For all of the two seconds it took to brace himself for the stroke, Hamilton Garner tasted victory. His enemy was on his knees before him, his spine arched and bared for the final strike. In the next impossible instant, however, he heard a soft hiss of rushing air and his jade-green eyes flicked disbelievingly to where a stray beam of sunlight was flaring along the length of Cameron’s broadsword, causing it to burn an arc through the air as it slashed toward him, severing through flesh, bone, and sinew with a fiery grace that was as unexpected as the maneuver itself.
There was a look of utter incomprehension and horror in Garner’s eyes, and a brief groping movement by his hands as if he could not accept the fact that his head was no longer attached to his shoulders. It spun free of the slumped body and rolled halfway down the slope before it came to a halt against a hillock of moss-covered stones. The neatly queued blond hair had come loose from its binding and lay in a tangle of bloodied threads across the ashen pallor of the face, the mouth gaped open in shock, though there had not even been time to put sound to the scream.
Alex swayed unsteadily on his feet, most of his weight sagging forward onto the support of the red-streaked clai’mór. He bowed his head and leaned his brow on the cool metal of the basket guard, his chest heaving, his legs trembling visibly from the massive exertion. It had happened so quickly—the feint, the opening, the desperate knowledge that he would have only the one chance—he half expected Garner to stand up and resume the attack.
Of the men who formed the now-silent ring of spectators, some stared at the twitching, headless corpse of their commanding officer, but most gaped at the bleeding Scotsman. It was so quiet, so absolutely still, they could hear the labored sounds of his breathing and the sluggish pulsations of blood that soaked the ground beneath Garner’s body. They could also hear the slow, deliberate thumbing back of a hammer as Corporal Jeffrey Peters raised his musket, took careful aim at the Highlander’s chest, curled his finger around the trigger, and squeezed.
The delay between the flint sparking against the powder and the powder exploding to release the lead shot was filled by a second blast of gunpowder. Peters was lifted and flung back off his feet, the action causing his weapon to discharge harmlessly into the empty air. When the smoke cleared, there was a neat round hole in the centre of his forehead, a Cyclops’ eye with a rim of bright red around the edges.
Count Giovanni Fanducci lowered his snaphaunce as a dozen other armed clansmen appeared out of the mist behind him, their muskets primed and leveled on the stunned circle of redcoats.
“Scusa, signore. I’m-a sure you could have handled these bastardos on-a you own, but, eh … why should you have all-a the fun?”
Alex smiled weakly. “Why indeed.”
“You can walk?”
Alex swallowed hard and nodded. “I can walk.”
“Bene.” Fanducci waved the snaphaunce, indicating to the soldiers, who for the most part had forgotten they held muskets, that they would be wise to lower them all the way down to the ground. As soon as they complied, the clansmen gathered up the weapons and powderhorns and carried them to the edge of the forest. The soldiers were herded into a nervous group and driven back down the field, while Alex, his good arm draped gratefully over Fanducci’s shoulders, was led in the opposite direction into the safety of the mist and trees.
Bleary with pain and exhaustion, Alex had no idea how far they walked before Fanducci called a halt and lowered him gently onto an overturned tree stump.
“So much blood,” he muttered, tearing strips from his shirt to bind the wound on Alex’s arm. “It’s a wonder you do not melt into the ground, my friend.”
“I would have been part of the ground if you hadn’t come along when you did. Saying a mere thank you hardly seems adequate.”
“Do not-a thank me yet, Cameron” came the quiet rejoinder … so quiet and so low it took several seconds for the alarm bells to penetrate Alexander’s fogged brain. Other vague stirrings in what was left of his battered instincts sent his hand moving to his waist only to find that his dirk had somehow vanished from its sheath.
“I took the liberty of removing it while we were walking,” the count said in perfect English. “Unlike your friend back there, I have come to appreciate the fact that one should never underestimate your limits or your talents.”
Alex stared up at the handsome face for a long moment before answering.
