by Aileen Adams
This was a far cry from old Brodric’s place in Perth, with its filthy floors and grimy tables, its mugs which looked sorely in need of a good scrubbing even after the old man finished washing them. Not that the conditions back there ever left him with an empty tavern or purse. Neither was the case, and not only because Drew’s antics kept the patrons coming back to see who he would lure into a fight on a particular day.
A man in need of a great deal of ale rarely cared about the conditions in which he happened to be drinking it.
“Drinks all around,” Drew announced. “I can afford a bit of generosity.” He strode down the length of the room, between two rows of long, wooden tables over which men bent with bowls of stew, hunks of bread, and always a mug.
“He’d do better to spend his coin on stew,” the lass observed with a wry grin.
“Aye, that would be Drew,” Rufus chuckled. “Not one for practical matters.” He watched his cousin hold a brief conversation with the man pouring from a large barrel, gesturing to the group of them across the room.
“What shall ye do now?” Rufus was unable to keep from asking the woman. By the gods, he didn’t even know her name and thought it might be too late to ask.
“I cannot say,” she admitted as she took a seat on the bench alongside their table. “I will find a way somehow. This is not the first time I’ve had no choice but to live.”
“On your own?”
“Aye.”
“Without your brothers?”
She rolled her eyes. “Why are they of such interest to ye? Why am I? Do ye not know, of the hardships a woman faces when she is thought of last? Not a son, not of a wealthy family, so nothing to offer a family in a better position through marriage. She is nothing. Barely an afterthought. My brothers do not care for me, and I have no parents.”
She shamed him with her admission. He forgot at times that not all men were like himself. If she were his sister, he’d have moved heaven and earth to protect her. “Forgive me.”
“There is nothing to forgive ye for,” she shrugged. He heard her meaning. Nothing he’d done. Her brothers, on the other hand, deserved her ire. He agreed with her.
Drew caught his eye as he returned, and with a quick motion of his head signaled Rufus to step away. He joined his cousin near the door. “What did you hear? Anything about MacFarland?”
“Nay, but I did hear that one, there, muttering something about a mistake.” He nodded toward a grizzled old man in threadbare clothing with a patch over one eye and a bald head covered in scars, as though someone had taken knives to him. He had seen quite a bit through that single eye of his, Rufus supposed.
“A mistake?” he asked.
“As in, the lot of us are making a mistake.” Drew shook his head, eyes narrowed as he looked over the tavern. “I dinna like this. I could not tell what he spoke of, but he seems to have an interest in us. Makes me question whether that devil is lying in wait somewhere, knowing we’d be through.”
Was it possible?
And why did Rufus look to the lass before he looked to anyone else, questioning whether she would be better off far from them should they be attacked? It was no wonder men preferred not to travel with women. All they did was distract from the matter at hand.
“We had better be off, then,” he decided with a firm nod. “Tell the others. We’ll leave the lass and go.”
“Do ye believe we ought to?” Drew asked, glancing over Rufus’s shoulder to where she sat beside Clyde. She’d raised her hood, Rufus noted when he followed Drew’s gaze. “What if he hears she was with us? He might take her, ask her questions, have her lead them to us.”
“Damn,” Rufus snarled. “I dinna know if we ought to risk bringing her along, just the same. She knows nothing about us.”
“Are ye certain?” Drew caught his eye, his brows lifting in disbelief.
Rufus knew this expression well and hated him for it.
“I saw the two of ye speaking, alone. I saw the way she looked at ye, and the way ye looked at her. Dinna tell me ye shared nothing with the lass.”
“Are ye accusing me of something?” Rufus hissed.
“Nay, I’m merely asking if you’re certain she knows nothing that Ian MacFarland might use to his advantage.”
“Nothing the man does not already know, that I intend to kill him. He’s an even bigger fool than I thought, if he has not considered my desire for vengeance.”
