MacFarland's Lass

by Campbell, Glynnis

  Rane stared at the young lass. There was much unspoken in her eyes, and maybe one day she'd confide in him, but 'twas not the time to pry. At least he knew the reason she clung so tenaciously to that girdle—'twas likely all the lass had left of her mother.

  With a nod of farewell, Rane scooped up Florie's discarded gown. At the church well, he spent nearly an hour trying to loosen the smudge on it with water and a pinch of salt, scrubbing at the cloth. But he feared the garment was permanently stained with her blood…just as her thigh was irreparably marked by his shaft…and just as his thoughts were indelibly scribed with her image.

  He held the dripping gown before him. 'Twas simple, plain brocade, straight in cut. And yet it managed to hug the sprite's curves with seductive allure. How could such a thing be? Surely 'twas a bewitched garment to work such magic. Or maybe his eyes were blinded by some enchantment when he looked upon her. He shook his head and hung the thing from an oak limb to dry. Whatever 'twas, his strange attraction to the lass and the way his body stirred at the mere thought of her left him uneasy and convinced him to spend the remainder of the afternoon on the church steps, out of sight of her.

  His gaze continued to stray, however, to the gown rippling with the breeze, taunting him with its beckoning sleeves. Eventually, weary from his restless night, he leaned back against the door, his arms crossed over his chest, and dozed.

  Even in his dreams, he saw the garment. But this time, it twisted slowly in his mind's eye, and when it turned toward him, he saw with horror that it hung, no longer empty, but draping Florie's pale and lifeless body, from a gallows. A thick hangman's rope bit into her delicate neck, and as Rane watched, mortified, a hungry raven flew to perch on her shoulder, preparing to feast on her flesh.

  He wakened with a start, his pulse racing. The sun had crawled halfway to the horizon. No wind stirred Florie's gown now. Nonetheless, with the morbid vision still fresh in his brain, he hastened down the steps to snag the garment from the tree, gathering it against his still-pounding heart.

  Then, with a jagged sigh, he slung it over one shoulder and trudged down the hill toward the pond. Maybe a sobering splash of cold water would steady his nerves.

  'Twas folly, letting a dream frighten him. But it had seemed so real, like the visions his Scots grandmother claimed to have, visions that transcended the dream world and foretold the future. What did the dream mean? What did it portend?

  "Ho! Rane!"

  The familiar voice made the breath hitch in his chest. He froze in his tracks. So much for his sharp senses. Curse his wandering mind, he'd blundered into half a dozen mounted men-at-arms watering their horses by the pond. And the dark-bearded man at the fore in the amber tunic, the one clutching Rane's missing arrow in silent question, was the man he most dreaded to see.

  Chapter 8

  Rane drew a steadying breath. He'd anticipated this inevitable, fateful meeting for weeks. Now that the time had come, 'twas almost a relief. Despite the damning evidence of his crime in Lord Gilbert's hand, he found himself curiously unafraid. He straightened slowly, looking destiny squarely in the eye. "My lord."

  But 'twas not poaching Lord Gilbert had on his mind. Indeed, the lord looked relieved to see him. "Ye're safe, then. After the raid last night at the fair, when ye didn't return to the tower house…" He twisted the arrow distractedly between his thumb and finger. "I'll admit I feared perhaps ye'd been run through by an English blade."

  Rane forced a levity to his voice he didn't feel. "Why, my lord," he said with a wink, "ye know my Viking hide's too tough for that."

  "Well, I'm glad to see I was wrong." Rane glimpsed fleeting fatherly affection in the older man's eyes before Gilbert straightened, dismissing his sentiments with a frown. "Good huntsmen are hard to come by."

  Rane acknowledged the compliment with a nod. "Did ye find the culprits, my lord?"

  "The whelps are long gone, though I'm sure they'll be back. But 'tis another hunt I'm on at present."

  Rane glanced at the arrow Gilbert rolled idly between his fingers.

  "Tell me, Rane. Ye know the forest better than anyone. Did ye happen to see a strange lass walkin' in the woods in the last few days?"

  "A lass?" The arrow spun slowly, back and forth, back and forth, in Gilbert's glove. Perhaps the lord didn't even realize to whom it belonged.

  "Aye. A thief. She was seen fleein' into the forest."

