So much death, so much pain. And for what? There was little enough of value in her packs—a few jewels, her clothes. She shut her eyes for a moment, sent up a prayer for the men in her escort, good men she’d known since childhood, friends and kinsmen. She looked at the dead man beside her. His eyes were still wide, but they no longer reflected anything at all.
John hadn’t moved. He was in the shadows now, and the firelight barely touched his pallid face. Had he slipped away? Left her here alone? She willed him to move, to give some sign he lived.
He twitched, his foot flexing against the frilly bonds made from her petticoat, and she nearly cried out with relief.
“The bastard Sinclair killed Sim,” Rabbie said, pointing at the body next to Gillian. The man tending his wounded comrade paid no attention. He was trying to bandage the dying one’s wounds, give him water, soothe his pain. She looked on, felt pity, despite the circumstances. The dying man thrashed and moaned in agony, and she saw tears in the other’s eyes.
Rabbie regarded the scene without a drop of compassion in his hard, dark eyes. “Where are the others?”
“Dead, or as good as,” said the last man. “The men we attacked were fine fighters.”
Gillian’s belly tensed. She watched as he opened a sack and dropped a collection of dirks and brooches in a pile next to the fire. She recognized a MacLeod badge, and a dirk with the cairngorm on the hilt that Keir prized. Her chest tightened with grief and rage. She watched Rabbie squat next to the pile, examining the items they’d taken from the bodies of her clansmen. Most of the weapons were bloody. He left them and rose to his feet.
“Then no one else is coming back?”
“We’re all that’s left.”
Rabbie merely nodded. “Then there’s a bigger share for us,” he said. “Let’s see what we have.”
He untied the pack that held her belongings. Frothy lace and filmy shifts spilled out onto the dirty ground. Rabbie tossed the garments aside, searching for valuables.
The man beside the dying lad turned just long enough to grab a linen gown. He tore it for bandages, used the cloth to soak up his friend’s blood.
The other man picked up a shift, as sheer as a spider web, meant for her wedding night, and peered at her through the filmy material, chuckling. “Yours?” he asked. She blushed and didn’t reply.
Rabbie whistled and unfurled the pink and gold silk gown—her masquerade gown—and held it up. “Now that’s the finest thing I’ve ever seen.”
All three men looked at Gillian, assessing her anew, their eyes roaming over her, growing hot. She clenched her fists, felt her throat closing.
Rabbie stepped over the pile of torn petticoats and bloody weapons, and threw the gown on the ground in front of Gillian. “Put it on.”
She stared at him. Surely he was joking. “I—I’m tied.”
He cut her bonds, dragged her to her feet, and shoved the gown into her hands. “Now put it on,” he commanded again. Gillian stood with the silk in her arms, arms that tingled, bloodless and nearly useless from being bound. She looked at the men watching her, their expressions hard and cruel and lustful. Not now, not in this gown, the gown she’d worn when John kissed her, the one meant to be her wedding dress.
She dared not glance at John or take her eyes off the man in front of her. Her cheek still burned from his blow, and if he hit her now . . . She would not allow him to strike her again, to rape her while she was unconscious, to draw his dirk across her throat and John’s.
She raised her chin. “I’ll need privacy,” she tried, but he laughed, a harsh, ugly caw, and shook his head. “Nay, ye’ll strip down here. If ye need help with the laces, Alan can do it for ye.”
“Me?” the second man gaped.
“Aye, you—part of the spoils,” Rabbie said. “We’ll draw straws to see who has her first once she’s dressed up and pretty.”
Rabbie pointed the dirk at her. “Go on.” He sat down to watch.
Gillian’s fingers were awkward on the front laces of the plain russet gown she was wearing. She undid it and slid it down over her hips. She was wearing a linen shift under it, but she felt naked. Rabbie gave a low, dirty laugh, and she felt her humiliation burn from ankle to hairline. She grabbed the pink silk and stepped into it, pulled it up. The low bodice exposed too much, and she tugged on it.
“There now. Lace her up, lad,” Rabbie commanded, and Alan stepped behind her. His hands were clumsy, but she felt the fabric close, tighten, plump her breasts and push them skyward. She resisted the urge to cover herself with her hands.
