by Nora Roberts
She woke with Brigham’s name on her lips and her heart thundering. Fighting for air, she lifted her trembling hand and found no blood. Slowly, struggling to separate dream from reality, she pressed the hand to her heart. It wasn’t a warbler she heard, but an eagle. It wasn’t the song of the river, but the moan of the wind.
He was alive, she told herself, and laid a hand over the mound of her stomach as if to reassure her child that its father was safe. Almost immediately she heard the whimper of the baby already born. Wearily she rose to make her way to the back of the cave. With Fiona’s help, Maggie held young Ian to her breast, where he sucked lustily.
“Serena.” Maggie’s voice was thin and her cheeks still deathly pale, but her smile was sweet. “He grows stronger every hour,” she murmured, and lifted a hand to stroke his downy head. “Soon you’ll have your own.”
“He’s beautiful.” With a little sigh, Serena sat beside her. “God was good enough to give him your looks instead of his father’s.”
Maggie laughed, settled comfortably in the crook of Fiona’s arm. “I didn’t know I could love anyone as much as Coll. But now I do.”
“I know the journey was difficult for you. How do you feel?”
“Weak. I hate feeling so weak and helpless.”
Serena stroked her cheek. “A man doesn’t fall in love with a packhorse, you know.”
This time Maggie’s laugh was a little stronger. “If some girl tries that trick with my little Ian, I’ll scratch her eyes out.”
“Of course, but you’ll be sure to teach it to your daughters.”
“Oh, aye.” Maggie shut her eyes. “I’m so tired.”
“Just sleep,” Fiona murmured. “When the bairn’s had his fill, we’ll tend him.”
“Will Coll come soon?”
Over Maggie’s drooping head, Fiona’s eyes met Serena’s. “Aye.” Fiona’s voice was soothing. “Very soon. He’ll be so proud of you for giving him a son.”
Serena gathered up the dozing baby as Fiona settled Maggie among the blankets. “So tiny.” Serena swaddled Ian and laid him to sleep. “It always seems a miracle.”
“It is.” Fiona looked to the far side of the cave to where Gwen lay curled in exhausted sleep. “Each child is a miracle. There is always death, Serena; there is always grief and loss. Without the promise of new life, we couldn’t bear it.”
Serena asked now what she had not been brave enough to ask before. “Do you think they’re dead?”
“I pray they live.” Fiona took Serena’s hands in hers. “And I will pray every moment until we know. You must eat,” she said briskly. “For yourself and the child.”
“Aye, but …” She let her words trail off as she glanced around the cave. “Where is Malcolm?”
“With Parkins. They left soon after you went to sleep. Down for more supplies.”
Frowning, Serena started to accept the bowl Mrs. Drummond offered.
“Don’t you fret about them, lassie, my Parkins knows what he’s about.”
“Aye, he is a good man, Mrs. Drummond, a steady one.”
A becoming blush glowed in the widow’s cheeks. “We are to be wed.”
“I am happy for you.” She stopped, her fingers tightening on the bowl. “Do you hear that?” she whispered as she set the bowl down.
“I hear nothing.” But Fiona’s heart had risen into her throat.
“Someone’s coming. Stay to the back of the cave. See that Ian makes no sound.”
“Serena.”
But even as Fiona reached for her, Serena was moving quietly to the cave opening. Ice ran through her veins, freezing her fear and making her strong. She would kill if God showed her no other way, and she would kill well.
With a steady hand, she picked up the pistol, then the sword. If the English had come, they would find women alone, but they would not find women defenseless. Behind her, Mrs. Drummond gripped a carving knife.
As the footsteps came closer, there could be no doubt the cave would be seen. Holding both weapons, Serena stepped out of the cave and prepared to do battle. The sun fell over her, striking her eyes so that she narrowed them even as she leveled the pistol.
“Still a hellcat, I see.”
Brigham, supported by Coll and Parkins, managed to grin at her as he was half carried over the broken ground. The light shone over his blood-streaked coat and breeches.
