Return of the Highlander

by Julianne MacLean

  “Darach!”

  The sound of Larena’s voice caused him to swivel on his knee. There she stood, at the edge of the glade, staring at him in horror in the pale light of the advancing dawn.

  His gut clenched. “It was an accident,” he tried to explain, holding the bloody knife out for her to see.

  She ran to her father and dropped to her knees beside him.

  Just then, Darach heard a distant sound in the woods.

  Voices, hoofbeats….

  He rose to his feet and listened.

  Miller’s nose lifted from the grass and his ears twitched. He began to back away and tug at the leather line as if wanting to bolt.

  Glancing around in search of his sword, Darach spotted it at least ten paces away. Making haste to reach it, he drew the pistol out of his belt, but he was not quick enough, for all at once, the glade erupted into a deafening cacophony of musketfire.

  Larena screamed, but there was nothing Darach could do. It was too late. Everything spun out of control. The soldiers had come. There was shouting, heart-pounding chaos, and madness. There were too many of them.

  God help us.

  Larena…!

  Another shot was fired and pain exploded in the center of Darach’s back. Please, God! Not this! Not now!

  The world turned white before his eyes as he fell forward onto the forest floor. Then the chaos receded and there was only a calm sea of silence.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Larena cradled her father’s head in her arms as she looked up at the English officer in the saddle, trotting around the glade on his massive black warhorse. “Stand down!” he called out to five other mounted soldiers.

  Reeling with shock and horror, she looked toward Darach who was lying immobile, face down in the grass. “Darach!”

  He made no move to rise. Feeling dizzy and disoriented, she lowered her gaze to her father who was bleeding profusely from the belly.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have kept my wits about me, lass. I should have known.”

  “Known what?”

  “That the Campbell lad wanted me dead.”

  “That’s not true,” she argued, glancing toward Darach again, wanting to go to him, but her father grabbed her by the chin and forced her to look down at him.

  “He accused me of murdering his father.”

  “Did you?” she asked, not knowing what to believe.

  “Of course not, lass. You know me better than that. The lad was full of vengeance. I shouldn’t have challenged him, but he said he seduced you to spite me. I couldn’t let it go.”

  The officer in charge dismounted and stood over them. “Are you Larena Campbell? Is this your father, Fitzroy Campbell?”

  “Why should I tell you anything?” she bit back.

  He scoffed. “Because you’re under arrest for coming to the aid of a convicted criminal.”

  “This one’s dead!” another of the Redcoats shouted from the far side of the glade. He kicked Darach with his boot and rolled him over onto his back.

  “No…Please…” Tears welled up in Larena’s eyes. Her heart was pounding so hard, she could barely breathe. She felt as if all the trees in the forest were closing in around her.

  “Seize that horse and get this prisoner onto his feet,” the officer in charge ordered. “Can you ride?” he asked her father.

  “Aye.”

  “Good. We’ll take him back to Leathan!” he shouted at the others.

  “But he’s hurt,” Larena argued with a note of pleading in her voice.

  “All the more reason to get him back to the garrison, miss. We’ll have him tended to there.”

  “But why? So you can hang him in front of the clan or ship him off to the Tolbooth?”

  “I don’t make those decisions,” the officer said with an infuriating note of indifference.

  Two Redcoats surrounded them and hoisted her father onto his feet. He cried out in agony.

  “Please, be careful with him!” she shouted, following at his side.

  “Larena, you must go back to the colonel and plead with him,” her father said to her over his shoulder as they dragged him toward Miller. “Tell him the truth about what happened here—that this rebel Highlander wanted vengeance against me and he seduced you to get it. It wasn’t your fault, lass. Chatham loves you. He’ll forgive you. You can still save yourself and the clan. They’ll need you in the coming years.”

  She turned toward Darach, still lying lifeless on the grass. Her chest felt on fire and a sickening wave of nausea rose up in her belly. She tried to go to him, but one of the other soldiers grabbed hold of her arm and clamped irons around her wrists.

  “What are you doing?” She struggled to resist but he shoved her toward a horse.

  “You’ll be riding with me, miss,” he replied, “so I can keep an eye on you.”

  “What about him?” she asked the officer in charge, gesturing toward Darach. “You can’t just leave him here.”

  “We can do whatever we bloody well please.” He turned to one of the others—the one who had kicked Darach with his boot. “You’re certain he’s dead?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then confiscate his weapons and we’ll leave him for the crows.”

  Larena let out a sob of protest as she was dragged toward a horse and forced up onto the saddle.

  Darach…

  Dear God…

  What had happened here?

  Her father, clearly in pain, was pushed up onto Miller’s back. They tied a line to Miller’s bridle to lead him along.

  “Father….” She turned to make sure he was all right.

  “Don’t worry for me, lass,” he assured her, hunched over. “I’m a Campbell. I’ve survived worse than this.”

  But with one look at the dark bloodstain on his shirt, she knew his prospects were grim.

  As they moved in a single column out of the glade, Larena glanced back at Darach, unmoving in the grass. Every piece of her soul ached with grief—an incomparable agony that felt worse than any pain she’d ever experienced in her life.

