by Tracy Brogan
As suddenly as his kiss began, it was over. But he was angry still. She saw it in the glow of his eyes, felt it pulsing from him as he weighed her down.
Fear and cold took hold, and she shivered despite his warmth. Or perhaps, because of it. “I’ve done my part for this truce,” she whispered. “My brothers cower under your dominance, the king is satisfied, and you mighty Campbells have claimed another Sinclair woman. Must I sit at your feet like a hound? Let me go, and I’ll speak of your mercy. Of how you spared my life in repayment for my mother’s.”
He grabbed hold of her face with one hand, still pinning her wrists with the other. “’Tis a bold lie, Fiona. My father did not kill Aislinn Sinclair. Say it again, and you will suffer for it.”
Fiona trembled at the severity in his voice, at the violence coiled beneath his surface, and realized how mildly he’d treated her until this moment.
A gentle tapping sounded at the door, and the red giant’s head poked in, his eyes bright with mischief. “Have you subdued her, then?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Myles scoffed as he rolled off and sprang up, pulling her with him so fast her head spun with dizziness.
Breath hissed from her lips as the cord binding her wrists cut deeper. Her finger, still bent at an odd angle, had long since turned purple. Fiona bit her lip. She’d not cry out in his presence, no matter the pain.
“You’re bleeding, lad,” Tavish said, nodding at his leg.
“Aye, she sliced me, the little witch.” He winked at Tavish before leaning down and pulling a strip of fabric from her already shredded skirt. He dabbed at the wound. “’Tis a scratch.”
Tavish bent to peer more closely at the wound. “Still, I should tend to it.”
They stepped from the hut, Fiona pulled by her husband, and she found herself surrounded by glaring Campbell men, their hair wet and hanging down, their horses soggy and foaming round the bit. She was the reason for their discontent, and well she felt it in their stares.
“Lads, she is found.” Her husband raised her bound arms in a mild show of victory.
A grumble of acknowledgment followed. A particularly shaggy man with brown eyes and an unkempt beard stepped forward. “The skies are clearing, my lord. Should we ride to catch your father or make camp?”
Myles looked to the heavens. Fiona watched his shoulders rise and fall with a sigh. The rain had indeed stopped, but the sky darkened with the coming evening.
“It’ll soon be too dark to travel. We’ll make camp. Taggart, take some men and see what you can scare up for food.”
The men dismounted and went about their various tasks. Myles nudged her toward the side of the hut, where she sank down and remained largely ignored. Before long, fire crackled in a hastily dug pit and a few rabbits turned upon a spit. How the men had found dry wood or caught the hares in so short a time she could not imagine. But soon enough, the smell of cooking meat made Fiona’s stomach scorch with want. The meager supplies Bess provided had long since worn away, and she quivered with hunger and thirst, but her last shred of pride prevented her from asking for anything.
Her husband let Tavish minister to his wound and said nothing more to her, nor did he spare her a glance. His disregard was oddly unnerving, for without seeing his face, she could not read his mood. But when the hare finished cooking, he took a hearty section of it and came to sit near her, neither smiling nor scowling in her direction.
He ate loudly, smacking his lips and commenting to no one in particular about the meal’s deliciousness, while offering her none. She closed her eyes and breathed deep, as if the smell might nourish her. But it only made her stomach clench and her mouth water. She twisted her hands beneath the binding, hoping the pain might distract her from the hunger. It didn’t.
Curse him and his rabbit-tainted breath. God have mercy, may he choke on a stringy sinew and cough it all up.
Tavish approached her, his hand outstretched. She stared down at her feet, covered with thick mud and nettles she could not work loose.
“Would you like some bread, my lady?” he asked, his voice solicitous.
She looked up. Lord knew that girth of his could spare a bit without suffering. She nodded once, the smallest of concessions.
But he stuffed the bread into his mouth with a chunky fist and talked around it, crumbs falling. “More’s your sorrow, then. Think of that next time you sneak away on my watch.”
“Tavish,” Myles chided, shaking his head.
