Thistle and Flame - Her Highland Hero (16 page)

“Then stay there!” John’s voice raised before Red
Ben shut him up with an elbow to the ribs. “Just do what I said, right?”

“Aye, I’ll do it,” Liam said. “But I’m not pleased
that you shouted at me.”

With a grunt, John and Red Ben went to rejoin
Lynne, who was lying flat on her stomach, staring down the corridor, into
darkness only broken by two torches, one of which a man walked past.

“D’ya see that?” She said. “That’s his grunt.
That’s the Spaniard who can’t talk. I’ve seen him fight before. You don’t want
him pulling that sword.”

“I can handle him,” John said.

“No you can’t. This isn’t a time to size up your
cock. John, we’ve got to hurry if we expect to get Gavin before the sheriff
beats him to death.”

“I thought you said-”

“I say a lot of things. We’ve no choice. We have
to either avoid him, or...”

The padding of bare feet came down the hall to the
left of Lynne, Ben and John. Tentative, slow, then in a furious burst, then
slowly again.

“That’s no guard,” John said.

“No, it’s the worst thing that could possibly
happen.”

“Kenna! No!” Lynne stood, shouted, and charged as
quickly as she could. “Kenna!”

She was too far away.

Much too far.

––––––––

I
wish these torches were more regularly placed,
I-

“Kenna! No!”

“Lynne? Is that you? What is...oh, no!”

Kenna looked up just in time to see the leather
straps across Rodrigo’s chest as she walked straight into him.

Rodrigo grunted.

His hand shot out so quickly that Kenna didn’t
know he was reaching for her until she felt his leather glove on her throat.

“I...I can’t breathe!” She squeaked.

He squeezed harder.

“Put her down!” Red Ben barreled toward Rodrigo,
red-faced and enraged, but the Spaniard simply dodged to the side, stuck out
his foot and sent Ben barreling straight into the wall and then the floor.

John tried next, ripping his dirk from his boot.
He lunged at Rodrigo with murder in his eyes. The first of three quick slashes
caught and drew blood but the other two cut only air.

With his hand still firmly around Kenna’s throat,
Rodrigo ducked a wild jab, kicked Red Ben’s foot out from under him as the big
man was trying to stand, and whipped his rapier from its scabbard.

“You’re quick,” John said.

Rodrigo smiled.

John backed up, drew the long-knife from his belt
and tossed the dirk to his two-fingered hand with the blade lying down his
wrist to be used for blocking.

They stared at each other for a moment that
stretched longer and longer. Slowly, carefully, both men moved closer, then
further.

“We’re in a bit of a hurry, John,” Lynne said from
behind him.

John was in a different world. The last time he
drew, it was against three very large men in the tavern he and Gavin called
home. They got drunk, got rowdy, and tried to rape the woman who owned the
place. John didn’t like that, and so in a few seconds, he gained an ear, three
fingers and somehow a toe before Gavin made him stop short of painting the
walls red.

John was at peace.

Rodrigo squeezed Kenna when she wiggled.

“Put her down,” John said. “I’ll still fight you,
but let’s not get her in the way.”

“Mhm.” He pushed her away.

Kenna ran over to join Lynne, who put her arm
around the trembling girl, but never took her eyes off the two men who had
resumed their slow, patient dance.

Round and round the two of them went. Neither man
seemed interested in breaking the silence with a blow.

“Ben,” John said. “Get up and go over to them.”

When the big man made a move toward Rodrigo, John
waved him away. “This is my fight,” he said in a whisper.

“I can’t decide if they’re going to kill each
other or kiss,” Lynne said to Ben, breathlessly.

“Your stance,” John said. “It’s strange. Where did
you learn to fence?”

Rodrigo grunted, his eyes never moved from the
hand holding the long-knife. He lunged, but kept his rapier upright. John
didn’t fall for the feint, but instead lashed out and drew blood from the
Spaniard’s other arm, just above the wrist.

“You don’t have to talk to say a lot of words, you
know.”

Rodrigo smiled and then raised his shoulder as
though he was stretching out a cramp. His eyes never left John’s hand.

Each time John attacked, Rodrigo moved just enough
to make him miss, never an inch more. It was as though he knew exactly the
length of the knife and the precise length of John’s arms. Another swipe,
another dodge.

