Gather the Stars

by Kimberly Cates

  "You think they'll give a damn what you say?" He tore away from her touch. "Even if you got down on your knees, it wouldn't matter! They've hunted me for nearly two years, suffered humiliation every time I escaped them. They're hungry for blood, and they'll get it, blast them to hell! But it won't be Adam's blood. I swear it won't be Adam's."

  "Gavin, please. What... what are you going to do?"

  "Offer them a trade: Adam's life for the Glen Lyon."

  "No." She was ashen, desperate, all traces of anger stripped from her face, leaving it vulnerable, love and fear warring there. "You can't just ride in and offer yourself up! Do you really think they'll release Adam? They won't! Gavin, think! There must be some other way—"

  "There's no time!" He yanked away from her grasp and charged into the cave, hungry for the feel of his pistols in his hands, the weight of his sword.

  He heard her follow, felt her presence, but the desperation with which he wanted to turn to her and bury himself in her arms only hardened his resolve.

  "Gavin, let me go with you. Let me try."

  "You have to stay here. Without you as hostage, there'll be no chance for the children to get away. The bastards will ambush Cairnleven, and the children will die. All of them will die—Catriona, Mama Fee, Barna. Besides, what are you going to do, Rachel? Charge in and tell Cumberland that Adam is a hero? That he's saved countless women and children from the bite of English swords? You think Cumberland would thank him for that, when he is the man who wants the Highlands cleared of rebels once and for all?"

  "Children aren't rebels," Rachel choked out, clinging to him. "I'll make Cumberland see—"

  He wheeled on her, impotent fury seething in his eyes. "You don't understand, do you? Better to cut them down in their cradles before they grow into Jacobites, hungry to avenge their fathers, their mothers, their sisters. Better to slay every Jacobite who breathes, down to the tiniest babe in its mother's womb, than to wait in your bed twenty years hence for an assassin's sword or one brave leader to gather up the pain of the past into a fist of rebellion that can strike to England's very heart."

  His jaw knotted. "Give me your ring—your betrothal ring."

  "My ring?" She'd taken it off the second day she'd cared for his wound, saying she didn't want the gaudy setting to tear the half-healed flesh. Yet she knew there had been other reasons, more indefinable ones, that made it impossible for her to feel the weight of that ring on her finger.

  She crossed to the chipped cup on Gavin's desk where she'd stashed the ring so it wouldn't get lost. "What do you need it for?" she asked, clutching it in her hand.

  "To prove you're my captive."

  "Take me with you. I'll tell Dunstan myself. I'll make him understand."

  She sounded so wounded, so bruised, worlds away from the tumbled angel he'd held in his arms last night.

  She squared her shoulders like a soldier bracing for a wave of cannon fire. "I won't let you face this alone. I'm coming with you. There's nothing you can do to stop me."

  He gazed into that defiant, lovely face, and hardened his heart against the desperate plea in her eyes.

  He grabbed his weapons and glanced at the men nearest him. "Lock her in. She's not to be allowed out of this room until the ship sails."

  Rachel stared, disbelieving, betrayed. "You're going to lock me in?"

  Silent, Gavin stalked to the door.

  Rachel charged him, furious. "How dare you! Gavin, damn you—"

  Gavin should have stormed away and left her immediately. But he couldn't stop himself from grabbing her in a crushing embrace. He kissed her, knowing it would be the last time, knowing that he was going to die. He drank in the taste of her, the feel of her, letting his kiss tell her what he could no longer say—that he loved her to madness, that losing her was more painful than death could ever be.

  She fought him, then clung, begging him to stay with nothing but the hot pressure of her mouth on his, the clutch of her fingers on the muscles of his back. He knew that she would never forgive him if he walked away.

  "Gavin, don't do this," she begged when he broke the kiss.

  "If you're with child, go to Lydia Slade of Strawberry Grove. She'll take care of you both. She'll love you for my sake."

  "Gavin, if you love me at all, don't—"

  Gavin put her away from him, the feel of her desperation branding itself into his fingers until he knew he'd never be free of it. "Don't let her out until the day the ship sails," Gavin ordered, feeling as if he were tearing out his own heart. With savage resolution, he strode from the cave.

