief had been shown up as a gross exaggeration.
"What are we going to do?"
"Keep pretending that you are debilitated by the ride."
"That should be easy," Emily said with a grimace, her sore muscles making it not much of a pretense.
"We have to steal some horses."
"But they will only follow us."
"Our one hope is to stay ahead of them long enough to meet up with my brother."
"If he is following."
"He is. Trust me. Do you notice how they are letting the horses drink without a guard?"
Emily looked to the water's edge where all five horses drank. The men were busy readying the boat Cait had mentioned and some kind of contraption that she thought might be for the horses. It looked like a floating raft, but with openings for the horses to be harnessed to it, so they could swim behind the boat, but be kept afloat? At least that is what it seemed to her.