“Oh, sweet God.” Laying the weapons down, Serena ran to him.
Her face swam in front of his eyes as he struggled to speak again. He could only manage her name before darkness closed in on him and smothered the pain.
Chapter 15
“How bad is it?” Serena knelt on the floor of the cave beside Brigham while Gwen examined his wounds. The fear had returned, drying her mouth to dust.
Wordlessly Gwen probed Brigham’s side where the ball was lodged. A few feet away, Fiona dressed the gash in Coll’s leg while he stared in wonder at his son.
“The shot was meant for me.” Coll clung to Maggie’s hand. The fire in his leg was a dull, almost dreamy pain beneath his exhaustion. He was alive, beside his beloved wife and firstborn son while his friend lay bleeding from a bullet that had been meant for him. “He stepped in front of it, took it. We were trying to fight our way into the hills. We’d lost, everything was lost. We were separated from our regiment. I thought—at first I thought him dead.”
“You brought him back.” Serena looked up, gripping a blood-soaked cloth.
“Aye.” Coll turned his face into his wife’s hair. Wanting to smell only the sweetness of it and not the stench of death and battle.
He would never be able to describe the events of the last day and night. But he would always remember the desperation he had felt when he had carried Brigham into the hills. He would remember hiding like a wild dog and binding the wounds as best he could while the English searched the rocks and heather. He had hidden in the lee of a rock, too weak to cross the stretch of moor to a barn. There, lying in scrub with Brigham unconscious beside him, he had seen the soldiers come and set fire to the building. And he had heard the screams of the wounded who had hidden within.
He had made the rest of the miles to Glenroe mostly at night, supporting Brigham when he was conscious, carrying him when he was not.
“We were afraid for you,” he managed after a moment. “Afraid the English would come before we could warn you.”
“The bullet must come out right away.” Gwen pressed a cloth against the wound as all eyes turned toward her. “We must find a doctor.”
“There is no doctor.” Serena felt the hysteria bubbling up and fought to control it. Had he been given back to her only so that she could watch him die? “If we searched for one, we would only bring the English down on us.”
“I know the risk,” Gwen began.
“They would kill him.” Serena spoke flatly. “As an English nobleman, they would be doubly harsh. They would heal his wound only to keep him alive for execution. You must take it out.”
“I’ve never done anything like this.” Gwen closed a hand over Serena’s arm. “I lack the skill and the knowledge. I would kill him in trying to save him.”
Panic fluttered. Beneath her hands, Brigham moaned and stirred. “Better he die with us, here.” Her eyes were grim as she looked down at Brigham. “If you won’t try, I will do it myself.”
“My lady.” Parkins’s voice was as expressionless as ever as he stepped forward. “I will remove the ball, with Miss MacGregor’s assistance.”
“You? Can you?” Serena gave a brittle laugh. “We’re not talking about starching lace, man.”
“I have done it once before, my lady. That is once more than you. And Lord Ashburn is my master,” he said stiffly. “I will tend him. He will need to be held.” Parkins turned his gaze to Coll.
“I will hold him.” Serena leaned over Brigham’s body, as if to shield him. “And God help you if the knife slips.”
They built a fire and turned a blade in it until the tip glow
ed red. When Brigham surfaced, Gwen held a bowl of medicine heavily laced with poppies to his lips. Sweat poured down his face no matter how diligently Serena wiped his skin with a cool cloth.
“Sit with Maggie and Mother, Rena,” Coll said quietly. “Let me hold him down.”
“No. This is for me to do.” She braced herself over Brigham, clasping her hands on his arms, then lifted her face to Parkins. “I know you will have to hurt him, but for mercy’s sake, be quick.”
The valet had stripped off his coat and rolled back his sleeves to reveal thin, spindly arms. Serena closed her eyes a moment. She was putting her love, her life, into the hands of a man who looked able to do no more than shine boots. Opening them again, she studied the valet’s face. Steady. She had called him so herself. Loyal. More than loyal, she realized. As a man could love another, he loved Brigham. With a prayer, she nodded for Parkins to begin. And watched the knife cut into her husband’s flesh.