  Rane's gaze snapped up to Gilbert's face. "A thief?" he echoed. A prickling began at the back of his neck.

  "Maybe ye've seen some trace o' her," Gilbert insisted, "footprints, anythin'."

  "A thief," he repeated, absently rubbing the cloth of Florie's gown between his finger and thumb. It couldn't be. Yet Father Conan had warned him that Florie had powerful enemies. Had it been Lord Gilbert's men who'd ridden past the other night?

  "Aye. She accosted my wife at the fair, stole a gold bauble o' hers, and somehow managed to elude my constables."

  The news hit Rane like a bolt in the chest. Was it true? The girdle Florie guarded with her life—had she stolen it? Had she lied about being a goldsmith, about her dead mother? Had she made up that story about the pomander? Rane didn't know his letters—she might have lied about them as well. Odin's teeth, was she no more than a common thief?

  "Ye're sure?" he said tightly.

  "O' course I'm sure. There were several witnesses to the incident."

  Rane felt ill. It couldn't be. Surely Florie wasn't capable of such deceit. This was the lass who'd shielded him from blame, who'd invited him in from the cold, whose eyes lit up when she talked about gold. Aye, he thought bitterly, the same way a robber's eyes lit up when he spoke of silver.

  He didn't want to believe Lord Gilbert. Worse, he didn't want to admit that Florie—faerie-faced, doe-eyed, mouth-watering Florie—had utterly beguiled and deceived him. To think he'd imagined her some unfortunate victim of abuse. What a half-wit he'd been, gulled by her sweet face. The little outlaw had led him a merry chase. And, curse his soft heart, Rane had helped her to escape.

  "Well?" Lord Gilbert pressed, reining his restless mount away from the pond.

  Rane hesitated. Her betrayal stung, and beneath his carefully controlled expression, righteous indignation began to smolder. The scheming lass had intentionally misled him with her dewy gaze, audaciously lied to him through her soft, sweet lips. He should turn her over to Gilbert at once. She deserved whatever punishment he would dole out.

  But despite her outright deception, Rane was still hesitant to expose her. Perhaps because he was riddled with guilt over shooting her, some perverse sense of obligation made him want to protect her. Even now. Even though she'd played him for a fool.

  Still, honor would not allow him to speak falsely. Sooner or later, Gilbert would discover that the thief he sought resided in the church. He may as well hear it from Rane's lips. There was no need to add harboring an outlaw to Rane's growing list of crimes. The lass had claimed sanctuary, after all. She was safe enough there, at least for the moment.

  "I believe the maid ye seek is in the old church," he said softly. "She said she was seekin' sanctuary." But though Rane wouldn't blatantly lie, he was no martyr. He omitted mentioning that he'd carried the fugitive to the fridstool himself.

  Gilbert's eyes flared with surprise. "What? She spoke to ye?" Surprise turned quickly to ire. Lord Gilbert's temper had grown short over the past several months, ever since he'd brought his new wife home. "Ye let her escape, and now she's claimed sanctuary?" He pounded his fist on his pommel. "God's bones! Ye bloody fool!"

  Rane's jaw tensed. Aye, he might have let a thief escape, but he took exception to being called a fool. He straightened proudly and scowled. "Escape? I hunt game, my lord, not fugitives."

  Lord Gilbert's dark beard quivered with rage. "'Twas my wife's gold girdle the wench stole," he bit out. "And Lady Mavis paid a king's ransom for it."

  Rane doubted that. He'd never seen Lady Mavis offer a king's ransom for anything. Indeed, Gilbert's petulant
bride made a practice of bullying merchants to sell her their wares for far below what they were worth. Rane knew 'twas not only the damaging rains and the English attacks, but the economic devastation Lady Mavis had wrought over the past months, that had left the commoners half-starved…and turned Gilbert's huntsman into a poacher.

  "Damn ye, Rane!" Lord Gilbert roared. "Forty days ye've cost me now! Forty days!" His horse sidestepped nervously as he grumbled, "And forty for the guard I'll have to post against her flight. Sanctuary. Shite!"

  He wheeled his horse about to choose a man for the task. Rane noted that none of them would meet their lord's eye. He couldn't blame them. 'Twas an irksome duty to be confined for forty days to the perimeter of a church, guarding a fugitive, knowing that if the felon escaped, the guard would be held accountable for the crime…

  When Gilbert turned slowly about again, Rane didn't care for the sly smirk on his lord's face.

