Highlander Mine (29 page)

“Danger is what I’ve trained my entire life to confront,” Knox said. “You’re not alone anymore, lass. I’m here to help you. And your family. We’re together now.”

At first I thought the thundering sound was some sort of heavenly response to the emotional rush of the resurrection I was experiencing.

But as it grew louder, I realized what it was. They appeared to us: a clustered line of galloping horses in the green distance, the dusty cloud of their wake rising behind. Upward of twenty-five of them, in full war regalia, with swords and flags raised.

Knox Mackenzie’s men.

CHAPTER TEN

T
HEY
SWARMED
AROUND
us, curious, fierce and much relieved to see their laird and commander. Those that had not met me before eyed me and I remembered what Knox had told me: that his men would have figured out his decision by now, that the news of our engagement might have circulated. I almost regretted that I was so windblown and wild from the ride and the travel and the repeated attentions of my husband-to-be. I could feel the color on my cheeks and the twinkle in my eye. I remembered, though, that Knox Mackenzie had had his choice of all the refined noble women of Scotland. I knew by now what effect my unreserved tendencies had on him. I no longer doubted my value to him, nor my worth. His sincerity and his devotion strengthened me along with the memory of his words.
My body is my oath. I love you. I am yours.

Lachlan rode up to us. “I believe congratulations are in order, milady,” he said to me.

“Thank you, Lachlan,” I said, but my divided happiness was soon pierced by Knox’s announcement to his men. “We travel directly to Edinburgh. The future Lady of Kinloch’s life is under direct threat from a menacing ganglord by the name of Sebastian Fawkes. We believe he holds her sister captive as a ploy to lure Amelia into his clutches. The threat will be dealt with and the sister rescued. We will discuss tactics en route, but the sooner this devil is eradicated, the better. Onward!”

* * *

W
E
RODE
SOUTH
.

Two messengers had been sent to return to Kinloch with the news of Knox’s plans and whereabouts. Knox’s men had brought his horse, a mammoth called Seven, named for Laird Mackenzie’s lucky number, I was told. I didn’t mention it to Knox then, but seven was my own lucky number, and one which I often employed in my card tricks. A magic number, every time. I liked its oddness, and the fact that many people considered it an inauspicious number, thereby avoiding it; this detail gave the number a mystique and a perversity that I’d once thought fit pleasingly with my own. I didn’t know why, but that inclination drew me even closer to Knox Mackenzie. I loved him with a ferocity that swelled in my heart as we drew closer and closer to the enemy who would determine our fate: a peaceful life of beauty and plenty, or a gory, unnecessary death at the hands of greedy men. I could only hope our lucky number would preserve us.

Knox held me close to him, and I leaned back against him.

We rode until the sun painted the clouds with bold, brilliant swirls of red and orange.

A sixth sense pinged at my awareness, provoking a strong urge to look behind us. I twisted to glance around the significant obstacle of Knox’s body, from where I sat in front of him on his horse. Knox took no notice of me. He was used to my wriggling by now. Personally, I thought I was handling the travel exceedingly well, considering I’d never ridden astride a horse before in my life. He seemed to disagree. “Sit still,” he muttered, holding me closer even as he scolded me.

The feeling grew. Someone was coming.

I took another look. At first I could see nothing. Just a panorama of heather-layered plains and the jutting, craggy peaks of the Highlands rising behind. But there, I was certain, was a tiny speck on the colorful horizon. A lone figure. Nay, a horse.

I watched this horse gallop closer and I could see that there
was
a rider.

A very small one.

A boy.

Oh, God, nay.

It was Hamish.

* * *

I
SLIPPED
OUT
of Knox’s embrace and off his gigantic horse, my mind a flurry of white-hot concern that was so consuming I barely noticed the jarring contact I made with the ground.

“Amelia?” I heard Knox’s question fade out as he might have noticed the reason I was now walking in the direction from which we’d come.

Hamish was riding at a hell-bent pace. How did he even know how to ride a horse like that? He might have sat on a carriage horse once or twice as a novelty, not as a mode of transportation. Either he’d been given lessons by a dedicated expert during his short time at Kinloch or the lad was a natural. Just another activity my clever nephew excelled at. My clever nephew whose neck I was about to wring.

His horse slowed as it neared me and he rode up next to me.

