Gather the Stars

by Kimberly Cates

  From the moment he'd conceived the idea of abducting her, he'd been prepared to soothe her fears as much as possible. He'd spent weeks framing the comforting speeches he would make to her. But her beauty and defiance had left him as awkward and tongue-tied as he'd been at his first ball. The magnitude of what he'd done had left him filled with guilt and self-loathing. And Rachel de Lacey had pounded on those soft places in Gavin's soul with the deadly accuracy of a blacksmith's hammer until anger had made him lash out, demolishing all his good intentions.

  "I don't see why we had to go to all this trouble to begin with." Adam's grumbling annoyed him a great deal. "We should have kidnapped Sir Dunstan himself—held a gun to the cur's head until the army did as we asked."

  But just as soon as irritation pinched at Gavin, it was followed by gratitude that his half brother had distracted him from far more troubling thoughts.

  "We've been through this a dozen times," he said. "They would've shot Wells themselves to get to me, then drunk to his memory and recounted his brave deeds. Kidnapping the woman was the only way."

  "By the time this is over, you're going to wish you'd put all that dazzling genius of yours into thinking up another plan. That woman is going to give you nothing but grief, Gav. I've had plenty of experience with the fairer sex. Trust me, I know Rachel de Lacey's breed. You'll be lucky if you don't murder her yourself before this month is done."

  "She will be no more distraction to me than that puppy little Barna brought into the cave the other day. Rachel de Lacey is a minor inconvenience, nothing more." Gavin pushed his fingers through his tangled locks, trying to believe his own words, but the woman was already throwing him off balance in ways that were dangerous, making him look at facets of himself that were too painful to examine.

  "I still don't know why we couldn't just capture Wells himself—" Adam protested again.

  "I need Dunstan Wells free," Gavin said. "He's the only one who can order his men away from the inlet in Cairnleven. And Rachel de Lacey is the only leverage I could find to bend him to my will."

  "Are you so sure that threatening this woman will work?" Adam asked quietly.

  Gavin's temples throbbed. "She's going to be his wife. Of course Dunstan will do anything in his power to protect her."

  "If he loves her. A man doesn't always love the woman he marries." The words were stealthy spurs driven into Gavin's heart. As if anyone—especially Adam—should have to remind him of that fact.

  He closed his eyes, images again welling into his mind: a sad-eyed woman with dark-gold hair watching, waiting for her husband to come; a small boy, helpless, hurting, trying to distract her from her heartache, trying in vain to cushion her from the truth they both knew but never spoke of.

  That her husband was a day's ride away, laughing with a bonny, bright-curled lady who was his lady-wife in spirit, and dandling a pack of bold, dark-haired children on his knee.

  "Damn, Gavin, I'm sorry," Adam snapped, and Gavin turned his gaze to his half brother, wondering what he was apologizing for—bringing up a past that was still painful, or stealing away the father that was Gavin's own.

  "It's just that this whole escapade is so damned risky. Hell, I haven't been this edgy since the night Colonel Mayfair almost caught me sleeping with his pretty little wife."

  "It's a small enough price I'm asking Sir Dunstan to pay for the return of his betrothed. I just want to be able to sneak one last ship into Scotland."

  "One last ship." Adam groaned. "You've been saying that for the past year. But the minute that ship sails, you start filling up another one and another one. Sometimes I think you keep smuggling out the crofters because you want to be caught. Out of some crazy sense of justice. Because..." He paused. "Because of what happened at Prestonpans."

  "If I suffered a thousand deaths, I couldn't pay for what happened that day. But I did learn something: there is no justice, Adam, no justice at all."

  "Gavin, you've done more than a hundred men could have to help these people. Your debt is paid. Christ, you should hear what they say about you. You're a goddamn hero, as bold as Rob Roy or—"

  Bitterness and a soul-deep sadness tore at Gavin's chest. "I'm no hero. Truth is, I'm as much a monster as Sir Dunstan Wells himself."

  "For Christ's sake, man, are you insane?" Adam blustered. "You're nothing like Wells!"

  "What do you call a man who abducts an innocent woman, holds her prisoner for his own gains?"

  "Blast it, you aren't going to hurt her! Her fate is a bloody lot better than the women Wells has raped and slaughtered. When she goes back to her ballrooms and soirees, she'll have her own tales of heroism to share."

