Caribbean Scot

by Kimberly Killion

  The creak of wheels and the clopping of horse hooves drew close then came to a slow stop. A horse nickered. A tail swooshed.

  “What is it?” a man asked. Through the slits of her eyes, Robbie saw soft yellow light glowing inside the carriage.

  The driver stood and studied her. “There’s something in the road.”

  The man leaning out the side of the carriage craned his neck for a better view. His head jerked to the left to survey the wood.

  An owl hooted—their signal to attack. A rustle of leaves followed. Her fingers wrapped tightly around the hilt of her dirk as she waited for her kinsmen to emerge from the woodland and pounce.

  “’Tis a trap,” the man shrieked and pounded on the side of the carriage. “Move forward, I say. Run over it.”

  The crack of reins exploded against horseflesh. One of the beasts reared and then jerked against its harness.

  Holy Loki! Robbie pushed to her knees, but before she could gain her feet, a force from behind knocked her to the side of the road and landed atop her. Air rushed from her lungs in a whoosh. The passing wind of the carriage pulled her skirts over her calves and the wheel nipped at the tip of one boot. Fortunately her toes had been tightly curled.

  A mass of muscle rolled off her. “Ye call this safe?” Reid didn’t wait for her reply and raced after the conveyance just as Jax fell from the branches and landed in a squatting position atop the moving carriage.

  Trembling from a fright only seconds old, Robbie sat up wide-eyed and watched Jax pluck the driver out of his seat then effortlessly fling him to the ground. Undoubtedly spooked by the attack, the horses whinnied in protest. The carriage came to a sudden halt where her kinsmen had piled boulders at the entrance to the bridge.

  She ran toward the scene and only then did she see the cross mounted to the back of the carriage. Candle lamps hanging from four corners of the carriage glowed behind the cross like a religious halo. They were men of God. While disturbed by this knowledge, she selfishly felt relieved they were not vigilantes come to hunt the MacGregors.

  Atop their steeds the MacGregors surrounded the conveyance, blades in hand flashing beneath the moonlight. Eoin dismounted and approached the carriage then jerked the door open with a force that startled even her.

  Screams erupted inside, both male and female.

  Without compassion, Eoin reached inside, pulled a man out by his garments and tossed him to the ground. He scurried to regain his feet but tripped over his crimson robes—bishop’s robes.

  Robbie felt instant misgivings. She waited for an omen. Mayhap lightning would strike her down for this deed. While Grandda held a certain fascination for the Norse gods, he’d raised her in the Church after her parents died. They’d attended mass in the kirk every morn until the Colquhouns burned it down and killed Father MacCrouther.

  “Repent! Repent sinners!” the bishop wailed just before Eoin’s favored kinsman, Lyall, drove the butt of his dirk into the bishop’s temple.

  He sprawled out onto his back unconscious.

  Robbie fought the remorse drawing out her sympathies. Clergyman or no, the man had given his driver the order to run her over. His actions were by no means righteous or compassionate. While Robbie justified their actions, Eoin yanked a woman dressed in eels of silk out of the carriage. A young girl with matching white-blonde hair followed and clung to the woman Robbie could only assume was her mam.

  “Release the horses from the carriage. Lyall, gather any valuables inside.” Eoin gave the orders, which were followed without pause, then walked an intimidating circle around the sobbing twosome. He didn’t have to speak to instill fear in them.

  “We are people of God,” the woman deemed with a haughty lift of her chin that demanded they be treated with respect.

  “And what man of God travels in the secrecy of night with a woman and child?” Eoin asked in a tone filled with accusation.

  “We have nothing of value.” Their full skirts, trimmed in silver and gold threads, mocked her words. The soft plume bobbing out of her wide hat could buy twenty loaves of bread for the clan.

  Eoin looked down his nose at her, then ripped a gold button from her high-necked collar. “Remove your garments and your boots. Both of ye.”

  Robbie shook her head, lips parted to oppose Eoin’s order, but in truth, their garments combined would bring forty or fifty pounds from the right merchant.

