The words wrenched her gut as they rolled off her lips, but she didn’t care. She wanted Conall to hear, and believe. She wanted to hurt him, though a man like him—a man with no heart—couldn’t be hurt.
Rob muttered something incomprehensible, then stood. “Up with ye, lass. I’ll have my plaid back.”
She rose and shook out her soaking gown. “Go back to the village. Our talk is finished.”
Rob shook his head at her but did not answer. After a long moment, he ambled off in the direction of the loch.
Mairi picked up the ax and poised it once again over the felled pine. Her chopping echoed in the wood, and the sweat she broke began to warm her frigid limbs. After a time, she looked up and fixed her eyes on the gnarled larch.
Conall was gone.
He waited at the camp till near midday, but she never came. What did he expect? Her feelings about him were made clear in the wood that morn. He was relieved, in a way, that she loathed him. It made his departure easier. Or so it should.
Conall positioned the well-worn saddle across the black’s wet back and cinched it tight. Rain sluiced off the horse’s withers. “I’m sorry, laddie,” he said. “’Tis not a day for traveling, but we shall go all the same.”
The black stamped a hoof, splashing mud onto Conall’s soggy boots. Jupiter sat in a puddle nearby, looking miserable. All of them were soaked. The smell of wet wool, wet dog, and wet horse assailed his senses.
He pulled himself into the saddle and adjusted his weapons.
“Rob’ll be vexed ye didna wait for him,” Dougal said. He and Harry stood in the rain, waiting for their orders.
“I told Rob, and I’ll tell you,” Conall said to them. “I want every man here at Loch Drurie. At least until the trade boats arrive. When I reach Monadhliath I’ll send wagons back for the goods. Harry, you know what to do after that.”
The scout nodded. “Aye, I’m to cut out part of the Dunbars’ share and see it safe to Falmar Castle in payment of their debt.”
“Take Rob and fifty men, and if Symon willna accept it, you’re to—”
“Aye, I know,” Harry said, and patted the bulge underneath his plaid and next to his heart. “Offer the silver.”
Conall had given it to him that morning. Aye, well…Iain had told him to use it in his dealings as he saw fit, and this was the best use of it he could imagine. “Remember,” he said to both of them, “you’re not to let Mairi go with you to Falmar. If you have to tie her to a bloody tree—” and likely they would “—you’re to keep her here at all costs.” Safe, he thought to himself. “Do you understand?”
Harry and Dougal nodded.
“Send the rest of the goods to Monadhliath for distribution to the clans.”
“Aye,” Dougal said. “Ye can count on us.”
Conall nodded, then took a last look around the camp and over the newly built docks floating on the slate waters of Loch Drurie. He’d done what he’d set out to do. His brothers would be pleased. At least that was something.
But he felt neither accomplishment nor satisfaction, only an emptiness that gnawed at his gut. His gaze drifted to the lake house and a torrent of raw emotion welled inside him.
“Did she no’ return?”
He turned his mount in the direction of the feminine voice and was surprised to see Dora standing in the rain, a plaid draped over her head and shoulders. He should unfurl his own and do the same, but there was something about being soaked to the skin and iced to the bone that he liked.
’Twas a penance of sorts, he guessed. Not much of one, when he considered the magnitude of his sins. His kinsman John’s untimely death—or murder, he reminded himself—lay heavy on his heart. He’d make certain the warrior’s widow and children were well provided for. ’Twas the least he could do, and another reason not to delay his departure for Findhorn.
And then there was Kip, whom he’d allowed against all better judgment to get close to him. The boy looked on him as a son would a father. Conall knew the feeling, for he’d felt much the same about his uncle, Alistair Davidson.
Dora spoke again, snapping him out of his thoughts.
“Nay,” he said. “I havena seen her.” Mairi was probably still in the wood, and for a moment he considered going after her. He didn’t want to leave things this way between them. He’d tried to explain himself yesterday in the garden, but had not gotten very far.