“Get off that horse right now,” I told him, more irate than I’d ever been.

I wasn’t sure if he would obey me, but he did. And he was in my arms before I could either scold him
or
wring his neck.

“Ami,” he said, from somewhere in the depths of my crushing, heartbreaking embrace. I unclasped my hold on him and cupped his face. “You left without me.”

I could barely get the words out. “Aye, Hamish. I’m sorry. I had to. I had to keep you safe. Why did you
follow
me? Didn’t you get my note?”

“Aye, I got it. And I ripped it up! You said we’d stay together. No matter what.”

“Aye, I did. And I meant it. But I couldn’t bring you with me this time, Hamish. ’Tis too dangerous. You might get hurt. And I couldn’t risk that. You’re too important.”

“
You’re
too important to go alone!” he shouted. “You don’t think I can handle danger! You don’t trust me to help you!”

“I do!” Damn this new weeping tendency! “I just want you to be
safe,
Hamish!”

“And I want
you
to be safe, Ami. I want my mother to be safe. I saw
that
note, too. And I’m going to help you.” He stood defiantly, with his hands on his hips.

“You saw that?”

“Aye. My father is dead. And my mother has a knife at her throat.”

Oh, God!
This wasn’t fair. That this innocent boy understood all this. He was wise, as I’d taught him to be. I could only hope he wouldn’t be scarred in some way, that his resilience wasn’t forged only by the hardships he’d had to endure. I’d tried so hard to buffer him from all that. And from this. “I’m sorry about your father, Hamish.”

“My father should not have done those things,” Hamish said. His youthful voice was hard, but his eyes were shiny. “He took the wrong risks. He always played the wrong cards. Not like us, Ami.”

Knox and Lachlan had dismounted and were walking over to us. I looked at them. “Make him go back,” I said. “Someone take him back to Kinloch.
Please.
He’s too young.”

The two men exchanged glances. They were studying Hamish. I noticed only then that he wore not only the belt and small metal sword he’d been given, but another one: the finely made, glinting one he’d shown me that day in the arsenal. The one he’d yearned to use one day. “I hope you don’t mind that I’ve borrowed this,” Hamish said to Knox. “I’ll return it when we get back to Kinloch.”

“I followed my father into battle once when I was ten,” Lachlan commented. “He wasn’t pleased.”

“Nay,”
I said. “He’s only—”

“I’ll be ten in one month and twenty-one days,” Hamish offered spryly.

“I was eleven,” said Knox. “My brother Wilkie first fought when he was nine. A skirmish with Clan Montgomery. My father always said a young soldier learns more in one day on the battlefield than in months of training in the barracks. And he was a wise man.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“I’ll keep him right next to me, Amelia,” said Lachlan.

“That lad should be entitled to fight for his mother’s life,” Knox continued. “And yours.”

“What kind of recruit would I be if I didn’t step up, Ami?” Hamish insisted.

A safe one,
I thought. But it was clear that my protests would not be given in to. Hamish was adamant. That he had the support of his idols only bolstered his determination. Lachlan was lifting Hamish back onto his horse. And Knox’s hand was reaching for mine. “Let’s get this over and done with so we can go home,” he said.

“Guard him with your lives,” I told them, the new accessory of my glimmering tears catching sunlight.

“As one of our own,” Knox said, and I would take comfort from his words.

* * *

W
E
RODE
FOR
several days, across open plains, through small villages, along a rocky seashore. To the lowlands. Where the countryside grew more populous, less wide-open. Instead of feeling as if I was traveling home again, I felt as though I was distancing myself from the one place that had shown me true, unbound happiness.

At dusk on the evening of the third day, Knox decided we would camp for the night in a wooded valley. We would reach the city by the afternoon of the next day.

The men set up the camp, dividing into their campfire circles. I had learned that the army was organized into smaller regiments, groups of men that formed bonded teams, useful in battle and for hunting parties. These groups split off at night, sharing communal campfires and taking patrol shifts. Knox’s group comprised his eight first officers, Lachlan among them. I had learned their names over the past few days and had found them to be good company.

There was Robb, a muscle-bound diplomat with a surprisingly gentle nature. He appeared to be the tactical expert and spent a good deal of his time drawing maps, plans and weapons in a small book he carried in a special compartment of his belt.

