Rachel had been stunned, her heart hot and aching for the woman who still clung to hope that her boy was healthy and laughing and coming home to her when his "ramblings" were through.
Ever since that day, Rachel had endured the empty place setting, arranging it with the greatest of care. She had endured being all but jammed against Gavin's shoulder whenever meals were served, even though the slightest brush of his thigh beneath the table or of his arm against hers sent sizzles of awareness through her, a swirling, heated memory of how it had felt when he'd kissed her, when he'd touched her.
But today the masquerade at the table seemed too insufferable to bear. She grimaced, imagining what any sane person would say about the pretense, what her father the general would have said in such a situation, what Dunstan would have done. The image made her mouth tighten and her shoulders stiffen.
"You aren't doing Mama Fee any favors, lying to her this way," she said for Gavin's ears alone. "Her son died an honorable death. I might not agree with what side he was on, but he is still a hero of battle. She'll have to face the truth sooner or later. My father had to tell his dearest friend that his son had died in battle. I'm certain Dunstan wouldn't flinch from the truth."
"There's no question Dunstan Wells would inform Fee that her child lays in a mass grave with hundreds of other faceless soldiers," Gavin said in quiet scorn. "Is that what you want to tell her?"
"No! I mean, not that way. But somebody has to stop pretending! Somebody has to—"
"Tell her that her son is never coming home? Don't you think she'll figure it out for herself?"
Rachel glared at him, wishing he wasn't standing so close to her, the heat of his body penetrating hers despite the distance between them. "She should know the truth! It's not going to change, no matter how much you want to pretend otherwise."
"No. The truth won't change. It will still be there when she has the strength to face it. I know that your papa the general would dismiss it, Mistress de Lacey, but spirits can be wounded far more deeply than the body can be. And physical wounds are far easier to heal. Fiona will face the truth when she can. Until then, the only gift we can give her is to allow her this tiny bit of comfort before reality crashes in—not that a soldier's daughter is likely to understand."
He turned and strode away, angry in a way she'd never seen him. Though he left, his words had stirred a thousand echoes of memories Rachel had tried so hard to quell. . . her very first memories, memories of death.
She had been three years old, and was supposed to have a new baby brother by Christmastime, but something went horribly wrong. She could remember her papa walking into her bedroom, grim, no tears on his face as he briskly informed her that her mother was dead. She was not to cry. It was over and done with.
The day after the funeral, she had crept out, wanting to go into her mother's withdrawing room, the sunny chamber where her mother always was. But a dozen maids had been buzzing about the chamber. They’d been tearing it apart, bundling off everything that had belonged to Rachel's mother.
Rachel stiffened, remembering how she had run to her father, begged him to tell them to stop. But the general had glared down at her from beneath the shelf of his bushy brows. I was the one who ordered it. There is no sense living amid unseemly clutter. It only makes you cling to the past.
As Rachel had stood there, fighting back tears, another maid had come in to her father's study. With no expression on her face, she had taken a portrait of Rachel's mother from the wall and replaced it with a battle scene of Henry V at Agincourt.
Now Rachel knew that her father had been right. There was no sense in clinging to the past, pretending death away. Yet it would have been comforting to have a sewing box or portrait, or even a stray hair ribbon—something to assure Rachel that her mother had been real. Something that might give her even vague memories of the woman who had died when she was so small.
Rachel turned her face into the sweet Highland wind and felt the familiar twinge she'd known whenever she thought of her mother. The greatest irony of all was that, while she could remember the aftermath of her mother's death, she could not remember her face.
"Child, whatever is amiss?"
Rachel started, wheeling to see Mama Fee bustling over, her lovely features creased with concern.
What is amiss? I'm being held hostage by a madman who reads bedtime stories to children in between plotting treason and pretends that your son is alive so that the truth won't hurt you. I'm going mad myself, because sometimes his insanity almost sucks me under, makes me believe . . .
She pushed back the frenzied thoughts, groping for something else to say. "I chipped a plate. I'm sorry."
