Free Highland Obsession by Dawn Halliday Page B

were awake, keeping watch over the grounds. She had to be as silent and careful as a wraith to prevent them from seeing or hearing her. The moonlight was waning, but the feel of dawn was in the air, and the earliest hint of a morning glow softened the nighttime sky.
    She flattened her body against the stone wall and inched around the building. A crunch of footsteps on gravel sounded nearby, and she froze.
    Quickly, she wedged herself behind an outcropping and prayed. Half her body hung out in plain view, but she was in shadow and covered by the dark reds and blacks of the plaid. The man would not see her unless he turned. Sorcha held her breath as he crossed the courtyard and disappeared into the barracks.
    She moved faster now. Keeping her back pressed against the wall, she shuffled around the corner, down the long end of the building, and around the back. A guardhouse stood at the end of the spit, but if she was lucky, she’d be fast enough and they’d miss her.
    She sprinted across the grass, ducking low as she reached the two bushes she always used to mark the entrance to the path down the cliff. Here the incline to the water was not quite vertical, and rock formations in the face of the wall created natural steps. They were too dangerous and too steep for most to bother with, but Sorcha had clambered down them often as a lass. A tiny cave stood at the waterline—no more than a deep impression in the earth—where she’d gone to escape the constant tension she felt living on the grounds of a loyalist lord in a family and community that covertly sided with the Jacobites.
    Tonight the steps were covered in mud and slippery with moss. Clearly it had been a long time since anyone had made use of this method of climbing down to the water. She clutched at small outcrop-pings as she nudged her body downward, grasping for the rocks with her toes. Her foot landed on a sharp edge, and she yelped as it jabbed into the most tender part of her arch.
    “Did you hear that?”
    The voice had come from the guardhouse, not ten yards away. Scrabbling for purchase, Sorcha ducked beneath the lip of the cliff and pressed her body against the earth, hanging on with her toes and fingers and gritting her teeth against the tingling pain in her foot.
    “Anyone out here?”
    “Likely just an animal, Will.”
    The second voice sounded sleepy, as if Will’s sudden jump to attention had awakened its owner.
    “Sounded like a person to me,” Will groused.
    Again, Sorcha heard footsteps. This time the steps were soft—the person was walking over wet, springy grass. It sounded like only one pair of feet—probably Will come to investigate the noise.
    He stopped just above her. Sorcha knew if she looked up and around the ledge she’d be able to see his boots. But she didn’t dare move. Her lower lip trembled, and she bit down hard on it.
    “Sounded like a woman.” Will’s voice rang clear just overhead.
    Sorcha hoped beyond hope that he hadn’t heard about his master abducting the newly wed Sorcha Stewart.
    The second man still sounded far away. “P’raps a rat,” he said on a yawn.
    “Huh. Ain’t never heard the sound of a rat compared to the sound of a woman before.” Light descended around her as Will crouched overhead, lowering his lamp to peer over the edge of the cliff. Sorcha held her breath.
    “Aye, Will.” The other man gave a mocking laugh. “’Tis all that squeaking they do when ye bed them. You just wouldn’t know.”
    Will didn’t answer, but the light disappeared and his footsteps sounded again, this time receding back toward the guardhouse.
    Sorcha released a shaky breath. Carefully, she continued making her way down, facing the cliff. The steps seemed to have changed since she’d last come down this way. Now they felt more dangerous than they had before. Perhaps it was because of the darkness, though she’d descended these steps at night on occasion. Most likely it was just that she’d simply become more