  "She doesn't know that. Not now."

  "Damn it, I can't believe this! The woman is as spoiled a little princess as they come, Gav. If she could've ordered, 'Off with their heads,' there wouldn't be a single one of your precious urchins left alive. She's going to make life bloody hell for all of us, and you're feeling sorry for her!"

  "It doesn't matter if she's Medusa herself and turns us all into stone. Don't you see what has happened?"

  There was hurt in Adam's eyes, and confusion— the pain of not being able to understand. It was a pain all too familiar between them.

  "I thought you'd gotten exactly what you wanted," Adam said, "what we've been planning for over a month. I thought you'd gotten the key to freedom for the children of Lochavrea. You're going to win, damn it. Can't you take some bloody joy in it?"

  "Win?" A raw laugh tore from Gavin's throat. "I've already lost. Dunstan Wells has finally managed to turn me into a monster just like himself."

  "God preserve me from honorable fools!" Adam groused. "I—"

  "Quiet." Gavin snapped in a low voice, awareness sizzling at the nape of his neck. "Someone's coming."

  Adam's hand went to his pistol. "We should have spent the time finding some lost priest to issue last rites instead of arguing—"

  "Quiet, damn it!" Gavin strained, listening, half expecting the telltale sounds of ambush, the rustling of underbrush, the muted thud of more than one horse in the surrounding area he and Adam had searched so thoroughly earlier. He glimpsed two riders, hidden behind an outcropping of stone, doubtless waiting to follow them when the meeting was over.

  The only other sound was the steady clop of one animal.

  His jaw knotted as the approaching rider breached a copse of trees, sunlight turning his uniform the liquid red of a fresh sword wound. A perfect Ramiles wig framed a face of supreme arrogance, the flesh clinging starkly to jutting cheekbones and a hawklike nose. Eyes of the most frigid blue Gavin had ever seen glittered like those of a predator whose quarry had eluded him far too long.

  It had been nearly two years since Gavin had peered through a hellish montage of battling soldiers and peasants and first seen Sir Dunstan Wells. The knight had been orchestrating Armageddon with the delight of a maestro, his white teeth flashing, his face alive with undiluted pleasure. Half of the men under Wells's command had died that day, along with Gavin's own honor.

  This was the man Rachel de Lacey had chosen to be her husband?

  Gavin was stunned to find himself recoiling from the idea, sickened. Spoiled and beautiful as she might be, Miss de Lacey had no idea the kind of monster she intended to invite into her bed.

  "Show yourself!" Sir Dunstan bellowed. "Come out, you craven Jacobite dog."

  The man's bellow was overlaid by Adam's harsh, whispered plea. "For God's sake, don't do this. Let me—"

  Gavin shook his head, spurring his drab bay gelding forward. His stomach was a hard knot of hate and rage and loathing, his palms dampening the leather of his reins with sweat.

  "Get out here, whoever the devil you are," the knight roared. "I command you—"

  "These are the Glen Lyon's lands," Gavin said, as Sir Dunstan's eyes slashed to his. "You aren't in command here."

  "The whole of Scotland is beneath the English boot, you fool. Your master is nothing but a sniveling coward without a penny to
his name. He'll be hunted down like a dog."

  "So you keep saying." Gavin let his scorn flash in his eyes. "In fact, the Glen Lyon had a coffin hewn out for himself because of your predictions of doom. But considering how long it's taken for you to follow up on your threats, he's thinking of finding another corpse to entomb in it. Your betrothed, perhaps."

  "He dares to threaten her?" Sir Dunstan raged.

  "Threaten? No. You should know by experience that the Glen Lyon never makes idle threats. He simply desires that I tell you his terms for her release."

  "What does that devil want?"

  Gavin could hear just how much it cost the arrogant bastard to ask.

  "Three weeks from now, there will be a ship putting in near Cairnleven. The Glen Lyon wants your hunting curs as far away from that inlet as possible. Once this shipload is on its way to God knows where, your betrothed will be released, unharmed, and you and the Glen Lyon will pick up your amusing little game right where you left off."

  "The fool would risk kidnapping the daughter of a general for one shipload of ragged wretches? Why is this shipload so important?"

