Claimed by the Laird

by Nicola Cornick

  “If that is so, why did you not tell me the truth?” Christina demanded. She knew the answer almost as soon as she had spoken and did not wait for his reply. “You were afraid that if I learned you had deceived me, I would sack you,” she said flatly. “You wanted to stay at Kilmory. So you kept lying, kept using me, pretended to care for me and all the time you were hoping I would lead you to your brother’s murderer.” She was ashamed of the way that her voice broke. “Damn you, Lucas,” she said more quietly. “Why could you not have come here openly to ask about Peter? I would have helped you.”

  She turned away. She did not want him to see her like this, in pieces. “You were right,” she said. “I want you to go. Leave Kilmory.”

  “No,” Lucas said. His jaw had set stubbornly. “Christina—”

  “Please,” Christina said. “Stay at the Kilmory Inn if you wish to continue your inquiries. I don’t care. But if you have even the smallest degree of respect for me, do not, I beg you, pester me with any more excuses.”

  She pushed blindly past him out of the Round House and stumbled down onto the beach. It was only then that she realized she was barefoot and had left her stockings and shoes behind. The sand felt cool between her toes. The breeze had a sharp edge. The blue twilight wrapped about her, but for once the timeless beauty of Kilmory could not touch her. She felt cold to the soul, with what was left of her heart shattered into a million pieces. She had been right all along about love. It hurt. You could lose it in an instant, and then everything changed.

  * * *

  DAMNATION, BLAST AND bloody hell.

  Lucas ran an exasperated hand through his hair.

  That could not have gone much more badly. It had been far too little, far too late. He could see that now, now that the damage was done. His quest had blinded him to the hurt he would cause Christina when the truth finally came out. He had made some disastrous miscalculations, proving nothing to her other than that she could not trust him.

  Fool. Bloody fool.

  She had been hurt so badly before. Her whole life, all her certainties, had been destroyed in one moment. Now he had unwittingly done the same thing, taken her certainties, taken her world, and broken it.

  He went outside and sat on the flat stone facing the sea. The driftwood fire had burned down to a glow of smoldering ashes now. The sky over the sea was rose and gold. The breeze felt cold. He sat there for a long time, thinking.

  In pursuing his search ruthlessly to the end he had lost the one thing he had come to care for above all else: Christina, and the promise of a future with her.

  Yet Peter deserved justice, too. He could not simply abandon his brother’s cause, not when Peter’s murderer was still out there, not when no one else would ever bring him to justice. He felt horribly torn. He could not leave Kilmory without doing all he could to discover the truth. But more important still was the need to prove to Christina that she could believe in him.

  I would have helped you, Christina had said. He wondered if, even now, she might be persuaded to do so. She had such a passionate belief in natural justice. He had to trust that her goodness, her generosity, would help him now, even though he did not deserve it.

  Lucas got to his feet slowly. The urge to go after Christina, to override all her objections, was strong, but equally powerful was the respect he had for her. He could not force her to help him. This time he had to earn her trust. He had to win her all over again.

  It was as he emerged onto the beach that he saw Eyre galloping across it on a rangy gray, the sand kicked up by its hooves into a spray. As Eyre saw him he reined in and drew to a halt. He did not dismount but sat looking down on Lucas from a great height, his eyes narrowed.

  “Out late, Mr. Ross.”

  “I’ve been swimming,” Lucas said with a shrug. “Gardening is a dirty business.”

  “So is spying,” Eyre said pleasantly. “I hear you’ve been busy seducing the duke’s daughter as part of your investigation. Nice work, Mr. Ross. I hope it was worth it.”

  With the greatest effort of will Lucas kept his mouth shut and his hands from Eyre’s throat. The excise officer only wanted to provoke him; Lucas knew that. But it was almost impossible not to defend Christina and give the man the confirmation he sought.

  “Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Eyre?” he said coldly.