Perhaps ’twas because he didn’t really know how he felt about her. How could he explain his departure to her if he, himself, didn’t understand his own feelings? He knew that Iain’s summons was enough of a reason to leave.
But it wasn’t the real reason.
He smiled at Dora and turned the black north, toward the forest path leading from the camp. Jupiter, who normally ran ahead, anxious to be the first to break trail, plodded beside him, eyes dulled and head down.
“Wait!” a small voice cried from the village behind them. “Conall, wait!”
Jupiter was the first to turn, and his eyes lit up. He barked, nearly spooking some of the Chattan mounts tethered nearby at the edge of the camp.
Kip tore across the beach at a full run. Jupiter bounded toward him and the two collided in a muddy and exuberant embrace. The mastiff licked the raindrops from Kip’s face while the boy hugged him fiercely.
Conall dismounted. He at least owed the lad a proper farewell.
Kip saw him and wrenched himself from Jupiter’s affections. “Conall!” he cried, and raced toward him.
Conall knelt on the wet sand, and Kip tackled him. The boy’s arms went ‘round his neck like a vise. Conall embraced him and all at once felt the tears.
He choked back a strangled sound—for Kip, for Mairi, for John the drummer and for all of those he’d hurt—and battled the confused emotions raging within him. His love for the boy was a bitter and cruel confirmation of why he must leave, and leave now.
“Keep Jupiter with you, lad,” he whispered in Kip’s ear, clutching him tightly so the boy wouldn’t see his tears.
“Nay, I canna,” Kip said. “He…he’d remind me too much o’ ye.”
Conall squeezed his eyes shut and his tears broke hot on his face. The sheeting rain would mask them from the others who stood nearby, watching, waiting, he knew, to see if he’d have a change of heart.
Conall clutched the boy tighter and wept.
He had no heart.
It had turned to stone long years ago, and had grown dangerously brittle with Mairi Dunbar’s love and loathing.
He pushed Kip away and, before the boy could protest, vaulted onto the black’s waiting saddle. One light kick and the stallion responded, lurching toward the path that would lead them from Loch Drurie. Jupiter followed reluctantly.
At the edge of the camp, a flash of color caught his eye on the wooded hillside. He felt her before he saw her, and pulled his mount up short just inside the cover of the trees.
Mairi stood on the hillside, soaked to the skin, her hair plastered to her face, fists balled at her sides, and simply stared at him.
His heart beat erratically in his chest as he fought the overwhelming urge to leap from his horse, scramble up the hillside and sweep her into his arms. He held her gaze and willed her speak.
One word. One move toward him. One sign, and he’d damn his convictions to hell.
The black stirred beneath him, anxious. Jupiter barked. He was aware that all eyes were on them—Dougal, Harry, Dora and Kip.
He begged her with his eyes to stop him, but she did not.
He was trembling now, and gripped the reins tighter to still his hands from shaking. She hated him, and he couldn’t blame her. She was right—he was a rogue who cared for nothing and no one. Her eyes confirmed it.
The black whinnied, and Conall kicked him forward, sharply this time. They lurched into the wood, and he felt Mairi’s eyes burn into him.
He swallowed hard and didn’t look back.
Two hours later, on the ridge top above the standing stone near Loch
Drurie’s northern shore, Conall reined the black west toward Falmar and Geoffrey Symon’s hunting place.
His timing could not have been better. Weekly, on the day following the Sabbath, Symon hunted alone in the wood north of his demesne. Conall knew today was no exception.
The detour would cost him but an hour. There was unfinished business yet between them, and Conall was determined to settle it before moving on. The memory of Mairi bound to Symon’s bed still burned in his mind. ’Twas a vision he’d ne’er forget.
Conall’s dirk was already in his hand when he at last found the chieftain in a stream-cut ravine, kneeling beside a rushing tumble of water over rock, slaking his thirst.
Rain beat down in sheets as he signaled Jupiter to stay, slipped from the black’s saddle and approached Symon on foot, the downpour masking the sound of his footfalls across a sodden blanket of autumn leaves.
At the last moment Symon turned.