  Lyall ransacked the interior of the carriage while Robbie’s kinsmen untethered the horses. Without further protest, the woman and young girl stripped down to clean white sarks and then watched Eoin stuff their heavy skirts and footwear into a wool sack. The girl’s sobs eased, but in their place came the incessant chatter of her teeth.

  When Eoin stood and stared at them, as if to imply they were not yet finished, Robbie found her tongue. “’Tis enough.”

  “Leave them their dignity.” Reid rounded the front of the carriage. The candle lamp fixed to the corner filled his sharply-boned face with shadows. His scowl was dark and full of contempt.

  Eoin narrowed his eyes on Reid, but instead of flaunting his status as the man was want to do, he yanked a gold crucifix from the bishop’s neck and mounted one of the mares bareback. “Stay behind to soothe them if ye choose, but when you’re done playing the martyr,” he gestured toward the remaining unsaddled horse, “confiscate the mare.” Eoin then directed his attention toward Robbie. “Ride Thor and try to keep up. Let’s move out.” Eoin kicked the mare’s belly with his heels, not waiting to see if his orders were carried out. He didn’t need to.

  The MacGregors followed him through the brook like pups to a bitch, and with their departure came a tense silence.

  Wanting nothing more than to distance herself from the raid, Robbie hooked her toe in the stirrup and mounted the enormous black stallion Eoin had stolen from the Laird of Luss last fall. She watched in wonder as Jax removed his fur which exposed his dark muscled body. Black images covered his back and the side of one leg, and most likely represented his achievements or his status within his clan. He stood naked save for the scrap of rawhide covering his pillicock and offered his heavy fur to the woman and her child.

  “Begone from us, you wicked son of Satan!” She slapped his hand away as well as his offering and hugged the girl tighter.

  Jax pivoted on his heel, leaving the fur at their feet. “White women are not smart.”

  Reid looked up at Robbie, his icy eyes filled with a disappointment that made her want to run to the nearest kirk and confess her sins.

  “This was far from honorable.” He walked away from her without so much as a backward glance.

  3

  ~ CONSEQUENCE ~

  Mayhap he was too late.

  With his hands clasped behind his back, Reid walked up the hillock beside Jax. The moon had guided them over the moor, but his memory of the land now led them through the mist-covered hills of Glenstrae—the land that once belonged to the powerful MacGregor clan. A force of nigh four hundred kinsfolk used to protect this land. His land.

  There had been a time when Da believed the MacGregors would always reap the splendors of victory, but something had changed. Something made Da give up his status and turn his back on the clan. Mayhap Da had simply grown tired of the fighting. He’d never wielded the sword with much expertise. Had Da made different choices, Reid might be leading Clan MacGregor instead of Eoin.

  God’s legions! He hadn’t come here to pine over his lost status, nor had he returned to lead the clan. But what if that was the only way to prove his worth to Robbie? Would he hold her respect as well as her affections if he helped regain the MacGregor name? Or would she remain loyal to Eoin?

  He didn’t want to accept that she was in love with the man or content with her life, but mayhap she was. Mayhap she was happy with Eoin, though Reid was surprised she’d forgiven his cousin for what had happened that night in the cavern.

  The years had changed her. She didn’t look at Reid the way she once had in her youth. The spark i
n her emerald eyes was gone, no doubt dimmed by defeat and pessimism. She wasn’t the woman he’d created in his fantasies. She wasn’t soft or whimsical. Instead, she was bitter, angry, and obstinate.

  Mayhap he should leave as she suggested and go back to Rukux, back to the Yucatán. He was respected there. The Mopán people didn’t see him as a coward. He was an esteemed warrior, a brother, a son. They were his family and had been for eleven years.

  Reid crested the knoll where the ancient stones still stood proud and tall. The smell of smoke clung to the wet haze surrounding them and guided him toward a fire burning in the middle of Leckie’s cattle yard. Three sides of the barn remained, but they were charred from fire like so many of the MacGregors’ homes he’d passed along the way. Eighty, mayhap a hundred men, women and bairns bustled round the fire. Reid estimated the clan had decreased by three-fourths. Had they died fighting the Colquhouns? Or had they left in search of a better life like Da?

  Oddly enough, they appeared jovial, no doubt telling lies of their victory, and he wasn’t certain he wanted to be a part of their merriment.

