by Karen Ranney
He bent his head to kiss her, then followed that kiss with another. His mouth closed over her nipple and tugged gently. She clenched her fingers on his shoulders and arched her head back, captivated by the sensation that flowed through her.
More, please, more.
A thought she found herself whispering.
“Yes,” he said, his voice guttural. He pushed aside her bodice, revealing her other breast, then kissed her as sweetly there. His fingers clutched at her skirts, burrowed beneath them. She felt his hand flatten on her thigh, then his fingers intruding between her thighs.
“More?” he asked roughly.
She nodded, but all he did was bend and kiss her throat, the tip of his tongue tracing a pattern against her pulse. She nodded again, but his hand remained where it was, cupping her gently but unmoving.
“Please,” she finally said, turning her head, her hands reaching out to flatten against his cheeks. “Please,” she whispered against his lips.
His thumb circled her softness, tenderly boring against a spot that made her gasp in surprise.
“Kiss me, Leitis,” he said, and she did, infusing into that kiss heat and exhilaration, and all the various emotions she was experiencing at this moment.
Her pulse raced, her heartbeat so loud it vied with the thunder. She found herself being lowered to the sandy floor of the cave, her cushion the Raven.
He kissed her again and again until her lips learned his, until every one of his breaths felt like hers. Fingers flew in desperation, only at peace once they rested in curves and hollows. The planes of his chest, the hard length of him beneath a questing finger, the curve of his shoulders, his muscled arms, all of these places felt with the tips of her fingers and the tactile surface of her palms.
She bent and whispered against his lips. “Should an enemy be able to bring me such delight?” she asked faintly.
“Only if he loves you,” he replied softly.
He pulled her atop him more firmly, slid slowly inside her, each movement he made making her wish to stretch this second further until it reached to infinity itself.
“My enemy,” she gasped as he surged inside her.
“My love,” he whispered.
The joy she felt was applauded by the roaring thunder, punctuated by flashes of lightning that illuminated the cave. The storm and his kiss muted her sounds of delight.
Long moments later, she roused and leaned up on her elbows. She wished she could see him, but the lightning had moved away with the thunder, now threatening the far hills.
“You have a great deal of experience in loving, Ian,” she said.
He didn’t speak for the longest time. “You were the first girl I kissed, Leitis MacRae,” he finally said. “I’ve learned a bit since then.”
She leaned down and kissed him tenderly. “I’d be just as pleased,” she said softly, “if you don’t learn any more.”
“I’ve not yet shown you all I know, Leitis,” he teased.
She sighed, only half joking. “I’ll no doubt die of pleasure,” she said.
“Better that than be hanged for sedition,” he said soberly, sitting up. He folded his arms around her, helped her lace her dress in the dark. He did it quite well, she thought sourly, and wished his experience were not quite so extensive.
“Have you noticed that we have an affinity for caves?”
“I never notice anything,” she said artlessly, “when you’re around.”
He bent and kissed her lightly.
“We should leave,” he said, “now that the storm has passed. Both the one inside the cave and outside.”
She smiled and reached up to cradle his face between her palms. “Ah, but Highland storms are never to be trusted, Raven. They’ll come again soon enough.”
Chapter 22
H er words were, unfortunately, prophetic. The storm had not moved on, only abated for the moment. He rowed across the cove to the shore, where his horse stood beneath a tree, patiently waiting in the drizzle.
Ian mounted and held out his arm for her. This time, however, he placed her behind him. She gripped his waist with both hands and laid her cheek against the middle of his back.
They traveled to the farthest place first, where Mary’s sister lived. She was a sweet-faced woman with three boys, all below the age of ten. After Ian and Leitis explained that the people of Gilmuir were leaving, she asked only one question.
“Is it true that Mary’s going with you?”
“It’s true,” Leitis said.
With that, the woman gathered up her belongings and left the cottage without looking back. The two youngest children were mounted on the stallion, while the oldest walked beside his mother, Leitis, and Ian.
The procession grew as they traveled back to Gilmuir.
The distance of the journey would be no great hardship to the young and able-bodied, but Leitis wondered how the older people would fare. Ian answered that question by striding to the summit of the tallest hill and breaking off a clump of heather. A moment later it was ablaze and he waved the smoky torch in an arc before stamping it out and returning to where they stood waiting.
A few moments later Leitis heard the sound of a vehicle approaching. She watched as a wagon, pulled by four sturdy-looking horses, passed between the rolling hills. The driver wore a mask similar to Ian’s.
“Borrowed from the English, I presume?” she asked, amused.
Ian turned in her direction. “They were not using it,” he said, his voice tinged with humor.
She didn’t ask about the man who accompanied him, nor about the mask he wore. There were some things, perhaps, that she should not know, and he would not tell her.
The younger children, silent in their bemusement, clambered into the back of the wagon, as the older people were helped up. Grown women, some of childbearing years, some older, all of them aged by the harshness of the previous year, walked beside the wagon. There were only two men at an age to have been in the rebellion. One was blinded in one eye and the other had lost an arm. But they both refused the wagon and walked beside the women.
