by Aileen Adams
“It will be slow going now,” he grunted, looking out toward the river. “Slower even than before. I’m not certain where we are, to be honest.”
She wiped the rainwater from her face.
He pointed straight ahead. “That ought to be north, as far as I know, and the river is flowing west to east. If this is the River Glass, we’re in luck.”
“How is that?” She realized she did not care much whether or not they were in luck. Not when her thoughts kept returning to those they’d left behind.
He turned to her with a brilliant smile. “Munro land is just beyond the other side of the river, near Loch Glass. It flows into this. I believe we’re nearly home.”
Home. It was not her home. It was not even his home—he had already told her as much, had he not? She could hardly muster a smile in the face of his enthusiasm.
“What is it?” he asked.
She gaped at him. Could he be that daft? “How can you ask me that?”
“Tara, ye have to put aside what happened—believe me,” he continued over her protestations, “I know how ye feel.”
“You do not know any such thing.”
“I do.” He sighed, leaning an arm against the tree trunk and wincing as he did. “Tore my shoulder, I think. Not that it matters. What matters is, we are safe. I managed to get ye out of there before they found ye. That is what I must remind myself when I feel guilt or regret.”
“Do you feel those things? Do you?” She wanted him to. It would mean he wasn’t like them. Not if he could feel, if he could regret.
“Of course I do. Who do ye think I am? Have I not shown ye time and again and that I am not the sort of animal they are? I would never consider breaking up a camp, burning it—” He stopped himself there, though his mouth had opened as though he wished to say more.
She was glad he’d stopped himself, for she could not listen to it. Her imaginings were terrible enough without hearing the brutal images in her head spoken aloud.
He looked down at his bloodstained tunic.
She had wept on that tunic, had she not? With a man’s blood beneath her face. Her stomach churned at the thought.
“I canna pretend to be sorry I killed them, however.”
“I do not expect you to.”
“But if ye think I dinna care about what happened there, ye are mistaken. Terribly so. I’m sure I shall never forget it. All it does is make me that much more determined to get ye to safety.”
“Why?” she whispered, nearly too exhausted to speak. She felt empty inside, as though all of her crying had hollowed her. Would she ever cry again? How could she possibly have any tears left?
“Why? Why do I wish to get ye to safety?”
“Why me? What makes me any better than any of the others?” She sat, drawing her knees to her chin and wrapping her arms about her legs. “Why was I worth saving and none of the others were? What makes me different from them?”
“Is that it? Ye feel guilt for being alive and well while they…?”
She nodded, eyes closed, unwilling to hear more.
“Och. I know that feeling as well.”
“Please, do not humor me.”
“I am doing no such thing. Ye shall recall, that I fought in the rising.” He sat beside her, just far enough away that they did not touch. “Do ye know how many men died?”
“I do not.”
“Nor do I, but I can tell ye I watched dozens. Hundreds, perhaps. We may never know how many brave men we lost against the loyalists, but I know I was not one of them. And for months afterward, I regretted being one of the men who’d walked away—able to walk away—from the battle after the fighting was done. I even hated myself for having lived while the others died. What was so different about me that I deserved to live when they did not?”
She opened her eyes to look at him. “Why did you fight when you had a duty to the laird?”
“He wished for me to go, if I wished to go. I know he would have been there alongside me if the duties of managing the lands did not mean more. He has no brothers, ye ken, and no children. No heir.”
“I see. And you lived through it.”
“Somehow.”
She had seen him fight. She knew how strong and fierce he was. It hardly seemed like a matter of chance.
“I know I was not the only one to feel the way I did. That I did not deserve to live when others had died.” He stretched his legs out before him, wincing. “He truly bruised me.”
“Do not speak of him, please.” He might have been nothing better than a devil, but he was now dead. It hardly seemed proper to speak of him, and in such an offhand manner.
“Forgive me. I dinna mean to offend.”
She waved this off. He was humoring her again, and there was not much that angered her more. “I would rather not think of either of those men.”
“Ye never have to again.”
“Och, but I will. I shall think of all of them.” And she would ask herself every day why she had been able to escape while they had not. Why had more of them not run for the horses, that they too might get away?
A voice in her head answered that question for her. Because they didna wish to leave each other. Manfri would have spoken so, and he would have been correct. They were a clan, a family, and they’d stayed together to protect each other.
Perhaps William’s way was better. There was no way to tell.
Would she have run away if she were one of the girls with whom she had danced? If a group of men had raided her camp, attacked her kin, would she have run off into the night and taken the first horse she came to? Or would she have stayed behind to fight until her dying breath?
Much more likely was the latter than the former. But it was always easy to answer such questions when not in the midst of an emergency.
And truth be told, she was ever so relieved when they escaped. There was no denying it to herself, even if she would never admit it aloud.
The rain continued to pour, now dripping on them even with the tree acting as cover. She reached for her cloak and pulled it up to her chin, but that did nothing for her head.
