“P-please – I am sure I can – walk,” Leona protested. “There is no need,” he answered firmly. “I cannot believe you wish to negotiate a flight of stairs at this moment.”
He started to climb them as he spoke and Leona saw the walls were covered with pictures, shields, pikes, claymores and flags.
‘It is exactly,’ she thought with delight, ‘as Mama described what the inside of a Scottish castle was like!’
Her rescuer carried her without apparently any exertion on his part to the top of the staircase and, as a servant came running up behind him, he said,
“I will take the lady to the ‘Thistle Bedchamber’.”
“Aye, my Lord.”
The servant moved ahead.
Leona had a quick glimpse of a salon and of the walls of the corridor, also hung with shields and pikes. Then she was carried into a large bedr
