"Who was that woman who came in earlier? Your mother?"
"Mama Fee?" He shifted onto his right side with great care, tucking his arm beneath his head. "She is everyone's mother. Mine and Adam's and all the children that you saw when you arrived. She even mothered a wild bird fallen from its nest three weeks ago. She was born to be a mother. But she's not the woman who bore me."
"Then how did she come to be here?"
A long-fingered hand splayed across the bandaging at his ribs. "We found her in the ashes of a village that had been burned. One of the other women there told us that Mama Fee had seven strong sons before Prince Charlie landed at Eriskay. They ran off to join the Stuart cause. Bonnie Prince Charlie or death."
Rachel heard sorrow in that deep, quiet voice. Sorrow, soul-deep.
"She began to get letters, one by one, telling her that they were dead. Only her youngest, Timothy, was never accounted for. She believes with all her heart that he'll come home one day."
Rachel looked away, imagining the boisterous family the Scotswoman must have raised. She wondered what it must have been like to be showered with the adoration of a woman born to be a mother. What it might be like to feel the easy caresses Mama Fee had lavished on the two men hours before, her smiles warming and free of any demands. The woman's devotion twisted at her heart and left her aching.
"She's a lunatic, then? Lost her mind?"
"Sometimes, I think Mama Fee is the only one who is sane," he admitted. "She's managed to create love where there is only hate. Beauty where there is horror. Hope where there is only despair. I just wish I could convince her to sail to the Americas, or to . . . the continent—anywhere safe. But she has to wait for Timothy."
The simple words unleashed a score of questions.
"And you? What do you wait for?" The query hung in the silence of the room of stone and shadow, softly probing. "Who are you? What are you doing here, in this cave in the middle of nowhere?"
Sea-blue glints twinkled in the mist of his eyes. "As of approximately three hours ago, I was getting shot."
"No," Rachel said, insistent, her fingers curling around a handful of the heather ticking. "I'm serious. I want to know."
"I suppose that's a reasonable request for a lady to make if she is to spend the night in the same bed with a man." He was teasing her, despite his pain. "Before Culloden Moor, I was Gavin Carstares, Earl of Glenlyon."
"An earl? I'd never heard of you."
"I wasn't very good at being an earl, I'm afraid. All that gambling and ball-going and curricle-racing and spending days at a tailor's to capture the perfect cut to my coat. It's little wonder you didn't know me. However, I did see you once."
Rachel couldn't stem a sudden wave of curiosity. "Where?"
"One of my neighbors was having a house party near our family estate in Norfolk. I was out riding when I saw Lieutenant Viscount Woulfe and the honorable Captain James Darwin holding some contest for your entertainment. If I remember rightly, Woulfe was attempting to slash an apple from atop Darwin's head at full gallop. I was curious which was to be your hero—Woulfe, for his feat with the saber, or poor Darwin, for standing there, icy calm, while a half-drunk madman slashed away at his head "
Rachel winced. She could just imagine what this man must have thought. She wanted to deny what he'd seen. She wanted to make excuses. She'd been younger and foolish and headstrong and dazzled by her own power over England's most courageous men. Instead, she said, "There can be no doubt that you would not be brave enough to perform such a feat."
A low chuckle rumbled from his chest, then ended on a gasp of pain, doubtless from his sore ribs. "No. I would definitely not be brave enough." It should have been an admission of cowardice. Instead, the words made Rachel feel like a swaggering child being indulged by a much older and wiser adult.
"I suppose it is not your fault. Your lack of dash. Your father was doubtless a bookish scholar, locked away in his library, plaguing you constantly with Latin recitations."
She was only attempting to regain a sense of control. She didn't expect the lightning flash of emotion that crossed the Glen Lyon’s face.
"My father was a brash, bold warrior of a man who should've been born during medieval times. A knight merrily slashing and bashing with sword and shield from dawn to dusk."
"But you don't seem like—I mean, your father must have been . . ..”
