Margaret shuddered at what Harry might do if he were feeling unkind. He might smile like an angel, but there was something terribly dark in him. He would hurt her through her baby.
A panic started to sink into her bones, but she got a hold of herself quickly.
No. I need to be able to think. I need to be able to plan. I cannot simply go crazy with fear.
The room she was in was plain but furnished. The only escape was through a narrow window. Margaret thought that she might actually be able to crawl through it, but there was a steep drop outside, one that would place her right on top of a gully of sharp rocks and brambles. Margaret's hand cupped over her belly protectively. She was more likely to break a leg than she was to fall unhurt, and there was no telling what she might do to the baby inside her.
I can't take that risk. Instead, she walked around the room. There were tapestries to keep out the chill, a long low hearth that ran along one side of the room, a few chairs, some paintings, and little else. She walked around the room restlessly for what felt like hours, and she finally had to sit down because she was making herself tired and sad. There was no way out of the room except the door, and it wasn't as if she could take it... could she?
She stopped to think her, rubbing her belly absently. Then she smiled a little.
Well, it's not as if things will get much worse if we lose, will it, baby?
* * *
It was the next morning by the time a man was sent to bring some food to the Earl of Norwich's woman. The mercenaries did not bother learning much about the quality. They went where they were told and did what they had to do, but still, there was a certain amount of curiosity over the woman the earl had come north for.
The man who brought her the victuals promised to tell the rest about her, but when he came to her room, he found it empty. She had toppled most of the furniture, throwing some of it into the hearth for spite, but at some point, she had probably had the idea to escape. One of the great tapestries was pulled down off the wall, tied to a large chair, and then dangled out of the room.
The man cried for the others, and then the earl himself appeared from his commandeered chambers, roaring at incompetence and sabotage and worse things. He stormed into the room where the lady had been, breaking the furniture and staring at the rope that she had used to make her escape.
"Down and look for her tracks," he roared finally. "She can't have gone far. She will be easy to catch."
The men left in a crowd of angry murmurs. They had wanted to go home before this; now, it looked like they could do no such thing.
After they left, Margaret finally let out the breath she had been holding. The chimney was a dusty, sooty place, and she had thought that her arms would give out from holding herself in it. Once or twice, she had been able to balance herself on the furniture that she had left in the fireplace, but she hadn't dared do it too often. She thought right up until the last that she would give in, give up, not be able to hold herself up out of sight.
Whenever Margaret had thought that, however, she had thought of her baby and its father, who she loved with all her heart. Somehow, she knew that he had given her strength in her time of need, and now she needed to repay it by returning to him.
She slipped down, stretching out her sore arms. Then, moving quietly, she made her way out of the room. She guessed that the men were out in the woods looking for her, but she was wrong. Instead, she stepped out into the courtyard into chaos, shocked at the men who were barring the door and rapidly and fearfully arming themselves. There was no time for them to catch sight of her, because they looked as if they were getting ready for a siege.
Automatically, Margaret looked up to the parapet where Harry stood, and when he tried to talk, a cry went up from behind the walls.
Margaret's heart beat double time in her chest, because Heaven help her, she knew that war cry, had heard it since she was a young girl.
Clan MacTaggart had arrived.
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chapter 44
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"You have no rights here," the Earl of Norwich called out to them.
Aidan grinned grimly.
"I'm a Highlander in Scotland, I have more rights than you do when you are in front of your king," he retorted. "Leister Castle does not belong to you, and you will be leaving it immediately, giving back what you took from me."
“I took nothing from MacTaggart lands. You cringing dogs have nothing that I want. We are at peace now, and not even a degenerate king like Robert the Bruce will countenance this. This is an act of war.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no. The peace is less sound that it seemed even a short while ago, isn't it? But no, this does not need to be an act of war. It does not need to be a massacre, Norwich. Only let her go.”
Norwich laughed, and Aidan ached to put his fist through the man's face.
“All this over a woman?”
Aidan could feel the men he had brought with him at his back. Norwich's soldiers would be doubting him now, wondering to themselves whether a single woman was worth this. His own men knew that it was never about just a woman. It was about English soldiers in a Scottish stronghold, and with Devon Montgomery and his troops gone, an opportunity to reclaim what had been lost.
“All this and more,” Aidan replied. “The villagers who are meant to supply and work the land for your castle. Have you asked about what they will die to defend?”
Norwich started to answer, but then stone-faced, Aidan pointed east, where the wind was sending up a dark column of smoke. It was the same as the smoke that was sent up from the pyres of bodies burned after the battlefield, and Norwich's expression turned sallow.
“You... they were your people, Highlander!”
Aidan grinned savagely.
“They stood too close to you, Englishman. I did that to people who may have shared my own blood. Now, tell me what I might do to you.”
Norwich hesitated for another moment, and then his fair head disappeared under the parapet. There was still no telling which way this might go, and Aidan did not relax.
