by The Hunter
Though the English presence was still heavily felt, this was William Wallace country, and many of the martyred patriot’s followers had come over to Bruce. A number of Wallace’s relatives lived in Sundrum, including a cousin who the Highland Guard used for occasions such as this.
Ewen should be relieved. His mission was all but complete—or would be in the morning, when they met Hawk and Chief in Ayr with the birlinn. He would return Janet to her family, and he would go back to his duties with the Guard, tracking the next enemy or missing ally. Bruce would be grateful, and Ewen would be one step closer to restoring the name of Lamont—and, he hoped, the lands as well.
It was exactly what he wanted. Exactly what he’d been fighting for.
Then why was he trying to eke out every minute on this horse? Why did it feel like the moment he let go of her, this would all be over?
But there was no “this.” There never had been. She couldn’t be his. He’d made that clear. He’d told her he couldn’t marry her, and from her silence since, it seemed she finally understood.
It was what he wanted.
So why was he disappointed that she hadn’t protested? Why had a tiny part of him hoped the idea of marriage to him wasn’t so inconceivable?
He stopped at a small burn in the Broad Wood to water the horse for the last time before reaching Sundrum. His leg was much improved since acquiring the mount, but it grew tight without movement, and it felt good to move about.
He wasn’t delaying.
Janet returned from tending her needs and sat on a rock by the stream, nibbling on a piece of dried beef, while he held the horse to water.
“Tell me about Helen.”
He glanced over at her in surprise. Not exactly the conversation he was expecting after their last. He stiffened slightly, wondering if she’d noticed something about his leg. He was careful not to favor the other, but the lass was too damned observant. “What do you want to know?”
She shrugged. “She’s good at what she does?”
“She’s one of the best.”
“You said she could be a physician? How could that be? She is a woman.”
“It’s rare, but not impossible. Your brother-in-law’s brother, the Earl of Sutherland, is married to a woman who trained in Edinburgh for a while at one of the guilds until she married. Helen might have as well.”
“But then she married Magnus?”
Ewen wasn’t sure where she was going with this. “Aye, but Helen never wanted the guilds. She’s happy doing what she’s doing.”
“And what exactly is that?”
Ewen finished letting the horse drink and then led it from the burn, tying the rein around a tree. He crossed his arms and looked at her, knowing he was treading dangerous ground. She was no doubt trying to trick him into revealing something about the Guard or confirm his place in it. “She tends to the ill; what else would she do?”
“Does she go into battle with you?”
“No.”
“But she is nearby?”
“Why are you so interested in this?”
She shrugged. “I just am. It’s not usual, you must admit, for a gently born lady to take on such a role.”
“Helen is unusual.”
“As is her husband. He is a rare man to permit his wife to put herself in such danger.”
He laughed. “MacKay hates every bloody minute of it.”
She looked genuinely perplexed. “Then why does he go along with it?”
“Because he knows she is needed. And—”
He stopped.
“And?”
He shrugged uncomfortably. “And because he loves her.”
“Oh.” It obviously wasn’t the answer she expected.
His mouth twisted in a smile. “Surely you’ve heard of it?”
Their eyes met, and a sharp frisson of awareness passed between them.
She blushed, lowering her gaze. “Aye, just not in marriage.”
The wry tone did not hide the sadness underneath. “Your parents did not have a happy marriage?”
She made a sharp sound. “My father gave my mother as much consideration as he would have given a serf. Most of the time he forgot she was there. When she did find the courage to speak, he would cut her down so cruelly, she eventually began to believe that she was as stupid as he made her feel.”
He winced, having seen more than his share of similar marriages. “Not all marriages are like that, lass.”
Her mouth twisted with cynicism. “Aye—some, like my sister Mary’s, are full of misery, heartbreak, and infidelity, and others, like my brother Duncan’s, are constant battlegrounds of strife and discord. He and Christina would fight for hours. He was constantly dragging her off to their chamber to do God-knows-what to the poor woman.”
Realizing she was serious, Ewen burst out laughing.
She bristled. “I don’t see what is funny.”
Seeing the hurt on her face, he sobered. “I’m sorry, lass. I can’t speak to your sister Mary’s first marriage. I knew the Earl of Atholl, and though he was a hell of a warrior, I didn’t pay much mind to his relations with women who were not his wife. I’ve known Sutherland for a while, though, and to my knowledge he has been faithful to your sister since he first set eyes on her.” He left out how amused they’d all been by it, given that Mary had rejected him as a suitor. “It was your comment about Duncan that made me laugh. His passion for his wife was well known—both in and out of the bedchamber. I suspect they made up just as passionately as they argued.”
Janet’s eyes widened, her cheeks reddening as she took in his meaning.
Her brows drew together. “How do you know so much about my brother?”
Damn. This wasn’t exactly a subject he wanted to be discussing with her. “I fought with him for a while.”
She looked stunned. “You did? Why did you not tell me before?” She seemed to realize something even as the words left her mouth. “You were with him at Loch Ryan, weren’t you?”
He nodded.
She let out a slow breath. The way it hitched painfully made his chest squeeze. He wanted to reach for her, but forced his hands to his side.