The Scotswoman's eyes softened with understanding. "Come now, sweeting. I saw you and Gavin having a bit of a quarrel. It's quite natural, you know. What with your heart turning upside down with love a dozen times a day."
Rachel sucked in a breath, intending to blast Mama Fee with a denial. It had been agony to watch Mama Fee bustle about the past weeks, dreams of romance and bridal delights wreathing her face. Still, what could possibly be gained by speaking the truth now? It could serve only to upset the woman and make Rachel's own escape more difficult.
Rachel searched for something to say, and in the end merely choked out, "He's the most wretched man alive! He infuriates me!"
"Well, you can be making it up when you go to bed tonight, lovey. That'll be something to be looking forward to, won't it?" The old woman patted her hand. "I know Adam hasn't found the priest yet, and what's happening beyond the door to your bedchamber isn't quite proper, but he's a tender heart in him, Gavin does. I'm certain he takes care of you in his bed just as he would anywhere else. 'Tis a rare gentleness with women he has. Not all men do."
Rachel felt as if she were going to explode with frustration and anger and hopelessness. And with the unbearable weight of the images Mama Fee had painted: Gavin, inexpressibly tender, introducing his lady-love to the ways of passion; Gavin, sheltering her spirit the way he did the children and Mama Fee's; Gavin with his artist's hands and his poet's eyes, peeling away the innermost layers of her soul.
The panic that had been building inside her pressed hard against her heart. She closed her eyes, trying to blot out the image of the Glen Lyon with one of Sir Dunstan Wells. A real hero. The embodiment of every dream she'd ever had. A man with fierce warrior's eyes that had seen the blood and death of battle but never turned away. A man to whom duty and honor and courage were life itself. She remembered the miniature he had given her when he'd ridden off to war—engraved with the inscription by Lovelace: I could not love thee, Dear, so much, Loved I not honor more.
Her hands had trembled when she read the scrolled words; her heart had swelled with pride. It was as if he'd sprung from her fantasies and was repeating the lines, like an actor upon the stage.
At that moment, she had believed that he was not only the best choice for her husband, but that maybe her father was right. He was a man she could understand, one with the same morals and goals she had been raised to believe in. In time, she would learn to love him.
Why was it, then, that when she closed her eyes, it wasn't a charging hero who filled her imagination, but rather a man with tawny gold hair, and sorrows eons old haunting his eyes? A man with a smile that cherished everything, that understood the secret weaknesses in her spirit, her most deeply buried fears, and forgave them?
"Rachel, child, you've been wool-gathering long enough." Fee touched her lightly on the arm. Rachel shook herself inwardly and found she was gazing into the woman's eyes—eyes that seemed more alive than they had been in all the time Rachel had been captive. "Come along. I've something to show you."
Rachel wanted to go back into the cave, to bury her face in the mattress and scream. She wanted to bar the door, so that no one—not the children, not Mama Fee or Adam, and most especially not Gavin—could pry away at the walls she'd built around herself, walls made of reason and of duty, a thousand truths she'd once b
elieved with her whole heart.
She needed to escape the glen forever, to be free of the sweet madness the Glen Lyon had woven here.
Today would be her best chance, what with everyone outside. She glanced over at Adam. He had forgone sharpening his blade and was getting up from his seat.
"Have to go for a little ride," he said, casting a meaningful glance at Gavin. "There's a bit of plaid that I dropped."
Gavin nodded. "I hope you find it."
Fee paused, glancing over at them, perplexed. "Can't you wait to be fed first? I've got a lovely stew simmering."
"It was a souvenir from a lady," Adam explained. "All this bother about love Gavin is stirring up is making me dashed sentimental. Besides, I want to take another look around for that priest I promised I'd find. We'd best get Gavin and his lady wed before they provide us with another babe to feed."
Rachel refused even to glare at the man. Adam had been taking far too much pleasure in tormenting her the past two weeks with tales of his search for the priest who was to supposedly marry them.
But for once, Rachel was grateful for the ruse, if it would draw the sharp-eyed Adam far away. Gavin would be distracted by the children's demands, as he so often was. It should be easy enough to elude Mama Fee. Rachel felt a sharp jab of guilt. She had no other choice.
