He shook his head to clear it. Memories of her were memories of sadness and of hope. He knew he couldn't remember much – who she was, where he knew her, what her name was – but he did know one thing absolutely.
He knew he loved her.
He knew he had to see her again.
Of all the things in his world, there was little else that mattered quite that much.
The men who had captured him settled slowly down around the fire. He heard someone laugh, someone relax, the sound of leaf-litter crackling under his weight as he shifted about, getting comfortable against the tree behind. Heard someone open a pack and take out cooking pots.
It seemed they had decided to let him live. Even, Camden thought, as they handed him a little bread and broth, that they had decided he was useful with his wits intact. Why though?
At that moment, weary, confused and hungered, he didn't particularly care.
Only two things mattered. Surviving, and seeing her again. The world was very simple after a blow to the head had made it so. He loved her. He always had. It was so ridiculous that he should come to know it now, in the middle of a forest, when he didn't recall her name.
RUBINA MAKES A RESCUE
“Ride! Ride!”
Rubina shouted it, hoarse and defiant. She had no idea she did so until she saw Will, one of the guards, staring. She swallowed hard.
“On, after them!” she said. “We must make haste.”
They had found traces of activity at the cottage. There was no sign as yet of men being there, but the place had clearly recently housed them. They must have moved camp fairly recently, as the fire was still in evidence where they had cooked outside the place.
Perhaps two days ago.
Rubina shuddered. The men – she had taken five of them – rode alongside her. She knew it was unconventional in the extreme to come with them, but something told her she should be here. It was better than giving way to worry. Instinct told her she needed to be with the men as they hunted this presence in the woodlands.
“There are hoof prints ahead!” a man shouted excitedly. “Four pairs.”
“Good!” Rubina felt her heart sing. “Any sign of horses recently passing by?”
“Not yet, milady.”
Rubina nodded. They were not keeping to paths, so the sign of any hoof prints was unusual enough.
“There were four of them at the cottage?” she asked Will.
He nodded. “At least four, milady. Mayhap five. Not more.”
Rubina looked about her swiftly She had brought five men with her. At least, then, if they came to blows, they would not be exceeded in number. She had no desire to be involved herself any more closely. She was there more as healer and observer, she told herself, than anything else.
“They went this way!” someone called from her right. “Heading North.”
They all headed eagerly north together.
“Have you any thoughts who they might be?” Rubina asked quietly. She rode beside a younger guardsman. She had to know if anyone shared the nagging suspicion that had been haunting her ever since she heard about the cottage.
The man frowned. He looked uncomfortable. Rubina guessed that mayhap he did share her thoughts though, like herself, was reluctant to suggest that.
“Well,” he shrugged uneasily. “Could be anyone, really,” he said cautiously. “Vagabonds, felons, outlaws, bandits...or just some poor sorts who have no home any longer.”
Rubina raised a brow. “I thought that also,” she said carefully. “But men? Horses?” she let her lack of belief show in her voice.
He sighed. “Could still be robbers, milady,” he said carefully. “Could have overpowered some men. Taken horses. Happens.”
“Yes,” Rubina admitted mildly. “Yes, I suppose it does.”
All the same, as she rode into the woods, she couldn't help thinking there was only one explanation. The English.
She offered a silent prayer of thanks that Barra had overheard them.
Without her information, they would never have known. She also would not be here, in the dark of a rain-soaked afternoon, riding through the woodlands with five guards, looking for them.
She sighed. Perhaps I really have gone mad. What she was doing certainly seemed that way even to her.
Just then, the sound of a scream rent the silence of the forest.
Rubina whipped round in alarm. One of the guards rode up, sweat dripping from his brow.
“Milady!”
“What?”
“This way. We found them!”
Rubina felt her heart pounding in her chest. That scream! Unearthly and piercing, it had been the cry of a being – man, woman or perhaps not even human – in immense pain. Her whole body tensed with the need to answer that cry.
“Let's go!” she shouted.
As she rode, she found herself amazed. Where was this authority, this confidence, coming from? It seemed to be pouring out of her from some resource inside her, hitherto unknown.
They headed off into the forest.
Smoke, gray and coiling, surrounded her. She had smelled it, distantly, but now in the clearing it was impossibly thick, acrid and engulfing. She rode into the smoke, coughing and spluttering. The leaf-mold had caught fire – someone's neglected campfire, mayhap. Mayhap it was purposeful, mayhap accidental. However, in either case, it blinded her men and brought their enemy an advantage.
“We have them!” One of the men yelled triumphantly. “If we could just see...”
“Ugh!”
Another of the men cried out behind her, and Rubina realized in horror that the smoke was disorienting her men, making them easy targets.
“Get off your horses!” she yelled. “On the ground.”
To her utmost astonishment, all five men obeyed her. She found herself on foot in the midst of men on foot. She kept hold of Merryweather's bridle and together they walked forward. It was slightly easier to see. On foot one was less of a target as well.
They were in a clearing. Rubina could just make out the white outline of tents, if she squinted into the mist. She coughed. There was a man there. One of her men was struggling with him. She heard the sound of another fight and turned to her left. Then she saw someone run at her.