She was quiet for a moment, as if steadying her emotions. “How did he die?”
Ewen saw the blade flashing in the sunlight before it came down upon Duncan’s neck and forced the hideous image away. She didn’t need to know the details. “Bravely, lass. Like the fierce Highland warrior that he was. I was proud to fight alongside him.”
She knew he wasn’t telling her all of it, but for once she didn’t press. “It must have been horrible,” she said. “All those men who died.” She shuddered. “You were fortunate to make it out alive.”
“Aye.”
It had been a bloodbath. The MacDowells had been told of their arrival and had been waiting for them. Ewen had been in one of only two birlinns that had managed to escape. Whoever had betrayed them had cost almost seven hundred men their lives. One day that person would pay.
Janet saw the dark emotions cross his face and regretted invoking the painful memories. But somehow it made her feel better to know that Ewen was with Duncan when he died. Though the loss of her brother would always be a painful hole in her heart, Ewen had soothed the hurt just a little bit.
Was it true what he’d said about Duncan and Christina? Had she so misinterpreted the feelings between them? What went on behind those closed doors?
Apparently more than she’d realized.
Suddenly, all those long hours in the bedchamber took on a very different meaning—one sensual rather than sinister. Her brother had always seemed so subdued afterward. She’d taken it for regret, but what if it was something else?
It was disconcerting to realize how little she knew about something that had been going on right before her.
She arched a brow, watching as Ewen fiddled with a bag tied to the horse, eventually removing a skin. How did he know so much?
After taking a long swig, he sat down beside he
r. It was nice, this, sitting here with him without a cloud of danger hanging over them. Apparently, in no hurry to continue their journey, she decided to ask him. “Did your parents love each other?”
He tensed almost imperceptibly. She sensed right away that the subject was not a welcome one. But he answered her question. “Aye, though they shouldn’t have.”
“What do you mean?”
“When my father abducted my mother—with her approval—away from the Chief of Lamont, it nearly destroyed my father and our clan. Had it not been for James Stewart, it would have.”
“Yet there is something undeniably romantic about it. Your father must have truly loved her to be willing to risk so much.”
Ewen’s face hardened. “My father was an irresponsible ruffian who did whatever the hell he wanted, without any sense of the consequences. He fought hard, drank hard, and apparently loved hard. Duty and loyalty didn’t mean a damned thing to him. He stole his chief’s bride, for Christ’s sake, knowing full well there would be war.”
Hearing him speak of his father explained so much. It seemed Ewen had done everything he could to distance himself from the type of man his father had been. His discipline, his sense of honor and responsibility, were the opposite of his father. Where his father had been wild and irresponsible, Ewen was the model soldier, doing exactly what was expected of him.
“What about your mother?”
His fingers clenched on the skin he still held in his hand. “His irresponsibility killed her.” She gasped. “What happened?”
“He couldn’t keep his bloody hands off her. She’d barely given birth to me before he got her pregnant again. She died in the birthing chamber ten months after my saint’s day. The child—a little girl—was stillborn.”
The way he said “little girl” made something in her heart catch. “Oh Ewen, I’m sorry. That is horrible. Growing up without a mother … It couldn’t have been easy.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t know any differently. Fortunately, the Stewarts took me in to foster or I might have ended up every bit as wild and disreputable as my father. When he wasn’t fighting or drinking, he was trying to kill himself with some fool challenge. That’s actually how he died. The Lamont chief finally had his revenge, daring my father to climb a cliffside near Dundonald Castle in the rain.”
“He must have been devastated after your mother’s death.”
“He was building her a castle when she died. For years, all he would talk about was finishing that castle. But, of course, he never did. As a boy, it came so that I hated even the bloody sight of those half-constructed walls.”
Her heart squeezed. It must have been a painful reminder of his father’s failures.
He shook his head. “But you know what the worst part is? He somehow managed to get me to do it for him. So now, on top of trying to regain some of the Lamont lands, I also need to earn enough coin to finish the blasted thing.”
Emotion lodged in her chest and for the first time she admitted to herself what it was: she loved him. With every fiber of her being, she loved him. How strange after all these years to have finally lost her heart.
He was staring off into the distance, lost in his memories, the strong lines of his handsome face cast ablaze by the orange hues of the fading sunlight. Nay, lost was wrong. She’d found it. Her heart had always belonged to him.
“You are a good man, Ewen Lamont,” she said softly.
He turned to look at her and something strange flashed in his eyes. It looked almost like guilt. But then he smiled wistfully. “I’m a sentimental fool, and I think you’ve spent too many nights on this hard ground.” He stood and held out his hand. “Come. You’ve a warm bath, a hot meal, and a comfortable bed waiting for you.”
She sighed dreamily, slipping her hand into his and allowing him to help her up. “It sounds divine. But Ewen …” Steel-blue eyes met hers. “None of that will change my mind.”
He held her gaze for a long pause. And then he said something that she didn’t understand, but that held the vague sense of a warning. “I hope you’ll feel the same in a few days.”