“Scared the devil out of him, big brother,” Reade said with some satisfaction.
Aidan shook his head.
“He's a strange one. I think if his mother had known what she was bringing into the world, she might have drowned him in a bucket of ashes. I won't be happy until we've seen the back of this place.”
There was something skin-crawlingly vulnerable about waiting for Norwich's response but all Aidan could do was wait. It could come to a siege; they were prepared for that, but it would be a long and difficult thing with winter coming on. They would win, but the cost might be terrible. No, the best thing would be for Norwich to surrender and to leave...
It seemed to take hours, but it was probably only a few minutes before the broad door started to hitch open. The men who opened it were not used to the mechanism, and it halted a few times before it was over.
Norwich appeared, armored and with that same strange smile on his face and his men at his back.
“Go in and look for her if you want. You will not find her.”
“What is this?” Aidan growled.
Norwich shook his head.
“She vanished, Highlander. Cast herself to break on the stones in the ravine, or some other fate. She is gone, and—”
There was surely something else that the English lord surely meant to say something else, but then there was a flash of red, and a horse broke ranks from Harry's soldiers. A cry went up, hands tried to reach for the rider. All Aidan needed to see was a banner of dark red hair, and he lunged forward on Bram, lunging for Margaret and shouting like a madman.
They met on the empty ground between the castle and the MacTaggart soldiers.
“How could you?” Margaret asked tearfully. “Those poor people! I heard you, you just... sacrificed their lives and for what?”
Aidan lunged for her horse's bridle, catching it on his second try, un
able to take his eyes off her. She was covered in soot, tears streaking clean patches down her face. She looked like she had dragged herself through the mountain passes on her hands, but none of that mattered. He wanted to draw her into his arms in that moment, but first he had to calm her down.
“Margaret, Meggie, no... “
She flailed at him, but then she was close enough that he could lift her up on his horse, drag her over, and put his mouth next to her ear.
“It is only a fire. No harm at all. Just a fire with plenty of bones in it to send up smoke, I swear to you, there is no harm to it at all, none...”
Margaret looked up at him with tear-filled eyes, her mouth open with relief.
“You swear?”
“I swear. Margaret, I would never...”
There were many things to say in that moment, ranging from using the English's belief about Scottish brutality against them to how much he needed her and loved her, but at that moment, Aidan turned and saw Norwich riding down on them with his sword drawn. The man's face was fixed in a nearly inhuman snarl, and his gleaming sword caught the thin sun. The MacTaggart soldiers roared with anger, but they were too far away to do anything, and Aidan had to make a decision.
Please. Please want to kill me more than you want to do anything else...
As prayers went, it was a strange one, but it was all he had.
“Hang on,” he told Margaret, and then he slid off of Bram's back. In the same movement, he slapped the horse's side, sending him back to the MacTaggart lines with Margaret in the saddle. That left Aidan on his feet, drawing his sword.
For a moment, he thought that it wouldn't be enough, that the earl would charge after Margaret, catch her, kill her, and that would have been the end for Aidan, too, but Norwich wheeled his horse around, murder in his eyes.
“Scottish barbarian,” he screamed. “You had her again and again...”
Aidan didn't answer, fending off two blows from above. Harry's horse wasn't trained for battle; otherwise, he would have been dead. He might still be dead, but Norwich was too furious to think about what he was doing, to pause for even a moment. The blows he sent toward Aidan would have cut him in half if they had struck, but they went wide.
Norwich's shouting grew incoherent, but Aidan didn't care. He was waiting for when the other man would grow careless, too careless to survive, and a moment later, there it was.
One of Norwich's blows went wide, pulling him forward in the saddle, and Aidan reached in, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him off. For a moment, he didn't think it would work, but then Norwich was on the ground.
“Get up,” Aidan said, stepping back. “If I have to kill an Englishman today, I want to do it fairly.”
Aidan had met the English on the field of battle before. They were only men, as he and his soldiers were only men. There was nothing to war but the will of those far greater than those who fought, and he knew that.
However, when he faced Harry Stratham, he wondered if there was something else there. Harry looked like a man, but there was something insensible in him, something brutal. He lunged at Aidan twice, no strategy, nothing but rage, and finally, when Aidan had the measure of him, he struck him down, the gesture not so different from butchering a pig or a cow.
Harry fell to the ground with a heavy thud, dead, and for a moment, all Aidan cared about was that the man was dead and gone. It didn't matter if he was a lord or a beggar; the world was better off without his madness. Later, he could think about what it might have meant for the world that he had killed an English lord during what was meant to be a peacetime, but right now, all that mattered was that he was dead.
Reade sat tall in his saddle, looking over the mercenaries.
“Your leader is dead. Do you have any quarrel with Clan MacTaggart?” he asked, his voice light, but his meaning clear.
The mercenaries shook their head, and if they had any doubts about where the situation lay, they kept it to themselves.
