Devil Black

by Laura Strickland

  Isobel, riding alongside the two men, blinked at her husband—this stranger with the wild, black hair, bloodied face, and seeping wounds. In the light cast by the stars and a half moon, with the blade glittering silver in his grasp, he might have been a savage conjured from the past.

  She knew Dougal MacRae as harsh, unbending, and ruthless. He had earned the name of Devil Black full well. Yet always, in her experience, had he held his emotions in check. Even when they lay together and their passions ran high, she sensed a part of him kept back as if he guarded himself.

  But the battle she had just witnessed defied all that, made a mockery of restraint and any civilized veneer he had ever worn. Life and death had balanced on his blade, and did yet.

  “No one pursues us,” said the scribe, looking over his shoulder, and not for the first time. He seemed nervous about the choices he had recently made and how he had cast his lot.

  “They will not come,” Dougal growled from between clenched teeth. “Not unless they want this bastard to die.”

  He jerked Bertram by the rope that encircled his throat, and Bertram made a sound like a trapped animal. Isobel could feel the rage emitting from Dougal. She also felt such a tangle of other emotions—terror, relief, horror, love, and, surprisingly, pride—she could barely contemplate them.

  “Do you mean to kill him?” Catherine asked. Isobel glanced at her sister and felt concern; Catherine rode her mount hunched over, as if in pain or as if protecting the babe she carried, but her voice sounded strong.

  “I am no’ certain,” Dougal replied.

  “He deserves to die,” Isobel shocked herself by saying, and her husband looked at her sharply.

  “I know.”

  Bertram, fool that he was, spat, “You ha’ not got the balls to kill me, MacRae! ’Twould mean all-out war and an excuse for the King to end your practices in the district.” Beneath his defiance, Isobel heard the pain in his voice, and it gave her satisfaction.

  “And what of your practices in the district,” she challenged quickly, “terrorizing the women who fall into your hands and, no doubt, the wives and daughters of your clansfolk and tenants. Should that not be ended? Would the world not be a better place without you?”

  With difficulty, Bertram turned his head to stare at her. “By God, what kind of woman are you?”

  Dougal laughed joyously. “She is the daughter of Celts and Vikings—a fearful combination! Trust me, MacNab, the only thing keeping you alive is my need to get these women safe off your lands. When we reach my border, we shall think again.” Cruelly, he drew Bertram’s head back. “You recall the boundary where you left me some eight years ago?”

  “Still no one coming,” said Campbell.

  Ahead, a shallow burn marked the boundary of MacNab’s holding. On the far side of it waited Dougal’s small troop of warriors, all mounted. They gave a shout when they identified the approaching riders, and lowered their swords.

  “Go,” said Dougal to Isobel. “Take your sister across.”

  “What will you—?” Isobel began, trying to look into his eyes.

  He lowered his lashes. “Go.” He told the scribe, “You stay. I need a witness.”

  Campbell, looking unhappy and a bit ill, obeyed. Isobel splashed her mount through the water to the opposite bank, with Catherine behind her.

  One of the warriors called to Dougal, “Your man Hewett is awa’ with your letter to the King.”

  “It is well. You hear that, MacNab? What do you think the King will make o’ this night’s work?”

  Bertram sneered, “He will have your head, MacRae. James is in my father’s pocket.”

  “You think so? For, I am thinking ’tis you who may hang, instead of me. Get down.”

  Swiftly, Dougal dismounted and hauled Bertram after him. Isobel, watching from the far bank, thought it a scene out of some dark dream, lit only by the cold stars and the half moon.

  Bertram wobbled when his feet hit the ground; the wound in his thigh, grave and deep, had cost him a lot of blood. Dougal leveled the sword, already stained, at his throat.

  “On your knees,” Dougal ordered. “I want to hear you beg for your life.”

  “I will be damned!”

  “Aye, no doubt, but that will come later. This is my time of justice. On your knees, or you die where you stand.”

  Slowly and with a glance at the scribe, Bertram sank down onto his knees.

