He wondered if Bennett knew how lucky he was, to have the affections of a woman such as Lady Amelia. Not that he deserved her love, or any woman’s love, for that matter.
What he deserved was to have his fiancée ripped out of his world, severed from his life, quickly and harshly, without warning or any chance of restoration.
An eye for an eye.
Duncan lifted his head, accepted the heavy descent of his foul mood like a pounding hammer in his brain, and took another swig of wine.
* * *
Amelia wanted to run but felt as if her muscles had turned to stone. She was so terrified, she couldn’t move or speak or breathe. Angus, the blond one, stood in front of her, feet braced apart, his face a mere inch from hers—so close, she could feel the rapid beat of his breath on her cheeks. A sudden breeze gusted across the treetops and swirled around the glade, and her heart drummed against her rib cage.
Ridiculously, she said a silent prayer that the Butcher would return and stand between her and these three wild Highlanders. Please, God …
But God was not listening.
Angus tilted his head to the side and inhaled the scent of her skin, then let his dangerous gaze rake over her body. It was a deliberate attempt to intimidate her. She recognized it, and it worked—there was no doubt about that—but it also ignited her anger.
She had done nothing to this man, or to any of these rebels. She was an innocent victim in all of this, and she despised what they stood for. She loathed their foul, violent ways and their sick infatuation with bloodshed and brutality.
No wonder England felt such a necessity to crush this Scottish rebel ion.
“You won’t kill me,” she said, speaking the words clearly, in an effort to feel more confident.
“Are you sure?” he replied. His voice was unexpectedly soft and whispery.
“Yes, because you need me,” she said. “I am your bait.
Duncan said so.”
Angus grinned with sinister intent. “Aye, that’s because he means to use you to settle a score.” He glared at the other two, who had been watching the exchange with some concern, then slowly backed away.
Palming the hilt of his broadsword, he stalked off in the other direction. His horse followed, trotting obediently behind. When Angus reached the edge of the clearing he withdrew some food from his saddlebags, sat down on the ground, and leaned back against the gnarled trunk of a chestnut tree to eat alone.
“Are you hungry, Lady Amelia?” Gawyn asked.
She was oddly startled by the politeness of his address.
“Yes, I am.”
“Then you should eat.” Fergus went to his horse and retrieved his own sack of supplies. “We don’t have much—
just a few biscuits and cheese—but it’ll fil the hole in your belly until Gawyn can prepare a proper hot meal for you.”
“A proper hot meal,” she repeated. “I confess I am partial to the sound of that.” Though she wasn’t quite sure what it would entail, or if there would even be utensils. She imagined herself squatting by a fire, chewing flesh off the thighbone of something.
“Come and sit yourself down,” Gawyn said, unfurling a tartan blanket and spreading it out on the grass. He offered her some dry-looking biscuits while Fergus poured wine into a pewter cup and passed it to her.
“Thank you.”
They ate the biscuits in silence. Amelia watched the men uneasily, and they did the same to her, glancing frequently at her, then looking away. To avoid making any further clumsy eye contact, she let her eyes wander in all directions around the glade, wishing she knew the location of this place. She still clung to the hope that Richard was searching for her, or that she might still be able to escape when her captors were distracted, but where would she go? She could die out here in this deep wilderness. She could starve or be gobbled up by a wolf, or be mauled by a wild boar.
Just then, out of the blue, Gawyn asked her a personal question. “So you were planning to get married, right inside the fort?” He studied her with a furrowed brow. “Your father’s been dead only a month, lassie. Did you not think you should mourn him properly before you made such an important vow?”
Taken aback, Amelia reached for another biscuit. “You know when my father died?”
“Aye. Angus told us who he was, and your father was well known among the clans.”
She sighed and returned to his original question.