"Disappointed? Dismayed that I didn't share his passion for hacking away at things? Undoubtedly. Though, to his credit, he attempted to disguise his feelings on those rare occasions he visited me. Fortunately, he had Adam, who made up for my shortcomings. He's my half brother. The firstborn by three months. It's a pity he couldn't have inherited the earldom. He would've been better suited to the title than I was."
Rachel stared at him. The man didn't sound bitter or cynical or angry. He sounded, well, sincere.
"But he must have been a bastard. I mean, in actuality—not just by disposition."
The Glen Lyon’s lips pulled in a wistful smile. "He was the son of my father's heart. Adam's mother was my father's great love, the woman he'd pledged his troth to, his life to, long before he was forced to put a wedding ring on my mother's finger. He lived with her at Strawberry Grove, and visited my mother and me occasionally."
"You mean he lived with his mistress?" she demanded, aghast, remembering the laughing, titian-haired beauty in the portrait.
"She was his wife in his eyes, with five children born of their loving." Rachel remembered the portrait, the frolicking brood of children, the laughing woman with joy in her eyes. What would it have cost a sensitive boy to be thrust in the midst of that boisterous lot and know he would forever be an outsider?
"It must have been a terrible shock to your mother and to you."
"My mother knew all about Lydia from the first. I was never certain whether she simply didn't care or she believed she could change my father's heart, given time. He was a man destined to love only one woman. It's said that is the curse of all Glenlyons."
"Then why did he marry your mother at all?"
"Because my father had been born to be a soldier. He'd dreamed of it his whole life. As second son to an earl, his future was up to his father. The earl promised that if he wed a wealthy merchant's daughter to recoup some of the family fortunes, a commission would be bought for him in the cavalry. But a fortnight after the wedding, his elder brother died, leaving my father the heir. There was no way that Glenlyon's sole surviving son could march off to get his head blasted to pieces on a battlefield."
"How dreadful! He must have been devastated—to be longing for the glory of battle and to never have tasted it."
"I suppose my father thought so. He was forced to remain home, to love his lady, to watch his fields and his children grow. To smell the fresh scent of new-mown hay at night, instead of gunpowder and blood and death. Yes. He's a man to be pitied, no doubt,"
Rachel didn't know how he had managed to make her sound foolish again. "You would never understand."
"You're right. I wish I. . ." he paused, but old pain vibrated in the rich baritone of his voice. There was loathing and revulsion too, as if those gray eyes were seeing visions she couldn't share.
"You must have felt some of your father's longing to prove one's mettle in battle. Why else would you have raced off to join Bonnie Prince Charlie yourself?"
"Because I was a damned fool. Because he . . . wanted me to. My father's family had always fought at the Stuarts' side. He lay there, his strength seeping away every day, his life ebbing from his eyes—dying a little more every . . . time I saw him. Just once, I wanted to drive . . . the disappointment out of his eyes, make him proud." He stopped, and for the first time, bitterness etched his features. "My father lived just long enough to get the news that his son and heir had been judged a coward at Prestonpans."
Rachel's breath caught at the depth of pain in those storm-cloud eyes. This man, who didn't give a damn if the world labeled him coward, who mocked the g
lory-spinners who turned war into legend, was wounded far more deeply than by just the bullet that had torn his side.
As Rachel watched him, her heart ached for him. She saw a golden-haired boy, so lost, so alone, craving the smile of approval from a father who could not give it. Craving the unconditional love and the pride that must've glowed in his father's eyes whenever they lighted upon the blustering, magnificent Adam. But these things were forever beyond this man's grasp.
As Rachel had battled a lifetime to make her own father proud, to overcome the general's regret his only offspring was a daughter. Yet what would it have cost him—a born soldier—to have Gavin Carstares as his heir? What emotions would have lurked in her father's hawk-like eyes, no matter how hard he tried to conceal them?
Why was it that she suddenly felt compelled to fill the empty, shadowed curl of the Glen Lyon’s fingers with her own?
