The Devil Wears Plaid (18 page)

That was when he realized it was the wrong tree.

The wrong man.

Like a sleeper wading through the cloying fog of a dream, he followed the line of fire from the pistol to its target—not his breast but Emma’s. Not his heart but hers. Oblivious to the threat, she continued across the glen, utterly alone, utterly exposed.

Jamie yanked his pistol from the waistband of his breeches and lunged into motion, knowing even as he did so that there was no way he could shoot down the assassin from this distance, no way he could reach her before it was too late.

Time seemed to unfold as if the seconds were being measured by a laboring clock someone had forgotten to wind. He was charging forward but the distance between him and Emma seemed to be growing—each step he took carrying her farther and farther out of his reach.

“Emma!”
he bellowed.

She stopped and turned toward him, a desperate hope shining in her eyes.

A blast rang out.

He saw her body jerk. Saw a look of blank shock descend over her face like a mask. Saw the crimson stain begin to blossom across the shoulder of her gown.

Jamie had seen the exact same scene a thousand times in his imagination. He’d heard the pistol blast thundering in his ears. He’d seen the crimson stain blossom and spread until it seemed to obliterate all of the other colors in the world. He’d witnessed the look of betrayal on a woman’s face as she fell.

A roar of pure anguish exploded from his chest. Time resumed at twice its normal pace as he raced toward Emma, firing wildly toward the cedar where the gunman had vanished.

The glen exploded in a storm of gunfire.

Through the crimson veil that had descended over his vision, Jamie saw Ian standing frozen beside the wagon, a stricken look on his face as he gazed at Emma’s crumpled form. He saw his own men come spilling out of the trees, yodeling fearsome battle cries and firing at anything foolish enough to move. He saw the driver bring his whip down on the backs of his team with a savage crack, sending the wagon careening wildly out of the glen. He saw the Hepburn’s men spur their horses into motion, driving them
down the rise and into the thick of the fray to join the ambush.

Ian reached into his coat. This time his hand emerged not with a note, but with a pistol. Gritting his teeth, Jamie swung the mouth of his own weapon around, pointing it at Ian’s chest. No power on earth was going to stop him from getting to Emma, not even a gun in the hand of the man who had once been his dearest friend.

Their eyes met for the briefest of seconds, but before Jamie could fire, Ian shouted, “Get her, damn it!”

Ian turned and went sprinting toward the cedar where the assassin had disappeared, running low and hard to try to avoid the pistol balls whizzing around him.

From that moment on, Jamie only had eyes for Emma.

If she was still alive, he knew he had only one hope of keeping her that way. He broke his stride just long enough to scoop her up in his arms like a child and went racing for the nearest boulder.

Collapsing to his knees behind the boulder, Jamie gently cradled Emma across his lap. She gazed up at him, her beautiful eyes glazed with pain and shock.

“It’s all right, lass,” he said hoarsely, desperately trying to staunch the flow of blood spilling from her shoulder with his free hand. Her freckles were standing out against her pallid cheeks in stark relief. He
rested his forehead against her cold, clammy brow, willing her to focus her eyes and look at him. To really
see
him. “I’ve got you now. I’ll not let you go.”

“It’s too late,” she whispered, a lifetime of tenderness and regret shining in her eyes as she struggled to lift her hand to his face. “You already did.” Then her eyes fluttered shut and her fingers fell open, going as limp as the petals of a dying flower against his cheek.

T
HROUGHOUT THE REST OF
that endless day Jamie rode as he had never ridden before—through the waning sunlight, through the rising mist of twilight, through a cold, driving rain that only deepened his desperation, and finally through a night as deep and dark as any he had ever known.

Once the Hepburn’s men had realized they were both outgunned and outmanned, they had wheeled their horses around and beat a hasty retreat. Jamie had been left with no choice but to trust Bon to tie up any loose ends. He’d never abandoned his men before, but he couldn’t afford to wait for them. Not when every minute lost might be another minute of Emma’s life ticking away.

