The Highlander Who Protected Me (Clan Kendrick #1)

by Vanessa Kelly

  Royal’s strong features fell into brooding lines. “I’ve been by that place a hundred times since it happened. I won’t say it’s not still painful, but it was stupid of me to overreact the way I did.”

  “Of course, it will always hold tragic memories for you. Then to see me sprawled in the grass, it’s no wonder you thought the worst.”

  “You weren’t sprawled. You were flat on your back, straight as a board with your hands tucked up under your chin.” He gave his head a little shake, as if trying to clear the painful memory. “In fact, you looked like a . . .”

  “A corpse? I’m sure, because I tend to sleep like that. It can be very disconcerting for hapless bystanders. There was a maid in my father’s household who refused to come into my room to light the fire in the morning. She said I gave her the frights.” She tapped his foot. “So, forewarned is forearmed, husband.”

  He gave her a faint smile. “Thank you, wife.”

  For a few charged seconds, they held each other’s gazes. Then Ainsley looked away, her newly discovered feelings making her shy. She wanted to tell him but lacked the courage to face it head on, at least for now.

  Besides, he probably wouldn’t believe her. Hello, I’ve just discovered that I’m madly in love with you. It sounded ridiculous, even to her ears.

  “What did Angus tell you about Cam?” Royal finally asked.

  She met his somber gaze. “He told me what happened at the river that day, and how it tore your family apart. He also said you saved Kade, and that you, more than anyone, helped Lord Arnprior and the family through that terrible period.”

  He waved an irritated hand. “I’m no hero, Ainsley. We were all just hanging on by our fingernails.”

  “Angus certainly seems to think you’re a hero.”

  “Och, he’s a silly old man.” His brogue was low and rough.

  “He’s a silly old man who loves you and is worried about you. I hope you’ll let him apologize tomorrow. He was quite downcast when you wouldn’t let him in the room.”

  “He gets fashed whenever my leg is bothering me. It’s not good for him.”

  “Do you know what I think?”

  “I’m sure I will momentarily.”

  “Behave, Royal Kendrick, or you’ll be sorry.” She jabbed his good leg. “What I think is that you don’t like people fussing over you. It doesn’t fit with your image as a mighty Highlander who can wrestle a wild boar to the ground and hold off a ruthless band of brigands, all whilst playing the bagpipes.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I never learned to play the bagpipes.”

  “Don’t try to distract me with humor. You hate it when people try to help you. Admit it.”

  “I admit nothing,” he said firmly. “What other whiskers did Angus tell you about me?”

  “He told me a little bit about Waterloo.” She went back to gently rubbing his foot. “He said you’d been abandoned on the battlefield. I’m not entirely sure what he meant by that, but it sounded absolutely horrific.”

  Her husband growled. “I am going to throttle that old man as soon as I’m out of this bed.”

  “Why shouldn’t he tell me what happened? I’m your wife.”

  “In name only,” came the terse reply.

  She had to swallow a few times before she could answer. “That was not very nice, you know.”

  He grimaced as he rubbed a hand over his face. “Sorry, lass. I’m a thorough brute. You’re my wife in every way that matters, and I’m that proud to be your husband.”

  His obvious sincerity eased the tight feeling in her chest. “Then why won’t you tell me what happened at Waterloo?”

  “It’s not fit for a woman like you to hear.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “You think I’m too sheltered? Well, I’m not.”

  Not anymore.

  “It’s not fit for any woman to hear. It’s too ugly.”

  “I’ve lived through ugly, Royal. It no longer frightens me.”

  “I know you have. But war is a different kind of hell, and I don’t want you touched by it. You’ve been through enough, love. You shouldn’t have to carry that burden, too.”

  “But—”

  “Angus should have held his tongue.”

  “He didn’t tell me very much. He said it was your story to share.”

  He mirrored her posture by crossing his arms over his chest. For a moment, she was distracted by the widening gap of his nightshirt, exposing more of his impressive chest.

