Heaven and the Heather (13 page)

“Save me,…Niall,” she breathed.

As if she had called forth the demon of want that dwelled within her and the one that dwelled in these Highlands, cold, wet, talons grasped her ankles, digging into her flesh.

“OHHH!”

Sabine soared backward, the ball of paper burst from her hand. She landed with a loud splash into the stream which was far deeper than it had looked from the bridge. She sank beneath the water, her skirts weighing her down, her hair loosening from its pins, floating about her face like dark sea grass. Bubbles rushed over her body as she thrashed beneath the surface. What terrible creatures lived in these Highland streams that fed on people?

Something strong wrapped around her waist. A tentacle! It pulled her roughly to the surface of the pool, bitter comfort as she was certain to be devoured by this creature.

Breaking the surface of the water, she gasped in huge swallows of air trying to find a spark of strength. The creature dragged her out of the well-pool into the shallows of the stream. She struggled, her slippered feet skidded on the mossy rocks. Then she was dropped to her belly on the bank.

She rolled around ready to face her attacker, to fight, to die in this terrible place. She whipped aside her dripping locks with a defiant toss of her head and stood up.

Niall grinned at her. Shocked, she fell to the bank, hard on her rump.

“
Cretin!
” she cried. “Bastard!”

Niall bowed, sweeping his hand down over the surface of the water. He stood knee deep in the stream.

“At yer service, Mademoiselle.” He straightened up. “Ye did say, and I quote: ‘Save me, Niall’. Or was it a voice on the wind?”

“I did no such thing!” she protested.

Niall nodded. “Ye did.”

His auburn hair was slicked back from his face, save for a few wavy strands that tickled his forehead. The plaid he wore hung in a great soggy mass from his lean hips. His tunic clung to his broad shoulders and gaped open down the front, revealed damp lines of hair strewn across the muscled chest. Sabine scooted backwards up the bank. Temptation was the most dangerous creature here, and the most alluring.

The handle of a great sword thrust up from behind Niall’s right shoulder. Sabine narrowed her gaze at so large a weapon.

“Do you intend to use your sword on me now? Or do you always pull unaware wayfarers into cold streams?”

“A dousing in the burn does most anyone a wee bit of good…clears the head,” he replied leaning forward, warm breath a caress on face.

Sabine moved away on her soggy bottom until a thorn in the bracken pricked her neck.

She did not cry out, certain Niall would like her to do so.

“
Mademoiselle
, you are a stranger here. I had to save you from imminent danger.”

“By nearly drowning me? Tell me, Niall MacGregor, where is this terrible danger?”

“On yon hill coming this way. I’ll wager Campbell thinks ye have run away. And from the way ye rushed from his castle, I’d say ye fled from something quite terrible.”

“
Oui
…” she began, then shook her head. “
Non.
I mean…mind your own affairs!” She was not about to let him know he was right about Campbell, yet.

Sabine sat up, craning her neck to see through the bracken. It was far too dense for that. She began to stand to get a better look. Niall lunged forward shoving her roughly back to the ground.

“What did you do that for?” she demanded.

“Bide yer time, and Campbell will soon be here. I’d wait if I were ye, with yer gob shut and yer body hid.”

Sabine leaned forward on the bank, looking through the branches, to downstream. The bridge was only a dozen paces away if one chose to wade through the water to get to it, which she did not. She was as chilled to the bone as a person could be. She considered climbing up the bank, but it was too overgrown with a cacophony of vivid colors. Saffron flower petals, emerald leaves, ivory-pale birch trunks, and ruby berries nestled among the bracken thorns. She began to reach into her gown knowing that she now held a wealth of paper to—

“A wealth of soggy, useless paper,” she whispered. Sabine stared hard at Niall who stood protectively beside her. “’Tis all your fault. My papers are now worthless.”