Gunn and Gow were brothers, huge men who spoke little but seemed to be Knox’s key bodyguards. They would clearly sacrifice life and limb to keep their laird safe, and I pitied any man who had need to fight them. The sheer brawn of them seemed providential and I couldn’t help thinking that the odds were in our favor with protectors like these.

Tavio was an inventor of sorts. I recognized him as the soldier who had been with Knox the day I was discovered by the weapons shed...wearing very little. If Tavio remembered the incident, he did not acknowledge it. I was grateful for that. He was tall and blond, and clearly possessing a keen intellect. He told long, involved stories about the contraptions he was designing to anyone willing to listen, Hamish and me included. His belts holstered not only knives and a single sword, but innovative devices and gadgets whose possible uses were a mystery to me.

Peyton, Kendrix and Alistair were weapons experts, trackers and gifted swordsmen, all of them big men, focused entirely on war and the task at hand.

And Lachlan was Knox’s most trusted adviser, and also his closest friend. If Lachlan offered advice, Knox listened. I thought often of Lachlan’s wife and children and wondered if these other men had families they had left behind. Of course, most of them would have. I hoped for the safety of these soldiers, who were putting their lives on the line for me. And I resolved to do everything in my power to keep them out of harm’s way.

All in all, I couldn’t have dreamed up a better group of warriors to storm the lair of Fawkes and his gang. Still, I worried. I worried about Cecelia. And about Hamish. And I wondered how the attack would play out.

We were seated around the fire, eating a meal of dried meat and bread. We hadn’t discussed what might happen over the coming days, aside from general locations; these, Robb had mapped onto a drawing. Knox had asked Hamish, and me, for in-depth descriptions of the layout of our family’s club, room by room. This information had been documented on paper, and studied.

It was time to discuss our plan of action.

“Do you expect Cecelia is being held at the gaming club?” Knox said. “Or somewhere else?”

“He’ll have scouts at the club, waiting for me. He’ll expect me there. Whether he’s hidden her there, or somewhere else, I don’t know.”

“I can understand why Fawkes is hell-bent on capturing you,” Tavio commented. He had a naturally flirtatious nature, even if he kept it almost wholly in check under the watchful eye of his laird. “The reason he wants you is obvious enough, but still, it seems he is taking excessive, almost irrational measures to lure you.”

Knox’s officers had so far treated me with utmost civility, out of respect for their laird, I suspected. It was true they seemed mildly fascinated by me, and by the marked difference between me and what they might have expected for Knox in a bride. I didn’t get the sense they were disappointed by me, however. Quite the opposite.

“I’ve never known Sebastian Fawkes to be rational,” I said. “He is a man of extremes. He likes to be noticed.”

“He likes to get his way,” Hamish said.

“Aye,” I agreed. “Either through force or bribery.”

“Or luck,” said Hamish. “I used to think he could see right through the cards. Either that or he had spies in every corner.”

“His luck has just run out,” Knox muttered.

Just the thought of Fawkes’s conquest, and facing it head-on, army or no army, caused the tiny hairs on my arms to rise. I knew for a fact that Sebastian Fawkes would not react well to the sight of Laird Knox Mackenzie, with or without his officers. Fawkes’s power had been gained through force and founded on fear. Even the vilest soul would recognize the strength of conviction that radiated from Knox Mackenzie like an aura. I knew this detail would anger Fawkes to no end. He did not like to be upstaged or outclassed.

“If your sister is being held captive in the club,” said Knox, “then the plan is straightforward enough. We storm the club and retrieve her, killing Fawkes or whoever guards her.”

“Absolutely not,” I said, which got the attention of everyone present. I supposed they weren’t used to hearing their laird’s dictates being refused. The laird himself, however, was getting used to it; he barely noticed. “I go alone, to begin with. If he feels threatened, he might kill Cecelia before we can reach her. I can’t risk that possibility.”

“There’s—” Knox began.

“But if he thinks there’s a chance that I’ll do his bidding,” I interrupted, “he’s more likely to allow me to bargain with him. Once I’ve freed her—that’s when I’ll need you. Only then.”

“There’s no way in
hell,
lass,” he growled, “that I’m letting you walk into that club alone.”

“’Tis not a matter of you
letting
me do anything,” I countered. Knox’s men seemed entertained by the exchange and watched his reaction to my insolence with interest.