“Good!” Lady Arline said with a smile. “It will do ye good to spend some time with yer daughter.”
“Are ye no’ joinin’ us?” Rowan asked, feeling more than slightly disappointed.
“Ye’ve no’ had much time alone with Lily this past week, Rowan. I thought ye would want to be alone with her.” Arline hadn’t considered joining them. She was attempting to give Rowan time alone with his daughter. “I do no’ want to intrude.”
His lips curved into a wide smile, his dazzling and perfect white teeth sent a shiver of excitement up and down her spine. She cursed inwardly for enjoying the tickling sensation that came to her belly every time he smiled at her.
“’Twould no’ be an intrusion, me lady. ’Twould make me verra happy,” he told her. He turned to Lily, knowing full well that Arline would not be able to tell the child no. “What do ye say, Lily? Would you like Lady Arline to join us fer our picnic?”
“Aye, I would!”
Rowan felt no guilt for using his daughter to get Arline to change her mind. As he watched the loving smile come to her face when she looked at Lily, he knew she’d be joining them.
“Verra well then!” he said, growing excited about the opportunity to spend more time with Arline and his daughter. He tossed Lily into the air once, his heart filled with an overwhelming sense of joy when she squealed with delight. Carefully, he set her on her feet and patted her head.
“Ye go write yer letters while I go bathe. I be certain ye don’t want a sweaty, smelly Highlander on yer picnic!”
I find ye quite handsome all sweaty and I do no’ think ye smelly at all. I think ye smell like a strong, virile, beautiful man. Arline shooed the thoughts away. Will I ever be able to look at this man and not feel all tingly and giddy? She forced herself to remember that she was not a wanton woman. But the more time she spent with this man, the more wanton and sinful she began to feel.
Pulling on every ounce of willpower she could muster, she tried to pretend that nothing about him affected her in any way. Her stomach told her she was a liar.
“It will no’ take her verra long, Rowan. She’s a verra smart little girl.”
“Good. Then I shall hurry. Should I meet ye in me rooms?”
“Nay!” she nearly shouted her answer. Rowan gave her a curious look. “I mean, nay. We shall meet ye in the kitchens.”
Nay, nay, nay! Neither of us would be safe together in yer rooms, ye devil!
Rowan cast another brilliant and sinful smile her way. She had to force herself to look away for fear her legs would give out and she would turn into a puddle of jelly at his feet. She supposed that’s what most inexperienced women did, turn to jelly when they didn’t have a clue how to express themselves when around a gorgeous, handsome man such as Rowan Graham.
Deep down, she did like the way she felt when she was around him, although it was all quite confusing. The tingling sensations were enjoyable, but the shocking thoughts that raced through her mind were maddening if not embarrassing.
Ye’ve been married more than once and ye still do no’ know how to act around a man. Yer an eejit.
Their picnic had not turned out the way Rowan had envisioned it. Instead of a small, intimate affair with just him, Lady Arline and Lily, half his clan decided it was a perfect day to take the noonin meal out of doors.
He hadn’t been able to get one moment of privacy with the woman throughout the meal. They were never alone, constantly surrounded by people, or more specifically, his men.
Frederick and Daniel were especially attentive. Thomas stood nearby, watching Lady Arline closely, as if she were going to steal the silver candlesticks or Rowan’s private supply of whisky. It was plainly evident that Thomas still held some reservations about Arline.
Rowan knew it wasn’t a romantic kind of attention that the two younger men were displaying, but one forged from the time they had spent together all those years ago.
Lady Arline looked rather uncomfortable as Frederick and Daniel began to regale an audience of some twenty-five men, women and children with the story of how they had met Lady Arline.
They had just finished eating and were now enjoying the sunshine and cool autumn breeze that tickled grass and skin alike. A goodly number of Daniel and Frederick’s audience were lazing about on blankets while a few had taken felled trees as their seats.
