“Yes, you do,” he said. “I will take you.”
“No!” The word erupted from her lips.
His lips twisted. “What’s wrong, Mrs. Blackburn? Don’t you trust me?”
“No.”
He laughed without bitterness. “Wise, but unnecessary. I won’t hurt you. Having little, I value what little I own: my word and my honor and my independence. The first I can keep because I have the skills and strength to do so, the second, because I have the will to do so, and the third, because I am tied to no man or woman except those to whom I am indebted. And among that very small number, your family is preeminent.”
She searched his harsh countenance, her thoughts awhirl. She wasn’t a fool. He was possibly her only real chance of getting to Castle Parnell. She had no desire to brave the road with some stranger, especially
under the conditions MacNeill had so succinctly outlined. But he frightened her. Instinctively, she knew he could cause her great harm, and she trusted those instincts. “No.”
His hand tightened into a fist. She shrank back involuntarily, thinking of the anger she’d seen him unleash upon Dougal and his cohorts. With a low curse, MacNeill stepped away from her.
“Maybe you are right,” he said harshly. “God knows. You may be right.”
Then, as she watched in amazement, he dropped to one knee and lowered his head, crossing his forearm over his chest, his fist clenched above his heart. The guttering candlelight glinted in his dark red-gold hair.
“Katherine Blackburn, I vow to serve you. I pledge my arm and my sword, my breath and my blood to that service.” His voice vibrated with intensity. “Whatever you ask, I will do; whatever you require, I will provide. By God’s will alone, and no man’s, I do faithfully pledge.”
He raised his face to hers. “Pretty words, are they not? And ones I’d die before I betrayed.”
His last words were so low, Kate wasn’t certain she had heard right. But he was speaking again, his pale eyes glittering. “This is my country. I know these mountains and these rivers. I know where to find shelter and where there is none. I can tell the wind’s caprice from her savagery, and I know paths that will lead us to your destination without taking us into harm’s way.
“I told you once that I would wait for however long it was necessary to discharge my vow. I have waited a long time. Faithfully. You can free me of the burden of my obligation and travel safely to Clyth. Let me do this.”
She flushed, amazed by the fervor in his voice. Three years ago he had surprised candor from her. Now, she heard an echo of that candor in his voice. This was madness, but surely the alternative—to trust her care to a complete stranger—was madder still.
“Yes.”
“I’ll get my things.” He rose with liquid grace, his attitude once again cool. His passionate pledge might never have been uttered. “We leave at first light.”
THREE
ACKNOWLEDGING ONE’S NEW CIRCUMSTANCES
SHE WAS AFRAID OF HIM. In spite of her bravado, she hadn’t been able to hide the flinch of apprehension, the start of anxiety whenever he’d moved.
Kit MacNeill strode across the dark yard, heedless of the sting of the icy rain or the wind whipping his hair. He had done what he’d been asked. After nearly two years in India, three weeks ago he’d stepped ashore at Bristol and promptly contacted the London solicitor to whom the abbot would relay any messages. He hadn’t expected any news. He’d been frankly amazed when the rose had arrived at his boardinghouse, shriveled and small but still golden.
The message that came with it asked him to safeguard Kate Blackburn’s trip to northern Scotland, relating the route she was to take and warning him that she would bitterly resent interference, so much so that the sender—had it been Charlotte? The signature was blurred—had begged him to let Kate believe that their meeting was happenstance. He had, of course, done as instructed. He had no choice. He had made a vow.
But that hadn’t kept him from resenting this interference in his life and the time wasted squiring a young beauty to her next potential husband’s home. He had a purpose in returning to England after so many years, and now that purpose was being delayed.
He’d spent three years trying to forget that he’d once had “brothers,” a surrogate family whom he had loved and trusted and to whom he’d been fiercely loyal. He’d spent the same three years trying to forget the past. He hadn’t. He couldn’t. There would be only one way he could move forward, by finding the man—possibly one of those self-same brothers— who’d betrayed him to an almost certain death in a French prison. But now…His pale gaze swung toward the dark inn. First there was Kate Blackburn.
