19
Exactly two weeks to the day of their departure, a small but heavily armed party of Cameron clansmen were reportedly seen on the outskirts of Inverness. Word of their success in capturing the garrison at Fort Augustus had preceded them by four full days, but the victory had already been overshadowed by the prince’s own daring maneuver against the government troops occupying Inverness. A day after the astonishing rout at Moy Hall, the vanguard of Lord George Murray’s column had marched into the glen. Hearing of the prince’s close call with Blakeney’s men, the general had whisked Charles Stuart away to Culloden House, there to be surrounded by three thousand of his own men. A few days later, taking advantage of the enemy’s loss of credibility, the prince had boldly advanced on Inverness, chasing Lord Loudoun’s troops across the waters of the Moray Firth to Dornoch.
“It is all in the timing,” Aluinn remarked wryly. “Had we arrived a week earlier, we would have been heroes. Today? We’re just adding another feather to the prince’s bonnet.”
“Tell that to my wife when you see her,” Alex muttered. “The closer we get to Moy, the tighter my collar feels.”
“At your age and with your experience, you should know by now not to make rash promises you cannot keep. Especially to a pregnant female. I’m told the condition does something to their sensibilities: increasing the protective, feline instincts or some such thing. And since she has a rare temper to begin with—” He shrugged and let the sentence hang, earning a glare from the indigo eyes.
“You are an absolute font of cheer,” Alexander commented, nodding abstractedly to a couple of somber-faced women who had paused by the roadside to stare at the passing riders. “So is everyone else, for that matter, or am I just imagining all these rousing accolades of welcome?”
Aluinn slowed his horse to match Shadow’s pace, both animals drawing to a halt on the crest of a knoll overlooking the glen and parks of Moy Hall. The scene appeared tranquil enough; the camp was off to their right, snuggled at the base of the imposing, forested slope. A dozen or more fires trailed lazy fingers of smoke into the clear air, and there were visible signs of activity in and around the canvas tents. The backdrop of rolling hills marched off toward the horizon like choppy green waves on the ocean, some peaked in foaming white snow, some so distant and faded, they blended into the underbellies of low-lying clouds far to the south.
“Everything seems quiet enough,” Aluinn said.
“Too damned quiet, if you ask me.”
Struan MacSorley halted his shaggy-maned garron beside them, and next to him, Count Giovanni Fanducci reined into line, his feathered blue tricorn as sweepingly incongruous in the surroundings as usual.
“Maybe we should have-a taken time out to shave,” he noted with a disgruntled twitch of an eyebrow. Eager to return to Moy, Alex had forced his group to ride straight through, stopping no more than an hour at a time to rest the horses and partake of a hasty meal. Despite his unshaven appearance, however, the count looked the least ruffled of them all. Both Alex and Aluinn wore full beards, and were coated with the grime and sweat of the long hard ride.
Alex nudged Shadow forward again, his gaze alternating between the regal stone manorhouse and the camp. Halfway down the slope a familiar figure mounted on a muscular gray gelding came pounding across the turf. Lady Anne Moy, her hair flying loose around her shoulders and her cheeks flushed pink from the exertion, pulled to a rearing halt a few paces away.
“I was told ye were taking the road from Inverness,” she gasped. “I sent men along the way to watch f’ae ye.”
“We decided to cut across country,” Alex explained, frowning. “We weren’t really expecting a reception committee.”
Lady Anne’s horse pranced impatiently and she cursed under her breath in Gaelic. “Then ye havena heard?”
“Heard what?” Aluinn asked.
