Then Roxburghe was suddenly behind her, his arm wrapped tightly around her waist and lifting her out of the current. ―Let go,‖ she heard him yell over the roar of water. ―I‘ve got you!‖
Squeezing her eyes shut, she shook her head. She could not do it. She could not trust him. She could not go back! ―You let go!‖
His arm tightened on her waist. Somewhere in her brain, she knew he was standing in the water. ―You need me to get to shore. We can no‘ stay here. The water is too damn cold. Let go, Rose.‖
His body prevented her from slipping back into the current. Yet it was that very strength and power that dissuaded her from trusting her life to him. She clenched her hands tighter, terrified of letting go of the tree branch, a lifeline in the murky depths that had become her life. Fate had taken away her rainbows and her dreams and now it would drag her the rest of the way down.
Over the roar of water, she screamed. ―I will not go back with you. I—‖
―You can not return to the abbey,‖ he shouted near her ear. ―There is no place in Britain or France you will be able to hide from your father now. That is the way it is, Rose. But if you go over the falls, I go with you.‖
The thought gave her pause. The idea that she might die with him, might have to spend eternity bound in death to him, sharing the black waters of an abyss or the flames of hell together, was too horrible to contemplate.
But the choice to go to her father should have been her own to make, just as the choice to let go of the branch was now. In any case, they would soon both be too weak to fight the current. Roxburghe was right about the danger. She could fight him and end up too weak to pull herself from the water before they went over the waterfall.
She loosened her lifesaving grip and he caught her in his arms. Together they struggled to the bank and crawled out of the water exhausted and half drowned. She collapsed to her knees next to him. He rolled onto his back and placed one forearm over his eyes. Over the river‘s roar, she heard his labored gasps as she sucked in her own lifesaving breath. His Holland shirt had been torn across one shoulder. Like her, he wore nothing on his feet. She could still escape him.
Somehow, she still possessed the strength to make a dash for the rocks, but his hand shot out, grabbed her ankle like an iron vise and she slammed to the ground against her palms. She twisted around, ready to kick him, but he was already upon her, holding her down with one thigh insinuating itself between her knees. She launched a dazzling attack of her own, withdrawing the dirk from a slim sheath on her hip and laying it against his throat. The action had been so clean and swift she felt a moment‘s satisfaction. She met his narrowed eyes, even as her mind was immobilized by the terrifying idea he would strike her.
―I see now I erred in playing the gentleman and should have frisked you more thoroughly,‖ he said and spit blood. She must have hit him in the mouth.
―Gentleman indeed! I refuse to be your hostage.‖
His breath brushed her cheek, but that was not all she felt of him heavy against her.
―Have you ever cut a man‘s throat, Rose? ‘Tis messy.‖
She had never maliciously harmed any creature, yet her hand tightened on the blade.
―I would not die instantly,‖ he continued as if to convey there was a chill in the air. ―I would still have time to snap your neck. Such a lovely neck, too.‖
―Do not try to be charming, Roxburghe. I am extremely angry.‖
And she was cold and trembling. And frightened. She didn‘t want to kill him. She wanted only to escape. As if to confirm her intention, she tightened her grip on the blade. ―Do you doubt my courage?‖
If he had been angry before, something else had replaced the emotion. ―Nay, love. I am only debating how best to disarm you without getting my throat cut.‖
He made no attempt to remove the blade from her hand. He was smart, she realized. If he disarmed her by brute force alone, he would have given her psyche room to retreat. Surrender became a powerful tool of defeat if given by choice, even if that choice was an illusion.
She didn‘t resist when he finally eased the knife from his throat and pressed her wrist to the soft ground, into the mud and pine needles. His weight rested on his arms positioned now on either side of her head. Neither moved. They were wet and covered in slime. But it didn‘t veil the heat of him. Her shirt sucked to the crevices and curves of her body, and she may as well have been naked beneath him for all the protection the thin fabric provided her. Though she was frightened, something melted inside her.
The dirk fell sideways next to her hand.
The tips of his damp hair brushed her cheeks. ―I concede you handle a blade well. An interesting pastime for a sister of the abbey. Would you have really used it?‖
She fixed her gaze on his face. ―I . no one has ever tested me that far.‖
He frightened her and infuriated her, and she knew she should fear him. He did not move as she‘d expected. Lord above, now that the shock of nearly drowning and going over the falls was wearing away, she felt a moment‘s faintness. There was nothing casual in the way his eyes touched hers. She didn‘t know what emotion it was he caused to rise in her.
She‘d heard accounts where women were abused and violated by their captors. The infamous Kerr laird would know of such stories, too.
―Please,‖ she murmured, aware of her own weak response.
―Please, what?‖ he said in a low voice.