  How could it end like this? How was it possible that he had put a knife in her father’s belly when he’d claimed that he loved her?

  The promises he had made….

  What had gone wrong? Was it all lies? The entire time?

  She thought suddenly of Logan, and wondered what had become of him. Had he returned to Kinloch Castle as Darach had ordered him to do?

  God, oh, God….

  Her emotions tumbled into a sickening downward spin that left her numb and frozen inside. She felt as if she were breaking apart. Then the flood of quiet, agonizing sobs began as they departed from the glade and left Darach’s dead body behind.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  By the time they reached the castle and the iron portcullis lifted on giant, rattling chains, Larena’s father was long dead. He had fallen out of the saddle many miles back.

  There was no hope when they all dismounted and looked him over. He’d lost too much blood and was stone cold.

  The officer in charge suggested that he’d probably been dead for quite some time when he tumbled to the ground. The soldiers then proceeded to ponder how long he had been riding upright without a pulse. They’d even wanted to set a wager about it, but they let the game go when they realized there was no way to prove a winner.

  So they hauled her father up off the ground and tossed him over Miller’s back like a worthless sack of grain. Then they resumed their journey back to Leathan.

  From that moment on, Larena felt as if the innermost core of her heart and soul had died, too. A heavy cloak of misery descended and she wallowed in unspeakable despair, torturing herself for all the mistakes she had made over the past fortnight and all the things she could have done differently to prevent this horrific unfolding of events.

  Was she being punished for succumbing to the temptations of the flesh? Had her sinful, self-indulgent desires for Darach MacDonald—or Darac
h Campbell—caused all of this misfortune?

  Perhaps her instincts had been correct all along and she should have placed duty above desire. If she had insisted that Darach return to Kinloch and leave her behind to fulfill her pledge to Lord Rutherford, then Darach would be alive today and so would her father. He would still be in his prison cell, awaiting his removal to the Tolbooth. Darach would be…somewhere.

  Who knew what might have transpired if she had accepted her fate or maintained some caution where Darach was concerned? She could have continued to plead with Gregory to allow her father to remain at the castle. Perhaps she might have used her feminine wiles to wield a greater influence over him.

  ‘He loves you. He’ll forgive you,’ her father had said.

  Would Gregory forgive her now, after what she’d done?

  Did she even care, when her heart felt completely dead and all happiness had been sucked from the earth?

  * * *

  As soon as they entered the bailey, the soldiers pulled her off the horse and escorted her down to the prison, where she was thrust into the same cell her father had occupied. The guard removed the irons from her wrists and walked out. He slammed the door shut behind him and locked it.

  Larena sat down on the bed and stared at the wall.

  She had no idea how much time had elapsed before the heavy clang of metal caused her to lift her weary gaze. The door slowly opened.

  A different guard entered, instructed her to stand, and escorted her back up the stairs to the bailey and across to the East Tower. People stared at her in silence—a few fellow clansmen she knew and members of the English army—but she didn’t care. Nothing seemed to matter.

  When she reached her father’s former chambers—now occupied by Gregory Chatham—she had no memory of climbing the curved staircase. She had been thinking of something else. She knew not what.

  The guard knocked on the door. A second later it opened. She gazed in a numb stupor at her betrothed.

  “I didn’t believe it when they told me,” Gregory said.

  She offered no reply. What was there to say?

  “Come in.” He signaled to the guard to leave them alone, then he led her inside to the upholstered chair before the hearth that had recently been swept clean. There was not a single speck of ash. Her eyes lifted at the sound of a clock ticking on the mantle. It was not yet noon. How odd. It felt like it should be evening.

  A glass of claret was presented to her. Feeling strangely disconnected from everything, she looked down at the hand that held it, then her eyes followed the red sleeve up to the gold shoulder epaulets and she took in the white neck cloth in a tidy knot. Finally she regarded Gregory’s face.

  He stood over her, watching her with concern. “You’ve had quite a morning.” He gestured for her to take the drink.

  “Aye,” she replied as she accepted it.

  “I’m sorry about your father.”

  With trembling hands, she raised the glass to her lips and sipped thirstily.

  Gregory took a seat in the chair across from her, leaned forward, and rested his elbows on his knees. “They tell me it was painful for you. Your father was already wounded when they found you?”

  She nodded her head.

  “They also told me that the Highlander was running off after he stabbed your father. Is that what happened?”

  “So they say.”

  He leaned back. “I’m so sorry you had to suffer through all of that, Larena. No doubt you are terribly distressed.”

  She nodded and swigged more of the claret.

  He sat in silence, watching her for a moment. “I’m not clear about why this happened,” he finally said, “or how you escaped the castle walls. Reports say the gate hadn’t been lifted since last night and I have guards patrolling the battlements at all hours. How did you get your father out?”

  “We escaped through a window on the east wall,” she lied. “Darach lowered a rope.”

  “No one saw you?”

  “It was dark and very late. Luck was on our side.”

  “I see.” He paused. “So you admit you played a part in your father’s escape. Was it your idea?”