Lady Anne’s bright green eyes went to Alex. “We had some trouble after ye left. The king’s men came in the night, hoping to take the prince. Catherine was the only one who could rouse him into moving himsel’ up the mountain, to the caves where we thought he’d be safest. There was a fight, an’ … an’ Catherine was hurt—not bad!” she added quickly. “She scared the living bejesus out of her brither, mind. I ken he aged ten years bringing her back down the mountain again. But the doctor says she’s fine. She’s fine, the bairn’s fine—”
Alex did not wait to hear the rest. He kicked his heels into Shadow’s ribs, startling the beast into a gallop that carried him the rest of the way through the glen and up to the front door of Moy Hall. Horse and rider came to a flying halt, and with cloak and tartan swirling around his massive frame, Alex vaulted to the ground and launched himself through the double doors. He took the stairs to the second storey two at a time and was at his wife’s room before the other riders in the group had even gained the front entrance.
Catherine did not hear the sound of boots in the outer hallway, she was laughing too hard. She was not even aware of the impending storm until the door to her chamber burst open and a tall, caped, and heavily bearded intruder filled the doorway. The laughter died in her throat as she recognized the windblown figure, but her instinctive cry of pleasure met a similar fate as she saw his dark eyes sweep around the room and his expression change from concern, to disbelief, to anger.
Deirdre, seated by the bed, dropped the bit of lace she was mending and stared. Damien, lounging in a chair by the fire, abandoned the comedy he was reading from, his smile fading as quickly as Catherine’s when he saw the look on Alex’s face.
“Alex,” he said lamely. “You’re back.”
“If I am disturbing you, I can return when it is more convenient.”
His casual offer deceived no one. Deirdre and Damien moved together, one fumbling to gather up her scraps of lace, needles, and thread, the other closing his book and pushing to his feet. Only Catherine remained impassive. She placed her hands carefully and precisely on her lap and offered her sweetest smile.
“Do come in, my lord, and tell us all about your adventure at Fort Augustus.”
Alexander merely folded his arms across his chest and leaned indolently against the oak jamb. “It wasn’t much of an adventure, really. We met with a bit of resistance, but nothing too daunting. Nothing, from what I hear, as exciting as your own escapades.”
Catherine unclasped a hand briefly to smooth a wrinkle on the coverlet. “As you say, nothing too daunting. We simply foiled a kidnapping attempt, saved the prince’s life, and scattered the king’s army in a panic.”
“All in a day’s work,” he mused.
It was a good performance, but her husband was not fooled. Not for a minute. There were still faint shadows beneath her eyes, and the flush in her cheeks bore the unnatural brightness of a recent fever. The movement of her hand had drawn attention to the thick wadding of bandages that distorted the shape of her upper arm; the slight tightening of her lips betrayed the true cost of the seemingly nonchalant gesture.
The midnight eyes flicked to the two silent observers and his mouth spread in a lazy curve. “Would you mind excusing us? I am a little tired, a little dusty, and not very promising company at the moment.”
Deirdre and Damien were spurred into motion again, each stammering profuse apologies that went unacknowledged by either of the other two occupants of the room. Once they were out in the hallway and the door was firmly closed behind them, Deirdre spied three more grimy, bearded men hurrying toward them and she broke away from Damien, flinging herself into her husband’s outstretched arms. Count Fanducci whipped the plumed tricorn off his head and discreetly hung back a few paces with Struan MacSorley while Aluinn gave her a fierce, hard kiss.
“What the devil is going on?” he demanded, prying her away to arm’s length. “We met Lady Anne outside and she said Catherine had been hurt.”
Deirdre nodded, taking a swift inventory of arms, legs, fingers, ears. Her relief at finding him uninjured was dampened by the concern she saw in his soft gray e
yes.
“It was not as bad as we first thought. We … I thought she had been shot dead, but—”
“Shot? Catherine was shot?”
Deirdre nodded again. “Corporal Peters shot her. Only in the arm, as it turned out, but it was still quite horrible.”
“Only? How the hell did she only get shot in the arm, and what do you mean Corporal Peters shot her? Was it an accident?”
“Oh, no. It was quite deliberate. He had already killed the houseman, Robert Hardy, and was planning to kill all of us, as well, I’m sure, before he took the prince back to Inverness and handed him over to the English army.”
“Peters? Corporal Jeffrey Peters?”
