“She’s mine alone,” she said, and pressed her lips firmly together.
“Ach, ye haven’t told him, have ye?” he said. “A man has a right to know.”
“You’re a kidnapper, and ye judgeme?” she said.
“’Tis wrong to take a child from its father.”
“Sometimes,” she said, rubbing her cheek against the child’s curly blonde head, “’tis the only right thing to do.”
“O shluagh,” he said, calling on the faeries for help as he ran his hands through his hair. “’Tis bad enough I have to take a highborn lady unaccustomed to rough travel. I cannot take a bairn as well.”
“You’ll not take me without her,” she said, and the iron in her voice surprised him. “If ye try, I promise ye I’ll fight every moment of every day to get back to her.”
That would surely make for an unpleasant journey. And if Lady Margaret did manage to escape, she would be in danger until he found her again.Damn it.
“Besides,” she said, “’tis to your advantage to bring her along.”
“To my advantage?” He gave a dry laugh. “I cannot wait to hear this.”
“The men my brother will send to search for me will not be looking for a woman with a child,” she said.
“Why not?” he asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.
“Archie doesn’t know about her,” she said. “No one does.”
“How did ye manage to keep your daughter a secret from your family as well as the father?”
“Ella has been living with a woman here in the village,” Margaret said. “Everyone believes she’s her daughter.”
“Well then, this problem is solved,” he said, relief pouring through him. “Ye can leave the wee bairn with her.”
“The woman died suddenly…of a fever,” she said. “That’s why I had to rush here in secret at night from Holyrood.”
The faeries were surely laughing at him in their faery hills tonight. What in the hell was he going to do? He shuddered at the prospect of tearing the child from her mother’s arms and carrying a screaming and wailing Lady Margaret off over his shoulder. And then the lass would give him no end of trouble with her attempts to escape.
He glanced down at the child. Though he knew next to nothing about bairns, even he could see this one was too young to be left on her own. He could leave her on the doorstep of one of the neighboring cottages, but he had no way of knowing if the family would take good care of the wee thing.
He was tempted to walk out the door and not look back, but there would be grave consequences if he did. Moray and the Gordons would lose the leverage they needed to force Archibald Douglas to release the young Gordon chieftain. And then, once the lad came of age and returned to rule his clan, he’d hold a grudge against Finn for the next fifty or sixty years. Finn would have to leave Scotland and never return.
“Shite!”What choice did he have? He spewed a long string of Gaelic curses interspersed with a few moreshitesuntil he noticed that Lady Margaret’s eyes were wide with alarm and she was holding her hands over the bairn’s ears.
He did not mean to frighten her—at least not more than he needed to.
“All right, ye can bring your daughter, but only”—he paused and pointed his finger at her—“if ye promise to give me no trouble.”
Lady Margaret broke into a smile that made him feel as if he’d just walked into a valley filled with sunshine and birdsong.Jesu, the lass was dangerous.
###
Margaret peered into the darkness, afraid that someone would see them—or hear the Highlander muttering more colorful Gaelic curses. She could feel that Ella was frightened, but she neither cried nor whined as any other child of three would do. Instead, she merely sucked her thumb and held tightly to Margaret’s hand.
“It will be all right, sweetling,” she leaned down to whisper, and hoped she was right.
“Must we take this damned basket?” the Highlander asked again from the other side of the horse.
“Aye,” she said. “Ella cannot sleep without it.”
The Highlander had already tried to persuade her to leave it behind, but it would comfort Ella to sleep in it and the child had lost everything else, so Margaret held firm.