“The way you move,” John said. “You’re practiced,
aye? I’ve never seen anyone so fluidly, so – hyah!”

Rodrigo’s blade flashed, orange under the
torchlight, and caught John on the chin ever so slightly, just to show that he
could. John wiped the blood with the back of his hand and smiled a grim smile.

John moved next, a wild slash that Rodrigo parried
with ease, and on the follow through, thumped the hilt of his sword on John’s
back and pushed him into the wall.

“I can’t believe this!” John spun and crouched
into a low stance and measured his opponent again.

John deflected a careless blow with his dirk and
lunged forward, sure that his knife was about to sink ten inches into Rodrigo’s
stomach, but again the main twisted at the very last second, turned away, and
his sword whistled through the air, and struck John on the side.

“John, look out!” Lynne cried, but too late.

As he recovered from the stinging in his side,
Rodrigo swept his feet out from under him and a half second later, Rodrigo’s
eyes finally moved from the knife in John’s hand to the sword at John’s throat.

“No!” Kenna shouted. “Don’t hurt him! He’s just
trying to save his friend! He’s trying to save my Gavin!”

She ran to where the two men had ended their
dance, and straight into Rodrigo’s extended arm.

“Rodrigo, no! Stop! I know...I know about you and
about the sheriff.”

His eyebrow rose, and Rodrigo relaxed his sword
arm enough to keep the tip from piercing John’s throat, but he didn’t look
away.

“I, uh, I yield if that helps your decision.”
John’s knives clanked to the floor.

Kenna grabbed the outstretched hand and held on.

“I know your wife, Rodrigo, she told me about
everything. She told me about Alan making you leave your home and making you
come with him and about how she took a job at Macdonald’s horrible estate just
so she could stay with you and she told me about-”

“He didn’t make me come.”

Four jaws hit four chests at the same moment.

“I wanted to come. I wanted away from Barcelona
and the wars. I wanted to stop fighting.”

“You wanted to stop fighting, so you took a job as
a bodyguard?” John said.

“It...makes very little sense when you put it that
way.”

Rodrigo’s arm relaxed further and John scooted
backwards.

“But I wasn’t forced. That warty little man
couldn’t make me do anything.”

“And yet,” Kenna said, “here you are, fighting
people you don’t know and standing guard outside a door while someone gets beat
half to death!”

Lynne put a hand on Red Ben’s chest to stop him
from getting any closer. “I think she has this,” she whispered.

“I don’t see what choice I have.”

“Yes you do,” Kenna said. “You know exactly the
choice you have. You can take the sheriff’s blade away from your throat just as
easily as you took yours from John’s.”

Rodrigo heaved a heavy sigh and sheathed his
rapier.

“I’d drop it, but it’s very expensive. I’ll
already have to oil the blade and hone it. If I dropped it on the ground, it’d
need a smith.”

“Right,” Kenna said. “I’m sure that’s true. Tell
us, Rodrigo. You dinna have to help, just tell us where the sheriff has Gavin.”

Behind Lynne and Red Ben, a great noise began to
swell through the halls of the prison.

“What’s that?” Rodrigo said.

“Oh, that noise? That’s the prisoners.” Lynne
answered. “We may have let them go.”

“May have?”

“I’ve known one Spaniard before you, and between
the two of you I know you’re proud people and honorable ones,” Lynne said. “The
people in this prison don’t deserve to be here, and you know that.”

Rodrigo pursed his lips and stiffened. He looked
back and forth between Kenna and Lynne.

“She’s right, you know,” Kenna said. “I can see it
in your eyes. You don’t like what’s happening here either. You don’t like
injustice and cruelty. You could have slashed his throat if you wanted, but you
dinna do that. You’re no simple tough, Rodrigo.”

“What am I, then?”

The clamoring grew nearer.

“You’re a man who can save a lot of lives. All
with one decision.”

“And that’s a decision that should be made
quickly,” John said. “The natives are restless, and they’re getting close.”

Something behind them crashed and the hooting,
screaming cacophony was almost on them.

John started to talk, but Kenna waved him quiet.

