And soon, that translucent veil of red over his eyes was replaced with an oddly calming, misty black, that rolled over his vision like morning fog. The battlefield faded away to nothing, and Camdyn McKay lay still, all of the fight gone out of him. A sputtering lantern, among a sea of extinguished flames.
Chapter 1
It had come as quite the surprise when Camdyn had awoken to find himself alive and somehow still breathing, upon the gloomy expanse of Culloden Moor. He did not know how many hours had passed, but there was still daylight to see by, and the spit of rain to add insult to his injuries.
The Englishman who had fallen on top of him had already been taken away, presumably by his people, who cared how their own soldiers were put to rest. Yet, the bastard’s bayonet wound still throbbed in Camdyn’s chest, just down from where his shoulder joined with his collarbone.
As for the Scots… Camdyn had almost lost his breath again as he looked around the battlefield, now strewn by the crush of abandoned corpses. He did not need to be told what had happened. It was as clear as day—the Jacobites had lost, and they had lost badly. A massacre of good soldiers, whose wives and children would never see their husbands, brothers, fathers, uncles, again.
How many are left? How many got away? Where did they all go?
Camdyn had no one to answer his questions as he plodded along in the gloaming, now a fair distance away from that fateful moor.
He had encountered nobody from either side as he had abandoned the battlefield, heading north-west toward the Moray Firth, where he planned to follow the coastline down to Inverness, where he had resided for the last few years, in-between skirmishes and battles. There were faster routes, but he knew they might be teeming with English, determined to take a few more Jacobite lives while they still had a taste for it.
“They will nae get me,” Camdyn muttered encouragement to himself as he walked, his entire being feeling as though it could come apart at the seams at any moment. Although, there was one silver lining to be found—he could hear again, though the sounds were fuzzy and distorted, as if he were submerged in water.
“I cannae stop. I have to keep goin’.” He repeated the sentiment as minutes shifted into hours, until he no longer knew if he was even on the right path. Wounded and alone, he knew he would be easy pickings for any Englishman who might cross his path. As such, he kept to the shadows of the glistening, dripping trees that lined his tiring road home, not caring about the icy splashes that pattered down onto him.
“What if it is nae even me home no more?” he said quietly, blinking deliberately to try and stave off the heaviness of his lids. If the English had ridden for Inverness after their success, he realized he might be heading directly into the lion’s den.
Several times on his lengthy trek, he thought about turning around and walking north, all the way back to the Highlands and Castle Venruit—the place he had once called home before he came to fight in the Jacobite campaign. He felt certain that Laird Young and his wife, Bernadine, would welcome him with open arms, and he would have relished the opportunity to see his family again.
I cannae do that, though, can I?
Common sense prevailed time and again.
I’d die afore I reached it, in this state. Even if someone found me body on the side of the road, they wouldnae bury me. I’d be left for the crows to feed on.
And, deep down, past the combined torture of his injuries, he could not deny he felt a touch of shame.
“How could I face ‘em again?” he grumbled miserably, speaking aloud as though he were out in the forests near Venruit Castle, trying to scare off any lurking predators in the nearby shadows. “I left ‘em, promisin’ I’d be comin’ back victorious. Laird Young even tried to talk me out of it, but I wouldnae listen, would I?” He sighed, fighting to ignore the pains in his chest. “I’d do nothin’ but bring ‘em danger, if I went back now. Until the English have said what they’re goin’ to do about us Jacobites, I cannae risk it.”
Still, despite the threat, he had not been able to part with his broadsword, which now bounced against his tender back, wrapped in some sackcloth that he had pilfered from the battlefield in an attempt to disguise it.
Finally, with his stomach gnawing from hunger and his legs growing more like lead by the minute, he saw the glisten of the Moray Firth ahead of him. There would be another few hours of walking to go, given his laborious pace, but there was a comfort in the sight of water. If any Englishman happened to come by, he could throw himself into the Firth’s icy embrace, and swim from the danger. At least, that was his plan, if it came to it. Whether his broken body would cooperate was another matter entirely.
I could even rest awhile on the shoreline or beg a scrap of bread from a farmhouse along the way.
The prospect cheered his equally wounded mentality as he hobbled the last few yards to the worn trail that meandered alongside the water. He could not remember the last time he had slept for more than a couple of hours, or the last time he had filled his belly to satisfaction, but there was nothing like a bit of kip and a hearty meal to make a man feel more like himself again.
However, it appeared as though the farmhouses and cottages along the road had already been informed of the Jacobites’ failure, and the risk of scattered retreaters calling on the generosity of strangers. Every single window stared darkly out at him like blinded eyes, taunting him with the lack of welcome. And on the few doors that he knocked upon, he received nothing but silence.
Nae matter. I’ll eat and sleep when I get home. It is nae far now.
Tricking himself into believing that was true was the only thing he could do, with nowhere to pause for a brief reprieve from his suffering.