  “That’s right,” he said. “My story.”

  “To share . With your wife .”

  His gorgeous green eyes flickered with irritation, but she held her ground—or her piece of the mattress, so to speak.

  “It would be good for you to talk about it,” she said.

  “Why?”

  She searched for the right words. His wartime experiences were so much a part of who he was, and yet he refused to talk about them. She understood why, but the cost of carrying so much pain, all alone, was a heavy one.

  “For months, no one but my mother and then Aunt Margaret knew I’d been assaulted,” she said. “My mother certainly didn’t wish to talk about it, and my aunt would grow too distressed. So I had to lug it around inside, like a great, iron chain that grew heavier by the day. So heavy that I could hardly bear it.”

  He made a distressed sound deep in his throat and reached for her.

  Ainsley held him off, needing to finish. “When I came back to Glasgow and was finally able to talk to you and Victoria about it . . . well, the chain began to unravel, link by link, and I felt like I could breathe again. I didn’t have to carry the weight of that horrible truth alone anymore.”

  He took the hand she’d clenched over her breastbone and pried it open. When he leaned over and kissed the middle of her palm, Ainsley had to blink back sudden tears.

  “I’m so glad you told me, love,” he said gruffly. “But you don’t have to worry about me. I can breathe just fine, thanks to you and Tira.”

  “Maybe, but you still carry a very grim burden from the war. I can see it, and your family can certainly see it too. That’s why they worry, especially when you withdraw from them. It’s almost like you don’t want them to come near you.”

  Abruptly, Royal leaned back into the pillows, adopting the sardonic expression he wore like a suit of armor. It clearly said do not trespass.

  “What nonsense,” he said. “You make me sound like a caricature of an inane poet, shutting myself in my room to pen gloomy poems and drink myself into oblivion. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m much too busy working and taking care of my family for that sort of idiotic behavior.”

  He finished his little speech by grasping the whisky bottle. But Ainsley plucked it out of his hand and put it back on the nightstand.

  “I’m sure that’s all true,” she said, “but look what happened today. You’re positively beating yourself up because you think you somehow failed me.”

  “Because I did fail you,” he growled.

  “That’s a demented way to think, and it’s the product of the shame you seem to feel about your injury.”

  He flinched but quickly recovered. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  She barely refrained from rolling her eyes. “You think what happened to you makes you weak, like you are not a whole man because of it. You can’t bear to ask for help because you believe people—including your family—will think less of you. That I will think less of you.”

  His gaze darted off, narrowing on the fire. He studied it with a ferocity that conveyed an inner battle raging in his soul. She could only pray it would tip in her favor.

  The seconds passed, marked by the quiet tick of the mantel clock and the hiss of coals in the grate. Dismay hollowed her stomach at the lengthening silence and the shuttered expression on his face. She’d pushed Royal, wanting him to open up and share the hidden parts of his life, as she’d shared her deepest secrets with him. But perhaps some wounds ran too bloo
dy and deep for that.

  And perhaps some words, no matter how honest or true, were too bitter and ugly to ever be said.

  “Royal, I’m—”

  “I was left for dead on the battlefield for hours,” he interrupted in an oddly flat voice. “Overnight, in fact. A soldier rolled me into a ditch and left me there.”

  Her stomach lurched into her throat.

  Maybe he’s right. Maybe I’m not strong enough to hear this.

  But she had to be strong for him. For them both. “They didn’t check to see if you were alive?”

  He gave a credibly nonchalant shrug. “It was utter chaos when I went down. I’d been lucky until then. My arm had been winged in the mess at Quatre Bras a few days before, but I was still relatively untouched. After we marched to Waterloo and took up our position, we faced heavy artillery fire and direct attacks from the French troops. I was wounded during one of those later cavalry attacks.”

  “How did it happen?” she softly asked.

