Return of the Border Warrior

by Blythe Gifford

  He reached for his tunic and pulled it over his head.

  ‘No!’ She jumped out of bed and grabbed his arms as if she was afraid he would disappear. ‘No. It’s not that.’

  Covered again, he searched her eyes, slowly, his memory returning. It had been like this before. Been like this every time they had kissed. First passion, then rejection.

  Only when he had not held her had she wanted more. Only when he had stifled his own eagerness.

  He struggled to make sense of it. ‘What is it then, Cate? Tell me. Do you want me?’

  As if suddenly aware of where she was and what she was doing, she let go and looked down at her feet. ‘Yes.’ Little louder than a whisper.

  But she turned away and slipped on her shirt, so she was covered from shoulders to knees.

  For a moment, he wished himself back on a battlefield. Surely it was easier to face an enemy’s sword than this uncertain to and fro. He had walked away from women before. Why couldn’t he leave this one?

  But then she raised her eyes to his and he lost himself again. ‘If it is yes, then say it aloud. To my face.’

  ‘Yes. I want you.’

  His anger was passing, but puzzlement remained. ‘That sounds like resentment, not passion.’ There was something here, something he should know if only he could make his mind work as hard as his tarse for a moment.

  ‘I want you.’ It was Braw Cate speaking now. The woman whose eyes would clash with his as bravely as her sword. ‘And I do not want to want you.’

  Anger, still close to the surface, escaped. ‘What am I to do with that?’ It hit him, then, as if he had run into a wall. ‘It’s marriage you’re wanting then, is it?’ A strange word on his tongue. It came to all men, eventually, but he had avoided all thoughts of tomorrows because tomorrows meant decisions he was not ready to make.

  ‘No! All I want is Willie Storwick’s death.’

  ‘Storwick! I’m sick to death of hearing his name. Must he follow us into the bedchamber?’ He paced again, afraid that if he stopped, he would lay hands on her in frustration. ‘Why can’t you leave him be for a night, or even an hour?’

  * * *

  Cate watched John turn away and lift his arms to heaven.

  Why can’t you leave him be?

  For those few, precious minutes, she had. She had faced the man today, looked him in the eye, talked back and made him blink.

  Then, she had been able to lose herself in John, in the two of them together. Craving his lips, eyes, fingers on her, in her. Nothing but the two of them and this room. Finally, she was free...to love.

  And then, the weight of a body crushing her, stiffness between his legs, wool scratching her belly, fingers fumbling below her waist—and it was no longer John she was loving.

  It was her nightmare alive.

  How could she tell him that?

  John still prowled the room. ‘Why does he obsess you so? Brunsons have died by Storwick hand before and we did not give the whole of our lives to hatred.’

  Are you going to tell him?

  How could she tell him what she had told no one? How could she explain that when she tried to love Johnnie Brunson, her body still fought Willie Storwick?

  Before the fire again, he stopped and looked at her, hands on his hips, a demand that she answer.

  And a slow dawning of suspicion in his expression. ‘I asked you once whether your father’s death was all. You told me there was nothing else. Did you lie?’

  She swallowed, unable to speak. Suspicion was not certainty. If she told him, everything would change.

  She let her eyes wander the face that had delighted her days. She wanted to savour him one more time, to look at his rumpled hair and grey-blue eyes, to admire the arms that had held her gently and attacked those who would threaten her.

  ‘It is more than my father’s death.’ With each word, she was unsure she could say the next. She kept her eyes on his, as if she wanted to see the exact moment he stopped loving her.

  His anger melted at her stillness. He dropped his hands from his hips. Then he was beside her, pulling her to him in a gesture part-protection, part-seduction. ‘Tell me.’ His whisper, insistent in her ear. ‘How much more?’

  She swallowed and opened her mouth. ‘He...’

  Nothing else came.

  She shook her head.

  He straightened his arms, holding her so he could see her face, and she saw in his eyes that she need say nothing more.

  That he knew.