But the big man looked less than remorseful. He turned and walked away, his big body shaking in mirth.
Defeat, utter and complete, battered her defenses. If she had that dagger now, she’d use it on herself. She lowered her head against her knees and succumbed to weeping.
Myles sighed. “Oh, come now, none of that.” He tapped her leg and handed over his plate, still piled high with meat and bread. “Here you go, you silly girl. ’Tis better than you deserve, but none of us will sleep if you’re keening with hunger all night.”
She looked at the food and then to him, and saw an easy smile, not a glower or boast or trick. He seemed in earnest.
Slowly, she reached for the food and saw his pleasant expression change to dismay. He looked to her hands, where welts from the cord oozed blood, and her purple finger still bent to the side.
“What happened to your finger?” He set down the plate and moved to unlace her bindings.
“I fell.” She gasped as the air stung like salt against the wounds on her wrists.
He frowned, leaning in to examine her hand. “You could’ve been hurt much worse, you know. But I need to straighten that finger. Are you ready?”
She nodded, but could not bite back a cry as he set her finger back into position. Her head swam, but she willed herself to stay upright.
Myles tore another strip from her dress, which was disappearing with the hours, and tied the fractured finger to its neighbor, along with a small stick to keep it straight. His ministrations were efficient but gentle. Then he fetched a bit of clean cloth from one of his men and wrapped each of her bloodied wrists separately, tying the cloth off in a bow. Two neat little cuffed bandages and, just like that, her shackles turned to bracelets.
And her mind turned to confusion.
He was the strangest enemy she could imagine. When he should rail and torment and break her bones, he set them instead. He made no sense at all. He was a terrible soldier, aiding his combatant at her weakest point.
He sat back once more, picking up the plate and passing it into her unbound hands. She ate, and after a moment, he said, “I am a simple man, Fiona. It takes little to please me and great effort to bring me to violence, yet you seem hell-bent on doing the latter. But for every Goliath, there are a hundred dead Davids who could not defeat him. I will always win. Remember that.”
Darkness fell and Myles helped his men settle the camp for the night. His wife ate her food and drank her water, saying nothing, but not glaring or crying anymore either. Sometimes victory must be measured by one arrow at a time.
After giving his instructions to the watch, Myles pulled Fiona back into the hut, spreading out his mantle for them to lie on and using her maid’s thin wool cloak for their covers.
“You, little wife, have peculiar tastes. Last night, we slept in a cloud of blankets and wanted for nothing. Yet tonight, because of you, we lie in dirt like dogs. Now, must I tie you to me, or will you promise not to run again?”
“I will not run.” Her words came on a sigh.
“Or walk, or skip, or slither either?”
A wan smile, pale as the moonlight, passed over her face. “I’ll stay put. Another night like last, and there’ll be nothing left of this dress.”
The thought of taking the remainder of that rag from her danced wickedly in his mind, but just as quickly danced away. Even he was not brutish enough to take her in a place like this.
Instead, they lay down on the cloaks, positioned like the night before. Myles gripped his arm around her, perhap
s more tightly than necessary, but she did not resist. And within moments, her breathing evened out and he knew she slept.
Inside the tiny hut, with wind whistling and moon shining brightly overhead, he heard his wife mumble something incoherent, and he relaxed his hold.
Her face, awash in the moonlight, was lovely as she slept. Her soft lips moved slightly as she whispered within her dreams. The warmth and softness of her body teased him. In spite of all the unpleasantness that had occurred between them, in spite of her harsh words and foolish actions, he felt his heart opening up to pull her inside. And quite suddenly, like a flint ignites a spark, he understood how his father had come to make a promise to Fiona’s mother.
Though Cedric Campbell had not spoken the words aloud, Myles knew with certainty his father had once been in love with Aislinn Sinclair.