He couldn’t even afford to linger in the glen long enough to deal with Ian. He’d only had time to bark out quick instructions that he was not to be harmed
if captured, but brought directly to his grandfather’s stronghold for questioning.

By the time Jamie finally reached that stronghold himself, it was well after midnight and Emma’s makeshift bandage was soaked through with a mixture of blood and rain. As he dismounted, drawing her into his arms and tugging the hood of the cloak over her head to shield her face from the worst of the downpour, she was as still and limp as a corpse in his arms. Her breath against his throat felt more insubstantial than a will-o’-the-wisp drifting across the moors on a moonless night.

As he staggered through the mud, churning gusts of wind drove the rain into his face, blinding him. He stumbled and nearly fell before finally reaching the ancient keep perched at the crest of the steep hill.

The earth and timber structure had served as both home and fortress to the Sinclairs ever since they had been driven out of their own castle over five centuries before. The gatehouse and most of the outbuildings had burned long ago, leaving only the central tower standing to battle the elements. Even that was beginning to crumble in spots, making it impossible to predict just how many more seasons it would survive.

Cradling the lifeless bundle Emma had become against his chest, Jamie pounded on the rough-hewn door with his fist. “
Open the bluidy door!
”

There was no response to his pounding or his desperate roar. He and his grandfather hadn’t exactly parted on the best of terms the last time they’d spoken, but he’d never known his grandfather to turn his back on him in a moment of need. He continued to slam his fist against the door and shout until both his knuckles and his voice were raw.

His desperation gave way to rage. He wasn’t about to just stand there in the pouring rain while Emma died in his arms. He was backing up and preparing to give the door a mighty kick when it began to swing inward with a rusty creak. The darkened crack between frame and door slowly widened to reveal a face as familiar as his own.

Jamie glared at his grandfather, his expression both fierce and pleading. “Stand aside, auld mon. Your grandson has come home.”

T
HE LAST THING EMMA
remembered after the glen had exploded in a fiery cloud of pain was falling. Falling so hard and so fast that not even Jamie’s arms could catch her.

Then everything had gone as dark as the blackest night. But even in the murky hours and days that followed, Jamie had been there—his big, callused hands easing her to a sitting position with a tenderness that should have been impossible for them; his gruff burr
coaxing her to open her mouth wider so he could spoon a bitter-tasting broth between her lips; his cool lips brushing her brow when it was ablaze with fever; his warm arms enfolding her when she was wracked with chills; his head bowed as he clutched her limp hand and pleaded with God to let her live.

So it was no surprise it was his presence she sensed when the first glimmers of light began to pierce the receding shadows. She slowly pried open her eyes, waiting for her head to stop spinning and the wavering world to come back into focus. When it finally did, she found herself gazing into the gentle eyes of an enormous brindled beast sitting in front of a crackling fire on a crude stone hearth.

“Why is there a pony in here?” she asked, surprised by how rusty her voice sounded to her own ears.

“’Tis not a pony, lass. ’Tis a dog.”

She frowned at the towering creature. “That, sir, is no dog.”

“Aye, it is. ’Tis a deerhound.”

As the creature folded its long limbs and sank into a reclining position, her frown deepened. “Are you sure it’s not a deer?”

She gingerly turned her head, wincing at a lingering twinge of stiffness, only to find herself gazing up into a pair of arctic green eyes fringed with thick silver lashes. A wave of shock rippled through her. The man she had been arguing with wasn’t Jamie
at all, but Jamie as he would look forty years from now.

His thick hair might be the snowy white of hoarfrost and his face as craggy as the side of a mountain, but time hadn’t robbed this man of his vigor as it had the Hepburn. He still possessed the impressive shoulders and rugged vitality of a much younger man. He wore a green-and-black tartan kilt and a ruffled shirt with falls of lace at the throat and cuffs that made him look as if he belonged in some Gainsborough or Reynolds portrait from the previous century.

Realizing she couldn’t have possibly been asleep for
that
long, she whispered, “You must be Jamie’s grandfather.” She blinked up at him, unable to drag her gaze away from those oh-so-familiar eyes. Everything about the man was larger than life, including the wooden chair he had drawn next to her bed. Still too muzzy-headed to censor her words, she blurted out, “I thought you were dying.”