  "That is the Glen Lyon's concern. Now, do the two of you have a bargain?"

  "Thieving bastard! He dares attempt to blackmail a knight of the realm?"

  "He prefers to think of it as a simple matter of... trade. If you do as directed, he will leave your beloved in the same garden from which she was kidnapped, with... shall we say... minimal harm."

  "And if I tell your bloody master to go to hell?"

  "You won't. It would be most embarrassing to lose a treasure such as the general's daughter, Wells. The man who did so would be the object of scorn and mockery—blows to the pride that a fine, upstanding hero the likes of you could never endure. Besides, even the most vile villain who ever breathed must have some affection for something—a pet dog, a horse... or perhaps a lovely woman."

  "The Glen Lyon wouldn't kill a woman," Dunstan snarled. "He hasn't the stomach for it."

  "Perhaps not. Then again, his stomach might have grown mightily since Lochavrea."

  "If that bastard dares to so much as touch the hem of her gown, I'll slaughter every Jacobite—man, woman, or child—who stumbles into my path."

  "It's rather pointless to threaten to kill innocents after you've already resorted to wholesale butchery, isn't it?" Gavin sneered. "Just one more error in your strategy when it comes to the Highlands."

  The knight's lips whitened, his fingers tightening on his reins as if he were hungering to feel Gavin's throat crushed beneath them. "Tell your master I shall be delighted to give him a lesson in strategy he'll never forget when he dares to meet me face to face."

  "I am certain the Glen Lyon will tremble with fear when I give him your message. Now, although I'd love to tarry and listen to more of your empty boasting, I'm certain the two men you've stationed behind that outcropping of rock are getting restless."

  A dull red suffused Sir Dunstan's cheeks, his eyes all but bulging from his head with fury at his ploy's being discovered.

  "The choice the Glen Lyon has given you is this," Gavin said in a steely tone. "Either you allow a handful of meaningless Jacobites to escape across the sea, or he will fling your woman to men who owe you a blood price of suffering far beyond a delicately bred lady's imagining. The choice is yours."

  "It will take some arranging. How can I contact the Glen Lyon to let him know?"

  "You mean so that you can have a chance to lure him into a trap? There will be no contact between the two of you. One of his men will return here in two weeks' time. If all has been arranged, tie this to the lowest branch of this tree." Gavin tore free a scrap of Jamie Cameron plaid. "Otherwise, may God have mercy on your lady, Sir Dunstan; the Glen Lyon will not."

  "Tell the Glen Lyon I will see him in hell," the Englishman snarled, his ghost-gray horse pawing at the ground.

  Gavin's gaze shifted, emptiness sweeping through him like desert wind. "He is already waiting for you there."

  CHAPTER 4

  Foam flecked the lips of Sir Dunstan's horse, the beast quivering with exhaustion as he reined it in at the crest of a hill. But though Sir Dunstan and his men had all but ridden their mounts to death attempting to trail the Glen Lyon's messenger, the cunning bastard had managed to slip into the Scottish mist as though Satan's own angel had stolen him away.

  Satan? Dunstan swore violently. Glen Lyon didn't need the powers of hell. Every soul in the Highlands would gladly have died to shield him from harm.

  And as if that was not vile enough, the bastard's fame had spread until many of those loyal to the crown even considered him a hero for protecting the beaten dregs of the Jacobites. Such loyalists were weaklings, to be sure, with no stomach for the steps that must be taken to subjugate rebels.

  They were bleeding hearts who wept over a passel of beggar children who strayed into the path of the war, forgetting how many decent, honorable English soldiers had lost their lives driving the Scots away from England's borders.

  Any loyal subject of the king should have been grateful that the soldiers saved England the cost of hundreds of gallows by cutting down the traitor scum in whatever stinking den they had crawled to.

  The mewling do-gooders sickened Dunstan, infuriated him. Their squeamishness had robbed the victory at Culloden Moor of its glory. Instead of viewing the British troops as heroes, they now shuddered as if the soldiers' hands were still warm and wet with blood—the blood of rebels, the blood of traitors who had all but stormed London's own gates. They seemed to forget.

  The only thing they never forgot was each humiliation of Sir Dunstan at the Glen Lyon's hands, every failed attempt to snare the rebel.