  “I caught a lance in the thigh.” His mouth twisted in a travesty of a smile. “Didn’t even see the French lancer coming at me. I was caught outside the square, you see, hacking and slashing away like an idiot. Fighting like the wild Highlander that I was, as you would say.”

  Her heart ached for him. “I’m sure you were simply trying to survive in desperate circumstances.”

  His nod was somber. “You have the right of it, lass. It was carnage. We were all just trying to stay alive, including the French.”

  “But how could your men just leave you there, wounded like that? You weren’t unconscious, were you?”

  “Not at that point, no. A British infantryman shot the soldier who lanced me, and then pulled me back into the square. A couple of fellows tried to get me to the back of the line, but we were overrun by a regiment of Cuirassiers.” He grimaced. “And when I say overrun, I mean overrun.”

  “By horses?” she asked, horrified.

  “Yes. One trampled my wounded thigh. What were the odds of that?”

  Words utterly failed her. Her imagination failed her too, mostly because she couldn’t bear the thought of him in such horrific straits. For several terrifying moments, Ainsley couldn’t catch her breath.

  “Sweetheart,” Royal said, gently cupping her cheek. “It’s all right. I’m here, and I’m well.”

  “I know. I . . . it’s just that I’m so terribly sorry you had to endure such a horror.”

  “Are you sure you wish to hear the rest?”

  She stiffened her spine, mentally and physically. “If you could live through it, then I can certainly hear about it.”

  He nodded and withdrew his hand. She missed his warmth, but sensed that he needed to retreat a bit to finish the tale.

  “Needless to say, the pain from the encounter with that bloody big horse put me right out. When I awoke, I found myself halfway under a hedge, with no idea how I’d gotten there. My regiment was well gone, taking part in the final advance against the French army, as I later learned. I managed to crawl a few feet, but all I could see were dead bodies, both horses and men. And I was so weak at that point I could scarcely move. Night was falling and I had no idea which direction to go in, anyway.”

  Ainsley swallowed against a sudden rush of tears. “You must have felt so terribly alone there in the dark.” After her assault, she hated being alone in the dark.

  “I wasn’t alone for long,” he said dryly. “Nightfall was when the scavengers came out.”

  “You mean people who rob the bodies of dead soldiers?”

  “It’s a time-honored tradition amongst soldiers of both sides, unfortunately.”

  Anger seared like a hot poker in her chest. She wanted to kill anyone who’d hurt Royal—or would ever try to hurt him again.

  “And you were obviously robbed,” she said.

  Royal nodded. “The man thought I was dead, so he was quite surprised when I grabbed hold of his coat and asked for water.”

  “Did he give you any?”

  “Hardly. He coshed me on the head, riffled my pockets, and then rolled me into a ditch.”

  When she gaped at him, too sickened to muster even a sympathetic word, he shrugged again, as if it didn’t matter.

  “I . . . I don’t know what to say,” Ainsley finally stammered.

  “There’s nothing to say, love. It’s war. That’s what men do.”

  “Awful men. But not you,” she protested. “Or Lord Arnprior. Neither you nor any of your brothers would act like that.”

  “I hope not. But war is a desperate, dirty business. It brings out the best and the worst in men, and you never know for certain what you’re capable of until the moment is upon you. You never know if you’re going to survive. That’s the worst part. The not knowing.”

  She grabbed his hand, desperate for his touch. “But you did survive.”

  “Thanks to Nick. He defied orders and spent the whole night searching for me. He finally found me in that damned ditch, half-drowned and nearly dead. And I was in bad shape for weeks after that.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I wonder how—or even why—I survived when so many didn’t. There’s no making sense of it.”

  She lurched up onto her knees and crawled to the head of the bed.

  Royal peered at her with a concerned frown. “Ainsley?”

  She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “You survived for me, you stupid man, for me and for Tira. And don’t you ever, ever forget it.”