Ramsey Sinclair leaned forward, his eyes twinkling as if he was about to confide a delicious secret. “Well, for the past few days, I thought ye were dying, too.”

“Mind yer tongue,” a voice croaked. “I’ve worked too hard to keep the lass alive to let ye scare her to death.”

Emma could not stop herself from recoiling on the
pillow as a woman who looked ancient enough to be the Hepburn’s grandmother came shuffling toward the opposite side of the bed, the rounded hump in her back forcing her to stoop almost double. Stringy strands of hair the color of tarnished silver hung around cheeks so sunken as to be nearly hollow. As she drew closer to the bed, Emma realized what she had mistaken for a toothless grimace was meant to be a smile.

“There, there, dearie,” the woman crooned, patting Emma’s hand. “Don’t let the auld rogue affright ye. The worst is o’er. Ye’re goin’ to be just fine now.”

“Mags is right about that,” Jamie’s grandfather said dryly. “If ye have a strong enough constitution to survive the foul stench o’ her poultices, then gettin’ shot certainly isn’t goin’ to kill you.”

This must be the Mags Jamie had mentioned, Emma realized with a start of shock. The woman who had once been his mother’s nursemaid.

The old dame wagged a bony finger at the Sinclair. “If it weren’t for me foul-smellin’ poultices, Ramsey Sinclair, ye’d have been molderin’ in yer own grave a long time ago.” She gave Emma a gloating look. “For years, he could barely leave the fortress without gettin’ his fool self shot or takin’ a tumble off o’ his horse. Lucky for him, that stubborn neck o’ his was too hard to break.”

The Sinclair made a sound that sounded suspiciously
like a harrumph. “It was ne’er as hard as yer head, woman.”

As they continued to trade barbed insults, Emma’s fascinated gaze bounced between the two of them. They weren’t behaving like master and servant but bickering like an old married couple.

“Bluidy hell, auld mon!” Jamie exclaimed from the doorway. “Why didn’t you tell me she was awake?”

As Jamie strode toward the bed, Emma ignored Mags’ fretful clucking and struggled to push herself up on the pillow. The sight of him gave her a fresh shock. His handsome face was haggard, his jaw unshaven, his eyes bloodshot with dark smudges beneath them.

His grandfather settled back in his chair, waving away Jamie’s concern. “Pshaw! I wasn’t about to wake ye from the first nap ye’ve had in four days. Don’t ye think ye can trust me to play nursemaid for a few hours? God knows I did it often enough for ye when ye were squallin’ from the colic or had stuffed yer wee face with too many green apples.”

Mags retreated from the bed, making way for Jamie to kneel beside it. He laced his fingers through Emma’s, his fierce gaze searching her face as if to assure himself that she was truly awake, truly alive.

“What happened?” she asked him.

“It was an ambush,” he said, gently squeezing her hand.

“What about your men?” she asked. “Were any of them hurt?”

He shook his head grimly. “As soon as the Hepburn’s men realized they were outnumbered, they scattered like the rats they were. You were the only one who was wounded.”

“Me?”

“Aye. The Hepburn sent an assassin. The wretch must have been hiding in the tree before my men even arrived.” When she reached up to touch the edge of the clean bandage peeping out from the neckline of her nightdress, he managed a strained smile. “Thank God it was a clean shot. The pistol ball went right through your shoulder. It cost you a lot of blood and there was some infection but Mags was able to fight it off with her poultices. A wee bit more rest and you’ll be as good as new.”

Emma touched two fingers to her brow, struggling to recall the moments before the world had gone dark.

She remembered walking away from Jamie across a sunlit meadow, knowing she would never see him again. She remembered the birds singing while her heart was breaking.

“I heard you call my name,” she whispered. “If I hadn’t turned…”

She lifted her gaze to his grim face, reading the truth in his eyes. If she hadn’t turned toward him at
the precise moment the assassin had fired, the pistol ball would have gone straight through her heart.