She gazed down at the space that separated them—a yawning chasm of doubt and confusion, of fear and outrage. Unspeakable horrors had loomed in her imagination from the moment she'd been dragged away from that starlit garden. But this man hadn't hurt her. Instead, he had teased her, sheltered her, looked at her with eyes so deep and understanding that they had broken through her defenses.
This was insane. The man had had her kidnapped. She had shot him, and now, she was considering . . . what? Comforting him?
Slowly, she started to reach across the space that separated them, but at the last moment, she dug her fingers deep into the mattress. Gavin's eyes shimmered at her in the half-light, unutterably old, unguarded for a heartbeat, hinting at the vulnerability of the boy he had been. His wistful voice drifted out.
"At Prestonpans, I lost everything I was. I betrayed everything I believed in. I killed men to gain my father's approval, Rachel. To win just a little of his . . .” He stopped, unable to say what he had wanted, needed. Rachel knew only too well. Love. "In the end, I failed him, too."
Was it possible for so much regret to be captured in one man's voice?
"You asked what I am waiting for," he said. "I'm waiting for something I can never have, Rachel—absolution."
His gaze clung to hers a long while, then his eyelids slid shut. The candles guttered out one by one, leaving only liquid darkness and broken dreams to haunt Rachel long into the night.
But she never touched him. She only wished that she had.
Chapter Seven
Someone had imbedded live coals in Gavin's side, stitched them into his flesh with diabolical cleverness so they sizzled and pulsed. He lay still upon the mattress, as if the slightest movement would shatter him. Sweet oblivion danced just beyond his grasp; exhaustion, gritty and grinding, pushed down on his chest.
The chill of the cave penetrated his bones, and every shiver released red-orange sparks of pain that scattered to every nerve of his body.
His current state should have been miserable enough to satisfy even the most dedicated of Satan's imps, yet the physical reaction to his wound paled in significance to what he felt as he gazed at the woman sleeping beside him.
He had awakened from his fitful slumber an hour ago to find her sleeping, and had spent the time since watching her. Her face was translucent, great dark circles under her eyes. Heavy skeins of silky, dark hair pooled and tangled like lace against the ivory satin of her skin and the rumpled folds of her bedraggled robes.
She had entered the Glen Lyon’s lair a captive queen, battle fire in her remarkable eyes, every inch the general's daughter who had commanded men to risk their lives to win her regard. He'd felt guilty for taking her hostage, and yet at first, it had been easy to cling to the instinctive dislike he'd felt for her since the moment he'd first seen her in Norfolk.
Now, the events of the past days had stripped away the veneer of reigning beauty, leaving vulnerability, the faint reminder that there had been shadowy monsters lurking beneath her bed in her childhood nursery as well. Gavin was surprised to find he was wondering what they were. But of one thing he was certain: those monsters could not be half so frightening as the reality she was facing now.
Self-disgust filled Gavin. She must have been terrified in order to aim that pistol at a man's chest. She still claimed she hadn't shot on purpose, that his lunge for the weapon had made it discharge—but he'd seen the courage in her eyes, the resolute tilt to her chin. She would have had the grit to pull the trigger if she had thought it necessary. She would have stared into her opponent's face and seen an enemy, not a thousand hopes and dreams unfulfilled, someone's son or brother or father or sweetheart, someone who could laugh and cry, love and mourn, and fear as his life ebbed away.
She wouldn't have hesitated the way he had on the battlefield so long ago. She would have done what she had to do. Still, she would carry the scars from her actions the rest of her life. Gavin could see it in the soft, hidden places in her slumbering face.
She whimpered, a tiny, lost sound that would have appalled her had she been awake. It buried itself in Gavin, more devastating than the pistol ball she'd fired there hours before. He could only imagine the contents of her nightmare.
The thought unnerved him, reminding him all too clearly that he had his own nightmares lurking in the shadows of his mind, and that he could never be certain when they would stir to life. He shuddered inwardly, horrified at the idea that this woman—that anyone—might see him torn apart by those night terrors. His only comfort was the fact that he could usually feel the dreams stalking him before they came, a sick sensation that mocked him with his own helplessness to drive them away.
