Rebellion & In From The Cold (23 page)

The blood was hammering in his brain. There was pain, exquisite, terrifying pain. The control with which he lived his life, with which he raised a sword or fired a pistol, was gone as if it had never existed. He dragged her against him, his fingers raking through her hair, bruising her soft flesh.

“Now, for pity’s sake.” He plunged into her, going deep. Her nails dug into his back as she cried out, but she was moving with him, driving her hips up to meet each thrust. With her head thrown back, she gasped for air. In some part of her brain she knew this was something like dying. Then there was no thought at all. Though her eyes flew open, she saw nothing, nothing but a white flash as her body went rigid.

The aftershocks of pleasure wracked her body even as her hands fell limply to the ground. Her vision was misted—it seemed only more of the dream. But Brigham lay, warm and solid, over her. And he was … he was trembling, she realized with a kind of wonder. It was not only she who was left weak and vulnerable, but he, as well.

“You came back,” she murmured, and found the strength to lift her hand to his hair.

“I said I would.” He shifted to kiss her again, but softly now. “I love you, Serena. Nothing could have stopped me from coming back to you.”

She framed his face with her hands to study it. He meant it, she realized. Seeing the truth only made her more uncertain of what to do. “You were gone so long. No word.”

“Sending word would have put too many at risk. The storm’s coming, Rena.”

“Aye. And you’ll—” She broke off as she noted blood on her fingers. “Brig, you’re hurt.” She scrambled up to her knees to fret over the soaked bandage on his shoulder. “What happened? You were attacked? Campbells!”

“No.” He had to laugh at the way she snarled the rival clan’s name. “A little business in London before I left. It’s nothing, Serena.”

But she was already ripping the cuff from his shirt to make a fresh bandage. Brigham sighed, knowing Parkins would make him pay, but he sat meekly and let her tend his wound.

“A sword,” she said.

“A scratch. We won’t talk of it now. The sun’s going down.”

“Oh.” She blinked, noting for the first time how much time had passed. “I have to go back. How did you find me here?”

“I could say I followed my heart, which I would have. But Malcolm told me you’d ridden out.”

A few flowers clung yet to her hair, and her hair was all that covered her breasts. She looked like a witch or a queen or a goddess. He could only be certain that she was all he needed. He grabbed her hands. The intensity was back in his eyes, dark, demanding.

“Tell me, Rena.”

“I love you, Brigham.” She brought his hand to her cheek. “More than I can say.”

“And you’ll marry me.” When her eyes dropped from his, he erupted. “Damn it, woman. You say you love me, you all but kill me with passion, then you go skittish when I speak of making you my wife.”

“I have told you I cannot.”

“I have told you you will.” He picked up his ruined shirt and slipped it gingerly over his shoulder, which was just beginning to ache. “I shall speak with your father.”

“No.” Her head shot up quickly. Trying to think, she pushed the hair back from her face. How could they have come so far and be back where they had begun? “I beg you not to.”

“What choice do you leave me?” He pulled her shirt down over her head, struggling for patience when she jerked away from him to dress herself. “I love you, Rena, and I have no intention of living my life without you.”

“Then I’ll ask for time.” She looked at him then and knew she had to resolve what was in her heart and what was in her head. “There is so much to be done, Brigham. So much that will be happening around us, to us. When the war begins, you’ll go, and I shall only wait. Give me time. Give us both time to deal with what has to be.”

“Only so much, Serena. And only because, in the end, I’ll leave you no choice.”

Serena was right. Things were happening around them that would shape the destiny not only of two lovers, but of the whole of Scotland.

Within days of Brigham’s arrival at Glenroe, the French dealt the English a crushing defeat at Fontenoy. Though Charles’s, and many of the Jacobites’ hopes rose with it, Louis of France still withheld his support from the rebellion. Charles had hoped to ride on the glory that surrounded the French victory, to gain much-needed impetus for his cause; once again, however, he was left to his own devices.

But this time he moved. Brigham was both confidant and informer. He knew to the day when Charles, with money raised by the pawning of his mother’s rubies, fitted out the frigate
Doutelle
and a ship of the line, the
Elizabeth.
While the push in the Highlands, and in England, went on for support, Charles Edward, the Bonnie Prince, set sail from Nantes for Scotland and his destiny.

