The Chieftain Read Free Page B

Reid to safety, and she subsided onto the seat, sobbing wildly. ‘Oh, it’s the Highlanders, I know it is! We shall all be murdered in our beds!’
    ‘Nonsense,’ said Isobel as calmly as she could, hoping her mother had not seen who had her father prisoner. If that had been real - perhaps after all she had imagined it. ‘And we’re not in our beds,’ she added.
    It was doubtful comfort, and had little effect on Margaret Reid. So distraught was she that it was not for some time that Isobel realised they had left the town and were travelling fast through the countryside. It was not a reassuring sight, but she did not risk speaking of it.
    What has happened? she thought. Who can be doing this, and why? Or have the horses simply bolted? But she knew that was unlikely, or the coach would not have kept so unerringly to the road for so long.
    And then at last, in the cool shade of a wood, the coach turned into a narrow lane and halted. Orders were shouted, there was a distant noise of horses’ hooves, over and above the coach horses, and then all at once the door was flung open. Hands reached in, and Isobel felt herself grasped and dragged roughly into the open.
    Then, horribly, the door was slammed shut again, an order shouted in Gaelic, and the coach drove on, out of her sight.
    ‘Mother!’ she cried, and began to run along the lane after it.  
    Hands caught her and held her.  
    ‘She’ll be safe enough. He’ll leave the coach at the next crossroads. They’ll have a long walk home, but they’ll take no harm.’
    She knew that voice, deep and lilting, completely untroubled. She turned sharply and met the unforgettable dark eyes, full of ironic amusement.  
    Hector MacLean bowed.
    ‘We meet again, Mrs Carnegie—I give you that name,’ he added, ‘because it is still yours. But not for long... I do not like to be insulted.’
    A trickle of fear ran coldly down her spine. ‘What…what do you mean?’ It was all so unreal, like a nightmare. Had she fallen asleep in the coach? Was this all just a bad dream?
    ‘You’ll know soon enough.’ He called another order in Gaelic, more softly this time, and she saw that the wood seemed to be crowded with Highlanders, and that it was not horses she had heard, but ponies, the shaggy sure-footed garrons best suited to the mountains. One was brought forward, and she realised she was supposed to mount. She shook her head, stubbornly refusing to move.  
    Hector MacLean drew his dirk. ‘Do you want me to bind you to the beast? Get up!’
    Would he use that knife, if she were to refuse him? She dared not to risk it, and struggled onto the pony’s broad back, with a little ungentle assistance from Hector. And then most of the others mounted, bareback like herself, and they set off into the trees, one man leading her pony. They went quickly, but the men on foot kept pace with them easily, moving with silent loping strides through the patchwork of light and shadow. She noticed how the bright tartan merged into the background as they went, and understood its advantages as clothing for a race of cattle thieves and murderers. Was she to be their latest victim? What could they want with her? A ransom? That seemed the most likely. Yet such things did not happen, not to Isobel…
    In that bewildered dreamlike state, she was aware of very little, except for the bumpy motion of the pony; and that after a time they left the wood and emerged into the bright hot sunlight, and then that they splashed through a shallow burn. On through another wood, and then along the edge of a cornfield, and a second, until at last they came to a cottage sheltered by trees; and halted in the ivy-shaded yard behind it.
    The cottage looked almost derelict, with holes in the roof and broken windows. It could not have been lived in for years. But it was not empty now. Yet more Highlanders came softly out to greet them, speaking quietly in Gaelic, but clearly excited. Innumerable pairs of eyes peered up at