by Paula Quinn
Nick laughed at him when he reappeared. “Then you’re not escorting her to St. James’s Park?”
“Ye take her.”
“But I’m betrothed!”
Connor was tempted to hit him over the head with his sword.
“Let’s go to the tavern and have a drink. I’ll pay since you saved me from having to wed the woman you’re still pining over.”
Connor thought about arguing that last point over with him, but what was the use. It was the truth. “Later,” he said instead. First, he wanted to find Mairi and tell her she wasn’t marrying Sedley or Oxford. If she did, it would be over his dead body, or more likely, over theirs.
“He is going to hate me.” Claire Stuart left the concealment of a thick brocade curtain and dropped into the nearest chair.
“Not if all goes as planned.” The queen crumbled her parchment and tossed it into the hearth fire. There was nothing but scribble on it anyway.
“And if it doesn’t? What if he decides he doesn’t want to fight to win her back? If he believes there is no purpose in it, he might—”
“He will fight for her.”
Claire smiled at the door, thinking of her son and knowing him well. “Aye, I knew he loved her still. I tell you I’ve never heard such fear in my son’s voice as when you dismissed him.” They both giggled. “He is so stubborn. He will not tell her how he feels, and yet he can’t let her go. She is the same.”
“That is where Oxford and his sister will aid. We need not do anything to foster Henry de Vere’s affections toward Mairi. He is already taken with her. Very soon now, Captain Grant should make a bold move. As for your Miss MacGregor, did you note the rage in her eyes when she saw Oxford’s sister flung over the captain’s shoulder?”
Claire nodded, and they laughed again before the queen continued.
“Captain Sedley did what I asked of him and twice brought Elizabeth de Vere to your son. The girl did the rest on her own.”
“She is already chasing Connor,” Claire agreed.
“Your son is a very handsome man.”
They exchanged a smile. “I was truly astonished,” Claire said a moment later, “by Captain Sedley’s ability to pretend surprise when he learned of his intended marriage to Mairi. I wasn’t sure he would help us. He has known Connor for many years, but it’s difficult to trust completely anyone who lies so effortlessly.”
“But, Lady Huntley,” the queen pointed out, her dark eyes gleaming with mischief. “We are no better, and to your own son!”
“Hell, that is true,” Claire agreed again. “But it is for his own good. He and Mairi are meant to be together.”
“And we will help them see it more clearly.”
Och, but Claire was glad she had come to England, glad she had met this pleasant, clever woman who was willing to help her and enjoying it immensely. If all went as planned, in a few months she would be planning the wedding of two of the people she loved most in the world.
Relief washed over Connor when he found Mairi where he’d left her—at his father’s side. At least she wasn’t with the man who could possibly be her future husband. Like hell, he told himself, forging on toward her.
“I wish to have a word with ye,” he told her when he reached them. He spared his father a brief nod of thanks for not letting her wander off then turned his gaze on her once more. “ ’Twill take but a moment of yer time.”
She looked about to refuse him but then reconsidered when he hardened his jaw, daring her to do so.
“Verra well, speak.”
“Not here.” Without another word, he grasped her hand and pulled her toward a shadowy alcove a few feet from the strolling guests.
He hadn’t thought of what he was going to say to her on his way there, which was why, the instant they were alone he foolishly said, “Ye’re not marrying Oxford.”
He knew when her raven brow arched that he had begun the wrong way.
“I spoke to the queen.”
“Did ye?” Her lips curled into a rapier thin smile. “And what about Captain Sedley?”
He shook his head, certain that opening his mouth would only cause further damage.
“Should I thank ye then fer sentencing me to the life of a maiden in my old age? Will ye ride off to Skye next and ask my faither not to let me wed Hamish MacLeod or Duncan MacKinnon?”
Hamish MacLeod? “Duncan MacKinnon asked fer yer hand?” he asked, unprepared for the rush of fury—and raw panic—that washed over him. “How long ago? Why didn’t yer brother tell me in his letters?”
