Gather the Stars

by Kimberly Cates

  Finish it. The child's words echoed inside Gavin.

  He had no choice but to follow through with his plans to the bitter end. Rachel de Lacey wasn't one of his foundlings, one of the battered souls he'd protected beneath his meager shield. She didn't want his help. Hell, the mere suggestion she might need it would make the lady dissolve into amazed laughter.

  Yet with every day that she stayed in the Highlands, with every night she tossed and turned on the heather bed Gavin had shared with her that one night, Gavin had lost a little more perspective—he'd caught glimpses of the woman she hid beneath her haughty façade. He'd wanted to reach past all that to the gentle, gallant, confused woman who watched with suppressed yearning every careless caress he and Adam and Mama Fee exchanged.

  Inexpressible longing surged through Gavin, flooding past anger and resentment to touch secret corners of his own heart. It was so devastating, so unexpected, that he shook himself inwardly, shoving the image of Rachel de Lacey from his mind, and focusing on the child standing so quietly before him.

  Gavin tied one last knot in the silvery hat he'd been fashioning and draped it over Catriona's cherubic curls. The big-eyed moppet smiled at him. "You can fix anything!"

  His heart wrenched, his hands feeling awkward and empty and powerless. "If only I could," he said, touching the little girl's cheek. "Now, run out and show Mama Fee and Mistress de Lacey your treasures. I'll be out in a little while."

  After I've managed to sort out these feelings inside me—after I rein in this infernal ache crushing my chest.

  The children scampered outside, bellowing for Mama Fee, leaving Gavin alone. He took his spectacles off and cast them onto the desk, then buried his face in his hands, wishing to God this whole thing was over with—the children safe, Rachel...

  Rachel returned to the care of the man she had chosen?

  God, why should he care...

  "Glen Lyon! Glen Lyon!" Barna's piercing shriek made Gavin leap to his feet, grab for his pistol, racing out the dark tunnel of the cave. Barna barreled into him headlong at the cave's entrance. "She's gone!"

  "Who? Mama Fee? She's likely gone to fetch water or—"

  "Not Mama Fee! That thrice-cursed English scum of a lady!"

  "What the blazes?" Gavin shoved past the boy and into the light. Sunshine struck to the backs of his eyes, blurring everything, blinding him for a moment. "Rachel? Mama Fee, where the devil is Rachel?"

  "I told you you shoulda kept her clapped in chains!" Barna wailed his indignation.

  "Barna! The silly games you're after playing!" The old woman's face whirled into focus, bland and smiling as a baby's. "Don't get all blathered, Gavin, sweeting. You look as if you think she's run away from you, now!"

  Gavin struggled for patience, his gaze flashing about the glen, searching desperately—praying that Rachel had slipped out to answer a call of nature or to gather some sweet herb for Mama Fee—praying that she hadn't done anything so foolish as to fling herself on the mercy of this wild, untamed land. It was a land awash with desperate men and blood-drunk soldiers, a place where the mention of her name might bring her to a torturous fate beyond her imaginings at the hands of men who had lost everything to Sir Dunstan's cruelty. They were men with nothing left to them but dreams of seeing their enemy suffer as they had, their children had, their women had.

  She couldn't have gotten far on foot.

  "Which way did she go?" Gavin demanded of Fiona as he thrust his pistol into his waistband.

  The older woman looked stunned, her eyes clouding, her mouth pursing. "You can't go hauling her back here like a sack o' grain just because the two of you had a tiff. It's best if you let her go off alone—"

  Gavin cursed himself for a fool. How could he have left Rachel unattended? He'd lost himself so far in his own morose musings that he doubted he'd have heard if a brigade of horsemen had stormed up.

  Horsemen... thunder and fire! He wheeled, glancing to where the horses had been tethered. Adam's was gone. So was... hell, the only one left was...

  Gavin bit out a vile curse and hit the ground running, grabbing up the dilapidated saddle and worn bridle that remained. His face determined, he turned and faced the snorting, wild-eyed beast aptly named Manslayer.

