Highlander’s Broken Love by Fiona Faris
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Iwanted to ask you something,” Elisabeth said, her hands fidgeting with the long sleeves of her dress.
“In you come then,” her father beckoned her further into the room.
Never having enjoyed a close relationship with her father, this conversation felt particularly strange to begin. He’d once made it clear she was not to ask too much about his business, and she had abided by his wish at the time. Now, she could no longer do that.
She closed the door behind her and moved around the study, walking through the dim candlelight as she reached the side of the table where he was staring at maps and charts. Her father was dressed particularly finely this evening, wearing an orange coat embroidered with silver thread and a bright white waistcoat beneath. She had to work hard not to wrinkle her nose in objection to the outfit.
Since she had returned home and discarded her torn dress, she had opted for clothes that were not very ostentatious at all. Every time she saw the expensive dresses in her wardrobe, she had been reminded of the poverty of those she had seen in the Buchanan Clan. It had just felt wrong to indulge in clothing so fine.
Instead, she had opted for a rather plain dress. Pale blue silk, it was cinched at the waist with small, flared sleeves around her elbows, but it had little embroidery and she had worn no jewelry with it.
“Speak, Elisabeth,” her father waved a hand at her. “Have you lost the power of your tongue?” he asked with a smile, as though attempting a jest. She couldn’t smile in response, for she was still thinking of Kenny’s words and the scars across Ian’s back.
“Is it true you govern a prison?” she asked. To her surprise, her father’s face didn’t even flinch. Beneath the goatee and spindly moustache, his face remained impassive.
“It is,” he confirmed. “Objectionable place, but such things are necessary.”
“For who?” she asked.
“The prisoners of course,” he laughed as he returned his attention to the table in front of him. “Is that all you came to ask?”
“No,” she rounded the table, standing opposite him in the effort to capture his attention. He had pale hazel eyes unlike her blue ones that she had inherited from her mother. Those hazel eyes looked back at her now, with a little puzzlement.
“Then speak up, Elisabeth. There are things I need to attend to. I cannot afford to waste time.”
“Who do you keep in these prisons?” she asked, lifting her chin high.
“That is no business of yours,” he said dismissively.
“I’m making it my business; I wish to know,” she said, watching as her father recoiled. Slowly, he folded up one of the charts in front of him and stared back at her.
“There was a time when you never would have been so outspoken,” he said, his voice quiet and full of warning. “I am your father, and you will show me respect, Elisabeth.”
“Showing you disrespect does not concern me, father, when there are greater things at stake,” she answered honestly. A few days ago, she had been kept in a cage, with the threat of mutilation, rape and death hanging over her. She knew what real fear was now. She was hardly going to be afraid of something so minor as disrespecting her father and the anger it could incur. “Who do you keep as prisoners?”
“It hardly concerns you, but, since you want to know, very well, I will tell you,” he said, leaning forward with his hands on the table between them. “Thieves, common criminals, low lives.”
“Heirs to Scottish lairdships?” she asked, watching as her father’s eyes widened.
“You have been talking with your captors,” he said, shaking his head. “I hope they have not warped your mind.”
“I feel as though I am seeing clearly for the first time,” she didn’t back down, despite the warning in her father’s eyes. “I have one final question. Did you torture these men?”
Her father said nothing; he just opened another chart on the table in front of him.
“Father,” she pleaded, leaning across the table and drawing the chart away, forcing him to look up at her. “Did you torture them?” she whispered, almost afraid of hearing the answer.
“Why should I deny something that was necessary?” he asked before flipping the chart back in front of him and returning his attention to it.
Elisabeth was stunned and felt her lips part in surprise.
“You don’t deny it?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. “You are not even ashamed of it?”
“Pain is necessary,” he said quickly, the words sharp. “I was dealing with our enemies.”
“Your enemy?” she repeated, horror stricken as she stumbled back from the table. “I hear you attacked the Buchanan Clan unprovoked.”
“The Scottish and English have always been enemies. It is the way of the world.”
“It doesn’t have to be!” Elisabeth found her voice and nearly shouted the words. He slapped one of the maps on the table, the sound echoing across the room.
“How dare you question my decisions?” he barked the words at her. “I am a General in his Majesty’s army. I will not be challenged, least of all by a woman, and definitely not by my own daughter.”