CHAPTER 10
WANDERING ABOUT IN the darkness last night had been unduly miserable, yet this day was equal torment for Fiona. Riding astride in the rain, her legs chafed, her muscles burned in protest, and she could not fathom worse discomfort. Her finger, tied in the makeshift splint, throbbed relentlessly. Yet, despite thunder and rain, Myles insisted they press on. It was his aim, she’d heard him tell Tavish, to rejoin the other half of the Campbell traveling party and his father with all due haste.
Her desire was the opposite. Fate awaited her in the form of Cedric Campbell, a man she had blatantly defied. A man wicked enough to squeeze the life from her mother’s throat. Though Myles was magnanimous with his forgiveness, she was not so naive to imagine her father-in-law would be similarly swayed. She straightened in her saddle. But whatever punishment she faced, she would accept it. She’d not run again. Myles would only recapture her, and last night, in the cold and the dark, she’d come to a sobering realization.
She was not prepared to perish for the sake of family honor. She was no martyr, nor a hero.
Onward they rode, mile after wet, stretching mile, but as morning gave way to afternoon, the rain stopped and they came over a crest to behold a scene so devastating it shocked her to the core.
Fingers of black smoke clawed toward the sky, the acrid scent of spent flames lingering in the air. Carts lay singed and overturned, their charred cargo cascading into the muck. And bodies, a dozen or more, splayed open by brutal weapons, were strewn about in bloodstained heaps upon the road. A few men milled upright, tending to the wounded, though they themselves appeared injured and exhausted.
“Christ Almighty!” Myles spurred his horse to motion, and his men quickly followed. Commotion erupted as they entered the scene, and in that instant, Fiona realized this was what remained of the Campbell traveling party.
Heart thudding like a gong, she nudged her mount forward, not wanting to be any part of this, yet pulled inexorably onward. Somewhere in that horrible mayhem was Bess. A peculiar numbness flooded her limbs, and she felt as if she were trying to move underwater. Sounds muted in her ears, and the smell of blood created a foul taste in her mouth.
Myles took charge, and soon the air was filled with questions and shouts.
“Where is my father?”
“Who sees the chief?” another called out.
And the dazed answers from the men remaining.
“They came upon like hounds of hell, my lord.”
“We were outnumbered, my lord, but fought them off.”
The battle had ended, but recently. Flames still licked at one of the carts, and two men worked frantically to extinguish the last bit of fire. A few others searched among the fallen for their Campbell kin. Fiona heard Tavish call to Myles, but their voices blended in the screeching discord of alarm and she knew not what they said.
Sliding from her saddle unassisted, Fiona called for her maid, but her voice was thin, lost amid the chaos. “Bess,” she shouted again, sweat prickling at her skin like bee stings. And then she saw her. A narrow form, twisted in a fearful fashion inside a green cloak. Her cloak.
Bile rising, Fiona ran to the spot and sank as if her limbs were made of water. A fervent prayer spilled from her lips, but for naught. Fiona eased the hood away from her nurse’s face and gasped. A foul gash cleaved along the side of her head, blood darkening her gray hair. Horror, hot and red, filled Fiona’s mind. What villain would do such a thing?
She looked up and around, and was surrounded by dead enemies, their blank eyes staring into a void of nothingness. None near could give her any answers. They were on their own dark journey. Looking back to Bess, she dabbed at the wound, trying to press the sides of flesh back together, but it made a sickening sound, and Fiona’s stomach rolled with nausea.
It was her fault Bess was in this mayhem. She should not have escaped and left her nurse to fend for herself. She should not have even allowed the old woman to leave Sinclair Hall in the first place. Were it not for Fiona, Bess would be safe at home, playing nursemaid to young Margaret.
Tears scalded her cheeks. All around, the view was a macabre painting, with colors too vivid to be real. But the smell was real enough. Death and fear had its own stench, and her head filled with it. The sounds began to separate, and she heard each voice more clearly now.
“Where is my father?” her husband called again.
“We’ve been searching, my lord! We cannot—”
The man’s words were cut off by a distant cry. “Here! I have found him. He is wounded.”