  Rachel leaned low over her mount's neck, driving the beast faster, harder. A knot of panic had swelled with each mile that disappeared beneath her horse's hooves, the unfamiliar landscape seeming alive to her, wild and hostile, filled with a sense of brooding that chilled her.

  Furley House... that was the name of the place the Glen Lyon's men had spoken of when she'd overheard them—a manor house that had once belonged to Jacobite rebels and was now to be used as a headquarters for the troops whose job it was to crush the Highlanders forever.

  Please God, Rachel thought, let the English still be there. Surely any contingent of soldiers would know she had been abducted, or if not, would aid her the instant she told them who she was. Perhaps even Dunstan would be there, masterminding the search for her, mustering all his skill, all his power to save her from the rebel who had stolen her away.

  He would be thirsting for vengeance against those who had taken her.

  Rachel quelled a vision of Gavin Carstares's band of Scottish children—the casualties of war she had dismissed with perfunctory regret so many times before. Yet now they had faces, voices. Now Rachel knew that they cried for their lost sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers when they believed no one could hear them. She knew that there was one man who never failed to help them through their pain.

  Rachel blinked suddenly as the horse shot past a copse of trees. How many times in the past two weeks had she lay still in the shadows, hearing Gavin softly soothing the little ones? Twice, she'd awakened to find him drowsing on his pallet, several children nestled about him like slumbering puppies.

  His strong artist's hands had been so gentle, silhouetted against Catriona's curls or Andrew's cheek. The nightmares had been banished from the children's faces, driven away by Gavin's tenderness, yet even in the flicker of the single lighted taper, Rachel could see that the children's night terrors had found a new home in his gray eyes.

  A branch lashed Rachel's cheek, and she was glad of the stinging pain. He was her enemy—the man responsible for days of terror—her imagination subjecting her to every horror one human being could perpetrate against another. He was a rebel, not some broken knight errant, some embattled angel, some wounded hero for her to heal. He was everything she loathed and despised—a man with scars on his back, on his honor, in the deep, smoky reaches of his eyes.

  Why, then, did she feel this tearing sense of loss as she raced away—to escape, as any soldier must.

  At the top of a rise, she reined in her horse, her gaze scanning the area below. In the distance, she saw a cluster of cottages, a smattering of red uniforms and horses milling about.

  Soldiers! Rachel's heart leaped. There must be a dozen of them. She turned for a heartbeat to cast one last look back, a strange sense of loss tugging at her. The odd sensation in her chest was lost as she heard hoofbeats from behind her. Another soldier? Or could it be an enemy—someone set to follow her? At that instant, the horseman broke from beneath the curtain of trees.

  Rachel gaped as if some Celtic god of vengeance had just split the earth beneath her feet. The man rode as if fused to the untamed beast in some pagan communion, hair the deep gold of a thane's ancient crown whipping back from a face set hard with fierce intent.

  She didn't know how long she sat there, frozen, captive of the vision of horse and rider thundering toward her. Gavin Carstares—the poet and dreamer of the Glen Lyon's lair—was suddenly transformed into something heart-poundingly primitive, something that sang to the most elemental part of Rachel in a wild, bewitching voice.

  It was the hard yank of emotions inside Rachel that jarred her from her trance. She straightened in the saddle, attempting to turn her mount, jar it into a canter, but at that instant, a low whistle echoed out from behind.
The roan whickered in answer, prancing and rearing, dancing on its hooves, but no power on earth could get the animal to move forward. In desperation, Rachel smacked the reins down hard on its rump. The animal wheeled and started to canter toward the gray-eyed sorcerer that seemed to hold it under some mystic power.

  With a groan of outrage and dismay, Rachel realized there was only one course left to her. Kicking out of the stirrups, she rolled from the animal's back.

  She slammed into the ground, bruising her rump, twisting her wrist, but she barely noticed the pain. She was scrambling to her feet, scooping up handfuls of the harlot's skirt she'd been forced to wear. It was the faintest of hope that she could reach the cluster of cottages before the Glen Lyon would catch her— catch her or trample her with that demon horse. Rachel stumbled on, running as if pursued by hounds. If she could reach the break in the brush, plunge out into the meadow beyond, she'd be visible to the soldiers. She could scream...