The sight of the lime-washed walls of the wattle-and-daub farmhouse, nestled against a small hill on the banks of Lochend Loch, should have been cause for celebration. It was the first stop on the end of their journey. They would be safe here.
But to Ewen it represented a bitter return to reality. Free from the narrowed vision of danger, where getting Janet to safety and staying one step ahead of the English who stalked them was all that mattered, he could see clearly what the guilt, which had been building since he’d first realized how important her place in the king’s network was to her, had been trying to tell him.
She was going to hate him for not telling her the truth. For allowing her to believe she could actually be returning to Roxburgh in a few days. For not telling her about the betrothal.
What had seemed prudent and not-his-place at the outset now felt like a betrayal. It was a betrayal. He couldn’t pretend otherwise. Their relationship had changed. The sinful attraction he’d felt for “Sister Genna” had transformed into something deeper, something more intense, as he grew to know—and care about—Janet. Somewhere in there, the right thing to do had switched, and if he’d ever had an opportunity to correct the mistake, he’d missed it.
Finishing this mission was going to exact a personal cost that he’d never imagined. He’d known she’d be angry; he just hadn’t realized how much it would matter to him.
Part of him wanted to tell her the truth, but he knew it would probably be better this way.
Maybe if she hated him it wouldn’t be so hard for him to walk away? Maybe it would stop him from thinking of things that couldn’t be? Maybe it would make it less hard to see her marry someone else?
His chest burned. The very thought of it ate like acid in his gut.
His hand clenched the reins, and unconsciously his arm drew tighter around her waist.
What the hell choice did he have? The king wasn’t going to very well set aside the betrothal with Stewart to let her marry one of his Guardsmen—not to mention a Lamont—even if Ewen could convince her, which he wasn’t sure he could. The only option open to him was one he wouldn’t consider. He wasn’t his damned father. He wouldn’t “abduct” his liege lord’s bride. He wouldn’t risk everything for one woman. No matter how much he wanted her.
And God, how he wanted her! After so many hours with her in his arms, every inch of his body burned with need. The scent of her hair, the slimness of her waist, the heaviness of her breasts, the curve of her bottom, had infused his senses, imprinted on his consciousness, invaded his soul.
He didn’t want to let her go.
She turned to look up at him. “Is something wrong?”
He startled. “Nay, why?”
“Aren’t you going to get down? I assume this is our destination?”
He cursed under his breath, trying to cover his embarrassment. How long had they been standing there?
He pried his arm from around her waist and jumped down. After helping her to dismount, he tied the reins to a post. “Wait here, while I make sure we are welcome.” She nodded, but then he thought of something else. “It is important that you only call me by my first name.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“Lamont is not exactly a welcome name in these parts. There are some who still believe that my kinsmen had a hand in killing William Wallace’s father.” Not to mention that his cousin, the exiled Lamont chief, was a vassal of the Earl of Menteith, the man who was responsible for turning Wallace himself over to the English.
Normally, he would simply use his war name of Hunter. But with Janet here that wasn’t an option. She knew too much already.
Fortunately, the answer seemed to satisfy her. “Very well. And who am I?”
He knew what she was asking, but there was no way in Hades that he was going to pretend to be married to her again. He couldn’t stand another night of sleeping beside her. “
Janet. That is all they need to know. I would not make them uncomfortable by learning that they serve the king’s sister-in-law in their humble abode.”
“I would not make anyone uncomfortable, but it has been many years since I’ve been served by anyone. I do not expect it, nor do I wish it. I assure you, this humble abode will seem like a castle compared to some of the places I’ve stayed.”
He didn’t miss the soft rebuke. If she was also trying to tell him that their difference in station didn’t matter to her, he pretended not to understand. It might not matter to her, but it would to the king. Of that he was damned well sure.
With one last look that felt suspiciously like goodbye, Ewen went to find the farmer.
Once Janet realized the truth of her feelings for Ewen, everything seemed to fall into place. If she had any doubts about what she wanted, they were soon put aside upon arriving at the small farmstead.
She sat at the table set out before the softly glowing peat fire, enjoying the warmth that enveloped her. It wasn’t just the heat from the flames or the satisfaction of a good meal, but also the company. The Wallaces were gracious hosts, and their happiness was contagious.
Ewen was right; not all marriages were horrible. The Wallaces were proof of that. Their fond banter, subtle loving glances, and unconscious touches spoke of possibility.
Robert Wallace was a distant cousin of William Wallace. He’d fought alongside his illustrious relative until six years before, when Robert lost a hand at a skirmish in Earnside. Margaret was considerably younger than her husband, and far prettier. The dainty, dark-haired lass with her elfin features and slim build seemed utterly wrong beside the grizzled warrior of around forty years, who had the towering height of his famous relative and the imposing bulk of a smith. But somehow they went together perfectly. Her bright laughter and open, sunny nature complemented her husband’s gruff, taciturn disposition. It was clear he doted on his young wife. His young pregnant wife.
The odd pang Janet had felt in her chest when she’d first realized Margaret was with child had become more identifiable as the evening wore on. It was longing. Sharp, aching longing.