She stared into eyes that were wild and dangerous. She remembered in sunlight they were the color of a twilight sky. ―I want you to get off me. You are . heavy.‖
He laughed. Rose thought she hated him at that moment. She wanted to buck and dislodge him. But his chest already flattened her breasts and she dared not move. His face held no emotion, as if he could read her thoughts. ―If I wanted to rape you, love, the deed would already have been done.‖
Pushing away from her supine body, he stood and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Stunned, she stared up at the black velvet sky filled with stars and took her first deep breath. But without his body heat, the night air had chilled in the fine mist. After a moment, she propped herself on her elbows. Her wet hair fell over eyes like reeds. She shoved it back with her hand and flinched. Her entire body hurt. Especially her leg.
Roxburghe was squatting in ankle-deep water rinsing mud and blood off the back of one hand. He had injured himself on the rocks as well.
He watched her from beneath half-lowered lids. After a moment‘s pause, he returned to tending the cut. For a man with such large hands, he worked quickly and efficiently. He appeared to have a familiarity with cleaning wounds. Her gaze dropped to the ring on his hand before she caught herself and looked away.
―Do you always wear breeches?‖ he asked.
She endured the amusement she glimpsed as his eyes went over her and slowly returned to rest on her face, and accepted the question as rhetorical.
―Why were you hiding at the cemetery?‖ he asked.
She pressed a thumb against her temple. ―I go to the cemetery often when I wish to . pray. Everyone knows that.‖
―Including those border raiders?‖
She turned her head startled and alarmed. ―What makes you think they were not after you?‖
He propped an elbow on his knee. ―Because the abbey is in the opposite direction of the border crossing. And a conversation with the mountebank told me otherwise. No . I suspect your man, Geddes Graham, was after you. Not to play nice, either.‖
A heavy silence fell between them. If only she could think clearly. Roxburghe was right. She could never go back to the abbey. ―Geddes is a weasel. He is an informant for ‖ She refused to say my father. ―For the king‘s warden,‖ she said, the most hated man in all Scotland.
People would despise her, too, when they learned his daughter still lived. Her life as she had known it was forever at an end. A part of her wanted to laugh at the absurdity and utter irony.
Instead, she started to shiver
from the combination of wet, cold, and pain and wrapped her arms about her torso. ―Geddes and I have never got along. I took money from him that belonged to Jack.‖
Wrapping a torn piece of fabric from his shirt around his palm, Roxburghe returned to her side and knelt on one knee. Hard muscles encased not just his arms but his legs. She had so desperately wanted to find a weakness in him, yet his strength overwhelmed all impressions.
―You need to dry out. We cannot remain here. Can you walk?‖
He was asking if she could walk barefoot in the woods. The soles of her feet were as callused as cow‘s hide. She‘d grown up barefoot. But she had injured her thigh. She could feel warmth pooling against the cloth of her breeches. ―Wouldn‘t it be better to await your men to find us?‖
―Lest you have not noticed, we are on the wrong side of the river. I doubt even you have a taste for raider company, dressed as you are.‖ With care, he gently tilted her chin. ―I don‘t want to kill anyone over you tonight, Rose.‖
She pulled from his grip. Her ring on his finger, like the small earring in his ear, flickered in the moonlight.
And fueled the pace of her thoughts.
What manner of man would not be afraid of border raiders when he was but one against many? A border raider himself. The same kind of man who had let her keep her weapon—who would risk death to jump into a raging river after her.
That he had done so for the life of his brother only made her own actions and defiance less clear in her mind.
Ruark ascended the path that let away from the river, a small winding trail more suitable for goats than humans. The sound of rushing water still roared in his ears. Twice while climbing, he‘d stopped to hand Rose up the slippery boulders.
The trek had been treacherous for half a mile as the crude path narrowed upward through moss-covered rocks into woods of rowan, ash, and tall pine. Barefooted, the path was even worse. He‘d noted blood on one of Rose‘s feet. But there was nothing to be done at this moment. It was the only trail out of the wash.
Neither of them spoke until they reached the woods and the noise of the river faded. Without asking her permission, he sat her on an old rotten log to rest and reached for the torn hem of her breeches.
She misunderstood his intent and caught his hand to stop him.
―Easy, Rose. You have to allow me to look. You are bleeding.‖ He sat her foot in his lap and followed the trail of blood with his fingers up the slim curvature of her calf.
She squirmed. ―You do not need to touch me . ‖
He noticed that about her: she disliked being touched, or perhaps only his touch disturbed her, for she seemed consumed with tenderness for others.
It was not her foot that was injured, he realized. The blood came from a jagged gash on her thigh that he could see through a tear in her breeches. He silently swore. She had attempted to bind it with torn cloth from her shirt. He rent one of his sleeves, then rose and knelt in a shallow stream to rinse the cloth. He returned to her side. ―Why didn‘t you tell me you were injured?‖
―What would we have done? Hailed a carriage and ridden out?‖
He suspected Rose was the type of person who could be bleeding from an artery and still would not open her mouth in complaint or ask for help. She intended to carry her own burden whether she be his hostage or nay. So it surprised him when she squeezed her eyes shut, clearly afraid of what he saw.