“You seem to have acquired a new talent of your own,” he noted calmly.
The blue eyes glanced up. “A compliment from The Dark Cameron? I’m flattered.”
“Don’t be. Who the hell are you? And why the elaborate charade?”
“Elaborate, yes. I was told I had to be wilier than the fox himself to get close to you, and I must say, in all humility, Count Giovanni has always ranked among my best and most favorite personas.”
“You have others?”
“A chameleon must be able to change his colors to adapt to his surroundings—you of all people should appreciate that, Monsieur Montgomery.”
The use of the name set off another, louder chorus of alarm bells and Alex peered closely at the count’s face. He had shed his plumed tricorn and abandoned his wig somewhere along the way; his sable-brown hair was curled forward at the temples, liberally shot through with streaks of gray. Something about him looked damned familiar. Alex wracked his tired brain trying to dredge up some distant memory, some incident or event in his past to explain the nagging feeling he should know who this man was. Monsieur Montgomery, he had said. A slip … or a deliberate clue?
A clue, chimed the ghostly whisper of Aluinn’s voice through the hushed stillness. And if he gave you a much bigger one, he would have to hit you over the head with it. I warned you, goddammit. I warned you, but you wouldn’t take me seriously, and now it’s too late.
Warned me? Warned me about what? About who?
Think, you stupid bastard! Think back—
Alex stiffened through an ice-cold shudder of apprehension. The Frenchman! Aluinn had told him months ago about a man … an assassin hired by the Duke of Argyle to hunt him down and accomplish what his scores of brute-fisted henchmen had been unable to do for fifteen years. But it wasn’t possible! It couldn’t be possible, not after all they had gone through together—the weeks, months of camaraderie in camp, the advance into Derby, the retreat … Culloden!
“You could have killed me a hundred times over,” Alex said in a shocked murmur. “Why the hell have you waited until now?”
The Frenchman smiled benignly. “A good question, monsieur. One I have asked myself many times over the past weeks.”
“And? Have you come up with any answers?”
“None I would be able to explain to you. None I was able to explain to myself until just a short while ago.” He finished tying off the strips of bandaging around Alex’s arm and straightened, moving a prudent distance away as he detected the subtle increase of tension in the Highlander’s body. To discourage him from attempting anything foolhardy, the Frenchman withdrew one of his snaphaunces and held it casually balanced across his folded forearm.
“One of the hazards of our profession, monsieur: friendship. I have always prided myself in being able to resist such mundane entanglements—especially those involving the female persuasion. There, too, alas, I once committed a major faux pas, which I now find has come back to haunt me with a vengeance.”
Alex was only partially listening. He had already arrived at the conclusion that the Frenchman could kill him before he’d even struggled upright onto his feet; he was not particularly interested in hearing the bastard gloat.
Sighing, he adjusted the angle of his injured arm, cradling it higher on his chest. “So what happens now, Fanducci … or whatever the hell your name is.”
“St. Cloud. Jacques St. Cloud.”
Alex’s face remained impassive. He thought he detected more than the normal degree of intensity behind the piercing blue eyes, but if the name was supposed to dislodge some of
the mortar sealing his recollections, his captor was disappointed.
“So,” St. Cloud mused. “There are still some secrets left in the world.”
“I’m afraid I’m not following you.”
“You are not required to follow me, monsieur, only to listen.” He paused and looked down at the blood staining his fingers. “Your wife is a very beautiful woman. There could not be two faces so alike in this world, yet I did not see it—or perhaps I did but was unwilling to resurrect the pain of old wounds. You see, I was once very much in love myself, with a woman as vibrant as the sun itself, who heated within me a passion I had never experienced, before or since. Unfortunately, circumstances neither one of us could control intervened and separated us, dispatching her back into her world and me into mine.”