“It was all a pretense, you see,” she explained, the words tumbling out in a flurry. “He hadn’t really changed sides at all. He only used Catherine and I to wheedle his way into camp. He was really one of the king’s men all along and would have taken the prince to Inverness to collect the reward.”
“I’m-a knew it!” Count Fanducci exploded, smacking the back of his hand against the side of Struan’s arm. “I’m-a knew something about that man, she’s-a no right!”
“Yes, well,” Aluinn acknowledged the hindsight with a grimace, “he felt the same way about you. At least, he tried to make damn sure any suspicion was directed your way and not his.”
Fanducci’s eyes narrowed. “Ah-hah! So that’s-a why you stuck to my back like-a the flea! He made-a you think I was-a the spy!”
Aluinn shrugged apologetically. “He was very convincing and I … I was open to suggestion.”
The count snorted extravagantly, feigning supreme indignation.
“Peters,” Aluinn said, returning his attention to Deirdre and Damien. “Where is he now?”
“Dead,” Damien said. “As far as we know.”
“What is that supposed to mean, as far as you know?”
“It means, the last we saw of him he was going off the top of a cliff. I took some men back up the mountain the next morning to collect the bodies and found Robert exactly where we had laid him, but Peters was gone. There was a good deal of blood on the rocks at the base of the cliff where he landed; it looked like he had been dragged off for an evening meal by wolves or mountain cats.”
“You don’t sound so sure.”
“Blame it on lawyer’s instinct, but I don’t like loose ends. There was a lot of brush growing down the side of the cliff. It isn’t likely a man could have survived a drop like that, but it is possible. I have been out almost every day scouring the forest and nearby glens, but so far there hasn’t been any trace of him. The whole camp and countryside has been alerted to watch out for him, so even if he did manage to walk away from a twenty-foot fall and a cracked skull, I doubt he could have gotten very far on his own. Nights have been colder than sin lately so you probably could assume that if the cats didn’t get him, the frost would.”
“Probably?”
Damien rubbed absently at a fading bruise on his neck. “I would just feel better if we had the body.”
Aluinn had already noticed the bruises and scrapes on Damien’s face. If they were already over a week old, he must have been quite a sight at the time. “Everyone else is all right?”
“Robert and Catherine were the only casualties,” Damien said glumly. “And I’m damned sorry about Hardy. If my reflexes were a few hairs quicker—”
Deirdre reached out and touched Aluinn’s arm. “Tell him he mustn’t blame himself for what happened. If he’d done nothing whatsoever, we would all be dead now and the prince would be in an English jail.”
Aluinn walked up to where Damien stood and stripped the glove off his right hand. “She’s right, you know. You have no reason to hold yourself to blame for anything. In fact, it sounds as if we have a great deal to thank you for, and I, for one, do so most heartily.”
Damien looked at the extended hand, then at the deeper offering of genuine friendship in the warm gray eyes.
“Besides,” Aluinn added, giving Damien’s hand an added shake, “there won’t be enough guilt to go around once Alex gathers it all onto his own shoulders.”
“Alex? But he was fifty miles away when it happened.”
Aluinn glanced at the closed bedroom door. “Aye, you know that and we know that …”
“You promised you would be back in a week,” Catherine said lightly, hoping to break the silence that had settled over the room since Deirdre and Damien—the cowards—had fled. Apart from moving over to stand by the window, Alex had not said or done anything to indicate he intended to stay too long himself.
She moistened her lips. “As I recall, you even waved your little knife around and—”
The implacable, dark eyes glanced from the window to the bed, freezing the words at the back of her throat. His mouth was a grim line, barely visible through the two-week growth of luxuriant black beard. There were other indications that he had not wasted time returning to Moy Hall. Shallow blue smears circled eyes that were red-rimmed and puffy from lack of sleep. Thin black crescents of dirt crusted his fingernails, and his hair was lashed roughly into a queue at the nape of his neck, dull with grime.
Catherine felt mildly ashamed at her attempted levity and wished he would just come over to the bed and take her into his arms …
“Are you not going to say anything to me at all?” she asked softly. “Are you not even going to ask me what happened?”