  The thunder of hooves swelled until her head felt it would burst. Her lungs were afire, her legs scratched and screaming with agony as she ran. It seemed impossible, but she managed to push her way through the brush, catch a glimpse of the scene below. The banner of Sir Dunstan's command fluttered against a painfully blue sky, the splash of uniforms scattered like scarlet blossoms in the midst of the tiny village.

  She was close, so close...

  "Help!" she cried. "Please, God, help me!" Yet despite her desperate, shrill cry, not so much as one soldier turned toward her. They were intent on their task—hellishly intent.

  Disbelief welled inside her as she heard other cries. The sounds pierced through her, the mad whirl in the village twisting into focus. Her scream died as she saw flames shoot up from a tiny kirk and the glint of a sword biting deep into a woman's breast; she saw the children who had been clinging to the woman's skirts collapse beside her, their cries fraying Rachel's sanity, flooding her with horror.

  She stumbled forward as if to stop the soldiers herself, scoop the little ones out of the way, but the sight was blocked by a swarthy figure riding down into the madness astride a fine horse. Captain Darcy Murrough—Sir Dunstan's most trusted second in command. Bone-melting relief shot through Rachel, all but driving her to her knees.

  He would stop it. Rachel was certain that Murrough would stop it now, lash the men back into order.

  "Death to the traitors! God and England!" The battle cries rang out in counterpoint to the screams of the dying, the terrified. God in heaven, what had the people of the village done? What horrible crime had they committed against the crown that they should pay such grim retribution? women? children?

  Her ears were so filled with the screams that she didn't even hear anything behind her. Hard hands closed about her, an arm about her waist; the calloused curve of a palm clamped over her mouth.

  Rachel started to struggle as she was hauled back against Gavin's chest.

  She barely believed her eyes as Murrough's sword arm arced back, then swung with deadly accuracy, cleaving the back of an old man struggling to reach the wildlands.

  Rachel's cry of denial was muffled by Gavin's hand as the man crumpled to the ground.

  Gavin hauled her back behind the shelter of the trees, and tried to twist her in his arms so she wouldn't see.

  But she yanked against him, unable to tear her gaze away from the horror below. Slaughter... they were helpless, the people of the village, helpless...

  Jesus in heaven, Murrough must have gone mad! Dunstan would never allow such a horror to take place.

  Rachel ripped free of the hand Gavin clamped against her mouth. Her throat was dry, burning. "Help them..." she choked out. "My God... do something..."

  She turned tortured eyes to him—her captor, the rebel coward Sir Dunstan loathed. What she saw in those old-soul eyes pierced through her heart: anguish, outrage.

  "Gavin!" A voice called from behind them, Adam, dusty and desperate, riding up on his mount. "Sweet Jesus! I've been riding like hell to find you! Forget the woman. All hell's breaking loose. The bastard! Hasn't he feasted on enough goddamn blood? We have to stop him—"

  Rachel staggered as Gavin released her, his features grim. "There's only one way. A diversion." He reached into the pocket of his frock coat, drawing out a Stuart cockade affixed to a Scottish bonnet trimmed in red and gold plaid.

  "Wh-what are you going to do?" Rachel asked, staring as he slipped the bonnet onto his tousled mane.

  "I'm going to give them a more rewarding prey to hunt," he said grimly. "I'll ride to the west, draw most of them off that way."

  "Gav, for Christ's sake—" Adam protested. "You can't. You'll be a blank target. One pistolball and they'll—" Adam didn't finish. He didn't have to.

  "There's no time." Gavin whistled low, the demon horse coming at his summons despite the rising stench of gunpowder and blood, the shrieks that rent the air.

  "Rachel, I can't take care of you.... For God's sake, stay out of sight. They'll cut you down before they know who you are—"

  "Wait—look!" She cried, staring past his broad shoulder. "They're stopping!"

  Gavin wheeled around, Adam facing the village as well. "What the devil are they doing?" Adam demanded, nonplussed.

  The soldiers were herding the cluster of villagers like sheep, driving them into a thatch-covered cottage. Wild-eyed women disappeared through the doorway, their terrified children stumbling after them.