  “Did White Serpent make good decisions?” Jax rubbed the gooseflesh from his arms and waited patiently for Reid’s answer. For hours the man held his tongue while they walked the Scottish landscape. His friend knew the way Reid’s mind worked. He wasn’t impulsive, nor did he ever make decisions with haste.

  “We eat and drink.” Reid slapped Jax on the back and grinned.

  “We eat and drink?” Jax’s flat nose flared wider as he pointed in the general direction from where they’d crossed acres of land. “White Serpent thinks too much. We steal Fire Tongue and go back to the Yucatán.”

  Reid laughed outright at Jax’s persistence. “Mayhap, but not this night. Tonight we eat and drink.” Reid jumped a broken fence, but the instant he stepped into the firelight, silence wrapped around him like a cold blanket.

  The women stared at him, the bairns stared at Jax, and the men narrowed their eyes and reached for their weapons. Huddled by the fire, Robbie sat atop a thick log beside Eoin. Her honey-red hair glowed in the firelight, and her fair skin pinked with warmth. She was beautiful. She always had been.

  Her eyes met his and after a long painful moment she surprised him with a small smile.

  His heart skipped a beat, then picked back up again in double time. The world vanished, as if the sun and moon revolved around this woman. He imagined what it would be like to return from the hunt and have her waiting for him. In the vision he conjured up, she stood barefoot at the edge of his jungle with a bairn on her hip and another swollen in her belly. Of course, thousands of butterflies decorated the scene inside his head; yellow, blue, orange—

  “Where’s my horse?” Eoin’s question slammed the gates shut on Reid’s fantasy. His cousin swallowed and wiped the grease from his mouth on his already soiled sleeve.

  “’Twas not your horse,” Reid stated matter-of-factly, managing to pull himself back to reality.

  “I stole it and gave orders for ye to return with it.” Eoin sat up taller beside Robbie who twisted her hair round and round her index finger like she’d always done in her youth.

  “I decided it best not to leave a man of God stranded without means of travel.”

  “’Twas not your decision to make.”

  Reid knew Eoin flaunted his status, and he had to remind himself of his goals—none of which involved leading Clan MacGregor.

  Eoin cleared his throat and spit into the flames. “I suspect ye cost the clan a great deal of coin. What say ye, Lyall? Think ye we could have gotten five hundred shillings for the mare?”

  “Oh, aye, m’laird. Mayhap more.” Lyall stood and tossed another log on the fire. Sparks flickered upward like orange stars out of the flames.

  Reid pulled in a long breath and then exhaled. He didn’t have to let them goad him. He reached inside his surcoat, withdrew a small bag of coins, and tossed the satchel between Eoin’s boots. “Forty doubloons should cover the loss of your stolen goods.” And mayhap buy the women new kirtles and brogues, he wanted to add when he saw a dozen young girls drying wooden troughs with their thin skirts. He didn’t recognize any of them. But what he did recognize was the brand on their cheeks. He quickly glanced over scores of kinsfolk. Every woman in the yard, young and old, was marked the same as Robbie.

  Guilt made him turn back to Eoin, who scoffed at Reid’s offer but tucked the small satchel into his plaide. What the man did with the coin was out of Reid’s control, so he kept his suggestions to himself. He was more interested in the way Robbie hid her bemused smirk.

  “Reid MacGregor,” a woman bellowed with a voice coarse enough to peel paint. “Merciful Moses.” Not until the bone-thin woman rushed toward him did he recognize Nanna. The waistband of her soiled kirtle undoubtedly kept her sagging bosom from falling to her navel, but he would have expected nothing less from a woman who’d teat-fed half his kin for nigh three decades.

  Long after the plague took Reid’s mam, Da took Nanna to his bed and sired both her bairns, although she was beyond her birthing years. As she stood before Reid with soft, fawn-colored eyes filling with tears, he wondered if she regretted not accepting Da’s offer to take her, Shane, and Kelsa to the Yucatán.

  “Ye look well, Nanna.” He wiped a tear from her branded cheek as a rush of remorse spiraled through him. The same life-sucking guilt he’d felt when he first saw Robbie.