  He heard her struggling as the door scraped shut, heard the terrible finality of the heavy wooden bar being jammed into place. Her muffled shouts of anger, of pleading, echoed after him, her fists pounding against the solid plane of wood.

  "Gavin! Gavin, please don't! Don't do this!"

  His hands clenched into fists, as the sunlight struck his face. He whistled for Manslayer, the beast prancing toward him, ready to carry his master down any road Gavin might name, even a road that led to certain death.

  Mama Fee ran to him, clinging, her face seeming to shrink into itself, pale as ash and just as fragile. "I can't lose you and Adam," she said in a quavering voice. "I can't lose you both."

  "You're stronger than you think," Gavin said softly. "You have to take care of Rachel for me. Please, God, take care of her."

  The Scotswoman's chin lifted a notch, some of the fight sparkling again in her eyes. "I will. And I'll send help. When Timothy comes—"

  Gavin gritted his teeth. God, what would happen to her if he didn't get Adam free? If they both died? If she had to face the truth, that her last son was dead, without anyone else to love her, hold her in her grief, dry the tears of her broken mother's heart?

  Without another word, Gavin mounted his horse. He spurred it away from the cave and the glen and the children. He spurred it away from Mama Fee and the half-finished illuminations he'd been working on. He spurred it away from the woman trapped helpless in the prison he'd made for her.

  He traveled in silence the road he'd always known he would travel one day—the road to his destruction. He prayed only that he could save his brother from taking the same path.

  CHAPTER 16

  Furley House coiled at the base of the mountain like a snake ready to strike, its fangs the weapons of the soldiers swarming around it, their uniforms the color of blood. Gavin peered down at the renovated castle from his vantage point atop a hill and cursed. At first glimpse, the building seemed like a dozen other manor houses tucked in the meadows of England. The owners, in recent generations, had attempted to tame the fourteenth-century keep into something more civilized, but the task was hopeless.

  Despite the baroque wings that had been added on, the pitted stone, hewn centuries before, would not be subdued. It whispered of cattle raids and clan wars, the skirl of pipes and battle cries that had turned enemies' blood to gushing rivers of panic.

  Even the stone arms that had once enclosed the bailey seemed impatient, disgusted with the renovations, so much so it seemed they would sweep out like mighty arms and dash the great windows and spires and intricate carvings away as if they were nettlesome flies.

  As Gavin stared down at the building, he knew with a sick certainty that Sir Dunstan Wells had chosen his headquarters wisely. The newer wings would provide the height of comfort for the officers; the forbidding stone of the castle would make a hellishly perfect prison, impenetrable by any small band of outlaw Highlanders.

  Wells had armed his stronghold with the strategic genius that had earned him his knighthood, using the most dangerous weapon at his disposal—frightened men, ready to fire at the tiniest rustle of leaves, the most subtle stirring of some harmless night creature.

  The blaze of torchlight cast a wavering circle around the castle, driving back the darkness, but the soldiers stared into the shadows as if they expected the very stones and trees to change shape into warriors of earth that would reach in to pluck the
prisoner from their shackles as if he were some mythical hero.

  If only Gavin could summon up the denizens of night to aid him, he might have a chance. But there was no hope of such a grand rescue for Adam. Gavin's hands tightened on Manslayer's reins. He'd fought one hopeless cause long enough to recognize another when it stared him in the face.

  This was the end, the end of the Glen Lyon, the end of the strangely beautiful life he'd carved out in a cave in the Scottish Highlands. The end.

  On his way from the cave, he'd done his damnedest to set things in motion. He'd paused long enough to leave orders with his men that every one of them was needed to load the orphans onto the ship that was to sail, the last ship the Glen Lyon would ever send sailing away from embattled Scotland. Gavin had ordered his men to be on it as well. The Glen Lyon's mission was finished.

  His jaw clenched at the memory of their faces, so brave and earnest, yet relieved. They had believed that the entire band would all leave Scotland together, that Gavin would be departing as well—one last humiliation for Sir Dunstan to endure.