“Och! Laddies,” Frederick said excitedly. “Ye should have seen how brave Lady Arline was the night we were attacked on our way to Stirling! As brave as any Highland warrior she was that night. Ye never heard a peep out of her as the arrows -- on fire mind ye -- went flying through the air. The bastards hit man and horse alike as they tried to kill us.”
“Aye, everra word Frederick says is the God’s honest truth.” Daniel said as he sat on a log chewing the end of a long blade of grass. His blond hair waved in the afternoon breeze and his big blue eyes sparkled with excitement. “As brave as any warrior I ever met, she was.” He looked proudly then at Lady Arline who was sitting on a blanket next to Daniel and Frederick’s stage. Lily sat beside Arline, eating a crisp red apple.
Rowan paid close attention to Arline. Her skin seemed to grow redder as Daniel and Frederick’s tale grew longer and mayhap a bit exaggerated.
“Nary a peep nor complaint from her lips. She’d been keeping up with us as we tore along the valleys and glens to get to Stirling. She has a verra good seat, Lady Arline does.”
The women giggled and the men guffawed at his choice of terms. Rowan had his own thoughts as they pertained to Lady Arline’s seat, but good manners forbade him from sharing those opinions with the rest of the crowd.
Daniel shook his head at them. “Ye ken what I mean! She’s as good a rider as any one here, I tell ye.”
Frederick agreed wholeheartedly. “Aye, he’s tellin’ ye the God’s honest truth, lads. And brave she was that night, too, when the flamin’ arrows were flyin’ through the air.”
Apparently the flaming arrows were their favorite part of the story, for they had repeated it more than once.
“And then, when we finally made it to Stirling Castle? Och! I’ve never seen a braver lassie in me life. Only eight and ten she was at the time,” Frederick said.
Daniel added his own opinion. “Aye! Just eight and ten and verra brave. She’d carried that box across Scotland, never lettin’ it out a her sight, guardin’ it with her life.”
“And then when we got to Stirling Castle? That’s when things got verra scary.” Frederick said.
The crowd fell silent as they listened to Frederick explain how the box had been stolen and it seemed all was lost. “Fer a very long time, we thought Angus and Duncan were goin’ to hang, ye ken. The only thing that could keep them from hangin’ was what was inside that box.” He paused then, shaking his head and looking quite forlorn.
One of the men piped up. “Well, what happened? What was in the box?”
Frederick and Daniel smiled at Lady Arline. “Well, ye see,” Frederick said, lowering his voice ever so slightly. “In that box were papers, papers that showed who had really betrayed King David, the crown and Scotland.”
“Aye, and when it was stolen right from under her nose?” David looked at Arline then. “Did she fall into a heap and cry? Did she rant and rave and curse the world? Nay. She did not.”
They were all looking at Lady Arline, as was Rowan. She looked exceedingly ill at ease, as though she wanted to crawl away. But she remained mute, pretending to ignore the stares and whispers.
“Nay, she did not. She went and found the box! And she was able to save Angus and Duncan from hangin’ and expose the true traitors.”
Arline could take no more. She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Nay, that is no’ what happened and ye ken it!”
Frederick and Daniel looked surprised. “’Tis no’? Well,” Frederick said quietly, “’tis how I remember it.”
“And I as well,” Daniel offered, looking a bit smug.
“I was scared out of me wits the night
the arrows flew!” Arline said. “’Tis why ye didna hear a peep out of me. I was too scared to say anything fer I was holdin’ on fer me life! And the way ye all took off, racing across the land? Every time ye jumped a log or a stream, I nearly lost me supper!”
The crowd laughed, not at her but with her.
“And as fer me findin’ the box, that’s not exactly true. Robert Stewart pulled all the maids in to his private rooms to question them.”
A woman from the crowd gasped in awe. “Ye met Robert Stewart, the steward of Scotland?” she asked, looking amazed and intrigued.
Arline swallowed hard. She would not be able to tell them everything that had transpired, but there were some things that she supposed were not private or privileged information.
“Aye, I did. He was a verra nice man, verra well mannered.”
“Was he as handsome as they say?” Another woman asked. Her husband glanced at her, disapprovingly. His expression along with his wife’s question made Arline giggle.