Drew pursed his lips, considering this. “Fair enough. I hope ye are right about this.”
So did Rufus.
The two of them returned to the table, where mugs of ale awaited them. Rufus swallowed the entire contents in two gulps, dragging an arm over his mouth before speaking. “We need to go. Now.”
“What of me?” The lass looked from one of them to the other.
“Ye were never coming with us,” Rufus reminded her. “And it’s better for ye to stay behind now. We think someone might be watching or waiting for us. Best ye never met us, lass. Remember that. Ye dinna know us, and ye learned nothing from us.”
The color left her cheeks. “I see.”
Laughter rang out on the other side of the tavern. High-pitched and reedy. “Ye dinna know what ye do, lads.” Rufus turned to find the one-eyed man laughing at them.
“What business is it of yours?” he asked. The last thing he wished was to fight with an old man who sounded as though he’d left much of his good sense behind with his youth, especially in the presence of strangers who turned their attention to this bit of entertainment.
“I only felt it fair to warn ye,” the old man explained with a shrug. “Ye believe it’s wise to have this one with ye, then?” He waved one hand to Clyde, who stood silent and unmoving as always.
“Him? What’s wrong with him?” Drew stepped forward, his color rising. How like him, always prepared to fight.
The stranger snorted in laughter. “I was not speakin’ of your giant-man, lad. If I were in your place, I would certainly want him on my side of a fight. Nay, I was speakin’ of the woman trying to hide herself behind him.”
Rufus turned to find the lass doing just that, half-crouched behind Clyde’s wide body. She turned her face away, so the hood she had not lowered hid her profile. Yet even a one-eyed man had been able to see her, to recognize whoever it was she happened to be.
“Who is she?” Alec asked, moving nearer to her.
“Aye, who is she?” Tyrone demanded. “Speak.”
“Och, ye dinna know,” the man mourned, shaking his head. “I might have guessed, for ye would not have had her along if she’d told ye.”
Rufus stepped forward, drawing his dirk and leveling it at the man’s scarred face. “Speak her name, or I’ll have your other eye.”
The man did not flinch. This was likely not the first time he’d stared down a blade. “I’ll tell ye, but not because of that dirk of yers. More because I don’t like the notion of a man being fooled by a bonny face. That’s Davina MacFarland hiding behind the giant, sister of Ian MacFarland, and she’s about to run out the back door.”
Rufus knew something the wise old man did not, Davina could not run, not with her ankle bandaged as it was. Even so, he put on speed, dodging between Alec and Tyrone and sliding past Clyde that he might catch the lass before she managed to get outside and steal one of their horses.
He caught her by the back of her cloak only a few steps over the threshold, jerking her violently toward him. What did he expect would happen? Perhaps that she would have the good grace to at least appear contrite, to beg for mercy.
Instead, she threw off his hand with a single, practiced sweep of her arm and with the other withdrew a dirk from a garter around her thigh. He stiffened when the blade touched the skin just beneath his jaw. “Do not touch me,” she spat, “unless ye plan to speak to me as a person, not as a MacFarland.”
“Ye lying, filthy—” he spat through gritted teeth, careful not to make any sudden movements which might render him with a hole in his throat. “
What was your plan all along, eh? To ride ahead and warn your brother that we were on our way? To be certain they’d lie in wait for us?”
“Nay,” she hissed. “I planned no such thing.”
“More lies.” He heard the door open, heard Clyde’s heavy footfalls hitting the ground behind him. “And I believe ye to be vastly outnumbered, MacFarland, so ye might want to hand the blade to Clyde.”
“I never intended to cause harm to any of ye,” she whispered as tears welled in her eyes. “This, I vow. I never wished to bring harm on any of your heads.” Only then did she withdraw the dirk and hand it to Clyde with a resigned sigh.
“I dinna care to hear what ye did or did not intend, woman.” He caught Drew’s eye, standing behind her. “Pull out another length of bandage for her wrists.”