  Only Gavin had known the truth. While the Glen Lyon's men sailed to a future they'd earned with their blood and tears and courage, he would be stepping onto a gallows, facing a traitor's death. Alone. Pray God alone. That was the only intercession he asked.

  But it seemed Dame Fortune no longer fought on his side. He had gone over and over every scrap of information he'd been able to gather on his wild ride to Furley. A footman turned rebel who had once served at the manor had sketched in the dirt the layout of the renovated castle, outlining possible routes that might lead to the place where he was certain Adam lay imprisoned.

  But those who knew the manor best had only shaken their heads, telling Gavin it was hopeless to attempt a rescue. He couldn't pluck Adam from its depths with an army of men.

  One of the reasons Gavin had been so successful as the Glen Lyon was that he had always been a realist when it came to examining such plans. He possessed an almost uncanny ability to find hidden traps that could mean disaster and to judge the chance any scheme ultimately had of success. As he peered down at the house where his brother lay prisoner, Gavin knew that the chance of a raid succeeding this time was so tiny he dared not risk it.

  If Gavin was taken prisoner trying to break Adam out of his cell, they would both die.

  There was only one way to get Adam free now. It would be the most dangerous gamble the Glen Lyon had ever taken: confront Sir Dunstan Wells face to face.

  Gavin's jaw clenched, fury and killing jealousy welling up inside him, along with a hatred for this man so fierce that it seared like the savage lash of a whip. Wells, the man who had turned the Highlands into a river of blood; the man who held Adam captive; the man who had the right to slip a betrothal ring onto Rachel de Lacey's finger and would have been able to wed her and have her bear his children, if Gavin hadn't carried her away.

  Gavin shoved the thoughts from his mind. He couldn't afford any emotion that might set him off balance as he faced his enemy in this final confrontation.

  Hoping that one of Wells's soldiers wouldn't fire, Gavin spurred Manslayer onto the road.

  He'd barely breached the first dim rays of torchlight when a spindly youth of about nineteen thrust a pistol barrel toward Gavin, three more soldiers racing to his aid. Nervous fingers curled around the triggers of their weapons.

  The boy's face gleamed white in the torchlight, his eyes holding the haunted air of someone trapped by orders he didn't want to follow, a duty he no longer understood, leaders he couldn't trust yet hadn't the strength to defy. In that frozen instant, Gavin wondered how many more soldiers in Scotland would be haunted forever by the horrors they'd been forced to carry out, frightened by the brutal face this mission had put upon their world.

  The boy's hands shook as they grasped the pistol. "Who goes there?" he demanded, his voice betraying him by giving a most unmilitary crack.

  "You needn't fear," Gavin said levelly, remembering the gnawing terror that had once been in his own gut, the quaking that had rendered his own hands all but useless.

  "Identify yourself." A pockmarked soldier with subtle cruelty in his features shouldered the boy aside.

  "It doesn't matter who I am," Gavin said. "What matters is the identity of the prisoner you've been boasting about."

  "That's easy enough," the soldier sneered. "He's the Glen Lyon, the rebel scum we've been hunting since Culloden. You can be sure we've been repaying the cur for every thieving trick he ever played on us."

  Gavin's jaw knotted at the feral pleasure in the soldier's face, the hot gleam in his eye. The knowledge that Adam had been at the mercy of such sadistic monsters made bile rise in Gavin's throat.

  "I have some information that your commander is in desperate need of—that is, unless you prefer to make fools of yourselves before the whole of Scotland."

  "What the blazes—" the pockmarked soldier blustered.

  Gavin cut in. "You've got the wrong man."

  "The devil you say!" Two soldiers made a grab for Gavin's arms, intending to haul him from the saddle, but Manslayer sensed the threat. The scarred animal reared, lashing out with his hooves in an effort to guard his master. For a heartbeat, Gavin feared that the boy would shoot the horse, but Gavin snapped out, "Stop! He won't hurt you. Just stand back."

  They fell back a step, regarding horse and rider warily.

  Gavin's throat thickened at the display of equine loyalty, and he smoothed a hand down his horse's neck. "Whoa, boy. Easy," he murmured, then slowly dismounted.

  The instant his boot soles struck the ground, the two soldiers fell on him, grabbing his arms, pinioning him between them.

