The Hunter

by Monica McCarty

  As the distance closed between them, the merchant moved his cart over to the side of the path to let the soldiers pass. Janet followed the couple, taking advantage of the opportunity to angle her own mount behind theirs, where she hoped she wouldn’t be as visible.

  The pounding of her heart in her ears grew louder as the powerful warhorses neared. The ground started to shake, she hoped hiding her own shaking.

  The merchant raised his hand in greeting as the first horse rode by.

  The pounding in her heart stilled. Keep going, she prayed. Don’t stop.

  One … two … three … passed by. Her heart started again. It was going to be all right. But then the pounding stopped—not her heart, the hooves.

  “Halt,” a hard English voice said. “You there. What is your name? What business do you have on the road?”

  No reason to panic, she told herself. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Walter Hende, my lord. I am a merchant on my way to Roxburgh, where my wife and I hope to open a shop.”

  “What kind of shop?”

  The merchant motioned to his cart. “A drapery, my lord. I’ve the finest woolen cloth in Edinburgh. Take a look if you like.”

  Janet ventured a peek at the soldier. Her heart dropped. He wasn’t a soldier he was a knight, although she did not recognize the arms of six martlets separated by a thick gold bend. He was an imposing-looking man, and not just because of his heavy armor and mail. He was big—tall and broad-shouldered—with a hard, square jaw and dark, hooded eyes just visible beneath the steel helm.

  He motioned to a younger man by his side, whom she assumed must be his squire. The lad jumped down and approached the cart. Lifting back the oiled leather cover, he nodded. “Aye, Sir Thomas. It’s filled with cloth.”

  It was then that disaster struck. The squire glanced in her direction. Because of where he had come to stand by the cart, he had a clear vantage of her face.

  He gasped. “Lady Mary! What are you doing here?”

  The blood slid from her face. Oh God, this couldn’t be happening. The boy thought she was her sister.

  “You know this woman, John?” Sir Thomas said.

  The lad frowned, staring at her. He must have seen something that made him question his first impression. “It’s me, Lady Mary. John Redmayne. I was friends with your son at court. You remember—we met at Bamburgh Castle last year. I came with Lord Clifford.”

  Sir Robert Clifford was one of Edward’s chief commanders in the battle against the Scots. Fear curdled like sour milk in her stomach.

  After a moment, Janet finally found her voice. “I’m afraid you have mistaken me with someone else.”

  The boy’s frown went askew.

  “Step forward where I can see you,” the knight ordered. “If you are not the woman my squire believes, then who are you?”

  “Kate, my lord,” she said softly, using the name she’d given the merchant.

  The knight’s eyes narrowed. “Pull back your hood.”

  She did as he bid, she hoped without showing as much reluctance as she felt. The moment the plaid fell back, a collective silence fell over the knight and his men. They stared at her in shock and unmistakable masculine admiration.

  Except for the squire. He smiled broadly. “It is her. Lady Mary, the Countess of Atholl.”

  The lad had obviously not heard of her sister’s defection and second marriage. But the knight had. The way his dark eyes gleamed as his mouth curved in a slow smile chilled her to the bone. “And what is the rebel Lady Mary doing in Melrose?”

  Janet forced a shy smile to her face. “I’m afraid the boy is mistaken, my lord.” She batted her lashes up at him with what she hoped was just the right amount of innocence. But something told her this man wasn’t going to be easy to fool. “I am—”

  “Our daughter, my lord.”

  Janet startled and hoped she didn’t look as surprised as she felt, when the merchant came up beside her and claimed her by the arm.

  Ewen fought the lulling force of darkness, which sought to drag him under. You can’t sleep. He tried to open his eyes, but the lids were too heavy. Someone had put a weight on them.

  Try. You have something to do. He didn’t know what it was that he had to do, but he knew it was important. Very important. The most important thing in the world.

  Get up. You have to go after her.

  Oh God, Janet!

