The Rock

by Monica McCarty

  “But be careful what you wish for,” Elizabeth said with a laugh, bounding the adorable fair-haired child in her arms. “I remember how it was when Hugh started to walk. It seemed we were forever chasing him to prevent some sort of disaster.”

  The little boy seemed to like her bouncing and gurgled with laughter, revealing a handful of pearly white teeth. He was a cute little devil with a cherubic round face, big green eyes, long lashes, feathery soft blond hair, and sturdy little limbs.

  “He likes you,” Lady Helen said with a smile. “He seems to have a fondness for pretty lasses already.”

  Elizabeth grinned and laughed as he started to play with one of her plaits. “How old is he? Ten months?”

  Lady Helen’s brows lifted. “Yes, next week. I’m impressed. You’d think with all I know about healing I’d be better at this. But Willie has a knack for revealing just how ignorant I am. I never seem to know what to do with him. I can’t believe I actually thought this would be easy.”

  Hearing the very motherly frustration in her voice, Elizabeth had to smile. She remembered Joanna’s similar travails during Uilleam’s first year. Her nephew would be two in June. “He is your first?”

  Helen nodded. “I’ve heard from some of the other wives that it gets easier. Since a few of them have more than one child, I guess I’ll have to believe them.”

  It must have for Jo, Elizabeth thought with a smile, if the recent greenish hue to her skin in the morning meant anything.

  Elizabeth suspected she was referring to the other wives of Bruce’s secret Guard. “Your husband doesn’t mind you and the baby being here?”

  Lady Helen’s mouth twisted. “I wouldn’t say that. I think he’d rather Willie and I were at Varrich Castle in the far north of his lands in Sutherland, but he knows I may be needed, so we try to find a balance. Willie and I stay far away from danger, but as soon as Magnus deems it safe we are with him. With the victories the king has been having of late, I hope it won’t be long until most of Scotland is safe.” She glanced down in horror at Elizabeth’s wrist. “Willie, no!”

  The little boy had moved on from trying to poke his chubby fingers through Elizabeth’s plait to gnawing on her bracelet.

  “It’s all right,” she said with a laugh. “He isn’t doing any harm.”

  “Are you sure?” Lady Helen said, watching uncertainly. “It’s very beautiful.” She peered closer at the thin, etched piece of metal. “And unusual. I noticed you holding it when I walked into the room. It must be special to you.”

  Elizabeth must have been twisting it again. Joanna had pointed out more than once—as if she should signify something by it—that she did so often when she was anxious or nervous about something.

  “It is,” Elizabeth answered. Thommy had given it to her for her saint’s day right before she’d been forced to leave for France at the start of Bruce’s war. She rarely removed it.

  The small cuff was simply designed, consisting of two half-circles of brass (likely remnants from making the quillons from a sword) hinged on one side and secured by two clasps on the other. The workmanship was exquisite. It was etched with ancient symbols, such as those that were on the old cross at St. Mary’s in Douglas said to have been from the time Christianity was first introduced by the Irish missionaries St. Finian and St. Columba. Thommy was so talented, which is why she’d never understood why he wanted to be a knight. Although perhaps she had a better idea now.

  “May I see it?” Helen asked.

  “Of course,” she replied, trying to wrestle it from the baby’s gummy grasp. When he started to argue the way that babies do, she distracted him from whining by putting him down on the ground. He took off exploring right away. The room was sparsely furnished—so not much for him to get into—but she kept a close eye on the fireplace.

  With one eye on her son, Helen marveled at the design.

  “I read once about the Romans giving armbands to their soldiers for military distinctions,” Elizabeth said. “It has always reminded me of that.”

  Something in Helen’s gaze sparked. “It does! I’ve heard of those as well. Armilla, I believe they were called. Hmm . . .”

  Elizabeth would have followed up on that hmm, but Helen handed the bracelet back to her at the same time as she darted forward to cut off Willie’s path to—of course—the fireplace.