  "Search him," the pockmarked soldier ordered the youth. "God knows what devilment he's about! He might be one of those thieving Scots come to break his leader out of jail. He might be bent on murder."

  The boy shoved his weapon into his waistband and ran his trembling hands over Gavin in search of weapons. The pistol was taken, along with his sword and a dirk Gavin kept in a sheath in his boot top.

  "I need to see Sir Dunstan Wells," Gavin repeated.

  The pockmarked soldier smirked, and there was something so ugly beneath that flash of teeth that Gavin felt the urge to drive his boot into that inhuman smile. "We'll have to see if Sir Dunstan has the time to be entertaining visitors. Sure, you must have heard that that rebel scum Glen Lyon has been holding Sir Dunstan's betrothed hostage. From the minute that Jacobite arrived here at Furley House, Sir Dunstan has been trying to convince the bastard to tell him where Mistress de Lacey is."

  Horror oozed in icy sweat from every pore in Gavin's skin. He had seen how ruthless Wells could be with women and children, strangers who had committed no sin except being born Scottish. How cruel would the knight be while attempting to pry information from a man he believed was his worst enemy? An enemy who had humiliated Wells, eluded him for two long years? One who had added the most unbearable insult of all, taking Wells's betrothed captive?

  "Your commander might as well torture that stone pillar instead of the man he now holds," Gavin said, fighting for inner balance. "No matter what torture Wells plies, he will fail." The words could have been an attempt to delude the soldiers into believing Adam had no information. In reality, they were tribute to Adam's iron will. But Pockface only jeered.

  "I suppose you're going to deliver Mistress de Lacey on a silver plate, eh?"

  "Perhaps. But what I have to say is for your commander's ears alone. Tell Sir Dunstan that we've met before. That he was supposed to leave a scrap of plaid as a message for me. I'd wager then that he'll even take a moment's break from the delights of torturing the prisoner."

  "I'll take that wager, me boy—only I'll wager Sir Dunstan will tell you to go to the devil and send you to rot with that scurvy rebel in his cell."

  Gavin winced inwardly. It was a distinct possibility. What if Dunstan refused to see him at all, merely ordering up a matching set of shackles and a fresh set of
tortures? No. He couldn't even think about that chance, or the certain doom it would mean for Adam.

  With their weapons still pointed at Gavin's heart, the soldiers marched him into the baroque section of Furley House. It was elegant, filled with ornate moldings and portraits in gilded frames. The face of a soulful-eyed man wearing a neck ruff had been slashed by swords, his lady shredded until she drooped in her matching gilt frame, one more casualty of the hate. Mirrors were shattered, tables swept clean of anything of value.

  As Gavin saw the devastation, he wondered what was left of his own beloved estates back in England— the lands, the house, treasures from countless generations of Carstares. Seeing it decimated would have been agonizing, yet he would have set a torch to it all himself rather than surrender what he stood to lose now—Adam.

  The pockmarked soldier swaggered up a staircase that must have been magnificent before it had been scarred and battered by idle soldiers eager to leave their mark on a traitor's home. At the top of the risers, he stopped before huge double doors. He knocked on the ornately carved frame.

  "What the devil do you want?" a muffled voice snapped.

  The soldier tugged at his neckcloth, as if it had suddenly become too tight, then entered the chamber.

  After a moment, the soldier returned, scowling. "Sir Dunstan says he'll see you at once."

  Until that moment, Gavin hadn't realized how damned scared he'd been that Wells would turn him away.

  "If you try anything foolish, Sir Dunstan will shoot you dead," the soldier warned. "I understand."

  The door swung open, and Gavin entered what might once have been a salon. A harpsichord was jammed haphazardly into a corner, the room littered with weaponry. Trophies of Wells's campaign against the Highlanders filled tables and draped chairs: claymores that had been clan treasures since the time of Robert Bruce, jewels that had once adorned the women of proud chieftains. Anything that might be sold or bartered or displayed as spoils of war, Wells had kept here, tangible proof of his total domination over his enemies. The only trophy missing is the Glen Lyon's head, Gavin thought grimly. But not for long.