“You foiled an attempt to kidnap the prince, saved his life in the offing, and sent the king’s army running for the hills … all single-handed, no doubt.”
His sarcasm pricked her guilt into abeyance. “It must be your influence, my lord,” she countered smoothly. “How else should the wife of the legendary Dark Cameron behave? What else could be expected of her but to follow her husband’s example and try to take on the entire world single-handed?”
His eyebrow rose in a slow arch and Catherine braced herself. He was obviously angry—very angry—and she wondered how the air could feel so sensually charged and, at the same time, so cruelly cold.
“I did not deliberately go looking for trouble,” she said quietly. “And I did not deliberately stand in the path of a discharging gun so that I could win anyone praise or admiration. It was all quite horrible, and I was terribly frightened, and I would have been the first to run away and bury my head in the sand if it had been at all possible.”
Alex took a moment longer to study the pale oval of her face before he turned away from the window. “Very well.” His words were clipped, measured. “What happened?”
“Will you not sit down first?”
He took an even longer moment to follow the motion of her hand as she patted the side of the bed. From the hand, he traced a path from the gathered ruff of lace at her wrist, up the fullness of the creamy-yellow lawn nightdress, finally settling on the wide, imploring violet eyes.
“I have been in the saddle nearly forty-eight hours without—”
“I have seen and smelled worse,” she interrupted, patting the mattress again.
Alexander moved grudgingly to the side of the bed, then, with his gaze still locked on hers, he sat.
“Would you like a glass of wine or ale? I can have someone fetch hot food and drink for you if—”
He leaned forward without warning. His hand curled around her neck, his mouth claimed hers with a forcefulness that was more reminiscent of an invasion than a kiss. Catherine resisted the brutish assault for the span of a few sharp breaths, but just as she was on the verge of welcoming his passion, he broke away, leaving her more confused and unsettled than before.
“I thought I should do that,” he said obliquely, “just to get it out of the way. And now, if you don’t mind, perhaps you can tell me why it is you always manage to get yourself into trouble the instant I turn my back?”
The tip of Catherine’s tongue traced the moisture on her lips, trying to capture the lingering taste of him.
“Bloodlines?” she offered lamely. “My father was a
highwayman, remember.”
Something flickered in the depths of the dark eyes, but it was brought swiftly and savagely under control behind a steel-edged glare. It was a glare that should have sent her cringing under the covers, but it had, in fact, the opposite effect. Her eyes held his without evasion, without faltering, and she could see beneath the anger to an emotion that had been so completely foreign to him for most of his life that he did not know any other way to hide it.
“Your anger is very formidable, my lord. I am sorry if I frightened you, or gave you cause to worry, but—”
“I lost ten years of my life running up those stairs”—he interrupted bluntly—“only to find the three of you reading bad poetry and laughing like jaybirds. How was I supposed to react?”
“You were supposed to react exactly the way you did: You were supposed to eject them from the room, take me in your arms, and tell me how proud you were of me and how brave you thought I was.”
“I did all of that? I must have missed it.”
“I didn’t,” she whispered softly. She brushed her fingertips across his brow and down his temple, letting them linger beside the dark, midnight eyes. “It was all right here.”
For the first time since bursting into the room, the heavy lashes fell, guarding against any further betrayals.
“Mind you, you did a very fine job of startling Damien and Deirdre out of their skins. They are probably still running.”
“I will apologize to them later,” he sighed after a moment.
“Sweet merciful heavens, never do that. You will lose all credibility as a tyrant and warlord, and I’ll not be pampered an inch more than my life is worth.”
The dark lashes rose again. “It is worth a great deal to me, madam. You might do well to remember that in the future.”
“I promise. No more rescuing princelings by moonlight.”
His gaze settled on the bandages padding her arm. “Would you care to tell me what happened?”
“Are you sufficiently calmed enough to hear it?”
The Blood of Roses Page 40