Her eyes opened wider on him. “Tristan penned ye letters?”
Hell, he should have thought this speech through before engaging in it with her. But since when could he not control his mouth? “Not fer a while now,” he amended.
“Letters about me?”
This time he took a short breath, trying to proceed more delicately. The last thing he wanted her to know was that he’d never stopped asking about her. “They were not always about ye.” When her eyes narrowed on him, he dipped his gaze to her hands, expecting to find a dagger in each one. “I simply wanted to know if ye were happy.”
“Ye lost that right to know. Just like ye have no right to try to step into my life now and make decisions fer me that dinna’ concern ye!” Her voice rose as she spoke, drawing the attention of the Earl of Essex and his wife while they studied a painting at the end of the hall.
She spoke more quietly but with even more conviction when she continued. “I will wed who I want and neither ye nor the queen will change that.”
“Ye would wed a Protestant then?” he challenged, truly wanting to throttle her pretty neck. She likely would wed anyone simply to anger him. “Because if ye would”—he cut her off when she would have answered—“then ’tis ye who betrays Scotland, not I.”
Her mouth opened, but for a moment no words came out, then, “Me? A traitor to Scotland? I am the one who fights to preserve it while ye fight to preserve kings who refuse to do—”
“What do ye mean, ye fight?” Hell, the daggers, the spying… When her lips snapped shut his heart crashed to his belly. He repeated his question, hoping for a different reply from the one he suspected. “Does yer faither know about this?”
“I am through speaking with ye, Connor.”
His fingers around her arm stopped her when she tried to step around him to leave. The warning glare in his eyes prompted her to give him an answer.
“All right then,” she said, yanking her arm free. “I’ve been in a few skirmishes with some Cameronians, that is all. Nothing that would do him any good to know about.”
Och, hell. He rubbed his hand over his stubbled jaw and closed his eyes to gather back the control he needed not to shout at her. “Skirmishes involving weapons?”
“Ye wouldna’ go into one without a weapon, Connor,” she said as if he should know, being a captain after all, then let out a slight, frustrated sigh. “Nothing overly dangerous… or frequent. There are not many Cameronians left beyond Edinburgh. The last time I used my blade was this past spring outside of Glen Garry.”
Connor couldn’t believe what he was hearing. She’d always been interested in the sword, even training under his mother’s tutelage. But never, never would he have imagined her to be so foolish as to… He couldn’t even think it. Mairi, fighting against men bent on killing her. Satan’s balls, she had gone mad.
Chapter Sixteen
Henry de Vere leaned his back against the cold stone wall a few inches from where Mairi and Captain Grant whispered in the shadows. His heart beat frantically in his chest, and, with each beat, it broke again and again. He touched his fingers to the scar disfiguring his face. No, he had to have heard wrong. Mairi could not have done this to him.
He had to move. He no longer cared to hear what they were saying to each other. He had to flee before they saw him. He had to think, to consider what it meant and what he should do about it.
Leaving the Shield Gallery, he made his way slow
ly toward the stairs. His legs felt weak, his arms heavy, his face…
She had beguiled him with smiles no other woman would bestow upon him. Because of her. Oh, how could he not have recognized that silky, husky voice? He thought he would never forget it—or her eyes, so vividly blue and cold as she sliced open his face in Glen Garry last spring.
On his father’s orders he had attended a secret meeting held by a group of Cameronians who had begun to fear that Charles might grant the kingdom to his Catholic brother, James. They had been correct… and they had also been discovered.
The night had been black and the road even darker, but he had sworn to himself that he would never forget those eyes below her hooded and masked face. Poor Edgar, his coachman, had reached around his shoulder and shone down his torch on the small group that had come upon them. She flung her blade and killed Edgar instantly. Henry knew he should not have left the carriage. He regretted his bravery every day since.