  “Not really,” Eyre said. “I’ve got an informer in the castle now. I don’t need your help.” The horse sidestepped as Eyre’s hands tightened on the reins. He looked up at the cliff and following his gaze, Lucas could see a number of other riders on the track at the top. “We’re on our way to the whisky still now,” Eyre said. “Word is we’ll catch the smugglers in the act tonight.”

  “Best of luck,” Lucas said, feigning boredom over the sudden pounding of his heart. Surely, he thought, Christina would not have gone straight from him to the whisky still. Yet angry, disillusioned and miserable, she might well have wanted to hide away from the prying eyes of her family. He felt the tension grab him like a vise.

  Eyre raised a hand in a mocking salute and galloped away. Lucas forced himself to walk slowly back along the beach toward the castle as though he had not a concern in the world, but as soon as he was out of sight he broke into a run.

  There was a spy at Kilmory, someone who had betrayed Christina and her smuggling gang to the excise officers. He wondered who that person could be. The irony was that Christina would believe that he was the traitor. She would never believe his protestations of honesty now, assuming he ever had the chance to see her again. He thought of Eyre and his cohorts heading along the loch to the whisky still and he ran faster.

  He pounded on the front door of the castle and it felt like hours before Galloway came, stately as a galleon, to open it.

  “Mr. Ross?” The butler’s face was set in lines of deep disapproval. “This is the front door. The servants’ entrance—”

  “I’m aware of where it is,” Lucas said tersely. “I need to see Lady Christina.”

  The butler looked both affronted and wary, and in that moment Lucas knew that the servants were all aware of his affair with Christina and that Galloway utterly deplored it and would never in a hundred years allow him to see Christina or pass on any message to her.

  “Her ladyship is not at home,” Galloway said, and started to swing the door closed, but Lucas blocked it with a slap of his palm on the wood. The butler jumped.

  “Has she gone to the whisky still?” Lucas demanded.

  Galloway blinked at him, impervious, silent.

  “Damn it, man,” Lucas roared. “Tell me!”

  “Mr. Ross!” Galloway was shaking with fury. “You are insolent. You will be dismissed from your post.”

  “Too late,” Lucas said. “Lady Christina has already sacked me.” He turned away. He could not afford the time to see if Christina was inside the castle. He did not want to draw further attention to the fact that she might be missing or indeed to their relationship, though it seemed it was too late for that. The only thing he could do was go to the whisky still and hope against hope that she would not be there.

  He knew that if she had gone there he would be too late. The excise officers had fifteen minutes advantage and they were on horseback. They would be at the bothy already.

  He turned and ran.

  Too late...

  The stones slid beneath his boots. The heather and bracken whipped at his legs. As he came around the headland toward the loch, he saw smoke rising into the still blue of the night sky. His heart gave a huge thump of fear. Eyre had set the bothy alight.

  Lucas ran up the slope. It felt as though his lungs were bursting, but he drove himself on. He could not see the excisemen anywhere. The bothy door swung wide, hanging off its hinges. The lock had been smashed. The interior was alight and burning fiercely; the smoke was thick and choking, glass shards everywhere from the broken window.

  Lucas rested a hand against the splintered door frame and drew in deep gulps of fresh air.<
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  Christina. He had to find Christina.

  Then he heard shouts and the drumming of hooves. Fresh fear gripped him. Pushing away from the door, he ran out onto the path. The moon was up now and it illuminated the hunt below. He could see the figure of a woman, cloaked and hooded, fleeing through the heather down toward the edge of the loch. She was sure-footed and did not stumble or hesitate once. Her cloak billowed out behind her like a sail, black against the inky blue of the night and the purple haze of the heather. But for all her speed, she was not going to get away. Lucas could see the trap. Behind her the riding officers were fanning out, a half dozen of them on horseback in a semicircle, some of them driving her downhill toward the water, some of them coming in along the shore of the loch.

  Soon she would have nowhere to run.

  She reached the edge of the loch and half turned to look behind. Eyre was thundering down through the bracken at her back, the others shouting, circling, drawing ever closer, their blood lit with the excitement of the chase, all except Bryson, who appeared to be having a short, sharp argument with Eyre. Eyre raised his pistol and the breath jammed in Lucas’s throat on a shout. He saw the riding officer try to level the pistol and heard the snap of the shot. Christina checked for a second in her headlong flight along the edge of the loch.