  Cupping her face in his hands, he forced her to meet his eyes again. ‘Say it. You can trust me.’

  ‘Trust you?’ Those were the words. The words that freed her.

  She brought her arms up between his and knocked his aside, striding away again to the opposite wall. But trapped. Still trapped as she had been all this time. Always trying to walk away and hitting a wall every time.

  She had come to trust him, as she had trusted no other man. More, she had begun to trust herself when she was with him.

  She had let herself be lulled by the days beside him, a man who had not known, or guessed, her past. Tricked herself into believing that they could go on like this. Riding beside each other. Planning for a grand revenge and dreaming of what would come after.

  Dreams that included Johnnie Brunson because she had hoped, had believed, had prayed that she would be able to join with this man, unlike any other.

  That she would be alone no more.

  Foolish dreams. From that day, she had known that she could never again be like other women. Well, she had fooled herself too long. She must cut out her heart. Cut off her hope. Confess and let him ride away and shun her.

  She could not face him now, could not face his knowing. She turned away, walking to the window.

  ‘Every night, I pray to God,’ she began, looking west towards the valley where Willie Storwick rode free, ‘to rain down flame and fire and flood and pestilence on his head and then to give him a death of unspeakable horror.’

  She took a deep breath and looked back at John’s love-touched face, as if for the last time.

  ‘And I must kill him,’ she said, ‘because he raped me.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rage washed through him. Red-hot hatred followed by a cold, black determination.

  The reasonable man, the king’s man, the man who had argued for laws and justice, that man ceased to exist. In his place stood a Brunson, ready to kill because of what his enemy had done.

  Not to his family. To her.

  And for that, Scarred Willie Storwick would die.

  He should have known, should have recognised the truth earlier. But at first, his promise to bring the man to justice was dispassioned, designed to sway Cate and spare his brother a difficult decision. Whether the wardens let Storwick live or die mattered not. It had been a bargain. A means to an end.

  Now, nothing would stop him from killing the man.

  Not even his king.

  ‘I will tell the men. We will ride now. Tonight. We will find him, no matter where he hides. He will not live to see the dawn.’

  Instead of the gratitude he expected, her eyes filled with horror. ‘No. You mustn’t tell them. You must tell no one.’

  Halfway to the door, he paused. ‘Why? They’ll avenge you. You needn’t have borne this alone.’

  She grabbed his arm, the strength of her hands reminding him she had wielded a sword. ‘No. Please. What I said was only for your ears. Don’t tell them.’ Here was yet another Cate. No longer the hard, harsh woman he knew, nor the one sightless with fear. This woman was pleading, desperate. ‘If I had not thought you would keep the secret, I would never have told you.’

  He reached to stroke her hair, for just a moment relishing her womanly worry. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.’

  She practically threw him from her. ‘It’s not your hide that worries me.’ Though she bit her lower lip, so he was not sure she spoke true.

  ‘What, then?’ Every muscle, every ner
ve was bent to Willie’s death. His brain had room and time to comprehend little else.

  ‘Do you not understand me? If the men know he...know I was...’ She broke her gaze, unable to speak the word again, and looked towards the fire. ‘They may not even believe it.’

  Where was his Cate? The woman ready to take on an army? ‘Why would they not?’

  Her eyes met his again. Here, finally, was Cate without armour. The real, vulnerable Cate.

  She cleared her throat and tried. ‘What he did. It is not the way of the Borders.’

  In that, she was right. A Border man might leave a woman widowed, but she would not be touched. That was why it had taken him so long to see the obvious truth. ‘But some men—’

  ‘And what would happen to him,’ she interrupted, ‘if he were to be named for forcing me?’

  ‘He would be hanged.’ Too kind a death.

  ‘On my word alone? I had no witnesses. No wounds to show. By the time I came down from the hills, my bruises were gone.’

