The Highlander’s Rescued Maiden by Anna Campbell
Chapter 16
“Will, put me down,” Ellen snapped. More than surprised, she was furious. He needed to escape, but he didn’t need to cart her away, too, God rot him.
“No’ on your life, my darling.” At last, he started moving with the speed the situation warranted. “You’re coming with me.”
She knew he wouldn’t drop her. Even so, the ground below her moved at a dizzying rate, as he ran down the rocky slope toward the cove where his boat waited. She started to punch his back and kick. He grunted with discomfort and tightened his grip on her rump.
“Stop that, or you’ll ruin our hopes of having children. Which would be an awfu’ pity, when you’ll make the bonniest mother in Scotland.”
The laughter in his voice was the last straw. A growl exploded from deep in her throat. She redoubled her struggles, but neither her wriggling nor her curses made him pause. He turned his strength against her in a way he never had before.
“Let me go, ye great, hulking bully.” In this position, talking was uncomfortable, but she was so het up, she managed it.
“No.” Although he negotiated a steep hillside while he carried her, he didn’t sound even a wee bit winded.
She gasped for air to fuel her tirade. “I’ll never forgive ye for this.”
His arm curved under her buttocks, using her skirt to restrict her kicking. She was sickly aware that her feeble fists made little impression on that powerful back. To think, she’d once gloried in his manly vigor. She’d had no idea what trouble she was getting into.
“I’m no’ leaving you on this island to fade away. Or even worse, to fall prey to some unprincipled bastard who shows up with an army.”
“Why should that be any worse than…what you’re doing?” she asked in a choked voice, as angry, frightened tears rose. She tried closing her eyes, but that just made her nauseous.
“Don’t be a silly widgeon, Ellen.” They were nearly at the cove. “Of course it’s better.”
“Why? Because that paragon…Will Mackinnon does the kidnapping and no’ some…unwashed ruffian?” Every time his feet hit the ground, he knocked the breath out of her, so her harangue emerged in jerky fragments.
Her biting sarcasm had no effect. Instead, the scoundrel had the temerity to chuckle. “Och, go on with ye, lassie. You ken in your heart you want to come with me.”
Anger lent her a burst of energy. “Now ye can read my mind? Goodness me, you’re a man among millions. And to think ye set your sights on poor little me.”
Another short laugh. “By my faith, you’ve got a tongue on ye. When we’re married, I’ll have to watch my step.”
“Plague take you, this isnae a joke, Will,” she said in a cold tone. “If ye steal me away against…my wishes, you’re as great a villain as any…of the men who came here before you.”
“You dinnae believe that.” His boots squeaked across damp white sand. She lay panting over his shoulder. So frustrating that all her struggles had got her precisely nowhere. But that didn’t mean she gave up the fight. Far from it.
“Once more, you’re able to read…my thoughts. Ye should go on…the stage. You’d make a fortune.”
He responded with more of that annoying equanimity. “I can read your thoughts. Sometimes anyway. Ye can read mine, or guess at them. It’s part of our closeness.”
If she’d been standing upright and staring into his eyes, what he said might have made her melt. Slung across his shoulder like a sack of barley, she wasn’t quite so ready to relent. “If I read your thoughts about disregarding my every wish, I’d have thrown ye out the day I saw you, my fine laddie.”
“Och, give it a rest, Ellen.” Will stopped beside the boat. It was pulled high up on the beach and stashed under a projecting shelf of rock, out of reach of the tide. “You’re no’ really that angry with me.”
“There you’re wrong, blast ye.” Speech was becoming more difficult, with her stomach crushed against one sinewy shoulder. “I wish I had my pistol. I should have…followed my first impulse and shot…ye.”
Will’s long-suffering sigh only made her itch to clout him again. “Ye dinnae want to shoot me. We both know that. We also both know that ye want to come with me, and cowardice is all that’s stopping you.”
He accused her of being afraid? The prancing poltroon. She wasn’t afraid of anything, including Will Mackinnon. “How dare you, ye…”
That calm, beautiful baritone spoke over her. “You’re in love with me and cannae face the thought of a separation. But you’ve been stuck on this island so long on your own, you’ve convinced yourself that you’re unfit for the world outside Bortha.”
In love with him? He made a lot of cocksure claims, the devil. Rage rose so hard and high, she saw nothing but red. “Why, ye arrogant, misbegotten, vainglorious… Oof!”
With a bump, he set her on the wooden seat spanning the stern. Her feet splashed into the water in the bottom of the boat.
Again he spoke over her spluttering tirade. “Which is an altogether grand state of affairs, because I’m so in love with you that I cannae see straight.”
“Nothing ye can do would…” Ellen stopped as what he’d said penetrated the fog of temper. “What did ye say?”
He smiled at her the way he’d smiled at her last night, as if he’d never beheld anything so splendid. “I said I love you.”
Her answer emerged immediate and irrefutable. “You cannae.”