“What do ye think you’re going to do to me?” she snarled. “I cannot run.”
“Nay, but ye can ride,” he grunted. “Hold out your hands.”
“What are ye going to do?” Tyrone murmured in his ear, standing just behind him.
“I’m going to ensure she stays with us now,” Rufus explained.
When Davina would not comply with his command, he took her arms and pulled then forward, holding her wrists together in one of his much larger hands.
Her hiss of discomfort when he cinched the linen strip tight gave him no small amount of pleasure. He wanted her to hurt, for she had made a grievous misstep by believing him so easily fooled. He’d take his payment out of her flesh if need be.
“Why do this?” Alec murmured.
Drew answered. “So she canna ride ahead. We canna risk her going to her brother.”
“I would never go to my brother,” she snarled, then spat on the ground as if to confirm this. “I hate him.”
“Pardon me if I canna find solace in that,” Rufus smirked, raising his eyes from her bound wrists to her hate-filled face. She must have hated him this way all along. How cleverly she had concealed it, and how terribly foolish of him to care a whit about what would become of her once they parted ways.
Tears rolled down her cheeks, tears he imagined would be hot and enraged. She could feel all the fury she wished, but it would make no difference. It was only fortunate that they managed to find her true identity before moving on. No telling how she would have played them falsely.
“Put her on my horse,” he ordered Clyde. “I’ll ride with her.”
“Ye shall do no such thing!” she hissed.
“Ye are in no position to tell me what I shall and shall not do, Davina,” he snarled, her name like poison in his mouth. “I’ll do just as I please, and ye would be wise to keep your lying mouth shut from now on. I would adore an excuse to gag ye.”
“Try,” she dared. “You’ll lose a finger.”
“I doubt it.” He turned away, wishing with all his might there was a way to vent his rage. He wanted to make her suffer the sting of her betrayal as keenly as he did. For it did sting, far worse than he would have liked to admit.
“What are we going to do?” Drew whispered, eyes wide as he watched over Rufus’s shoulder the act of Clyde placing Davina in the saddle. To her credit, she didn’t say a word.
“I don’t know as yet,” Rufus admitted in a tight whisper. “I wish I did.”
“That makes two of us.”
“But we canna let her go on her own. That much I know,” he decided. “When MacFarland finds out I have his sister, he might just understand a bit of what it is to not know the fate of your family.”
He was about to turn away, intent on mounting behind the woman, when Drew caught his arm. “Ye know I would not go so far as to disagree with ye on anything to do with this mission we’re on unless I felt strongly about it.”
“You’re going to disagree with me?” Rufus asked, puzzled.
“Not disagree so much as reminding ye of something ye might not have thought of.”
“What?”
Drew nodded in Davina’s direction. “What if he doesn’t want her? What if he doesn’t care? He hardly seems the type to give a damn.”
“She’s his blood, and a woman. How could he not care?”
“I believe ye ought to look at this through the eyes of a man such as the one we’re talking about,” Drew murmured as he folded his arms. “Ian MacFarland isn’t the type to lose sleep over a woman. Even if that woman happens to be his sister. Why would she be out on her own, so far from their home, if he cared about her?”
Rufus did not see things this way. In fact, his thoughts ran in the other direction. “What if he left her there as a spy?”
“Come, now.”
“Nay, listen to me,” Rufus urged. The more thought he gave to the notion, the greater sense it made. “He must know I would not ride alone, and that among all of us there would be at least one with the decency to tend to a lass in need. I would wager anything at all that she was there to lure us.”
“That ankle of hers certainly did not appear to be a lie,” Drew noted, his voice quiet. “In fact, it looked damn near broken. Do ye believe he would harm her just to make his lie look believable?”
“I dinna know what the man would do,” Rufus snarled, waving his arms. “And I’ve heard enough. I will not treat the wench with more respect than she deserves, and I certainly will never trust her again.”