  He flailed blindly in the darkness, trying to sit up. But something wrestled him down. Powerful, steely hands clamped his wrists and ankles, pinning him to the bed.

  He cried out, writhing in pain and frustration as he tried to fight his way free. But the steely hands seemed to multiply like some kind of hideous spider.

  Have to get up. Danger. She needs me. Oh, God, Janet … sorry.

  “… Tie him down.” A soft voice penetrated the edges of his consciousness. A woman’s voice. An angel’s voice. “… Getting worse … Take leg.”

  “No!” He lashed out, fighting with everything he had until the pain overwhelmed him and the darkness dragged him under.

  Ewen was dreaming again, running through the darkness looking for something—for someone.

  Have to find her …

  He startled and opened his eyes, quickly closing them again as the light stabbed them like a dagger.

  He groaned, turning, surprised to feel his arms moving freely at his side.

  “He’s awake,” a familiar voice said.

  Oh God, Janet!

  He opened his eyes again, blinking up into the face that had haunted his dreams.

  He reached up and cradled her cheek in his hand. “You’re here,” he said, his voice gravelly and weak. She was safe. Janet was safe. “God, I’m sorry.”

  She smiled, and he felt the first inkling that something wasn’t right—a fuzzy prickle nudging the frayed edges of his consciousness.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  Another face appeared beside hers, also familiar but scowling. Despite the way the man was looking at him, Ewen knew that he should be relieved to see him for some reason.

  “I know you almost died,” the man said. “But you are going to find yourself close to death again if you don’t get your damned hands off my wife.”

  Sutherland, Ewen realized. He’s alive.

  He dropped his hand from the woman’s face. Mary’s face, not Janet’s.

  Mary gave her husband a sharp scowl. “He’s been unconscious for nearly four days—do you think you could put aside your primitive male possessiveness for just a few minutes?”

  Four days?

  Sutherland shrugged unrepentantly. “Not if he’s going to look at you like that. Hell, I thought he was going to drag you down on top of him. I was just saving him from a thrashing when he recovers.”

  Ewen wasn’t too groggy to scoff. “That’ll be a cold day in hell, Ice.”

  Mary harrumphed. “Obviously, he thought I was my sister.”

  “Where is she?” Ewen said, instantly alert. “Where is Janet?”

  Sutherland sobered. “We were hoping you would tell us that.”

  “You mean she isn’t here?” He looked around, suddenly realizing that he didn’t know where the hell he was.

  Mary seemed to understand his confusion. “Dunstaffnage.”

  Bruce’s headquarters in Argyll, won from the rebel John MacDougall, Lord of Lorn, a couple of years ago.

  “We found you not long after you collapsed at the Wallaces,” Sutherland said. “I’m sorry for leaving you and the lass alone out there, but it could not be helped. When the English attacked for the second time, I didn’t want to take the chance and lead them to you. I caught up with MacKay and MacLean, who had found Douglas. We would have been here sooner, but Douglas had a few problems we needed to take care of.” Ewen assumed they were English problems. Sutherland’s expression turned grim. “You were bad. We didn’t think you were going to make it. Saint and Hawk got you to Angel just in time.”

  Angel
. That was who had been tending him when he’d woken delirious—

  Ewen froze in horror as the rest of the memory returned. He was almost scared to look. Hell, he was scared to look. Taking a deep breath, he lowered his gaze to the blanket over him, releasing it only when he saw the lump of his legs—the two lumps of his legs.

  “You remember?” Mary asked.

  He nodded.

  “You were fortunate in the location of the wound,” Sutherland said. “Angel decided that it would be more dangerous to take your leg because of where the injury was than to let you fight the festering in the bone.”

  But it wasn’t the fact that he’d nearly lost his leg that had turned his blood cold. “Why didn’t someone go after her?”

  “Striker and I did,” Sutherland said. “We only returned last night. We thought we picked up her trail going north on the road to Glasgow, but then we lost it.”

