He laughed bitterly. How could the daughter of Lord General de Lacey understand the gut-crushing horror Gavin had felt, facing blood and treachery, wanton death and destruction? Men had screamed in agony as they died. They were the lucky ones. Their torment ended swiftly, unlike those who writhed on the ground, an arm, a leg blasted away by cannon fire. Death, that sweet release—to be reached only after an eternity of suffering.
No. If he spoke for a thousand years, he could never make Rachel understand. Because if she dared understand, it would shatter everything she'd ever believed in. It would topple her general father from his pedestal, her betrothed from his bower of hero's laurels.
Gavin's mouth set, grim. Sir Dunstan would topple himself soon enough anyway. Would the man truly be wise enough, canny enough to hide the atrocities he'd committed from his bride? Wouldn't the shadows of the helpless ones he'd cut down show on his sharp-edged features? Wouldn't tales of this deeds come back to haunt him when this madness faded, when the threat of rebellion was banished and sanity returned? When Englishmen realized once again that the Jacobites who had fought and died were their brothers, their cousins and their friends? Men who were misguided, perhaps idealistic, but not vermin to be exterminated.
Even if Rachel never discovered what her betrothed had done here in Scotland, there would be other wars. Dunstan Wells would glory in them. Someday, when Rachel was holding her own little son on her knee, she would discover that men like Sir Dunstan were greedy for that child's blood. Her son was no more than a pawn in their eternal game of war.
The image of Rachel and her child at the mercy of Sir Dunstan made Gavin’s heart clench, but there was a chance that the knight wouldn't hurt his own family. One of the most chilling ironies was that a man like Sir Dunstan, who could slaughter other men's children, would be loving to his own—tender when his little ones ran to their papa with a scraped knee or a bee sting. But wouldn't that make it even more devastating when Rachel discovered the truth?
Gavin grimaced, knotting a length of pink satin into the princess hat. Rachel's inevitable disillusionment wasn't his concern. She was his captive, his hostage, a tool he was using to get the children to safety. He couldn't save the whole world, no matter how much he wanted to.
What could he do? Go to Rachel? List the atrocities Dunstan had committed? He recalled her outrage at the children's game. What if he tried to tell her that Barna's grisly pretending was based in fact? She would jeer at Gavin, shout at him, refuse to believe—and in the end, she would leave the Glen Lyon’s lair, run back to her life, her betrothed, to a place where Gavin could never defend her.
"Don't worry." Gavin jumped at the soft child's voice, a small warm hand patting his. He looked down to see little Catriona nibbling on her plump pink lip. "You're looking fearful frustrated," she said, wistfully eyeing the bits of silver and pink material as a new-fledged fairy might its first set of wings. "If it's too hard, you don't have to finish it."
Finish it. The child's words echoed inside Gavin.
He had no choice but to follow through with his plans to the bitter end. Rachel de Lacey wasn't one of the foundlings he'd protected beneath his meager shield. She didn't want his help. The mere suggestion she might need it would make the lady dissolve into amazed laughter.
Yet with every day that she stayed in the Highlands, with every night she tossed and turned on the heather bed Gavin had shared with her that one night, Gavin had lost a little more perspective. He'd caught glimpses of the woman she hid beneath her haughty facade. He'd wanted to reach past all that to the gallant woman who watched every careless caress he and Mama Fee and Adam exchanged, her face filled with suppressed yearning.
Inexpressible longing surged through Gavin, flooding past anger and resentment to touch secret corners of his own heart. It was so devastating, so unexpected, that he shook himself inwardly, shoving the image of Rachel de Lacey from his mind, and focusing on the child standing so quietly before him.
Gavin tied one last knot in the silvery hat he'd been fashioning and draped it over Catriona's cherubic curls. The big-eyed moppet smiled at him. "You can fix anything!"
His heart wrenched, his hands feeling awkward and empty and powerless. "If only I could," he said, touching the little girl's cheek. "Now, run out and show Mama Fee and Mistress de Lacey your treasures. I'll be out in a little while."
