Highland Hearts 03 - Crimson Heart (20 page)

“You do not order the queen regent.” Henri slid his sword free again.

Searc felt his magic swirling in his gut. One crack in his wall, one slight nod toward letting it free, and the man would die with a single touch. “I don’t have time for ye,” he said low. “I must find her.” With that, Searc turned.

“Let him go,” he heard Marie say behind him. “My Highlander has passion,
non
? And passion makes the warrior.”

Searc slammed through the door. The shadows of the buildings in the bailey were growing long. Evening would soon fall. Where was she? How would he find her? He went to the front gate and questioned the guard, but the man had just come on duty and didn’t know if she’d left that way. This was getting him nowhere. If he were at home he’d already have the Munro warriors and possibly the Macbain warriors scouring the land for her. Here he was surrounded by strangers. Edinburgh was too big for him to search himself.

He scanned the bailey. A cart sat near the center. He strode to it, stepping up onto the thick hitch. “To arms!” His voice boomed out over the area. Guards turned to him, drawing their swords. “A woman has been taken and we must find her before she becomes the next victim of the Edinburgh murders.”

The men moved closer. “What woman?”

“Elena Munro, my wife.”

“The Englishwoman?” one asked with a barely hidden sneer and re-sheathed his sword.

Searc kept a tight rein on his temper. Losing it would not motivate these Lowlanders. Most hated the English as much as Highlanders and they didn’t know Elena at all. He saw Marie and Henri step silently from the great hall, standing in the background. The regent folded her arms before her, watching, not helping at all.

“Elena is wed to a Scot, so she is a Scot,” Searc countered but watched the wash of mutiny seep into the guards’ expressions. He jumped down and stepped before an older guard, one who had spoken with authority at the gate. “Do ye have a daughter?” Searc kept his voice low so the curious men had to come closer to hear.

“Aye,” the man answered, his brows low.

“He’s got three,” one of the other guards added. “Poor sot.”

Searc stared the old man in his hard eyes. “And what would ye do if ye found one of them taken?” He raised his voice louder. “Taken when there is a murderer stalking the lasses of Edinburgh.” He didn’t wait for an answer but looked at another guard.

“Ye have a wife, man?”

“Aye, as of a fortnight.” Two others slapped the newlywed man on the back.

“And what if ye returned home tonight to find yer dinner in an untended pot but yer lovely bride gone?” He held the man’s gaze until it darkened.

Searc looked at another. “And ye? A wife perhaps?”

“Aye with a babe on the way,” the man answered, his face already hardening as he knew what Searc would ask. “If she were gone I’d tear down every rock in this city to find her.”

Searc slapped a hand down on his shoulder, feeling the man’s conviction mixed with a twinge of fear and worry. “Aye.”

Searc leapt back onto the wagon and took in the whole audience of forty or so men. He let his voice carry. “There is a murderer in Edinburgh, stalking our wives, waiting for our daughters to run an errand or merely step out back for a breath of air.”

Men grumbled in the crowd, shifting their feet as their blood began to race. Searc watched the hardening of faces, the look of warriors before a battle. He sensed the air grow hot with their anger, the pounding of their hearts. These men didn’t know him or Elena, but they knew loss and how it felt. They knew that their own women could be next.

“This devil must be stopped!” Searc called. “And right now my lass is missing. If we find her, we may very well put an end to this devil before he finds yer own lass.”

“To arms!” the elderly guard yelled.

“To arms!” the others answered, raising their swords or fists in the air.

Aye!
Searc leapt off the cart and deftly split the group into four groups, one to stay behind and search the castle and grounds again, and the other three to search the city in three directions.

“She is wearing green and has red-gold colored hair.” Searc watched the groups run in their assigned directions.
And she’s the most beautiful lass alive.