  “What is it about babies that makes them see danger and head right for it?” Elizabeth said with a shake of the head while Lady Helen gently admonished her son.

  “I don’t know,” Lady Helen answered. “But not all of them outgrow it. My husband, for one.”

  Lady Elizabeth laughed, but she sobered when Helen turned from the window where she’d moved over to point out things to distract Willie.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  The healer’s relief was visible. Until that moment, Elizabeth hadn’t realized how anxious she was. “They’re back.”

  7

  THOM HANDED SIR David Lindsay the sword. The important knight, and one of Bruce’s closest companions, held it out in front of him to examine. He turned it over in his hand, sliced through the air a few times, and looked at every angle of the handle as if he were searching for something, while making short exclamations along the way.

  “Bloody hell, MacGowan, how did you do this so quickly? It feels like an entirely new sword. The balance is incredible, and the handle feels as if it was made for my hand.”

  Thom shrugged. “If I’d had a pair of fullers I could have fixed the blood groove. It could use a little more taken out near the tip to lighten it. But the English armorer wasn’t thoughtful enough to leave all his tools behind.”

  The castle forge appeared to have been hastily abandoned after Douglas had taken Roxburgh. Thom had decided to make use of it when he wasn’t attending to his duties for Carrick. God knew, he wasn’t sleeping; he might as well make some extra coin in those wakeful hours.

  He had nothing to feel guilty about. But damn it, seeing Elizabeth’s pale, anxious face from across the Hall or courtyard the past couple of days had eaten away at his resolve. Indeed, he’d skipped the midday meal today as much to finish the sword as to avoid seeing her.

  Not that it helped. He could still see those big doe eyes right in front of him as she’d looked up at him and pleaded with him to help her.

  The pull to go to her aid was so strong it physically hurt not to do so. His chest had been aching for two days.

  He cursed inwardly and turned his attention back to Lindsay, who paid him the coin they’d agreed upon and thanked him. “I could send a few more men your way, if you think you’ll have time. I know many of us have had a difficult time finding a good smith with as much time as we spend sleeping on heather.” Thom stiffened. Not noticing, Lindsay laughed. “It seems of late that the only time we are in a castle, it is to destroy it.”

  Us, the men who fight, and you, the men who serve. Thom knew the knight didn’t mean anything by it, but it still reverberated. He wasn’t one of them, and maybe he was a fool to try to change that. Damn it, what did he have to do? For three years he’d been killing himself to become one of “us,” and all he had to do was pick up a hammer and once again he was “you.”

  But he had to admit there was something about being back in a forge that was oddly comforting. He felt more at home in this unfamiliar building than he had in any of the places he’d stayed in the past three years.

  He’d been back to Douglas only once since he left, and it had been horrible. Although it had been good to see Johnny, the short time he’d spent with his father had been awkward, uncomfortable, and filled with pain on both sides. It was as if neither of them knew what to say to one another anymore. His father thought Thom was ashamed of his background, and Thom didn’t know how to explain what drove him to try to do more. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he could explain it to himself. But it was the same thing that drove him when climbing. He liked the element of danger and pushing himself to the extreme. He wanted to see how far
he could go.

  “I wish I could,” he said truthfully. He needed the money. “But I’m leaving in the morning.”

  The additional men had arrived earlier this afternoon and Edward Bruce had given him leave to return to Rutherford to escort Lady Marjorie to Yorkshire. Unfortunately, the escort would be small, as Carrick could only afford to spare a few men. The earl and the rest of his army would be leaving at the end of the week to begin the siege at Stirling Castle.

  Out of habit rather than necessity, as the forge would undoubtedly be destroyed by the end of the week, Thom cleaned out the ash and replaced the tools after Lindsay had departed. It was dusk by the time he closed the door of the forge behind him and crossed the yard to the barracks. He was filthy, and despite the chill in the air, he was going to head down to the river to bathe before finding something to eat and trying to get some sleep. He had a long day ahead of him in the saddle tomorrow.

