Heart of Stone by Rebecca Ruger

Chapter Two

Confused and frightened, Julianna stumbled rather without any plan. None save that she not be cut down herself in any feeble attempt to warn her bridegroom and his travelling party of the deceitful welcome awaiting him. Thoughts crowded and jumbled, her legs refused to move in such a way as to create any speed, and she was slapped in the face by a low-hanging pine bough as she ducked into the trees. She turned right and made for the north, from whence the MacKinnons had come—away from Kinclaven, where it seemed her stepfather had just tried to kill her. Mayhap she ought not have taunted them, flinging her arms wide, daring them to aim at her. The panic inside her head and heart, revealed as thunderous beating drums within, did not overwhelm all the noise of what remained of the attack. She heard more than one grunt, wincing even as she ran away from it, imagining that someone had been struck.

Julianna went deep within the pines, not wanting to be detected by any man upon the Kinclaven wall. Honestly, she couldn’t be sure that at least one arrow had not been meant for her. She only ran. That was all she was capable of now. She couldn’t think or process or yet mourn this tragedy. She felt nothing, even as she tripped twice and landed hard both times. Scooting herself back to her feet, she continued to run, never looking back.

So lost in her trauma was she that she wasn’t aware that she was being pursued. She heard no voice brutally demand that she stop, heard not the jangle of harnesses nor the heavy, swift thuds of hooves closing in on her, was blind and deaf until she was jerked backward and spun around, at the same time a dagger was thrust at her face.

And everything stopped, save for the merciless pounding of her heart.

“Dinna make a sound.”

She shook her head frantically, or it felt as if she had. In reality, she moved her head barely at all, that her captor added in a dangerous voice, “If you scream for help, I’ll slit the throat of any who come running to your aid.”

Julianna nodded succinctly, letting him know she understood.

Oh, God.

The hand that held the knife dropped, but only fractionally.

The man was huge and sported a once perfectly pleated tartan of blue and gray and black, draped across a ridiculously broad shoulder, beneath a jaw as hard as stone and eyes as green and cold as the pine needles above him. The plaid was askew now, held at his chest by a large and costly brooch of silver, the letter M filling the circle; elsewhere, the plaid pulled and draped and hung messily.

Julianna whimpered and met those scorching green eyes. Her lips quivered but she could form no words.

“Your name?” This, clipped from a mouth that barely moved, through clenched teeth.

“Ju-Julianna.”

The frosty green eyes lightened before he turned ugly with his grand fury and the dagger inched near her again. It didn’t touch her, didn’t slice the skin of her quivering chin, but was close enough that the tip was invisible in her downward periphery. So much of his hatred was found in the turn of his lip, curled up with all the rage he felt just now.

She could not stave off the wince that came when he moved again. He did not run her through, but lowered his weapon and reached for her. Julianna went stiff and still as he latched a huge paw onto her upper arm and began to walk, dragging Julianna behind him with one hand while the other held his immense sword, aloft and ready.

“Aye, then. Come along, bride. You’ve not escaped your groom after all.”

***

HIS MIND WAS SETTLEDnow.

The events of an hour ago made sense, the initial confusion having been replaced by what Calum decided was a cold-blooded and duplicitous assault on the MacKinnons. It hadn’t been accidental. It hadn’t been a mishap, laid at the door of panic. No, Angus Faucht hadn’t mistaken he and his men as invaders; he’d planned this for some time, had lain in wait, had used his own daughter as bait.

Riding at the fore of what remained of his unit, Calum’s lips curled yet again.

Julianna.

Calum’s intended bride.

He resisted the urge to turn and favor her once again with another dark look promising great retribution for Faucht’s crime. He’d done so several times already, had forced his unyielding glare upon her, had watched as she shrank before Tomag, with whom she rode, her hands tied to the pommel. Her slim shoulders had folded inward, and her colorless lips had trembled each time he’d glared at her. The last time he’d turned his simmering fury upon her had shown only the top of her shiny head, her chin lowered to her chest. Shafts of sunlight, poking past the trees through which they rode, had glinted off the painted ornaments adorning the upswept blonde tresses.

She would die of course.

