“I entrust my daughter to your hands!” he spat. “And this is how you care for her?”
Iain restrained his temper, telling himself that there would be plenty of time to kill him once he resolved the situation at hand. He couldn’t keep his tongue stilled, however, as FitzSimon was a lying bastard. “Entrust? Is that what ye call it when ye Sassenachs cast your own kin away?”
FitzSimon had the decency to stutter at the question. “I—I was angry,” he reasoned. “I did not realize what I was saying—what I was doing!”
“Bluidy lyin’ bastard! Ye seemed to know just fine,” Angus interjected.
Iain cast Angus a quelling glance, and then returned his attention to FitzSimon. “You sounded to me like a mon who knew his mind well enough,” Iain proposed. “I gave you plenty o’ opportunity to change your mind and ye didna. Ye wouldna.”
“I was angry,” FitzSimon reasoned once more.
“And do ye think I’m no’ angry?” Iain returned. “Just because I’m standin’ here listenin’ to you doesna mean to say I dinna take pleasure in the thought o’ carvin’ the heart from your feckless body!”
FitzSimon stared warily.
“A mon is no’ a mon, but a beast, if he canna use his reason,” Iain said.
FitzSimon said nothing, and Iain decided he hadn’t spoken clearly enough.
“You are worse than any beast I know, for e’en a beast doesna sacrifice his young!”
“I did not know she was my daughter!” FitzSimon admitted, shocking Iain with the disclosure. Of all the things he might have spoken, it was the one thing to which Iain could not respond. His own revelations were too freshly revealed.
He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, Dougal came running from the tower, breathless. “I canna find Malcom, either,” he said, between pants. “I looked everywhere, and I canna! Nor Lagan either!”
Murmurs filled the air. Iain’s heart began to pound all the more fiercely. “Neither Malcom, Lagan, nor Page?” The hairs of his nape stood upon end.
“Nary a one!”
Iain tried not to give in to panic. Panic would gain him naught, he knew. “Did no one see them go?”
It seemed a thousand murmurs responded, none of them yes.
And then he heard his son’s shouts, distant, but unmistakable, and his heart jolted. He tore through the crowd at once, shoving his way through to follow the sound. “Malcom!” he called out.
“Da!” his son cried, running through the night toward them, his voice full of fear. “Da!”
Iain began to run.
“Da!” Malcom wailed.
Iain reached him and swept him up into his arms, embracing him desperately. “What, Malcom?”
“Lagan!” Malcom sobbed. “Page!” And then he began to cry hysterically, uncontrollably.
Iain’s heart tripped. He shook his son in a moment of desperation. “Malcom, tell me!”
“Lagan was g-gain’ t-to k-kill me, da,” he cried, choking on his sobs. “P-Page p-pushed him.” He sobbed, clutching Iain’s neck, and Iain felt his legs go weak beneath him. His mind raced.
“Pushed him? Where?”
He gripped his son beneath the arms, pulling him away, his arms trembling.
Malcom held on all the tighter. “I didna want to leave her, Da, but she told me to run!”
“Where is she now?” Iain choked out, and his heartbeat stilled for the answer.
“O’er the bluffside!” Malcom cried. “She went o’er the bluff, Da!”
Praying to God he wasn’t too late, he thrust Malcom away and into waiting arms.
Christ in Heaven above! he thought. Do not let it be too late!
Page had fallen, her body scraping over rock and brush, onto a ledge in the cliffside where the rock jutted outward. Somehow, though the impact had driven the air from her lungs, she’d managed to hold on to the small platform.
Groping blindly with her feet for a better hold than the tentative one she had, she found a place in the craggy cliffside where she could snuggle her toes. And then she held on for her life!
It seemed an eternity passed before she heard the first voices above.
She didn’t wait to be called upon; she shouted at the top of her lungs. And still it was another eternity before they followed her voice to where she hung so precariously along the cliffside.
“Are ye hurt, lass?” Page heard Iain ask.
Sweet Jesu! It was about time! “Well, if I am,” she returned somewhat caustically, “I certainly have no wish to know this minute! Rather ask me when I’m safe above!”
His answering chuckle, uneasy though it sounded, reassured her somehow. “Verra well,” he told her, his tone clearly filled with relief. “Hold fast now,” he said, “I’m comin’ down after ye, lass!”