CLAIMED BY A HIGHLANDER (THE DOUGLAS LEGACY Book 2) (43 page)

And a plague on Hector for leaving their defenses so thin in the west.
Damn him!

Everything Rory touched had turned to ashes, just as Hector predicted. For the first time, Rory considered that it might actually be true that he was not his father’s son and that he had brought all this on his clan because he did not have chieftain’s blood.

Regardless, he knew what he had to do.

He sent a man to ride ahead to alert his uncle, then he set out with his brother and thirty men for Fairburn Tower.

As he approached the fortified tower house, he counted the warriors in the clearing surrounding it.

“I see two hundred to our thirty,” Alex said beside him. “And that’s just outside the house.”

“There are more men in the woods,” Rory said. So far his uncle’s men were letting them pass.

“I’m not sure this is wise,” Alex said. “I hope ye know what you’re doing.”

Rory hoped he did too. But he could think of no other way out of this.

“Hector of Gairloch!” he shouted when they halted in front of the house. “I’ve come to discuss the terms under which I will leave MacKenzie lands.”

CHAPTER 46

Rory laid out his conditions for leaving.

“You will cease provoking our neighboring clans and make peace with the Munros and the Grants,” Rory said. “If ye lay the blame for your attacks and the death of Grant’s grandson on me and say you’ve banished me, that will go a long way toward appeasing them.”

Hector shrugged. “I’ve no need to fight them now.”

“I have one last condition. Ye must return my wife to me,” Rory said. “I know ye took her, and if you’ve harmed her, there will be no deal between us.”

“Now that I know how much she means to ye, I wish I had kept her,” Hector said. “She said that the trouble with the Grants led ye to set her aside in favor of Grant’s daughter. I felt sorry for the lass, ye sending her off in rags with no protection, so I let her go.”

“I did not set her aside,” Rory said between his teeth.

“Then that lass is a damned good liar,” Hector said. “She begged me to let her board a ship that was waiting to carry her to France.”

Rory’s heart lurched, but he kept his expression passive. He told himself that Hector could have invented the story, for it was common knowledge Sybil’s brothers were living in exile in France.

“The ship had some frilly French name. Ach, what was it?” Hector said. “
La Fleur
, that was it, and it was sailing for Calais.”

Hector could not know the name of the ship and where it was sailing without speaking to Sybil. “She’s here,” Rory said. “I know she is.”

“Ach, ye hurt my feelings with your lack of trust.” Hector spread his arm out to the side. “But you’re welcome to search the house.”

Rory knew exactly where to look. When he was a bairn, his uncle locked him in the dank dungeon beneath the tower and left him there until his mother found him hours later.

He charged down the stairs and through the undercroft, grabbed a torch from the wall sconce, and pushed open the door to the dungeon.

No one was in it. But on the stairs, he saw fresh drops of blood.

***

“Rory is not the man ye thought he was,” Hector said with a satisfied smile. “He’s given up on the chieftainship without spilling a drop of blood.”

Hector had kept Sybil bound and gagged watching from an upstairs window in the tower long enough to see Rory ride up and to hear his declaration. It had broken her heart to hear it. As Rory and Alex entered the tower, Hector’s men hustled her out a back door to her new prison, a small, windowless hut a few hundred yards from the tower house.

Now Hector had come to gloat.

“The man who deserves to lead is the one who can outwit his opponents,” Hector said, tapping his finger against his temple. “Rory is no match for me.”

“If Rory gave up the chieftainship, it was because he knew you’d destroy the clan if he didn’t,” she said. “He put the welfare of the clan before his own ambitions. That’s what a great leader does.”

“That’s a surprise, coming from a Douglas,” Hector said with a smirk, and sat down on the only chair in the hut.

She glanced at Brighde and Lùcas, who were bound together in the corner and had the sense to keep quiet. At least they were still alive.

