The man yanked her head back roughly and jerked her around to face him. His fist hung in the air, his eyes clouded with fury.
“I’m going to teach you how we deal with demon bairns where I come from.”
Fiona’s eyes shot darts of defiance into the Highlander’s face.
“If you hurt me,” she hissed. “My papa will kill you.”
A look of shock flickered into the man’s face as his fist opened. Then his black eyes narrowed into a hardness that froze Fiona’s blood.
“Where you are going, your almighty papa will never find you,” he growled menacingly.
Dragging her toward the rear door, past Margaret, who had been gagged, the leader flung the little girl at one of his men.
“Take her down,” he spat. “Now!”
“Should we wait for you in the courtyard, Torquil?” the man clutching Fiona asked. Fiona tried to jerk her hand free, but her captor twisted her arm behind her back, taking hold of her hair with vicious force.
“No, I will catch up,” the man responded gruffly. He turned with a sneer toward Margaret. “We have a very sad occurrence that needs to take place here.”
A look of horror came into Margaret’s eyes, and she cast a final look at her daughter as they dragged the screaming child from the room.
Lord Gray, Margaret Drummond’s uncle, was the first to discover his niece’s body. The shocking news traveled like a thunderbolt through the countryside.
From what could be gathered, earlier in the evening a group of strangers had kidnapped Margaret’s daughter, Fiona. On the eve of such momentous expectations, after waiting two long years for the child’s father’s return to them, the shock of this loss had proved too much for Margaret—she had lost all sense. In despair, she had taken her own life, poisoning herself in her daughter’s room. They had found the note she left, professing that life was not worth living without her child.
People searched high and low throughout the Scottish countryside. But the fruitless effort was curtailed a fortnight later when the worst gale in fifty years tore across Scotland, spreading havoc and destruction from the Outer Hebrides and the Isle of Skye to the Firth of Forth and Edinburgh itself.
Neither the child nor her kidnappers were ever found, and those who loved her wept, thinking her dead.