“So be it,” Drew sighed. “Ye know I am by your side in this. No matter what.” Yet there was hesitation in his voice, clear as day. It was clear, he regretted the choice Rufus had made and would continue to make so long as they held Davina captive.
This was simply something he would need to become used to, for Rufus’s mind was made up long before he swung up behind the bound woman.
“Ye ought to accustom yourself to being near me,” he muttered. “For I dinna plan to allow ye out of my sight ever again.”
7
And she’d thought there was nothing more uncomfortable than sleeping with her back against a tree and her ankle swollen to twice its normal size.
How wrong she had been about that, along with so many other things.
He’d bound her wrists so tight, there was no longer feeling in her hands. They might as well have no longer been attached. Dead lumps of flesh, lying useless in her lap.
The fact that her captor very deliberately jostled and banged against her was not helpful. She nearly lost her balance several times, though she would not have fallen with one of his arms on either side of her, reins in his hands.
A prison, really. Bars made of human flesh and bone.
She grew tired quickly, the moment the excitement of them discovering her had given way and drained every bit of energy and life from her muscles. Fatigue would not have been so difficult to bear were it not for the warm, firm tower of muscle behind her. Knowing he was there and how easy it would be to fall back against him…
That could not happen. Not ever. She would have rather leaned against a red-hot chimney than him.
He might have listened. He might have given her a chance to explain.
Instead, he’d treated her like nothing more than a criminal. Someone to loathe, to bind up, and shove around. To hate. She was nothing more than a MacFarland, and unworthy of even a few minutes in which to tell them just how little loyalty she held for her brother or any of her kin.
He would not have listened. It would all have been a waste of her breath and her time. Though she had nothing more to do with her time, did she?
Oh, how they hated her. She’d known what it meant to be with men who cared nothing for her, the brothers and cousins who’d never seen her as anything more than a nuisance. Someone to do their washing and cooking once she’d grown old enough and strong enough to do so. At least she’d earned her keep then, and could avoid their ire so long as she did her work to Ian’s satisfaction.
If not? A slap to the side of the head. A shove. He’d once kicked the backs of her knees, making her legs buckle so she fell to the floor like a sack of potatoes, all because his supper was cold w
hen he’d deigned to come in and eat it.
And she’d believed that to be the worst thing she could deal with. The most uncomfortable, the most distressing. Knowing how little they cared.
She had not known what it meant to bear the hate-filled, accusing glares of men who refused to speak to her. Who blamed her, who resented her. Who likely had created stories in their heads as to who she was, what she intended.
They knew nothing of her. Nothing at all. Typical of a man, thinking he knew all without stopping to ask.
“Wake up.” Rufus shook her from side to side with his arms, and she realized she had slumped forward and was nearly hanging over the horse’s neck. “Can ye not stay awake through the day?”
She held her tongue. It was past dark, the horses having carried them for many hours. The poor beasts were likely near exhausted, but Rufus insisted on pushing everyone harder. Farther. As though he would prove something to her by insisting they catch Ian and the others sooner.
As though it would make him more of a man.
She’d wounded him gravely. He’d come to care for her, at least a small bit. She’d felt it in those final moments before the man with the eye patch had given her away. He’d hesitated. He’d asked how she planned to survive on her own.
A man did not ask such questions of a woman who meant nothing to him.
Her brothers and cousins would never have asked such questions. They had left her to die when her mare ran. They hadn’t so much as wrapped her injured leg or offered to let her ride with them. No, she would have slowed them down. Ian could not have that.
The difference between the man behind her and the only other men she’d ever known was indeed striking, and the strength of his hatred for her was indeed a reflection of the hatred he felt for himself after having come to care for her.
How fragile men were. Amusing, that, seeing as how they liked to pretend women were the fragile ones.
Only many years spent observing men and being left on her own to discern their motives could have granted her this depth of understanding. She might have shared this with her captors if only they would give her the chance to speak.