“Handsome?” she pretended to think on it fer a time. “Nay, I didna think him handsome. But he was a verra nice man.”
Frederick and Daniel chimed in, evidently not liking the bland manner in which Arline told the story.
“Handsome or nay,” Frederick said, “the truth of it is that the box and the letters were found. And Lady Arline stood in a room filled with hundreds of people and told the truth. She named the true traitors and Angus and Duncan were spared.”
“It wasn’t hundreds, Frederick. More like a few dozen.”
“It was a lot of people, me lady. Ye may no’ have notice fer ye were busy keepin’ the nooses from goin’ around Angus and Duncan’s necks.”
Arline gave him a warm smile, much like a mother would to a child when she knew that child was exaggerating. “Be that as it may,”
Frederick leapt to his feet, “Be that as it may, ye saved two innocent men from hangin’ that day.”
Arline looked up at him, shielded the sun from her eyes with a hand. “We all saved two innocent men from hangin’ that day. I didna do it alone. Were it no’ fer ye and Frederick, and yer brother and all the other men who made sure I got to Stirling alive, well, the outcome would have been quite different.”
“What happened to the traitors?” another of the men asked. “Who were they?”
This was the part of the story that Arline did not like to think or speak about. Her smile faded away and she looked sad. “They hanged them the next day.”
“Who were they?” the man repeated his question.
Arline took a deep breath and looked away from the people. “The son and grandson of me husband.”
Several gasps cut through the silence. Rowan studied the crowd then. The women looked genuinely concerned for Arline, as if they understood the pain she must have gone through. The men looked at her with admiration. Even Thomas’ expression showed he was rather impressed with her.
Lady Arline had shown her fealty and loyalty to Scotland by telling the truth, even when it cost the lives of her husband’s son and grandson.
“Did ye ken they were the traitors? Yer stepson and grandson I mean?” One of the men asked in a low tone.
“Aye, I did,” Arline answered.
“What did their da think of ye then?”
“’Twas their da who confided the truth in me. ’Twas he who asked me to go to Stirling and seek out Robert Stewart and tell him the truth.” Arline turned to face the onlookers. “I had no choice in the matter. I could no’ let two innocent men hang for the crimes of others, even if the traitors were me family. ’Twas the right thing to do.”
The breeze picked up for a moment, caressing the skin of all those in attendance. As the zypher brushed over the tall brown grass, it made a soft, gentle, swooshing sound. For a moment, Rowan could have sworn it was the sound of a hundred people saying aye.
Seventeen
When Garrick Blackthorn had learned that three of his men were dead and his former wife was not, he had turned violent with rage. With his dagger, he had sliced away three fingers from the hand of the man who had delivered the news. Tables and chairs in the gathering room had been upturned and destroyed. By his order, everything in Arline’s room had been taken outside and burned, from her belongings she left behind to the bed she had slept in. Nothing had been spared.
He took his displeasure out on anyone who was stupid enough to get near him, from kitchen maid to trusted advisor, no one was safe from his fury.
Save for his Ona.
Ona. Ona was the only source of light in his otherwise dark and disturbed world. There was nothing he would or could deny her. She had a good heart, his Ona. He knew it was her fault that his former wife still lived, for it had been Ona who had convinced him to spare her life. Ona believed that it was not Arline’s fault that she and Garrick been kept from marrying for more than a year. Nay, that was his father’s fault.
Ona never begged, never pleaded, never gave ultimatums, never batted her eyelashes or used seduction to get what she wanted from Garrick. She only needed to ask.
Ona was his only addiction. He craved her, needed her as much as he needed air. She was the only reason Arline still lived.
Had he killed the foolish woman first, before telling Ona his plan, then Arline would now be rotting in the ground where she belonged. Instead, she was now under the protection of Rowan Graham, the man he had once considered his only true friend. But that was decades ago, when they were children. Too much had happened since those carefree days.