  “Now,” Dougal told him, “we will have a confession. You will recite all your sins—well, I doubt we ha’ time for that, but give us the major ones. Start with what you did to Aisla.”

  “That craven bitch,” MacNab said.

  Dougal struck him, a sweeping, openhanded wallop that knocked him over, and then hauled him up again by the rope that encircled his neck.

  “You will tell what you did to her, and fairly. How she suffered and died. These folk,” he swung his sword at the listeners on both sides of the burn, “are your council who will help decide your fate.”

  Bertram said nothing.

  “Come, man! Is that not justice?” Dougal shouted at him. “I want to kill you now, my blade thirsts for it, but I give you, here before witnesses, the chance you did not give her.”

  “She was weak,” Bertram said. “From the moment I took her, she wept and moaned. She did not deserve to live—only the strong deserve to live.”

  “She was a child,” Dougal cried, “a lass of sixteen when you took her. What need had you to torture her?”

  “I shall tell you, MacRae, why I treated that bitch the way I did, if that is what you want to hear,” Bertram spat up at Dougal. “’Twas because she loved you. And once, when I rutted with her, she was foolish enough to call your name!”

  Dougal sagged where he stood. Isobel, watching, saw the strength go out of him, precisely as if he had been stabbed to the heart. But his blade remained steady at Bertram’s throat.

  “And then you came to save her,” MacNab went on, “fancying yourself the great hero. I could no’ let you have her, could I? Nay, I wanted your shame! And do you know, MacRae, she died soon after—still with your name on her lips?”

  “Kill him,” said Catherine in a harsh voice, making Isobel jump.

  “Aye, kill him,” agreed one of Dougal’s warriors, beginning a chorus. “He deserves it!”

  Dougal’s blade trembled visibly at MacNab’s throat—with eagerness, Isobel fancied.

  “Kill him,” said the scribe, Campbell.

  Dougal raised his head and looked at Isobel. By some trick of the moonlight, she could see all of what filled his eyes—blinding pain, the lust for revenge, and a question.

  “Leave him live,” she voted after a moment’s deliberation. “But make certain he never finds pleasure in raping another woman—anywhere or at any time.”

  Slowly, Dougal grinned. At that moment he looked so like a devil Isobel shivered. But at the same time something within her responded to that look and gloried in it.

  “My wife has spoken, MacNab,” he cried. “And despite all you ha’ done to her, she chooses mercy.”

  “No!” MacNab howled.

  “I think you should kiss the ground in gratitude to her. Kiss the ground, MacNab!”

  He struck Bertram again, a thunderous blow that sent him tumbling sideways in an awkward sprawl. Bertram’s bound hands moved to protect his genitals, but Dougal’s blade moved more quickly still and laid the grievous wound. Bertram howled, like a pig at the slaughter, into the night sky.

  “You should have killed him,” said the scribe mildly. “Now he will hate you twice as much.”

  “There is still time for him to bleed to death,” Dougal said levelly. “Just you be sure, Campbell, you write down the fact that I granted him mercy, and left him alive.”

  Campbell looked round at the assembled company and gave a tight smile. “Aye, so—left him here beside the burn, bound and in the same condition he left his stronghold. I do no’ know how he came by that last crippling injury.”

/>   “His word against ours, and yours—I like that, fine!” Dougal grinned again, turned, and sprang back onto his horse. Bertram had ceased writhing and lay motionless on the ground.

  Isobel looked again at her husband—wild-haired, calm-eyed, and with an ease about him that argued he had shrugged the weight of the world from his shoulders.

  He splashed his horse across the burn and held out his hand to her. “Let us, Wife, go home.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  “Bertram MacNab has been taken into custody by the King’s guard,” said Dougal, paused in the doorway of his wife’s bedchamber. “They say he languishes even now in a dank cell.”

  Isobel looked up. Dougal had caught her at her morning ablutions. Bright sunlight poured through the slit windows of the chamber and turned her hair to flame. Barely a week had passed since the rescue, but the grey weather seemed to have cleared as miraculously as the cloud of despair on Dougal’s heart.