“We canna cross the river until the rain stops,” William informed her with a grimace. “With the water rising so, it will cover the road and sweep us off.”
“Are there no other bridges?”
“Do ye believe there are bridges everywhere, just waiting for us?” There was an edge to his voice, and she regretted her question. He was even more eager to reach safety than she was. After all, traveling with her was a heavy responsibility which he would be glad to rid himself of.
So she told herself.
He let out an angry sigh. “Aye, there are other bridges, but they happen to be a good distance apart, and all of them except one are built the same. I’ve seen them, trust me. The only one sitting high enough above the river sits at the mouth of it, where the loch flows through and narrows. In this rain, it would take us most of the day to reach it, and we would be knee-deep in mud by the time we did. Far better to stay where we are.”
“What if they happen to find us?”
“The rain will hold them in place, as it holds us in place. They shall count on that.”
“How do you know?”
“I dinna know!”
“Just as you did not know last night what we were about to walk into, yet you insisted we go though I said I didn’t think we ought to!”
He threw his hands into the air with a look of grim satisfaction. “There ye are. I knew it. I’ve been waiting all through the day for this. For ye to blame me, as I knew ye wanted to. As if I have not already blamed myself. Please. Dinna hesitate to remind me that we might have avoided that horror if we had not ventured nearer the camp.”
“We might have avoided that horror if we had not ventured nearer the camp!”
“And ye might have avoided being kidnapped and having a bounty on your head if ye did not raid villages and camps!”
This took her breath away. If he had kicked her in the stomach, the e
ffect would have been the same. The air left her lungs in a hard, heavy burst.
“That is what you think of me?” she barely whispered, still struggling to breathe. “You believe it was my fault for being there. I was not part of that raid. I waited for the others to return. I was in my tent. They took—they took me—” She placed her hands over her breast when her heart began racing out of control, the memories making her ill.
“Och. I ought not—”
It was too late. He had already said it. She was already reliving the night. And she knew he blamed her. As if she could help what Manfri wanted to do. As if she had any say.
“Leave me alone now.” She turned away from him, curled into as tight a ball as she could and drew the cloak over her shoulders. “Do not speak to me, do not look at me. Tell me when we can move on to the bridge. I want nothing else from you now.”
“If ye would only listen.”
“No.” She lowered her head onto her folded arms and wept.
19
William had never so wished he could dig a hole and bury himself in it.
He had never so regretted anything he’d said.
He had crushed her. The last person he wanted to hurt.
In any other case, at any other time, he would have said what he said and not given it a second thought. In fact, he might have taken pride in knowing he’d been able to cut his foe to the quick with nothing but a few well-spoken words.
Killing without spilling a drop of blood was rather efficient. It meant less to clean up after the fact.
But this? This was what he’d imagine it meant to have oneself torn open from top to bottom and watching one’s innards spill out. He had somehow managed to harm himself while hurting her, because he had caused her pain. It was all too much to understand.
But he needed to understand, because she was still with him. She was still his to care for and protect.
Only the sound of rain hitting ground, river, dripping from the trees filled the air after her angry sobs quieted, and he both welcomed the peace and cursed it. With nothing to do but sit and wait, every thought and fear and a sliver of self-doubt he’d pushed aside came rushing back to fill to empty minutes.
He closed his eyes in the vain hope that it would all go away. He’d never so wished to escape reality. In truth, he’d never wished to escape it at all, preferring to face challenges head-on. He’d faced this one long enough. It was not weakness to wish for escape, even for a moment.
That moment dragged on as he slid into a dreamless slumber, lulled by the rain and the softness of the needles beneath him.
Silence was what roused him.
Not complete silence, as the river’s flow never ceased and the snorting and soft neighing of the horse reminded him of its presence. But these were mere background noise, the sort of thing a man learned to ignore when so much of his life was spent in its midst.
The rain had ceased, which was what pulled him out of slumber.
To find himself alone.
“Lass?” He sat straight up, immediately reaching for his dirk. How could he have been so careless? “Tara! Where are ye?”
Scrambling to his feet, all but deafened by the sound of his racing heart, he looked in all directions. Only a single set of footprints in the rain-softened earth. He followed them, blade at the ready, eyes darting this way and that.
He’d failed her again. He was never meant to protect her when he could not manage to stay awake. What had become of him?
What was to become of her?
He continued to follow her tracks. Why was there only one set? Why, unless…
Unless she had not been taken from him. Unless she had run away.
This slowed him down somewhat as the truth settled into his bones. Of course. He would have heard a scuffle, the approach of other men. Under no circumstances would she have gone without a fight.
She had escaped him while he slept. She was in no more danger than that in which she’d placed herself.
And for the briefest moment, he considered allowing her to go. To be on her way and remove herself from his protection. All she’d done up to that point was make his life infinitely more difficult. Was it not better to be rid of her?