Had that been his gift to this innocent woman? Nightmares to rival his own? He reached out, touching a lock of her hair, as if his fingertips could drive away the phantoms that might haunt her.
Restless, shivering, she shifted toward the warmth of his body, as if seeking the tenuous comfort he offered. The knots that held the thin fabric of her robes strategically draped around her had sagged and loosened, some slipping free, baring the ivory column of her arm, her shoulder, the slightest wedge of the upper curve of her breast. Her skin was flawlessly lovely, though covered with slight goose flesh.
Gavin gritted his teeth, steeling himself against the pain it cost him as he reached across her in an attempt to settle the coverlets back up beneath her chin. But she was lying on a fold of the blanket, and as he tried to dislodge the coverlet from beneath her, the whole left side of his body was set aflame.
He tried again to release the coverlet, but his attempt failed. Yet before he could draw himself away from her, her silky arm draped across his chest.
Gavin swallowed hard, knowing he should disentangle himself and ease over to the far edge of the bed. Better still, he should scramble off onto the cave floor, away from her soft lips, the forbidden scent of her hair. It had been forever since he'd tasted a woman's mouth or held a woman in his arms.
But Rachel de Lacey was not the type of lady Gavin had ever favored. He preferred his women gentle-spirited, with that same dreamy quality captured in the maidens in the illuminations that he cherished.
He would have drawn away from her, had she not suddenly nestled against his shoulder, giving a contented sigh. Tension bled out of her body; the shivering eased. Even the tightness around her mouth softened, her breathing even and warm against his skin.
The thought of moving away from her suddenly seemed cruel, if he could give her comfort in such a small way. He knew instinctively that Rachel de Lacey would never be a woman to consciously ask to be soothed, but that didn't mean she didn't need it, in the bottom of her stubborn heart.
She'd be mad as hell if she ever discovered that he'd glimpsed her vulnerabilities, but he'd deal with that later.
Carefully, Gavin edged the coverlets higher about her, his fingers stroking her hair as if she were one of his little half-sisters come to him to cry out some heartache.
Gavin winced. Doubtless, Christianne, Eliza, Laura, and Maria needed comfort now, with their papa dead and their brothers hunted as traitors in t
he wilds of Scotland. He could only thank God he'd had the wisdom to convince his ailing father to sign over Strawberry Grove to Lydia before he'd died, before it could be snatched away by the crown, another forfeit of Gavin's treason.
Regrets. Gavin stared down into Rachel de Lacey's night-shadowed face and wondered if a man could be free of them.
He let his eyes drift shut, and savored the warmth of her. He wondered if this was one more act of self-deception, one more time he refused to see the truth. Was he holding Rachel de Lacey to soothe away her fears? Or was he holding her so that for just one brief moment he would not feel alone?
Only a coward needs to keep a candle lit to drive back the night. She could still hear her father's voice, see his forbidding scowl, as if her request was an insult to him.
She could still feel the dragging terror of the dreams—dreams of endless corridors, black as the new-turned soil of her mother's grave, dreams in which the tears she held inside hardened, like diamonds that ground into her eyes until they bled.
No tears. No light. No one to hold her.
Alone.
Grief shoved hard against Rachel's heart—not grief for the mother she'd barely known, but grief at her own isolation. Somehow, this time was different. She could feel it—warmth, cocooning her, enveloping her, driving back the dreams. Something gentle stroked her hair.
Of her own volition, she melted into that warmth. Even in sleep, she knew it was weakness. But just for a little while . . . just for a moment, she needed that warmth so badly she didn't care. She sank into it, drowned in it, drank of it greedily. And somewhere in it, she found a rest that she'd never known in her gold and blue bedchamber at Lacey House, nestled among the lace-trimmed counterpanes and mounds of pillows in her own bed.
But it seemed her dream-demons were jealous of her sleep, for they rattled their wings together until the sound assaulted her ears, pulled at the weighted rims of her eyelids.
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