  Eyre was trying to kill her.

  He did not want to capture her. He did not want to take her prisoner. He wanted her dead.

  Sheer, atavistic terror grabbed Lucas by the throat. He set off down the hill toward them, knowing it was hopeless, that there was nothing he could do to save Christina and that Eyre would surely have shot her before he got there. But he would take the man down and kill him for what he was doing, for the hunt, and the terror and the cold-blooded execution.

  Christina had reached the point where a spit of shingle ran out into the waters of the loch. Eyre was so close at her back that Lucas saw him reach out to grab her cloak and only just miss. Christina did not hesitate. She walked into the loch. Lucas saw her skirts billow out, her cloak spreading across the water.

  She would rather drown than give herself up to these thugs and bullies.

  He cried out then; his voice caught on the wind and blew away. The heather roots tripped him but he stumbled on, trying to reach her, knowing in his heart it was too late but not prepared to give up, to give in.

  Christina was walking steadily onward, out into the waters of the loch. It had to be an optical illusion caused by the moonlight, but it appeared that she was walking on the water. Eyre had urged his horse into the loch behind her and as Lucas watched the creature plunged up to its chest in the water and Eyre gave a shout as he was almost unseated. A moment later the horse was swimming and Eyre had fallen off with a loud splash and a howl of invective, yet Christina continued to walk out into the darkness until the moon disappeared behind a cloud and the spread of her cloak on the dark water vanished. When the moon came up again there was no one there, nothing but Eyre splashing out into the shallows, soaked and still swearing, leading his horse, and the other riding officers circling on the beach, milling around, bewildered.

  Lucas stood, staring at the breeze ruffling the top of the water. He did not know what to think. Hope and desperation warred inside him. And then he remembered, like the whisper of the breeze, Christina’s voice telling him how well she knew the sea and the lochs and the landscape, the way her ancestors had.

  Lucas gave a great shudder. He felt his knees weaken and he crumpled to sit in the midst of the heather and bracken, head in hands. Christina knew and loved this land in a way that Eyre and his men never would. She understood it. And tonight that had surely saved her. He did not know how. He did not know where she had gone, but he felt hope and faith catch alight inside him and burn steadily.

  The riding officers still had not seen him. In all of the fray they had not noticed he was there. He lay a bit lower in the heather, feeling the sharp prickle of the stems against his skin, listening.

  “Where did she go?” Lucas heard Bryson ask.

  “She drowned,” Eyre said shortly. He was shaking himself like a dog.

  “But—” One of the others, a youth called Austin, was pressing closer. “We all saw. She walked away. She walked on the water.”

  Eyre glared at him. “What do you think she is? A bloody witch? A ghost? She drowned, I tell you!” His voice was rising. “And in the morning we shall see who is missing and then we will know.”

  “We’ve nothing, though,” Bryson said. “No whisky still, no arrests, not even a body—”

  Eyre turned on him. “We’ve a woman missing, and I think I know who she is...” He stopped abruptly. It was clear to Lucas that Eyre’s vanity could not allow him to share his suspicions of Christina. In the same way that he could not countenance that she had outwitted him again, he alone wanted to claim the triumph of breaking the news of her drowning and of her secret life as the smugglers’ leader.

  Lucas stood up a little stiffly and started to edge toward the track. He had to find Christina, help her. When Eyre came to Kilmory Castle expecting to tell her shattered family that she was dead, Christina had to be alive and well, waiting to refute everything Eyre said.

  The excise officers were cantering away along the edge of the water. They were subdued, looking over their shoulders. One superstitious fellow even crossed himself. Lucas waited until the last echo of the horses’ hooves had died away, and then he walked down to the water’s edge. He was not sure where Christina would come back to dry land, but it had to be along the western edge of the loch.