She would have to. His uncle would insist upon it. Hell, Calum would insist upon it. Six men ambushed as if their lives had no more meaning than any bird in the sky. And the lad Rory gone, dead upon the summer grass, abandoned by necessity—for this alone, being unable to claim the lad’s body lest another lose his life as well, Calum would exact retribution. Such treachery was not to be borne.

Finn sidled up next to Calum. Calum kept his pace brisk, was in no mood to listen again to Finn’s previously given assertion that the lass had been trying to warn them. She was not, Calum knew. She’d been trying to distract them so that the ambush was completely unseen, unexpected. Unless she knew herself to be in no danger, no woman would have dared put herself in harm’s way simply to warn a complete stranger, even if it had been her intended husband. What manner of lass was Julianna Elliot that she had been party to this treachery? The deceptive and dangerous sort, he concluded, understanding that in all likelihood he eluded a gruesome fate by not taking her to wife.

“Aye now,” Finn said, loud enough to be heard over the thundering hooves.

Calum wouldn’t let him speak. “It makes no difference what her role was. She is daughter by marriage to Faucht. And the MacKinnons will be avenged.”

“Jesu, lad. You’d mark an innocent—”

“Aye! I would!” Calum barked hotly. “Just as they marked all of us! Marked Rory!”

“Now ye listen here,” Finn kept up, his tone increasing in both volume and irritation. “That wild-eye look of horror on her face was no’ invented for the moment—”

Abruptly, Calum reached his long arm across the bare space between them, grabbing onto his captain’s plaid and tunic, which quieted Finn. He pulled Finn closer across the open space between their large steeds and ground out, “I dinna want to hear one more argument in her favor, do you understand me?”

In response, Finn snarled back at Calum and shook himself free, pushing hard at Calum’s grip until it loosened. He mumbled something unintelligible as he slowed his horse that he no longer rode side by side with Calum.

Calum’s scowl remained as he played again in his mind the wild scene that had been their near-arrival at Kinclaven. It had struck him as odd initially, the lack of welcome, but then he’d considered it more inhospitable than suspicious. Nothing else had screamed at him that something was afoot until the lass had shown herself, had begun to run toward him. Wild-eye look of horror? He thought not. There wasn’t any way that Finn could have surmised as much, being at the same distance as Calum had been, which was too far to have noticed any expression upon her face. In hindsight, he’d concluded that spreading her arms wide had been some grand gesture to announce her presence to the wall, and whatever words she’d hollered up to them had been the signal to begin firing, which they had. Calum couldn’t account for why she might have run toward them and not back to the keep, but then who was he to decipher the unknowns of a madwoman’s mind?

Calum twisted his mouth again, his fury yet unrelenting for the lack of suitable answers to so many questions. Likely, his anger would not be assuaged until vengeance was his.

Until she was brought to justice at Caerhayes.

Until she was dead.

***

THEY DIDN’T STOP MOVINGuntil many miles and many hours separated Julianna and the MacKinnons from Kinclaven. Julianna knew nothing of their destination but that they travelled north. Her shock and anger had given way to numbness. She thought she might have succumbed to exhaustion at some point, had slept as she sat, before another mountain of a man who’d spared her no words nor perhaps any thought. Save that she took up space on his steed, and that he was forced to encircle her in his arms that he was able to manage the reins, he acknowledged her presence not at all.

For the life of her, she could not reconcile in her head the utter chaos and sheer shock over what had transpired—what her own stepfather had perpetrated. With so implausible a motive, he’d tried to snuff out the lives of people who’d done no harm to him, had not threatened him in the least, had indeed come at his behest. Julianna was still traumatized to the point of incoherency about the entire horrific event.

The lone thing that managed to pierce her tortured mind was the steely-eyed looks of the man who had discovered her and taken her away from her home. Earlier, when they’d met what remained of the MacKinnon men, the angry one had swung her around in front of him and had shoved her unceremoniously at the one with whom she now shared a horse. He’d said only, “Dinna let her go anywhere.”

He—the angriest one, she’d been forced to amend at the time as she’d sent her terrified gaze around the circle of stunned and seething men glaring at her—had gained the saddle of a large destrier, whose coat was as black as his master’s crop of unruly hair. He’d led them off, away from Kinclaven and the carnage.

No attention had been given to the wounded men immediately, as this party was eager to be moving away from Kinclaven, but Julianna knew sorrow each time her gaze happened upon either of the arrows, still encased in the flesh it had struck. One man had taken an arrow to his arm, another to his thigh. She’d heard that man exclaim to another, “Went straight through, pinning me to the horse just now.”

