***
Sybil hummed to herself as she arranged the flowers she had picked earlier. She wanted everything perfect when Rory arrived for their first night at Killin since it was rebuilt.
She had left Castle Leod first thing this morning with servants, rugs, dishes, and bedding to finish setting up the house. She surveyed the main room, pleased with all they had accomplished. All was ready, including wine and a simple supper waiting on the table, so she sent the servants off to the new servants’ cottage behind the house, telling them they could have the evening off. She could not help grinning when she told them she could make a passable porridge, so they could sleep in as well.
For the tenth time in an hour, Sybil looked out the window hoping to see Rory. He promised to be here before supper, and she hoped he would beat the storm. Though it was midafternoon, storm clouds darkened the sky to the west, and the wind was picking up.
She closed the shutters on all the windows, lit the candles on the table, and then went into the bedroom to fluff the pillows again in anticipation of the night ahead. She was looking forward to having her husband all to herself.
But she was not good at sitting and waiting. She drummed her fingers, then sprang to her feet when she remembered something she had been meaning to do for a long time. Catriona said she hid the Eilean Donan ledgers in her mother’s secret hiding place, a wooden box buried in the barn. Sybil wondered if there was anything else in that box.
Sybil smiled at the two guards posted outside the door to the house—she knew better than to try to dismiss them—and breezed by them on her way to the barn.
It did not take long to find the wooden square flush with the dirt floor where Catriona had swept aside the straw. Excitement stirred in Sybil’s belly as she knelt and tugged the top off. She saw nothing, which was disappointing, but it was too dark inside the box to see all the way to the bottom. She reached inside, hoping she would not find a rat.
“Aha!” There was a cloth bag down there. The box was so deep she had to stick her head inside as she strained to grasp it and pull it up. The bag was light and felt as though it contained papers.
The wind whistled outside the barn, reminding her of the coming storm, so she decided to take the lost treasure back to the house. Back in the bedchamber, she sat on the floor to examine her find. Dirt spilled onto her skirts as she unfolded the bag and pulled out the contents.
There were two parchments. The first one appeared to be a letter to Rory. She set that one aside—and gasped when she saw what the other one was. She had never seen a papal bull before, but the heavy lead seal with the heads of Saint Peter and Saint Paul on one side and the pope’s name in Latin, Iulius II, on the other told her this had to be it.
Her heart raced as she read that his holiness the pope declared the marriage of Rory’s parents valid and the three named children by that marriage legitimate in the eyes of God and the church.
She could not wait to show it to Rory. This would lay to rest any whispers about Rory’s birth and right to the chieftainship. Heart singing with joy, she picked up the other parchment again. Should she read it? She was burning with curiosity, and Rory would ask her to read it to him anyway, so she gave in.
Oh my God. Once she read it, she was sorely tempted to hide the letter and never tell Rory about it. She had promised never to deceive him again, but she was afraid of what he would do.
She was so absorbed in what Agnes Fraser MacKenzie had written to her son that she almost failed to hear Rory open the front door. She quickly placed the two documents back inside the bag, slid it under the bed, and ran down the stairs to greet him.
He must have gone to look for her at the back of the house, but he’d left the door open, and the cold wind blew through the house, threatening to blow out the candles. He must be anxious to see her. Smiling, she shut the door and spun around to find him.
The scream caught in her throat. Hector’s eyes were wild, and he held a dirk dripping with blood.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said, inching her way back to the door. “Rory ordered ye never to set foot in Eastern Ross. He’s on his way. Ye ought to leave before he gets here.”
“Ye made a mistake coming to Agnes’s house,” Hector said, stepping toward her. “I knew this is where I’d find ye.”
***
The first drops of rain pelted Rory’s face as he galloped through the fields.
He opened the door to the house and shook the rain off. Sybil must be upstairs. He barely noticed the supper on the table. He was hungry, but not for food. He took the stairs two at a time, hoping to catch Sybil in the bedroom before she came down.