  "Rane, lad," he said, twirling the quarrel between his fingers as he closely inspected the bloodstains, "this is your arrow, is it not?"

  A dire chill slithered up Rane's spine. "Aye, my lord."

  "Yet I never granted ye leave to hunt in Ettrick."

  Rane's fist tightened in the fabric of Florie's gown. "Nae, my lord."

  Lord Gilbert stared at him a long while, as if measuring his value, then whispered, "Ye know I could have ye hanged for poachin'."

  Rane refused to make excuses, refused to show fear or remorse. He'd done what he felt he must do. "Aye."

  For a lengthy moment, neither man looked away. Finally, Lord Gilbert hurled the arrow, burying its point into the ground at Rane's feet. "Ye shall stand guard against her escape, forty days and forty nights."

  "What?" Rane exploded, his brows drawing down sharply.

  Him? Rane? Gilbert's huntsman? He couldn't stand guard over an outlaw. Not for forty days. 'Twas madness. Not only was he unequal to the task, but he couldn't afford to foreswear hunting, lawful or not. The crofters depended on him for food. In forty days the deer would be gone, hunted by spoiled, overfed nobles, and there would be no winter provender left for the peasants.

  Muzzling his outrage only by dint of great will, he said evenly, "My lord, I'm not a man-at-arms. With all due—"

  "If she escapes, 'twill be upon your head. And at Lady Mavis's mercy."

  Before Rane could reason further with him, Lord Gilbert wheeled his mount, and he and his men thundered up the rise toward the main road.

  For several moments Rane stood mute, his fists clenched, his thoughts running as wildly as scattering rabbits.

  In the distant fields, through the slowly clearing dust of Gilbert's departure, Rane glimpsed the hunched backs of a dozen scrawny peasants planting crops for the lord's table. He steeled his jaw against a current of rage.

  The lass, the thief, had just doomed them all.

  Her greed had likely cost her not only her limb or her life, but the lives of countless crofters for whom Rane would be unable to hunt, helpless families who'd likely starve come winter without his assistance.

  He might have been inspired to pity if he thought she'd stolen the girdle to pay for food. After all, such a crime was no different from what Rane did when he poached deer for the peasants. But his motivation was mercy. Hers was greed.

  The thought made him tremble with rage. 'Twas apparent from the wealth of gold she already wore about her person that she was in no danger of going hungry. And worse, she'd lied to him, repeatedly.

  Knowing all that, the only thing that kept him from coldly exhorting her to vanish into the forest as mysteriously as she'd appeared was his own guilty conscience and the fact that now he himself would have to pay for what she'd stolen. Unfortunately, though his skill with the bow afforded him fine quarters and a place at Lord Gilbert's table, that glittering bauble the lass clung to so stubbornly looked to be worth more than all his possessions together.

  He supposed he'd have to take it from her by force, as unsavory as that idea was. Maybe in a few weeks, when she was healed and when he no longer felt burdened by remorse for shooting her, 'twould seem less distasteful.

  A few weeks at most. He had no intention of standing guard over her for forty days. Lives were at risk. Every day lost was a day closer to famine for the peasants. He wouldn't let them starve for the sake of one scrawny thief who was blatantly guilty of her crime.

  Now he knew what the dream meant. The lass was going to hang. Sanctuary or no sanctuary, in forty days, Florie would be tried and found guilty. No witness would dare come forward to testify against Lady Mavis, especially when the careless lass had the stolen goods on her person. She was as good as dead. And Rane was vexed enough by the fact that the lying lass's greed had thwarted his mission of mercy that he told himself he didn't care if she did hang.

  'Twas what he staunchly maintained until he returned to the church, snatched open the door, and looked toward the chancel to behold the delicate bundle of lass on the fridstool, bent forward over several pieces of parchment and one long, slender, shapely, and quite bare leg.

  She sat alone, unaware of him, in a pool of sunlight, her dark spill of hair illuminated by the rays streaming through the red and gold and blue panes of the altar window, the sweet oval of her face fair and ethereal above his cloak of gray-green wool. She looked like a fallen angel, delivered to the earth upon heavenly beams.

  Lost.

  Helpless.

  Irresistible.

