The story went around the Highlands and in England as well, regarding the sad fates of bastards, and it had always sent a chill down her spine.
Behind her, Aidan tied off the end of her braid with the bit of ribbon she kept for the purpose and sat back.
"Ah well, if you do that, come knock on my gravestone. I'll stand you company."
His light words surprised a laugh out of her.
"Oh, never," she said, with a slight smile. "You have generations of MacTaggarts to lie down with. They would miss you too much."
"They can miss me all they like. I'll do my duty to them all my life. They can't expect it after I am dead as well."
Margaret was slightly startled by the bitter edge that came into Aidan's voice then. She wasn't sure she had ever heard it before.
"Aidan?"
"Perhaps I like this life better. We could wander the length and breadth of this world, just two ghosts. You're tolerable company now, and I shouldn't think death would change you, Meggie. We could have a fine time."
There was something slightly odd in his voice, but when Margaret turned to face him, his hands landed on her shoulders again.
"I'm sorry," he said, sounding much more like himself. "I'm speaking foolishness, nothing but foolishness. I don't mean to be so very morbid."
Margaret swallowed. There was nothing promised in her life. She knew that even in the Highlands, she would not necessarily be safe. There were plenty of men who saw bastard girls, particularly bastard half-English girls as nothing more than prey, as Harry Stratham did. She was in no position to make promises at all, but she wanted nothing more than to make one to Aidan.
"All right," she said lightly. "I agree."
"What?"
"When I die, and when you die, I'll come to your tomb and knock. When you rise, we will travel all over the world, dancing on the cathedral spires and swimming in the oceans. A deal's a deal, MacTaggart. You'd better come when I call."
Finally, Aidan allowed her to turn and look at him, and she could see the darkness at the edges of him, the things he would never show to a member of the clan that looked to him. He was meant to guide them and to see them prosper. She was only a girl on the road, and she knew he could show this to her with some degree of safety.
"All right. It's a deal."
They shook on it, and Margaret didn't know why that joke made her want to cry. She lay in his arms that night, warm and safe as she ever had been, and she allowed her tears to fall, soaking her sleeve.
She needed this to be over soon. But she didn't know if she could bear for it to end.
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chapter 23
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The border between Scotland and England was, at best, a vague thing. There were towns that the South had claimed, and towns claimed by the North, but in between were large swathes of land that belonged to whoever sat on them. The people who lived in them were as likely to say Scotland as they were to say England, and it largely depended on who had an army parked in their territory that day.
Aidan felt himself getting more wary and not less as they went north, and he knew that Margaret could feel it.
"We're getting back to the territory that you know best," she said one afternoon. "Aren't you pleased?"
How in the world could I be pleased to be leaving you? He shook the thought away. They had been friendly, and even close for a few nights now. The last thing he wanted was to lose that, even if he would rather have had more.
"I will be in another few days, when we're in Scotland proper, and when I recognize another clan's proper territory. Here... this area was disputed during the fighting. Scotland one day, England the next. It’s full of men who might rob you as soon as look at you."
"What a terrible place to have to live," Margaret said. "That village we passed yesterday..."
It had been just a few cottages reduced to little more than black spars of wood jutting up from the ground. If Aidan had to guess, it had been put to the torch some time last year, when the fighting was fierce. There was no way to tell which side had done the deed or whether the people who had lived there had survived.
"Yes. The sooner we're gone, the happier I'll be."
"I wish there was something we could do to help them."
"There isn't."
It was a reflection of who they were, Aidan thought wryly. He was consumed with keeping his family, his clan, his very world safe. Margaret, with her mother who sometimes tended the sick, wanted all to be well.
I think we would have gotten on well together as laird and lady of Castle Doone. We would have kept everyone safe.
He tried to tell himself that it was only a young man's fancy, but the feeling that he was right was still present when he focused on it too much.
It's just as well we didn't, though. Perhaps we would have been too strong-willed to see each other’s part.
Just as that ill-fated thought crossed his mind, there was a rustle in the brush, and a man burst out onto the trail.
Bram half-reared, and Aidan fought him back down, reaching back with one hand to steady Margaret.
She clung to him like a burr, however, calling out in a low and urgent voice.
"Quick, quick, get Bram down. That man needs help!"
Aidan cursed, fighting Bram and making sure he didn't land too close to the man who had come out at them. Bram was no war horse, but he was protective, and he could fell a man with his hard hooves.
Before Bram was even properly down, Margaret was sliding off his back and racing for the man on the road. Aidan cursed and leaped off Bram's back to follow her, dark thoughts about Nicholas in his mind again.
This man was no English knight, however, that Aidan could see right away. He was as gaunt as a bad winter, with gray hair that fell around his face. Despite his weathered look, however, his clothes were tidy where they weren't torn, and Aidan's eyes narrowed at the bruises that were now evident on the man's face and the flesh that he could see.
