The Raider (34 page)

“You will not sway me, Rosalin. Not this time.”

“Do I mean so little to you then? God, I thought you loved me.
Mo ghrá
.” Her voice broke, emotion tightening like a hot ball in her throat. “You called me ‘my love.’”

He looked surprised, and maybe even a little embarrassed by her discovery. But if she was expecting a declaration, she was to be disappointed. Brutally disappointed. “My feelings for you are irrelevant.”
Irrelevant
. How little she mattered to him. He might as well have tossed her heart on the ground and walked right over it. “Stop trying to force me to choose between you or your brother. If you want any chance for this to work, I told you not to put yourself in the middle of it.”

Tears of frustration stormed to her eyes. “I
am
in the middle, don’t you see that?” Just like Sir Alex, she was caught between the two sides. “I will always be in the middle.”

“You are wrong. When we are married your allegiance will belong to me—only me.”

“So what do you intend for me to do, carve your name across my heart? Renounce my country, king, and family? None of it will change the fact that I will always be English and I will always be a Clifford.”

“Don’t bloody remind me.”

He had no idea how much his thoughtless comment hurt. How it seemed to epitomize the very futility of a future between them. “I knew how hard it was going to be to make this work, but I thought the challenges would be worth it. Despite what you may think, I am not a romantic fool living in a fantasy world. I knew what I was asking of you. I knew how difficult it would be for you to see past my being English and Robert Clifford’s sister. But did it ever once cross your mind to think about what
I
was giving up to be with you? Do you think I want to leave my friends, family, the man who has stood by and protected me for my whole life, and the life I had in England to come to live in a hostile, unforgiving land—a country at war—where I know no one? Where I must be locked in a tower for my own protection? Where the moment I open my mouth I’m viewed with hatred and suspicion—even by the man who I’m giving up everything to be with?” She paused, just as surprised by her outburst as he. Realizing she was shouting, she lowered her voice. “What about our children, Robbie? What will you tell them? Will you turn them against their uncle?”

Obviously, the thought had never occurred to him, and he seemed to be having a difficult time working it out in his own mind. “Our children will be Scot.”

“And half-English.”

His jaw clenched as if the sheer force of his will could make it untrue. “I will not discuss this with you now.”

“If not now, then it will be too late.” She moved toward him, giving him one last chance to make it right. “Please, Robbie, I’m not asking you to trust my brother, I’m asking for you to trust
me
.”

He gave her a long look. Some of her words must have gotten though, because for a moment he seemed to be wavering. But then his expression once again shuttered. He shook his head. “I did, and look what happened.”

Rosalin stared at him in disbelief. “So this is my fault?” Anger rose inside her. Anger and outrage. “I’ve told myself to be patient because I know what you’ve been through. I understand why you might view my countrymen with such loathing and distrust—God knows you have good reason—but I am tired of trying to prove to you that I am worthy of your trust. I have never given you a reason not to trust me, but every time I think I’ve finally gotten through to you, something happens and you assume the worst. Whether it’s me supposedly tricking you to set Roger free, allegedly lying to you about being betrothed, or breaking my word to escape with Sir Henry’s men. Well, I’m not going to do it anymore. Either you trust me or you don’t. My brother did not do this. I’m asking you to wait to hear from him before you seek your vengeance.”

He turned away, cold and implacable. “You ask for too much.”

He drove the final nail into her heart. This wasn’t the man she loved. She wondered if that man ever existed. “No, it is you who ask for too much. You expect me to sit by and watch as you destroy my home—my family? I won’t do it.”
Too far gone
. “Sir Alex tried to warn me that only one thing mattered to you—you tried to warn me yourself—but I didn’t want to listen. I convinced myself that you needed me. I told myself you loved me. That I could make you happy.”

“You have.” He made it sound almost like a concession.

