A Sinner at the Highland Court: A Marriage of Convenience Highlander Romance (The Highland Ladies Book 8) by Celeste Barclay

Author:Celeste Barclay [Barclay, Celeste]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-10-19T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Four

“Where can she be?” Fingal was beyond desperation. He and his men had fanned out and retraced their steps from the night before. They’d traveled from one side of the woods to the other twice, but they found no sign of Madeline. When they made their first sweep through the woods, Fingal had been optimistic that they would find Madeline alive. He’d called out to her several times, but when no response came back by the time they reached the middle of the woods, he grew impatient.

“Madeline, if ye think to hide from me because ye’re angry at me, I will turn ye over ma knee,” Fingal had called out. “I’m serious, Maddy. We dinna have time for this. Come out.” When silence greeted his warning, they pushed on. As they turned back toward their camp, Fingal feared they would find Madeline’s body, frozen from the night before or ravaged by starving wolves. It was as they walked toward their camp for the second time that Tommy’s boot made contact with metal. He bent down and found a horseshoe. He turned it over and brushed mud from it.

“Look,” Tommy pointed to an etching. “A blazing sun. The MacLeods of Lewis. It’s from Lady Madeline’s horse.”

“Aye, and here’s an apple core she must have given her horse,” Nichol pointed.

“Madeline!” Fingal bellowed as he spun in a circle.

“She slept here last night. Look,” Simon pointed. “Ye can see the imprint from her horse and her. And here are boot prints.”

“And another set here,” Tommy said as he kicked away leaves that covered two sets, one large and one small. He followed them until he found the beginning of hoofprints. Fingal followed Tommy and squatted to examine the ground.

“They made her walk,” Fingal said as he stood. “Ye can see her smaller prints behind the horses’.” Fingal followed the trail, stopping periodically to study the ground. “They must have been dragging her because I see where her prints are smeared, and she fell at least once.”

“Who do ye think did it? Highwaymen?” Harry wondered.

“Likely,” Fingal sighed. The exact people they’d tried to avoid by cutting through the woods were the ones who probably had Madeline. “The Chattans and Farquharsons might take her, but the Gordons wouldnae. She’d tell them that she kens Allyson and Cairstine. The Gordons would ken our plaid, anyway. They’d likely be searching for us.”

“If it was highwaymen, that opens up a lot of land to search,” Harry mused as he stared at the tracks.

“Aye. We follow these as far as they go, then figure it out from there,” Fingal announced as he mounted. Once they were in their saddles, they followed the tracks out of the woods and onto the road. The prints were easy to follow at first, and Fingal reasoned they were made shortly after the rain stopped and the ground was still soft. But as they traveled further from the woods, the road grew drier and dustier, making the tracks harder to follow.

“Look here,” Simon pointed as he pulled his horse to a stop.

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