A ragtag group of refugees, armed with only their will and their courage. She had never felt more proud to be a Scot than at this moment.
They stopped at a clachan Leitis recognized. Ian lit a lantern stored in the back of the wagon, closing all but one of its shutters, then walked to the cottage and knocked softly on the door.
The old woman who had given Leitis the wool answered, her braid draped over one shoulder.
“I’ve come to offer you a new home,” Ian said. “A place to live where you’ll be safe,” he said.
“I am safe enough here,” she said calmly.
“You’re not safe where there are English,” Leitis said, walking to stand at Ian’s side.
“The English can do nothing further to hurt me, child,” she said, smiling gently.
“They can starve you out,” Leitis said. “Or burn your village.”
“Whatever will happen will happen,” she said quietly. “I have lived here all my life; I’ll not leave now. Who would tend to the graves of my loved ones? The English?” She smiled at both of them. “There must be a sentinel,” she said, “for the past.”
“There is the ship coming,” Ian said in an effort to persuade her. “It will take you wherever you wish to go.”
She smiled at him gently. “Unless it can fly to heaven, young sir, I’m content enough here. There are many here and in the neighboring glens who will leave. Enough to fill your ship. Take them.”
She tilted back her head and surveyed him with kind eyes. “You do as you must,” she said. “And may God go with you. But not I.”
She reached up and touched his face, where the mask ended at the curve of his cheek.
Leitis thought for a moment that he would argue further, but the old woman placed her fingers against his lips, silencing any subsequent protest.
“We should be going,” Leitis said, but Ian only nodded. She had a feeling that the
older woman’s decision disturbed him greatly.
He leaned over and placed a gentle kiss upon her withered cheek, inducing a smile of delight.
“Be well,” he said.
She looked up at him with suddenly somber eyes. “You are the one who should be on guard,” she said.
Ian was quiet as they left her cottage. He studied the crofters’ huts, lost in thought.
“If she does not wish to come,” Leitis said gently, “there is nothing you can do to persuade her.”
“Yes, I know,” he said. “But I do not think her long for the world.”
“You cannot save them all.”
“I know,” he said somberly. “But it does not mean I shouldn’t try.”
“Do you suppose that people will wonder one day what happened to us?” she asked, looking around her. There was a mist forming over the ground, as if the clouds rose from the grass itself. Far away, a night bird called, and the echo of its voice was oddly plaintive.
This land, harsh and wild and unearthly beautiful, would always be inhabited by dreams and wishes and memories of the people who had lived here.
“Will our lives be better?” she asked, almost desperate that it would be so.
“Yes,” Ian said shortly. “Life is always preferable to death.”
Their procession now numbered twenty, and as they passed through clachan after clachan, the word spread.
“Are you leaving, then?” one old man asked, peering out of his cottage.
Another man seated in the back of the wagon answered him. “We’re leaving the English behind before they can do to us what they’ve done to Scotland.”
Before they’d passed through the village, they’d acquired another émigré.
The journey back to Gilmuir took them three times as long as it would have on horseback. The wagon needed to follow a well-worn track. Otherwise, it would have sunk into the grass due to its weight.
The storm, undaunted by its earlier display of bravado, returned, its arrival announced by a grumble of thunder.
A child began to cry in fright even as his mother shushed him.
There was no place to seek sanctuary, and the forest was a more dangerous refuge than being out in the open.
Leitis and the others followed silently behind the wagon in pairs. It was a few minutes later when she realized something was wrong. The wagon, filled with people, was becoming mired in the mud.
She walked to where Ian stood inspecting one wheel. She couldn’t see what he was looking at, but she knew well enough that a wagon wheel could snap under this pressure.
“What should we do?”
“We can carry the children and leave the older people to ride,” Ian said, moving around to the rear of the wagon.
The rain came in earnest then, a torrent that soaked through their clothes quickly and muted speech with its sound.
Leitis joined Ian at the rear of the wagon, holding out her arms for a small girl no more than five. The child shied away, then changed her mind a second later when lightning struck nearby. She nearly catapulted herself into Leitis’s arms. She set the little girl down gently before helping Ian lift another child to the ground. Only when the wagon was nearly empty, its only occupants an elderly man and a woman of similar age, could they push the wagon free of the mud.
Leitis reached out her arms for the little girl once more, wishing she had a shawl to shield her from the rain. They were all drenched, miserable, and chilled by the wind that accompanied the storm.
They began to walk, to slog through the mud as best they could, each adult holding a child. Ian carried a small boy in each arm, both children winding an arm around his neck, instantly companionable.
It could be that some of the sons and daughters of Scotland had not seen a grown man in a while, their homes being isolated and their kin not returning from the war with England. The twin boys he held might well have never felt the touch of a father’s hand or heard a man’s voice speak to them in a low and comforting tone.