Even dazed by the drug, Brigham stiffened. Serena used all her strength to press him down even as she murmured to him, nonsense, endearments, promises. She watched the knife go deeper and ignored the rolling of her stomach.
As the pain of the knife sliced through the swoon and the drug, Brigham began to fight. Coll tried to take Serena’s place, but she snarled him away and summoned all her strength.
There was no sound in the cave but for Brigham’s harsh breathing and the low crackle of the fire. But the air was charged with silent prayers, said with a unity that made them as strong as a novena. Serena watched her husband’s blood stain the floor of the cave and his face go ashen. In her prayers, she begged to take some of his pain into herself and spare him.
“I’ve found it.” Sweat streamed down Parkins’s face as he probed for the ball. In his heart he prayed that his master would faint and escape the pain. But his thin hand was steady. Slowly, terrified of causing more damage, he began to guide the bullet out. “Keep him still, my lady.”
“Get the damn thing out.” She shot a furious look at Parkins as Brigham moaned and struggled under her confining hands. “He suffers.”
She watched, her breathing harsh and unsteady, as Parkins pried the small ball of metal from Brigham’s flesh. Before Parkins could release the breath he had been holding, Gwen was taking over.
“We must stop the bleeding. He can’t lose much more and live.” Competently she began to pack the wound. “Mama, will you see to his arm and shoulder? They are less severe, but look ugly. Mrs. Drummond, my medicines.”
As Brigham went limp again, Serena leaned back. Her arms and back were trembling with the pressure. Carefully, mindful now of the child, she made herself relax. “How can I help?”
Gwen glanced up only briefly from her work. Serena’s face was as pale as Brigham’s. “By getting air. Please, leave this to me.”
With a nod, Serena rose and moved slowly to the mouth of the cave. It was nearly dusk again, she noted. How quickly the time had passed. And how strangely. A year before it had been Brigham, carrying a wounded Coll. Now it was Brigham who lay near death. The time between seemed like a dream, filled with love and passion, laughter and weeping.
She could see the hills going purple in the lowering light. The land, she thought. Would they now lose even that? They had fought, they had died. Coll had told her that their father’s last words had been “It will not be for naught.” But the man she loved lay wounded and the land they had fought for was no longer hers.
“Lady Ashburn?”
Blinking, Serena brought herself back. She was Lady Ashburn. She was a MacGregor. She laid a hand over her stomach as the child within kicked. A new life. A new hope. No, she thought, she would not say it had been for naught.
“Aye?”
“I thought you might enjoy a hot drink.”
She turned, nearly smiling at the formal tone of Parkins’s voice. He was wearing his coat again, and the perspiring, intense man who had removed a bullet might never have been. “Thank you, Parkins.” She took the cup and let the liquid soothe her raw throat. “I would like to apologize for speaking to you as I did.”
“Pray do not consider it, my lady. You were distraught.”
Serena lifted her hand to her face as she was caught between tears and laughter. “Aye. Distraught. You have a steady hand, Parkins. A steady heart.”
“I have always strived to, my lady.”
She let out a long breath, swiping at her face with her knuckles. “Have you a handkerchief, as well?”
“Of course, Lady Ashburn.” With a slight bow, Parkins offered one of sensible cloth.
“Parkins, you have served Lord Ashburn today, and you have also served me. There may be a time when you require a favor of me. You have only to ask.”
“My service was given without condition, my lady.”
“Aye.” She took his hand, causing him to color a bit. “I know it. The boon is still yours when you need it.” She offered him back the damp handkerchief. “I will go sit with my husband now.”
The wind picked up and howled like a wild beast. It fought its way through the blanket over the cave opening and sent the flames of the low fire dancing. In its shrieks, Serena heard what her ancestors would have called the spirits of the hills. They laughed and moaned and mumbled. She felt no fear of them.