Trudging on, his steps slowed until he barely felt as though he was moving. His right foot could no longer bear any weight at all, prompting him to take his broadsword off his back and use it as a walking cane, wedging the bar of the hilt under his armpit.
Accompanied by the harsh rasp of his arduous breaths, he did not know if he had it in him to reach Inverness. Nevertheless, he kept his head down and ploughed on, focusing on nothing but the slow shuffle of his limping gait. It distracted him from the rest of the agony that screamed through his body, though he knew he would have to face the brunt of that later, when he finally had to stop for rest.
What’s that?
Camdyn blinked furiously as he raised his weary head. In the near-distance, he spied the tell-tale glowing lights of civilization, floating like the will-o’-the-wisps that lurked on the perilous paths of Highland marshes.
Relief washed over him, for he realized that home was now within his reach. Here, regardless of what had happened today on Culloden Moor, he knew there were people in Inverness who would help him. They would not bar their doors and snuff out their lights to deny him a morsel of sympathy.
“Murdock will fix me up,” he said, trying to pick up his pace now that he was so close to his destination.
Murdock McLachlan was a baker by trade, though he possessed a heart as courageous as any warrior. Camdyn knew the man would have joined the Jacobite campaign, had he not been coming into the winter of his life. Indeed, Murdock had tried to protest that he could still fight, but Camdyn had managed to persuade him not to put his life in peril. Now, he was glad that he had, for he sensed that friends would be few and far between, having lost so many on the moor.
Before long, he came to a cluster of grand houses, just on the outskirts of Inverness itself. Beautiful structures of pale gray stone with dark slated roofs, and sparse-leaved oaks and apple trees that would flourish in the summertime, contrasting that muted gray with vibrant greens and yellows, and the blush of ripe fruits.
And yet, Camdyn hated the very sight of them. He did not care how pristine they looked, nor how meticulously they were built, for they had been constructed by the hands of wealthy English lords and merchants. To him, that meant the very foundations were rotten the core. What right did an Englishman have to build anything on Scot
tish soil? None, as far as he was concerned.
Friends and good men are dead because of ye, ye bastards!
He wanted to stop in the street and roar his loathing for everyone to hear.
Of course, he knew that battles and death were as entwined as volatile lovers, but that did not mean he could not despise those responsible for what had transpired today. The English had thrown money at this conflict from the beginning, while the Jacobites had scraped together what they could, relying on determination instead of wealth. The English had even called 12,000 troops back from the Continent, to make sure the rebellion was quashed.
Before today, Camdyn had taken pride in the fact that, even with those stakes leveled against the Jacobites, they had still proven themselves to be worthy opponents, but that pride had turned sour now.
“How can ye call that a fair fight, eh?” he spat. “Ye’re naught but cowards, the lot of ye!”
He dragged himself closer to the nearest house, gripping the bars of the tall, wrought iron gate for purchase as though he had already been imprisoned for his part in the rebellion. As he glowered up at the illuminated windows, a rising rage flooded through his bones, where his ancestral hostility toward these Sassenach invaders had first taken root. It was part of him, part of any Scotsman or woman worth their salt.
“Look at ye, safe in yer ill-gotten houses, tramplin’ over our land and its people, thinkin’ ye’ve got any cause bein’ here.” He clenched the bars until his knuckles whitened, flecked with dirt and rusty streaks of dried blood. “We ought to round ye all up and march ye to the border, and hoof ye across it with a warnin’ never to return. Our ancestors did it to them Romans. Why should ye be any different, eh?”
His breath shifted to shallow, sharp gasps that did nothing to satiate his lungs, his eyes bulging with the vehemence inside him. Without warning, his hands slipped from the bars and he crumpled in a heap in front of the gate, his body slumped against it while his broadsword slipped through the bars and clattered onto the flagstones beyond.
For a soldier who had just lost everything, the potency of hate could be a venom to the blood, and Camdyn had received a felling dose.
Chapter 2
A widow at thirty-three years of age, the Countess of Desiglow, Victoria Seifried, had little to occupy her time of an evening, especially when there were no desperate men and women knocking upon her manor door to implore her aid. A skilled healer, well-versed in the medicinal arts, she relished the opportunity to put her lifetime of research and learning to charitable use.
Evening had fallen, and the day had passed without a single patient to give Victoria purpose, and now she had to figure out what to do until she finally retired to bed. Certain that she would become bored if she tried to read or rearrange her various vials of pungent liquids and pouches of herbs for the thousandth time, Victoria turned her attention to her most reluctant, and longest suffering patient—her lady’s maid, Genevieve.
“I know it smells as vile as marsh water, but you will grow accustomed to it. I have an excellent feeling about this one. Soon enough, we shall have you leaping about the place like a spring lamb!” Victoria cheered enthusiastically.
Genevieve cast her mistress a dubious eye. “I haven’t been anything close to a spring lamb for almost three decades, as you well know.”