  She was not calculated in her responses. In fact, she hardly cared what came out of her mouth, for the future mattered not at all. She had no hopes or dreams left in her heart. The world seemed like some sort of waking nightmare.

  “It was Darach’s idea,” she told Gregory. “He suggested it, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “I had been led to believe that he had passed through the castle gates last night and was on his way back to Kinloch. Yet here you sit, telling me that he returned. How did he get back inside?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. All I can tell you is that he knocked on my bedchamber door after I said good night to you and told me that he could rescue my father. Because of what I knew was in store for my father at the Tolbooth, I agreed.”

  “So it was not something you plotted before you arrived at Leathan,” he said.

  “No. It was completely spontaneous. And foolish, I now realize.”

  “Indeed.” Gregory rested his temple on a finger and continued to regard her with meticulous scrutiny. “May I ask you something, Larena?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you in love with that Highlander? Or rather, were you in love with him?”

  She took a deep breath and let it out. “I suppose I must be honest with you, Gregory. Yes. I don’t know how it happened. It just did. I didn’t plan it.”

  “I want to believe you,” Gregory replied, “but I need to know the truth. How long have you known him? Were you betrothed to him before you accepted the proposal to become my wife?”

  Larena looked up. “Goodness, no. I assure you that I entered into that arrangement in good faith. I only met Darach for the first time after the ambush,” she explained, “when he came to my aid.”

  Gregory cocked his head to the side. “You don’t think it’s possible that he played a part in organizing that ambush, so that he could get his hands on you and ultimately your father?”

  “I don’t think so,” she replied, her attention sparking. “He didn’t even want to escort me back here. He made it very clear that he didn’t like Campbells—and that is putting it mildly. Angus had to command him to do it. I didn’t even like him at first. I thought he was an arrogant bully, but eventually I came to rely on him and….” She paused. “He gained my trust.”

  Gregory inhaled deeply, stared at the empty hearth for a few seconds, then he sat forward again and laid his hand on her knee. “May I tell you something about that Highlander?”

  With growing unease, she nodded.

  “When I first met him here in this very room yesterday,” Gregory said, “I knew there was something familiar about him, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. After dinner, when you left, it came to me.”

  Larena’s stomach began to burn. “What was that?”

  “The fact that Darach MacDonald was not a true MacDonald,” Gregory explained. “He was an imposter. How and when he adopted that identity, I cannot be sure, but this much I know: He was a Campbell by blood and a son of your former chief, Ronald Campbell.”

  Larena’s eyes lifted with apprehension.

  “You might not remember him,” Gregory continued. “You were only six years old when he and his brothers went off to the battle at Sheriffmuir. He would have been much older than you. Fourteen or so. He had shorter hair then. He was thin and lanky.” Gregory’s eyebrows pulled together with frustration. “But I should have noticed the resemblance when he first walked in, for he once chased me up a tree and sat there on the branch for a full hour, not letting me come down. I should have remembered those dark, sinister eyes. I was distracted, I suppose. Then I recalled all those days in my youth when I was persecuted in the worst way. He and his brothers were the foulest of the bunch. They were cruel and violent. Did you see that side of him at all?”

  She shook her head. “No. He was v
ery kind to me.”

  Although that was partly a lie, for she had seen a dangerous side to him at first. He had been most intimidating in the early days of their acquaintance, and she had seen him snap the bone in his brother’s arm without the slightest hesitation.

  In addition, she had seen the bloody knife in his hand that very morning. The knife that killed her father….

  Nevertheless, she still didn’t want to believe what Gregory was saying. Heaven help her, she didn’t want to believe anything about this day.

  “He was kind to you,” Gregory explained, “because he wanted to use you to seek vengeance upon your father.”

  Good Lord, what else did Gregory know about this?

  He sighed and noticed that her glass was empty. He rose to his feet, went to fetch the decanter and poured her another drink. As soon as he was seated again, he crossed one leg over the other and said, “Do you remember what we discussed during dinner last night? I told you about the rumors surrounding Ronald Campbell’s death—that your father murdered him during a hunt.”

  “And I told you that they weren’t true. There were witnesses who saw what happened. He fell from his horse and that is all. My father is innocent.”

  “The witnesses were Jacobites who supported your father and wanted him as chief, so I wouldn’t trust their word. But you see, that is why I believe Darach was using you—to seek out his own justice against your father. An eye for an eye, so to speak.”

  Larena bowed her head and shook it. “This has been a trying day, Gregory. I cannot think straight anymore. It all feels like a terrible nightmare from which I cannot wake.”

  Gregory touched her knee again. “None of this is your fault,” he said. “I believe you were taken advantage of in the worst possible way by a villain and an enemy. Do you see that now?”

  Her eyes lifted and she saw compassion in Gregory’s eyes. “I don’t know.”

  He sat back. “Obviously you need time to recover.”

  “Yes.” She set the claret on the table and wondered when she would ever be able to feel anything again, when all her emotions seemed to be made of cold clay.

  “You must go back to your chamber and rest,” he added, rising to his feet. “I will have a bath arranged for you and supper sent up later. All I want to do is ease your pain, Larena, and protect you. I hope you know that.”