After I've managed to sort out these feelings inside me. After I rein in this infernal ache crushing my chest.
The children scampered outside, bellowing for Mama Fee, leaving Gavin alone. He took his spectacles off and cast them onto the desk, then buried his face in his hands, wishing this whole affair was over with the children safe and Rachel . . .
Rachel returned to the care of the man she had chosen?
Why should he care?
"Glen Lyon! Glen Lyon!" Barna's piercing shriek made Gavin leap to his feet, grab for his pistol and race out the dark tunnel of the cave. Barna barreled into him headlong at the cave's entrance. "She's gone!"
"Who? Mama Fee? She's likely gone to fetch water."
"Not Mama Fee! That thrice-cursed English scum of a lady!"
"What the blazes?" Gavin shoved past the boy and into the light. Sunshine struck to the backs of his eyes, blinding him for a moment. "Rachel? Mama Fee, where the devil is Rachel?"
"I told you you should’a kept her clapped in chains!" Barna wailed in indignation.
"Barna! The silly games you're after playing!" The old woman's face whirled into focus, bland and smiling as a baby's. "Don't get all blathered, Gavin, sweeting. You look as if you think she's run away from you, now!"
Gavin struggled for patience, his gaze searching the glen. He prayed that Rachel had slipped out to answer a call of nature or to gather some sweet herb for Mama Fee. Prayed that she hadn't done anything so foolish as to fling herself on the mercy of this untamed land. It was a land awash with desperate men and blood-drunk soldiers. The mention of her name might condemn her to a fate beyond her imaginings at the hands of men who had lost everything to Sir Dunstan's cruelty. They were men with nothing left but dreams of seeing their enemy suffer as they had, their children had, their women had.
She couldn't have gotten far on foot.
"Which way did she go?" Gavin demanded of Fiona as he thrust his pistol into his waistband.
The older woman looked stunned. Her eyes clouded, her mouth pursing. "You can't haul her back here like a sack o' grain just because the two of you had a tiff. It's best if you let her go off alone."
Gavin cursed himself for a fool. How could he have left Rachel unattended? He'd been so lost in his own morose musings that he doubted he'd have heard a brigade of horsemen storming up.
Horsemen. Thunder and fire! He wheeled, glancing to where the horses had been tethered. Adam's was gone. So was . . . hell, the only one left was . . .
Gavin cursed and hit the ground running, grabbing up the dilapidated saddle and worn bridle that remained. His face determined, he turned to face the snorting, wild-eyed beast aptly named Manslayer.
Rachel leaned low over her mount's neck, driving the beast faster, harder. Her alarm had grown with each mile that disappeared beneath her horse's hooves. The unfamiliar landscape seemed alive to her, wild and hostile, filled with a sense of brooding that chilled her.
Furley House. That was the name of the place the Glen Lyon's men had spoken of when she'd overheard them. A manor house that had once belonged to Jacobite rebels, it was now to serve as headquarters for the troops whose job it was to crush the Highlanders forever.
Please God, Rachel thought, let the English still be there. Surely any contingent of soldiers would know she had been abducted. If not, they would aid her the instant she told them who she was. Perhaps even Dunstan would be there, masterminding the search for her, mustering all his skill, all his power to save her from the rebel who had stolen her away.
He would be thirsting for vengeance against those who had taken her.
Rachel quelled a visi
on of Gavin Carstares's band of Scottish children—the casualties of war she had dismissed with perfunctory regret so many times before. Yet now they had faces, voices. Now Rachel knew that they cried for their lost sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers when they believed no one could hear them. She knew that there was one man who never failed to help them through their pain.
Rachel blinked suddenly as the horse shot past a copse of trees. How many times in the past two weeks had she lay still in the shadows, hearing Gavin softly soothing the little ones? Twice, she'd awakened to find him drowsing on his pallet, several children nestled about him like slumbering puppies.
His strong artist's hands had been so gentle, silhouetted against Catriona's curls or Andrew's cheek. The nightmares had been banished from the children's faces, driven away by Gavin's tenderness. Yet even in the flicker of the single lighted taper, Rachel could see that the children's night terrors had found a new home in his gray eyes.