  “Glasgow? Why the hell would she go there?” But he knew before he’d even finished the question. Bloody hell! She’d taken his lessons to heart.

  He sat up and would have lost the contents of his stomach had there been anything inside. He swayed as nausea and dizziness fought to take him right back down.

  “Wait!” Mary cried, trying to push him back down. “What are you doing? You can’t get up.”

  Ewen gritted his teeth. “I have to find her. It’s all my fault.”

  The door opened and three people burst into the room. “We heard voices …” Helen let out a gasp, but she recovered quickly. Her eyes narrowed. “I see it was a mistake to untie you.” She shot her husband, who’d come up next to her, an I-told-you-so look.

  But it was the third person who’d entered the room that caused Ewen’s heart to sink and a sheen of sickly sweat to gather on his brow.

  Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland, fixed his dark, razor-sharp gaze on him. “Where is Janet, and why is it your fault?”

  Twenty-three

  Rutherford Priory, Scottish Marches, December 14, 1310

  “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t toss you in a pit prison right now!” the king had demanded.

  “Because you need me to find Janet and make sure she is safe,” Ewen had answered.

  But he couldn’t even manage to do that. Five bloody days! For five days he’d scoured the countryside, turning over every rock—every leaf—with no sight of her. Janet had proved a better pupil than he could have imagined, using the skills he’d taught her against him.

  This was his last lead—hell, it was his only lead. With St. Drostan’s approaching, he was back at the priory in Rutherford, hoping that whatever reason she’d had for wanting to return by this time would bring her back.

  But from his position in the trees a few dozen yards from the entrance to the priory, he could barely make out the faces of the nuns passing through. He clenched his fists at his side, fighting for patience that had run out days ago. “I can’t see a damned thing. I’m going in there.”

  MacLean stepped in front of him. “You won’t do her any good if you are caught. Remember what the king said: stay out of sight, observe, and don’t interfere unless necessary. I don’t think tearing apart every church between Roxburgh and Berwick counts as necessary.”

  “Or terrorizing merchants unfortunate enough to sell sugared nuts,” Sutherland quipped dryly from his position behind him.

  Ewen grimaced. That had been a mistake. But the merchant had been a provoking bastard, and Ewen had been fed up with his smart-arse answers. Before he knew it, his hand had been wrapped around the man’s neck and he had him pinned against the wooden wall of the shop. Not surprisingly, the man had then been far more forthcoming in his responses to Ewen’s questions. Inelegant perhaps, but effective.

  “This is my last lead,” he said through clenched teeth. “I won’t take the chance of missing her. Get the hell out of my way.”

  “Use your head, Hunter,” MacLean said.

  But Ewen was beyond reason. He stepped around MacLean—rather than push him aside as he was tempted to—but another one of his brethren, or rather his former brethren, blocked him.

  “You aren’t going in there,” MacKay said.

  “I sure as hell am,” Ewen said, muscles flaring with readiness for the fight MacKay was going to get if he didn’t move out of his way. Over the other man’s shoulder he noticed another handful of nuns emerge from the priory. But none of them was the nun he wanted.

  “What the hell do you plan to do?” Mackay challenged. “Walk in there looking like that? The nuns will take one look at you and run screaming. You look as feral and wild as a wolf.” He shook his head. “You might want to try to get a few hours of sleep or eat something that doesn’t come from a skin. Your leg is far from healed, and you aren’t going to do the lass any good if you keel over and die. I’m beginning to think Helen was right. We should have kept you tied up.”

  Even knowing he spoke the truth, Ewen didn’t give a damn. He’d spent his entire life trying to avoid being compared to his father, and right now he was every bit as crazed and unhinged as Wild Fynlay had ever been. “Unless you want to put on a kirtle and have me call you ‘Mother,’ my sleep and eating habits aren’t your concern. I don’t have bloody time for this!”