  How could anyone doubt his Cate? ‘But—’

  ‘And after I accused him, then what? Perhaps, after I had been poked and questioned and made to feel as if I had enticed him away from the cattle with a comely stare, perhaps he might be branded and exiled. Or perhaps, to make things right before God and man, we would be wedded for our sin. And afterwards, because a marriage across the Border is forbidden, we could both be strung up for violating the law and swing side by side from the hanging tree. Is that what you want?’

  He opened his mouth, but it took some time before words escaped. ‘None of those things will happen. I won’t allow it.’ A simple statement. As simple as the ideas he had brought home with him. Justice. Order. Obedience. But here, justice was complex. Family loyalty was simple.

  ‘Once they know, they will not treat me...as they should.’

  ‘Once they know, they’ll avenge you, as they are sworn to do.’ Angry again, at himself this time, for not seeing, for not understanding before. ‘And from now on, we’ll protect you, which is what we should have done all along.’

  We. As if he were a Brunson, too.

  She shook her head. She had calmed, as if accepting that, finally, someone else knew the truth. ‘What do you think of the women you and the king have tupped?’

  He shrugged, not understanding. ‘They’re fickle, changeable.’ Not worthy of the time he had wasted

  on them.

  ‘Is that what the father says of his daughter? Does her brother use those words?’

  A glimmer of light pierced the red haze in his brain. ‘You think they will think—’

  ‘I know what they will think.’

  She had kept them away, all of them, for so long he could see why it had taken so long to let him in.

  ‘And that’s why...’ He felt as slow as the biggest dolt. ‘Why you didn’t want to touch or kiss or...’ His every touch must have been torture. ‘I should have known.’

  She shook her head. ‘I did not want you to know.’

  Those final words shattered her calm. She turned away and curled in on herself, shoulders shaking, hands to her mouth, trying to hold in all the pain she had borne alone. My God, how had she lived with this?

  He picked her up, sat on the bed and rocked her. And with the tears, finally, she released a cry, near the sort of scream one might hear from a mortally wounded animal. But even that she stifled, to be sure the others would not hear.

  So she bit her lip, buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed. And he held her in his lap and let her cry until there were no tears left.

  ‘But you told me,’ he whispered, much, much later, after he’d wondered at all the reasons why.

  She raised her head, her small smile a mismatch for eyes still red from her tears. ‘You are different.’

  ‘Ah, Cate.’ He pulled her close and wrapped her in his arms, as if that would be enough to keep them both safe. ‘You say I’m different at the very moment I’ve become a Border man.’ Full of blood lust that wanted nothing more than revenge.

  The woman in his arms needed healing, but that would have to come later. After.

  Holding her, holding back the kisses he wanted to give her, he felt her relax and finally heard the breathing that said she slept, trusting, in his arms. And he watched the waxing moon rise over unchanging hills.

  Only the land remained the same. Everything else had changed.

  He felt no different towards her. More loving, more tender, more protective if anything. She was at once all he had ever thought of her and more, for now he understood what had made her his brave and angry Cate.

  Yet as he held her in his arms, waiting for dawn, it was the man wearing John Brunson’s skin that he no longer knew.

  At court, he had been surrounded by constant plots and shifting loyalties. He had taken things lightly—missions, women, promises—not wanting to care for something that might be lost, expecting that tomorrow, everything would change.

  But this man who held Cate Gilnock in his arms had no intention of tracking down Scarred Willie Storwick and turning him over to the Border wardens. No interest in peace on the Borders or a position as Pursemaster or a wealthy wife.

  He had one intent now. He was going to kill Willie Storwick. And if he were caught and hanged for it, he would die a happy man.

  This man was a stranger, but he lived squarely inside John’s body now, never to be escaped, no matter how fast the horse.

  This man was a Brunson.

  * * *

  Impossible to rest safely in a man’s arms.

  Impossible that he knew. And accepted.

  Would that change after he had had time to ponder?

  Cate opened her eyes and felt her lashes flutter against his skin and breathed the man smell of him. The hair on his chest was soft on her lips and she let lose a sigh, grateful to Bessie for finding another bed for the night and leaving them alone.