He could not be blamed for it, either, as she was the one who’d been headstrong and foolish. Sore feelings had led her to this? Well, good riddance, then. He’d done all he could.
This went through his mind in the amount of time it took to blink.
Then, he moved forward. She was not going to get away from him. Not when he’d been through so much for her. Not when he’d come to care whether she lived or died. And whether she was happy while she did so, which was almost entirely beyond his ability to understand.
Indeed, the thought of never seeing her again—and of not being able to apologize for his nasty words—rather pained him.
Which was why the sight of her walking no more than a few minutes upriver lit his world as though she were the sun itself. She walked slowly, taking care to avoid the worst of the mud left behind by heavy rain. Not the stride of a woman in a great hurry.
Instead of clutching her close to him, as he wanted so much to do, he demanded, “Where have ye been? Did ye not think I would wake and notice ye missing?”
She turned quickly enough to nearly topple, only keeping herself from doing so by thrusting an arm out and catching herself on a low-hanging limb. “You startled me,” she gasped, one hand over her heaving chest.
“And ye nearly killed me, by sneaking off while I was sleeping!”
“I did no such thing! I was not sneaking anywhere!”
He made a show of bowing deeply before sheathing his dirk. “Och, then. My mistake. Ye were merely taking the air while I was not awake, and ye didna bother yourself to wake me with a warning.”
“I merely wished to see where the bridge sat, and whether the water had gone down low enough for us to cross.”
This was a lie. He knew her well enough by this time to see the way her eyes lowered whenever she told one. She thought she was clever, and he was willing to grant that she had her moments, but she was not half as clever as she believed at this moment.
Instinct warned him against challenging her, however, no matter how badly he wanted to do so. He’d already broken something between them with his caustic words and would only make things worse if he pressed her to tell him the truth. He’d found her, and that would have to be enough.
He looked upriver, where the nearest bridge was barely visible in the distance. “It seems we ought to be able to cross easily enough,” he observed. “I can see clear space between the underside and the river’s surface. We’ll make it.”
“I’m glad.” Yet she did not look it, and she certainly did not sound as though she was. In fact, had he not known better he would have guessed she’d just received terrible news.
“What is it? Is this not what ye want? To finally reach safety?”
“Safety?” She let out a snort before turning away and drawing the cloak about her shoulders to ward off the chill which left her shivering. “Is that what you believe?”
“What were ye really doing out here?” he asked, as it made no difference. She would hate him either way—her derisive tone told him as much, and they were nearing the end of the journey, so it mattered little now. He was wrong to think it would.
She did not hesitate a moment. “I was going to run away. I was all but decided on the matter.”
His jaw clenched, as did his fists, but he managed somehow to restrain himself. “What stopped ye?”
“I must admit, I do not know. It would have been the wiser course of action to run, would it not have been?”
“Why would ye run away now, when we’re so close to reaching the castle? We’ve come so far. Why throw it away?”
“You do not understand, and you never will.” She turned her head to him, fixing him with a tired, scornful stare. “We are going to your home. Where you have a life, a position. Respect. I have nothing, and I ne
ver will. I have no skill. I have no one to speak for me, to recommend me for a position somewhere. I cannot even show my face. How could I make a life anywhere when Jacob Stuart will surely be coming for me?”
“Richard will—”
“Richard will do nothing,” she predicted, sounding even more tired than she did before. As though the weight of the entire world rested upon her shoulders and she wanted nothing more than to release that weight, to be free. “He will do nothing for me. Why should he? I mean nothing to him. And I cannot tell him why the Stuarts had me. I simply cannot.”
He shook his head hard, fast, as though shaking water from his hair—or from his head, which might as well have been underwater for all the sense her words made. “I dinna understand. Why not?”
She scoffed, looking across the river again. In spite of the cloak she’d drawn close around her shoulders and arms, a shiver ran through her. If he could only offer her his warmth…
“If you wish for your laird to know how Jacob Stuart’s men happened to find me, I will not cross the bridge with you. If telling him the truth means so much, I understand. But you cannot expect me to be part of that. Not when I know not whether he will accept me.”
“I know him. I’ve known him all my life. He’s like my brother.”
“Not my brother. Not even my friend. He is nothing to me, and I am nothing to him. Do you understand what I mean? I might be on my way to more of what I left behind.”
“He would never. Dinna even think it. I would leave his guard and his lands if he were the sort who was capable of such a thing.”
She shook her head, eyes rolling. “Even if he would not allow me to live in my own filth for days on end, there is a strong chance he will not take well to knowing what I was part of. I need you to promise you will not tell him—or I will not cross that bridge with you. We shall part ways here.”
He groaned. “Och, ye put me in an impossible position!”
“I would say I’m sorry, but I am not.”
“That comes as no surprise.”
He crouched by the water’s edge, splashing some of it on his face to wash away any blood which might have seeped from his wound while he took his ill-advised rest. Really, he wished to turn away from her for a moment, to busy himself while his brain struggled to make sense of what she said.