“Dinna poke at it now, Booth. Will only bleed out. Wait until we stop.”

Since that leave-taking, the angriest one who had found her and stolen her had spun around several times in his saddle. He hadn’t spoken to anyone when he’d turned, hadn’t looked beyond these men to be certain they were not being followed. Indeed, there seemed to be no other purpose to his pivoting in his saddle than to subject Julianna to his lethal and ferocious gaze. After the third or fourth time, she’d bowed her head, unable to withstand the promise of retribution she found within his cold eyes.

It wasn’t until they were about an hour into their hard ride that Julianna realized she’d not given one ounce of protest at being taken.

Fleetingly, she wondered and then decided with some pitiful abhorrence that she might well surmise that the angriest one was her own betrothed. From the few harsh words he’d spoken to her to the way he led the party, he must be the MacKinnon himself. The wretchedness that had come with this insight came as well with the as-yet-unasked question of why he’d bothered to bring her with them. Why hadn’t he left her at Kinclaven with only the evident disgust he’d thrust at her? Or, more curious, why hadn’t he killed her in that moment? Surely, he’d deduced that Angus Faucht was the only plausible person who might have attacked them; certainly, if he were her bridegroom, he’d have recognized her name. What had stayed his hand?

Late in the afternoon, she was pulled from her jumbled reverie when they finally stopped.

The MacKinnons gathered just at the edge of a narrow and glistening creek, keeping to a sprawling thicket of rowan trees, rock, and coarse grass on the south side. The one with whom she’d ridden slid off the saddle behind her. Julianna wasn’t sure what she might be expected to do but quickly decided it didn’t matter as her wrists were securely tied to the pommel. With listless eyes, she watched as one man collected the steeds, two at a time, hitching them together with a lead rope; the lad with whom she’d shared a mount, who was possessed of a mop of bright red hair and pale eyebrows, dragged his boot repeatedly over the grass to clear a round section of ground but then did nothing to it but walked away; the two wounded men sat upon a fallen trunk of a tree while a third man began to address their injuries, leaving Julianna to understand they were stopping for an extended period of time, perhaps all night.

The man securing the mounts came to her then, tilting his face up at her. He directed no outright fury at her, though his middle-aged face indeed portrayed a grim countenance. Without a word, he began to unravel the tight knot that bound her wrists, his cracked and calloused fingers making quick time of the ropes. When her hands were freed, he stepped back and flicked his fingers at her that she understood she was to dismount. Unsure how she might accomplish that from so great a distance atop this mammoth animal, Julianna hesitated. However, before she was allowed even a moment to consider how she would find herself on the ground but not face first, the man pinched his mouth and stepped forward. Without ceremony, he set his hands on her waist and whisked her off the horse.

“Oh,” she said, startled, as she was set onto the ground. “Thank you.”

Ignoring her, he then took the reins and led that horse away as well.

Julianna stood, twisting her hands in front of her, nervous, frightened. The red-haired youth returned, tossing twigs and peat into the bare circle he’d made in the ground. He spared a glance at Julianna, skinnying his eyes at her, before ambling away again. Another man appeared, his hands busy at his breeches that Julianna was sure he’d just relieved himself. He, too, sent a scant glance at her, his dark eyes narrowed with curiosity, it seemed, before sitting himself near that cleared circle, his back to her, and pulling a worn leather bag into his lap.

The angriest one showed himself and Julianna’s pulse quickened with trepidation. He paid her no attention though but plucked one of the saddlebags from the ground and retrieved a leather wrapped flask from within. He tossed back a long drag of its contents and when he lowered the flask, his gaze did rest on her.

Julianna swallowed and forced herself to take a step forward. She must speak to him. He must understand that she had no idea of the gruesome attacked planned. She’d taken but one shaky step forward when the dark slashes of his brows descended, bringing her to a frightened halt.

Across the space of the twenty or so feet that separated them, Julianna dared to speak. “I want you to know I did not—”

The twisting of his mouth and more faces turned her way quieted her. To her great mortification, hopeless tears welled once again. She lifted a hand beseechingly. “I—I am sorry....” He was unmoved, unconvinced, she could well see. Letting her hand drop, she considered what she might say to convince them, if anything. Her shoulders slumped when she failed to imagine any words that might find willing ears just now. Feeling naught but despair, she stood awkwardly, her gaze moved to the ground now, not sure what she should or could do.

