With This Kiss: A First-In Series Romance Collection

by Kerrigan Byrne

  Sir Dunstan gaped at him, contempt sharpening his features, curling his lips. "Carstares. The coward."

  "When I escaped Culloden Moor, I decided to stop running. I'm the one who has stolen so many fugitives from beneath your swords. I'm the man who gave the order for Rachel de Lacey's kidnapping."

  "He's not! Damn it to hell! Listen to me," Adam bellowed. "I'll tell you whatever you want to know! Just fling him out."

  Wells stormed toward Gavin, fists clenched. "Where is Rachel? I'll wrench the information out of you if I have to strip the flesh from your bones one blade-full at a time!"

  "Do what you will with me, but believe me when I tell you Rachel is safe, and will remain so as long as the ship sails away from Cairnleven."

  "Don't listen to him!" Adam roared. "He may be the Earl of Glenlyon, but I'm the son of the dead earl as well! His bastard, the son he would have made heir if it had been in his power! I became the Glen Lyon because my brother shamed the title, and my father!"

  Adam was lashing out, using any weapon at his disposal, any way he might stand a chance of making Dunstan Wells believe.

  "You're nothing but his bastard!" Gavin flung back. "I'm his heir! That is why, even now, you're attempting to steal away my glory! Sir Dunstan, you gave your word you'd release him. Drive him the hell out of here at sword point if necessary."

  "Enough!" Wells’ bellow shattered their warring. "Are you both so eager to die? I'll ask you this one last time. Which one of you is the Glen Lyon ?"

  "I am!" Gavin gritted his teeth in fury as the claim rang out in unison with Adam's own.

  Dunstan stared at them, his face twisted in a frown, veins throbbing at his temples. "Prove to me which of you is the rebel traitor, and I'll hold true to my word."

  "I brought you the ring, can describe every curve of Rachel de Lacey's face."

  "I can recount the kidnapping—every second, down to the color rose that fell from her fingers."

  Wells’ glare shifted from one to the other, and Gavin felt his blood chill. He bargained with God and the devil, praying that Adam would be shoved from the room, driven away from the death that awaited one of them, but nothing prepared him for Dunstan Wells’ pronouncement.

  "Hang them both."

  Adam roared in denial.

  Gavin shouted, "No! You gave your word of honor he'd go free!"

  Very real frustration cinched Wells’ features tight. "How the devil can I honor that promise when I don't know for certain which of you is lying? I have no choice except to execute you both."

  "Damn it, Adam, tell him the truth!" Gavin pleaded. "Tell him!"

  But Sir Dunstan slashed his hand through the air to silence him. "It no longer matters what he says, Carstares. The man could swear in blood that he was not the Glen Lyon and I couldn't be sure. Better to kill one innocent man than risk allowing a rebel traitor like the Glen Lyon to escape."

  "Perfect! Now you've done it, Gav, you infernal fool!" Adam tore away from his captors. His booted foot slammed into a chair, sending it careening, splintering it against the wall. One of the guards cuffed him with a pistol butt, but Adam barely grunted in pain, he was so possessed by his rage.

  "I have just one request to make, Wells," Adam said through gritted teeth.

  "What is that?"

  "Hang him first!" Adam jabbed a manacled hand in Gavin's direction. "I want to be the one to kick the damned stool out from under his feet! Better still, cut off his head! He's sure the hell not using it for anything!"

  Two burly soldiers entered the chamber, imprisoning Gavin roughly between them. Heavy shackles were locked about Gavin's wrists, chaining him.

  Gavin tried one last time. "Let Adam go. You're making a mistake! I swear to you, on my honor, that I am the Glen Lyon."

  "Your honor? The honor of a coward?" Sir Dunstan scoffed. "Unless a miracle occurs and I'm able to identify you as the rebel raider beyond a shadow of a doubt, you will both die." The soldiers began to drag them from the chamber. But Sir Dunstan's voice rang out, and they paused.

  "As for what your existence will be like until I send you to your death, this I promise you," he said, glaring at Gavin with savage intent. "You'll welcome hell by the time I'm finished with you, unless you tell me where to find Rachel de Lacey." The threat thudded into the pit of Gavin's stomach like a cold stone. "Take them away."

