by Aileen Adams
Damn her forever. “I understand what ye mean,” he admitted to Clyde. “Forgive me.” Apologizing and making things right with the men was more important than pride. Discord could easily lead to a mutiny in the ranks, something he had witnessed too many times over the course of a long, disappointing war to ignore now.
Clyde favored him with a short nod—from him, this might as well have been a lengthy speech. He sat again, tending the fire, while Davina retrieved the linen bandages which had once wrapped her now-mostly-healed ankle. She soaked them in a bucket of water, then wrapped them around a fallen limb and held the limb over the fire at a distance.
“You’ve done this before, then?” he asked, watching her work. She did not hesitate, moving with efficiency and purpose.
“Perhaps,” she muttered, her back to him. “Perhaps I only wish to burn ye. We shall find out soon enough.”
“Your brothers?” he asked, ignoring her snide remarks in favor of indulging his curiosity.
“Who else?” Her shoulders shook when she chuckled, but it was a mirthless chuckle. “One of many things I did for them. The only woman about the place, ye ken. Remove your tunic.”
He moved slowly, removing his left arm before sliding the sleeve over his right shoulder and arm. Only gritting his teeth and reminding himself there was a woman present kept him from crying out.
Moments later, she came to him and shook the bandages off the limb. Steam rose from the linen, yet in spite of the heat, she did not hesitate to hold the bandage and wrap it tight around his shoulder and upper arm.
“Too hot?” she murmured as she worked.
“Nay, it feels good,” he admitted. The heat did indeed provide comfort, loosening his tight muscles and granting him a measure of relief. He found himself leaning back against the tree, taking slow, deep breaths, nearly weak with gratitude he could not bring himself to voice.
She seemed to understand, and did not ask him for thanks. Instead, she knelt beside him and began pressing on his shoulder with hands far stronger than he would have given her credit for.
“What happened to ye?” she murmured as she worked.
“Horse. During the war. Nearly crushed my shoulder.”
The breath she sucked in through her teeth spoke of her surprise. “And ye survived it?”
“It would appear that way.”
She snickered. “A pity it was not your skull.”
“Ye would not be the first to think it, lass, and I would wager ye won’t be the last.”
“Tis a wonder ye can use the arm at all,” she observed.
Her fingers were a wonder, loath though he was to admit it. She handled him with confidence, as though she knew his body intimately. “It took quite a lot of time and work to regain movement and strength. I need to be able to ride, ye ken.”
“Of course. And to fight.” Her voice faded to little more than a whisper. Yes, she would think of that.
“Of course.” It was all he would say.
“And ye were going to continue riding, even though ye were in pain? I’m certain this must have ached terribly.”
He shrugged the other shoulder. “That means nothing. I have managed in the past. Covering ground is more important now.” He waited for her to disagree.
She did not. It seemed she had a bit of sense, after all. Hell, he would not have shown her the sharp side of his tongue even if she had told him he was wrong, as the relief she’d granted him was far more important at that moment than being right.
Clyde made good sense, too. He did not speak much. When he did, it mattered all the more. Were he a sort who never stopped speaking, Rufus would not pay nearly as much attention when he did.
He knew he owed the lass a great deal just for this bit of healing. She deserved better than cruelty. “Thank ye.” He sighed when she withdrew her hands, rolling his shoulder in circles and marveling at the difference she’d made.
“I shall do this again when the bandages cool, until the storm passes. I shall need ye to make a promise in the meantime.”
“What’s that?” he asked, raising a suspicious brow.
“Should the pain return, tell me so. Do ye agree?”
“Aye,” he grunted. “I shall.”
“And might I ask a favor in return?”
He scoffed. “That did not take half as long as I had expected.” In fact, he had not expected it at all. The sudden relief brought about by her skill had caused him to forget himself. He would otherwise have suspected her from the first.
Her sigh was soft, put-upon. “Even so, might I ask a favor?”
“What is it, then?”
“Might I ride without my wrists bound from now on?”
He ought to have known that, too. What else would she be asking? “I dinna like the idea much. I canna say for certain whether I should trust ye.”
Instead of blowing up in his face, she responded with calm, even dignity. “Rufus. Come now. I did not have to do what I just did. I might easily have let ye suffer. I will not try to run. I will not make ye regret it. But my wrists and hands do ache so terribly, and it’s rather humiliating to have them unbound every time I need to attend to my needs, then bound again. To say nothing of adjusting my skirt or my hair or—”
“Enough, woman,” he sighed. “You’re enough to make a man’s head ache.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Must ye always be so difficult to get along with?”
“Aye. Always.” This was spoken with a smirk, one which he could not help but return. She had a way about her. She knew how to speak to him, how to get under his skin. He did not like it a bit.
“Very well, then. I hope none of the others decide to ask me about this, for I shall not have the patience to explain.”
“I shall explain, if ye wish.”
“Nay, nay,” he grumbled for the sheer sake of being disagreeable. “I shall handle it myself, the way a man does. No surprise, really, that ye would not understand this. Having the brother ye have, I mean.”
