Cates, Kimberly (15 page)

CHAPTER 9

Gavin sat on the edge of his cot, wads of silver gauze he had been attempting to fashion into a princess hat resting in his hands. The clamor of the children as they worked up bits of costume for their game seemed a thousand miles away. He felt as if he had taken a blow to the chest, the bands of tension that had made the past two weeks hell screwed tighter than ever inside him.

Dealing with his wound had been bad enough. Concealing its seriousness from Adam's sharp eyes and Mama Fee's loving gaze had proved harder still—fighting through fever, mastering the tremors that had coursed through his body. But that torment had been made even worse by the fact that Rachel was constantly nearby, coiling tension tighter with the memory of a forbidden kiss, fraying his nerves with the shadow of an accidental embrace, opening up aching, gaping holes inside him that could never ever be filled.

And if he hadn't already had to endure more than any sane man could stand, he'd had to endure that display of temper outside, had to listen to her royal highness, the general's daughter, flinging out judgments about the way he and Adam had chosen to handle Mama Fee's grief. Then she'd plunged on, spouting tales about Sir Dunstan's heroism until Gavin wanted to grab her by those slender arms and shake her until she saw sense. He'd wanted to take her far away from the Highlands and from the English knight who would one day destroy her.

The need to save Rachel de Lacey was a tearing, biting thing that left him shaken to the center of his already battered soul. But she didn't want to be saved, Gavin reminded himself fiercely. She had her hero— a soldier with every decoration for bravery possible pinned to his chest, a man who was not a coward.

Coward.
Long-suppressed pain knifed again through Gavin. Never would he forget the look on Rachel's beautiful face when she had seen the scars on his back, the revulsion, the accusation, as if being in the same chamber with him might taint her somehow. Worse, far worse, was the slightest look of pity that had flickered in her eyes, as if events at Prestonpans had unmanned him.

Bitterness welled up. God, Gavin thought he had dealt with the label that he'd been branded with the day of that fateful battle. He'd believed that he was able to dismiss charges of cowardice with wry, dark amusement. He'd never stooped to defend his actions or to hide the truth from anyone who asked. That scathing honesty was part of his punishment, his retribution against the dreamy-eyed fool he had been. He hadn't given a damn what anyone thought of him—it couldn't be more brutal than his opinion of himself. Why was it that Rachel de Lacey fired in him this need to spill out his private agony? Amidst the horror of that day, he had almost lost his soul. Why was it so vitally important that she understand?

He laughed bitterly. How could the daughter of Lord General de Lacey understand the gut-crushing horror Gavin had felt, facing blood and treachery, wanton death and destruction? Men had screamed in agony as they died—and they were the lucky ones, their torment ended swiftly, unlike those who writhed on the ground, an arm, a leg blasted away by cannon fire. Death, that sweet release—to be reached only after an eternity of hellish suffering?

No. If he spoke for a thousand years, he could never make Rachel understand, because if she dared understand, it would shatter everything she'd ever believed, would topple her general father from his pedestal, her betrothed from his bower of hero's laurels.

Gavin's mouth set grimly. As if Dunstan wouldn't topple himself soon anyway. Would the man truly be wily enough, canny enough to hide the atrocities he'd committed from his bride? Wouldn't the shadows of the helpless he'd cut down cling to his sharp-edged features like some dank malaise? Wouldn't tales of the poison he had spread through the Highlands come back to haunt him when this madness faded, when the threat of rebellion was banished and sanity returned? When Englishmen realized once again that the Jacobites who had fought and died were their brothers, their cousins, their friends—men who were misguided, perhaps idealistic, but not vermin to be exterminated?

Even if Rachel never discovered what her betrothed had done here in Scotland, there would be other wars. God curse the devils that prompted men to battle. Dunstan Wells would embrace them, glory in them. Someday, perhaps when Rachel was holding her own little son on her knee, she would discover the truth: men like Dunstan were greedy for that child's blood—worse still, for the child's very soul.

The image of Rachel and her child at the mercy of a man like Sir Dunstan made a fist clench about Gavin's heart, but there was a good chance that Dunstan wouldn't hurt his own family. One of the most chilling ironies was that a man like Dunstan, who could slaughter other men's children, would be exceedingly loving to his own—tender when they ran to their papa with a scraped knee or a bee sting. But wouldn't that make it even more devastating when Rachel discovered the truth?

