by Paula Quinn
Robert’s hopes of finding Kate began to falter two days later when they hadn’t found so much as a broken twig to keep them on the right path. How had the MacGregors disappeared without a trace? None of the men traveling with him and his uncle knew where the Devil’s holding was. It could be leagues away, or just beyond the next hill. Surveying the rocky peaks and rolling hillocks around him, Robert could not help but wonder if they were not being watched. Could he and his meager army of forty men survive an ambush of five? Hadn’t all but those five killed fifty of Duncan’s men in Glen Orchy? No one would aid them if they were attacked. The Highlanders they had questioned along the way had told them nothing. Even those the earl had beaten and threatened to hang claimed to know nothing of Callum MacGregor. If his sister’s life were not at stake, Robert would have admired such loyalty. The Highlanders did not seem frightened of the Devil, but of his uncle. And from what Robert had witnessed thus far, they had good reason to be.
When Graham Grant had first told him about the MacGregor laird’s imprisonment in his grandfather’s dungeon, Robert had refused to believe him. He had barely known Liam Campbell, for their father rarely took them to Inverary. But Robert was certain no man of his ilk could be so vile. But after what he’d witnessed so far when his uncle questioned the Highlanders, he was no longer so sure. Aye, Robert knew Duncan Campbell was a warrior. The earl had reminded him of it often enough when Robert was a boy. There was no shame in shedding blood for the good of the country. But where was the honor in torturing one’s countrymen because they did not give him the answers he desired?
Once Kate was returned to them safely, there would be much to consider about remaining in his uncle’s service. As much as Robert hated to admit it, mayhap he was not cut out for the coldhearted, underhanded business of warring. He had certainly been deceived easily enough by the traitor, Grant. Damnation, why had he not suspected something amiss when Grant had informed him that the Devil had captured his uncle?
Like any other Campbell, Graham had known much about the centuries-long battle with the MacGregors. Robert wondered now if it was the subtle inflection of admiration lacing Graham’s voice that had almost convinced him to admire the proscribed clan. The man pretending to be his kin had not denied that the one the Highlanders called the “Laird of the Mist” had massacred Liam Campbell’s garrison. But he claimed to know for certain that the laird did not kill his grandfather, though Graham told him he would have had the right to do so. Robert had found it odd at the time to hear such unprejudiced talk from a Campbell, but Graham had assured him that his Breadalbane kin did not hold the same disdain for the MacGregors. He should have asked Graham how he knew the tale of his grandfather’s dungeon was true. Instead, he let Kildun’s guardsmen ride directly into the swords of their enemies.
A cold numbness trickled down Robert’s spine, even now, at the memory of what had happened next. He’d been spared and brought before the warrior who led the battle. Stunned and shaken, he had turned to see that the man binding his wrists was Graham. Robert had fought against his tight hold, until he felt the tip of MacGregor’s blade at his throat. But it wasn’t the warm, wet metal on his flesh that halted his movements, and almost his heart. It was how badly MacGregor wanted him dead. It was clear in his eyes, in the cold snarl curling his mouth.
“Tell me where Argyll hides before I remove yer head.”
Behind him, Graham had spoken quickly, dragging the chieftain’s attention back to him. He spoke at first in Gaelic, causing the MacGregor’s expression to darken, then informed him that the earl had gone to Glen Orchy, to the home of his dead brother.
Robert would have preferred that they kill him instead of tying him to the gate and leaving him alive to contemplate what they were going to do to Kate when they found her.
It was his fault. He had left her. He had been too eager to become a knight of the realm.
He had to find her. He prayed his sister was still alive, despite his uncle’s belief to the contrary. Kate had to be alive, else not honor or even God would stop him from killing the Devil.
Chapter Eighteen
KATE RODE AT CALLUM’S SIDE as they traveled through Kylerhea toward the brae pass of Bealach Udal. She listened while Jamie, riding just ahead, pointed out the steep south ridge of Beinn na Caillich and the wild herbs and yellow and orange daffodils growing around it. The yellow daffodils are Maggie’s favorite, he advised her, then waited for Kate to catch up. “I have tried to find a flower as rare as she, but my search has proved fruitless.”