  A bolt of unwelcome desire shot arrow-swift through his body, leaving his pulse pounding in his ears.

  He frowned at once. Loki's ballocks! What was wrong with him? The wench was a thief, a felon, a fugitive. She wasn't some winsome lass he might court.

  Nor was he an untried youth who'd never laid eyes upon a female. Quite the contrary. Now that he was of marriageable age, the lasses of the burgh foisted their attentions upon him at every opportunity. In the last year, he'd swived more maids than he could count.

  So why was it this lass, this outlaw that made the blood sizzle in his veins?

  The oath brewing on his tongue was so vile 'twould have cracked the altar window had he voiced it. Instead, he smoldered silently at the treasonous hardening of his loins…and the damned softening of his heart. The tiny voice of Rane's conscience taunted him, telling him he was sorely deceived if he thought he could stand silently by and watch Lord Gilbert drag the beautiful maiden to the gallows.

  No matter how guilty she was.

  In a rare fit of pique, he slammed the church door behind him with a satisfying crash.

  Florie shrieked. Her heart jerked against her ribs. In a mad scramble, she gathered up the pages of parchment.

  "What the devil!" she exclaimed, pressing a calming hand to her heaving chest.

  Rane had scared her half out of her wits. And despite everything she'd learned about his generosity and loyalty and compassion, at the present his eyes burned with inexplicable rage. He whipped her gown from off his shoulder, and it snapped in the air. He clenched his hands as he swaggered toward her like the Norse marauder who was supposedly Rane's forbear.

  She pulled the cloak subtly, protectively to her bosom. No Scotswoman could resist Rane's charms, the priest had said. At the moment, this son of Vikings seemed anything but charming. What had happened to alter him she didn't know, but she'd seen her foster father change from mouse to monster with only the aid of a few tankards of beer. Nothing surprised her when it came to men.

  Rane's eyes narrowed to mistrustful slits as he continued to advance toward her. The sight of his dark, stormy brow inspired in her a powerful urge to clamber in retreat and take refuge behind the altar.

  Then she silently chided herself for her foolishness. After all, she'd claimed sanctuary. She was already protected by the church, wasn't she? Still, she wished the priest belonging to the church were here now.

  She could scarcely draw breath when Rane halted a yard away, towering over her like a conquering barbarian. Holy saints! The immense archer appeared t
o have grown several inches since she'd last seen him.

  For a moment he seemed to struggle for words. His fists closed and opened, closed and opened, as if they debated whether or not to throttle her. And she dared not speak for fear of assisting them in their decision.

  When she could no longer endure the suspense, she burst out, "Slay me, then, or leave me be! But do not hang over me like a bloody executioner's ax!"

  Her words seemed to shake him from his silent rage. She glimpsed some momentary flicker in his eyes, some awakening spark of remorse or pain. Then he let out a heavy sigh, and the fire in his gaze slowly diminished to a low flame.

  "I mean ye no harm," he told her, though she suspected 'twas a stern reminder to himself as well, for his voice sounded as glum as a priest's giving last rites. "I'm a man o' my word. I've sworn to protect ye, and I intend to do just that."

  He didn't sound very happy with his decision, and though he might reconcile himself to keeping his word, Florie knew good intentions often went awry. Her mother had vowed to protect her always, yet she'd died when Florie was but a lass. Her foster father's drunken promises were forgotten as soon as he sobered. She'd learned to trust no one.

  "I've said I'll take care o' ye," he repeated, though his tone was so irritable, it sounded as if he'd promised to trim the devil's claws.

  "Pray," she bit out, the words simmering off her tongue, "do not trouble yourself over my welfare."

  "If I didn't wish to trouble myself," he said with a scowl, "I would have left ye to bleed to death."

  Her jaw dropped.

  Rane cringed inwardly at his own harsh words. Indeed, he didn't mean them. He would no more leave someone to bleed to death than he'd shoot a birthing doe.

  'Twas only that he was frustrated. And vexed. And inexplicably aroused.

  He cursed silently and regarded the lass he'd again wounded, this time with words. Her dark eyes smoked with fury, but they were also moist. Her pointed chin jutted rebelliously, yet it quivered. At first he feared she might burst into tears, but soon he realized by the defiant angle of her head and the glitter in her gaze that she trembled more with anger than with hurt. The wayward lass loathed him.