Movement in front of her raised her eyes again and she couldn’t help herself but began to back up as the angriest one strode toward her, his green gaze fixed and harsh.

Panicked as he stalked her, Julianna blurted, “I’m sorry. I only learned of the—”

She stopped, her breath lost to fright as his hand once again clamped down on her arm.

And now I will die.

He moved beyond her, turning her around, pulling her after him.

“Oh, please,” she begged, trying to wrench his fingers away from her arm. “You must believe me.”

After several strides, he turned so swiftly she was brought up against his chest, crashed against him that she was unable to stem the severity of her grimace for making such contact with him. He squeezed his fingers tighter around her arm, which brought her eyes to his. Lowering his head, he put his face very close to hers. “Dinna speak. No one will believe a word you say.”

Julianna clamped her mouth and held her breath. The dangerously low and brutal tone he’d employed sent a knot of terror coursing through her belly that she whimpered.

He was right to be angry. Of course, he was. But sweet Lord, he was terrifying, for the soulless depths of his eyes.

He moved again, turned and yanked her along until he came to an ancient and wide rowan. Without preamble he forced her back against the rough bark, knocking the air out of her once again. A flash of rope passed by her as he began to wrap the length of it around her. He was a large man, tall and fit, but the tree owned greater girth than him and he was compelled to press himself against her to find the rope passed around the far side of the trunk. Julianna squeezed her eyes shut while his shoulder pressed into hers, his chest laid across her breasts. She kept her eyes closed while he wound the rope again and again around the tree, holding Julianna tightly, kept them closed as well when he straightened away from her and employed the remainder of the rope to bind her hands together. He touched her again, folding her elbows upward and finished his task, tying her bound hands to the rope that circled her chest. This drew a sharp breath from her, when he gave one last cinch of the entire contraption, tightening it where her hands were now imprisoned at her midsection. He’d stopped moving but Julianna refused now to open her eyes. She lifted her chin and willed herself to stop trembling and stayed that way until she sensed him stepping away from her. Still, she waited several more minutes before she opened her eyes and released a tortured breath.

She stood—was caged!—a good distance inside the meager strand of trees, while the MacKinnons made their fire and gathered around, between Julianna and the stream. All were visible to her, as she was to them, the path from her to them straight and clear. There were four now sat around the small, growing fire. None spared her a glance or thought, it seemed. Immobilized as she was, she was left with little choice but to watch them, as she faced them directly.

They spoke little, and then a fifth man joined them, taking up a position with his back to Julianna.

The angriest one was nowhere to be found.

An hour passed. Julianna’s fear reached new heights, left with nothing to do but allow her own brain to torment her with so many scenarios of what her short future might hold. At one point, a flock of starlings took flight, compelled from their roost inside the tall grass at the far side of the creek. Julianna watched listlessly as the birds shape-shifted and undulated across the sky, high and then low, here and then there until they disappeared completely, roosting again inside the heath, this time further away.

Beyond that, a trio of hills rose to meet the setting sun. The gray and brown-tipped peaks clashed with the purple and orange of the sky. Julianna wondered if at this time tomorrow, she would be living yet to see another sunset.

She became alert when one of the MacKinnons stood and began walking her way. Stiffening, her breathing came rapidly as the man neared. He was older than the others, so far as she could tell, his long face wizened with age, long lines creasing both his cheeks and his forehead. His eyes were light blue and remarkably clear. Possibly, he was as tall as the angriest one, though he could not lay claim to the breadth of that one’s shoulders. He walked stiffly, one leg arching outward with each of his steps, giving evidence of a long-ago injury that had never healed quite right.

Before he’d come within a dozen feet of her, and while her heart raced more, he lifted his hand to extend his flask. With no small amount of relief, Julianna made to lift her hand to accept his offer but was prevented from doing so by the ropes clasping her so tightly to the tree.

The man made a face, half-grin, half-grimace and stopped in front of her, lifting the uncorked flask to her lips.

“Warm ale is all we have,” he said, his voice scratchy but unafflicted by animosity.