Kate’s heart lurched at such sweet gallantry. “Margaret MacGregor must be quite a lady to invoke such tenderness in a man,” she told him, wishing she knew how to do the same.
“A lady!” Brodie snorted to their right. “Why, Maggie is as much a hellion as her Devil brother.”
Jamie’s expression grew serious instantly. He gave his mount’s flanks a hard kick that delivered him directly in front of Brodie. “I take offense to that! She is as innocent as a newly born lamb.”
Brodie merely looked heavenward, and then at Kate. “The wee hellion’s protector. Some think she’s a bit simple, what wi’ all them years o’ pain, but I tell ye, cross her and she’s got a tongue as sharp as m’ blade.”
“Off yer horse!” Kate heard Jamie’s demand and Brodie’s subsequent laughter as she turned to follow Callum when he passed her.
The laird had cantered to the top of the low summit and was looking out over the landscape when Kate reached him. She came up slowly, mesmerized by the perfect image of some battle-hardened king of old returning home to his kingdom.
“Your sister has a champion.”
Callum smiled, bemused by her fanciful notions and determined to rid her of them as he turned to look over his shoulder at Jamie. “’Tis his duty to guard her, nothing more.”
Och, but was he so consumed with one thing that he failed to see something as large as one of his men in love with his sister? Or could he simply no longer recognize love at all?
“Does my uncle know where your home is?” she asked as they climbed the next pass.
“We dinna hide. If Argyll wants to find me, ’tis easy enough.”
“And you hope that he will. Because of me.” When he nodded, she drew out a wistful sigh. “Pity, it would be enjoyable here without him.” She cocked her brow at him when he cast her a bewildered look. “What?”
“Ye possess a way about ye that makes significant things seem . . . no’ important at all.”
“You mean our names?” She dismissed his impression of her with a shrug. “They are only as important as others make them. I refuse to waste another moment being afraid of the consequences of associating with you. You will find that I don’t frighten easily.”
Beside her, Callum smiled, already knowing her declaration to be true.
“Take you, for instance. My uncle tried desperately to make me fear the terrible Devil MacGregor, but I barely spared you a thought.”
“No’ a thought?” He flashed her a winsome grin that made her senses reel. Nothing she had seen thus far matched its beauty.
“Barely one.” She did her best to keep her composure and offered him a teasing smile of her own. “Of course, I did not know it was you at the time.”
“And now that ye know me, d’ye find me worthy of more than a passin’ thought?”
She blushed, hating herself for doing it. “I think of you from time to time, I admit.”
His grin softened into a smile so intimate, so shockingly sensual her mouth went dry. She licked her lips to keep them from sticking together. His eyes followed the path of her tongue. His expression darkened with desire. He wanted to kiss her, and she wanted him to. Dear God, she knew she would go willingly to him if he but spoke the request, hanging be damned! She wanted to taste his mouth, his breath. She wanted to be in his arms again, to feel his hardness against her breasts, his skillful hands holding her, exploring her, caressing her while he told her . . .
“Are there many
people in Camlochlin?” she asked, forcing from her mind the foolish notion that he would ever care for her.
“There are enough.” He watched her guide her horse up another steep incline, making certain her mount did not slip. “There are more of us in Rannoch.”
But Kate did not hear him. From the top, her gaze spread over the breathtaking panorama of a world set apart from the rest. Black mountain ranges, their jagged peaks swathed in silver mist, cut across an endless horizon as if painted there by a mad artist bent on intimidating visitors. She could have been looking at the sacred isle of Arthur Pendragon’s burial place, for Skye appeared timeless, ancient, untouched.
“It is Heaven,” she spoke on a shallow breath, not wanting to move from her spot, wanting never to leave this place.
“Nae, but ’tis as close as I’ll ever come to it.”
She turned to him, disquiet marring her brow. “Can you not forget what haunts you, even here?”
