THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

the two men holding her arms dragged her backward, kicking and crying into the foliage.
     
     
     
    Chapter 27
     
    “ What in bloody hell do ye mean ‘YE LOST HER’?! ”
    Flora didn’t have to fabricate her fear or her tears. She’d never beheld such fury in her life. The Laird of Blackstone was beside himself, ready to tear her throat out and only Angus’s sturdy arm kept him at bay.
    Good.
    Her brother-by-marriage would now lose everything he held dear just as she had. To keep steady before his wrath, she held tight to the knowledge that he would now feel all the pain and humiliation she lived with every day since realizing he would never take her to wife.
    Oh, aye, she knew that her father had offered her hand to Duncan. She’d witnessed her father and Duncan slipping away and had followed. She’d listened from a darkened alcove, curious and hopeful, to their whispered conversation in the library. When Duncan had refused her father’s offer saying he could not marry for grieving, she’d wanted to believe him, though she suspected it was more for the lost child than for Mary, but then she had loved her sister and him. Not a season later, however, she’d been forced to face the humiliating truth—he did not want her—when he married that pathetic nun creature, and then another and another without giving her, a well-connected and rare beauty, so much as a backward glance. That all the marriages had been ordered by Albany mattered not. Duncan had no need for more land, and he knew, had he wanted her, that her father would have done all in his power to see them wed.
    That he had convinced her father she should remain trapped within Blackstone, where she’d been forced to face her humiliation daily, only added to her pain and fury. But Duncan sealed his fate the day he further debased her by trying to foist the first of several suitors on her. That he didn’t care if another held her, tupped her, had been the most hurtful insult of all.
    Her heart held no pity for him. 
    “Answer me, woman!”
    “’Twas I said, my lord. She trailed behind me one moment and...was gone the next.” She dropped to her knees, sobbing. “I swear...I dinna ken where she is. I sought her for hours to nay avail.”
    Flora could read the disgust and disbelief on his face and did not care. She had accomplished what she’d set out to do six years ago, and had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. He had lost his heart and his holdings, all in one blessed moment.
    “Throw her in the dungeon.”
    Two men grabbed Flora’s arms, much as the Bruce’s men had grabbed Beth, and yanked her to her feet.
    “And she’s not to be given food nor water until Lady Beth is found!”
    As the men hauled Flora away, Duncan muttered, “She lies. God damn her soul into perpetuity, she lies.”
    To the men before him he ordered, “You two, take ten men apiece and scour the ridges and crags. Report back immediately if you see tracks or find someone who has knowledge of Lady Beth’s whereabouts.” To Jacob he said, “Ready the war horses and armor.”
    Rachael appeared at his elbow with a goblet. “Drink this, my liege.”
    He took the wine from her hand and tried to swallow, but his throat had closed completely. Tears blurred his vision and he put the goblet down. “I canna lose her, I canna.”
    Isaac patted his back. “We will find her.”
    “Ye ken this stinks of the Bruce.”
    “Aye.”
     
    ~#~
    Beth awoke in a dank, black-as-pitch place. She blinked as she tried to see, and her eyelashes caught on something close to her face. She gasped and something collapsed against her teeth. She cried out. Instinctively she tried to brush it away and realized to her horror she was trussed like a turkey, with her hands and feet bound behind her back. She writhed and screamed, praying all the while that she was having a nightmare. Nothing changed.
    After minutes of struggling, her heart thudded so painfully, she feared she might die. She forced herself to calm. She held her breath, refusing her lung’s demand that she continue to pant. Slowly she exhaled and then eased a lungful of the fetid air back in. Her eyelashes again caught on something, and—now calmer—she realized she wore a hood. A second later, her memory came back to life...Flora leading her into the glen, the Bruce’s men grabbing her, and then one of them slamming a fist into her cheek, rendering her unconscious. Against her will, she started to pant again.
      Oh, God.