Victoria waved away the pessimism, as she continued to diligently apply a thick poultice of murky greenish sludge to the considerable swell around Genevieve’s knees. An arthritic condition that always troubled the older woman more in the colder months, though she never complained and was, actually, remarkably spry considering she was verging toward fifty.
“It has been devilishly quiet today, do you not think?” Victoria said as she worked. She had been applying poultices since she was a child, taught by her mother, and could have done it with her eyes closed, but she was determined to get the placement just right for optimal treatment. A fiddly business that, secretly, she adored.
Genevieve nodded. “I’d have thought we’d be inundated, considering what happened up at Culloden Moor.”
Victoria paused in her application. “Pardon?”
“The Duke of Cumberland and his men clashed with those pesky Jacobites. I hear it was nothing short of a massacre for the latter. 2,000 dead on their side, and more captured. Barely 50 dead on our side, though many with injuries that you’d have no troubling repairing,” she replied, pinching the bridge of her nose against the stench of the poultice.
Victoria took up a clean bandage and began to wrap it over the pasted layer beneath, her eyes wide with horror. “I had no idea! If I had known, I would have ridden there directly to offer my services to anyone that needed it.”
She did not specifically say that she would have been happy to help the Jacobites, as well, but Genevieve evidently understood the subtext, for she gave a quiet, resigned sigh. After all, when it came to healing human beings, there was no such thing as a right side or a wrong side, in her mind.
“Why do you think I didn’t tell you until now, when the remainder of the rebels have long-since retreated, and the injured from the proper side are already being tended to?” Genevieve cracked a mischievous smile.
Victoria frowned at her lady’s maid, though she was more of a friend or a grandmother to her, in truth. “I could have helped.”
“You would have been turned away for being a woman, regardless of your skill. It would have been a wasted journey,” Genevieve insisted. “Besides, those who know of you, and still have need of your aid, will find their way to your door eventually, anyway.”
Victoria tied a neat knot in the clean bandage. “Maybe I should take a walk, to see if there are any lost stragglers out there.” Standing up, she walked to the window and pulled aside a heavy drape of weighted cream silk, embroidered with golden fleur-de-lis, which seemed almost traitorous considering the ongoing squabbles with the French.
“I’ll get up out of this seat and bar the door if you even consider it,” Genevieve chastised.
But… what if there are people in trouble?
Victoria knew better than to say such a thing out loud, so she sent her worries silently out into the dusky world outside her window.
In truth, she had always felt somewhat guilty about the wealth and luxury that surrounded her here, at Desiglow Manor. Being a sought-after healer in Inverness, she often visited with the people who called upon her—Scottish and English alike. So many of them lived poor existences, whole families crowded into single-room lodgings or tiny residences where sanitation left a lot to be desired. Meanwhile, she always got to return to this grand manor, and it had only taken an arranged marriage to receive it.
Her eye was drawn to a figure moving along the street in the low light. Dressed in a tartan kilt of earthen colors, one fold of it pinned over his left shoulder, and a torn shirt that might once have been white, she knew immediately that he was a Scot. And not only a Scot, but likely one who had fought at Culloden Moor.
A Jacobite. He must be.
His dirtied face, almost camouflaged against in the gloom, held a pained expression as he came to a stop in the middle of the street, not far from her front gate. He certainly looked injured, considering he appeared to be leaning on a cane of some kind, but there seemed to be more to his visible pain that physical wounds. His mouth twisted up in a grimace of anger, and she could have sworn she heard him say something.
“There is a man out there,” she said quietly.
Genevieve gasped. “Where?”
“In the street. I think he might be a soldier.” Victoria squinted to get a better look. Her curiosity swiftly turned to panic as the man turned and approached her gate, prompting her to duck back beneath the drape. After a moment or two, she dared to peer around it, and saw the man staring right through the gaps in the bars.
Has he seen me?
She did not know, but her keen, healer’s eyes immediately sought out the ripped flesh of a muscled abdomen, poking through the tear across the fro
nt of his shirt. Dried blood, lying like war paint against the right side of a handsome, ruggedly angular face, though she could not make out the color of his eyes or his tangled mane of hair.
“I should see if he needs help,” she declared, not disclosing the part about him being a Jacobite to Genevieve, who would not approve.
He must have suffered terribly. If he is here, then he has not been caught. Does that mean he is a fugitive?
She found she did not care. The politics and conflicts of men held no sway over whom she treated, and she had always vowed that it never would, letting empathy guide her instead.
Before Genevieve could even attempt to rise from her armchair, Victoria hurried from the upstairs library that she had turned into her own personal surgery and raced along the landing. Grasping the banister, she ran down the stairs as fast as she could and threw open the front door, ready to offer the wounded fellow something to eat and drink, a place to take shelter, and treatment for his wounds.
Highlander's Fallen Angel : A Steamy Scottish Historical Romance Novel Page 2