“St. Cloud—”
The Frenchman held up a hand. “Please. This is difficult enough to do without having to go into lengthy and involved explanations, which neither one of us has the time or inclination to waste at the moment. Suffice it to say, those questions and explanations that have been plaguing me for the past five months were finally resolved an hour ago, when your wife mentioned a name—a name I whisper to myself each night before I close my eyes and each morning before I draw my first breath of air.”
“Catherine? Where is she?”
“Quite safe, I assure you. I left her some distance back in the forest—very angry, to be sure, and feeling doubly betrayed after I had promised she could be there to help rescue you. An incredible young woman, monsieur. I feel a true father’s pride in knowing each of you deserves the other. I could not have chosen a better match myself.”
Alex felt another shock ripple through him. He remembered! There had been a whispered confession made many months ago when Catherine and Deirdre had first joined the retreating army outside of Derby. In her need to exorcise the demons surrounding the death of the British lieutenant.
Catherine had also poured out the story her mother had told her, including the revelation that Sir Alfred Ashbrooke had not sired either her or Damien.
Was this not the ultimate irony? Alexander thought as he regarded the man before him. The highwayman turned assassin come to hunt down the husband of the daughter he did not know he had?
“Dear God,” Alex murmured. “Does Catherine know you are her father?”
“Catherine?” St. Cloud smiled faintly. “No, monsieur. This shall remain between you and me, unto the grave.”
“But she already knows Ashbrooke wasn’t her real father. Dammit, man, she likes you. She deserves to be told.”
“No,” St. Cloud said adamantly, aligning the aim of the snaphaunce for emphasis. “And if I cannot carry away your word that you will hold your silence in this matter, then I shall indeed carry away your head so that I might collect my well-earned reward from Monsieur le Due.”
“But—”
A thumb coolly and pointedly cocked a hammer. “I will carry the tragedy of my son’s death burned forever on my mind, Alexander, please … do not make me carry yours as well.”
“You knew about Damien?”
“I knew there had been a child … a male child, conceived out of wedlock, and instrumental in forcing my beloved Caroline into a marriage of convenience. I did not learn this for many, many years, and, by then, there were too many years of bitter feelings to keep me from searching too deeply into what had become of them. Too many hard decisions made, as well, to complicate my life or compromise the lives of any others.”
Alex nodded slowly. An assassin with a family? As unlikely and unhealthy as lighting a cigar in a roomful of powder. He agreed reluctantly. “You have my word. Catherine will not hear the truth from me—but it won’t stop me from appealing to you to tell her yourself.”
“Perhaps I will, some day. For now, however, I think it best we go our separate ways. You will need time to get your family out of the country,” St. Cloud said pensively. “And a fresh start, I think, without jackals sniffing after you at every turn.”
“There are five thousand Campbell jackals out there, St. Cloud. You’re good, but you’re not that good.”
“Monsieur! A little imagination, please. There is a perfectly good head lying back there on the field, cut to order. Some black dye, a little creativity with a knife, and voilà: The duke’s failing eyesight should keep my reputation unsullied.”
Alex thought for a moment, then reached with painful difficulty to unclasp the silver-and-topaz brooch he wore fastened to his belt.
“Give this to The Campbell of Argyle. He will know there is only one way you could have taken it from me.”
St. Cloud inspected the brooch’s studded gems and embossed family crest. “Bien. It will be enough, I think.”
He tucked the brooch safely into a pocket of his waistcoat and resheathed the pistol in its leather sling. Alex caught at his arm as he was about to walk past.
“You do have friends, St. Cloud. Good friends who would judge you for the man you are, not the man you were.”
St. Cloud leveled his gaze on the handsome features of his son-in-law and smiled with genuine appreciation. “Unfortunately, I also have many enemies, who, as you are undoubtedly aware from your own experiences, would gain great satisfaction in discovering I had formed any … lasting ties. Take care of yourself, Alexander Cameron. Take care of my daughter and grandchild as well.”
A faintly self-mocking salute carried St. Cloud back down the path and within seconds, he seemed to have vanished into the mist and shadows. Alex sat a few moments longer, lost in thought, and then, with the help of the clai’mór, struggled to his feet, took his bearings from the muted rill of a startled ptarmigan somewhere in the gloom of the forest, and began his own weary climb to safety.
