The Chieftain Read Online Free PDF Page A

two had passed. So short a time, and so complete a catastrophe.
    She noticed, too, that the clergyman was no longer in sight. He had done his part and gone quietly home again. Did he have any tremor of conscience at what he had done? Probably not, for her brief and painful acquaintance with Hector told her that he would have made very sure that no suspicion of the truth would trouble the minister. Without doubt he believed them to be a devoted couple, running away to new happiness together.  
    She became aware after a while that the men who surrounded her, on horse or on foot, were fewer than they had been at that dreadful moment in the wood. Hector was there still, of course, silent and preoccupied at her side, as if he had forgotten her existence; and there were four others, as far as she could see without glancing too obviously about her. But the three Highlanders who had acted as witnesses to her marriage were nowhere to be seen, nor most of the men who had brought her here or awaited her arrival at the cottage. She wondered for a moment if Hector would tell her what had become of them, were she to ask. But when she stole a cautious glance in his direction his expression was so forbidding that she did not dare to intrude. Most likely he had felt that too large a company riding together would attract unwelcome attention.
    Even less did she dare to ask where he was taking her. To his home, she supposed; to a place called Ardshee, if his name was any guide. But where that was she had no idea. She could only guess that it must lie somewhere to the north of the threatening range of mountains she had never thought to cross. Yet, when she looked about her, she realised that they were not going to cross them even now. They were not riding towards them at all, but parallel with them, in what she guessed to be a south-westerly direction. The level plain grew more hilly, and the hills rose until they met the mountains, but still they did not turn north. Their only change of direction came when, now and then, they made a detour to avoid a town or village or farmhouse. But there was no comfort for Isobel in their unexpected route. The one certainty about it, wherever it took them, was that each mile bore her relentlessly further and further from all she knew and loved.
    After a time weariness began to drive out even her misery. She thought of her soft bed at home, her quiet room, the gentle attentiveness of her parents. She began to think that if only Hector would allow them to pause now and rest she would not mind so much about all that had happened. And then she remembered that her bed would no longer be a place of rest and refuge for her, ever. She had a husband now, a husband in every sense of the word, so that she no longer had any right in law to shut herself off from his demands, however coldly calculating they might be, however little she knew him. She was at the mercy of his every whim, to be used or neglected as he saw fit. Despair swept her again, and tears began to run slowly down her face.
    If Hector noticed her unhappiness he showed no sign of it. Their steady pace did not flag. It was early evening now, and the sun was full in their faces, a fiery ball sliding down towards the smooth flame-edged line of the horizon, stretching a broad path across... across—
    Isobel was jolted in an instant out of her misery. It was the sea that faced them, a few short miles away - the sea dancing in the little evening breeze, sparkling beneath the rosy light of the setting sun. The sea on which a fleet of fishing boats bobbed black on the waves - and further out a larger ship, sails furled, rocked at anchor.
    She knew now why they had not crossed the mountains. Ardshee lay across the sea. They would take her from the land of her birth to some bleak island cut off by storms and wild weather for half the year. It would be a banishment more terrible than anything she could have imagined. Instinctively, she gave a little cry, and saw