She drew a deep breath. “But you will not make
me
happy. You are not the man for me. When I was sixteen, I fell in love with a noble young warrior who I watched do everything he could to save his friends under the worst conditions. I convinced myself that he was still there. But you were right. He no longer exists. War changed you. You’ve seen too much. You will never go back. You are too blinded by hatred to take the gift that is being offered you, and I’m done trying to make you see. Go. Have your vengeance, Robbie. But know that you are killing any chance of a future between us.”

“I thought you heard. You aren’t going back, Rosalin. We will be married as soon as I return.”

“I will not marry you. Not if you go through with this. I will not be a weapon to be used against my brother whenever he does something you do not like.”

His eyes narrowed. Without seeming to realize it, he took her by the arm and hauled her up against him. “I do not take to threats, Rosalin—or ultimatums. You will marry me, damn it.”

She looked up at him, seeing the cold fury imprinted on the handsome features. “I thought you did not force women?”

His icy expression cracked. All at once he seemed to realize what he was doing. He dropped her arm. “You are overwrought,” he said, perhaps trying to convince himself. “Eventually you will understand that I did what I had to do.”

Just as eventually he would see that she had done what she had to do. She turned her back, not wanting to see him walk away from her. “Goodbye, Robbie.”

Her heart squeezed as if wringing the last drop of her love to land in a pool at her feet.

He hesitated. She wanted to think him warring with himself. She wanted to think that he finally understood the truth of what she’d been trying to tell him. But his will—his hatred—was too strong.

He walked away, and with him, took the last embers of hope. It felt as if he were cutting her apart limb from limb. The pain—the heartbreak—was excruciating. She stood there until the sound of hoofbeats faded away into the distance.

Perhaps she’d been naive, and it was too much to expect that love could heal wounds as deep as his. Robbie had reasons for his hatred and distrust. But he’d let them consume him to the point that he struck back without questioning, and with a ruthlessness that enabled him not to care who he hurt in the process. Even her.

Rosalin had had enough. Enough of Scotland. Enough of war. Enough of loving a man who didn’t have the capacity to love her back. It was time for her to let him go. She went to find Sir Alex.

Robbie and a force of nearly fifty warriors, including Douglas and twenty of his best men, crossed into England near Gretna. They skirted the heavily defended fortress of Carlisle to the west, taking cover in the forested countryside, and passed the old Roman wall at Burgh by Sands near the Solway Firth—the place where King Edward I had met his timely end five years before. It had taken them nearly a day of hard riding to get here, and it was still another twenty miles to Brougham.

A raid so far south of the border would have been a fool’s gambit a few years ago. But the tide had turned, and last year Bruce’s raiding parties had traveled across much this same countryside. Nonetheless, the raid was not without substantial risk. But Robbie had hours to consider every detail and plan for any contingency.

He was ready.

Or at least he should be. But every hour that took him from Douglas increased his unease and the growing sense of doom hanging over him. He couldn’t get the sight of Rosalin’s stricken face out of his mind or the sound of her voice out of his head.

It is wrong
…
You are not the man for me
…
Killing any chance of a future between us
.

He’d told himself she’d spoken in anger and desperation to turn him from his path. That she didn’t mean it. But the farther they rode from Douglas, the more he feared she meant every word. It was like a weight pressing down on his chest, making it hard to breathe.

Damn her for doing this to him. Damn her for making him question his resolve! He could not let such a vicious attack go unanswered. Clifford had to pay.

An eye for an eye
…

But she’d been so certain, damn it. Robbie ran through the lad’s account over and over in his mind, looking at it from every angle. The boy had identified the soldiers’ arms, Clifford’s men were there—there could be no doubt of that—but other details had been less explicit. The lad had been terrified. It had been chaotic. He’d escaped in the first few minutes. Enough to see what was happening, but had he gotten the entire picture?

Robbie grimaced angrily. What the hell was he doing? Was he looking for any excuse to turn from his course? She was making him weak, making him lose focus. If she was going to be his wife, she needed to learn she couldn’t interfere. And she would marry him.

Wouldn’t she?

My home
…
How could you hurt me like this
…
?
I thought you loved me
.

Love? What the hell did he know about love? But something was making him second-guess himself. If he did this, he knew he would lose her. And the thought was making his pulse race with something akin to panic.