Searc glanced at Marie and Henri, expecting outrage at his complete take-over of her guards. Instead the queen regent grinned, a scheming gleam in her eyes. He nodded to her and jogged toward the stable to find Dearg. As he neared the building he saw one of the guards step out from behind it, glancing around anxiously. He’d been one in the crowd but didn’t seem to be searching. Rather he seemed to be hiding.

When he saw Searc, he straightened immediately and strode away toward the gate. Searc acted as if he were continuing to the stable but slipped around the building and followed the guard instead. The man was guilty of something. He could tell just by observing him, but if he laid hands on him he’d be able to sense more.

The man jogged out of the gate, glancing back over his shoulder just once and hurried to the left. Searc crept around the corner of the gate house and saw the man step back into a closed doorway.

Searc watched him for several torturously long minutes.
Damn!
This wasn’t getting him any closer to finding Elena.
Bloody hell!
He stepped forward, intent on shaking answers out of the man, when the guard suddenly pushed out of the doorway toward another guard coming up the street riding a horse. The first man ran up to him, talking with large gestures, his arm going wide to indicate the whole town.

Searc strode forward before either one of them saw him.

The nervous one was talking. “It was her, wasn’t it? In green, red-gold hair and in green. Where—?”

The guard on the horse saw Searc and nearly trampled his friend as he swung the horse around. In a leap born of fury and desperation, Searc lunged for the rider, grabbing his torso from the back of the horse and yanking him to the cobbled street. The horse whinnied and pulled away while the floundering guard held tight to the reins.

“Bloody hell! Leave me be!”

Searc could sense the dark, cloying emotion of guilt leap through the man. “Where is she?” Searc’s magic reared within in him and he held the man, leveling him so he could stare into his wide eyes, shaking him out like a wrinkled coat at the shoulders. “Ye took her somewhere. Why? Where? Speak now!” Several of the guards still in the area came running, but none were foolish enough to intervene.

The older guard, the leader, came forward. “Clement, are ye involved with the killings of the lasses?”

The man’s eyes bugged out of his head. “What? Nay! I’ve nothing to do with those lasses!”

“Where is Elena?” Searc stared in his face, letting a bit of his magic push through the crack in his mental containment, enough for the man to see the unnatural glint in his eyes. Searc felt the man’s panic rise within him.

“Into t-t-town is all.” He swallowed hard, the bulge in his throat rising in his stretched neck.

“Where in town?” Searc pressed.

“Her cousin’s.” Clement’s gaze moved to the leader. “Lyngfield’s house. He but wanted to visit with her.”

The man was holding something back. Searc could feel it like the brush of a silent person in a dark room. “Take me there now.” He pushed the man ahead of him. “And if anything has happened to her—” he let his lips roll back in a wolf-like expression, “—ye are dead.”

…

How exactly was she supposed to drink anything with the thick cloth wedged between her teeth? Elena sat in the hard, wooden chair before the little square table set for three with rough, mismatched cups and wooden plates.

Roger Lyngfield poured a hot stream from a kettle into her cup. “Our guest will be here momentarily. I will remove the cloth if you promise not to scream again.” He stood tall, seemingly waiting for her answer. She just glared at him. The rough clout, had dragged her inside, bruised her wrists as he tied her to a chair, and forced the foul cloth into her mouth. A shiver whipped along her spine at the thought of where the cloth had been before. The house was filthy and in disrepair. And to think she may have ended up here in his care. She hid the shiver by nodding slowly.

Roger smiled broadly. “Good lass. I don’t like tying ye up like this. Would much prefer yer cooperation, but I couldn’t get to ye with that Highlander around ye all the time.” He worked the cloth from her mouth and Elena sucked in a full breath of air. She exhaled over her tongue and swallowed down the horrid taste of grime, hoping that she hadn’t just poisoned herself. Perhaps she should have spit.

“What do you want of me?” Her eyes narrowed. Luckily her fury smothered her fear. She couldn’t lose the rage. “How dare you trick me here. Force me!”

Roger patted the air with his palms. “Bring it down now or I’ll have to put the rag back in that pretty mouth of yers, cousin.”