  The guards shoved Gavin forward, and he all but slammed into Adam's shoulder. Horrific failure ground down on him, a sick sense of despair.

  He'd failed. Instead of securing Adam's release, he would be following his brother to the gallows. And Lydia and Christianne and the others would be forced to grieve for them both.

  Was there some other way out of this? Could he somehow bribe one of the guards to help them? No. It was impossible. Gavin's jaw knotted as they were herded past the last of the ornate splendor of Furley House and into the crude stone remnants of what had been the castle. Dank walls pressed in on Gavin, the dampness thickening in his lungs until he could barely breathe.

  Adam was going to die, and there was not a damn thing he could do to stop it. The knowledge lanced him with pain and guilt and fury. The waste of it made him half mad.

  When the guards shoved them, together, into the cell and slammed the door, Gavin fell against the wall then wheeled to confront his half brother in the blaze of torchlight.

  "Damn you, Adam! You stubborn son of a bitch!"

  "Damn me?" Adam laughed bitterly. "I put my head in a noose for nothing! You noble idiot! What the hell did you have to charge in here for, Gavin? Why did you have to play the hero? Why couldn't you just walk away?"

  "Walk away and let you die in my place? No, Adam. Not for all the world."

  "It was my choice! My sacrifice to make! The bastards would have cut down those women and children you half burned yourself to death saving. Riding into the midst of the soldiers was the only way to protect them. And once I was captured, why not make them believe they had the Glen Lyon captive? They were going to kill me anyway. At least this way, my death would have counted for something. It would have bought you a future, Gav, given you a chance at freedom."

  "Freedom, bought at the price of your life? You think I could live, knowing what you'd sacrificed?"

  "Hell no. You're too noble. You love me too damn much to allow me to use my death—a death no one and nothing could prevent—in an effort to aid you. Yet, you don't see why the rest of us shouldn't stand back and watch you hurl yourself into disaster time and time again. You're the only one capable of feeling pain or guilt. I'm not allowed to feel that I betrayed you or to try to make things right."

  "Betrayed me? You've never betrayed me!"

  "Who convinced you to come away to war? Who listened to Father use every filthy trick at his disposal to force you to do something you didn't believe in, you never believed in? The grand Glenlyon legacy must be honored at all costs! The hallowed Glenlyon heir, whose blood must be spilled to make ancestors moldering in the grave happy. Never once, during the time he was dying, did I tell the stubborn son of a bitch that he was wrong, that he had no right to pound you that way, layer on the guilt until your knees buckled with it."

  Gavin reeled at Adam's admission, the light from the lantern suspended on an iron hook painting the planes and hollows of Adam's face in stark regret. He'd never known Adam felt this grinding guilt with him, hidden behind his reckless smile and blustery temper.

  "Gavin, I'm your brother, but I let you charge off to war, knowing you didn't belong there. I watched the horror of it break you, piece by piece, saw you fighting so hard to keep from going quietly mad. You tried to hide it from me, from everyone. And then, that night when you shattered, when I found you . . . God, the pain you were in, the nightmares . . ." Adam's voice broke. "Damn you, Gavin. I wanted to give you what our father had taken away from you, what I'd taken away from you, with my bragging and posturing before Father, with my playing at brave soldier, trying to prove . . . prove that I might be a bastard, but I was also a
son he could be proud of."

  "Oh, Adam." Gavin drew a ragged breath, glimpsing for the first time Adam's secret pain, a scar that his bastardy had left, buried so deep that even Gavin had never known it was there. Had Adam blamed himself all this time for the fact that Gavin had plunged headfirst into disaster?

  Gavin crossed to where Adam sagged, his massive shoulders bent not by the weight of torture or chains, but rather by something Gavin had never seen in his brother before—even in the horrifying aftermath of Culloden Moor—defeat.

  Gavin placed one hand on Adam's shoulder, wanting to offer comfort, not knowing how to begin. Adam dashed his hand away.

  "Leave me the hell alone, Gav."

  "No. What happened wasn't your fault. I was the one who had to prove to Father that I was a son he could be proud of. I was the one he was disappointed in, Adam. Never you. You had to know that."