Julianna tipped her head and drank greedily, unaware until this moment how parched she was, how fear had dried her throat. Closing her eyes, she drank sloppily, the ale spilling down her chin and neck. She nodded and lowered her face, indicating she was done, just as the flask was ripped away from her.

“Goddamn it—” the man cursed.

“Dinna be feeding her!”

The angriest one had returned.

The older man scowled at the other and bent to fetch his flask, which had been slapped out of his hand.

“She gets nothing—deserves nothing!”

“Bluidy hell, Calum,” was argued when the older man straightened again. He stood eye to eye with her betrothed. “You canna starve the poor thing.”

Julianna was treated to only Calum MacKinnon’s profile as he faced the other man but did not miss his dark brows rising into his forehead.

“Poor thing? Poor—” he blustered. “She’s no innocent lass, Finn! And dinna waste your ale on her. She’s bound to die.”

The man called Finn raised himself to his full height. His not-unpleasant face hardened markedly. “That’s no’ on you to decide. And it’s no’ on you to tell me what I might be doing with me own ale. Son of a bitch, Calum! Git yer head out yer arse. When did we start murdering innocents—”

Calum MacKinnon stepped closer to Finn and put his finger in his face. “They signed a contract, swore to a peaceful union and we’re greeted with a closed gate and murder.” He swung his arm wide, pointing toward the south. “We just left Rory dead on a field! There is no innocent Elliot or Faucht!”

Julianna gasped. Oh, no.

“We’ll see what yer uncle has to say,” Finn said.

“She will die!” The MacKinnon raged. “I will have vengeance!”

When Finn seemed to have no further argument to give, Calum MacKinnon turned to Julianna. She didn’t move, didn’t even blink. Mayhap she was numb. Mayhap this was naught but a nightmare. Maybe she’d exhausted all her fear already. She stood trapped while he closed in on her, bearing down on her until his face was once again very close to hers.

“Dinna flash those eyes again seeking aid. Next man to respond might only take and no’ give.” Crudely, and while his lip curled—to which Julianna was already so well accustomed—he let his hateful gaze skip around her face and down her neck. It stayed with some malicious purpose on the modest neckline and her small bosom. In the next moment, he lifted those cold green eyes to her and let her see the grand sneer that overcame him.

She might have known a sense of supremacy, that he’d just behaved so absurdly—it had been a long time since a male had made any derogatory mention of her sadly endowed chest—but that she’d just learned a man had died. Rory.

Nonetheless, Julianna tilted her chin upward and leveled him with a steady glare, pretending to be completely impervious to his nearness or his promise of death, pretending she was unaffected by the actual heated rage that wafted off of him and all but consumed her.

“I did not know of my stepfather’s plans.”

With a vocal and distasteful snarl, he spun on his heel and walked away.

When he was far enough gone, she allowed her breath to burst forth. It came with its own sound, a little sob of a noise while she exhaled through pursed lips.

Recalling that she was not yet alone, Julianna met Finn’s eye. He’d remained, had stood just to her left while the MacKinnon had tried to terrorize her. Finn appeared to be sizing her up, his eyes moving over her face while he chewed the inside of his cheek with some thought.

“I...I didn’t realize one of your men had died,” she managed after a moment, but barely, her voice cracking, her anguish overwhelming. “I don’t know how to...I am sorry.”

He said nothing, offered no appreciation for her condolence. Mayhap he didn’t believe it to be genuine. Filled with despair, she sighed and gave a weak thank you for the ale.

Finn gave a bare nod of his head, which Julianna thought was meant to convey to her that she needn’t worry—an impossibility at best, most unlikely in the least—before he, too, turned and walked back to the fire. She couldn’t be sure, though, and wondered if his nodding had indicated that he’d reached some decision about her.

As it was, she’d learned that she was indeed bound to die for what her stepfather had done. However, if she’d understood Finn properly, it seemed she would first be brought to the MacKinnon’s uncle and that the final decision would be his. She clung to the hope this offered, that someone other than her hard-eyed almost-husband would decide her fate. Presently, with so little information, she could not yet decide—given the choice—if she would have preferred marriage to Calum MacKinnon or death.

Somehow, she was not surprised when the six MacKinnons made their beds that night upon the ground, using their plaids as blankets, that she was ignored. Left as she was, tied to the tree, she supposed she was expected to sleep standing up.