“Now what would Sheona say if she could see ye now, laddie?” Rabbie asked Alan. “When we’re done, ye can take her this gown.”
Alan didn’t reply, but Gillian could feel his breath on her shoulders.
“Now ye look like ye’d fetch your weight in gold,” Rabbie said.
Alan finished his task and walked around to look at Gillian from the front. “What does a lass need a gown like this for?” he asked softly. “What kind of things does a woman do when she’s dressed so?”
“It’s my wedding gown,” Gillian said.
“To him?” Rabbie asked, pointing at John’s slumped form.
She nodded silently, since it was less complicated than the truth.
Alan whistled softly. “What sort of wife are ye then?”
Rabbie chuckled and looked at the man tending the dying lad. “What say ye, Duncan? What kind of wife is she?”
Duncan looked up, frowning, and took in the gown. “Can ye cook, or sew, or wash clothes?”
“Aye,” she said.
“Then ye can cook our supper,” Rabbie said. He took a bag of oats from his own pack and handed it to her.
Just oats and nothing else.
“There’s meat in the saddle packs,” she said, knowing John, like all who traveled in the Highlands, carried food. There’d be some in Callum’s pack as well. “Dried beef.”
Rabbie jerked his head at Alan. “Fetch it.”
“And water,” she dared to add. “It’s impossible to cook porridge without water. And I’ll need a bigger fire.”
Alan sighed and picked up a bucket. “Now I ken what kind of wife she is,” he muttered as he went into the forest. Rabbie stayed, his knife—her knife—and his greedy eyes on Gillian. She measured oats into the pot.
Duncan continued to tend the man with the belly wound, glancing over his shoulder at Gillian only occasionally.
And that, thought Gillian, just left two—Rabbie and Duncan, since Hugh, poor dying Hugh, wouldn’t be a threat. But there was no opportunity to strike or flee yet, for she couldn’t go without John.
When the injured man groaned, and Rabbie and Duncan both turned their attention to him for an instant, Gillian closed her hand on Keir’s dirk. She slid it quickly into her sleeve and pulled her long lace cuff over it. When Alan returned with water, she began to cook.
* * *
John woke with a searing pain in his head. He forced his eyes open and looked around. He was in the woods and it was dark. Crickets were making a sibilant, swishing sound. He frowned. Crickets didn’t make that sound. He turned his head and squinted at the painful light of a small fire.
He saw the gleam of pink silk, the glint of gold, and he remembered Gillian on the night of the masked ball.
Surely he was dreaming, delirious. He blinked, tried to focus, but she remained, moving around a forest clearing in a ball gown.
Perhaps he was dead and this was heaven.
Or hell.
He tried to raise his hands to his throbbing head and found them bound.
Then he recalled the attack. He saw the MacLeods fall, had gotten Gillian away . . . What then? He looked around him. Besides Gillian, there were three men in the clearing, and one more lying on the ground, writhing and crying out in Gaelic. One more man was sprawled on ground next to him, his throat gone.
Gillian was stirring something over the fire, and the light made her silk gown shine. He saw stripes p
ainted on her cheeks and chin and remembered the paint the Cree, Mohawk, and Iroquois wore. Gillian also had a dark bruise that covered the side of her face from cheek to chin, and he felt rage rise at that. They’d hurt her, and he didn’t know how badly, what they’d done. He’d kill them all. He tested the bonds that held him, but the cloth bit into his flesh and held tight. The effort made his head ache. Was he in any shape to fight? He drew deep breaths, tried to clear his mind and vision.
He was going to need his strength and the element of surprise to save Gillian and get them both out of this alive.
* * *
The wounded man cried out, and Duncan held his hand, whispered to him, ran his big hand over his friend’s forehead. The lad’s face was pale, his eyes sunken, his lips already blue. Gillian could see the tracks of tears on Duncan’s cheeks in the firelight and how his throat worked with grief.
“My sister is a healer,” she said softly.
Duncan looked up, his eyes wide on hers, hopeful.
“Can ye help him?” he asked. “He’s my brother.”
“I have eleven sisters,” she said, coming closer. She looked at the wounded lad. He was young, perhaps fifteen. Her heart contracted.