The sound of the thunder was a blessing in a peculiar way. There was no danger of the soldiers at Fort William hearing them. Nothing could vie with the storm, not even the children’s startled cries when lightning came too close.
A sizzling sound preceded the boom of thunder as a tree was struck by lightning. In seconds it became an arrow of white flame from its roots to the top branches, and seemed to shudder before crashing to the ground.
The storm was ominously quiet for a moment as if in homage to its own destruction.
Leitis clapped a hand over the little girl’s ear, pressed her closer to her chest, and continued to walk.
Gilmuir suddenly emerged from the darkness, a darker cloud on the horizon. A mile, then, no more than that, and they would be warm and dry. A thought she held on to with determination, since the remainder of the journey was uphill.
Her legs ached with the effort of walking through the mud. The little girl, who had tearfully confided that her name was Annie, had long since wrapped her arms around her neck and pressed her face against Leitis’s throat, her soft breathing an oddly comforting counterpart to the rain and thunder.
Leitis’s skirts were sodden, mud dragging at the hem. She had never felt as wet or as tired.
When she had thought of spiting the English, of engaging in feats of rebellion, she’d imagined something other than this. The courage needed now was simply that of endurance. All she needed to do was place one foot in front of the other, and ignore the mud clinging to her ankles and shoes, wipe her face of the rain, and murmur reassuring words to the frightened child in her arms. Not great deeds, only forbearance.
Was that the true meaning of courage, then? Knowing that she could not take another step but somehow finding the fortitude to do it? Small acts strung together. If that was what courage was, then the Scots had it in abundance. Tenacity, too. The sheer will to live, and to prosper despite the circumstances.
She knew then that they would do well, wherever they chose to live, because the will was in them to do so. But it made her ache for her country that its people were leaving. This was the greatest sin to lay at the feet of the English. Not that they had won, or even that they acted as victors, but that the nature of their conquering would alter a nation.
As if they heard them coming through the storm, the village of Gilmuir began to awaken. One by one the cottage doors opened to reveal a soft spill of welcoming light. Dora cried out and reached for the little girl in Leitis’s arms. Leitis surrendered the child to the older woman, averting her eyes when Dora began to cry in relief.
Leitis went back into the night, guided the child’s mother and brother into Dora’s cottage.
The other villagers were standing at their doorways, each welcoming a family group. Ian had relinquished the two little boys in his arms to their mother, who was being tearfully welcomed to Ada’s home.
An old woman approached Ian, reached up, and patted his chest. He looked startled, even more so when she gestured him to come closer. He bent low and she kissed him smartly on the mouth.
Leitis thought the sight of Ian surprised into smiling was a memory to recall forever.
He’d had love and protection all his life, and even in his darkest hour, when he learned of his mother’s death, Ian had a home and a parent to welcome him. The children he surrendered to their aunt had only an uncertain future and no father.
He turned and walked back to Leitis. His approach was all it took for her to smile up at him, welcome in her look.
Ian wished, in a purely selfish way, that there were limits to her character. But she had wordlessly held out her arms for a frightened child, and uncomplainingly traveled back to Gilmuir on foot.
She’d overwhelmed him with her passion and humbled him with her courage. She made him laugh, yet had the capacity to irritate and infuriate him. A woman of fascinating dimensions.
He should have told her from the beginning who he was. Another thought countered that one. If he had told her, she never wo
uld have believed he was sincere in wishing to help the people of Gilmuir. She would have repudiated him based on his reputation alone.
Once he had been glad of his sobriquet. It had aided him to be called the Butcher of Inverness. Now he cursed the name and the rumors that accompanied it.
He had fallen in love with Leitis as a boy, held her in his arms, and loved her. If he told her the truth, he might lose her. Not an inducement for honesty, he thought wryly.
In one way he was the young boy tied to Gilmuir by bonds of memory and blood. Yet, at the same time, he was an English colonel trained in obedience and duty.
Time was running out for him, both in his masquerade and in this venture. The ship should be here soon, and with it another choice to make.
“We should be heading back,” he said.
Leitis said nothing, only placed her hand on his arm and walked with him to his horse.
Hamish MacRae stood in his doorway, looking out at the scene before him. You’d think all these people would have a notion of the time, he thought. A body wished to rest at night and not have to use his pillow to muffle shouts and cries and the sound of tears.
Dora was crying, and that fool Malcolm was bouncing up and down like a thistle in a brisk wind. And Mary, with her soft smiles, was weeping so hard her face was red with it.
And his niece? She was the worst of all, looking after a man with her heart in her eyes, smiling in that soft way that a woman does when she is in love. A masked man, at that.
If he was Ian MacRae, why didn’t he bare his face like an honest man?
And why was she here at all? It didn’t make sense that the Butcher would choose her to be his hostage and then allow her to slip from Gilmuir so easily.
He narrowed his eyes and studied the man in the mask.
The storm, having vented its fury for the last time, moved away, the lightning darting from cloud to cloud to occasionally touch the summit of a hill. The world was gray and black with flashes of light, an ethereal scene and one strangely muted.