Graham jerked out of his brother’s grasp. “I’ll hear ye out of respect. Ye dunnae need to hold me.”
Iain inclined his head in acknowledgment. “We have watched yer foolish choices for weeks. We have given advice that ye have overlooked. Ye depart on the morrow, so ye will listen now. Ye leave yer wife with me, which I have agreed to, but the price of my agreement is yer listening.”
Graham nodded, anger flowing through his veins thicker than blood.
“Ye are letting yer past once again dictate yer future,” Iain said, and Graham noted that Lachlan was nodding his agreement.
“I’m nae,” Graham denied. “It is because of my past that I make the choices I do for my future and for Isobel’s. Around her—” He jerked his hand through his hair. He could not say out loud what she did to him. His emotions ruled him where she was concerned, just as they had with his need to prove himself to his mother, a need that had cost Lena greatly, and just as he had with his jealousy and desire to take from Lachlan, who had only ever given to him. “My past is in my mind with every breath I take, but it dunnae rule me.”
“It does,” Marion challenged. “I see how you feel for her in your gaze, but you deny her and yourself happiness. You are sentencing both of you to a lifetime of loneliness. Or perchance not,” Marion said, cocking her head. “Perchance Isobel will find solace in another man’s arms if you set her aside and act as if you are not married. Perchance Isobel will leaveyou.”
Fierce possessiveness gripped him. “My wife will nae ever leave me or take another to her bed. She would nae do such a thing to me, in spite of what I do. She is faithful, honorable, and all that is kind and good.”
“She is that!” Father Murdock boomed as he approached the dais.
Graham started to scowl at the priest for eavesdropping, but then he recalled Isobel mentioning Father Murdock did not feel needed. Graham cleared his throat. “It’s good to have ye returned, Father Murdock. Ye’ve been sorely missed.”
The priest blinked. “I have?”
Graham nodded, seeing the shocked looks of his brothers and their wives, but he refused to be gainsaid in this good deed. “Before I leave on the morrow, I’d like to give ye my confession.” Suddenly recalling that he had meant to ask Father Murdock what he and Isobel had talked of, he added, “Perchance as my wife did?” He stared expectantly at the priest, who shifted in front of Graham.
“Yer wife did nae give me confession.”
“What did the two of ye discuss, then?” Graham demanded.
Father Murdock glanced uneasily down the length of the table and then leaned forward. “Well,” the priest said, tugging on his beard. “I fear I may have caused her a bit of trouble as I made a careless comment that she had bewitched ye and Rhona overheard me and looked as if she truly feared yer sweet wife. I told yer wife I would speak with Rhona, but in my haste to get to my ill sister, I forgot to do so before I left. But if there have nae been any problems since I have been away—”
Lena gasped beside Graham. Disquiet gripped him at his sister’s obvious dismay. As far as he knew, Rhona had only called Isobel a witch the one time and he had taken care of it. But mayhap he didn’t know all.
“Lena, have ye heard any continued whispers about Isobel beingban-druidhsince I told the clan she was nae?”
Lena bit her lip. “Aye,” she whispered, her face crumbling as she started to softly cry. Graham’s blood froze in his veins. “I’m sorry, Brother. I fear the whispers are all my fault. I tried to correct Rhona and the other women who are saying she isban-druidh, but their grief twisted their hearts. Perchance if ye speak to them again?”
He nodded distractedly, barely controlling his urge to race from the hall. Control. He had to maintain control. Didn’t he?
“I need to speak with Isobel,” he said, his emotions rising up to choke him. Had she heard the whispers? Had she known the fate of rejection he was forcing her to accept from him, from his clan, as she had been forced to accept rejection from her father? Oh, what had he done?
His thoughts swirled in a vicious circle as he made haste from the great hall and up the stairs toward her bedchamber. When he saw her door ajar, the uneasiness that had been rising flooded him. He abandoned his restraint and ran the rest of the way to her chamber only to find it empty. Every instinct for survival he had spent years honing to a deadly sharpness told him that Isobel was in mortal danger. He could not say how he knew it, but it was there in his gut, with every breath and every beat of his heart. Without hesitation, he took the stairs back to the great hall, burst through the door, and shouted, “Come with me! Isobel is missing!”
He ordered Cameron to search the castle for Rhona, but he had a terrible feeling she would not be immediately found. Running into the courtyard with his brothers and Marion by his side, he turned for a moment, uncertain where to start. He glanced to Iain and Lachlan, but Marion spoke, her face white with fear. “She may have fled you.”
Graham stared at Marion for a long moment, feeling as if he had lost the ability to speak as the weight of her words sank into his mind. “Did she say she would?”
Marion bit her lip but nodded. “Yes, but only if she had no other choice. It was to be her last attempt to try to get through to you. She does not want to live her life with a man who refuses to love her.”
“Marion,” Iain growled, but Graham interrupted.
“Whether she has fled me or been taken,” he said, his throat so tight that the words caused him pain, “I will find her now.”
Before he could say more the watch tower horn blew, announcing that a vessel had been spotted in the water. Shoving the men who were in his path out of his way, he raced toward the seagate stairs and took them three at a time, hearing only the hammering of his heart in his ears, despite the fact that he knew hundreds of men were behind him. Near the end of the stairs, he saw out in the middle of the loch, under the bright moonlight, was the skiff he and Isobel had used earlier that day. It bobbed in the rough water, one end much higher than the other. It was sinking!
“Isobel!” he shouted, fear sweeping through him and causing him to shake. She was in that skiff, and she was not so foolish to have tried to escape in a skiff with a leak. He ran toward the shore and raced into the now-freezing water. It stole his breath, along with his ability to move for a moment, but then he thought of her and dove under to swim hard and fast. When he broke the surface with a gasp, raised his head to get his bearings and judge the distance to the skiff, a scream of terror—Isobel!—broke through the noise in his head to confirm his worst fear. She was on that sinking skiff, and for reasons he could not see, she was sinking with it instead of swimming to safety.
Chapter Twenty-Two
She was going to die. It was the first thought that struck Isobel when she awoke. The second was that everything hurt. Her head pounded, her body ached, and she was terribly cold. She blinked, unsure where she was. She tried to sit up to look around only to realize her hands and feet were bound. Her breath caught with fear that intensified when cold water touched her back, then her feet, her legs, and her hands. And her head.
Confusion muddled her thoughts as her world seemed to rock. Oh God, she was in the skiff, and it had a leak! She sucked in a shocked breath, remembering Rhona hitting her over the head. The woman must have tied her up while she was out and set her to sea.