He shook his head and continued onward. “’Tis here where I remember.”
They traveled for the rest of the day in silence, save for Angus’s gravelly voice filling the braes with old Highland ballads and Brodie’s intermittent groaning.
As they passed through the small village of Torrin, the black mountain range—or the Cuillins, as Jamie had called them—loomed closer in the distance, a force of nature as harsh and unyielding as the warrior chieftain riding toward them. They skirted round Loch Slapin and followed a path that brought them directly below the mountain brae.
Kate doubted any view could be more splendid than the one she had seen at Glen Arroch. But she was wrong. The road they traveled rose above a sun-dappled loch toward the honeycombed cliffs of Elgol. Every step was more treacherous than the one before it, but the view alone was worth every heart-stopping turn. Following closely behind Callum, they winded around another curve, at whose edge Kate was forced to stop. She was certain they had arrived at the end of the world or the beginning of time, for the brutal grandeur that unfolded before her stilled her breath. The entire horizon was a chiseled masterpiece of jagged, shadowy mountaintops and white, swirling mist. Her heart wrenched at the intense loneliness of such a savage landscape. Who could survive here, and who could survive without it once they had seen it?
They continued on while salt tang filled her nostrils and the sound of crashing waves below played like music on the moist breeze. This land was as tumultuous as the sea and just as dangerous, with mossy peaks and crannies, and slippery slopes that promised certain death with one wrong turn.
Finally the cliffs fell away, leaving the troop on a grassy crest overlooking a remote haven nestled beneath the giant slopes of Sgurr Na Stri and the craggy bulk of Bla Bheinn to the north. Directly below them were rolling moors carpeted in lush lavender heather. Sheep dotted the sunlit vale, and cattle grazed amid cozy thatched-roof bothys strewn across the grass. To the west of the glen, a wide loch spewed small frothy caps along a pebbled beach where children played.
“Camlochlin Castle.” Callum reined his mount closer to Kate and pointed down into the glen.
The fortress must have been built of the same stone as the mountain behind it, for it blended into the landscape so neatly she doubted she would have even noticed it there had Callum not pointed it out to her.
Kate longed to push on ahead and enter this vast, separated land Callum called his home. The men did not move toward it, and just when she was about to question them about why they were not rushing home, the sun began its short descent. Golden rays of light were captured in the mist above the mountains. The sky exploded into flames of bronze and yellow, while the curtain wall before her grew even darker, casting shadows over the land. Splashes of gold fell upon the loch, turning white caps a frothy ochroid.
“I want to go there,” Kate breathed on a longing sigh, then turned to Callum. “Now.”
Callum held her gaze with his own and wondered at the way she worked at chiseling away his defenses. He’d never planned on bringing a woman here to share his life. He had neither the time nor the heart for such watery notions. But if he was going to entertain thoughts of taking a wife, she would be a woman who loved his home as much as he did. A woman who could see beyond the veil of the unyielding and the impenetrable and appreciate the beauty of a land that spoke to the heart alone. Aye, and mayhap she would even be able to see something good in him beneath the beast he had become.
He swallowed back the unwanted desires Kate Campbell stirred in him, but they returned full force when she slanted her smile at him and then kicked her mount into a full gallop.
The men followed her down the steep heather incline, but before Callum let loose his reins, he watched the back of Kate’s slight form racing toward his home as if it were her own.
With a heart that felt lighter than it had in years, he set his eyes on his castle and his heels to his mount. Within seconds he thundered past Kate and his men as if they were pausing to admire the scenery.
The celebration of their return began even before Kate and the others reached the castle, when Angus popped the cork off a fresh pouch of brew and, in an uncommon gesture of generosity, passed it around. After a long swig of the potent spirit, Kate shuddered all the way to her kneecaps, then set her eyes on Camlochlin’s laird. He had reined in just before entering the pasture and then turned his horse back toward the others, his smile wide and beautiful, his long hair streaming across his shoulders.
There was happiness in Callum’s life, and it was here. Kate was thankful for it. She wanted to be a part of it.