  With a grimace, he was about to open the door to the barracks when the sound of a party of horsemen riding through the gate drew his attention.

  He recognized Douglas in the lead, as well as a handful of the men who accompanied him. Thom had crossed paths with Boyd, MacKay, Sutherland, MacRuairi, and MacLeod a few times in the past three years; Elizabeth hadn’t exaggerated: the warriors who’d accompanied Douglas were among the best of Bruce’s army. He frowned as something struck him. Both Boyd and MacRuairi were reputed to be members of the king’s secret “Phantoms.” If there was any truth to it, he wouldn’t be surprised that these other men were as well.

  Was Douglas?

  The very idea of his former friend being a part of something so illustrious grated. But it made sense. Too much damned sense. Whatever Thom’s personal feelings, he could not fault Douglas’s skills as a warrior.

  He was about to turn away when he looked closer at the riders. He swore aloud, realizing who was missing: Archie.

  One look at her brother’s face, and Elizabeth knew—even before she scanned the men who were walking into the Hall behind him for the gangly auburn-headed youth.

  “Archie?”

  Jamie shook his head grimly.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Lady Helen’s reunion with her husband. The big Highlander took his son from his wife’s arms as if he weighed nothing and enfolded Lady Helen against his leather-clad chest. The deep affection between them reminded Elizabeth of her brother and Jo. She’d thought their love unusual, but maybe it wasn’t as uncommon as she thought.

  “What happened?” she asked her brother.

  He shook his head, indicating not here. Jamie conferred for a few minutes with one of the most fearsome, imposing-looking warriors of the Phantoms—which was saying something. Though she’d never met him, Elizabeth knew he was the leader of the impressive band of warriors: Tor MacLeod. All ten members of the Guard had answered Jamie’s call to rescue his young brother; it was out of their respect for Jaime that they’d put aside their other duties. It also said much about the king’s regard for Jamie that he’d let them go with the greatest test of his kingship coming in a few months’ time. The coming of the English host in summer was a specter haunting them all.

  “I will send word to the king about our delay and speak with Carrick,” MacLeod said in the native tongue of the Gall-Gaedhil Islanders.

  Jamie nodded. “We will reconvene in the morning. Get something to eat, and my steward will direct you to your chambers. We can all use some rest.”

  After seeing to the food, Jamie led her into the king’s solar. Seeing his exhaustion, she forced him to sit and fetched him a goblet of wine before taking a seat on the bench next to him to hear what had happened.

  He explained how they’d arrived and spent the first day surveying the castle and trying to gather information about the prisoners. They’d learned the Scots were being held in the guardhouse in the tower near the edge of the bluff. MacRuairi had tried to enter the castle with some villagers, but the porter was checking everyone, and he’d had to turn around rather than take a chance at being recognized. Apparently, MacRuairi had a lot of enemies in the Borders. From what she’d heard, the infamous West Island chieftain turned pirate mercenary had a lot of enemies all over.

  Jamie had waited until the wee hours of the night to attempt to scale the cliff.

  “It should have been easy,” Jamie said, clearly frustrated. “That side of the castle is woefully undefended—I didn’t see one guard in the area the entire night. All we had to do was climb that cliff, toss the scaling ladder over the wall, and we would have been in and out with no one the wiser.” He shook his head. “Even the cliff didn’t look as bad as we thought. It was steep, but there were plenty of foot- and handholds. For the first hundred and twenty feet or so, I thought we would make it.”

  “And then?” she asked.

  Jamie’s mouth fell in a hard line. “Then we hit thirty feet of sheer rock. I tried, but I could not get more than a few feet up. MacRuairi managed to climb to within a dozen feet, but then slipped and came within a handhold of falling the rest of the way off the cliff.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes widened in horror.

  “You are to keep that information to yourself, by the way. I doubt his wife would appreciate how close she came to becoming a widow.”