  She raised her head, slowly, wanting to look at him, to see who Johnnie Brunson was now.

  The sweet face that had ridden home just weeks ago was tempered. He had been determined, yes, and even bitter when he arrived, but careless and light, he had looked over the world as if he thought the worst could never truly happen.

  Now, lips that had curved in a smile were set in a harsh, straight line, as if they might never kiss again.

  She stretched a finger, tracing their lines, but he caught her hand and pulled it away. ‘Ah, Johnnie. Have I stolen your smile for ever?’

  He blessed her with it, then. ‘I want to see you smile, too. Must I wait until Scarred Willie’s dead?’

  She shook her head. The name of her dreaded enemy drifted past her ears, no heavier than a feather. What was real was this man. The face she loved to look at. The touch she craved. The belief that, finally, she could trust someone other than herself. And trust herself when she was with him.

  ‘Not nearly so long, Johnnie.’

  And then she smiled. And raised her lips to his.

  She had kissed him before, yes. But this was different. This time, she had no secrets.

  She melted into him, her body no longer hers, responding, feeling, wanting. Now that she had shed her secret, she ached to join with him in a way that could wash away the taint of that other joining, a baptism to cleanse her of that sin.

  Now that she had let it go, she recognised the weight of the secret she had carried. When she shared it, it had tumbled off her shoulders, splashed into the water.

  Her lips, his, both eager. She pressed as close as she could, as if flesh itself were a barrier that could be overcome. Now, finally, she could become one with him, no longer alone...

  Then, fear fluttered again.

  The secret had not floated away on the current. Instead, it bobbed on top of the water, staining the stream with poison.

  It was not gone. It would never be gone until Willie was.

  He paused, breaking the kiss. ‘It does not bring you joy, still.’

  She shook her head
, hating Willie, hating herself because before she could stop it, willing lips and eager arms had stiffened against him again. ‘I want it to. For you.’

  He smiled again. A smile tinged with sad knowledge she knew would never leave him, either. ‘Ah, Catie, I cannot find joy unless you do. And you cannot find joy while you think of him.’

  And even when Willie was gone, what if that were not enough? What if nothing changed even then?

  She swallowed. ‘There’s never been anyone else to think of.’

  * * *

  Pain crumpled John’s face as he saw, finally, fully, the enemy he faced. At first, he had thought it would be as easy as letting his anger loose and taking revenge. He would track the man and kill him and Cate would be free.

  Now he saw that death would not be the end. Scarred Willie, or his memory, still lived inside of her, where he could rise like a powrie spirit.

  There, inside her, Willie’s ghost might live for ever.

  He would kill Storwick, yes. And for stealing the joy she should take in joining, he was going to make that death very, very painful.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Thomas Carwell appeared at their gate the next day.

  John’s first urge was to lock him out, but Rob, surprisingly, overruled him. Still, they let him come no further than the small hall off the courtyard, meant for conducting business with strangers.

  John glowered when Bessie brought them ale. Carwell deserved no such welcome, and, judging by his expression, the man knew it.

  Rob sat at the head man’s table, leaving Carwell to perch awkwardly on a stool.

  John refused to sit at all. Bad enough he was forced to share a brew with the man. ‘I’m surprised you dare to show your face.’

  ‘I thank you for opening the gate. It is more than the English Warden’s men did.’

  Rob shook his head. ‘A waste of horse feed, that trip.’

  ‘His steward said he was gone,’ Carwell said. ‘To Truce Day. Where he never appeared. And then he expressed “utter dismay” to hear of Storwick’s escape, an emotion I sincerely doubt.’ He took a gulp of his ale. ‘I don’t know where the man is.’

  ‘Well, we know where Storwick is,’ John said, pacing. A plume of smoke from the central brazier sluggishly sought the ceiling vent. ‘He’s built himself a tower in the Debatable Land. Calls it his Hole House.’