  Adam raised his face, and Gavin's chest was crushed with pain as he saw the hot salt tracks of tears running through the maze of purpling bruises on his brother's bruised face. "But that was why you had to go, to fight," Adam said brokenly. "Because of me. Do you remember when you first came to Strawberry Grove? You hadn’t even brushed the dust from your mother’s grave off of your boots before father thrust a sword into your hand and hauled us to Monsieur du Pree’s Salle d’Armes.”

  Gavin closed his eyes, the school of swordsmanship still vivid in his mind. A half-dozen lads near his age had ranged about the room in easy camaraderie, practicing their parries and thrusts, laughing and boasting. Racks of weapons lined one wall, some swords sharp-edged, others with metal buttons on the points. But nothing could blunt the impatience on his father’s face or the loathing in Adam’s all-too-honest dark eyes. The boys had called greetings to Adam, but Adam had ignored them, grabbing up a sword, then stalking to the center of the floor, eager for Gavin to take a swing at him. Adam hadn’t needed to say a word. Gavin had read what he was feeling in the fierce lines of his face. Go back to where you came from so that I don’t exist in your world and you don’t exist in mine. Go home!

  But the house Gavin had shared with his mother was all closed up, the black wreath on the door, the furniture draped in Holland covers. Even though he was only ten years old, Gavin sensed that their father would never again willingly set foot in the house where his unwanted wife once lived.

  Gavin swallowed hard, remembering how confused he and Adam had both been. Confused and in pain as Adam was now.

  “You were Monsieur du Pree’s favorite student, I remember,” Gavin said softly, wanting to kindle warmer memories for his brother. “You and Myles Farringdon.” Gavin had met the irrepressible Farringdon, Myles’s best friend, Braden Tracey and Nate Rowland that first morning at du Pree’s Salle. Knights of the Round Table, Monsieur du Pree had called them in the months that followed.

  Who would ever have guessed what lay ahead? That the five friends who’d practiced with their blades would one day have to choose sides, meet across a snow-dusted moor on an April morning that would change them forever.

  “I’ll always be grateful I met Myles that day,” Gavin said. “That winter Charles Stuart’s army spent in Edinburgh, Myles made me believe that I could still find a way to make things right in spite of what happened at Prestonpans. That it was not too late to try again.”

  Myles had understood about regrets—he had embroiled his family’s beautiful ward in his escape from redcoats determined to deal him a traitor’s death. Devlin Chastain had been weeks away from marrying Myles’s best friend. In the end there had been nothing for it, but for Myles to wed the fiercely intelligent, independent beauty, his childhood nemesis.

  Bonnie Prince Charlie and his troops had marched out of Edinburgh the morning after Farringdon’s wedding. Where was Myles now? Was his bride already a widow?

  “We all have regrets, Adam. Things we would change if we could. Going to war isn’t one of mine. At least, not anymore.”

  “Don’t lie to make me feel better. You’re damned rotten at it.”

  “Listen to me, Adam. If I hadn’t fought at Culloden, Barna and Catriona and all the rest of the children we’ve saved would likely be dead. So would Mama Fee. Maybe the war I fought wasn’t one our father could ever understand, but--”

  “He wouldn’t even have tried. Your whole life, you were standing on the outside, Gav.” Adam’s voice cracked. “Father wouldn't let you in. The bastard wouldn't let you in!"

  Gavin's chest felt like an open wound, and he knew how much it cost his brother to malign the father he'd worshiped. "I don't blame Father," Gavin said. "I had a choice. I made it. I have to live with the consequences, Adam, like any man."

  Consequences. Gavin closed his eyes, the image all too clear. The gallows, the jeering, blood-hungry crowd. And Rachel, barred in the cave room, furious, desperate. Rachel, riding away once the children were safe, returning to her world to discover that her worst fears had come true—he was dead.

  Gavin ground his fingertips against his eyes as desolation washed through him. His throat thickened as he remembered her outrage, her furious declarations of love, her fierce determination that they could find somewhere to build a life together.

  He could only pray that she wouldn't cling to her love for him with that stubborn tenacity that was so much a part of her nature. No, in the end, it might be better if he died on Wells’ gallows and end any wild fantasies she might have clung to.

