“I told ye to shut the hell up,” he growled. And then he hit her hard on the side of the head, and everything went dark.
* * *
“Where the hell is she?” Brogan paced the camp, hands on his hips, feeling an odd sense of déjà vu. The sun had not yet risen when he’d leapt to his feet, woken suddenly but unsure of why or how, but he’d been on high alert. Something was wrong. And then he’d noticed Fiona missing.
The men about camp stirred, sitting up at his call of alarm. Brogan lurched forward, practically running into Dugall and James, who rubbed at their heads and groaned.
“She hit us,” Dugall said.
“What do ye mean she hit ye?” Brogan growled.
“Snuck up behind us and whacked us with something, a thick stick maybe.”
“What the bloody hell are ye talking about?” Brogan grabbed both men by the shoulders and hauled them closer as he felt their scalps. They were not wet with blood, which was good. But Dugall and James both had large knots on their heads where they’d been thumped.
“Did ye see who did it? How can ye be sure it was her?” Brogan asked.
“Nay, neither of us did see her coming,” Dugall said.
“Nor did we see anyone else sneaking about camp.”
Brogan slid his gaze toward the mouth of the cave, counting the shadowed heads. The prince and the three men with him. All of his men were here too. The only one missing was Fiona.
And Milla.
Brogan blew a whistle, listening for the sounds of the wee hound running. And there it was some distance away, a rushing of four paws on the forest floor. Milla appeared a moment later with something large, long, and terrible-smelling in her mouth.
“What the devil?” Brogan groaned, and the rest of the men, too, pinched their noses.
Milla pranced with her prize, making a circle in the center of camp before settling down, happy as could be, to gnaw on a massive, rotting bone that looked to be something she’d dug up in the forest. A deer perhaps.
“That’s disgusting,” Fin groaned. “Good God, get it away from her.”
Brogan swallowed back his frustration, the smell of a rotting carcass the least of his worries. How had Milla gotten it, and where the hell was Fiona?
“Ye canna believe that she did this,” Sorley said, sounding completely skeptical.
Dugall and James frowned and shrugged. Brogan’s gut churned, rebelling against the very idea.
“She’s run away from us before and never hurt anyone for doing it,” Fin pointed out. “Why would she do it now?”
Doubt plagued him. Even though she claimed to be a Jacobite through and through, she was also a government postmistress. That meant she spent a good amount of her time working for the enemy. Though she’d claimed it was to keep tabs on the redcoats and their armies, what if that were a lie?
“Lady Fiona would not,” the prince announced, sounding peeved. “To say so, or even think it, is a betrayal of all that is good. She has been nothing but a loyal and faithful servant of mine for many years. You should be ashamed for even imagining that the lady has an indecent bone in her body.”
Brogan’s head ached with anguish, remorse. The prince was right, and he was damned ashamed for letting the thoughts cross his mind. But bloody hell, she’d put them all through the wringer before. He wouldn’t be human if he didn’t have an inkling of doubt every once in a while, would he?
There were so many thoughts going through his mind right now. Had she run away? Was she the traitor in their midst? It would not have been the first time he’d thought so, except the prince was genuinely upset that she’d left, and Brogan… His heart shredded with every traitorous thought rolling through his mind.
He’d trusted her…loved her.
Good God, how he loved her… The notion had been there sitting on his heart for weeks now, maybe even months, and yet it wasn’t until now that he fully felt the impact of those sentiments.
Fiona would not have left them. Betrayed them. She would not have attacked his men, not after all they’d been through. Even she had said more than once that the men of his camp were like her brothers. She’d risked her life for the prince on so many occasions that she deserved a medal of high honor and all the riches in the world. She’d not have turned tail for the dreaded dragoons and Cumberland’s faction. Not even if it meant her death.
There was no way she would have simply run away, and he’d be willing to bet his life on that. So what in the bloody hell had happened? Milla had not made a sound. He stared at the large bone the dog all too happily gnawed. Somehow she’d been lured deeper into the forest away from the camp to make this discovery. To keep her occupied while Fiona was stolen away.
But who could have stolen her? They were all present. Not even the men they suspected of being traitors were gone, and both of them seemed genuinely concerned—or at least were making a good show of it. Could they have done something to her in the middle of the night, then come back? He supposed it was possible.
Nay, it couldn’t be. Because Brogan did not feel like she’d been gone all that long. He could still smell her scent on the wind.
“How long do ye think ye were knocked out for?” he asked Dugall and James.
“No’ long. A quarter hour maybe?”
“I think we should consider that she was taken,” Brogan said. “And we’ve failed her. I’ve failed her.”
From the very beginning, he’d wanted her to go home, to be protected, and more than once now she’d been in perilous danger. The other times at least he’d been there to help. Something had happened in the night and he was going to find out exactly what it was.
Brogan racked his brain. If she’d been taken, she would have been lured to simply walk away from their makeshift bed. Otherwise, he was damned certain he would have noticed someone coming into camp and stealing her from her bed.
They couldn’t have. He would have noticed… Brogan was certain of it.
“We need to start searching now.”
“I’ll help,” said the prince.
“Nay, this could be a ploy to get ye out alone in the woods. Ye must remain behind with several men.”
“MacEachain, ye, Fin, and Keith remain behind. The rest of ye, let’s search.” If Cameron or even MacDonald had something to do with this, they might give something away in the search. Brogan turned to Sorley. “Retriever,” he said, using Sorley’s nickname. “Help me.”
“I will.”
They fanned out, searching for clues, which was difficult in the dark. By the creek, however, where Dugall had been stationed on watch, they found signs of a struggle. Dirt and grass and leaves were all kicked up and askew. A lance of fear pierced Brogan because it was clear now that she had been taken. In the back of his mind, he’d been hoping to find her in the woods needing a bit of privacy, that somehow the two men had come by their injuries by accident.