“Where is she?” he growled, striding out of the room.
Aulay pulled the door closed and glanced to Rory. “Can ye guard the door and keep the lass here until I can deal with her?”
“Aye, I’ll no’ let her out,” Rory assured him.
Thanking him, Aulay took Geordie’s arm to urge him through his sister and Dwyn’s sisters, every one of his sisters-in-law, as well as their friends Lady MacKay and Lady Sinclair. None of their brothers or the other men were there now besides Rory, he noted distractedly, but then shifted his attention to Aulay as they started down the stairs and his brother began to speak.
“Alick was leading a group o’ soldiers searching the border between our land and the MacGregor land when he encountered one o’ their men on patrol. He told him what was happening here and that he was looking for yer wife, who had been taken by a Lowlander named Brodie, and the MacGregor’s man told him that there’s a laird named Brodie on MacGregor land right now, that he paid MacGregor to let him camp there. Brodie claimed at the time that he was traveling home to Brodie from Arran when several o’ his men became ill from what he suspected was bad meat and they needed to bide a wee while they recovered. The MacGregor soldier said they’ve been no trouble, but then this afternoon one o’ Brodie’s men rode up to the keep with more coin and a request for the priest to come to their camp. He claimed it was to give the sick men the sacraments o’ the dying, but—”
“Brodie must have sent his man to fetch the priest when Katie got to his camp so that he’d be there waiting when he got back with Dwyn. He’s trying to make her marry him,” Geordie said grimly as they stepped off the stairs and hurried toward the keep doors. “He does no’ ken she’s already married to me, then.”
“Well, he did no’ ken it at the time,” Aulay agreed, and then caught his arm, drawing him to a halt as he cautioned, “But he may ken by now.”
Geordie’s mouth tightened. “If he’s hurt her, I’m killing him.” He waited for Aulay’s nod of assent and then turned to continue to the door, only to pause again when he saw Dwyn’s father enter, spot them and move their way.
When Geordie offered the man an abrupt nod of greeting, James Innes said, “Geordie, I ken ye think little o’ me, that ye do no’ approve o’ how I raised me Dwyn and that ye think me a selfish old bastard. But I love me daughter. All o’ me daughters,” he added, casting a glance to Una and Aileen, who had moved up beside them. Turning back to Geordie, he said, “We have to get Dwyn back, Geordie. Brodie’s no’ just a brutal bastard, he’s no’ right in the head. We need to get her back.”
“We will,” Geordie assured him, clamping a reassuring hand on his shoulder briefly before moving past him to push through the keep doors. He was halfway down the steps before he bothered to glance around, and then he paused when he saw the men all gathered on horseback in the bailey. Nearly every last Buchanan warrior was mounted and waiting, but they weren’t alone. There were soldiers carrying the banners from each clan his sister and brothers belonged to, as well as the MacKays, MacLeods and Sinclairs, and of course the Inneses. They were the soldiers that had escorted his in-laws, his family members and family friends here. Combined, they easily matched the Buchanan warriors in number.
“So this is what it means to have the Buchanans backing ye,” James Innes said with awe.
Geordie heard him, but he had turned to his brother in question.
It was Saidh who answered the silent query. Moving down another step until she could have put her head on his shoulder if she’d wanted, she said, “Ye did no’ think we would no’ back ye up, did ye?”
Geordie turned to look at her, noting that the women were all lined up on the steps behind him, Aulay and James Innes.
Smiling at him solemnly, Saidh added, “Rory and Jetta are staying behind to hold down the fort and prepare in case some healing is needed, but the rest o’ us are coming too.” Grimacing, she added, “Though we have promised to stay back and merely watch and wait to greet Dwyn when you big, strong men free her and bring her to us.”
Geordie tried to swallow the sudden lump in his throat so he could speak, but it wasn’t moving. In the end, all he could do was nod his gratitude. Turning away then, he continued down the stairs, thinking it was good to have family. And he had the very best.
“I’m so sorry, Lady Buchanan.”
“What for, Father?” Dwyn asked distractedly as she felt her way blindly across the ropes binding the priest’s wrists.
“For no’ being able to do aught while Laird Brodie beat ye,” Father Machar said on a sigh. “I did try to loose me bonds to help ye, but he trussed me up well.”
Dwyn was silent for a minute as her split lip and every bruise on her body seemed to ache a little more at his reminding her of the beating. Ignoring her aches and pains, Dwyn turned her attention back to what she was doing, and told herself she’d got off easy. Brodie had punched her several times, in the stomach, the chest and the face. He’d also managed to rip open the top of her gown while at it. Not intentionally. He’d held her with one hand curled around and clutching the neckline as he’d punched her in the face, and the material had torn as her body was forced back under the blow.
Dwyn looked down at it now, and had to hold back a sigh. She wasn’t falling out of the dress exactly, but it was holding her about as well as the low necklines of the dresses her sisters had altered did. This dress had been one of the new ones too, and was now, of course, ruined. Dwyn could live with that though, and considered herself lucky that the few blows and a torn dress were all she’d suffered so far. At least Brodie hadn’t tossed her out of the tent for his men to pass around and have at. She could survive a beating. She could probably survive being raped as well . . . by one man. Dwyn wasn’t too sure she’d survive being raped by one hundred of them though, emotionally or physically. She suspected something like that could kill a woman, or at least make her wish she was dead.
Clearing her throat, she murmured, “Oh, now, there’s nothing fer you to be sorry for, Father. ’Tis Brodie who should be sorry. As ye said, ye were tied up.”
“Aye, but the MacGregor offered to send warriors to escort me when Brodie’s man came to ask me to come to the camp. I refused. Had I allowed the men to accompany me—”
“They’d probably be dead by now,” she inserted on a sigh, most of her concentration on trying to unknot the ropes binding the priest’s wrists behind his back. Dwyn had managed to force her gag off by using her tongue, teeth and the priest’s back to drag it along, and then had removed the gag Brodie had tied around Father Machar’s head by using her teeth to tug the dirty cloth out of his mouth and down. While the priest had been quite flustered and embarrassed to have her sticking her tongue in his mouth to hook it under the cloth and drag it to her teeth to pull it over his bottom lip, he’d also been grateful to have the material out of his mouth. Brodie had ripped up a filthy old tunic to make the gags so that aside from the material sucking all the moisture out of their mouths, it had tasted most unpleasant.
“Oh, I’m sure he could no’ have managed that,” Father Machar assured her. “The MacGregors are fine warriors.”