The old man lay on the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut, allowing Margaret to run her hands over his limbs.
"You're fine," she said to the old man, her tone soothing. "No broken bones, but oh, you have had a hard time of it, haven't you?"
"Lady, lord, please... please you must help us..."
"Us? What happened to you?" Aidan demanded, his hand going to his sword. He scanned the area they were in quickly, watchful for bandits. A man traveling alone with a woman was easy prey, but he hadn't expected an attack this brutal.
"Soldiers, my lord," the old man wheezed. "Men who came upon us looking for food. We did not have enough to serve them, and if we had given them more, we would have starved."
Aidan resisted the urge to bare his teeth. The respite in the fighting that had started almost a year ago had set soldiers loose upon the land. Some had gone home to their families and their own fields, but some had turned bandit or worse in the disputed territories, where there was no guard in place to stop them.
"Here, take some water," Margaret said coaxingly. "You will drive yourself into a dead faint if you continue as you are."
The old man looked close to a fit, but at Margaret's urging, he took the water while Aidan paced. He glanced up to meet Margaret's pleading eyes.
"We must do something," she said softly.
He was already shaking his head.
"We cannot. This isn't my land, and I have no soldiers with me, not even a raiding party. There's nothing to be done."
The old man sputtered on the water, and his gaze was so desperate that Aidan winced.
"We are not many, my lord. Please. There were only three soldiers, but there was only my family and me and our neighbors. All our young men went to the army, and we were defenseless."
"We cannot leave them, Aidan!"
"What choice do we have?" Aidan demanded. "There is nothing we can do against well-trained men."
"My grandchildren and my daughter
-in-law, they were hiding. If the men have found them... Please, my lord, is there nothing that might be done?"
Aidan wavered. He knew that the man's family was likely doomed, and the soldiers would likely have had their way and already moved on. The raiding parties that struck on the borderlands were terribly quick, composed of men who were used to war.
Margaret stood up from the man, taking a step closer to Aidan. When she grabbed his hand, he could tell that there was panic and something else there, something that needed to help this man and his poor family.
"Please, Aidan. There must be something we can do."
He looked at her, and clear as in a mountain stream, he saw what men like the one who had attacked this man's cottage would do to her.
"No," he snapped. "We can give him food and water, even take him to the next town if he wants, but we are not going to fight a hopeless battle against soldiers."
"Aidan..."
It felt like choking down the branches of a bramble bush. Aidan shook his head.
"No. I need to see you north safely. There is no reason to stop."
There was something furious in Margaret's eyes for a moment, and then to his surprise, she nodded.
"All right. Just let me see to the man. If you will not help, stand away."
Aidan told himself that he had made the right choice. He was a powerful fighter, but he was only one man, and the fear of Margaret coming to harm made things even worse. He couldn't afford to lose that fight, and if that was the case, it was better not to fight at all.
He watched as Margaret gave the man more water and some of their food. The old man looked devastated, but he nodded, hanging his head and looking as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders.
At the last, Margaret leaned in close to offer him a hard embrace, and finally she stepped away.
"All right," she said, not looking at him. "Let's go."
Aidan wanted to offer her all his reasons for refusing. He wanted to tell her that it was a foolish thing to do. He would have if she had argued with him, but she didn't even do that. Instead, she rode double behind him on Bram, her arms around his waist, and was silent.
It was only another hour before dark, and when they made camp that night, Margaret was still silent. The silence was not the comfortable one that they shared from time to time, but something heavy. He had thought that she might cry or rail at him, but he had not expected this weight on her. He wondered if it was the first time she had run into people who she could not even begin to help. That was always a hard lesson.
It wasn't until they finally lay down together again next to the banked fire that Margaret said,
"Would you have helped them if they were Scottish?"
Aidan flinched as if she had taken a whip to him.
"Heaven above, is that what you think of me? They might have been."
"What do you mean?"
"Things get muddled this close to the border. The people here do what they must to survive, and most of the time, they don't trouble themselves with asking if they are Scottish or English. It only matters when someone comes marching up the road."
"So, you refused to help them—"
"Because it was a hopeless case!" Aidan snapped. "We would have been killed ourselves trying to lend them aid, or more likely, we would have come too late to do anything except him bury his family."
He thought that Margaret might try to argue with him, but she only looked at him.
"Are you telling me, or telling yourself, Aidan?" she asked softly.
He had no answer.
He thought he would never get to sleep that night, but somehow, he did, and his dreams were bloody.
He was on the battlefield again, and it was realer than real, with the sounds of men and horses dying all around him, of people grabbing at his ankles, and a sword that simply grew heavier and heavier as he tried to swing it. This time, however, the dream was worse, because he knew that Margaret was somewhere in this mess. He could hear her crying out, calling his name, screaming, but no matter how fast he went, how many people he killed, he could never seem to reach her.