  And then, too upset to care that she hated to cry, Ainsley collapsed into his arms and burst into tears.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Royal cradled his wife as she sobbed in his arms. Desperately, he rummaged through his brain for the words that might console her. He’d never seen Ainsley cry with such abandon, not even when she’d given up Tira that fateful day in Cairndow. Her courage back then had filled him with awe. But if she’d cried then as she was crying now, he would not have been able to turn his back and walk away from her.

  He never should have abandoned her, no matter how right the decision had seemed at the time. But the past was a country they could never revisit. Now, they could only go forward. Despite their shared legacy of pain, they could try to create a better life, a good life as husband and wife.

  Nothing and no one would ever take Ainsley away from him again.

  He stroked her silky black hair, breathing in the faint scents of lavender and mint that drifted up like a whisper of magic. “Hush, love. You mustn’t cry so, or you’ll make yourself ill.”

  She half sobbed something into his nightshirt, her body plastered against him. Ainsley was a delicious armful and he was aware of every bit of it, especially the lush breasts that pressed into him when she gulped in air. His leg was killing him, he’d just told her about the worst day of his life, and she was a distraught mess in his arms, yet he still wanted to tip the lass onto her back and kiss her until she trembled for other reasons besides grief.

  Get your mind out of the gutter, you idiot.

  Ainsley needed comforting now, not a husband slaking his lust, even though that lust had grown to monumental proportions.

  He focused on her muffled words. “What did you say, sweetheart? I couldn’t hear you.”

  She was trying hard to contain herself, swallowing her broken sobs. Royal stroked a hand down her back, simply waiting for her to settle.

  After a minute or so, she flattened her hands on his chest and pushed into a sitting position. The blue lace ribbon of her formerly impeccable coiffure had come undone, sending most of her hair down in a bedraggled tumble. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were swollen, and her nose had turned a rather bright shade of pink. She’d be utterly appalled if she caught a glimpse of herself, thanks to her fierce need to control how others saw her.

  To Royal, Ainsley had never looked more beautiful. Every emotion shimmered right on the surface, raw, honest, and vulnerable. She was not a woman who liked being vulnerable, so the fact that she could be that way with him felt
like a precious gift.

  She pushed her hair out of her eyes and swiped a sleeve across her nose as she gave a hearty sniff. Royal found her lack of self-consciousness utterly charming.

  “I said, I never get sick,” she replied in a husky voice. “You’re the one who’s sick, and here I am acting like a hysterical female. I am utterly mortified by it. You should just shoot me and put us both out of our misery.”

  He snagged a soft cloth from the bedside table and gently dried her damp cheeks. “You’ve nothing to be ashamed of, Ainsley. It’s an ugly tale. It was wrong of me to tell you.”

  She suffered his ministrations, even though he could tell she wanted to take the cloth and dry her cheeks herself. Ainsley was a stubborn, independent lass and he loved her all the more for it.

  “I asked you to tell me, as you might recall,” she said. “In fact, I insisted on it.”

  “That’s no excuse. You’ve suffered enough in your life. You don’t need to hear my gruesome old war stories.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said, giving his shoulder a little shove. “And I’m glad you told me. Since you know everything horrible that’s happened to me, it’s only fair that I know everything miserable that’s befallen you.”

  “Ainsley, I don’t want you touched by that sort of horror. It’s my job to protect you from such things, not expose you to them.”

  Irritation sparkled off the damp tips of her eyelashes. “Royal, I want your help and support, but you don’t have to tiptoe around me like I’m some frail miss who could shatter at the first sign of trouble. I’m perfectly c . . . capable of taking care of myself.”

  He smiled at her little hiccup. “That is most apparent and undeniable.”

  “Although you are certainly free to spoil me, on occasion. I haven’t been spoiled in some time, and I think I’m due for it.”

  “I would be happy to spoil you and take care of you. But, alas, today illustrated all too clearly that I’ve been mucking that up. In fact, I clearly need you to take care of me .”

  That won him a reluctant smile. “What a shocking reversal of the natural order.”