So, she was frightened of him. Good. A frightened woman was more likely to do as she was bid. And that would expedite this little sojourn. He always did what best served his purpose.
Then why did he keep seeing her image, pale and stricken, as she’d watched the brawl? So what? She’d glimpsed a world where when people were hit, they bled. His world. Imagine her terror if she’d known some of the things he’d seen—or even done—in the last three years. A soldier’s life was not pretty.
True, she wasn’t all shock and fear. She had courage. His lips curved in an unwilling smile as he recalled her attempt to cow him. She’d glared down that straight little nose of hers like some haughty goddess condemned to a mortal frame, still acting as if she lived in York’s most fashionable and exclusive neighborhood and could, with a withering glance, send her inferiors on their way.
Well, in York, inferior he might be. But not here.
But neither was she. True, she’d come down a fair step, yet it hadn’t appreciably eroded her self-assurance, as if she had been born better than the rest of the world and nothing could erase her knowledge of that fact. Damn, but looking at her one could believe that her poise, the hauteur still flashing in her eyes, even the tilt of her chin, was indeed something that needed to be bred into a person. Her superiority was as much a part of her as the devil was part of him. Or so the monks had claimed. Which meant, quite simply, that no one could stand further from him than Kate Blackburn.
Too bad that knowledge didn’t keep his body from tensing under the lash of desire.
He slipped into the dark stables and found the stall housing his gelding, Doran. Hauling his ruined shirt over his head, he pulled off the wad of wool he’d pressed over the nick Dougal’s companion had opened in his side. He tossed it aside. She hadn’t seen that, thank God, or he might still be up in her room enduring an even more intimate touch.
He opened his leather satchel and withdrew one of his two remaining shirts, donned it, and settled down, his back to the stall door. From here he could see her lighted window. He would not sleep, because he had sworn to protect her, and nothing would keep him from fulfilling that pledge.
A dark shape crossed the lighted pane in her room. Kate.
He disdained the acceleration of his pulse, but he did not deny it; he’d had enough hairshirts to last a lifetime. Instead, he allowed her image to bloom unhindered in his mind’s eye, to study in reverie what he hadn’t permitted himself in actuality.
Time had pared away her dewy youth, revealing the strong yet delicate bones of a narrow face that angled more than curved. Mauve smudges rode beneath eyes as fine and dark as onyx. Only her mouth, plush and wounded, vulnerable and ripe, remained completely familiar. And why not? He’d mused on those soft, sweet lips through many a night and in many a terrible place.
He moved silently to the stable door, lifting his face to the icy rain, cooling the heated progress of his thoughts.
“I never seen a man so braw,” a feminine voice purred.
Kit looked over his shoulder at the girl standing in the far doorway. He’d scented her before he’d seen her, all earth and musk and want.
“They’re all talking aboot it. Aboot how ye caught up that dark lady and took her up the stairs to her room. They thought ye and her were”—she paused, grinning lasciviously—“keeping the night
alive.”
“They were wrong.”
“I know.” She sidled closer and wet her lips with her tongue. “I dinna ken yer plaid. Where is it from?”
“Nowhere.”
She smiled pertly. “Where do you come from then? Somewhere far away, I’ll warrant.”
“What do you want, lass?” But he already knew: a few hours of forgetfulness or a coin to purchase liquor or just a night of excitement with a savage-looking Scot to alleviate boredom. The camp followers and even some of the officers’ wives had wanted the same thing. At night, in the dark, lines separating gentleman and commoner, peer and pauper, blurred. Want was want.
The girl had laughed at his question but didn’t answer it. “I seen yer kind now and agin, come down from the mountains. Half tame they be. Like you.” Her gaze slid appreciatively up his frame. “Mostly they go south and that’s the end of them. But sometimes, I seen ’em heading back to the mountains after the world’s hurt them some and pleasured them some. Then what happens to them, I’d like to know? Not fit fer this world anymore, but neither fit for the one they run from.”
“What, indeed?” he murmured.
“Ye speak a good sight better than any of them that I ever heard, I’ll grant, but even educated-sounding ye can’t hide what you are.”
“And what is that?”