―Is it . horrible?‖
He could see it was deep but she had done a fair job of stopping the bleeding. ―I will know more when I see the injury in the light of day.‖
―Bind it tightly, but not so tight you cut off the circulation to my leg.‖
Though he knew quite well what he was doing, he did not mind her instruction if it gave her the illusion that she held some power over her life.
Conscious of how she looked, her eyes and hair awash in a checkered patch of moonlight, and wearing a nearly transparent shirt, more undressed than other women he‘d bedded, he concentrated on applying the cloth firmly to her thigh and wrapping the makeshift bandage around the wound. And for one moment, decency reared its symbolic head, denouncing him for a bastard.
―Between what remains of my shirt and yours, we are running out of medical supplies,‖
he said. ―At this rate we will both be down to our breeches.‖
―Then ‘tis fortunate you allowed me to keep my dirk.‖
The tendons stood out on his arms as he leaned forward. ―Indeed.‖
He peered at her, reminding himself she was cold and in pain, and then suddenly looked past her down the narrow trail.
Something, a noise, voices in the night, touched the periphery of his senses. But he heard nothing now. ―What is it?‖ Rose asked.
He didn‘t answer. His body tensed. He stood. ―Remain here.‖
The path hooked sharply just ahead, and he walked toward an outcrop of rocks. Farther from the invading sound of the river, he could hear voices. Torchlight glow speckled a hollow below. He crouched behind the rocks and scrub. It was a group of some twenty or thirty redcoats bivouacked for the night.
Bloody Sassenach soldiers.
The flames from a central fire flickered over their faces and red coats and knee breeches. Some of the men were drunk. Others played dice. The late-evening breeze carried the sounds of their subdued laughter and voices as they sat around the fire. All, without exception, were well armed.
Rose suddenly came up behind him. ―Dragoons—‖
He clapped his palm over her mouth and dropped to the ground on his belly beside her, looking back down at the hollow. One of the men made a searching glance toward the rocky ledge but returned his attention to the tin plate in his hands as the bloke beside him said something that caused laughter.
Ruark pulled back slightly and peered at Rose, who glared back at him from over the rim of his hand. ―A scream carries too easily,‖ he said softly against her ear. ―If you make a sound, Rose . ‖
He meant the threat in his words. ―This is a well-armed British detachment and by the looks of it they have been drinking. Trust me. I can guarantee they will not treat you nearly as kindly as I have thus far.‖
She nodded in understanding, and he eased the pressure of his hand. The ferocity in her eyes dimmed only slightly as she spit dirt from her mouth.
―I do not trust you.‖ But her anger with him did not preclude her recognition of the danger she also faced. ―What are we going to do?‖
They‘d followed the only trail out of the wash. Rose was physically unable to go back the way they‘d just come. He studied the hollow and found a row of tents at the wood‘s edge, and he smiled to himself.
―We steal a horse.‖
―Are you insane?‖
The wind was rising and the sound of restless trees replaced that of the river. He could always count on rain in Scotland. Tonight he wouldn‘t mind. ―The patrol has bivouacked for the evening,‖ he said.
Careful not to dislodge any stones, he edged them down the trail, helping Rose walk with one arm beneath her shoulders. He could have slung her over his shoulder like a sack of oats and been done with it but he saved her the indignity. Much to her dislike some moments later, he borrowed her dirk. The thing was bloody convenient to have, and he didn‘t know when he‘d have use of a weapon. He wouldn‘t have allowed her to keep it otherwise.
An hour later, he had secured himself a fine black horse belonging to the officer in charge, and a pair of boots that actually fit. He had also acquired a knapsack and a cloak, which he gave to Rose when he returned to where he had left her, gagged and tied to a thick exposed tree root. He hadn‘t trusted her not to crawl away while he hunted down a horse and food, and the moment he‘d come across rope, he‘d used it. As he knelt in front of her, he warned her again of the consequences if she should cause him any more strife. Then he lifted her onto the saddle and climbed behind her. Only after they‘d ridden a distance from the Sassenach camp did he remove the gag, which was all that had
been left of his other sleeve.
―You are an ogre, Roxburghe. The French pox is too good for you!‖
He laughed and gathered her closer with one arm, liking the warm feel of her between his thighs. ―What do you know about the French pox?‖
―I know that nothing cures it.‖
With that pronouncement, he grinned. A faint clink of the bridle and her firm bottom pressed intimately between his legs, he turned the horse south. ―You are a lot of trouble, Lady Roselyn.‖
Chapter 6
Ruark carefully finished binding the wound on Rose‘s thigh as she slept. She laid on her back perfectly still, her hair spread around her head like a sunset halo and, despite himself, he lifted a strand and rubbed it between his callused fingers. She wore only her white shirt and the cloak beneath her that he had unwrapped from around her unclad form to tend her injury. She may as well have been naked.
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