Aye, Callum was happy to return home, but ’twas the joy in Kate’s eyes and the tenderness of her smile that exhilarated him.
He lived his life with a single purpose, to avenge what had been done to him, his clan, his sister. He’d hated who he had become—until he saw himself through Kate’s eyes. He despised the memories that haunted him, but just looking at her made him forget. At first he had fought her effect on him because she was a Campbell. Then he fought it because she could never be his—and live. Hell, leaving her in that bed at the inn had nearly driven him mad. But they were far away from the world now, far from the law. Somehow she had come to mean more to him than revenge, more than a quick tumble to quench his desire. His heart longed for the redemption she offered him. His body ached to hold her. He looked over his shoulder at Camlochlin. His sanctuary. But so much was missing from his life. He had no notion of how to find what would make him whole again, or even if ’twere possible. He was an outlaw, a murderer, a monster. But Kate Campbell saw something more.
He flicked his reins.
When he reached her, he leaned forward in his saddle, coiled his arm around her waist, and heaved her onto his lap. He offered her no explanation as he gazed deep into her questioning eyes. He could barely think at all. Instead, he stroked the soft contour of her cheek, then slipped his hand behind her nape and bent his mouth to hers. She did not resist him. He knew she wouldn’t. Her lips parted on a sigh of sweet surrender that made his whole body go rigid and melt at the same time. His tongue swept deeply, intimately into her mouth, tasting her and letting her taste him in return. Plunging his hand within her hair, he tilted back her head while the other drew her closer. He kissed her with exquisite thoroughness, ravishing her softness until she fell back, limp in his arms.
He lifted his head and slid his gaze over her glorious face while she hiccupped and smiled at him. And all at once he knew ’twas not only her heart with which he should have been more careful.
Chapter Nineteen
CALLUM COULD NOT HELP but smile as he stepped into Camlochlin with Kate clutched to his arm. He should be angry with Angus for feeding her Gillis’s poison, but he liked the way she pressed herself against him. He knew she held on so tightly to keep herself from stumbling, for the whiskey was potent indeed. But her rather submissive position would also work at easing some of the tension sure to come when he told Camlochlin’s inhabitants who she was.
He looked around at the
squires and vassals rushing to help his men disarm. Baths were already being prepared to wash away weeks of dirt and grime, and somewhere close by, Callum heard Old Keddy the cook shouting for a dozen fat hens to be slaughtered in celebration of the laird’s return. Brodie’s wife, Netta, heavy with child, came barreling down the long stairway and near leapt into her husband’s arms. Graham was besotted with kisses from Rabbie the tanner’s twin daughters, Glenna and Lizabeth.
Callum drank in the sights and sounds of his home like a man parched by the sun. He knew the face of every man, woman, and bairn who greeted him. Familiar scents of smoky peat and burning tallow wax fragranced his nostrils. He drew in a deeper breath, letting it comfort his restless spirit. Aye, Heaven.
His gaze dropped to Kate. ’Twould not be Heaven for her. When his kin learned that she was a Campbell, and naught but a captive to him, they would treat her unkindly. Some might even try to cause her harm. At the thought of it, his heart seized with the need to protect and shelter what was his. But she was not his, his mind reminded him.
“Who’s the lass, then, Laird?” someone called out as if to drive the truth of it home.
Best to get it the hell over with, Callum thought, involuntarily pulling Kate closer. “This is Katherine Campbell,” he shouted so that all could hear. People stopped what they were doing and gathered ’round him, some already whispering offense at her name. Callum’s expression went hard. “She’ll be brought nae harm here, understood?”
The mumbling soon died down, but there were questions aplenty. Callum felt Kate slip against his arm and wondered if she was even aware of all the faces staring at her.
“Did ye snatch her from her home, Laird?”
“What d’ye plan to do wi’ her?”
Hell, she wasn’t completely oblivious to what was being said, Callum realized when she lifted her head from his arm.
“She looks dimwitted. Is she simple, then?”