Her eyes darkened as she stood. “Nay. I would not understand.”
He had said too much, as always seemed to be the way between them.
She turned away, arms folded over her middle, greeting Alec and Tyrone when they returned with lines full of fish. He might just as well have not existed.
Only Clyde had borne witness to the exchange, and the way he glowered from beneath his heavy, bushy brows spoke more plainly than if he’d used words.
13
It rained straight through until the middle of the next day, until Davina was certain it would never not rain again. The sound of rain rang in her ears, pounded in her head, and everything touching her skin was damp and bore an unpleasant smell of rot and wetness.
The weather hardly worked a trick on any of the attitudes of the men around her. They were short-tempered, grim, and rather miserable on the whole.
This, she understood. This, she was well-accustomed to navigating. This was the temperament of the men with whom she had come of age. Twenty years spent in their presence.
She’d applied the hot bandages to Rufus’s shoulder regularly, nearly on the hour, until he’d fallen into a fitful sleep she could not help but watch and fret over.
More than once did she ask herself what it mattered how he fared, whether or not he was comfortable. He certainly would not pay her the same consideration, the lout. He could barely manage civility from one minute to the next.
None of the others treated her this way. Not even Drew, and him being a MacIntosh and all. Beneath his rather small, compact frame was a man of deeper intelligence than he let on. She presumed this had to do with a lifelong need to prove himself physically against bigger, stronger lads and men.
If he was to survive, he’d needed to fight. This did not mean he was unable to use his mind. Even with his hot temper, Davina considered him more reasonable than Rufus.
He understood, as did everyone, aside from Rufus, that her brother’s actions were not her own. T
hey might have mistrusted her at the start when they’d heard her name, but they’d begun to trust her soon after. She had not fought them, after all. She had accepted her fate.
On the surface.
If only he were as easy to convince as the rest of them.
The closer they drew to Rufus’s ancestral home, the clearer her predicament became. Ian would not believe she had traveled with the MacIntosh men against her will. Even if he fought on her behalf—which he would, but not because she meant anything to him—he’d be likely to kill her simply because she’d been in their presence. Because he would assume she had betrayed him.
It was enough to make her consider doing it. After all, she would face death even if she remained true to her kin.
She might as well do that which she would be murdered for.
It became clearer with each passing hour that she had to find a way to escape. She had no wish to die at her brother’s hand, and she had no wish to be among the men intent on killing him—no matter how she hated him.
“Och, but it’s a filthy mess,” Drew muttered when they emerged from the woods on horseback, with dampness still heavy in the air and clouds coloring the sky a dreary gray. There were breaks in them, however, revealing bits of blue sky underneath. The storm had passed.
And it had all but flooded the road in the process.
“What are we to do?” she asked, looking around at the men.
“What do ye think, lass?” Alec asked with a grim expression. “We make our way through it.”
She did not see how it would be possible. They’d make no progress. “Perhaps we ought to wait. The sun will dry the ground out some.”
Rufus let out a bitter laugh behind her. “I’m sure that’s what ye want us to do, to be certain your brother will reach my family’s home with time to spare.”
“I did not mean that,” she growled.
“Ye did not? Ye mean it never occurred to ye that he would have the chance to reinforce his position and prepare his men to face us when we arrive?”
“It was the last thing on my mind,” she insisted.
“Will the pair of ye please be quiet?” Tyrone groaned. “I’m sick to death of hearing ye go back and forth as ye do.”
“Ye speak out of turn, lad,” Rufus warned.
“Do I?” He merely scoffed, turning his face away. “Perhaps one of us needs to speak.”
Davina closed her eyes for a moment, drawing a slow breath which she released just as slowly. Someone had to calm things among them before they sank even further into fighting.
She told herself it was for her own sake that she sought to make peace for them. They would like as not take out their aggression on her. “I only meant to ask whether the little progress we’ll make through the mud is worth tiring the horses over. That is all. We will not reach another village until we cross the River Tay, and the poor beasts will be near dead with exhaustion before we can change them out.”
Rufus grumbled under his breath. “Aye, lass, but we’ve already lost enough time. I will not lose more. That is my decision, and any of the men are welcome to disagree if they wish.”
Silence fell over the group, and Davina did not know whether to curse them for being cowards or give them credit for knowing when to remain silent. Perhaps it was not worth starting another argument.
Perhaps they simply wanted to get the whole terrible affair over with. If that were the case, she could not blame them. She, too, wished for it to all be over.
The peaks of the Cairngorns were visible over the tops of the trees, and Davina’s eyes kept looking longingly at them. They were her escape. She could lose herself up there, in the mountains, and Rufus would certainly never take time from his precious mission to find her. The choice would be between searching for a single person in the heavily wooded mountains or continuing on until he found his foe and the justice he craved.
In her eyes, there was no choice to be made.
He would see it that way, as well.
She had only to slip away from the group once they’d crossed the river. By then, the horses would be too tired to ride much further, and she could use the speed her newly-healed ankle afforded her—along with a slight build and a cloak which blended well with the woods—to get away.