  "I knew Captain Murrough wouldn't—wouldn't allow them to be slaughtered! I knew he would stop it!" Rachel choked out, attempting to force the image of the captain murdering the old man from her mind.

  "Is it possible the bastards are just taking them captive?" Adam stopped, his craggy face wary as he saw some of the men hauling thick lengths of wood toward the cottage. They wedged them against the door, barred the heavy wooden shutters on the windows shut. "I can ride out, get the rest of the men. We can break them out when night falls. Gavin? Gavin?"

  The Glen Lyon stood rigid as stone, his face ice-white, eyes transfixed upon the distant cottage, as if he could hear every whimper, every cry of terror muffled now by the thick clay prison.

  "I told you the English wouldn't—wouldn't hurt helpless women... didn't kill children," Rachel clung to the words as if they were some kind of talisman. "I told you—"

  "The bastards are going to burn them alive."

  Rachel turned to Gavin, thick horror clotting in her throat. "Don't be ridiculous—"

  At that instant she saw it—a torch in a soldier's hand. It arced through the air in a smear of crimson. Before it could land on the thatch, Gavin was already flinging himself onto his horse.

  Adam dove for the plunging stallion's reins, his face ashen as he stared up at his brother. "Gav, there are too many soldiers! We can't—"

  "I'm not going to let them burn! We'll ride behind the trees, get the women and children out the back way, and pray like hell the English bastards are too busy with their plundering to notice."

  With that, Gavin dug his heels into the stallion's ribs. The beast tore free of Adam's grasp.

  Rachel watched in horror as the Glen Lyon plunged down into the glen—one lone warrior against the madness.

  CHAPTER 10

  Rage, hatred, desperation knotted in Gavin's chest as the stallion's thundering stride devoured the gap of land between the hillock and the burning cottage. Flames leaped and twisted as screams of terror from those trapped inside ripped like razor-sharp claws at Gavin.

  Hungry and heartless, the flames writhed and danced, twined and twisted along the ridgepole, gorging on brittle straw; countless sparks rained down on those below, filling their lungs with choking smoke.

  Gavin rounded to the rear of the cottage and saw the silhouette of a soldier in uniform—one man set to guard. Gavin grabbed his pistol as the soldier wheeled at the sound of hoofbeats. His eyes widened just as Gavin's pistol blast struck him full in the chest.

  The recoil shot up Gavin's arm and buried itself in his gut, bile rising in
his throat as the man flew backward into the arms of death.

  Gavin waited for the horror he'd always felt, the sick, gut-clenching denial, but he felt nothing except the desperation of those trapped inside the burning building—that and his own terror that he would be too late.

  He flung himself from the stallion's back, the impact slamming like a fist into his half-healed wound. For an instant, horror strangled him—the thick clay wall stretching pristine, unbroken by any window that could allow escape. The screams of those trapped within were horrendous, impaling him with his own helplessness. Rose vines clambered up the side of the cottage, the leaves curling and blackening, the petals scorching. Gavin started to bolt to the other side of the house, despite the certainty that the soldiers would see him, clinging to the hope that he might be able to get at least some of the women and children out, giving them a chance to race to freedom before the English cut him down. Yet as he started around the corner, Gavin glimpsed something dark brown beneath the rose vines. Wisps of smoke curled about a thick piece of wood barring a set of shutters that hadn't been opened for years.

  Relief jolted through Gavin as he tore at the vines, thorns slashing his hands until they bled. When the way was clear enough, he wrenched the wedge of wood from the shutters, but hampered by his sore ribs and raw hands, he found the thing was too tight. Out of nowhere, Adam raced up, the giant of a man tearing back the wood with a guttural roar. Gavin flung the shutters open. Smoke billowed out, thick, choking, shrieks of terror turning into wild cries as those inside the burning building glimpsed the tiniest bit of hope.

  "I'm going in," Gavin yelled.

  "Damn it, I—" Adam started to object, but Gavin was already hauling himself over the thick window ledge, the clay biting deep into his wound, grating against his battered side. Gavin clenched his teeth against the wave of pain that spread through his chest, and tumbled into the mass of clawing, terrified women trying to boost their children out, battling with each other and their own bounding fear.