She watched Brigham through the night, unable to sleep even when Gwen pleaded with her. The fire burned through him, so hot at times Serena feared it would eat him alive. Sometimes he spoke, in rambling sporadic sentences that told her he was reliving the battle. Through his words, she saw more clearly than ever how complete the slaughter had been. Once he spoke to his grandmother, telling her despairingly of the dreams that had been shattered by the English guns.
He called for Serena, and would be soothed for a time by her murmurs and by her hand, cool on his brow. He would wake again, delirious, certain that the English had found her.
“I will sit with him, Serena.” Fiona knelt beside her, laying a comforting arm over her shoulders. “You need rest, for yourself and your child.”
“I cannot leave him, Mama.” Serena wrung out a cool cloth and stroked it over Brigham’s pale face. “I am easier here than I would be if I tried to sleep. Just looking at him helps somehow. Sometimes he opens his eyes and looks at me. He knows I’m with him.”
“Then sleep here, for just a little while. Put your head in my lap as you did when you were a girl.”
With Fiona’s gentle persuasion, Serena curled up on the floor of the cave. Reaching out, she covered Brigham’s hand with her own.
“He is beautiful, is he not, Mama?”
With a little smile, Fiona stroked her daughter’s hair. “Aye, he is beautiful.”
“Our baby will look like him, with those fine gray eyes and strong mouth.” She closed her eyes and listened to the fearless song of the wind. “I loved him, I think, almost from the first. I was afraid. That was foolish.”
Fiona continued to soothe and stroke as Serena’s words grew slurred with sleep. “Love is often foolish.”
“The child is moving,” she murmured, smiling as she drifted off. “Brigham’s child.”
Brigham’s dreams were unrelenting. Sometimes he was back on the moor, trapped in the smoke and fury of battle. Men died agonizing deaths around him, some by his own hand. He could smell the blood and the acrid scent of gunpowder. He could hear the pipes and drums and the unrelenting boom of artillery.
Then he was limping through the hills, the fire in his side and the mist over his brain. He thought he smelt burning—wood and flesh—and heard screams echoing in his head.
Just when he knew he would scream himself from the sound of it, it stopped. Serena stood beside him, wearing a white dress that glittered over her skin, her hair falling like melted gold.
Sometimes when he opened his eyes he would see her, so clearly that he could make out the smudges of sleeplessness under her eyes. Then his weighted lids would close again and he would be pitched back onto the battlefield.
At the end of three days he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, a sleep as peaceful as death.
Waking was something like being born, confusing, painful, helpless. The light burned his eyes, though it was dim in the rear of the cave. Weakly he shut them again and tried to orient himself with sounds and smells.
There was earth and smoke and, oddly, a smell of cooking food. There was also the sickly scent of poppies that spoke of sickness. He heard murmurs. With the patience of the weak he lay still until he began to make them out.
Coll. Gwen. Malcolm. Relief poured through him nearly as strongly as the delirium. If they were here and safe, so was Serena. He opened his eyes again, wincing at the light. He was gathering his strength to speak when he heard a rustle beside him.
She was there, sitting with her knees curled up close, her back against a wall of rock. Her hair had fallen forward, almost curtaining her face. A wave of love all but drained him.
“Rena,” he murmured, and reached to touch.
She woke immediately. Emotions raced across her face as she shifted close to run her hands over his face. It was cool, blessedly cool. “Brigham.” She lowered her lips to his. “You’ve come back to me.”
* * *
There was so much to tell him, so much to hear. At first Brigham was only strong enough to stay awake for an hour at a time. The memory of the battle was clear, but that of the aftermath was, mercifully, a blur to him. There had been pain, a hotter, sharper one than the throbbing ache he felt now. He remembered being dragged and lifted and carried. There had been cool water poured down his burning throat. Once he remembered coming out of a half swoon when he and Coll had stumbled across six bodies.