  "Gavin, why? Why the devil did you have to come?" Adam said, burying his face in his hands.

  Gavin drew a searing breath. "I didn't want you to die."

  "We're a sorry pair. Both trying to play hero, fighting over who gets to sacrifice himself. So now what? We both die?"

  It was a damnable irony, one that made Adam laugh bitterly. "Who the devil will take care of Mother and the girls? And Mama Fee and the little ones? We were fools, Gavin, damn fools."

  "The other men will take care of Mama Fee and the children. And Wells will still have to let the ship sail—Rachel is still hostage."

  "Hostage, hell. You could hold her to you with nothing more than a glance, that's plain enough to see. The damned woman loves you. She's going to be mad as hell when you get your infernal neck snapped by a noose. Blast it, Gavin, I wanted you to have a chance to love her. But you always were determined to plunge after me into disaster. Remember what Mother used to say? If Adam leaped off of a cliff, Gavin would only insist on leaping higher. But it won't matter which one leaps first this time. We'll both strike the rocks below."

  Gavin reached out his hand and saw Adam's gaze flick down to it. "We'll do this thing together," Gavin said. "Face whatever the future holds."

  Adam's chin raised up, a shadow of his old reckless smile on his face.

  "Together," Adam said in echo. Then his hand clasped Gavin's own.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rachel curled up against the door, her legs stiff from the dampness and chill seeping from the stone floor, her hands scraped and cut, her voice a croak in her throat. She had begged and pleaded and shouted, attempting to get someone beyond the door to listen. Yet, in the two days that had passed since Gavin rode away, the people clustered in the Glen Lyon's cave remained stone-faced, immovable as the mountains that guarded the Scottish wild lands.

  The Glen Lyon had decreed that she be held prisoner, and for him, the Highlanders would willingly have barred heaven's gates to St. Peter himself.

  They would stand by, stoically, and watch him ride to certain death, a death they had all come to expect during the countless months the English had laid waste to their land.

  Despite the lectures her father the general had given Rachel on the necessity of sacrifice in war, despite the harsh realities she'd witnessed and the deadly peril Adam was in, she couldn't sit back and watch, helpless, as Gavin flung his life away.

  Yet what could she do to stop it? Not one of the men under Gavin's command would defy him, even though the fact that he was in danger was tearing them apart inside. She h
ad glimpsed the suffering scribed into their craggy faces, but they honored him too deeply, respected him too much to challenge his orders. He had charged them to guard the children, to see that they were placed on the ship that would anchor off the Scottish coast tomorrow. These gallant warriors would carry through Gavin Carstares's final request even if it cost them the last drop of blood in their veins.

  The children were helpless to aid her. Without the man who had chased away nightmares, they wandered around, lost, silent, pale little ghosts. Even if they had wanted to seek comfort, Rachel knew that they would not turn to her.

  The only person left was Mama Fee.

  The vagueness that had shielded her for so long had thinned until Rachel was certain the old woman was catching glimpses of reality for the first time since Gavin had found her in the burning ruins of her village. She was opening to reality just as Gavin had said she would. But Mama Fee would discover a reality far harsher now than she would have if Gavin had still been here to guide her gently into the light, to hold her pale hands, to dry her tears, to mourn with her, without words. His grief and his love for her would have shown in the depths of his silvery eyes.

  Even the loss of his comforting presence wasn't half so painful as what Rachel had planned these past hours she'd been lost in hopelessness—to rip away what little remained of the fragile protective veil that had shielded Mama Fee for so long. She was going to force those gentle eyes open, to make them see—see horror and death and hate, to see all she had lost— and force her motherly heart to realize that she stood to lose Gavin as well.

  Rachel cringed at the thought of what she had to do, but it was a risk she had to take. Mama Fee was her only hope. The one person Rachel could plead with, the only person here who might understand.

  She couldn't bear to lose the man she loved, and she would sacrifice anything—anything—to save Gavin from the hell the English army would design for him. It would be a hell beyond imagining, of that Rachel was certain. There was no retaliation so swift, so savage as that turned on a nobleman judged traitor.