“Why? Because I should obey you?” she snapped, walking around the table, close to him. “Just because you are a man, my father, or even a General in the military, that does not make your opinion right. You just admitted to torturing innocent people. People that never did you any wrong. How could you do such – ah!”
Elisabeth had been unprepared for it. The slap came suddenly, her father’s hand lifted in the dim candlelight and was unnoticed until it struck her cheek. She covered the cheek and stumbled back, staring at her father wide-eyed in amazement. He stared, his nostrils flaring as he breathed heavily.
“Do not say another word to me, child,” he said, treating her as though she were nothing more than a toddler. “Go to your chamber.”
She thought about arguing again, but she didn’t need to. She had her answers, and it left her feeling shame and anger at her father. He had not only imprisoned Ian and other innocents like him, but he had tortured them, too. He was responsible for all those scars on Ian’s back and his broken bones.
I can never forgive my father for that.
She turned to walk away when her eyes landed on the charts, for the first-time taking notice of just what part of Scotland they showed. They were of the Buchanan Clan.
“What is this?” she asked, picking up one of the maps as she lowered her hand from her cheek. He snatched the map out of her grasp.
“Revenge,” he said the word simply and slapped the paper back down on the table.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked, leaning on the table for support. She watched as he placed little wooden tokens on the map, showing where his armies were going to go. They were planning to encircle the Buchanan camp by the ruined castle. “No…” she shook her head, frantically. “You cannot attack them.”
“They abducted you. They took my daughter, and they thought nothing would come of it?” he said, with such anger that his cheeks were red and his hands were shaking with it, the lace cuffs around his wrists trembling with that fury. “They were fools for thinking so.”
“But I told you,” she said, stepping closer to her father again, “Laird Grier was the one who took me. He is no longer in charge. Laird Ian is in charge, and he saved me. Why do you not believe me?” She had explained everything to her father the evening she had arrived back. He had seemed to believe her at the time, but now it was apparent that he had been trying to mollify and soothe her rather than engage in the conversation. She half wondered if he’d paid any attention at all to what she’d said.
“Because they have warped your mind, manipulated you,” her father snapped the words. “I have spoken with Laird Grier.”
“Grier is lying to you,” she said with feeling, but he talked over her.
“We made a deal, and he has told me of Laird Ian’s greed and how he took you in revenge for his imprisonment. Grier has gone to kill Ian himself; whether he succeeds or fails is not my business. Ian and his people will pay for taking you. The clan will be brought to the ground so that none of them can come for us again.”
“No!” Elisabeth reached out for her father’s arm, pulling on it in a desperate pleading action. He tried to shake her off, but she wouldn’t let him and clung tighter. “Listen to me, father. Do not do this. Do not take revenge when there is none that needs to be taken. Laird Ian is a good man. His people are innocent. No good can come from you harming anyone in the Buchanan Clan.”
“I am not doing this for you,” he said, pushing her away. She stumbled and collided with the table, nearly knocking it flying. “If I let a Scottish laird take my daughter, then how does that look? Hmm?” her father asked wildly, his face a perfect picture of fury with the sinews of muscle around his chin taut. “There has to be a consequence. The Buchanans will be made an example of. That way, no one will try to hurt me again.”
Elisabeth gripped the table behind her, reeling at her father’s words. It was clear now that he saw the attack on her merely as an attack on him. Though he cared whether she had been harmed, he didn’t actually care a great deal. He cared only in that he perceived her as belonging to him, and the fact that someone would try to harm something he considered his was all that mattered.
“You are going to condemn innocents to death and pain just because you are afraid someone will see you as weak?” she asked, matching her father’s loud volume with her own.
“No one will try anything again after this,” he said, gesturing down at the charts.
“Father, please, listen to me,” she begged. She had to make one last attempt, have one last chance at pleading with him to try and save all those people in the Buchanan Clan. She thought of Kenny, of Seona who had helped her, and finally, of Ian. The love that erupted in her chest just thinking of him made the desperation to plead with her father all the greater. “If you love me at all, father, you will not do this,” she said, reaching out toward him. He stepped out of her reach. “Please, father. For me. Do not harm this clan. Do not harm their people.”