Gavin grimaced, knotting a length of pink satin into the princess hat. Rachel's inevitable disillusionment wasn't his concern. She was his captive, his hostage, the tool he was using to get the children to safety. He couldn't save the whole world, no matter how much he wanted to.

What could he do? Go to Rachel? List the atrocities Dunstan had committed? He recalled the disbelief on her face, her outrage at the children's game. What if he tried to tell her that Barna's grisly pretending was based in fact? She would jeer at Gavin, shout at him, refuse to believe—and in the end, she would leave the Glen Lyon's lair, run back to her life, her betrothed, to a place where Gavin could never defend her.

"Don't worry." Gavin jumped at the soft child's voice, a small warm hand patting his. He looked down to see little Catriona nibbling on a plump pink lip. "You're looking fearful frustrated," she said in a small voice, wistfully eyeing the bits of silver and pink material as a new-fledged fairy might its first set of wings. "If it's too hard, you don't have to finish it."

Finish it.
The child's words echoed inside Gavin.

He had no choice but to follow through with his plans to the bitter end. Rachel de Lacey wasn't one of his foundlings, one of the battered souls he'd protected beneath his meager shield. She didn't want his help. Hell, the mere suggestion she might need it would make the lady dissolve into amazed laughter.

Yet with every day that she stayed in the Highlands, with every night she tossed and turned on the heather bed Gavin had shared with her that one night, Gavin had lost a little more perspective—he'd caught glimpses of the woman she hid beneath her haughty façade. He'd wanted to reach past all that to the gentle, gallant, confused woman who watched with suppressed yearning every careless caress he and Adam and Mama Fee exchanged.

Inexpressible longing surged through Gavin, flooding past anger and resentment to touch secret corners of his own heart. It was so devastating, so unexpected, that he shook himself inwardly, shoving the image of Rachel de Lacey from his mind, and focusing on the child standing so quietly before him.

Gavin tied one last knot in the silvery hat he'd been fashioning and draped it over Catriona's cherubic curls. The big-eyed moppet smiled at him. "You can fix anything!"

His heart wrenched, his hands feeling awkward and empty and powerless. "If only I could," he said, touching the little girl's cheek. "Now, run out and show Mama Fee and Mistress de Lacey your treasures. I'll be out in a little while."

After I've managed to sort out these feelings inside me—after I rein in this infernal ache crushing my chest.

The children scampered outside, bellowing for Mama Fee, leaving Gavin alone. He took his spectacles off and cast them onto the desk, then buried his face in his hands, wishing to God this whole thing was over with—the children safe, Rachel...

Rachel returned to the care of the man she had chosen?

God, why should he care...

"Glen Lyon! Glen Lyon!" Barna's piercing shriek made Gavin leap to his feet, grab for his pistol, racing out the dark tunnel of the cave. Barna barreled into him headlong at the cave's entrance. "She's gone!"

"Who? Mama Fee? She's likely gone to fetch water or—"

"Not Mama Fee! That thrice-cursed English scum of a lady!"

"What the blazes?" Gavin shoved past the boy and into the light. Sunshine struck to the backs of his eyes, blurring everything, blinding him for a moment. "Rachel? Mama Fee, where the devil is Rachel?"

"I told you you shoulda kept her clapped in chains!" Barna wailed his indignation.

"Barna! The silly games you're after playing!" The old woman's face whirled into focus, bland and smiling as a baby's. "Don't get all blathered, Gavin, sweeting. You look as if you think she's run away from you, now!"

Gavin struggled for patience, his gaze flashing about the glen, searching desperately—praying that Rachel had slipped out to answer a call of nature or to gather some sweet herb for Mama Fee—praying that she hadn't done anything so foolish as to fling herself on the mercy of this wild, untamed land. It was a land awash with desperate men and blood-drunk soldiers, a place where the mention of her name might bring her to a torturous fate beyond her imaginings at the hands of men who had lost everything to Sir Dunstan's cruelty. They were men with nothing left to them but dreams of seeing their enemy suffer as they had, their children had, their women had.

She couldn't have gotten far on foot.

"Which way did she go?" Gavin demanded of Fiona as he thrust his pistol into his waistband.

