Free Sutherland's Secret by Sharon Cullen Page B

to run but with no place to go. Would she be safe up here? Would the officers approach the bedchambers? Was Blackwood here because he’d heard she was here? Had he found her, or was this dumb luck?
    Oh, what did it matter? He was here, and if he found her, he would take her away and punish Sutherland and his people. And she would rather die than be taken by him again.
    She raced into the adjoining room, but there was nowhere to hide in the sitting area and nowhere to hide in the bedroom. Breathless, she sank to the floor in a far corner and waited for Blackwood to find her.

Chapter 10
    Eleanor.
    Her name was Eleanor.
    At least Brice assumed that’s what her note meant. Why had he not thought to ask her if she could write? It had never occurred to him because not many women were that learned. But he had known that the lass—
Eleanor
—was different. Her ragged gown had set her apart as a woman of means. Possibly nobility?
    Possibly.
    Now that he knew her name, so many more questions crowded his mind. What was her full name? Where was she from? How did she come to be in Scotland?
    The last question was the most frightening. There was only one way an English lass of her class—or what he assumed was her class—came to be in Scotland, and that was by marrying an English officer. The thought kept him awake the two nights he’d been away from her and touched on a fear that grew daily. If he was housing an English officer’s wife, then he was a dead man.
    They had ridden to the coast to meet the ship that was due to take the refugees to Canada. The ship had been two days late, and his men and those who waited to board it had become tense with the thought that it would not show. It had happened before. One other time he’d lost a ship to a storm. The people he’d risked his life to protect had all perished, including the captain—his brother. Much to everyone’s relief, this ship arrived, but his mind did not focus on that as it should have.
    Damnation.
    Eleanor.
    Even her name suggested nobility.
    Which meant that whoever she had married was nobility as well.
    He kept a keen eye on the men, women, and children boarding the ship, their faces ravaged with the knowledge that this was the last time they would see Scottish land. They were to start a new life in Canada, where they would not be hunted and tortured, their wives not raped. There was hope on the other end of the voyage, but there was also devastation that they were being driven from the land their families had lived on for centuries. Brice always felt deeply for them, knowing that so many more awaited the next ship, and the next, and the next. But today he could not keep focused on that. He kept thinking of Eleanor and what her presence meant.
    “Rider approaching,” Lachlan said beside him.
    Brice turned in his saddle. The ship was well off the coast, and his men were gathering their things, hiding the evidence of their presence.
    “ ’Tis one of ours,” Lachlan said.
    Brice relaxed until he noted that the rider was at full gallop, heedless of the rocky terrain. His men were well trained with their mounts, and only something very important would cause the messenger to risk his horse in this manner.
    The man pulled his horse up short when he came to Brice and Lachlan. “My lord,” he said breathlessly. “I bring you news from the castle.”
    “Out with it, man,” Brice demanded, his heart pounding in dread.
    “English soldiers have entered the castle, my lord. Angus said ye must come at once.”
    “Go,” Lachlan said. “I’ll finish up here.”
    Brice spurred his horse toward home, his heart thundering as hard as Galad’s hooves. It wasn’t uncommon for the English to visit his castle. They’d done so before, and it was always a tense situation. But he didn’t like that they had arrived while he was away, and he doubly didn’t like that he was harboring an English lass. He was racing to get to Eleanor, to get to his people. But which did he