The Niece of His Highland Enemy by Alisa Adams
14
Naturally, Fergus’s chief instinct was to ride toward the shore in the hope that the ship might still be there to carry him homeward.
However, the extent of Ronald Campbell’s machinations gave him pause in that regard.
A man as cunning and manipulative as that, he reasoned, would almost certainly have arranged for some of his men to be positioned along the paths that led there. He would have planned contingencies in case Fergus succeeded in escape. The rotten old spider spun webs of his own, and they appeared to be intricate ones indeed.
Instead, Fergus rode toward a wooded area he spied a short distance from the castle. The forest looked thick and forbidding, but he hoped that the branches and brambles might hold back the guards and their horses for a while.
Long enough, at least, for him to question Moire.
Fergus coaxed his horse into a small clearing and dismounted, helping Moire down. She seemed fearful of accepting his aid, as though she were worried that he had a dagger up his sleeve.
“Please, I beg you, do not harm me,” she said breathlessly, her eyes wide. “I understand that you must feel you have every reason to, and perhaps you are right… but I was not lying when I told you of my siblings, and I wish to live long enough to see all of them one last time.”
“I have no desire to hurt you,” Fergus answered roughly, “and I will not. But in return, you must be truthful with me from this point forward. Do we understand each other?”
Moire nodded slowly.
“I wish to believe I may take you at your word,” he said. “I sense that you have tried to warn me against some great danger, even as you led me toward it.”
“I have indeed,” she assured him. “Not only that, but the attraction between us…that is, it started as part of the plan, but it turned out to be quite genuine on my part. I do feel we are fated to have met, Fergus, even if it was under such vile circumstances as these.”
“That, alas, is far more difficult for me to believe.” Fergus did want to believe her, though he hated himself for that, wishing he could approach this situation dispassionately instead. He loathed that he had been taken in by her lovely face, her soft curves, and her alluring manner -- and more than that, he loathed knowing that he still could be taken in by these things, despite the fact that she had previously deceived him.
It made him feel weak, helpless, desperate and irresponsible, and pitiable—though no more so, perhaps, than any other man who had ever fallen in love with the wrong woman.
Moire reached out to him with her pale, thin hand. “I hope I can find a way to regain your faith in me!”
Fergus forced himself to pull away from her, even though he longed for her touch. “We shall see about that. For now, you must tell me what has transpired here.”
Moire took a deep breath, steeling herself. When she spoke, at last, she folded her hands over her chest and closed her eyes, unable to meet his gaze. “Our meeting was not just a simple circumstance. It was planned by my uncle that I might be used as bait for him to lure and trap you.”
Fergus reeled as though he had been struck. “How can that be?! Do you mean to tell me that you willingly allowed yourself to be almost drowned to death just to attract my attention?”
“Not quite.” Moire choked back a sob, her lower lip quivering. “We… had spoken of several situations in which I might seem to be in peril, that you might “save” me. We had not settled upon one, or at least, I did not believe we had. Apparently, my uncle had chosen to have me dragged to the shore and nearly drowned and did not feel it was prudent to share that plan with me beforehand.” She gritted her teeth, looking every bit as wounded and betrayed as Fergus felt.
“Then why in heaven’s name did you continue to go through with the ruse if it almost killed you?!” Fergus demanded. “The man had almost murdered you! Why would you continue this charade on his behalf?”
“Because I had to!” Tears glistened in Moire’s eyes. “You must understand, Fergus, I had no choice, none at all! My uncle has kept my younger siblings imprisoned with the Sinclairs since he separated us all those years ago! They are kept in hard labor there. As I am here, and as Dand was before he left—and we are all threatened with vile cruelties if we disobeyed him! He was incensed when Dand struck out on his own. He starved, beat, and punished me for weeks as a result! But he has promised us that if we follow his orders and refrain from misbehaving, he will bring the rest of us together again and give us our freedom.”
“Was that why he returned Freya to you, then?” Fergus guessed. “Because you had managed to deceive me so thoroughly thus far, according to his fiendish plan?”
Moire nodded, ashamed. “Aye. Reuniting with Freya was my reward.”
“And those words she spoke about ‘serving her clan’...”
“Someone forced her to rehearse those sentiments,” she admitted. “My uncle, no doubt. But her presence, while a blessing, was meant as a clear warning to me as well: I could either continue to show him loyalty or betray him and see some grievous harm befall my beloved sister.”
“This makes sense, to be sure,” Fergus said, “but it does not answer the most central question: Why has Ronald Campbell become an enemy of my clan? What started all of this? Clearly, he has been spinning these complex webs of deception since long before he joined the Sinclairs in combat against us.”
Moire hung her head, ashamed. “He wants the Isle of Skye for himself. He knew that the best way to provoke you into a fight would be to seize your territories in the Highlands. So he used the Sinclairs as his proxies, knowing that you would commit the bare minimum of your forces to an attack against them. He’d already had dealings with them in the past. They were the ones who had been keeping my siblings prisoners.”
“But your sister told me that she was kept at the McGregor manor!” Fergus said angrily.
“She lied to you, Fergus. I suppose under the order of my uncle, but she lied to you. I’m sorry,” Moire said without looking at him.
“And then, all your uncle had to do was commit the bare minimum of his forces,” Fergus mused bitterly, “and thus eradicate a third of my soldiers. From there, he could easily fight us and bleed us until we come to him with our tails between our legs and allow him to assume control over our clan and all its holdings. My God, how could he have thought so far ahead? How could he have planned it all so bloody meticulously?”
“Because he has had an exceedingly long time to scheme it all,” she informed him. “To invent any number of devious plots to implement should the original one not go precisely as planned. I promise you, Laird Fergus, you have never in your life encountered a more ruthless or evil foe than my uncle.”
“Aye, no doubt you are right,” Fergus answered through clenched teeth. “And you have been his assistant. You have played your part to utter perfection. You treated me like a puppet on a string, bobbing and jerking me this way and that until I was in the lair of my enemy and hardly knew up from down!”
“Please, Fergus!” she begged. “Forgive me! You must see that I was coerced, that I was helpless against my uncle’s cruelty! Take pity on me, won’t you? Do not hate me, as I hate myself enough for the both of us.”
“No, I highly doubt whether you do,” Fergus replied coldly.
And with that, he mounted the horse and abruptly rode off, leaving Moire weeping hopelessly in the thickets and underbrush of the dense forest, like a forlorn and abandoned princess in a fairy tale.