“He’s never reived or stolen anything afore today. Never told a lie, or said an unkind word to anyone,” Duncan said. “He wants to wed, needs money to buy a wee farm.”
She knelt, peeled away the blood-soaked cloth that covered Hugh’s belly, and swallowed. Hugh would never marry or own a farm. He would not rise from this spot. She opened her mouth to tell his brother that, but Duncan grabbed her arm in a fierce grip, his eyes bright with tears. “Save him—Save him, and I’ll give ye a quick end before Rabbie can rape ye,” he said. He drew his blood-caked finger across his throat. “I’ll give ye mercy. Just—save him.”
Gillian swallowed hard and nodded. She could feel the dirk in her sleeve. “We’ll clean the wound, bind it,” she said. “I need—” She racked her brain, trying to remember the plants the healer at Glen Iolair used for wounds. “I need—hyssop, mugwort, and nettle,” she said. “Do you know them by sight?”
“Rabbie does,” Duncan said, looking so hopeful that guilt squeezed Gillian’s chest. She tried to remember Keir and Callum and Tam, to feel ruthless and vengeful, but life was precious. She thought of the lass this dying lad wanted to marry. Someone loved him.
Duncan jerked his head at Rabbie. “Hyssop, mugwort, and nettle.”
“Why should I fetch them?” Rabbie asked.
Duncan crossed and lifted him by the collar. Hugh’s blood smeared Rabbie’s shirt. “Because I’m tellin’ ye to, Rabbie Bain. Ye were the one who convinced Hugh to come.” Rabbie shook him off and strode into the wood.
Gillian cleaned the wound as best she could with plain water. She tore more cloth—one of her shifts—and bandaged the young man gently. She rolled a gown and placed it under his head as a pillow. His brother didn’t object.
She glanced at John from under her lashes and felt shock rush through her. He was watching her. She bit back a cry of relief and concentrated on Hugh.
The boy’s eyes were open too, mere glittering slits, his gaze fixed on her. “Sorcha?”
“His lass,” his brother muttered.
Gillian took the lad’s bloody hand in hers. “Aye, I’m here.”
“I have the coin at last, Sorcha. I did terrible things for it, but—” He coughed and blood spilled over his lips. “I love ye, sweeting,” he murmured, and his eyes drifted shut.
Duncan looked at Gillian, and she saw that he knew there’d be no saving the lad, felt fear of what he’d do to her now, and to John. Hugh squeezed her hand, and she murmured softly, and stroked his brow with her other hand. Duncan watched as his brother gasped, shuddered, drew another labored breath, before raising his eyes to her again.
“Your man is awake,” Duncan whispered, taking his brother’s hand from her. He looked at her fiercely and jerked his head. “Go. I’ll not stop ye, or him. Don’t wait until Rabbie gets back. I’m grateful for your kindness, mistress. I saw the dirk in your sleeve. Ye could have cut Hugh’s throat, taken revenge, and ye’d be within your right.” He jerked his head. “Get ye gone.” He called out to Alan, who sat by the fire. “Alan, come here, Hugh wants to tell ye something.”
“Thank you,” Gillian whispered. She rose as Alan took her place beside the boy. She drew the dirk and hurried across to John. She crouched, sawing through the bonds at his wrists. “Hurry,” John murmured.
Alan was still beside the boy, and Rabbie hadn’t returned.
“Can you ride?” she asked John in a whisper.
“Aye.” But the garrons were a dozen feet away. Gillian crossed and loosened the first one she came to, and reached for a second, but the beast pulled away, whickered an objection to the smell of blood on her hands, and Alan looked up. He leaped to his feet, yelling and reaching for a weapon.
But Duncan rose as well. Gillian saw his feet tangle with Alan’s. Alan sprawled on the ground next to the fire. They had precious seconds. She turned to find John, but he was already beside her. They needed weapons, a cloak, but there wasn’t time. She saw John’s pouch on the ground, reached for that. John tossed her onto the garron, and she grabbed the reins.