  Well's jaw clenched. Even now he could hear the Glen Lyon's mocking laughter in the wind, could feel the rebel jeering at him from whatever infernal hole he'd crawled into to escape English justice.

  Wells swore, his gaze sweeping with a commander's intuition across the moors where his men still searched.

  Damn them! Incompetent idiots! Bumbling fools! How was it possible that the Glen Lyon's messenger had slipped their net? It had been planned out so perfectly, the method they'd use to trail the messenger to the rebel's lair, the way they would run the Glen Lyon to ground. Their pistols had been primed, their swords honed, every man in the ranks hungry for rebel blood and for the rich purse Wells had offered from his own pocket to be awarded to the man who led him to his enemy, this animal who had not only defied the king, but dared to take Sir Dunstan's betrothed hostage.

  Wells's hands clenched on the reins, images of his proud Rachel swirling before his eyes—sable hair, an arrogant lift to her chin, a warrior's eyes in a woman's face.

  The Glen Lyon could not have dealt a more devastating blow to Wells's career or to his pride. Month after month, the rebel had systematically destroyed the honorable name Wells had built on the field of battle. He had forced Wells time and again to face an enemy that he'd never confronted in all his military career—failure.

  It was branded into Wells's features, carved into his reputation until every time his name was mentioned now, there was an undercurrent of scorn, of mockery, of contempt that drove him insane.

  Even his own men had been scarred by those emotions. Men who once would have charged into hell if he'd commanded it suddenly showed the signs of the most dangerous sickness that could infect a regiment—loss of faith in its leader. He could feel their confidence in him slipping away, filtering through his fingers, and he could no more hold it back than he could pin the tide to the shore.

  "S-sir Dunstan?" A voice hailed him from behind.

  Dunstan wheeled his huge animal around. A young private charged toward him on a winded gelding, the boy's face ash white and drawn.

  "Did you find him? By God, if you didn't—"

  "I—I'm sorry, sir. We combed every inch of ground for ten miles. There's not a sign of the man anywhere."

  Rage rose in a red tide before Dunstan's eyes.

  "They s
ay this—this Glen Lyon and his men are invincible," the youth stammered, "that he's not even human. They say he melts into the very hills—"

  "You infernal fool! The Glen Lyon is a man! Just a man. And this messenger he sent should have led us straight to his lair. But no—I'm plagued with a passel of sniveling cowards afraid of their own shadow."

  "Sir." A quiet, firm voice cut through his tirade, and Dunstan wheeled to see the stoic face of Captain Darcy Murrough as the swarthy soldier rode his mount out of the underbrush. Only once had Sir Dunstan seen the officer smile—that had been upon the stony outcropping where the Camerons made their final stand. Murrough had been grinning like a pirate's skull as he cut the traitorous bastards down, and Dunstan had known then that he'd discovered a kindred spirit.

  "Damn you, Murrough, tell me you didn't fail me."

  "There are a dozen trails made by two horses, winding all over the place, crossing and recrossing their paths until it's impossible to tell where they are going. We managed to track them all the way to Cairnleven, then all trace of them disappeared."

  "Blast it to hell!" Dunstan slammed one fist into his knee. "I should have captured that messenger and gotten the information out of him at the end of a whip if I had to. I could have broken him in five minutes, I vow."

  "You truly believe that?" Murrough was questioning him, an impudence that drove Sir Dunstan wild. "The Glen Lyon is far too wily to trust such a vital mission to a weakling. He had to know that his life, and the lives of the vermin he protects, depended on that single man's courage."

  "Courage?" Dunstan spat. "How dare you lay such a word upon that rebel dog!"

  Murrough's eyes met Dunstan's, scathingly honest. "I never underestimate my enemies, sir. Much as I hate the Glen Lyon, no one can deny his boldness."

  Was the rebel able to wring such praise even out of Sir Dunstan's own officers now? The notion made fury claw at the knight's vitals.

  Sir Dunstan would have to send word to his commander that he had been outmaneuvered once again. It had been hideous enough to face Cumberland and the rest of the officers after his past defeats, but now the Glen Lyon had raised the stakes a thousand-fold by taking Sir Dunstan's woman.