"All right then, lad," Mama Fee scolded the strapping man. "But I'll keep a bit of stew bubbling for when you come back home. If you bring back the priest, I'll make you one of those sweet cakes that you love."
Adam bussed the old woman on the cheek then swung astride his horse. "I'll do my best, Mama Fee, but you know how it is with men of God. When you're neck deep in sinning, they're swarming around you like bees about a split apple. But when you want one, they vanish." With a light touch of his heels against his mount's barrel, he sent it cantering off over the rise.
"If he's to find the priest, we've no time to waste," Mama Fee insisted. "Now come along, child. I want to show you my surprise."
Rachel turned back to Mama Fee. "I'd love to see your surprise."
The trunk was tucked on the west side of the clearing, not far from where two horses were tethered—one a wild black animal, whose eyes seemed to be searching for bones to crack every time they lighted on a human. The other mount was the one Rachel had decided to use for her own—a strong, steady bay. It was a blessing beyond belief that Adam had taken the other more acceptable mount. In the event that she did manage to escape, there could be no chance that Gavin could manage that man-killer of a horse, even if his ribs were still not giving him some pain.
Fiona knelt down beside the battered trunk. "I hid this before the Sassenachs burned the village. I couldn't let them take it, you see." It was the only time Rachel had heard the woman touch on the painful realities of the war that had just been fought on Scottish soil.
But despite the ugliness of her home being burned and the memories this recollection could trigger, Fiona's eyes glowed. She rummaged past baby clothes, displaying cherished gifts made by her sons' tiny hands and treasures given by her husband. Then, at last, she reached her goal—a carefully wrapped bundle at the bottom of the chest.
Her velvety cheeks turned a lovely shade of rose as she folded back the wrapping, unveiling an old-fashioned gown. "When a mother bears seven sons, the pride, the joy is too great to hold. Healthy lads, with eyes clear and bright as mountain sky and bodies strong and willing. The only whisper of regret I felt was knowing that this wedding garb would never be worn again. It belonged to my mother, and to hers before her. My great-grandmother wove every thread on her loom, tied every bit of lace, set every stitch a dozen times, to make certain it was perfect for her only daughter. Then, she stitched my mama's name into the hem, here, and a little verse her bridegroom chose to honor her with."
With a gentle hand, the old woman lifted the delicate hem, displaying the scrolled legend: Maire Chattan wed to Angus MacLean, 7th of May, the year of Our Lord 1698. I saw and loved. A little space beyond it was another line of stitching in a pale rose color. Fiona Mary MacLean wed to Gordon Fraser, this 20th day of April 1714. The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love.
Despite everything—her need to escape, her confusion, the strange ache in her chest—Rachel couldn't keep her fingers from touching the beautiful garment. She imagined the lovers who had pledged their lives, their hearts, their dreams to each other in those embroidered verses and solemn bridal vows. And she thought again, wistfully, of her own mother's gown, the one that had been destroyed after her death.
"I cannot tell you the joy it gives me to pass this on to you," Fiona said, with tears in her voice.
"No!" Rachel dropped the fold of the garment in horror. "You can't. It wouldn't be right."
"You're wedding my boy. Whom better should it go to?" Fee's face blossomed in a smile so wistful it broke Rachel's heart. "I tried to give it to my other sons' brides, but they always had treasures of their own to wear, from their families. Truth to tell, I felt awkward even offering. But now I know that the gown was meant for you. You'll look like an angel in it."
Rachel froze, touched at the gift that this woman offered, and so filled with guilt that she could never accept it.
"Unless of course you don't like it." Fiona faltered. "I wouldn't want to force it on you if you want something fine of your own." The uncertainty in Fee's eyes was more than Rachel could bear.
"It's the loveliest thing I have ever seen," she said, knowing that she would never wear the wondrous gown. This dream of Fiona's— that Rachel would wed Gavin Carstares—was as impossible as the dream that her son Timothy would come marching home.