  He followed the shoreline along to a place where the silver birch trees grew thickly, their pale trunks reflecting the moonlight. There, amongst the tangled roots, he saw the huddle of a body lying motionless in the shallows.

  Christina.

  He had lost count how many times that night he had felt despair. He waded into the water and caught hold of a waterlogged fold of cloth, pulling her toward him. She felt heavy and reluctant to come to him but he struggled, swearing, until his grip on the sodden material was sufficient to be able to lift her.

  She was still breathing. Whispering a prayer of thanks under his breath, he started to drag her out of the shallows. Immediately she stirred and started to struggle.

  “That’s my girl,” Lucas said. Relief flooded through him as fiercely as the terror had before.

  “I’m not your girl.” Her voice was scarcely more than a croak.

  “Let’s not argue about that now,” Lucas said. “Give me your hand. We need to get you out of there.”

  She hesitated for only a moment, then her hand grasped his outstretched one and he pulled her toward him. Her clothes were saturated and the water was reluctant to give her up, but he grasped her other arm and lifted her. She was clinging to him, soaked through, but beneath the sodden layers of material, she felt warm and alive, and he crushed her to him and felt the fierceness with which she held him. He felt relief, thankfulness—and anger with her for putting him through such an ordeal. It was so strong it took his breath away.

  “I warned you,” he said. His voice was rough. He wanted to shake her; he wanted to do something to vent all the fury that was inside him. “I told you it was dangerous.” He pulled her hood back so that he could see her face. Her hair spilled in glorious disarray about her shoulders. She had the pallor of exhaustion, her eyes wide and frightened, a smear of dirt down one cheek. There was blood, too. He could see it now in the pale moonlight, a smear of it on her sleeve. His anger fled as quickly as it had come.

  “You’re bleeding,” he said. “The bullet hit you.”

  “It’s only a scratch,” she said. She sounded faint with fatigue. “I should have realized you would be here.” She had freed herself from his grasp now and stepped away from him, wariness in her eyes.

  “Have you come to arrest me?” she said.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Lucas said shortly. “I came to warn you, but I was too late. Come on,” he added, trying to enc
ourage her up the shore and onto the path. “We mustn’t waste any time.”

  Still she hung back. His patience snapped. “Look,” he said. “A moment ago you clung to me. You trusted me.”

  She turned away so that he could not see her face. “I was glad to be safe,” she murmured. “I forgot.”

  “You should trust your instincts,” Lucas said.

  She gave him a look of weary disillusionment. “They have not served me so well in the past,” she said. Ignoring his outstretched hand, she clambered up the hillside and onto the track.

  They did not speak as they walked back to the castle. Christina had put up her hood again and held the sodden material of her cloak close. Lucas could see that she was shivering. It was as they neared the castle ruins that he heard the furious beat of hooves on the road and grabbed her, pulling her into the shelter of a tumbledown wall, one hand clapped over her mouth.

  “Eyre,” he whispered in her ear. “He is going back to try to find your body.”

  He felt the shudder that shook her, and drew her closer, arms wrapped about her, trying to instill a sense of security and protection into her as she trembled. He pressed his cheek to her hair and flattened his hands against her back and held her shaking body to him.

  “You’re safe,” he whispered. “Don’t be afraid.”

  Christina drew away from him slowly.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, when the sounds had faded and the night was still again. “Why did you not betray me? I thought you must be the one who told Eyre where to find the whisky still.”

  “There is a spy at Kilmory, but it isn’t me,” Lucas said. He caught her by the shoulders. “Do you really think I would betray you? Dear God, Christina—”

  “I don’t know,” Christina said dully. She tried to twist out of his grasp. “Don’t you see, Lucas?” she said. “I don’t trust you. I can’t trust you. I thought I knew you and you were someone else entirely.”

  Lucas could feel her shaking. “I did not betray you to Eyre because I have been trying to protect you,” he said harshly. “I’ve seen what you have tried to do to help the people of Kilmory and I admire you for it even if I don’t agree with what you do. And I don’t like Eyre’s methods,” he added grimly. “I wrote to Sidmouth to say so.”