Aidan awoke in a cold sweat, the sky just turning a cool pewter gray. For a moment, he only stared up at the sky, feeling that cold and empty relief that sometimes came after dark dreams.
It was only after he had taken several bracing cold breaths of fresh air that he realized that his worst nightmare had followed him out of his sleep.
Margaret was gone.
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chapter 24
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Margaret managed to sleep for a short while, but she woke while the sky was dark but the moon set. To make sure that she was not too early, she stayed silent for another short while, listening to Aidan breathe.
He was having another bad night, she realized. The tautness of his body told her he was remembering the fighting again, and her heart broke for him a little. It seemed tremendously unfair that he should have fought for as long as he did, and then when it was done, to have it follow him out.
She knew it was not cowardice that kept Aidan from helping the man earlier. It was a kind of bleakness, the realization that no matter what he did, people would die. All he could do was save the ones closest to him, the ones he had sworn to save.
However, Margaret couldn't make the same argument to herself. If she kept walking without looking back, she would hear that man's tortured breathing, his pleas.
That was why, when she knew that Aidan was in the deepest part of his sleep, she silently rose from the pallet they shared. For a moment, she thought he had awakened and would stop her. His hand was wrapped around a fold of her skirt, and for a terrible moment, he clung to her. Then he let go, and she breathed a silent sigh of relief.
There was a nearly full moon setting, plenty of light to see by, and after sneaking Aidan's long dagger from his gear, she made her way back up the road. As she had told him to do, the man was resting by the base of the tree, and he looked up when she approached.
"Your man will be angry when he sees that you have come here," the old man said.
She shook her head.
"He is not my man, and I will do as I must. My name is Margaret."
"And I am John Baker. I do not know what has become of my family."
"I do not know either. But if they yet live, I can try to help them."
Even if Aidan thought her young and unused to the ways of the world, Margaret knew well what she might find when they returned to John's cottage. At best, they would find everyone terrified out of their wits, assaulted and wounded, but alive. At worst, they might only find a smoldering ruin where once there had been a home.
What Margaret had not expected to find was the home still standing and the three soldiers still there. Margaret froze in the darkness and took in the scene.
There was a fire in front of the two houses, one that had obviously been made from a pile of destroyed furniture. The three men who stood around it, roasting up some kind of dripping meat, were large and coarse, their shields painted black and the swords close to hand.
Blank-shield soldiers, Margaret thought with disgust. They fought for pay rather than for country, and their shields were kept bare so that the device of any house they fought for could be emblazoned upon it. Proper soldiers might also paint their shields black when they were looking to go raiding, so that no one would bear tales back to their commanders of their misdeeds.
From the house behind them, Margaret could hear an anguished cry, the wail of a woman who has come awake to horror, and she saw the men stir angrily. They didn't like the noise apparently. Margaret could sense, with a chill running up her spine, that it would only be a matter of time before they went back to shut her up, one way or another.
That poor woman... I cannot let that happen to her.
She had no plan for what might happen if the marauders were still at the house. She had to act fast.
Margaret took John by
the arm, leaning up to whisper in his ear.
"Be ready to go to the hut and to bring whoever you can out and into the forest. Go as far and as fast as you can, just get away."
"But lady, what about you?"
"I am going to make sure that those men are as distracted as they can be.”
She gave John a light shove, sending him as close to the cottages as the cover from the forest allowed, and then she took a deep breath.
The borderlands were full of strange and bewitching stories. The cities might lock out all the strange glamours and terrors of the night, but the rugged countryside was different. Mothers sent their children out with bread and salt in their pockets to make sure that they would return home safely, and men who were walking home from their work would turn their tunics inside out and put them on again to keep from being piskie-led.
There were many stories of strange things in the wilds, and Margaret thought of them as she called out to the men in front of the hut.
"Where is my lover, my lover? Where has my lover gone?"
She made her voice as low and mournful as she could, and she could see when the men in front of the cottage heard her.
The calling lover was a type of ghost, one of a rich woman who had lost her lover. If a man came upon her and said that he was hers, she would give him all of her wealth, usually a king's ransom as the story went.
She saw the men trade nervous glances with one another, but she could also see John from her vantage point, coming closer and closer to where the men were.
She called again, putting some desperation into her voice.
"Oh, where is he? Where is he, who I have loved so well? I have brought all my fortune to him, and still he hides?"
For a moment, she thought that it wouldn't work. She thought that they would refuse to budge, but then one of the men stepped away from the fire, followed by his two friends. She smiled a little. She should have known. One man on his own might have ventured out, but the other two could not bear to be left out of any treasure that might be had.
The Highlander’s Lost Bride (The Highlands Warring Clan Mactaggarts Book 2) Page 12