Candles and fresh flowers were on the small table by the bed, and the pleasant smell of fresh-cut wood from the new bedframe filled the room.
“Sybil!” he called as he went back downstairs. She could not be far. She would not have left candles burning with no one here, at least not for long.
As he paused to examine the room more closely, his heart thudded in his chest. A chair had been pushed over. Her cloak was on the back of the door and her boots beside it. He opened the door and saw what looked very much like the scratch marks on the new doorframe.
In his mind’s eye, he saw Sybil clawing at it as she was pulled from the house. His heart pounded in his ears. Where were the guards? He had been so anxious to see his wife that he hadn’t even noticed they weren’t there.
After he found their bodies on the side of the house, he ran to the servants’ cottage. The servants said they saw Sybil come in from the barn a quarter of an hour ago. He had just missed them!
He had to find her. He found tracks in front of the house. Whoever took her had made no attempt to cover them, which meant either her abductor was unskilled…or he wanted to be followed. Given his boldness in riding up to the house to take her and his success in doing so, Rory assumed it was the latter.
He mounted Curan and followed the trail as fast as he could without losing it.
Who would use Sybil to lure him? This was not another clan dispute over territory. Nay, threatening a man’s wife was a vengeful act by someone who knew him well. Someone who wanted to rip out his heart.
All reports told him Hector remained in Gairloch. But the cold fear in his gut told him Hector was here.
And he had Sybil.
Rory spurred Curan into a gallop. He did not need to follow the trail anymore. He knew where it led. Hector had taken Sybil to the waterfall where Rory’s mother died.
When he heard the roar of the falls over the wind and rain, he prayed hard that Hector wanted a confrontation and that he had not led Rory here just to find Sybil’s broken body on the rocks at the bottom of the falls.
He left Curan out of sight and sprinted the last few yards through the brush on foot. His breath caught when he saw his beloved standing with her back to the falls. The rock ledge beneath her feet was slippery with rain.
Sybil glanced to the side to where he was hidden in the brush and seemed to look right at him through the hair whipping around her face. It was only for an instant, then she turned her gaze away.
“How long are ye going to keep me standing here, Hector?” she shouted over the noise of the storm and the falls.
His clever wife had seen him and was letting him know his uncle was here. She was also prodding Hector to speak and reveal where he was hiding.
“My legs are tired,” she said. “I’m sitting!”
“You’ll stand if ye don’t want to be pushed off.” Hector’s voice came from about five yards to Rory’s right.
Sybil ignored the command and lowered herself to the rock. That was a wise move, as she was less likely to slip or to be knocked over the edge in a scuffle, but Rory intended to keep the fight as far from her as possible.
“I said stand up!” Hector shouted.
Sybil used a Gaelic phrase advising him he could have sexual relations with himself. “If ye want to push me off, what are ye waiting for?”
Ach,
his wife was bold and full of courage. While she drew Hector’s attention, Rory pulled the dirk from his boot and skirted through the brush toward his uncle. As soon as he caught sight of Hector’s plaid, he launched himself at his uncle. But Hector had not survived so many battles without having sharp instincts. At the last moment, he leaped to the side, and Rory’s dirk sliced Hector’s arm instead of his heart.
Rory rolled as he hit the ground and sprang to his feet, ready to fight. But the sight before him made him break out in a cold sweat. Hector held Sybil at the edge of the ledge with a dirk at her throat.
“It seems fitting for ye to lose the woman ye love the way I lost your mother,” Hector said.
“Did ye murder my mother?” Rory asked as he inched closer. “Did ye push her over these falls?”
“I didn’t kill her,” Hector said. “I loved that woman.”
“Loved her?” Sybil shouted. “Agnes left a letter. I know what ye did to her. I know!”
Sybil was trying to give Rory his chance.
“Agnes wouldn’t have ye, would she?” Sybil said. “So ye raped her!”
Rory controlled his rage with an effort and crept closer.