It was high summer when word came that the Prince was on his way. The
Elizabeth
, with its store of men and weapons, was chased back to port by British pursuers, but the
Doutelle
, with Charles aboard, sailed on towards the Scottish coast, where preparations were being made to greet him.

“My father says I cannot go.” Malcolm, sulking in the stables, frowned up at Brigham. “He’s says I’m too young, but I’m not.”

The boy had just passed his eleventh birthday, Brigham thought, but prudently held back from mentioning it. “Coll goes, as do I.”

“I know.” Malcolm glared at the toe of his grubby boot and thought it the height of injustice. “Because I’m the youngest, I’m treated like a bairn.”

“Would your father trust his home and his family to a bairn?” Brigham asked gently. “When your father leaves with his men, there will be no MacGregor in MacGregor House, but for you. Who will protect the women if you ride with us?”

“Serena,” he said easily, and he spoke no less than the truth.

“Would you leave your sister alone to protect the family name and honor?”

The boy moved a shoulder, but began to think on it. “She is a better shot with a pistol than I, or Coll, really, though he wouldn’t like to say so.” This news brought Brigham’s brow up. “But I’m better with a bow.”

“She will need you.” He dropped a hand on Malcolm’s tousled hair. “We will all need you. With you here, we needn’t worry that the women are safe.” Because he was still young enough to know what it was to be a boy, he sat on the mound of hay beside Malcolm. “I can tell you this, Malcolm, a man never goes easily to war, but he goes with a lighter heart if he knows his women are protected.”

“I won’t let harm come to them.” Idly Malcolm fingered the dagger at his belt. For a moment, Brigham thought he looked too much a man.

“I know, as your father knows. If the time comes when Glenroe is no longer safe, you will take them up into the hills.”

“Aye.” The idea made Malcolm brighten a bit. “I’ll see that they have food and shelter. Especially Maggie.”

“Why especially Maggie?”

“Because of the bairn.” His fingers slid away from his dagger. “She’s to have one, you know.”

For a moment, Brigham only stared. Then, with a laugh, he shook his head. “No, I didn’t. How do you?”

“I heard Mrs. Drummond say so. She said Maggie’s not sure she’s increasing yet, but Mrs. Drummond was sure and there’d be a new wee bairn by next spring.”

“Keep your ear to the ground, do you, my lad?”

“Aye.” This time Malcolm grinned. “I know Gwen and Maggie are always talking about how you’ll be marrying Serena. Will you be marrying her, Brig?”

“I will.” He ruffled the boy’s hair. “But she doesn’t know it yet.”

“Then you’ll be a MacGregor.”

“To an extent. Serena will be a Langston.”

“A Langston. Will she like it?”

Brigham’s eyes lost their amusement. “She’ll grow used to it. Now, if you’ve a mind to take that ride, we’d best be off.”

Always cheered by the idea of his horses, Malcolm jumped up. “Did you know that Parkins is courting Mrs. Drummond?”

“Good God.” Brigham stopped in the act of leading out his horse and turned to the boy. “Someone should plug those ears of yours.” Malcolm only laughed, and Brigham, unable to do otherwise, put a hand on the boy’s shoulder again. “Is he really?”

“Brought her flowers yesterday.”

“Sweet Jesus.”

From the window of the parlor she was supposed to be dusting, Serena watched them ride off. How wonderful he looked, so tall, so straight. She leaned out the window so that she could watch him until he was out of sight.

He wouldn’t wait much longer. Those had been his words the last time they had stolen an hour together by the loch. He wanted her wedded, and properly bedded. He wanted to make her Lady Ashburn of Ashburn Manor. Lady Ashburn of London society. The idea was nothing less than terrifying.

She looked down at herself now, at her dress of pale blue homespun and at the dusty apron that covered it. Her feet were bare—something Fiona would have sighed over. Lady Ashburn would never run over the moors or through the forest in bare feet. Lady Ashburn would probably never run.

Her hands. Serena turned them this way and that, examining the backs and the palms critically. They were smooth enough, she supposed. Because her mother insisted she rub lotion into them every night. But they weren’t lady’s hands any more than hers was a lady’s heart.