  “How is Lachy?” Isobel asked.

  “Definitely on the mend—Meg even believes he will keep his arm. Lachy must be nearly well, for he insists on sending for O’Rourke, to perform for him a marriage service.”

  “O’Rourke does perform a very fine marriage. To that I can attest.” Isobel raised one eyebrow. “But has Meg agreed to wed with Lachlan?”

  “Not yet, though I canna’ think she clawed him back from the very edge of death only to reject him now.”

  Isobel did not reply. Dougal watched as a single drop of water trickled down her neck, caressed her throat and headed toward still more interesting regions. By the devil’s horns, how bonny she looked with that red hair all loose, flowing over her shoulders, and wearing but a thin sleeping gown that revealed the tantalizing shape of breast and thigh.

  He had not yet attempted to share her bed since their return from MacNab’s stronghold. He had told himself he might yet be arrested if Randal MacNab complained loudly enough to the King, and that Isobel needed time to recover from her ordeal. Aye, he had made all kinds of excuses, dodging the truth, which was that there were things needing to be said between them, and a ghost still to be laid.

  Now she lifted her chin and her clear eyes met his steadily. At that look, he felt his blood stir.

  “And so Bertram MacNab did not succumb to his injuries, either?”

  Dougal leaned against the doorway. “He did not. The man is strong as a bull.”

  “And evil as a demon. Husband, will you not come in?” She added carefully, “You might tell me the rest of your news.”

  Dougal sauntered in and closed the door behind him. “As you wish.” He sat on the bench in front of the fire, where he had a good view of her, bending to her basin. “Word has it the King, tiring of the cold and damp, has left Stirling and returned to London. It may be Bertram will rot in his cell a long time.”

  “So then Randal MacNab will be unable to bend the King’s ear?”

  “He will not. But only listen to this—it turns out the estimable scribe William Campbell is himself right close to the King and went to him directly with his account of MacNab’s sins. Who would have thought?”

  Isobel stared. “Certainly not I.”

  “Nor I.” Dougal stretched comfortably. “The man from whom I got the news says ’tis largely why Bertram was arrested in the first place.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “The man from whom you got the news?”

  “Campbell, himself.” Dougal grinned. “He stopped by here late last night on his way from Stirling, while you slept. He is away again now, on the King’s business.”

  Carefully, Isobel laid aside her cloth and hand towel; he saw her breasts rise as she drew a breath. “Does this mean it is over—truly over?”

  “I suspect so. Campbell says Bertram is a broken man who does not wish to live. Apparently that last wound he took refuses to heal.”

  Isobel shuddered, but said, “He has what he deserves. And what of his father?”

  “Now, there is an interesting thing. When Campbell recited to James a full account of what had taken place, and the things he heard Randal say, the King became so incensed he confiscated all MacNab lands in Lothian. The King does not take well to being a pawn to another man’s ambition. It makes a fine justice, does it not?”

  Isobel nodded, still watching him.

  “Campbell has recommended a steward—someone local, you understand—to oversee MacNab’s former holdings. He is a man you know right well, who has vowed most sincerely to settle down and live the balance of his life for his lands—and his family.”

  “Has he, indeed, so vowed?”

  Gravely, Dougal nodded. “So as for whether the thing is over and done—in part that rests with you, Wife, does it not? Can you put what happened behind you? Can your wounds heal?”

  She met his gaze, fearless and challenging. “Can yours? They are far deeper than my own.”

  He lifted a hand and touched the scar on his cheek. Then he rose and approached her, his thoughts rampant in his mind. Of all the things he needed to say to her, one reigned supreme, and his native honesty would not let him dodge it now.

  “I suspect my wounds will scab over now that they have been cleansed,” he said. “Perhaps that is the best for which I can hope.” He reached out softly and touched her face, brow, and chin. “I need to tell you, Wife, I will always love Aisla and will never love any other as I did love her.”

  “You think I do not know that?” Gently, she withdrew from his touch, her eyes still holding his.