“Yah!”
She screamed and rolled her body smaller, hit the ground. It was automatic, without having to think about it. Her assailant bent and stumbled and they were rolling over in the leaves together.
“Milady!”
Rubina found herself grappling with the man despite his superior strength. She raked his face with her nails but the blow on the side of her head stunned her for a moment. Then the man was falling away and she was free.
“Milady!” one of the men called, beckoning her.
Rubina ran over, lungs burning, head ringing. They had found something.
“Oh...”
She stared. The person lay on the ground, one leg laced with burn wounds. He was unconscious. He had pale hair, the golden side of ocher and a long, straight nose.
“No!” she screamed, only no scream came out, but a thin, wordless murmur.
It was Camden.
She ran to him and knelt beside his fallen form. She stroked his hair, gently patted his cheek. He was prone and unresponsive. She felt her heart beat desperately as she slid her hand into the front of his tunic, feeling for his heart.
“He's alive!” she sighed. She could feel a beat or two from his heart. Slow and thready, as disturbingly indistinct as any heartbeat she had ever heard, there was one there. She let out a long sigh.
“He needs treatment at once,” she said. A curse on it! Where was her sureness now? She felt broken, small, and alone and all she wished to do was cry. Her voice was soft and she had to think carefully.
“Yes, milady,” a guard said.
“Cover his leg,” she said quickly. “Lift him onto my horse. Gently, mind. Gently!”
The man nodded. He lifted Camden as if he was a rag doll and carried
him toward his horse. There, he gently settled him on the saddle.
“Right,” Rubina said shakily. “Now. Help me up?”
The man nodded and she slid into the saddle behind Camden. She was riding astride – something she had practiced once or twice with her cousins when they were all at Dunkeld estate together – but had never found the need to do till now. To give them their due, none of them men even blinked at her unconventional manner.
“Easy, there,” she whispered as Camden jerked and muttered. He must have been hit hard on the head, she realized, because even the trauma of being moved and settled on the horse – his leg with its burn-wounds must ache like fire – didn't affect him. “There, there, dearest.”
She held him against her, reaching round his body to the reins. It was an uncomfortable posture, but at the same time it felt so right. With his head lolling back against her shoulder, his body enfolded by her arms, she felt strangely at peace.
“Right, men,” she called, her voice cracked and broken. “Let's go.”
She was a duke's daughter. Whatever they may or may not have thought about obeying the commands of a woman was immaterial in this case. She held the greatest rank among them. Together, with her in their center, they rode toward the castle.
“Who goes there?”
The shout of the sentry woke Rubina from her trance-like state. She looked up at the wall.
“It's us!” one of the guards answered. “For pity's sake, Tom, let us in. Lord Camden's wounded.”
“Lord Camden?” the man sounded incredulous. Then Rubina heard as he took the chain that would lift the gate for them. “Open the gates!”
They rode in. Once they reached the courtyard, Rubina slid out of the saddle as the guards reached for Camden.
“Go gently with that leg,” she whispered. “Take him to the still room.”
“Yes, milady.”
Rubina swayed on her feet and clutched the saddle for support. She would not collapse. Not now. He needed her.
It was dark in the still room, a fire burning in the grate. Rubina sat by Camden's bedside.
“Daughter, come away,” her mother said. Her voice was hollow with weariness, rounded out with care. “He's resting easy.”
Rubina shook her head listlessly. “No. I'm staying.”
She couldn't exactly have said why, but she was focused on staying here. She knew, as well as anyone did, that this first night was the hardest. He had a fever – the terrible burns on his leg, products of torture – had sickened in the air. Tonight, while he battled the fever, would be the worst.
He sighed and shifted. There was sweat shining on his forehead, and his eyes were wrinkled at the edges, tight with pain.
“Whist,” Rubina murmured, reaching for a handkerchief to dampen his forehead. She looked up to see her mother standing at the edge of the bed.
“You should rest, Daughter,” her mother said again. “Frances can sit with him. Or Barra. Get some rest.”
“No. I want to,” Rubina said insistently.
Her mother raised a brow. “Well, if you insist, Daughter.”
Rubina barely heard her. “Thank you, Mother, for what you did. His leg will mend thanks to your skill,” she said. “But now, we both know tonight is important. I will not let him fight it alone.”
Her mother nodded. In the pale candlelight, Rubina could see she was pale with weariness. Her blue eyes were tense with worry. She ran a slender hand through her dark hair.
“Goodnight, then, Daughter,” she said hesitantly. “I will see you on the morrow.”
“Goodnight, Mother.”
Rubina barely heard the door click behind her mother as she went out. She reached over for a cloth to wipe Camden's brow.
“Hush, love,” she whispered, sponging water over that high, pale forehead. He was flushed with fever and he shivered as she sponged his skin. His blond hair grew dark where the water soaked it. He murmured in his sleep, face twisted in pain.
“My love,” Rubina murmured. “It's all well now. You're safe.”
She looked down at him and felt her heart ache; a dull, blasted pain as if it had been torn apart inside her. She was here for him, and he had been there for her. In all the terror, all the anger, he had been a calm presence on the edge of it; a wan smile of reassurance, a love without words.