Too late.
Conall’s arm was already ‘round him, his blade under Symon’s white throat.
Chapter Fourteen
It rained all afternoon.
Mairi didn’t bother to lift her skirts as she slogged through streams of muddy water snaking between village cottages shut tight against the weather. The Dunbars and most of the Chattan had taken shelter against the weather. No one was about, save the odd warrior patrolling the docks and the beachside camp.
Loch Drurie’s choppy waters darkened to a mottled slate. Even in foul weather Mairi had always loved the loch. But not today. When she looked out across its austere surface, all she saw was the presage of a cold, harsh winter.
All she felt was alone.
Her gaze drifted along the fine, straight lines of the newly built piers and floating docks. Their tightly lashed timbers swelled and rolled gently on the water’s surface.
She wished her father could see it. What she’d done. What they’d all done together. She was glad he was dead, but all the same, a part of her wished that Alwin Dunbar could have seen, and been proud.
Rain pummeled the slate roofs of the village cottages, but she knew those within were dry and warm. She had Conall to thank for that, she supposed. Over the past weeks, he and his men had repaired and fortified every croft. Every family had a proper home, every child a safe place to sleep.
The changes in the village were subtle, yet taken as a whole she could not deny the marked improvement. Everywhere she looked, she saw signs of Conall’s intervention and the Chattan’s handiwork.
He didn’t have to do it, but he had. Why?
She started aimlessly up the hill toward her father’s house and pondered the question. It had been but a couple of hours since Conall Mackintosh had ridden out of her life, and during that eternity of time she’d refused to think of him.
But she thought of him now, and couldn’t stop the tumult of emotions brewing inside her, overwhelming her mental sobriety. When she closed her eyes all she saw was his face, his eyes mirroring the colors of the forest and glassed with tears as he crushed a weeping Kip to his chest.
It had taken all of her strength, a fierce and unforgiving will and the fear she clung to so desperately to harden her heart and stop herself from rushing into his arms.
Her bare feet trudged along the slippery path. She moved in a trance and paid no heed to the ankle-deep mud peppered with twigs and sharp stones, and the bitter wind whipping at her hair.
She felt what she wanted to feel—Conall’s hands on her body, his lips on her mouth. Their lovemaking that second time in the half-light of dawn had been tender and fraught with untested emotion. Nothing like the frantic desperation of their first coupling.
Dora was right. He might have taken her at any time, could have taken her right there on the pier at their first turbulent meeting. But he hadn’t. He’d waited until she was willing, until her desire had matched his own.
Why?
She tripped on a half-buried stone and was wrenched from her stupor. Her father’s stripped and muddy grave peered up at her through the rain. How had she come upon this place?
Perhaps Alwin Dunbar held in death answers to questions she was too afraid to ask. She stared at where the headstone or at least a cross should have been, and imagined his rotting corpse beneath.
“Does he speak to ye ever?”
Mairi whirled in the direction of the voice. “Walter!”
The old man smiled and pulled his ragged plaid over his head and shoulders as protection from the rain. “He talks to me sometimes, ye know.”
Mairi snorted. “Oh does he? And what does my esteemed father say?”
Walter stepped closer and offered her part of his soaking plaid. She shook her head. He shrugged and wrapped it tightly around himself. “He says that sometimes a man must do things that are misunderstood by others. Especially by children and women.”
The old man was daft, but Mairi loved him all the same. “He says all that, does he?”
“Aye. Well, the first part anyway. The last bit is mine.”
“About the children and women, ye mean?”
He nodded.
“So what are ye telling me, old man? That there are things I dinna understand?”
Rain trickled into the deeply etched lines of Walter’s craggy face. “That’s exactly what I’m tellin’ ye. Alwin never forgave himself for your mother’s death, ye know.”
“Ye mean my mother’s murder? What, d’ye think he should have? The bluidy coward stood there and watched while those heathens butchered her.”
She ground her feet into the mud and willed the old man to challenge her. Mairi had been there, and she remembered. She’d been a child, but all the same she knew exactly what her father had and had not done.