“Don’t know what you thought ye were doing draggin’ such a scrawny lass up here anyway,” the elder Sinclair said cheerfully. “She doesn’t look hearty enough to survive a Highland spring, much less a winter.” His disparaging gaze dropped to Emma’s hips beneath the fur coverlet. “Won’t be much of a breeder either, I’ll wager, unless ye plump her up with some bluid puddin’ and haggis first.”

Emma gasped, outraged at being judged and found wanting like some sort of prize sow at the village fair.

“Now do you understand why I haven’t spoken to him in two months?” Jamie drawled. “Given his irresistible charm, it may surprise you to learn we had a wee bit of a falling out.”

The Sinclair glowered at his grandson. “Pay no heed to him, lass. That’s just his way o’ sayin’ I was right and he was wrong. He should have never returned to this mountain in the first place. He could have escaped its shadow forever.”

“Like you did?” Jamie ventured, the mocking note in his voice unmistakable. Freeing Emma’s hand, he rose to his feet. “This mountain is my home, just as it’s been home to every Sinclair who came before me. I’ll not abandon it. Nor will I be driven off of it by the likes of the Hepburn. Or by you.”

His grandfather’s voice was rising, his face growing
more flushed by the minute. “If ye’d have listened to me and let the Hepburn be, the lass wouldn’t be lying there in that bed right now with her bonny shoulder all shot up.”

Genuine anger flashed in Jamie’s eyes, but there was no arguing with the ring of truth in the old man’s words. “If you had wanted me to let the Hepburn be, you should have never told me he was the one who slaughtered my parents.”

“Well, I’m older now. And wiser. I’ve learned there’s nothin’ to be gained from stirrin’ up ghosts. Leave them to their rest, I say, or they’ll ne’er leave ye to yours.” His grandfather struggled to rise, but only made it halfway to his feet before being forced to sink back down in the chair. Laboring for breath, he gripped the broad wooden armrests, his visage robbed of both its vigor and its color.

“That’ll be quite enough o’ that!” Mags scolded, shuffling to the man’s side with more haste than should have been possible. “If ye won’t think o’ yer own health, ye auld fool, then think o’ the wee lassie’s. The last thing she needs right now is to listen to the two o’ ye tearin’ at each other’s throats like a pair o’ ornery hounds.”

“It’s all right, Mags,” Emma said. “I’m guessing their barks are worse than their bites. Or at least I hope so.”

Shaking the old woman’s hand from his arm,
Ramsey Sinclair made a second attempt to reclaim his dignity by getting to his feet. This time he succeeded.

He faced his grandson across Emma’s bed, the proud set of his shoulders painfully familiar to her. “Ye’re as rebellious and hard-headed as yer mother. I’m just tryin’ to stop ye from meeting the same fate.”

With that last salvo in what appeared to be a longstanding battle of wills, he turned and went lumbering from the room with Mags shuffling at his heels. After a moment, the enormous hound rose without a sound and padded after them.

Jamie stood gazing at the empty doorway for a long moment, his eyes still stormy. “He’s never stopped fancying himself the laird of a powerful clan and ruler of a mighty kingdom. He forgets his only subjects are a balmy auld woman and a devoted deerhound.”

“It’s his heart, isn’t it?” Emma asked quietly, having once had an aunt who suffered from a similar ailment. It had eventually killed her.

“Aye. He hides it well but the weak spells are growing more severe and more frequent. I might not have known just how frequent if Mags hadn’t pulled me aside and told me the last time I was home.”

“And that’s when you realized your time to prove the Hepburn had murdered your parents was running out. You decided the quickest way to accomplish that would be to steal his bride.”

Jamie gazed down at her, a wealth of regret in his eyes. “My grandfather was right about one thing. I meant to steal her… not to get her shot.”

Emma reached for his hand but he was already moving away from her toward the only window in the chamber—an expansive square of glass that occupied much of one wall.

While he gazed out over the brooding sky, she carefully eased herself to a sitting position, finally alert enough to really take in her surroundings.