“He was willing to give up on you as well,” Hector said. “Once he’s gone, I’ll make certain he hears ye chose to be Finnart’s mistress rather than live with him now that he’s a lowly warrior who must earn his living with his sword.”

“He won’t believe that,” she said. “Rory knows I love him and that I’d never go to Finnart. And I won’t!”

“I suppose ye can jump overboard and drown instead,” he said. “But ye strike me as a survivor, so I’d wager ye won’t.”

She would get away somehow and find Rory no matter where he was.

“Which would ye say pains a man more,” Hector asked, “losing the woman he loves to death or to another man?”

Surely death would be harder if he truly loved the woman. She shook her head, unwilling to seal her fate. So long as she lived, there was a chance of escape.

“I can tell ye which is worse.” Hector swirled the whisky in the cup he brought with him and stared into the amber liquid. “If she’s with another man, he has hope that she’ll leave him. Hope is a wound that festers every day, driving him mad.”

“What would you know of love?” she said.

He looked up, as if he suddenly remembered she was there and realized he had spoken his thoughts aloud.

“I want her son to suffer as I did,” he said. “That is the only reason I’m letting ye live.”

CHAPTER 47

“Duncan will come for me now,” Brighde said, in a high voice. “Hector doesn’t need my grandmother now that the laird has given up.”

“When he comes, that will give us our opportunity to escape.” Sybil put her arm around the girl and nodded at Lùcas, who was more alert now, but still very weak.

They would have one chance, and that was all. Sybil had her blade, and they had searched the hut’s dirt floor until they found two small shards from a broken pot. They each had a weapon now, and they had surprise on their side.

She tensed as she heard someone sliding the wooden bar on the outside of the door.

“Just like we practiced,” she whispered to the others.

But when Big Duncan filled the open doorway, she knew they could never be ready. He was too big, too powerful, too skilled a warrior. Their weapons were pathetically tiny, Lùcas could barely stand, and Brighde was little more than a child. But they had to try.

They remained in their places on the floor, holding their hands behind their backs as if bound, waiting for Duncan to make the first move. Their plan was to wait until the last possible moment to launch their attack.

Duncan did not even look at Sybil and Lùcas. Without a moment’s pause, he pounced on Brighde like a starving wolf attacking a helpless lamb. Brighde screamed.

Fury surged through Sybil, obliterating all fear and any thought of their plan. She flew across the hut and landed on his back like a wild cat, driven by rage and the instinct to protect her own. Before he knew what hit him, she plunged her blade into the side of his neck.

Duncan bellowed and arched back. She clung to him with her legs and one arm around his enormous neck as she stabbed him again, this time in his back. All her efforts seemed to do was enrage him.

He spun, knocking her against the wall as he tried to shake her off.
Oof!
The breath went out of her as she hit the wall again, but she managed to hold on. But then he caught hold of the back of her gown and flipped her over his head, slamming her onto the floor on her back. She lay stunned, her vision sparked with stars.

Just before the beast of a man fell on top of her, she managed to roll to the side far enough to avoid his full weight. But she was trapped under his leg and arm.

“Run! Run!” she shouted to the others. The door was open. “Get help!”

She bit Duncan’s arm and wriggled out from under him while he cursed her. She stumbled to her feet and ran out the door after Brighde and Lùcas.

Duncan caught her around her knees and she fell in the tall grass. Duncan turned her over and leaned down, his hideous face distorted by rage. “You’re going to pay for this!”

She struggled against the enormous brute, but he had her pinned, and he was so heavy she could not move at all.

“Rory!” she screamed as Duncan started pulling up her skirts. “Rory!”

***

Rory lay flat on his belly watching the hut. He suspected Hector had moved Sybil out of the Fairburn Tower so he could make that show of letting Rory search the house. That must have amused the bastard. After riding away, Rory sneaked back and watched the tower house until he saw Duncan leave.