  “’Twas a first love, and with something innocent in it. I suppose ’tis hard for you to imagine me innocent.”

  She shook her head.

  He smiled sadly. “Do you know, she and I never even lay together? I feared hurting her. I kissed her, aye, and dreamed. I made promises—too many promises—but she was taken from me before I could taste her, in truth.”

  “And so she will always be pure to you, no matter what happened after. She will always,” Isobel added bitterly, “be beautiful and young.”

  “Aye.” He went on heavily, “But I, for my sins, have changed a great deal. I am no’ the lad I was then, but a man, with a man’s needs. A man’s wants. Isobel, I ha’ been so unfair to you, forcing you into this marriage, neglecting to value you as I should. You have every right to walk away from me now, return to your father, or go make a life for yourself. If that is what you want, I tell you fairly I will not hold you, and I will settle a sum of money on you so you might have what I suspect you prize most—independence.”

  Isobel’s eyes widened and she got slowly to her feet. “You would grant me that?”

  “Someone should. You are strong and courageous, and graced with the brains to make your own way.”

  “Oh!” she said.

  “Thomas Hewett has agreed to stay here, however,” Dougal went on, not at all steadily now, “to act as my bailiff, and your sister, of course, with him. I did hope you might choose to remain here with her.”

  “You are saying I should stay for Catherine?”

  “No.” Dougal closed his eyes for an instant and called upon a deity all too often denied, before he sank to his knees at her feet in unthinking humility. “Stay, Isobel, please? Stay wi’ me.”

  She caught her breath, and one hand flew to her throat. He captured the other, still damp, and brought it to his lips to kiss, not the back of it but the palm.

  She said, “I can imagine very little worse than living my life with a man I love but who loves me not.”

  “Nor I,” he agreed, searching his mind, his heart for words—the right words—those he needed to make her understand. “I do not deserve you. I know that fine. But by God, I want you. No—not just in my bed but in my life. I want you to fill my days, my dreams, share with me your laughter and the beauty of your spirit. Isobel, I thought my heart crippled and blighted, and it was, aye, it was—until you poured your light upon it. I thought I could never love again—I was wrong!”

  Isobel trembled where she stood, but she d
id not bend. “Aisla will always come between us.”

  Dougal felt the incipient blow of her imminent refusal, but he held strong. “I see now Aisla was a lass loved by a lad, as a lad loves. He gave her all his heart, everything he had to give. My heart, now, is a far uglier thing—scarred, torn, and battered. But ’tis a man’s heart, and for what it is worth, I offer it to you. ’Tis true, Isobel, the lad I was will always love that lass who was Aisla. But the man I am will always love you.”

  Tears flooded Isobel’s eyes. She clasped his hand between both of hers and drew him up until they stood close, so close even the sunlight could not part them.

  “Is it enough?” he whispered. “Dare I hope?”

  “I find your heart—battered, scarred, and ever-true—a fair prize. And one I think I must accept.”

  His arms closed around her, and the last of the hurt inside him eased. “Ah,” he said, “and I promise you will never regret—”

  She laughed, the sound slightly breathless, and slightly wicked. “That I very much doubt, Husband. There will be regrets in plenty, rues and quarrels, hurt feelings and fallings out. But what I promise you in turn is none of that will ever part us, nor ever make me stop loving you.”

  Dougal felt his heart rise on a surge of feeling that buoyed and lifted him, so unfamiliar he barely recognized it as happiness.

  “It is a good promise, and one I make also,” he said devoutly. “But how can I show you my gratitude, scoundrel that I am?”

  “I can think of but one way,” Isobel said, and led him softly to the bed.

  A word about the author...

  Born and raised in Western New York, Laura Strickland has been an avid reader and writer since childhood. Embracing her mother's heritage, she pursued a lifelong interest in Celtic lore, legend, and music, all reflected in her writing.

  She has made pilgrimages to both Newfoundland and Scotland in the company of her daughter, but is usually happiest at home not far from Lake Ontario, with her husband and her "fur" child, a rescue dog. She practices gratitude every day.

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