But God, she loved him. She understood now that the heart could indeed speak louder than the head. English or not, she would be his. She had even come to know that she would leave her beloved Scotland behind for his England rather than live without him. And yet …

How could she marry a man who deserved the finest of ladies? Even her mother had thrown up her hands at Serena’s attempts to learn the spinet. She couldn’t do fancy work with her needle, only the most basic stitches. She could run a home, to be sure, but she knew from Coll that Brigham’s house in London and his manor in the country were a far cry from what she was used to. She would make a mess of it, but even that she could almost bear. It was knowing how poorly she had dealt with her one brush with society—the brief months she had spent in the convent school.

She had nothing to say to the kind of women who spent their days shopping for the right shade of ribbon and making social calls. A few weeks of that life and she would go not-so-quietly mad, and once she had, Brigham would hate her.

We can’t change what we are, she thought. Brigham could no more stay here in the Highlands and live her life than she could go with him to England and live his.

And yet … She had begun to see that living without him would be no life at all.

“Serena.”

She turned quickly to see her mother in the doorway.

“I’m nearly done,” she said, flourishing her dusting cloth again. “I was daydreaming.”

Fiona shut the doors at her back. “Sit down, Serena.”

Fiona used that quiet but concerned tone of voice rarely. Usually it meant that she was worried or annoyed. As Serena moved to comply, she searched her mind for any infraction. True, she’d been wearing the breeches a bit too freely on her rides, but her mother usually overlooked that. She had torn the skirt of the new gray dress, but Gwen had mended it so that it hardly showed at all.

Serena sat, pulling the cloth between her fingers. “Have I done something to upset you?”

“You’re troubled,” Fiona began. “I had thought it was because Brigham had gone and you were missing him. But he’s been back for several weeks now and you’re troubled still.”

Serena tucked her bare feet under the hem of her skirt as her fingers knotted and unknotted the cloth. “I’m not troubled really. It’s only that I’m thinking about what will happen after the Prince comes.”

That was true, Fiona thought, but not all the truth. “There was a time you would talk to me, Serena.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

Gently Fiona laid a hand on hers. “What’s in your heart.”

“I love him.” Serena slid to the floor to lay her head in her mother’s lap. “Mama, I love him and it hurts so terribly.”

“I know it does, my darling.” She stroked Serena’s hair and felt the pang in her own heart that only a mother understands. “To love a man is great misery and great joy.”

“Why?” There was passion in Serena’s eyes and voice as she lifted her face. “Why must it bring misery?”

Fiona gave a little sigh and wished there could be a simple answer. “Because once the heart opens, it feels everything.”

“I didn’t want to love him,” Serena murmured. “Now I can do nothing else.”

“And he loves you?”

“Aye.” She closed her eyes, comforted by the familiar scent of lavender in the folds of her mother’s skirts. “I don’t think he wanted to, either.”

“You know he has asked your father for your hand?”

“Aye.”

“And that your father, after long thought and consideration, has given his consent.”

This she hadn’t known. Serena lifted her head, and her cheeks were pale. “But I can’t marry him. Don’t you see? I can’t.”

With a frown in her eyes, Fiona caught Serena’s face in her hands. From what source did this fear written so plainly on her daughter’s face spring? “No, I don’t see, Rena. You know well your father would never force you to marry a man you didn’t want. But did you not just tell me you loved Brigham and that your love is returned?”

“I do love him, too much to marry him, too much not to. Oh, Mama, how much I would give him frightens me.”

Fiona saw a bit clearer now, and she smiled. “Poor wee lamb. You’re not the first to have these fears, nor will you be the last. I understand when you say you love him too much
not
to marry him. But how can you love him too much to marry him?”

“I don’t want to be Lady Ashburn.”

Fiona blinked, surprised by the vehemence in her daughter’s words. “Because he’s English?”

“Aye—No. No, because I don’t want to be a countess.”

“It’s a good family. An honorable one.”

“It’s the title, Mama. Even the sound of it frightens me. Lady Ashburn would live in England, grandly. She would know how to dress fashionably, how to behave with dignity, how to serve beautiful dinners and laugh at the cleverest wits.”