She was in the very last cell. He had known she would be, of course.
“Meredith!” he yelled as he approached. “Meredith, it’s me! Can ye hear me!”
“Ryder!” her voice came back almost instantly, the echo picking it up and sending it ricocheting against the walls. “Ryder, I’m here! Over here!”
Within seconds, he was at the door of her cell, his fingers fumbling with the keys as Meredith sobbed behind the bars her hands reaching for him frantically.
“Ryder! Oh, Ryder, I knew ye’d come!” she said, her voice breaking with emotion. “I told him as much! And... and I spat in his face, too! Ryder, ye should have seen it!”
“I’m sure ye did,” he said, smiling as he finally managed to insert the correct key in the lock and pull open the heavy door. “I’d have expected nae less o’ ye!”
With that, she ran from the cell and flung herself into his arms, covering his face with kisses, as he hugged her tightly.
“We have to go, lass,” Ryder said reluctantly untangling himself from her embrace. “Colby will ken I’d come down here to find ye. He’ll surely be after us by now!”
Sure enough, as he took her hand and started to guide her back the way he’d just come, they heard a commotion somewhere in the network of passages nearby. Raised voices, footsteps, plus the unmistakable sound of the Laird of Moore’s voice, commanding his guards to follow him to Meredith.
“This way!” Colby shouted, the echo immediately repeating his words. “Follow me. I know exactly where they’ll be! If we hurry, we can trap them there, and Ryder can join his pretty little wife in her cell, if I decide to spare him.”
Gripping Meredith’s hand tightly in his and raising the fingers of his other hand to lips in a shushing motion, Ryder led her on, walking more slowly now in a bid to remain silent enough to avoid detection by Colby and his men. At a point where the passage they walked down forked in two, they paused, Ryder listening hard. The voices were louder now. Colby and his men were making no attempt to stay quiet --- which was fortunate for Meredith and Ryder, who could tell exactly how close they were.
And they were close. Too close for comfort in fact, and, as Ryder looked frantically around for somewhere to hide, he realized they were out of options. With nowhere left to go, he turned around, shielding Meredith with his body as he pressed her up against the wall of the passage, hoping against hope that the space was wide enough and dark enough that the men would pass them by, without realizing they were there.
“Quiet, now, lass,” he whispered softly, feeling her trembling against him in fear. “Just a few seconds, and we’ll be safe. I promise I’ll keep ye safe.”
Ryder wished he felt as confident as he sounded. As the group of men reached the same fork in the way they’d come to themselves just a few seconds earlier, however, fortune finally shone on the couple hidden in the shadows. The voices grew louder and louder... then gradually started to recede. They’d taken the wrong turning! Ryder stifled a chuckle of amazement as he realized that Colby, for all his bravado, had led his men in completely the wrong direction! Pride goes before a fall, indeed, he thought, as he cautiously peered around the corner of the passage and, finding it empty, took Meredith by the hand once more, almost pulling her off her feet in his haste to get them both safely above ground.
“We’ll have just a few minutes before he realizes his mistake,” he said, his voice low as they finally saw the glimmer of moonlight that signaled the end of the long corridor. “I need to make sure yer well away from here before that happens.”
“And ye?” Meredith asked, tugging at his hand. “Where will ye be when I’m well away from here?”
Frowning slightly, Ryder didn’t answer. The fact was, Colby was not the only reason he desperately wanted to get Meredith out into the open air. If all had gone according to plan, the castle should be ablaze by now, his men having snuck quickly through the rooms, lighting fires at every stop. The aim was to create a blaze so large and so widespread that it would be impossible to stop --- a technique Ryder was sure Colby must have used when he set fire to the Quinn castle just a few weeks earlier. If the plan worked, it would destroy everything Colby held dear. But it also risked destroying both Meredith and Melissa, as well as the many men Ryder had mustered to help him that night, hence his urgent need to get them all to safety.
* * *
They emerged from the dungeon into an inferno. The sky, previously pitch dark but for the light from the moon, was now a fiery orange, the loud crackle of flames filling the air and almost drowning out the screams which seemed to come from every direction, as the castle’s staff and guards frantically tried to get to safety. As Ryder and Meredith paused at the dungeon entrance, they saw three guards run past, one of them briefly making eye contact with them and then looking instantly away. These men had long since abandoned their posts, Ryder saw; unlike his own men, who he trusted to be loyal to their last breaths, any loyalty they’d once had to Colby was gone. Their only thought now was for survival and escape, as his must be too.
“Quickly!” he said, pulling Meredith away from the blaze in the courtyard and through the nearest door. It was clear that they would not make it through the flames before them, and he would not risk it. The room they now entered, however, was still untouched by the flames, although smoke had started to permeate the air, making them cough as they fought their way through it.
“Pull yer shawl up over yer mouth,” Ryder yelled to Meredith, casting his eye around the room in search of some way to escape their predicament. This cannae be happening, he thought, as his gaze landed on the room’s single window, which opened out onto the wide expanse of grass below. We cannae escape Colby, only to burn to death in a fire started by me own men. There must be a way out!
The window was narrow, but as he strode towards it with Meredith cowering behind him, Ryder thought it looked just wide enough for her to climb through. He would not make it after her, but that didn’t matter. For now, all that mattered was Meredith and getting her to safety. Which might be easier said than done if he knew anything about his wife and her determination.
“Here,” he shouted, stooping down and making a stirrup with his hands. “Climb onto me hands, then out through the window. Quickly, lass, we daenae have much time!”
“But... but what will ye do? How will ye get out? I’ll be lucky if I can get through that space, let alone ye!”
Meredith’s eyes were wide with fear, but they grew wider still as she realized he had no intention of following her, even if he could.
“Yer not coming with me, are ye?” she asked bluntly, her lower lip trembling. “Ye want to go back into the castle and track down Colby, I suppose. Well, that’s a shame because I’m not going without ye, Ryder. Ye cannae make me. If we burn, at least we burn together.”
She meant it, too. He could see it in the firm set of her jaw as she stared at him, almost daring him to contradict her. Stubborn to the last, he thought. Then, before she knew what was happening, he had picked her up by the waist, swung her over her shoulder, and was forcing her out through the window, ignoring her screams of protest as he gently prised her fingers from the side of the window, and gave one last push which sent her tumbling the short distance to the ground below.
Ryder stopped for just long enough to reassure himself she was safe, then, as he saw her struggle to her feet, then whirl round to face the window she’d just come out of, he resolutely turned away, his eye stinging from the smoke as he ran back the way he’d come, and out into the flame-filled courtyard. If he’d waited and given her a chance to speak he knew she’d have been able to change his mind, and persuade him to leave with her, and he couldn’t risk that happening before he’d tracked down the man who had taken her and exacted his revenge on him. She’d be angry with him, he knew, but she would at least be safe, and that was the only thing that mattered.
For now, though, he had to find Colby.