For a minute, silence descended between them, and nothing was said at all. Eventually, he walked around her, heading for the maps on the table. He kept his gaze down as he answered her, not looking at her.
“I cannot do that, Elisabeth. They need to pay for the attack on me.”
She gave up arguing with him. It was clear that her father’s mind was full of a red mist when he thought of the Buchanan Clan. He was not going to stop, and he put his desire for revenge above his love of her, even supposing that he loved her at all. Right now, she felt little more to her father than an object in his house.
She felt the tears coming fast and ran from the room, not caring that she slammed the door behind her as she left. She ran through the castle in the darkness that had fallen, sprinting all the way until she reached her chamber.
Inside the room, there was just one candle lit beside a mirror. She hurried toward it, looking at her reflection. Across her cheek, there was a bright red mark from where her father had struck her. He had been wearing one of his rings when he slapped her, and there was a graze across her cheekbone from its impact, where a small amount of blood had escaped. She didn’t bother to dry it.
She turned away from the mirror and paced up and down the room a few times, her mind working quickly. At that moment, she didn’t care that Ian had rejected her. After discovering who her father was, she couldn’t blame him for it. The trauma and horror of what her father had done, ordering his floggings, must have been difficult to equate with how they made love in that priory church. What mattered more than that now was saving Ian and his people.
Elisabeth stopped and turned to the closed door. She knew she couldn’t get a message to them to warn them of the attack, not when the whole place was full of soldiers loyal to her father. Still, she had to warn Ian and the others of what was to come, and there was only one possible way to do that.
She had to go and tell them in person.
She looked down at her shoes. Seeing a pair of ridiculous court shoes on her feet, she flung them off and replaced them with more practical boots. Then she found a thick shawl from the back of a closet and threw it around her shoulders.
As soon as she was ready, she left the room. She didn’t bother taking the candle with her. She just tiptoed through the darkness, hurrying along corridors and through the shadows. Occasionally, she found soldiers patrolling, and she had to hide in alcoves, allowing them to pass before she continued on out of the house.
She didn’t even bother trying to get out the main entrance where two soldiers were keeping guard. Instead, she headed straight for the kitchen in the servants’ part of the house. Finding it empty with no sign of staff or soldiers, she slipped out of a back door.
Hurrying through the castle grounds and between the outbuildings, she could see across the grass that soldiers were camping out for the night, but they were on the far side of the lawn. It allowed her to get to the stable easily enough where she found the horses still nibbling hay or down for a night’s sleep. She found one horse still awake, its chestnut-colored hair shining in the moonlight, and began to saddle him up. It took some time, especially as she was moving slowly in the effort to not make too much noise and alert someone to her whereabouts.
Once saddled, she walked the horse out the back of the stable, and he went willingly, already having recognized the sure hand of an experienced horsewoman. Instead of crossing the lawn where the soldiers were gathered around tents and near fires, she headed straight for the trees where she and Kenny had arrived just a few days before.
Inside the tree line, she mounted the horse, struggling to remember the way.
“Let’s hope I can remember this,” she whispered to the horse as she urged the animal forward, kicking her heels into its sides. The horse at once set out into a fast gallop.
They rode for many hours, sometimes at great speed and other times at a trot or even a gentle walk, to ensure the horse did not tire too soon. Elisabeth had to retrace her path exactly in order to find her way back to the camp. This meant that they first came to the priory church. She made a point of not going inside, for she didn’t think she would be able to stand the sight of the altar stone where she and Ian had made love. Yet the sight of the church was a reassurance that she was heading in the right direction.
After that, she wove her way through trees and along a mountain pass, until in the moonlight she eventually saw the ruined castle in the distance, showing that Ian’s camp wasn’t far away. By the time she reached the edge of the camp itself, the sun was beginning to rise.
To her amazement, the foundations of buildings and structures were all around her. Timber houses were being built from the ground up to replace tents. It was only the very beginning, but clearly Ian was trying to restore his clan to its former glory.
Most people were still in bed when she arrived, but there was a face she recognized as he emerged from his tent. Laird Alex stepped around a fire where he had been warming his hands and walked toward her, his eyes visibly wide in the dawn light.
“Where’s Ian?” she asked him as she brought the horse to a stop in front of him. “There’s something he needs to know.”