Yet Fiona gazed up at Rachel from her dream world, her smile all the more beautiful because of its fragility. "If you think it is lovely, then you shall have it when you wed my boy. All my dreams—and all the dreams of my mother and my grandmother—will be yours from that day, stitched into the cloth."
Fee laughed, the sound like a tinkling bell. "Gavin will have to begin poring over those books he's always blinding himself with, to search for love words to give you. It should be simple enough— 'tis there for anyone with eyes to see."
"What is there to see?"
"He's in love with you, child."
"What?" Rachel glanced over to Gavin, who was still amid the children, little Catriona begging him to fashion a princess hat from scraps of cloth in the cave chamber.
He smiled down at the child, that heart-melting dreamer's smile, his eyes wise and ancient, so knowing and gentle. She wondered what it would be like to have him look at her thus, with no shadows in his eyes.
The thought fed the rising panic inside her until her hands shook. She had to get away from him. Away from his eyes, his touch, his pain. Before she probed the emotions he raised up inside her: Confusion, the excruciating sensation of being stripped bare to the soul. Before she discovered . . .
No! She shoved the thought away, as Gavin and the children disappeared inside the cave.
Forcing a smile at Mama Fee, she said, "I'm going to ride out a bit. I need some time to think about—well, what you said about Gavin loving me." She tripped over the words. "It's all so confusing."
Mama Fee smiled, a childlike, trusting smile, yet one of an earth goddess, a mother of life watching another woman begin her journey. "Off you go. But I vow you've already found everything you need, child, here in this glen."
"Please, don't tell him I've gone." Rachel couldn't look at her. Rachel’s throat closed with a crushing sense of loss. She all but ran to the horse. In a heartbeat, she was gone.
She urged the beast through the tangled maze of stone that concealed the entrance to the Glen Lyon’s clearing. She plunged down the narrow trail scribed in the sweep of cliff more forbidding than a hundred armed sentries. She fled into the hills, leaving a score of half-formed dreams behind her.
Chapter Nine
Gavin sat on the edge of his cot, wads of silver gauze he had been attempting to fashion into a princess hat resting in hi
s hands. The clamor the children made as they worked up bits of costume for their game seemed a thousand miles away. He felt as if he had taken a blow to the chest. The bands of tension that had made the past two weeks hell screwed tighter than ever inside him.
Dealing with his wound had been bad enough. Concealing its seriousness from Adam's sharp eyes and Mama Fee's loving gaze had proved harder still. He’d fought through fever, mastering the tremors that had coursed through his body. But that torment had been made even worse by the fact that Rachel was constantly nearby, filling his head with the memory of a forbidden kiss, the shadow of an accidental embrace, opening up aching holes inside him that could never ever be filled.
If that wasn’t hard enough, he'd had to listen to her royal highness, the general's daughter, flinging out judgments about the way he and Adam had chosen to handle Mama Fee's grief. Then she'd plunged on, spouting tales about Sir Dunstan's heroism until Gavin wanted to shake her until she saw sense. He'd wanted to take her far away from the Highlands and from the English knight who would one day destroy her.
The need to save Rachel de Lacey left him shaken. But she didn't want to be saved, Gavin reminded himself fiercely. She had her hero. A soldier with every decoration for bravery possible pinned to his chest. A man who was not a coward.
Coward. Long-suppressed pain knifed through Gavin. Never would he forget the look on Rachel's beautiful face when she had seen the scars on his back, the revulsion, as if being in the same chamber with him might taint her somehow. Worse was the pity that had flickered in her eyes, as if events at Prestonpans had unmanned him.
Bitterness welled up. Gavin thought he had dealt with the label that he'd been branded with the day of that fateful battle. He'd believed that he was able to dismiss charges of cowardice with wry, dark amusement. He'd never stooped to defend his actions or to hide the truth from anyone who asked. That scathing honesty was his retribution against the dreamy-eyed fool he had been. He hadn't given a damn what anyone thought of him. It couldn't be more brutal than his opinion of himself. Why did Rachel de Lacey fire in him this need to spill out his private pain? He had almost lost his soul amid the horror of that day. Why was it so vitally important that she understand?
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