Once more, Rodrigo looked around between the four
people staring at him, lingering on Kenna longer than the rest. Slowly, he
started to nod.

“Follow me.”

––––––––

“T
wenty-eight!”

Alan whipped Gavin across the back. He made no
noise, but it wasn’t for numbness, or for going unconscious. The sheriff had
weakened. The blows had simply stopped hurting.

“Rodrigo!” He shouted. “Get
back
here! What
is that awful noise?”

“Perhaps you should go look?”

“Rodrigo! Where is that awful Spaniard?”

“I told you to be nicer to him, he’s probably
left.”

The sheriff turned to Gavin and glared as the door
creaked.

“See? He knows what’s good for him.”

“Rodrigo, tell he what on Earth all this-”

“Quiet.”

“You can talk?” The sheriff said, his mouth
falling open.

“Sit down.”

“What’s going on here – hey, who are you three?
Kenna? How did you get here?”

“Kenna?” Gavin said. “Is that you?”

Her arms felt like heaven swallowing Gavin whole.
He opened his puffy, blood-shot eyes and when she smiled at him, all his pain,
all the bruises and cuts and scrapes and everything else melted away. When her
lips touched his forehead, Gavin’s whole body stiffened and then relaxed. She
sat down, holding his head in her lap, pushed his hair out of his eyes.

“It’s you, isn’t it? It’s really you?”

“Last I checked,” he smiled through his cracked
lips and Kenna stooped to kiss him.

She smothered him, from the top of his forehead,
to as far down on his neck as she could reach, in sweet, hot little kisses.

“How did you find me? How did-”

“Ach, you and the talking,” Kenna said with a
grin. “It was your friends. They’re the ones what found you. I hadn’t a clue
you’d even been taken anywhere until Macdonald let it slip. All I did was come
along for the ride.”

“What’s the meaning of this? Rodrigo? What are you
doing?”

“What I should have done a long time ago, but was
too afraid.” Metal slid against leather.

“Put that down! I pay you to guard me and here you
are pointing a – ouch!”

“I’ll do it again if you keep talking,” he said. “Probably
harder. Sit down.”

Alan sat.

“On the floor. Hands behind your back. Good. Red
Ben?”

“Aye, with pleasure.”

Thin ropes wound tight around the sheriff’s hands
and cinched down so hard it hurt. Ben tugged the slip knot and twisted it just
a little tighter than it needed to be, but the sheriff’s yelping and squealing
got him excited.

“Tell me if you can move them,” he said, laughing.

“Wh – what are you going to do to me? What is that
noise?”

“The...ach,
that
noise,” Lynne said.
“That’s all your prisoners escaping. All the ones you’re kept here to watch?
They’re all leaving. They’ve got the key to the front, but I expect they’re mad
enough to make their own doorway. And the way they were rampaging around, you’d
think they were as excited to get at you as we were to find Gavin.” Lynne said,
looping a finger in John’s trousers.

“You let them...you let them out? How could you?
That...there’s no way the King will renew my appointment.”

“Oh,” Rodrigo said. “I thought I was doing you a
favor. As much as you complained about this post, I thought you’d love to see
it disappear behind you on your way back to England.”

“Y – yes, but not in the back of a prison
carriage! I’ll be put in the tower for this!”

“I doubt that very much,” John said. “In fact, I’m
a wee bite doubtful you’re to get out of here at all. Those are some very
rambunctious prisoners you’ve got. Only a matter of time until they find their
way here, dinna you think?”

“No...no, you can’t do that to me. They’ll tear me
apart!”

“Hungry too, I think.”

“No!”

“You won’t be hurt by them,” Rodrigo said in that
dark leather voice. “They won’t have the chance.”

He slid the flat of his sword along Alan’s throat,
then his cheek.

The sheriff began to wobble back and forth. His
cheeks turned bright red to match the color of his nose. And then he began to
weep.

“Help me,” he said, “help me get away. I don’t
deserve this. I don’t-”

“Yes you do,” Gavin said. “You deserve every ounce
of pain and horror you could ever have. For what you’ve done to this town, to
these people, you deserve everything he wants to do. Help me up.”

As soon as he stood, Gavin’s knees went weak and
he fell, but Kenna caught him and got under his arm to hold him up.