She lowered her voice but not a bit of her rage. “You know as well as I that I am not your cousin. Why am I here?” She struggled against the ropes that held her arms wrapped behind her, trapping her securely to the chair. “I have a right to know.”

“Or course you do,” came a smooth voice from behind, causing her heart to leap and fly even faster. Elena knew she couldn’t turn all the way around so she kept her face focused on Lyngfield as he poured more of his brew into the third cup.

Footsteps clipped along the floorboards as the man with the cultured voice came into view. He sat directly before her and frowned. “God’s teeth, Lyngfield, untie the woman.”

“She was screaming and clawing at me.”

“That was before she knew that we are just having a civilized respite and discussion.” Lord Randolph’s smile returned. “Which we are, aren’t we, your grace.”

Elena’s breath caught down in her lungs at the title. Lyngfield went behind and untied the tight binding around her wrists. She pulled her hands to her lap and rubbed the tender flesh.

“Lord Randolph.” She kept her voice low, succinct. “I am but a common Englishwoman raised in the north country and now wed to a Scot. I hardly think that the English ambassador should refer to me in such a treasonous way.”

He smiled and chuckled. “I am not acting as the English ambassador at the moment. But ’tis serious business no less.”

“And what business would that be?” She stared him directly in his rat-like eyes.

Lord Randolph studied her. “’Tis remarkable really, how much you look like your father, which is probably why he did not let Seymour bring you to court very often.”

Elena’s stomach gripped in on itself and she forgot to breathe, though she kept her scowl in place. “I have no idea of what you are speaking, my lord.”

The ambassador looked to the low, beamed ceiling as if asking for heavenly assistance. “You are as stubborn as your mother. I doubt even that Highlander, who’s taken a fancy to you, knows of your royal blood.”

“You have no proof of any of your insane ideas,” she whispered.

“Ah—” he waggled his finger, “—but I do.”

Elena refused to change her mutinous expression, for surely it would encourage the man. He seemed to wait for a crack in her resolve, but continued on when she gave nothing away.

“There is a letter from your mother on her deathbed. The poor woman had no way to know if you survived after Thomas Seymour took you away at your father’s bidding. Seymour, the ever scheming politician, saw your potential and kept you alive.”

Elena felt the ache of angry tears at the back of her eyes at the mention of Thomas’s name. He’d been the only father figure she’d ever had. To think he’d taken her in only for his own purposes was too much. “Thomas Seymour was my father,” she gritted out.

Lord Randolph folded his hands on the table. “Perhaps he felt a fatherly affection toward you, but his main goal was to make you into a queen.”

“I am no queen, milord. Mary Tudor is queen.”

Lord Randolph’s smile faded. “A queen who burns Protestants and takes a Spaniard to her bed.”

“Not only are you an abductor of women.” Elena let her lips hitch up in vile dismay. “You are a traitor.”

“That depends on your political and religious views. Some call me a patriot and a defender of King Henry’s church.”

“Any who oppose Queen Mary’s rule is a traitor and will be executed like Lady Jane Grey,” she countered.

“So you ran to Scotland.” Randolph took a sip of the steaming brew, grimaced and set it back on the table. “To keep away from such treasonous-sounding plans or to just save your own head?”

Elena pursed her lips shut.

“Well,” he continued after a moment of silence, “Lord Arran would like to speak with you, especially now that you have married a Scot, one that will be a chieftain of his clan one day.”

“You work for Lord Arran.” Elena glanced between Lyngfield and the English ambassador. “He
is
in Scotland again.”

Her eyes opened wide. “Lord Arran had you put the stinging nettle on the regent’s horse.”

“Not me,” Lyngfield protested. “I’d never hurt a horse.” He’d bind a woman and gag her but he could never hurt a horse?

“Lord Arran has loyal Scots here in Edinburgh,” Randolph ran a manicured finger along the rim of the cup. “I don’t need to dirty my hands with such crass work.”