Epilogue
Catherine walked up behind the tall, brooding figure who stood at the mouth of the cave and slipped her arms around his waist. “Why are you torturing yourself, Alex? There is nothing you can do about it. You can’t stop them.”
There was no response, no movement from the rigid body as yet another series of muffled explosions reverberated off the cliffs and corries surrounding them. Cumberland’s troops were destroying Achnacarry. For nearly a week, the Camerons had remained hidden in the caves high above the castle, hardly daring to hope the soldiers might move on and spare their home from demolition, but it was a wasted hope. The delay had only provided the soldiers ample time to strip the castle of anything of value and to set nearly five hundred kegs of black powder in and around the walls and apartments. The initial explosions had caused the ground to shudder and dirt to crumble from the walls and ceiling of the caves, and, since then, day in and day out, what remained of the centuries-old fortification was systematically bombarded and reduced to rubble.
Alex stood for hours at the mouth of the cave, staring at the twisting, writhing pillars of black smoke that rose from the shore of the loch. Respect for his brother’s wishes had been the only thing that kept him from going down the mountain again. Lochiel had said, and rightfully so, that it was better to remember Achnacarry as it had been, not as the smoldering, skeletal mass of broken beams and smashed wreckage the soldiers would make of it.
Moreover, the mountains were crawling with patrols. A clansman had brought them word that Cumberland believed the prince was hiding somewhere in the Western Highlands, and as determined as the duke had been to break the rebel army at Culloden, he was obsessed with seeing Charles Stuart caught and taken back to London for trial.
Under the auspices of searching for the fugitive prince, the soldiers were sweeping through the glens like locusts, burning, looting, raping, killing, stealing everything that might provide sustenance or comfort to the cowering farmers. They were leaving a wasteland in their wake, one that would take the people years, if not decades, to restore.
Anyone suspected of having fought with the rebels or of having supported their cause in any way was arrested and sent to either Fort William or Fort George to await trial. Deciding to save the aut
horities the time and bother of legal proceedings, the soldiers often took their captives no further than the first sturdy oak tree. A list containing the names of forty of the most prominent Jacobite leaders was being circulated throughout the Highlands, and impressive rewards for their capture were turning many a hungry eye up into the mountains. High on the list were Lord George Murray, James Drummond, Lochiel and his brothers Dr. Archibald and Alexander Cameron, Ardshiel, MacDonald of Glencoe … From being leaders of a glorious rebellion, they had been reduced to penniless fugitives; once chiefs and lawmakers, the voices of absolute authority, they were now solely dependent upon the loyalty and generosity of former tenants.
No one among the fugitive Jacobites knew for certain the whereabouts of Prince Charles. Lochiel seemed to think he had headed for the coast, hoping to catch a ship for France, but rumors placed him as far north as Caithness or south in the Lowlands of Ayr.
“As soon as Donald is able to travel, we’ll have to leave this place,” Alex said, taking Catherine’s hands and removing them from his waist, so he could draw her forward and bring her into his arms. “As long as Charles Stuart is on the loose, the soldiers will keep policing the area, searching the hills, the towns, the villages. Once again, as ever, it appears I am failing you. A hell of a husband and provider you chose for yourself, madam.”
Catherine nestled deeper into his embrace, careful of his wounded arm. “This is all I want, Alexander Cameron. Just this. Just you.”
Alex bowed his head and buried his lips in the crown of golden hair. “You have me. You also have my most solemn word of honor, I will never let you out of my sight again. No more conspiracies, no more intrigues, no more jousting at windmills. No more—” His voice faltered, and Catherine’s arms tightened around him. She felt helpless to say or do anything to ease the pain and bitterness in his heart. It was bottomless and endless; there was an eternity of agony in his eyes, a loss he would carry with him the rest of his days.
The Blood of Roses Page 53