“You are a despicable man, Alan,” Gavin said.
“Despicable in every way I can think of, and many that I cannot, but that will
probably occur to me shortly when I’m regretting what I’m about to do.”

Every face turned to the beaten, half-broken man
who propped himself up on Kenna’s shoulder.

“If we kill him, and believe me, I know how good
it would feel, then we’re no better than he. If we beat him, torture him, and
leave him to be slaughtered by the starving prisoners running amok, then that
is certainly what he deserves. But it’s also what every single one of us, to a
man – or to a woman – wants to end.”

“But Gav, he’s the whole reason we’re fighting
this battle. People like him. The English that come up and try to tell us how
to run our lives, and then when we refuse, they murder us and steal our land!”

“No.” Gavin said. “It’s not him. He’s a pawn in a
game so big that he can’t even see the board. A single cog in a clock. To give
him any more power is to give him too much. Alan has no power. He was sent up
here, to be the law in a place he hates, a place that the King sees as a
lawless wasteland, because he canna even control
himself
much less
anyone else. He grovels to Macdonald and to the others. He runs from victim to
victim, torturing, raping and beating. And for what? What’s he gotten himself?”

By then, Alan had joined his weeping with
incoherent babbling. Every now and then, he eked out a plea for mercy.

“You’ll get mercy from us – put down your sword,
Rodrigo – we’re better than him. All of us are. And so we’re going to give him
mercy.”

“Th – thank you. You’re a good man, you’re a
g-great man!”

“Don’t start. I said that
we
were to give
you mercy, you wretched sheep’s arse. But I can’t say the same for the court to
which you’re delivered.”

John and Lynne began to laugh, Red Ben smiled, and
Kenna stroked Gavin’s arm. Only Rodrigo remained angry.

“What about the harm he’s done? What about his
undying cruelty and savagery? If he’s taken to some magistrate’s court, he’ll
be set free as sure as the sun rises tomorrow. He’ll be back with more men,
more power and more-”

“Ach, that’s true and that’s exactly why we’re not
taking him to a magistrate’s court.”

“What?” Alan said. “But that’s the law!”

“Aye, it might be the law in England.
In
England.
”

Alan’s blubbering turned back to weeping.

“Pick him up. We’ve got a long ride ahead of us.”

“But, but where are you taking me?”

“Well, I dinna about Kenna, but I’ve a mind to see
home again. Ah! Watch the squeezing,” he grinned. “He did a number to me. But
as long as we’re going that way, we can leave you in Glasgow if you’d like.”

“If you take me there, I won’t have a chance!”

“Still have more of a chance than anyone gave the
people in this prison. If you keep talking, I’m going to change my mind about
Rodrigo there sliding his steel in your belly.”

Alan’s mouth snapped shut.

“Ben, get him. Let’s go home.”

Gavin turned to Kenna, and his legs wobbled again
but she caught him. “Truth be told I could let him scurry back to England with
his tail betwixt his legs and be happy, just so long as I get to carry you back
to Fort Mary and give you a herd of red-headed little whelps.”

“Ach, Gavin, you’re a wee bit forward, dinna you
think? Haven’t asked me yet.”

“The bowels of a prison’s no place for a
proposal,” he said.

“Well then, Gavin Macgregor, you’re just going to
have to wait on your plans for a herd of sprouts until you find some place you think
to be more fitting.”

He smiled and turned from her, barely able to take
his eyes from the deep green of Kenna’s.

“Hang on tight!” Red Ben said, hoisting the
sheriff onto his back. “But if you choke me, I’ll be throwin’ you off and letting
the prisoners have their way.”

Into the darkness of the hall, walked six pairs of
feet.

One pair waggled in the air.

“You go on ahead,” Gavin said to the others.
“Kenna and I will hobble along behind. Meet you at the Black’s?”

“Aye,” John and Red Ben said.

“What’re we to do with him?”

“Whatever you like. We’ll hitch him to the back of
the horses when we two leave for Fort Mary. But we can decide all that when we
get to the house.”

He tugged on Kenna’s arm a bit harder when the
others were a little further down the hallway. And then, when she walked under
a torch and the orange light bounced off her hair, he reached up, took her
shoulders in his hands, and pushed her against the wall.