He’d moved quickly in his rage, knowing exactly where she stood when Edgar’s torch died with him. In the darkness he reached her before she or her comrades could stop him and slapped her face hard with his glove.
She couldn’t see him else the second dagger she produced would not have missed when she swung at his throat. Though the strike was not a lethal one, he went down clutching his bloody face.
“Traitorous dog,” she had spat at him before she hurried away. “ ’Tis a shame ye willna’ live to warn the others that we are coming fer them next.”
She thought she’d killed him. He wished she had, instead of leaving him mangled and terrifying to look upon.
Mairi.
He’d wanted her from the instant he saw her at Whitehall, so proud and confident, while the other women in the palace reviled her and her Highland dress—just as they reviled him. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and when she smiled at him, unfazed by his ugliness, he’d nearly dropped to his knees before her.
“No,” he croaked, tearing his wig from his head. It couldn’t have been his kind, compassionate Mairi who had done this to him.
“Henry?”
He turned at his sister’s voice. He didn’t want to speak to her now. No doubt she would do all the talking—about her handsome Captain Grant. That bastard had had his eyes on Mairi since he’d arrived.
“You look terrible.”
He didn’t need to be reminded. “I’m off to bed, Lizzy.”
“But it’s the middle of the day!” she called out as he turned from her again. “Are you ill? I hope you have not picked up some malady from that little Highland trollop of yours.”
“She’s not a trollop,” he defended rather weakly, since Mairi did swoon over Grant the way the rest of them did. She claimed she didn’t care for him, but every time he was in view—which was all the damned time—her eyes always darted back to him. And who the hell did Grant think he was carrying her out of the sun and away from his family yesterday? Why, Henry wanted to strike him for being so bold. Why hadn’t Mairi done it for him if she didn’t like the bastard as she claimed?
“Henry, are you going to answer me or just stand there looking miserable?”
He blinked at Lizzy. Should he tell her that it was Mairi had who scarred him? He needed someone to talk to, someone he trusted to give him advice as to what to do about it. Should he go to his father and tell him that Mairi MacGregor killed Cameronians in her spare time? Perhaps tell the Duke of Queensberry? Pen a missive to the Duke of Monmouth himself? What if they wanted him to kill her? Could he do it? “Lizzy, there is something I wish to speak to you about. I need—”
“Have you seen Captain Grant?” she asked, interrupting him, her eyes scanning the gallery below. “He was going to take me to St. James’s Park, but he seems to have disappeared.”
Henry’s expression darkened on her. Even his sister couldn’t keep her thoughts off the golden-haired rogue. It fired his blood and made him clench his jaw. He knew his scar appeared more pronounced when he was agitated. He didn’t care.
“Elizabeth, I think your captain favors another.”
Her eyes opened wider and grew moist instantly. He felt only mildly remorseful at his words. Why should he be the only one to suffer? Lizzy would get over Grant. She was still beautiful, after all. Unlike him.
“Who?” she demanded, her lips tightening. “You will tell me this instant who he favors.” Her voice rose to a quivering pitch. When she took a step toward him, he dropped his wig to the floor, freeing his hands if he had to defend himself. His sister sported a hellish temper and had struck him before when she didn’t get her way.
“It is Miss MacGregor,” he blurted. “They are together right now.”
She stopped, her jaw falling open and then growing taut again. For an instant, Henry thought she might fling back her head and commence screaming. She seemed to pull herself together instead and offered him a steely smile.
“That is the reason for your gloom, is it not?” She shook her head at him in disgust. “You care for her and this is how she repays you? What are you going to do about it, Henry?”
“What can I do?”
She bent to pick up his wig and handed it back to him. “Poor Henry. You lost so much more than your handsome face when you were attacked. You used to be so cocksure and determined to get what you wanted.” She moved closer, her breath falling against the sensitive flesh of his scar. “If there is still the heart of a man beating somewhere within you, brother, then take her to your bed and show her, and if she still doesn’t want you after that, kill her.”