It was always Duncan who did Hector’s dirty work, so Rory followed him. He could not risk giving away his presence until he was sure this hut was where Sybil was being kept. He wouldn’t have a second chance, so he held his breath and waited while Duncan went inside the hut.

Rory heard a scream and took off running across the field toward the hut. A young man leaning on the shoulders of a lass scurried out of the hut. As Rory raced across the field, the pair saw him and waved frantically.

A moment later, Sybil ran out of the hut with Duncan right behind her. Duncan dropped her, and cold fury shot through Rory’s veins. As Sybil screamed his name, he barreled into Duncan.

As they rolled on the ground, Duncan slammed a heavy fist into Rory’s bruised side, where he’d cracked a rib in the river. The blinding pain just made Rory more furious. He rammed the heel of his hand up against Duncan’s nose and heard the satisfying snap of it breaking.

Rory sprang to his feet with his dirk in his hand. Duncan was quick for such a big man. He was standing almost as soon as Rory, with his infamous axe in his hand.

They circled each other. Big Duncan’s blood was up and he was accustomed to overpowering his opponents with little trouble.

“How’s your nose?” Rory taunted him. “Gives ye the devil of a headache, doesn’t it?”

When Duncan roared and swung his axe, Rory danced out of his reach, then swooped in and struck Duncan’s thigh with his blade. Duncan’s next swing was low, and Rory had to jump to avoid losing a leg. The next, Rory felt the wind in his hair as he ducked below the axe. In between Duncan’s swings, Rory cut the big man’s shoulder, his side, and his other leg.

Duncan was a mountain of a man, and none of the injuries Rory inflicted seemed to slow him down. Rory needed to end this before any of Hector’s other men came this way.

Before Duncan could recover from the next swing to bring his axe back again, Rory stepped in close and rammed his blade to the hilt up under Duncan’s breastbone.

Big Duncan of the Axe fell like a stone. Blood seeped from his mouth as he stared up in shocked surprise.

Sybil ran into Rory’s arms. He held her close and buried his face in her hair. He had come so close to losing her.

“I tried to be brave,” Sybil said against his chest, “but I was so afraid I’d never see you again.”

“You’re the bravest lass in all of Scotland.” He brushed her hair back and looked into his beloved’s violet eyes. “I’ll never let ye go.”

When the pair who had run out of the hut joined them, Rory was relieved to see that the young man was Malcolm’s missing grandson, Lùcas. He was injured, but they did not have far to go. Though he did not know her name, he recognized the girl as the wise woman’s granddaughter. He knew now why the woman had lied about his birth.

The girl went to stand over Duncan.

“Burn in hell,” she said, and spit in his eye.

A fitting end to an evil life.

“We’d better hurry now,” Rory said. “I have a boat to catch.”

“I’d go anywhere with you,” Sybil said, “but I hate to see you give up the chieftainship to Hector. Your clan needs ye here.”

“I’ve no intention of giving it up,” he said, and gave her a wink. “I told Hector I would leave. I never said I wouldn’t come back.”

CHAPTER 48

Rory and his thirty chosen men boarded the birlinn, a Highland longboat that was fast and sleek, on the MacKenzie side of Beauly of Firth and under the watchful eyes of Hector and a hundred of his men.

Hector would have men farther up the shore watching to make sure their boat passed by, but it would soon be too dark for anyone watching from the shore to see their sail. Rory had asked for a few hours to allow his men to bid goodbye to their loved ones and prepare for the journey, which ensured their departure would be near dusk.

They sailed through the night for an hour. When they were near Avoch, Alex’s parish, Rory ordered the sail dropped. The men rowed toward the shore, the birlinn cutting silently through the water like a hot knife through butter.

A night fog had rolled in, hiding the shore. Rory tensed, ready to give the order to reverse oars if they were met by Hector’s men.

But all was quiet. Without a word, he and his men slipped over the sides of the boat and hauled it onto the shore. He did not relax until Alex emerged from the fog.