“Ooh! Gavin, what are you doing?”

“What I shoulda done instead of leaving Fort Mary
to come down here and fight. What I shoulda done when I was sixteen year old
and looking at you from across a meadow. What I shoulda done every time in my
life when I didn’t.”

“Wh – but Gavin, what about Macdonald and all of
that?”

“He won’t matter. Word’ll get to the King about
this sooner than word about that deal they wanted to push through. And even if
it doesn’t, the Earl of Dorchester isn’t going to want to buy a pile of land
upon which such wild savages as we dwell.” A twinkle in his deep blue eyes
caught Kenna off guard.

“Savages such as you, such as I.”

He kissed her lightly at first, his lips brushing
against hers and his hands sliding down her sides.

“Is that what we are, Gavin Macgregor? Savages?”

Gavin pulled away from her, sucking her lip softly
between his and tasting every inch of the woman he’d loved for his entire life
for the first time. He tilted his head to one side.

“Ach, you may be more savage than me by twice.”

So close that their breath mixed between them, the
walls around the pair seemed to vanish. Kenna slid her hands down Gavin’s arms,
her fingers bouncing over every little muscle and tendon. She looked down at
his chest, then back into his eyes, lost in the ocean she found.

“How did we come to this, Gavin Macgregor?”

“I dinna,” he said. “But I’ll not make the same
mistake again.”

“And what mistake is that?”

She closed her eyes and Gavin kissed her along her
jaw, behind her ear. Kenna’s skin prickled to life where he kissed, and where
the heat from his palms burned through her dress.

“What mistake, Mr. Macgregor?” She said. She
moaned softly as his lips moved down her neck to the slope of her shoulder
where he pushed aside the collar of her tunic and kissed again. “What mistake
won’t you be making?”

“The one where I let you get away. I can’t wait,
Kenna. I can’t stop myself. I’m...”

“Shh...” she said putting her finger to Gavin’s
lips. “We have an audience.”

Gavin looked to where she tilted her head.

Red Ben Black, John Two-Fingers, Lynne and Rodrigo
all stood silently, as though they were waiting for something. Lynne seemed to
have something in her eye for all the misting up she was doing. She squeezed
John’s hand in hers and pulled him close. Rodrigo had a quirk in the corner of
his mouth. John was beaming and gripping Lynne’s hand right back, and Red Ben
had a grin that stretched from ear to ear.

The sheriff had evidently been too much for one of
them to bear, and was a bit unconscious.

“Go on, you lummox! Don’t make her wait all day!
Or night, whichever.” John said.

Lynne elbowed him in the ribs.

Gavin bent one of his knees, and then rather
collapsed onto the ground. He held on tight to Kenna’s hand and pulled himself
to one knee.

“Kenna Moore,” he said. “Will you do me the honor
of making me the happiest man who's ever lived?”

“Ach,” she said blushing. “You want me to make you
oats when we get to the Blacks?”

“No, I want you to be my wife.”

Ben, Rodrigo, John and Lynne all leaned forward.
No one, except the sheriff, took a breath.

“I thought you said you were going to wait until
we were in a better place and hopefully we were alone! I’ll be the happiest
woman in the world if you can give me a herd of little red-headed sprouts. Of
course I’ll marry you!”

Cheers burst through the prison halls, around the
bends and through the bars.

Cheers filled the Edinburgh night as the prisoners
streamed out and into freedom.

But inside, the cheers were louder still.

“Get up you oaf,” Kenna said, and kissed Gavin
again as soon as he did. “Let’s go home.”

Kenna pulled Gavin to his feet and he threw his
arms around her, holding her close against his chest. He kissed her once on the
cheek, breathing her in. He kissed her behind the ear, and made her moan.

“What’s this?” He said as his lips found the cord
about her neck.

“What do you think?” She pulled out the glass
pendant that Macdonald had ripped from her and Olga fixed. “I never lost it.”

“The thistle...”

“Aye, Gavin Macgregor. You had me before we ever
spoke a word. Let’s go.”

Arm around her shoulder, Gavin limped and Kenna held
his hand tight to her chest.

––––––––