The older woman looked stunned, her eyes clouding, her mouth pursing. "You can't go hauling her back here like a sack o' grain just because the two of you had a tiff. It's best if you let her go off alone—"

Gavin cursed himself for a fool. How could he have left Rachel unattended? He'd lost himself so far in his own morose musings that he doubted he'd have heard if a brigade of horsemen had stormed up.

Horsemen... thunder and fire! He wheeled, glancing to where the horses had been tethered. Adam's was gone. So was... hell, the only one left was...

Gavin bit out a vile curse and hit the ground running, grabbing up the dilapidated saddle and worn bridle that remained. His face determined, he turned and faced the snorting, wild-eyed beast aptly named Manslayer.

Rachel leaned low over her mount's neck, driving the beast faster, harder. A knot of panic had swelled with each mile that disappeared beneath her horse's hooves, the unfamiliar landscape seeming alive to her, wild and hostile, filled with a sense of brooding that chilled her.

Furley House... that was the name of the place the Glen Lyon's men had spoken of when she'd overheard them—a manor house that had once belonged to Jacobite rebels and was now to be used as a headquarters for the troops whose job it was to crush the Highlanders forever.

Please God,
Rachel thought,
let the English still be there.
Surely any contingent of soldiers would know she had been abducted, or if not, would aid her the instant she told them who she was. Perhaps even Dunstan would be there, masterminding the search for her, mustering all his skill, all his power to save her from the rebel who had stolen her away.

He would be thirsting for vengeance against those who had taken her.

Rachel quelled a vision of Gavin Carstares's band of Scottish children—the casualties of war she had dismissed with perfunctory regret so many times before. Yet now they had faces, voices. Now Rachel knew that they cried for their lost sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers when they believed no one could hear them. She knew that there was one man who never failed to help them through their pain.

Rachel blinked suddenly as the horse shot past a copse of trees. How many times in the past two weeks had she lay still in the shadows, hearing Gavin softly soothing the little ones? Twice, she'd awakened to find him drowsing on his pallet, several children nestled about him like slumbering puppies.

His strong artist's hands had been so gentle, silhouetted against Catriona's curls or Andrew's cheek. The nightmares had been banished from the children's faces, driven away by Gavin's tenderness, yet even in the flicker of the single lighted taper, Rachel could see that the children's night terrors had found a new home in his gray eyes.

A branch lashed Rachel's cheek, and she was glad of the stinging pain. He was her enemy—the man responsible for days of terror—her imagination subjecting her to every horror one human being could perpetrate against another. He was a rebel, not some broken knight errant, some embattled angel, some wounded hero for her to heal. He was everything she loathed and despised—a man with scars on his back, on his honor, in the deep, smoky reaches of his eyes.

Why, then, did she feel this tearing sense of loss as she raced away—to escape, as any soldier must.

At the top of a rise, she reined in her horse, her gaze scanning the area below. In the distance, she saw a cluster of cottages, a smattering of red uniforms and horses milling about.

Soldiers! Rachel's heart leaped. There must be a dozen of them. She turned for a heartbeat to cast one last look back, a strange sense of loss tugging at her. The odd sensation in her chest was lost as she heard hoofbeats from behind her. Another soldier? Or could it be an enemy—someone set to follow her? At that instant, the horseman broke from beneath the curtain of trees.

Rachel gaped as if some Celtic god of vengeance had just split the earth beneath her feet. The man rode as if fused to the untamed beast in some pagan communion, hair the deep gold of a thane's ancient crown whipping back from a face set hard with fierce intent.

She didn't know how long she sat there, frozen, captive of the vision of horse and rider thundering toward her. Gavin Carstares—the poet and dreamer of the Glen Lyon's lair—was suddenly transformed into something heart-poundingly primitive, something that sang to the most elemental part of Rachel in a wild, bewitching voice.

It was the hard yank of emotions inside Rachel that jarred her from her trance. She straightened in the saddle, attempting to turn her mount, jar it into a canter, but at that instant, a low whistle echoed out from behind. The roan whickered in answer, prancing and rearing, dancing on its hooves, but no power on earth could get the animal to move forward. In desperation, Rachel smacked the reins down hard on its rump. The animal wheeled and started to canter toward the gray-eyed sorcerer that seemed to hold it under some mystic power.