“A Highlander,” she said, as if surprised he needed to ask. “An uncivilized”—she sashayed closer—“homeless”—she wet her lips again—“two-fisted blackguard.”
She rose on her tiptoes and swept her tongue up his throat to the cleft in his chin. “And that is just the sort of man I’ve a yen fer.”
When he did not react, her smile thinned. “Yer not in here wanting her?” she asked disbelievingly, jerking her head toward the tavern. “Yer wastin’ yer time. She’s above ye. Yer howlin’ at the moon.
“I’m yer sort. I know how to please a man like you in ways a lady like that couldn’t even think up.”
He barely heard her; his gaze kept straying to Kate’s window. “Oh?”
She settled her arms about his neck and nipped his shoulder. He closed his eyes, and at once saw a fall of shimmering dark hair, irises as black as a tarn at midnight, and a soft, full mouth. His eyes snapped open. He’d lost his bleeding mind.
“Go back to the tavern.” He unclasped the girl’s arms, and she glared up at him.
“Yer a fool, turning down what’s offered free. Why?” she demanded,
He answered with a twisted smile, “It would appear I’m not done howling yet.”
St. Bride’s Abbey,
Scottish Highlands, 1789
“He’s no devil.” The lad with the clever face and blue eyes snickered at the boys ringing Kit. The boy who’d tried to steal Kit’s biscuit lay in a sniveling ball at Kit’s feet.
“He’s the devil’s spawn then, Dougie,” one of the other boys —Kit was too new to know any of their names yet —declared. “Or a wolf cub. I heard the brothers talking aboot him. They said he were born bad.”
Kit’s unlooked-for, and as yet unappreciated, champion scoffed. “They see wickedness everywhere. They be a bunch of priests,” he finished with unimpeachable logic.
“I say he looks wicked with them green eyes,” another young male opined from within the crowd. “Unnatural.”
How many times in Kit’s ten short years had he heard that? He balled his hands into fists, waiting for the blows that always seemed to follow those words.
“And you look stupid, Angus.” A tall, black-haired boy, a year or so older than Kit, pushed his way to the front of the crowd. Kit had never seen so bonny a lad, yet there was nothing feminine about him. “But I guess there’s nothing unnatural aboot that seeing how you are stupid.”
Douglas smiled at the newcomer with obvious relief. “Ye have a fair way with words, Ramsey Munro.”
Kit stood, waiting. Like he always had. Like he had when his mum had disappeared for days on end in town after town, like when the tavern lasses played with him like some amusing lapdog, like when the men his mum went off with cuffed him across the face and told him to wait in the alley, or the stable, or somewhere where they wouldn’t have to look at him.
“What’s this about?” the black-haired lad asked. Though clearly Scottish, he spoke in smooth, unfamiliar accents.
“John decided the new lad here had had enough supper and so took his biscuit,” Douglas explained. “Only the lad here didn’t agree. Now some of the others are thinking it the devil’s work that someone half John’s weight and size should beat him so handily.”
“Yer a swine, John,” Ramsey Munro said amiably, nudging the lad with the worn toe of his shoe. John sat up, wiping the snot from beneath his nose. “And a glutton. Did ye not ken the abbot’s lecture on the Seven Deadly Sins?
“As for this lad here giving John a thrashing,” Ramsey continued, “it was only a matter of time before someone figured out that John is only half threat, the other half being bluster.”
“He’s too damn still except fer his eyes, and they be hot as hellfire and cold as North Sea ice. T’aint natural the way he looks at a body,” a new voice said.
Most of the time his mum didn’t like looking at him either, but every now and then she’d grab his jaw in her long fingers and stare into his face until tears came to her eyes. Then she’d push him away and disappear. Last time she hadn’t come back.
Instead, a large, wide-girthed monk called Fidelis had appeared one morning, and after paying a coin to the hag who’d rented his mum a bed, he’d loaded Kit into a cart and driven him away. A week later, here he was, deep in the Scottish Highlands, at some place called St. Brides with another dozen or so lads, most of them no nearer God than Kit himself. But at least they looked nearer God.