Shaking his head, he replied with matching certainty. “Of course I can. But perhaps we should delay this argument until we’re well away from your father’s guards.”
A reminder that right now Ellen had more to worry about than her aching heart. She raised shaking hands to her lips. “Ye have to go, Will.”
“I do.” He set the satchel beside her on the seat. “The question is – are ye coming with me?”
“Do I get a choice?”
“Of course ye do.”
“Then why all the dramatics? Why hoist me around and haul me down here to get my feet wet?”
He glanced at the sloshing bilgewater. “Sorry about that.”
“That’s nae answer.” She glanced around the debris-strewn beach and the rough sea. The sun might shine, but the recent stormy days had left their mark. Not least on her soul.
“You wouldnae listen to me up at the tower.”
Her arms folded across her bosom and she glared at him, although it was hard to maintain her outrage. He’d spiked her guns the moment he told her he loved her, even if she didn’t yet concede the fight. “Who says I’m listening to ye now?”
“Och, you’re listening, all right. What do ye say?”
The reality of what he’d said gradually seeped in, chasing away her anger, much as she wanted to cling to it as her only defense. Will must have noticed a softening in her tone, because the stiffness drained from his tall body. His hands spread to indicate that he’d been helpless to stop his heart opening to her.
How could she quarrel with that? Hadn’t it been the same for her, right from the start? She wasn’t quite ready to surrender, though. She needed to be sure.
One thing kept niggling. “You love me…”
Could this exceptional man love her? She thought back over their days together and remembered his care and consideration. And his passion. And how despite what it had cost him to hold back, she remained a virgin.
“How could I do anything else but fall in love with ye?”
“Because I’m the princess in the tower, waiting for her white knight to save her?”
His laugh was dismissive. “Don’t be daft. I’ve never been a man to lose his heart to a legend. I lost my heart to a flesh and blood woman who makes me laugh and long and desire. I’ve fallen in love with ye, Ellen Cameron.”
Somewhere in her essentially honest soul, she admitted that Will was right and she was afraid. What she was most afraid of was that he’d stop looking at her the way he was looking at her now. What if he ended up repenting that he’d invited a broken creature to share his life?
“I limp,” she said in a flat attitude.
He shrugged. “Aye, ye do. Does that mean you’re unworthy of happiness? Surely no’.”
She twined her hands together and foolish tears misted her vision. “I’m reluctant to be a burden to ye.”
His amusement faded, replaced by a serious expression she’d never seen before. “You’re no burden. You’re a gift from heaven.” He paused, but she was too overcome to answer. He went on. “I ken you’re scared of what may happen to ye if you leave Bortha, and your pride smarts at the idea of people pitying your lameness. But I’m asking ye to conquer both fear and pride and come with me now. Because if you dinnae come, you’ll break my heart. I love you, Ellen. I’ve never said that to another woman. Dinnae make me live without you. I couldnae bear it.”
She blinked to clear the moisture from her eyes, as she strove to tell herself that she was the wrong woman for Will. That she was suited for life nowhere except Bortha. That she refused to put herself and her infirmity on show again.
But none of it mattered because of three words.
I love you.
And she, heaven help her, loved him. Would the pain of living without him be worse than facing the world’s criticism?
What a muttonhead she was. Of course it wouldn’t.
She swallowed and stared into Will’s beloved face. A face that she’d live with all her life, not struggle to remember as she grew old and bitter.
“Ellen?” Her delay in answering seemed to dent his self-confidence.
“I’ll come with ye, Will.”
Jubilation blazed in his eyes, turned them gold. “My love…”
“Will, we have to go.” She raised a hand to stop him reaching for her. “There’s nae time for kisses.”
Purpose lit his expression, but to her surprise, instead of pushing the boat into the water, he turned to run back toward the tower.
“Will?” she called out in dismay and confusion. What on earth was he up to?
“I’ll only be a minute. Wait there and dinnae move.” He stopped then and faced her. “Actually do move. Start bailing.”
She growled again, in the grip of too much emotion to make sense of what happened. He loved her. She was mighty grateful about that. But if this delay meant her father’s men caught them, she’d be livid with him forever.
She was bailing like a mad thing and trying to come to terms with the way her life had changed in mere days when Will came bounding down to the beach again. It took her a few seconds to understand what he held in his arms. Once she did, her heart turned over in her breast. The tears she’d only just conquered welled up again.
“They’re my notebooks,” she said in wonder, as he shoved the pile of leather-bound volumes at her. She dropped the bailer and caught them before they could tumble into the water.
He began to push the boat down the sloping beach. “Of course. We cannae leave those behind.”
And Ellen, despite the danger, found herself laughing. “You fool. I love ye.”
He glanced up with a dazzling smile as he waded through the waves. “Damn it, you’d better. There’s a storage locker in the prow. If you put them in there, they’ll stay safe and dry, whatever the weather.”
With a vigorous leap, he joined her in the boat and set to rowing away from Bortha.