I should have seen it. It was my arrogance that made me fail to notice it. I thought he wanted me to be better, to be untainted. I was a fool.
All those weeks, trying to understand him. Dismissing his motivations, or ascribing the worst ones to him. She had been so, so blind! His gentle concern, his withdrawing, his tentative diffidence. It all came from one solid motive. He loves me.
He had been trying to care. That was why he turned away, why he absented himself. Why he didn't touch her. She hadn't seen it.
“My love?” she whispered. “I have been so stupid. I have been hurt, and I have been angry. I let that anger loose on you. My loathing for myself made me think you loathed me, too. Now I can see you never did. I see you loved me. I love you, too.”
As she said it, she sobbed silently. Tears ran down her cheek, ran off her chin, and splashed onto the blanket that swathed him. She sniffed but they would not stop.
“Oh, Camden,” she whispered.
She leaned back and looked at him. He was still unconscious – partly because of the mistreatment of his body, partly because of the tiny dose of poppy syrup her mother had given him while she treated his leg. He let out a sigh, those finely molded lips parting in sleep.
Rubina held his hand. As she felt him shake and he started to moan, she sponged his forehead, whispering to him. She gently dabbed his lips with water so he would not thirst. Then, in the early hours of the morning, when he started to speak nonsense and shiver and sweat, she changed his sheets.
She must have slept, because she woke to feel the gray fingers of dawn stroking her eyelids. She opened them on mist-white light and sat up.
She was sitting in the padded chair by the bedside. The screen was off the window and the candles had burned out, cold stubs in the gold candelabrum. She was looking down at the bed where Camden lay.
His eyes were open and clear, his forehead clean of sweat. He held her hand. When she looked into his eyes, he smiled.
WAKING UP
Camden was drifting in a haze of softness. He was warm and he felt sleepy. He opened his eyes and blinked. They focused on a face.
Rubina?
He smiled. Memory came back to him of a struggle in the forest. Of men holding him down and burning his leg with iron, trying to find out information. The layout of the land. The number of troops in the castle. The strategic positions. He shivered. The memory started in silence and ended in pain and darkness.
Maybe I am dead. How else is it that I am safe and warm and my dearest love is by my bedside?
Perhaps some caring angel had taken mercy on him and chosen to bless him with the one thing that would make him feel truly that he was in paradise: Rubina by his bedside, with that gentle smile, holding his hand. Saying his name.
“Camden.”
He smiled, feeling the crooked smile lift one side of his mouth. He saw her eyes light.
“Rubina.”
She smiled again, and her eyes glowed softly with the luminescence of tears. “Camden!” she said. “Do you feel better?”
He frowned. Tested his leg by twitching his toes. The tug on the burned skin made him hiss in agony.
“Not entirely,” he said. Then he frowned again. “Am I here?” he asked.
Rubina smiled at him. “Here?”
“I cannot say how pleased I am that you are here. My heaven would not be complete without you.”
Rubina's smile grew radiant. He was horrified to see a tear streak down her face. “Camden...” she began, and then sniffed, unable to say more.
“Oh, my dear,” he said, reaching up a hand to stroke that pale cheek. She didn't flinch, but let him touch her. He felt his heart fill wi
th light. “My dear,” he said gently. “I am not sad if I have died. My only sorrow is that you must be air and mist, not really here. For you are not also dead, I think?”
Rubina blinked again, and then laughed.
“Camden! My dear. You are not dead. I'm sure when the syrup of poppy wears off you'll know that well enough. You're here. In the castle. With me.”
He frowned in confusion. “In the castle? How? When?”
“We found you,” Rubina said, her face darkening with some unhappy memory. “They had you. They hurt you. We finished them.”
Camden blinked. “The English. In the woods. You found them? How could you? How did you know?”
Rubina bit her lip. “Thank Heaven we found out about them when we did. You could have died.”
She looked down at her hands and Camden felt a flare of warmth in his chest. Somehow, it had never occurred to him that Rubina would care whether he lived or died. He had truly thought she hated him!
“My dear?”
“Yes?” she said, looking up. He could see, now, the gray rings around her eyes, the only indication of weariness on that soft, pale face.
“You...you are here with me. Holding my hand. Mourning me. You...” he hesitated, feeling silly. How could he ask her that?
“Camden!” she said. She sounded angry. He flinched. “How can you think I would do aught else? You dear, silly, wonderful man.” She lifted his hand and pressed it to her lips. “I love you.”
Camden stared at her. It felt as if something warm and melting had settled in the middle of his chest, thawing his heart and making it grow, and spread and glow. He laughed.
“Rubina!” he said, as the joy flowed through him. “I love you, too.”
She stared at him. Then, to his utter surprise, she laughed. She held his hand and tears flowed down her cheeks as she laughed, sobbed, and laughed again.
“Oh, you dear silly man. I love you, too. I love you so much. We are so silly, aren't we? Forgive me?”
He frowned and then, suddenly, he was laughing too. “You mean...Oh, Rubina! I thought you hated me. That I couldn't possibly earn your love. That you were afraid.”
Adventures of a Highlander Page 77