Bloody hell
.

He didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until Douglas turned to him. If there was anyone whose face was blacker than Robbie’s right now it was Douglas. Robbie hadn’t missed the argument he’d had with Joanna as they prepared to ride out and guessed that she didn’t approve of the course they’d set either.

“What is it?” Douglas said, looking around. They’d stopped well south of the wall to water the horses in one of the many lochs—or lakes, as the English called them—in the area. It was dark, and they planned to get some sleep before resuming their journey in the morning. The attack would come in the afternoon, giving them cover of darkness in which to get away. At least that had been the plan.

“We need to go back,” Robbie said.

Douglas was incredulous. “You are calling off the attack? Damn it, Boyd! What the hell is wrong with you? What did she say to you?”

“I’m not calling off the attack,” Robbie said. “At least not yet. But I need to make sure the lad was right about what happened. We need to go to the village and see the truth for ourselves.”

Douglas eyed him skeptically. “This is because of the lass, isn’t it?”

He would not deny it. But that was only part of it. “Bruce is counting on this truce with Clifford, and if there is any chance of holding on to it, it’s my duty to do so. No matter how much we personally hate the bastard.”

“And if you learn Clifford was responsible?”

“We will be back.”

There were a few grumbles. The men weren’t happy to be denied a chance to exact retribution for what had been done to the women and the villagers, but Robbie was their commander, and they trusted that he would not be doing this without a good reason.

He hoped to hell he had one.

It was a few hours after dark the following day when they neared Corehead, the small village tucked deep in the heart of the hills and forests of Ettrick, from where Wallace had gathered men to launch his first attack on the English nearly sixteen years before. As they crested the hill, Robbie got his first glance of the devastation. He expected to see the village razed to the ground, with nothing remaining but embers and the gruesome evidence of the slaughter that had occurred.

That wasn’t what he saw.

Douglas swore, and they exchanged a glance. From this vantage, nothing appeared to be amiss. There were no blackened burned-out shells of buildings and no bodies piled up along the street. Indeed, although it was quieter than usual, he could see that there were a few people milling about.

Robbie’s heart started to hammer.

As they drew closer, he could see a few signs of an attack. Broken shutters, tumbled fences, a few shattered pots and trampled gardens, but it appeared the whole-scale devastation that seemed certain from the boy’s account had not occurred.

Word of their arrival had spread quickly, and the villagers began to gather along the high street as they approached. To his shock and relief, he saw Deirdre and the other women coming out of one of the buildings.

“I don’t understand,” Douglas said.

“Neither do I,” Robbie answered grimly, but he had the first inkling that he’d nearly made a big mistake.

From Deirdre and the village reeve he learned just how horrible a one. The lad had been correct in what he’d seen; he just had not put it together correctly. The first party of soldiers—de Spenser and his men—had arrived
ahead
of Clifford’s soldiers. Sir Henry and his soldiers had cut down nearly a score of villagers and were pulling Deirdre and the other women out of the cottage where they’d taken refuge, to tie them up and rape them for their crime of whoring with the rebels. They would have all been killed and the village set to flame—there was no doubt of that, Deirdre said—but Clifford and his men arrived and put a stop to the carnage. At first they all assumed he was there to raid as well. A few villagers tried to resist before they understood that Clifford was actually there to save them. Clifford arrested de Spenser and his men and took them back to Berwick for punishment.

Robbie listened to the accounts of the attack with a growing sense of shame, realizing the magnitude of the mistake he’d nearly made and what it might have cost him.

Had he really almost destroyed the only place that had ever been a home to Rosalin? Razed an entire village without cause? Christ, he felt ill. She would have never forgiven him. For good reason. What the hell had he been thinking? Thank God he’d realized the truth before it was too late. Before he’d done something that could not be undone.

He was suddenly anxious to return. More than anxious. There was a voice in the back of his head shouting “hurry.” He needed to get back and apologize to her, and aye, probably to Seton, too. It seemed he did need a conscience. For today had shown him just how far he’d strayed from the young warrior who’d raised his sword alongside William Wallace to fight against injustice.