Almost stumbling, Aidan found Margaret in his arms, and he held her so tightly he thought she might protest. Instead, she embraced him, drawing him down for a passionate kiss in front of the entire world and without a single care about it.
“Oh, Heaven be praised, you're safe, you're safe,” she sobbed. “Oh, Aidan, I love you so, and you frightened me so very badly...”
“I am here,” Aidan said. “I will not leave you, Meggie, not ever. I love you.”
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chapter 45
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Margaret felt as if she were behind a thick pane of glass. Everything was far away, and the voices of the men around her were little more than the calling of night birds or the barking of foxes. The only thing that kept her grounded was Aidan's arms around her as she sat in front of him on Bram's back. He was solid, he was real, and he would never let anything else happen to her. He loved her.
It all felt like too much. In less than two days, she had been captured, broken Aidan's heart, learned she was with child, and hidden in a chimney until help could arrive. She felt at once as inert as a standing stone and as fragile as a dried flower. All she could do was stay with Aidan, touching the skin of his hands when she felt as if she had drifted too far. All that mattered was that she stayed with him.
She was vaguely aware of Aidan splitting his men. Most would stay at Leister Castle to hold, Reade to lead them. It would prevent any enemy forces from taking it from them, especially if the rumors of war were true. Some would go home to Doone Castle, to deliver the news of what had happened to those who waited. Aidan said that he would join them at Doone Castle shortly, but before that, there was something he still had to do.
Margaret was feeling calmer when they rode north again, and she was calmer yet when she realized they were alone. Peace settled over her now, and even though there was so very much to say to each other, she didn't want to break that calm.
Finally, though, she knew she had to.
“Where are we going?”
“To your mother's cottage.”
Margaret couldn't keep a gasp from escaping her lips. She twisted in the saddle to look at him, almost unseating them both.
“You're... you're leaving me with—”
Aidan cursed, and then he slid off of the saddle, landing on his feet. They had stopped in a small copse of trees, sheltered from the wind. There was a standing stone close by, ancient, with the engraving worn down to nothing, and something in Margaret shivered at its silent witness.
“Will you come?”
After a moment, she did as he asked, because what else was she going to do? She had an unnervingly clear idea of everything she had put him through over the last few weeks, and no matter what he had said to her in the heat of battle, this would be the truth.
When they faced each other on level ground, Aidan's face softened a little. He touched her cheek gently, and she leaned against his touch.
“You look exhausted,” he murmured.
She shrugged.
“I can't imagine you're well-rested.”
“I've decided to love you all my life. I have a feeling that rest is going to be difficult to come by in the years to come,” Aidan said easily.
She stared at him.
“Aidan...?”
“Did you not believe me when I spoke before? When I said it eight years ago? It's true, Margaret, all of it is true. I love you. I have for years, even when I refused to let myself think of you or say your name. I love you, Meggie, and nothing will change that.”
“Then... then why are you taking me to my mother's cottage?”
“Because you asked me to. Because we were close to MacKinnon lands, and I wanted to speak with you alone. Because you have not seen her for years and because I want to ask for her blessing.”
Margaret felt as if she were walking through mud. This was all happening so fast. She must have looked ready to faint because Aidan placed his hands on her shoulders.
“
I love your hands,” she blurted out.
Aidan laughed a little in disbelief.
“What?”
“I love them. I love watching them. I love how they move when you handle a horse or a sword. When you touch me. I could watch them for the rest of my life.”
“All right, I'm beginning to wonder if you need more rest and food before we have this conversation.”
He might have been right, but Margaret could not stand to put it off one moment longer.
“No! No, tell me now. You want my mother's blessing...”
“Because I want to marry you, Margaret. Same as I did eight years ago. Same as I did from the moment I laid eyes on you. If you say yes, I will give you everything it is in my power to give you. I will protect you, care for you, and treasure you as you deserve. I will already love you forever, but perhaps for the rest, you would say yes to marrying me...”
“Oh, Aidan,” Margaret breathed, and she knew that she was still strained from her ordeal because she burst into tears. She threw herself into his arms, sobbing as if she was dying.
Through it all, Aidan held her and soothed her. Told her he loved her.
“What a story this will be to tell our child,” she said finally. “When their father proposed, their mother wept.”
“Ah, well, they will know us both. They'll understand. That will be quite a story to tell our child someday.”
“Say... in eight months, perhaps.”
Now it was Aidan's turn to stare at her, shock on his face.
“You mean—”
“It is early. But yes. I am as sure as I can be.”
She had never seen joy overtake anyone like it overtook Aidan in that moment, He held her close again, but this time, there was a care there, as if he was afraid he might shatter her.
“Margaret. Darling Meggie. Say it. Please. I fear I'll die if you don't.”
She knew it so truly in her bones that she almost wondered that it needed to be said at all, but he was right.
“I love you, Aidan. I will marry you.”
The Highlander’s Lost Bride (The Highlands Warring Scottish Romance) (A Medieval Historical Romance Book) Page 20
