Desire in Tartan: 2 (Highland Vampires) by Suz deMello Read Free Book Online

that clung to the scrape. Mary shuddered but remained still.
    Alice wondered if the reddened area ought to be bandaged. She eyed it, noting no ooze of blood, and decided to leave it be. If allowed, p’raps it would heal with no mishap. She didn’t care if Mary had a scar or two. Most of us do, Alice thought. Sometimes they’re not visible, but they’re there.
    She had a few, of course, and wondered about Dugald, his oddly rough laugh, his rare but welcome smiles. And his kiss. Did he also bear unseen scars?
    She looked up the trail, but the thick mist obscured everything, even the laughter and shouting of the Kilburns.
    She was alone.
    Buck up, lassie , she told herself, hearing Dugald’s imagined voice inside her mind. They’re there, just a bit ahead. We can catch up.
    Instead of mounting Mary, Alice took the reins to lead the horse along the trail.
    “Mistress! Mistress!” Malcolm emerged from the mist, shouting. “Run!”
    She stared, startled into immobility. An arrow flew out of the fog from behind her and struck him in the neck. Blood gushed forth. A scream tore from her throat and she ran, grabbing her skirts up and away from her ankles.
    As she neared Malcolm’s fallen body she slowed. He feebly moved his arm, reaching for the arrow, and jerked it out with a pained cry.
    She knelt by his side. The fluid that flowed from his torn throat had slowed to a dark ooze. Jerking out her hanky, she pressed it to the wound. Black, sticky blood seeped through the cloth in seconds.
    Black blood.
    Black blood?
    Alice lifted the hanky away from the wound. It was already closing. She gaped.
    Behind her, boot heels crunched on stone. Pain blazed through her head and her world went black.
    * * * * *
     
    Jolting and jouncing with the world turned upside down and pain stabbing from a sore scalp. Flakes of drying blood on her bare, cold hands from…from where? Wrenching sticky eyelids open, Alice saw mud and rock bouncing beneath her, and gradually realized that she was face down, draped over a horse’s back. Mary? Probably, because her loose hair—where was her hat?—fell uncomfortably close to the ground beneath.
    She tried to touch her head, investigate the pain—a bruise?—but couldn’t because her hands were bound. Bound together, and bound to her feet with the rope passing beneath the horse’s belly. Her boots were gone, she realized with mounting despair. Those responsible for kidnapping her knew precisely what they were doing. Even if she managed to escape, she’d never get far without boots. Dread crept through her.
    The dried blood on her hands had to be from her head. The blow had been hard enough to tear her scalp, and the blood had flowed down her arms to her hands while she’d been tied in this sickening, horrible, helpless position.
    She was going to die. She was sure of that. The rough voices she heard all around her, coming at her through the darkness and the fog, were not the Kilburns. She’d been around them for long enough to recognize their voices. And in any event, they’d never do anything like this to her. For all their strange behavior—she couldn’t ignore the incident with the street whore—they’d never shown her anything but kindness and courtesy.
    What was to become of her? She thought about her short life and her failure to do anything of meaning. New pain struck, this time around her heart. She’d never have the chance to discover what could grow from her feelings for Dugald, and his for her. Never have the chance to kiss him again, touch him, love him. Never bear his children.
    She realized with more than a touch of surprise that she’d wanted that, wanted him and everything he could give her. A life that held meaning and joy instead of hopelessness and despair.
    Tears gathered. She angrily willed them away, choosing instead to scrabble and struggle with the ropes binding her hands. She reached with trembling fingers to her bloodstained cuff and managed to tug out her hanky.