Garrick had learned two weeks after Lily Graham disappeared along with his former wife, exactly what had happened that fateful night. Rowan and three of his men had been able to breech Garrick’s defenses, enter his home and take the brat. Garrick’s men who were on duty that night were summarily tortured before being disemboweled for allowing the breech.
With every fiber of his being, Garrick despised Rowan Graham. Hated him. Wished nothing but ill will toward the fool.
He wanted Rowan to suffer, to die a slow, horrible, agonizing death, just as Garrick’s mother had died trying to bring Andrew Graham’s bastard son into the world.
Garrick had made a promise to his dead mother those many years ago. Her death had nearly been the end of him. He had adored her and she him. She doted on him, denied him nothing. He had been the perfect son. She had told him so every day of his life.
In Garrick’s eyes, she was the perfect mother. Even after he learned the whole sordid truth. He could not blame his mother for her indiscretion. That fault lay at the feet of others.
Doreen Blackthorn had loved Garrick’s father. She had all but worshipped the ground under Phillip Blackthorn’s feet. Naively, she had believed he returned those cherished feelings. That was until the day she found him in bed with a whore, a girl really, barely old enough to know what she was doing. Seeing them together, in their marital bed, had crushed Doreen’s spirit, had broken her heart, and had nearly killed her.
Doreen quit smiling and singing that day. Worst of all, she had quit living.
He’d been a boy then, just two and ten when he learned the truth, that Andrew Graham had seduced his sweet, beautiful mother. His father had told him the whole, sordid, painful truth, sparing few details.
His father took none of the blame of course. It was a man’s right to have a mistress he explained. His God given right to do as he pleased, when he pleased, and with whom he pleased.
But Garrick knew that had his mother not found Phillip in bed with another woman, she would never have sought comfort in the arms of another man, his seed would not have grown in her womb only to kill her in the end.
So Garrick promised to avenge her death. Even as a boy he knew it might take some time before he could put any kind of plan in action. The hope of exacting his revenge was the only thing that kept him going.
Until he met his sweet Ona. ’Twas then that he found another purpose for living. With her long, raven tresses, her soft, blue eyes, and all those glorious curve
s, he had fallen for her the moment he first laid eyes upon her. In so many ways, Ona reminded him of his sweet, beautiful mother. Soft spoken, beguiling and kind. She even sang like his mother.
But since Ona was Scots and Garrick English, his father refused to allow them to marry. Aye, they lived on Scottish soil, in a grand Scottish castle not far from the English border, but Phillip Blackthorn refused to allow Blackthorn blood to be tainted with even a drop of Scots blood.
With his father dead, Garrick could apply his father’s own words to his life. He would do as he pleased, when he pleased and with whom he pleased. And Ona pleased him very much.
Even after all these years, Garrick felt honor bound to never forget what Andrew Graham had done to his mother. He would seek revenge in her name, to right the injustice the bastard had served on his mother and, ultimately, upon Garrick. Unfortunately, the Black Death took Andrew Graham’s life before Garrick had the chance.
Garrick felt cheated out of the opportunity to watch the life drain from Andrew Graham’s body. He looked at that as another injustice, a slap in the face and it angered him.
The idea to make all of Clan Graham suffer came to him in a dream one night months ago. He would seek retribution by making all of Andrew Graham’s clan suffer. He would begin by tormenting Rowan, making him to suffer knowing his wee daughter was killed by Garrick’s own hand.
Somehow Ona had gotten wind of his plan and put an immediate stop to it. She’d not allow him to take the life of a little girl, especially now that their own child grew in her womb. Wanting nothing more than to make Ona happy, he relented and agreed not to kill the child. But she hadn’t said a word about taking her and holding her for ransom.
Rowan Graham did not know that he owed his daughter’s life to Ona. Arline was just as ignorant.
So Lily Graham’s life as well as Arline’s had been spared because Ona had asked it of him. Garrick would make damn certain that Ona did not learn what he had planned for Rowan, for he knew, deep in his heart, that should she ask him to spare Rowan’s life, it would be the one time he could not grant her wish.
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