On the third night after riding out of Park Castle, Rosalin and Sir Alex paused on the south bank of the river Tweed, looking across the wooden bridge to the steep White Wall on the opposite bank and the aptly named “Breakneck Stairs,” which wound up the hill to Berwick Castle.

She turned to look at the man who had risked so much to bring her here. He’d proved more of a friend than she could ever have imagined, safely leading her through the harrowing war-torn countryside.

“Are you sure about this?” she asked. “You can still leave me here and return.”

Sir Alex’s jaw was locked in grim determination, as it had been since the moment she’d come to him asking to be taken back to her brother. She’d been trying to talk him out of what he intended since the first night, when they’d stopped to sleep a few hours and she’d watched in horror as he took a knife to his arm. The arm where he had—or used to have—a marking much like the one Robbie had. Now the lion rampant tattoo had been obliterated by deep scores and slashes through his flesh.

As she suspected, Alex had been part of Bruce’s phantoms. The markings would identify him as such, and he knew what the English would do to him to get him to identify the other members of the secret band of warriors.

She suspected excising the markings from his flesh would be far easier than excising his friends from his memories. She knew how difficult this was for him. She could see it in his increasingly darkening expression with every mile they passed. He was resolved, and in many ways just as stubborn as Robbie. She just prayed Sir Alex didn’t come to regret what he was about to do. There would be no going back. For either of them.

He shook his head. “I’ve made my decision. I’ve had enough of the secret warfare and pirate raids. God knows I’ve tried, but I no longer have the stomach for it. Half the time I felt like I was fighting against my own side anyway. Maybe this way it will do some good.”

“What do you mean?” How could him turning against his friends do them any good?

“Maybe I can help end this war by working from the other direction. Instead of fighting against the English, I can fight from within—through reason and negotiation.”

It was a lofty goal and hard for Rosalin to argue against, as she was leaving for similar reasons. But although she could understand Alex’s decision, she knew Robbie and the others would not. Whatever the reasons, Robbie would see Sir Alex’s defection as a personal betrayal. And on top of her leaving, she suspected that it was going to be a bitter blow for him to swallow—whether he would admit it or not.

Why was she still worried about Robbie’s feelings when he’d treated hers with so little regard? Even though she knew that she was doing what was right, it didn’t make the heartbreak any easier. If only her love could be as easily cut from her heart as a tattoo. She would gladly take the temporary physical pain over the ongoing desolation of hopelessness. Wounds from a knife she would recover from. But she knew she would never completely recover from this, and the scars, she feared, would be both lasting and deep.

“Are you sure
you
want to do this?” Sir Alex asked softly.

She wasn’t sure at all. But it had to be done. Rosalin glanced across the black river at the flickering torchlight on the other side. She took a deep breath, feeling the hot swell of emotion tighten in her chest. God, why did it have to hurt so much? She nodded, and without further hesitation, they rode across the bridge.

It was morning when Robbie stormed into the yard of Park Castle. He’d ridden as if the devil were nipping at his heels, unable to quiet the voice inside him.
Hurry!

But the moment he glanced up into the tower window, he knew it was too late. His heart sank like a stone in a bottomless well. Darkness crashed down on him. She wasn’t looking down at him from the window. She wasn’t there.

A fear that was confirmed moments later when Joanna Douglas met them in the Hall.

“Where is Rosalin?” he demanded, fear already slashing his voice with a harsh edge.

“Watch it, Boyd,” Douglas said. “I know you are angry, but don’t take it out on my wife.”

But Joanna did not shirk from his anger. “I don’t need you to defend me from overbearing brutes, James. I’m quite used to them and displays of black temper.”

Robbie winced. Had he really thought her too sweet?

She turned back to answer him. “I assume at Berwick Castle by now. She and Sir Alex rode out not long after you left.”

Though part of him had known it, the news still shook him. How could she be gone, damn it? He had to explain. He had to apologize. He had to tell her how wrong he’d been.