A branch lashed Rachel's cheek, and she was glad of the stinging pain. He was her enemy—the man responsible for days of terror—her imagination subjecting her to every horror one human being could perpetrate against another. He was a rebel, not some broken knight-errant, some embattled angel, some wounded hero for her to heal. He was everything she despised—a man with scars on his back, on his honor, in the deep, smoky reaches of his eyes.
So why did she feel this tearing sense of loss as she raced away from him—to escape, as any soldier must.
At the top of a rise, she reined in her horse, her gaze scanning the area below. In the distance, she saw a cluster of cottages, a smattering of red uniforms and horses milling about.
Soldiers! Rachel's heart leaped. There must be a dozen of them. She turned to take one last look backward, a strange sense of loss tugging at her. The odd sensation in her chest vanished as she heard hoof beats from behind her. Another soldier? Or could it be an enemy-—someone set to follow her? At that instant, the horseman broke from beneath the curtain of trees.
Rachel gaped as if some Celtic god of vengeance had just split the earth beneath her feet. The man rode as if fused to the untamed beast in some pagan communion, hair the deep gold of a thane's ancient crown whipping back from a face set hard with fierce intent.
She didn't know how long she sat there, frozen, captive of the vision of horse and rider thundering toward her. Gavin Carstares—the poet and dreamer of the Glen Lyon’s lair—was suddenly transformed into something primitive. Something that sang to the most elemental part of Rachel in a wild, bewitching voice.
The hard yank of emotions inside Rachel jarred her from her trance. She attempted to turn her mount back toward the soldiers and spur the horse into a canter, but at that instant, a low whistle echoed out from behind. The roan whinnyed in answer, prancing and rearing, dancing on its hooves, but no power on earth could get the animal to move forward. In desperation, Rachel smacked the reins down hard on its rump. The animal wheeled and started to canter toward the gray-eyed sorcerer that seemed to hold it under some mystic power.
With a groan of outrage and dismay, Rachel realized there was only one course left to her. Kicking out of the stirrups, she rolled off of the animal's back.
She slammed into the ground, bruising her rump, twisting her wrist, but she barely noticed the pain. She scrambled to her feet, scooping up handfuls of the harlot's skirt she'd been forced to wear. She had only faint of hope that she could reach the cluster of cottages before the Glen Lyon would catch her—-catch her or trample her with that demon horse. But Rachel stumbled on, running as if pursued by hounds. If she could reach the break in the brush, plunge out into the meadow beyond, she'd be visible to the soldiers. She could scream.
The thunder of hooves swelled until her head felt it would burst. Her lungs were afire, her legs scratched and muscles burning as she ran. It seemed impossible, but she managed to push her way through the brush, catch a glimpse of the scene below. The banner of Sir Dunstan's command fluttered against a painfully blue sky, the splash of uniforms scattered like scarlet blossoms in the midst of the tiny village.
She was close, so close.
"Help!" she cried. "Please, Help me!" Yet despite her desperate, shrill cry, not so much as one soldier turned toward her. They were intent on their task—hellishly intent.
Disbelief welled inside her as she heard other cries. The sounds pierced through her, the mad whirl in the village twisting into focus. Her scream died as she saw flames shoot up from a tiny kirk and the glint of a sword biting deep into a woman's breast; she saw the children who had been clinging to the woman's skirts collapse beside her, their cries flooding Rachel with horror.
She stumbled forward as if to stop the soldiers, scoop the little ones out of the way, but the sight was blocked by a swarthy figure riding down into the madness astride a fine horse. Captain Darcy Murrough—Sir Dunstan's trusted second in command. Relief all but drove Rachel to her knees.
Murrough would stop it. Rachel was certain that he would lash the men back into order.
"Death to the traitors! God and England!" The battle cries rang out in counterpoint to the screams of the dying, the terrified. God in heaven, what had the people of the village done? What horrible crime had they committed against the crown that they should pay such grim retribution? Women? Children?