  “’Tis good to have ye home, laddie.” She pressed her trembling hand against his and peeked around his shoulder. “Did Calum return with ye?”

  Reid shook his head, wishing he could spare her his next words. “Da died three years past.”

  She inhaled a shaky breath, raised her chin, then as fast as a snake spit venom she transformed. “Shane! Bryson!” she bawled over her shoulder. “Fetch our Reid and his friend some fare.” She guided him to a log and then waved in Jax while the laddies retrieved meat from a young calf speared on a spit. “Come. Sit. Eat.”

  Nanna showed no prejudice toward his friend, but Reid wasn’t so delusional to believe the rest of the kinsfolk would treat Jax in like.

  Argyle Wallace limped around the fire, his crippled hands gripping the handle of a crooked walking stick. The right side of his face was smooth and lacked emotion, but the left pinched tight with wrinkles. “Mary-Robena tells me ye assisted m’laird on the raid this eve.” He fell onto the log beside Reid with a grunt.

  How in God’s name had these people survived?

  While Reid was glad to find Robbie’s grandda alive, the man had to be knocking on death’s door. Nay, he corrected. Argyle Wallace was standing beneath the archway.

  “You’d have been impressed with Reid’s friend, Grandda.” Robbie spoke over the fire between them. “Jax jumped out of the trees and landed like a cat atop the moving carriage.”

  Argyle leaned forward and studied Jax who was currently masticating a haunch of cooked meat. “Is he one o’ those savages?”

  Jax swallowed and pointed at himself. “Jax is not savage. Savage is a wild man who rapes and pillage.” He directed his black eyes toward Eoin. “White man is savage.”

  Jax really needed to practice the art of biting his tongue.

  “Holy Christ! Think ye I choose to live this way?” Eoin’s tone set a babe to screaming.

  Reid waited for one of the younger women to tend the bairn. Instead, Nanna rushed to a bundle wrapped in wool and cooed the wee bit back to sleep.

  Robbie inched away from Eoin, but he set his hand on her leg. “’Tis my duty to feed the clan. A duty that was not handed to me so much as forced down my throat. What would ye do? Please, pray tell. I welcome your opinion.”

  Reid’s gaze fixed on Eoin’s hand curled around Robbie’s knee.

  Jealousy rendered him speechless. It ate at his gut and tightened his muscles into knots of envy. He knew his cousin awaited a response. He could feel Eoin’s eyes on him, but couldn’t pry his stare from that simple intimacy.

  Eoin’s hand
slid lower, cupping the inside of Robbie’s knee, then he angled his arrogant chin and watched Reid like the hunter stalked his prey. The scabbit taunted him on purpose.

  Reid bit down hard on his back teeth and suppressed the urge to lunge over the fire. He had no right to feel such anger. Robbie wasn’t his woman.

  She laced her fingers in Eoin’s and set their clasped hands back atop her knee. “If ye were the Gregarach what would ye do?” Robbie’s question was not delivered in a defensive tone so much as a genuine inquiry.

  Reid controlled his breathing and glanced at those around him who awaited his input with the utmost interest. He was not the clan’s enemy, nor was he their savior, but something in between. For now, he accepted this undefined position. Patience was one of his greatest qualities.

  He untied the red sash around his calf and used it to wipe the sheen of sweat from his brow. “Mayhap you should consider uniting with your neighbors?”

  “Your memory obviously fails ye. We border the Colquhouns,” Lyall answered and stroked his dark beard, oblivious to the tension rolling through Reid’s veins. Lyall had been the youngest member of the council when Da resided as chieftain. The man had proven exceptional with numbers at a young age and was most likely acting as Eoin’s seneschal now. “’Tis doubtful they would align with us, given we killed two hundred of their kin at Glen Fruin.”

  ’Twas Reid’s first battle and not one he would soon forget. “Then what of the MacThomases?”

  Lyall settled beside Eoin and drank from a tin cup. “The MacThomases already pay us not to steal their livestock, but we cannae call them our allies, nor would we benefit from an alliance with them. They are small in number. The Colquhouns are our greatest concern. Not only do they control the borders and reside in the MacGregor stronghold, they also hold the king’s commission.”