“Aye, he let it happen.” Walter nodded slowly. “But ye dinna ken why.”
“Because he was a coward, a drunkard. A man who cared naught for his family or his clan.” She knew this well. ’Twas burned into her every day of the ten years following her mother’s murder.
“Nay, lass,” Walter said. “A coward he was not. And he didna take to drink till after Gladys was killed. Ye know I’m right.”
“Hmph.” Perhaps he was right, but only about the drinking. “What does it matter? He watched her die and he did nothing.”
“He had a choice to make, and he made it.”
Mairi frowned. “What choice? What d’ye mean?”
This talk of her father made her uneasy. Walter, and others, had tried in the past to broach the topic with her, but she’d have none of it. Nor would her father ever discuss it.
“’Twas a blood feud between a nomadic clan and ours. That day they outnumbered us two to one. Alwin dragged ye to the house and we surrounded it, protected ye both the best we could.”
“Aye, I remember it.” But she didn’t want to remember. She turned to leave, and Walter grabbed her arm.
“Ye shall hear what I’ve got to say, lass.”
“Nay.” The old man’s grip was a vise. “I know what happened, and there’s no changing what I feel.” This was madness. She didn’t want to hear. She tried to think of something else, of Conall or of Kip, but could not.
“’Twas either Gladys or ye, lass.” He willed her to his gaze. “She lay on the beach, wounded, and couldna walk. We were fighting up the hill to keep the nomads from the house.”
“Aye, I went to her. I tried to get her up, but I couldna.” A wave of sickness gripped her. “I couldna,” she breathed.
“Nay, and neither could Alwin, lest he carry her and leave ye behind.”
Tears stung her eyes as, all at once, she remembered how it was. She shook her head, not wanting to believe. “He could have saved her! I could have run!”
“Nay, lass. Nay.” Walter loosened his grip on her. “Nomad warriors were already on the beach. Ye were but a child. They’d have caught ye and cut ye down—or worse—had Alwin done different.”
Mairi sank to her knees in the mud and made fists of her hands. “Nay, nay, he could ha
ve saved her!” She didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t believe it. Her tears broke as she choked back a sob.
“Alwin swept ye into his arms and ran for the house. And there we could protect ye. After a time, we drove them off.”
“They…killed…her,” she sobbed, and felt Walter’s gnarly hand light on her shoulder. “He…we…watched them.”
“He had a choice, lass. And he chose you.”
She plunged her hands into the cool mud of the grave and wept. Not for her mother, or for herself, but for her father, Alwin Sedgewick Dunbar.
He’d had a choice. He’d chosen her.
Perhaps somewhere deep inside herself she’d known it all along. Mairi tilted her face skyward and let the rain wash the tears from her eyes. Walter stroked her wet head, as one might a child’s, then turned to leave.
“Th-thank ye,” she said.
The old man nodded, then disappeared behind the house.
Mairi sucked in a breath and willed herself to stop shaking.
Sometimes a man must do things that are misunderstood by others.
She closed her eyes and saw Conall’s tortured expression as they stood there that morn, just hours ago in the rain. Something snapped inside her.
Mairi shot to her feet.
Dora stopped dead as she rounded the house and saw her. “What the devil are ye doin’ out here? Look at ye! Why, ye’re covered with mud.”
Mairi gripped her arm. “Did Rob go with him?”
“What? Ow, let go!”
Her thoughts raced, her emotions tumbled in a fever of confusion. But one thing was clear. She must find him. “Which way did Conall go? Is Rob with him, or did he stay—”
“North, toward Findhorn,” Dora said. “And nay, Rob is here. The crazy fool rode off alone.”
She could catch him up. Aye, she must.
Mairi knocked Dora nearly off her feet as she flew by her. “Och, sorry!” she called back over her shoulder.
“Where are ye goin’ now? What are ye doin’?”
“Nowhere. Nothing. I’ll be back in a—” She tripped over a branch, but quickly recovered her footing. “I’ll be back.”
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