  She nodded. MacRuairi was married to Bella MacDuff. The former Countess of Buchan was regarded as a great Scottish patriot and hero.

  “We don’t think anyone in the castle heard, but we can’t be sure. A handful of our men stayed at Bamburgh to keep watch, while the rest of us returned to Roxburgh to regroup for another attempt.”

  Thank God. Elizabeth couldn’t hide her relief. “You are going back?”

  “Aye, and this time we will be successful. I probably should have listened to you in the first place.”

  Elizabeth was so shocked at first she didn’t understand. “You should have listened to me?”

  “You were right.” Her brother grinned at her expression and tweaked her nose the way he’d done when she was a girl. “Aye, I do know how to say those words. It would have saved me a long journey back and forth, if I’d taken him in the first place.”

  All of a sudden, she realized what he meant. “Thom?”

  Jamie nodded. “Aye. Those rocks would have been nothing for him. I’ve seen him climb far more difficult cliffs with ease.”

  Elizabeth shook her head dumbly. “It’s too late. You’ll have to think of another way.”

  “There is no other way.” He frowned, studying her. “What do you mean it’s too late?”

  Elizabeth bit her lip and made a sheepish face. “I already asked him.”

  He exploded off the bench. “You did what?” Well over six feet of angry warrior loomed over her intimidatingly. She combated it by sitting there serenely with her hands folded in her lap. Thom had taught her that. “Damn it, Ella, I told you to stay away from him.”

  Her eyes narrowed right back at him. “You are my brother, not my father. Thom is my friend, and I will see him if I want.”

  “Until you are married, I might as well be your father. It is your duty to obey me, and you will do as I say.” They stared at one another for a few minutes, angry gazes crossing like swords, waging a silent war of wills. Jamie was right, but he also must have realized that if he forced the issue, it would change the relationship between them forever. He was the first to stand down. “I should send you back to Blackhouse right now, as I promised.”

  Her heart clenched. He couldn’t send her away—not until Archie was safe. “But you won’t,” she said with more certainty than she felt.

  He held her gaze for a long pause before relenting. “Damn it, Ella. You don’t understand.”

  “Then why don’t you explain it to me?” she said quietly.

  “MacGowan doesn’t want to be your friend. He hasn’t for a long time. He wants you.”

  She shook her head. “He might have at one time, but not anymore.”

  Jamie’s expression hardened. “Do not
argue with me about this, Elizabeth. No matter what he’s told you, he wants you, and he’d do anything to have you. Hell, why do you think he’s here?”

  “He wants to be a knight. He’s wanted to be a knight for as long as I can remember.”

  “Because of you, damn it. He’s under some misguided belief that if he raises himself high enough he’ll be worthy of you. But he’ll never be worthy of you. I didn’t realize his feelings at first, but it became clear that night I found you on the tower. God knows what would have happened had I not put a stop to it. He took advantage of both of us, Ella. Me for our friendship, and you for your innocence. He thought that because we were friends I wouldn’t object to the son of the smith courting my sister.” His eyes blazed with anger. “Can you imagine? Christ, he would have made a laughingstock of us both—and ruined you in the process.”

  Elizabeth winced at the harshness of it, though she knew it was the reality. “He wasn’t taking advantage of me, Jamie. Thom is one of the most noble men I’ve ever known. You know him. He would have never done anything to dishonor me.”

  “I know from experience what passion can do to an honorable man.” Elizabeth realized he was referring to himself and that the memory pained him. “Aye, I know the kind of man Thom was,” he admitted grudgingly. “And I would have trusted him with my life. But trusting him to be able to control himself with my sixteen-year-old sister when I saw the way he looked at you?” He shook his head. “No way in hell. I wasn’t going to take any chances. I’m still not, which is why I want you to stay away from him. I will see to the situation with Archie.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t understand. I already asked him to help, and he refused.”

  She’d managed to surprise him. “He refused you?”

  She nodded.

  He frowned. “Was it his arm? I didn’t think he was seriously injured.”