She stabbed her hand down the front of her gown and produced a fistful of soggy paper. She stared at Niall, narrowing her gaze. He stared back amused, then reached forward and lifted a soggy scrap that clung to the top of her breasts.

She gasped and slapped his hand away. “Cretin!”

“Campbell is going to have yer lovely head if you dinnae hide it and haud yer wheesht,” he said dropping the paper.

The rumble of hoofbeats grew like thunder in the small river valley. Instinctively, Sabine shrank back from the noise against Niall, who pulled her deeper into the undergrowth, using the swag of his plaid to shield her from the thorny bracken. From there, Sabine spied the ball of paper, high and dry, near the edge of the bridge. The last of the wealth from Campbell’s chamber. She wanted it, wanted one good thing to come from this day.

“I’ll get it,” Niall whispered into her ear, reading her thoughts. “After….”

He kept her close to his body and trembled against her back.

Campbell suddenly rode into view and halted his mount on the bridge. “Where did that wench go?! I’ll thrash them both for taking their leave without my permission.”

“I did not know that I required his permission to take my leave,” Sabine whispered.

Niall squeezed his arm about her. She quieted.

Campbell looked upstream in their direction. Niall pulled Sabine closer against him, wrapping both of his arms and his plaid around her, drawing them both deeper into the bracken. They were one with the vegetation, a Highland disguise.

“Sorry, m’Lord,” one of the guards said. “I thought she was allowed to leave with Her Majesty still being out on the hunt.”

“No one goes in or out of the castle without my permission!” Campbell snapped. He waved a dark, gauntleted hand at one of the guards. “Ride ahead, see if you can find her. I’m back to the castle to await Her Majesty’s return, play the happy host.”

Campbell jerked the reins, rearing his horse about on the bridge. The boards creaked and rattled. The ball of paper bounced, threatened to fall into the water. He rode at a fierce gallop back to the castle spraying clods of earth in his wake. The guard rode off in the opposite direction.

Sabine did not move. She remained sheltered in Niall’s arms. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears as a light rain began to fall. Real thunder cracked in the distant mountains, a mirror of her pounding heart. She started forward, toward the bridge, reaching her hand out. Her
sac
dangled from a mere splinter on the edge of one board, despite Campbell’s rough departure.

“I’ll get it,” Niall said pushing past her.

He waded through the stream to the well-pool under the bridge. With agility common to any wild creature, he dove into the pool with hardly a splash. Niall surfaced almost as soon as he entered the water. With one arm, he grasped the edge of the bridge. He pulled himself out of the water far enough to grab the paper.

“Catch,” he said matter-of-factly, and threw the ball of paper over his shoulder at her.

She faltered on the slippery stones, but managed to catch it before landing in the stream on her already bruised backside. She held her the paper aloft over her head and looked up at Niall as he climbed out of the pool.

He looked down at her, grinning that grin which made her knees weak. Good thing she was sitting down.

“Why have you come here?” she asked. “Is it to speak to Her Majesty against me? To tell her the truth, that I was the one who let you inside the palace?”

Niall furrowed his brow. “Is that what ye think of me? That I would scorn yer name to elevate my own?” He smiled. “No,
mademoiselle
, that I would not do and I have proved it, have I not?”

“I do not have my
sac
,” she said.

“Ye will, in due time,” he said. “Trust me. ’Tis possible, because I’ve come to trust ye, little by little anyway.”

He offered her his hand. Sabine paused then took it. He pulled her from the stream and led her to the bank. The rain fell harder now.

“Come,” he said, “unless ye wish yer precious paper to meet a soggy fate, I’ll take ye to a dry place.”

“
Non
,” she protested folding the paper several time, tucking it into her hand, trying to keep it dry. “I will not go with you until you tell me why you came if ’twas not to return my
sac
.”

“Ye’ll get yer purse,” he repeated. “I dinnae break a vow.”

Niall looked into her eyes. His blue eyes reflected the glowering sky.