He drew back with a short breath. How many nights had he dreamed of killing the bitch that had done this to him? Dreamed of finding her and peeling off her mask to behold her face before he ran his blade over it and then snapped her neck?
“Come now.” His sister chuckled against his ear. “I know what you did to that peasant girl in Nottingham two winters past after she told all that she carried your bastard.”
He closed his eyes, remembering. He couldn’t do the same to Mairi. She may have done this to him, but she was kind to him. She favored him. He was certain of it. Him and Grant. Perhaps Mairi wasn’t the one who needed killing.
“Do something about her, Henry,” Lizzy warned quietly, and placed a soft kiss on his face before she stepped away. “Or I will.”
Connor stopped Mairi before she entered the Privy Garden. He wasn’t finished speaking with her, even though she believed otherwise. She hadn’t promised him not to wed Oxford—or either of her Highland suitors, but worse than that, she didn’t seem concerned in the least about the possible consequences of facing men in battle—or here in Whitehall for that matter. His skin grew cold at the memory of her laughing and dancing with Queensberry and then stealing into his room to rummage through his possessions.
“Who else knows that ye’ve been ambushing Cameronians in their own homes, Mairi?”
“Homes where they were holding secret meetings with members of the old Parliament. Might I remind ye that under Richard Cameron, they renounced their allegiance to Charles and denounced James as a papist. Now they are trying to gather recruits in the north. Someone has got to stop them, Connor.”
“Was levying fines upon those who did not attend government-approved churches, or hiring Highland mercenaries to plunder their shires, not enough then, Mairi?” Connor asked her forcefully. “Was it right to authorize field executions without trial?” He looked away and lowered his voice so that she almost did not hear him. “Leave the extermination of an entire populace to the king and his army, lest ye stain yer hands with blood that can never be removed.”
“Ye sound compassionate to them, Connor. I wonder, does the king know that ye side with his enemies?”
Damn her, how could she think so little of him? “He knows that I took part in the executions, Mairi. A part I regret, whether ye like to hear that or not.”
“But they were traitors to the king ye served fer seven years!”
“Aye, they wer
e,” he agreed quietly. “But they were also men who simply believed another way. That made them outlaws, and as yer father and mine know all too well, outlaws are not tolerated by the government.”
“But this is different,” she argued. “My kin fought fer their basic human rights, they didna’ seek to change the church. We are hated because we are Catholic.”
“Aye, and our hatred fer Protestants makes us no better.”
She was quiet for a moment, as if considering his words. He prayed she listened to him. She had no idea what having so much blood on her hands would do to her heart. Worse, she would be killed eventually if she continued fighting. Hell, when had she become so hard? What had become of the lass who wanted nothing more than a quiet life with her kin and a husband who adored her?
“Why did I tell ye anything?” She moved to leave him, warning him over her shoulder, “If ye breathe a word of it to anyone, I swear I will kill ye while ye sleep.”
“Unlike ye,” he said, reaching her again, “I would never put yer life in jeopardy.”
“Not even to the Prince of Orange?” she asked, flicking him a brief scalding gaze.
That did it. He snatched her hand and pulled her to a skidding halt. He was tired of her accusing him of betraying her, betraying Scotland. “Though I sympathize with any who are persecuted fer what they believe, I am not in league with William, Mairi. Hell, ye know me better than that.”
He felt his heart skip in his chest when she turned to face him fully, her eyes wide, haunted by memories she tried to forget.
“I dinna’ know ye at all, Connor.”
“Aye, ye do. Ye’re just too damned stubborn to realize it. I would never do anything to hurt ye.”
“ ’Tis too late fer that, is it not?”
“And what of ye?” he charged just as meaningfully. “Do ye think I’ve been happy all these years without ye?”
Something in her expression changed, softened on him just enough to make his heart exalt in it. But he wouldn’t admit anything else to her. She would likely laugh in his face, knowing with the same certainty that was beginning to plague him every time he was near her, that he was foolish enough to still love her.