  MacLean assumed that he was referring to the king’s upcoming journey to Selkirk for the peace parley. “We will only be gone a few days. The negotiations won’t last long. Bruce will demand to be recognized as king, Edward’s lackeys will refuse, and we will be on our way again. If the lass has not returned by then, we can try again.”

  Though the parley was held under the sacred banner of truce, Chief wanted them to serve as part of the escort. They were supposed to leave tomorrow to catch up with the others before they reached Selkirk.

  Ewen’s mouth fell in a thin line, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t explain that he wasn’t going to Selkirk, and that he was no longer a part of the Highland Guard.

  Sutherland had come around to stand next to his brother-in-law. He gave Ewen a hard look. “Why do I get the feeling there is something you aren’t telling us? What exactly did you and the king discuss?”

  The conversation with the king had gone exactly how Ewen had expected it to go. Once everyone had left the room, he’d explained what had happened. Bruce would have put a blade through his gut—or perhaps an area slightly lower—if Ewen hadn’t been on his back, unarmed, and weak from fever. Instead, his worst fears had been realized. The king stripped him of his land, his reward, and his place in the Guard, and he would have taken his freedom as well had Ewen not convinced him to let him find Janet to ensure she was not in danger.

  And it had taken some convincing. The king had been inclined to defer to Janet’s judgment: if she thought it was important, he didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize the informant or the information their contact might pass on. No matter how hard Ewen pressed him the king would not disclose the identity of the informant—except to say that it was someone in Roxburgh highly connected to Edward’s lieutenants. Who did Ewen think had been bringing them all the recent intelligence, enabling the Highland Guard to know exactly where to attack?

  Ewen had been stunned. Janet was responsible for that? He’d underestimated her importance and knew it. He owed her an apology—one of many—if she would ever listen to him again.

  But learning just how in the thick of it Janet was only ratcheted up his concern. Hell, it wasn’t concern, it was mind-numbing, bloodcurdling, bone-chilling fear. The stakes would be even higher if the English were to discover her role.

  He had just as much faith in her as Bruce did, but Ewen’s faith was blinded by something the king’s was not. It wasn’t until Ewen had lost everything that he could see clearly what duty and loyalty had prevented him from acknowledging. The emotion burning his chest and tearing his gut apart could only be one thing. Nothing else could strike this kind of fear and misery in him. He loved her. And he’d taken her love and thrown it back in her face.

  “You will
have me.”

  Her words ate at him. How could he have thought it wouldn’t be enough? She was everything. Without her, nothing else mattered.

  For the first time in his life, Ewen could see his father not with embarrassment, shame or anger, but with admiration. For he’d done what Ewen had not: he’d had the courage to risk everything and fight for the woman he loved.

  And now the woman Ewen loved was God knows where, doing God knows what, because he’d been too much of a fool to do whatever he needed to do to hold on to her. When he thought of how he’d turned away after making love to her, how he’d told her he was going to take her back and hand her over to another man …

  No wonder she’d run. He would spend the rest of his life making it up to her, if she would let him.

  But what if he didn’t get a chance to explain? What if something happened to her, and he couldn’t tell her how much he loved her?

  He had to find her, damn it. He’d tear apart every nunnery on both sides of the Border if he had to.

  The danger had finally caused Bruce to relent—but only so far. Hence, Ewen’s role as an observer. As for the rest, the Guardsmen would find out soon enough.

  “That’s between Bruce and me,” he told Sutherland.

  “Janet is my sister now,” Sutherland said, his notoriously hot temper sparking in his eyes. “If you did something to dishonor her …”

  Ewen’s mouth tightened. Sutherland would have to stand in line. “I buggered up, all right. But I’m trying to make it right.” He paused, distracted, as another nun emerged from the priory. But even from this distance he could see the build wasn’t right. He needed to at least get closer. He turned back to Sutherland impatiently. “I am not going to have this conversation right now. As soon as we find her, I will answer whatever damned questions you want. Now unless you are going to try to stop me, get the hell out of my way.”