Her escape might even be what Rufus needed to grant him the extra bit of strength and ferociousness against Ian. She would certainly not be unhappy if this turned out to be the case.
Drew sang softly to himself as they walked the horses through the mud, songs he might have learned in a tavern. There were rather bawdy words in them, which he at least tried to mutter quietly for her benefit rather than singing them full-out.
“Where did ye learn so many songs?” she asked in an attempt to lighten the spirits of those around her.
“Och, I’ve spent half my life in one tavern or another.” He grinned. “A man learns many things when lives that way.”
“Did ye go to war?” she asked.
“Nay, they would not have me.” He looked away from her, over the horse’s head, and she understood. Her question had been an awkward one, and she ought to have known better than to ask it. He was likely considered too small to fight, even if the Jacobites needed all the help they could get in the end.
“They lost a great fighter, then,” she said, and she meant it. “Things might have gone a lot differently had Bonnie Prince Charlie had ye.”
Drew’s eyes cut her way, a smile floating over his face. “Ye ought to write the man a letter and tell him so.”
“I ought to do just that,” she agreed.
Rufus’s gentle snort behind her spoke of his approval. Good. He would be a bit more relaxed, less likely to watch over her like a hawk watching over his prey.
“Are there any songs ye can sing that my poor woman’s ears ought to hear?” she asked, deciding to take advantage of the opportunity to create goodwill between them.
Alec turned and laughed at this. “I would wager most of what he knows would make a seaman blush.”
“Or a harlot,” Tyrone agreed.
“A harlot taught me some of my favorite songs,” Drew confessed, and even Davina had to laugh though her cheeks colored.
“Sing one of them. Please,” she begged. “I haven’t heard singing in so long. I promise I will not curse ye for using such terrible language in my presence.”
He shrugged as though to remind her this was her idea, not his, before beginning a tune about a lusty woman whose man went off to war, and how she amused herself in his absence. Davina found herself covering her mouth to muffle her laughter, even as she blushed furiously until the song’s end.
“Ye asked me to do it,” Drew reminded her with a wicked twinkle in his eye. She could imagine how many women had fallen prey to that twinkle, and to the dimples which flashed in his cheeks when he grinned.
Rufus’s cheeks held the same dimples, but he rarely grinned. Would he grin once he’d taken his family’s land back? Would he ever be able to feel so lighthearted again, even after exacting justice?
She doubted it. He was already too hard, too far gone. In that sense, he reminded her of Ian.
“Another,” she requested the moment her brother came to mind. She did not wish to think of him. This was the last morning she’d spend with these men, and as such she wanted it to be pleasant. The pleasanter, the better, as they would be less likely to suspect she planned to run away.
A rumble from behind them took her by surprise. It was Clyde clearing his throat. She thought he might be of a mind to say something—an event so rare as to make her hold her breath in wait.
Yet he did not intend to speak. He intended to sing. When he opened his mouth, the deepest, purest tones came pouring forth.
He sang of a woman, as Drew had, but this woman pined for a love which could never be hers. Her lover had died, buried on a faraway hill, and she traveled to his grave just so that she might lay a thistle which she watered with her tears.
By the time he finished, the
last notes fading to silence, Davina’s face was wet, and her throat choked with emotion. Such sweetness, such tenderness, from a man such as him. She’d known from the start that a good, decent heart lived in his overgrown body, but she’d never imagined he possessed such talent.
“Och,” Rufus murmured, and there was a note of longing in his voice which suggested to Davina that he understood her feelings, and felt them for himself. “Och. That was something.”
“I would never believe ye had it in ye,” Drew chuckled to his friend. “Ye missed your calling, man. Ye ought to be on the stage in London, not selling your strength to the highest bidder.”
While this was a bit of fancy which Drew only suggested in jest, Davina knew the giant would never have borne up under the weight of so many curious eyes studying him. He was not some brutal, hulking thing with only half a brain, the way he appeared. He was simply shy.
They passed the morning in this matter, the men now in a much better mood thanks to her guiding them away from bitter grievance. They shared rather scandalous tales which made her blush, again and again, giggling even though she knew she ought not.
Interesting, that. They spoke of nothing she’d not overheard time and again from her brothers and cousins, and yet none of their stories had ever made her laugh. They’d only made her cover her ears when her hands were not busy with the washing, the cooking or the serving of their meals.
The rushing of the river started as a gentle whisper, only teasing at the very corner of her awareness. It grew louder the closer they came to the river, until she could make out the fast-moving water through breaks in the trees.
“The rain swelled it so,” Tyrone observed with a grimace. “I hope the bridge survived.”
It had, an hour downriver, the stone structure spanning the Tay at a point where it narrowed before broadening once again. The banks sloped sharply on both sides, and any footpath which might have been carved over many years of travel was now covered by raging water flowing into Loch Tay.
The men exchanged a look which she knew was one of concern, questioning. Ought they dare cross the bridge when the water was so high? Davina imagined there was normally quite a distance between the arched center span and the surface of the river, but now it was a matter of a few feet thanks to the flood.