A sensation, like steam rising, thin and indistinct, built inside Fiona’s chest. Cedric Campbell was wounded. She should be glad, and yet she felt nothing but morbid curiosity and the faint hope that she’d awaken from this nightmare. An odd stillness overtook her senses, as if she watched from a faraway place.
Overhead, the birds twittered gaily, the wind whispered its love song to the budding trees, and the sun shone bright as Mother Nature, perfidious once more, ignored the horrors of men.
Myles rushed to his father’s side and dropped to his knees next to him. Cedric’s ashen face, marked with mud and worse, bore no expression, and Myles’s heart ripped asunder.
“He lives, but barely,” his man Benson said, his voice husky with concern.
Blood, dark and sticky, covered the earl and the ground around him. Myles could taste its metallic sourness on his tongue.
A series of wounds shredded his father’s garments, along with the fragile flesh beneath. White bone protruded from a broken arm, stark in contrast to the puddle of burgundy blood it rested in. On one side, a gash, deep and jagged, tore through from rib to hip, and another small gash laid open a gouge on his temple.
Tavish joined them, intoning a fast prayer.
“Father,” Myles called softly, grasping his father’s unbroken arm, “can you hear me?”
Cedric gave no flicker of response, but a telltale pulse thrummed on the side of his neck. He was alive, and for that, Myles must have hope of saving him still.
He and Tavish went to work, cleaning the wounds and setting his father’s arm as well and as gently as they could manage.
“What happened here?” Myles asked Benson as they scrambled to bind cloth around Cedric’s midsection.
“’Twas an ambush, my lord. About an hour ago, we came over that rise and into the valley, and suddenly, they were all around us, screeching like banshees. A dozen, I’d say. We fought as best we could. We killed many, but a few escaped.”
“You did well. I counted eight of theirs among the dead,” said Tavish.
“Yes, my lord, but one more thing. They knew who we were.”
Unease twisted Myles’s gut.
Tavish’s hands clenched into fists. “What makes you think that?”
“In the thick of it, I heard one shout, ’We need the Campbell, dead or alive.’ They nearly got him too, but for Seamus, God rest his soul. He fought alongside your father, my lord, and took down three of them before he fell.”
Such news as this was worse than bad. If they had been a simple band of thugs out for whatever they might steal from travelers, then the marauders would
be far away by now. But if they had a purpose, if they sought to harm the Campbells in particular, then his father and the rest of them were in more peril every moment they tarried. They needed to leave and be away from here as fast as possible.
“I thought you’d be in Inverness by now. Why are you still this far north?” Myles asked, frustration scratching in his voice.
“We lost a cart wheel, and the rain left so much mud we moved at a slug’s pace. I think your father might have pushed harder too, but he was waiting for you.”
Myles looked to Tavish, anger washing over him like burning oil. Had he not dallied in the hut last night with Fiona, or lost her in the first place, if he’d pushed his men back into the saddle, they might have reached his father sooner and prevented this attack.
Tavish shook his head, guessing at his nephew’s expression. “’Twas not your fault, lad. We had no choice but to retrieve your wife.”
His wife? Indeed! His wife! ’Twas she who forced a separation in the traveling parties. Had they been at their full number of twenty men, no brigands would have dared to attack. Yet they’d been split, and his father sprawled near death’s door because of Fiona’s reckless selfishness. And his failure to keep track of her. A twig cracked, and garments rustled behind him. Like a silent demon, his wife appeared. Her dress, already torn and filthy from the night before, bore fresh blood, and her pale face, streaked with grime, displayed no hint of emotion, as if this day’s events meant nothing.
“Is he dead?” she asked, her voice flat.
Her indifference lit the cannon of his temper. He reached out, like a falcon snatching at a rat, and grasped her shoulders. He pushed her to her knees next to Cedric. “He lives, no thanks to you. But do you see what has been done? Because you led us astray and divided our forces! Was that your Sinclair plan all along?”
She made no sound, only stared at his father’s inert form.
Myles leaned low and growled into her ear. “This is your doing, woman. If he dies, it will be your soul he torments.”