“She should have given herself to me,” Hector said. “She was supposed to be mine. Even after she chose my brother over me, I wanted her. I waited for her for years!”
“Ye drove her to her death,” Sybil said. “Dying was the only way she had of getting away from you and protecting her son.”
“I tried to save her,” Hector said.
“She warned ye what she’d do if ye came back, but ye didn’t believe her,” she said. “Ye couldn’t believe she hated ye that much.”
Sybil shot a glance at Rory, but they were so close to the edge that Rory was afraid that if he threw the blade now, Hector would take her over the edge with him.
“When I came to the house, she rode off in that terrible storm,” he said. “She was standing here when I caught up with her.”
“Ye wouldn’t leave, ye selfish bastard,” Sybil said. “Ye gave her no choice.”
“I begged her not to step back, not to go over the edge,” Hector said.
“Rory was only fifteen,” Sybil said. “Agnes knew he would try to kill you if he learned what you’d done to her, and Rory was bound to find out if it happened again and again, as it would have.”
“It was his fault.” Hector pointed at Rory. “Her precious boy. She would have come away with me if it weren’t for him!”
While Hector held her with only one arm, Rory had to take his chance. He would dive for Sybil’s legs as he threw his blade into the middle of Hector’s forehead. Though Sybil was several inches shorter than Hector, it would be close.
“If ye throw that blade,” Hector shouted, “I swear I’ll take her over the falls.”
To prove his intention, Hector started to take a step backward. Rory threw his blade just as Hector stepped down and his feet went out from under him on the slippery rock. Sybil’s scream filled Rory’s ears as he dove to catch her.
He caught her by the legs, but all three of them spun and slid sideways in a tangle across the flat, slippery rock. Rory kicked Hector off him and tried desperately to gain traction with his boots as Sybil slid dangerously close to the edge of the rock ledge.
Sybil went over the edge, pulling him with her. Rory let go of her with one arm to grasp a tree branch that hung over the top of the falls. With all his might, he swung his legs up and locked them around the thick branch. Sybil was hanging upside down and sliding through his arm.
His heart beat frantically as he worked his way along the branch as fast as he could with his legs and one hand toward the tree’s trunk on the riverbank. As they neared it, Sybil flailed her arms, trying to catch hold of a tree or shrub. The movement caused her to suddenly slip through his arm.
His heart stopped in his chest as he caught her ankle and swung her hard toward the safety of the bank before she slipped through his wet hand. She landed in the thick brush along the falls several feet below him and the ledge. Praise God.
He was climbing down from the tree limb when she shouted.
“Watch out! He’s coming!”
Rory landed on his feet and reached for the dirk at his belt. But it was gone, lost in the river, like the blade from his boot. Through the pouring rain, he saw Hector coming slowly toward him across the rock ledge with his dirk in his hand and murder in his eyes.
“Ye can’t protect her now,” Hector taunted him over the wind and rain. “I want ye to know as I drive my blade into your heart that I’ll have your wife begging for death before I finish with her.”
Rory did not wait for his enemy to strike first. He grabbed a heavy stick from the ground and ran straight at Hector. As he crashed into him, Rory blocked Hector’s blade with the stick. They fell to the ground and rolled across the flat rock. Hector tried to stab Rory in the throat, but Rory caught Hector’s wrist and fought to take the blade from him.
From the corner of his eye, Rory saw Sybil crawling toward them. Her face was bloody with scratches, but she had a blade in her hand and that determined look in her eyes. Jesu, she was going to get herself killed trying to save him if he didn’t kill Hector first.
Rory was distracted for barely a moment. It would not have been enough time for any other warrior to gain an advantage on him, but it was long enough for Hector. Rory was slammed onto his back. At the last second, he caught Hector’s arm with the dirk just inches above his chest.
“I should have been chieftain! I should have had Agnes! I should have had that Grant lass!” Hector said, putting his weight behind the blade as he tried to drive it into Rory’s heart. “First your father took everything I wanted, and then you did.”