Her ears were so filled with the screams that she didn't even hear anything behind her. Hard hands closed about her, an arm about her waist; the calloused curve of a palm clamped over her mouth.
Rachel started to struggle as she was hauled back against Gavin's chest.
She barely believed her eyes as Murrough's sword arm arced back, then swung with deadly accuracy, cleaving the back of an old man struggling to reach the wild lands.
Rachel's cry of denial was muffled by Gavin's hand as the man crumpled to the ground.
Gavin hauled her back behind the shelter of the trees then tried to twist her in his arms so she wouldn't see.
But she yanked against him, unable to tear her gaze away from the horror below. Slaughter . . . they were helpless, the people of the village, helpless.
Murrough must have gone mad! Dunstan would never allow such a horror to take place.
Rachel ripped free of the hand Gavin clamped against her mouth. Her throat was dry, burning. "Help them," she choked out. "Do something."
She turned tortured eyes to him—her captor, the rebel coward Sir Dunstan loathed. What she saw in those old-soul eyes pierced her heart..
"Gavin!" A voice called from behind them, Adam, dusty and desperate, riding up on his mount. "I've been riding like fury to find you! Forget the woman. All hell's breaking loose. The bastard! Hasn't he feasted on enough blood? We have to stop him."
Rachel staggered as Gavin released her, his features grim. "There's only one way. A diversion." He reached into the pocket of his frock coat, drawing out a Stuart cockade affixed to a Scottish bonnet trimmed in red and gold plaid.
"What are you going to do?" Rachel asked, staring as he slipped the bonnet onto his tousled mane.
"I'm going to give them a more rewarding prey to hunt," he said grimly. "I'll ride to the west, draw most of them off that way."
"Gavin, you can’t," Adam protested. "You'll be a blank target. One pistol ball and they'll—" Adam didn't finish. He didn't have to.
"There's no time." Gavin whistled low, the demon horse coming at his summons despite the rising stench of gunpowder and blood, the shrieks that rent the air.
"Rachel, I can't take care of you. For God's sake, stay out of sight. They'll cut you down before they know who you are."
"Wait—look!" She cried, staring past his broad shoulder. "They're stopping!"
Gavin wheeled around, Adam facing the village as well. "What the devil are they doing?" Adam demanded, nonplussed.
The soldiers were herding the cluster of villagers like sheep, driving them into a thatch-covered cottage. Wild-eyed women disappeared through the doorway, their terrified children stumbling after them.
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"I knew Captain Murrough wouldn't allow them to be slaughtered! I knew he would stop it!" Rachel choked out, attempting to force the image of the captain murdering the old man from her mind.
"Is it possible the bastards are just taking them captive?" Adam stopped, his craggy face wary as he saw some of the men hauling thick lengths of wood toward the cottage. They wedged them against the door, barred the heavy wooden shutters on the windows shut. "I can ride out, get the rest of the men. We can break them out when night falls. Gavin? Gavin?"
The Glen Lyon stood rigid as stone, his face ice-white, eyes transfixed upon the distant cottage, as if he could hear every whimper, every cry of terror muffled now by the thick clay prison.
"I told you the English wouldn't—wouldn't hurt helpless women. Didn't kill children," Rachel clung to the words as if they were some kind of talisman. "I told you."
"The bastards are going to burn them alive."
Rachel turned to Gavin, horror clotting in her throat. "Don't be ridiculous."
At that instant she saw it—a torch in a soldier's hand. It arced through the air in a smear of crimson. Before it could land on the thatch, Gavin was already flinging himself onto his horse.
Adam dove for the plunging stallion's reins, his face ashen as he stared up at his brother. "Gav, there are too many soldiers! We can't."
"I'm not going to let them burn! We'll ride behind the trees, get the women and children out the back way, and pray the English bastards are too busy plundering to notice."
With that, Gavin dug his heels into the stallion's ribs. The beast tore free of Adam's grasp.
Rachel watched in horror as the Glen Lyon plunged down into the glen—one lone warrior against the madness.
With This Kiss: A First-In Series Romance Collection Page 79