He would have run off, except St. Brides sat as clean in the middle of nowhere as a place could be. Besides, he liked the mountains and the scent of pine trees, the clarity of the air, and the colors of the sky. And he certainly liked the fresh bread he got every morning and the biscuits and cheese that came each afternoon.
Kit looked down at John, knowing he hadn’t hurt the boy near as bad as he was like to be hurt by John’s friends. That was the way of things. But now, it looked like there might not be a fight after all, because of this Douglas — who even then Kit recognized as having that aura of authority that made leaders — and the black-haired Ramsey Munro.
But… why?
“Get up, John. Yer pride’s more hurt than anything else.” Douglas reached his hand down to John and with a sullen glance at Kit, the bigger boy allowed himself to be hauled to his feet.
“And don’t go glowering at our boy.” Douglas looked around at Kit. “What’s yer name, lad?”
“Christian. MacNeill.”
“MacNeill, is it? Hear that, lads? And he’s wearing a plaid,” he said, looking Kit over. “It is a plaid, in’t it? Hard to tell beneath so much filth.”
“It’s a plaid,” Kit said gruffly. His mother had given it to him a few years ago upon retrieving it from a priest in Glasgow. She hadn’t told him anything about it, except that it was his and his alone and better than nothing to keep out the cold.
“Aha! This isn’t just some Highland brat, boys,” Douglas declared to the group enthusiastically. “I remember I seen this plaid afore. Belongs to an ancient secret clan. Christian MacNeill could be one of their princes!”
Ramsey leaned toward Kit and spoke in a low voice as Douglas worked the crowd into a better mood. “Best mind John from here out, Christian — ” He stopped. “Couldn’t be a more unlikely name for you, lad. You must go by another.”
“I been called Kit.”
“Devil’s kit?” Ramsey’s winged brow lifted, but with such obvious irony that Kit didn’t hold back his answering grin.
“Sometimes,” he admitted.
“You! New boy!” A deep baritone shouted from the arched entry to the cloisters. Brother Fidelis, fourteen stones of benevolent kidnapper, came charging down t
he pea gravel path, his brown robes flapping about his stout ankles. The boys surrounding them fled at his approach, but he ignored their flight.
“I saw it all! I saw you strike one of the other boys. That is wicked! I will not stand for that sort of wickedness here. Do you understand?” Brother Fidelis pointed one dirt encrusted finger under Kit’s nose.
“It weren’t his fault,” Douglas said.
“ ‘Wasn’t,’ not ‘weren’t,’ “ Brother Fidelis corrected.
“John was trying to filch his biscuit,” Ramsey piped in.
Fidelis sniffed suspiciously, eyeing Kit sharply. “Striking one’s brother is a sin.”
“He ain’t my brother,” Kit proclaimed flatly. He had no family. And now that his mum had decamped, he was on his own. And best that way, it was, too.
“ ‘Isn’t,’ and we are all brothers here. All of us. It is how we survive. Without one’s brother, one is alone. Do you want to be alone for all eternity?”
Kit shrugged, Douglas shook his head emphatically, and Ramsey’s long eyes narrowed slightly. Fidelis sighed. “No, you don’t. But you’ll learn. As for fighting, if you are indeed wicked, I can do nothing for you. Wickedness is a matter for the Lord to attend. However, boys with too much time on their hands I can do something about. Come with me.” He chugged forth, confident his orders would be obeyed.
Wicked he might be, but a coward Kit was not, and so he followed behind the monk, noting a few seconds later that both Ramsey Munro and Douglas Stewart had fallen into step beside him.
“What are you doing?” he whispered.
“Going with you,” Douglas answered calmly.
“I have never seen Brother Fidelis punish anyone. I’m curious,” Ramsey added.
The monk led them on a circuitous route through the decrepit abbey, some of the ancient buildings so dilapidated that the walls were caving in under the weight of their years. He ducked around the priory and headed for a high stone wall overgrown with vines, stopping before an arched wooden door and withdrawing a heavy key from an inside pocket. He fixed it in the lock and pushed the door open on a groan, turning to the trio. If he was surprised that Kit had been joined by Ramsey and Douglas, he didn’t show it, but as his little raisin dark eyes peered over their heads, his mouth pursed.
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