Rory’s arms shook with the effort of keeping the blade from piercing his chest. He could not hold Hector off him much longer. But this was a fight he could not lose. His clan needed him.
Sybil needed him.
As he and Hector struggled against each other, Rory felt the edge of the rock ledge beneath his shoulder.
“You’ve been a curse on this clan since the day ye were born,” Rory said through clenched teeth. “Today it ends.”
Rory gritted his teeth and with one final surge of strength, he turned and pushed, sending Hector over the falls.
Hector’s scream was swallowed by the wind.
When Sybil collapsed beside him, Rory rolled away from the edge and enfolded his beloved in his arms. They lay together, not caring that the rain was beating down on them.
“When I realized Hector had taken you,” he said cupping her lovely, dirt-smudged face with his hand, “I was so afraid I’d lost you.”
“I knew you’d come. Ye always do,” she said. “And it would take more than Hector MacKenzie to pry me away from you.”
Rory smiled at his brave and clever wife. With Sybil at his side, he knew he could protect his people and become the chieftain his clan needed him to be. They were both free of the past now.
And he held his future in his arms.
EPILOGUE
November 1524
Eilean Donan was stunning with snow dusting the mountaintops and a rare winter sun shimmering on the lochs surrounding the castle. When the gates were opened wide to admit the MacKenzie chieftain and his family, Sybil exchanged a smile with Rory. How things had changed since the first time he brought her here.
The Macrae guard who had warned Rory to escape that day stood at the front of the household gathered in the courtyard to welcome them. He now served as constable of the castle for Rory.
Kenneth hopped down from his horse and held out his arms for his baby sister. “Let me take wee Agnes while Da helps you down.”
Kenneth was more like his father every day. Sybil wondered if her daughter would ever know how lucky she was to have an older brother who would always look out for her.
They planned to stay through Yuletide and expected a large gathering. Malcolm, Grizel and their enormous extended family would j
oin them, as well as Catriona and her husband. Once Rory saw how happy his sister was and that Munro was utterly devoted to her, the two men had formed a close friendship. In fact, they had been appointed as the crown’s joint lieutenants of Western Ross responsible for containing the threat from the MacDonalds. Though the MacDonalds were relatively quiet at the moment, Rory and the Munro were here to ensure that they remained that way.
Before going up to their chamber, she and Rory stopped in the castle’s small chapel to say a prayer at Brian’s tomb. Rory had finally made peace with his brother’s death after Lovat used his connections to have Brian’s head returned from Edinburgh. In the end, Rory and his sister and brother decided to bury Brian here in the beauty of Eilean Donan, where he had spent much of his life.
A short time later, Sybil and Rory were settling into the laird’s chamber when a maidservant appeared at the door.
“A priest left this for Lady Sybil a few days ago,” the woman said and handed a letter to Rory, as Sybil was holding the baby.
Alex was able on occasion to have letters from her Douglas family in the Lowlands carried in secret by priests, but this was the first one she had received in months. Sybil kissed Agnes, who had fallen asleep, and laid her in the cradle beside the bed.
“It’s from your sister Alison,” Rory said and held it out to her.
Though Rory could read fairly well now—he’d asked her to teach him—he knew Sybil would want to hold her sister’s letter in her hands and read the familiar script herself. She tore it open and began reading.
“She and David have yet another babe!” she said.
Alison’s letter was filled with amusing stories about the children and fairly glowed each time she mentioned her husband David. The feared Beast of Wedderburn was a doting husband and father. Sybil read the next part aloud.
Our brothers and uncle have returned. Archie has the backing of his brother-in-law, the English king, and his titles and properties have been restored. Archie, of course, assumed his wife would follow his and her brother’s command to welcome him back, but when he approached Stirling Castle, the queen had the cannons fired on him. That was amusing, but I fear he has learned nothing from his last fall.
CLAIMED BY A HIGHLANDER (THE DOUGLAS LEGACY Book 2) Page 33