Alan was rising, reaching for a dirk, and John staggered, put a hand to his forehead, wincing. “Hurry!” Gillian’s heart hammered against her throat as he leaped onto the horse behind her. But Alan was beside them now. He grabbed a handful of her gown, held on. Gillian used the dirk, slashed at Alan’s hand, and he let her go. “Ride,” John said.
But Rabbie Bain strode into the clearing in front of them, standing in the way of escape, and Alan was rising behind them. “Bitch of a MacLeod!” Rabbie screamed.
He drew the dirk from his belt—her dirk—and threw it.
Gillian kicked the horse hard, swerved, and the knife flashed past, too far to the right. Rabbie ducked as the horse charged at him, threw himself out of the way as the beast raced into the dark wood.
“Stay low,” John yelled in her ear, pulling her against his body, covering her, protecting her, and she leaned forward over the garron’s neck and drummed her heels into the horse’s sides.
“Run!” she bellowed at the creature as it struggled through ferns and brush. “Run!” She cursed it, pleaded with it, cajoled it to go faster. Branches whipped her face and she clung to the horse’s mane as they flew into the dark, left the clearing behind.
A sob burst from her chest for all the kinsmen she’d lost that day—and for Hugh, as well. It had all been so pointless, such a terrible waste of life, and for what? Life was too precious, too short, to waste.
Then she dashed her tears away. They weren’t safe yet. Crying would have to wait.
* * *
Pain sang through John’s head as the garron stormed through the woods. He could smell pine, imagined for a moment that he was in the endless forests of the New World, on the edge of Hudson Bay . . . But he was in Scotland—God knew precisely where—and Gillian was beneath him, warm, safe, alive—and wearing a silk ball gown that flew around them like a sail, rustling in the wind. She was kicking the horse and yelling like a warrior. Their escape had been desperate and dangerous, clever and courageous, and he loved her.
Having her wriggling and shifting beneath him might have been delightful in other circumstances. It was still damned arousing, even now, running for their lives. She was magnificent. He grinned against her hair, kissed it. His head wound wasn’t serious after all, then, if he could still feel desire. He looked behind them, but there was nothing but darkness. No one followed. They were going to make it.
He almost laughed aloud. This shy, biddable lass—the one Fia had called delicate—had saved them both. This fierce, brave lass.
But it was dark, and he had no idea which way they were going. “Gillian,” he said, interrupting her argument with the garron. “We need to stop before we get lost.”
* * *
Gillian pulled the ho
rse to a stop. She feared John was fighting terrible pain for her sake. She tried not to think of the dying boy, or Rabbie’s evil face, or Duncan’s grief. She reached for John’s hand, wrapped tight around her waist. He twined his fingers in hers and squeezed.
She was shaking, but she was alive. They were alive. And free.
She looked around. The garron stood belly-deep in ferns, and there was no track in sight. Aside from the horse’s labored breath, all was quiet.
Still, the thieves might be following them, hunting them. They knew this territory. And if they caught them now, they wouldn’t care about ransom. She shivered, and John’s hand tightened. “Shh. We’re safe now, sweetheart.” He straightened, drew her back against him, and she laid her head on his shoulder and shut her eyes for a moment.
John was right—she had no idea where they were. She was giddy, exhausted, bereft, and shaking. Imagine escaping from a band of outlaws only to get lost in the wood! For a moment she grinned.
Then her smile faded. It was too cold to be out in the wood at night in a silk gown. They needed shelter and rest, a healer for John, and someone to find her kinsmen and take their bodies home. It was her duty to them. They couldn’t stop yet.
“We’ll ride to the top of that hill,” she said to John, and she took up the reins and urged the winded horse on again, leaning forward, her bottom as high off the saddle as she could raise it. She murmured endearments and praise to the labored beast crooned encouragement.
“Oh, lass, you’re killing me,” John groaned against her back, and she feared he meant his head, but realized it was another matter when she sat back. She felt a blush rise in the dark, warm her all over.
She stopped at the top of the rise. In the wide glen below, the river shone like a silver ribbon in the darkness. It was surrounded by hills, and there wasn’t a light or a farmhouse in sight.
“They’ll expect us to follow the river,” he said against her ear.
“Perhaps we should anyway. You need a healer.”
“I’m fine. Sassenachs have very hard heads,” he quipped.
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