“Storms can bring more than rain, Sabine. They can clear the air and bring sun and calm,” he said. “Let me give ye a wee bit of shelter. Ye need it, or did ye speak a lie on the bridge?”

“I did not lie,” she said tipping her chin up. Niall was as condemned as herself. He came here to face his enemy. But he had not when he had the opportunity. He had chosen to save her. She offered him her right hand. He swallowed it in the warmth of his hand. She would go with him, to save her life, and because she saw a glimmer of hope wink at her. Or was it Niall?

chapter 7

Something In Common

N
iall could not tell Sabine really why he had come, because he was not certain himself. He had to form a plan, and from the look in her frightened eyes he was certain Sabine would help him. The queen was within Campbell’s castle, this he and many knew. He had seen the cortege, had heard the hoofbeats a league or more away. All Her Majesty had needed to further announce her arrival on Campbell’s lands were Gideon’s-bloody-trumpets.

Aye, he and Rory had stayed close by, waiting, planning…for what, they did not know…yet. From the look on Sabine’s face, he might know soon enough. And form the news Rory might bring him. He had sent his friend a day ago to reconnoiter the castle, learn what he could. Yet, his concern did not yield to Rory as much as it now did for Sabine.

He looked at her expectant gaze. He should tell her he had hidden her purse in a very safe place. It was more secure in his hiding place than on her person in Campbell’s lair. However, Sabine did not look prepared to know where he had placed it. He needed her trust and her will to help him when he needed it. First he needed more information from her.

She was trembling. What in God’s name happened to her in that castle?

She looked at him, eyes wide, face too pale.

“Why are you here?” she whispered.

“I’ll tell ye,” he said, taking her hand, “after ye come with me to a drier place.” In that time he might come up with a reason to tell her why he was here, and a reason to save her, something she so obviously needed now, more so than her purse.

Hesitantly, she offered him her left, undamaged hand. Niall took it. He wrapped his calloused fingers about her fine-boned hand, over the soft flesh, swallowing it whole with his hand. She looked up at him, plaintively so, then immediately glanced away when he caught her eye.

Niall led her away from the bridge, his mind trapped in a whirlwind.

What was wrong with him? Did he really need this complication in his life? Ever since he and Rory had taken flight from Holyrood, he had beat himself inwardly. He had been a fool to think he could appear before Her Majesty without Royal appointment and prove his clan were not the savages a murderer like Campbell claimed. He had fled with the knowledge that the queen subscribed to Campbell’s ideas. Of course she would.

The urge to barge into Castle Campbell Dubh and slay his enemy clawed at his good sense. Such folly would bring his swift death—and what good would he be to his clan then? Or to this lovely French woman? A MacGregor had to watch his back, his front, and either side. Campbell knew he was alive, knew he had taken on the mantle of chief of Clan Gregor. Reason enough for Campbell to want him dead.

He led her along the bank of the burn, further away from the distant den of his auld enemy.

Rain pattered down, through the birch leaves, obscuring his vision. He swiped his eyes with the soggy sleeve of his tunic and plodded forward. Proof. What an elusive dream that was.

“Where are you taking me?” Sabine asked suddenly.

“My lair,” he said, teasingly.

She huffed and jerked in his grasp. He squeezed her hand and pulled her along.

“You’re an…how do you say…
outlaw
here,” she said as he led her further up the burn. “The queen will have you put in chains,” she added.

“That would be a relief. I thought she meant to execute traitors.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Niall pushed aside a birch branch, letting it whip behind him. He took a quick glance back at Sabine who, gasping in surprise, ducked the branch.

“Beast!” she hissed.

He suppressed a laugh. What else could he expect from her but French indignation.

Rain fell harder about them as they plodded forward. The banks of the burn were steeper here, and taller. Niall found what he was searching for, a small cave in the stony, moss-dripping face of the bank. He and Rory had slept here the night before, planning and arguing about their next move, before he had sent Rory to see what he could see at the castle.