“Contrary to what you must think of me for behaving in such a way, I did think about my haste to marry. And I am still not certain it was the right thing to do, to dash off to Scotland so quickly after I buried my father. But something drove me here. My father had given us his blessing, and I believed it was what he would have wanted—for me to be safe and cared for. He didn’t want me to be alone.”
“But you had your uncle as your guardian,” Gawyn reminded her. “And surely you have other folk you can call family. Do you not have any sisters or brothers, lassie? Or cousins?”
Hearing what sounded like pity in his voice, she glanced from one to the other, then turned her gaze across the clearing toward Angus, who still watched her like a starving animal. “I was an only child,” she said, “so I have no brothers or sisters. I do have cousins who were willing to take me in, but I was never close to them, and I didn’t want to be away from my fiancé.”
She was quite certain Angus couldn’t possibly hear what she was saying, yet he seemed to be listening from the other side of the glade, with a menacing scowl on his face.
Gawyn, who sat cross-legged, rested his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands. “Aye, I know what you’re saying, lass. True love can be a powerful thing.”
Fergus shoved him over onto his side. “What the fook is wrong with you? She’s talking about Colonel Bennett, you silly arse.”
Gawyn righted himself. “I know that, Fergus, but love is blind. You know it as well as I do.”
“I’m not blind,” she told them. “I realize that my fiancé is your enemy, but as I told Duncan, this is war. Colonel Bennett is a soldier and has a duty to fulfill to the King. Besides, the two of you can hardly point fingers at him when you are known as the Butcher’s untouchable rebels and you slaughter every helpless English soldier who crosses your path.”
“Is that what they’re saying?” Gawyn asked. “That we’re untouchable?”
She glanced from one keen young Scot to the other and began to rethink her initial impressions about their savagery until a quick glimpse across the glade at the other one reminded her not to get too comfortable or take anything for granted.
“Why does he hate me so much?” she asked, still watching Angus.
“It’s not you he hates,” Fergus explained. “It’s your betrothed.”
“But his hatred spills over onto her,” Gawyn clarified, turning his mossy green eyes in her direction. “He thinks Duncan shouldn’t have let you live.”
“I gathered as much.”
“Don’t get me wrong; he does hate you,” Fergus said flatly, popping a biscuit into his mouth. “But who can blame him?
Your fiancé raped and killed his sister.”
Al at once, the clearing seemed to spin in circles before Amelia’s eyes as she swallowed the breezy delivery of Fergus’s remark like a jagged stone in her throat. “I beg your pardon?”
“Then he cut off her head,” Gawyn added with an equal measure of nonchalance as he crunched down on his biscuit.
Speechless for a moment and shocked to the point of nausea, Amelia fought to form words. “You cannot be serious. I don’t know what gossip you’ve heard, or what the Butcher has told you, but that cannot be true. If such a thing happened, my fiancé could not have been involved. You must have him confused with someone else.”
Her Richard? Good Lord! He would never do such a thing.
Not in a hundred years. They must be mistaken. They had to be.
The branches on the trees flapped and fluttered, and Duncan emerged. She turned to look up at h
im. His eyes were dark and grim.
“Pack up,” he said to Fergus and Gawyn. “It’s time to go.”
Rising to their feet, they stuffed the food into the saddlebags and fled to their horses.
“Is this true?” Amelia asked, rising to her feet as well . “Is that why you are so determined to kill Richard? Because you believe he killed your friend’s sister? And … and violated her?”
The last part was difficult to say.
“Aye, it’s true.” Duncan lowered his voice. “And those two talk too much.”
Shock and disbelief coursed through her. She didn’t want to believe what they were saying—they were her enemies—yet a part of her could not ignore the intensity of their hatred.
Such an obsession with vengeance upon a single man had to be based on something.
“But how can you be sure it was Richard?” she asked, still clinging to the hope that it was a mistake or a simple misunderstanding. “Were you there? Because I find it very difficult to believe that he would allow such a thing to occur.”
“It happened.” He strode toward his horse.
“But were you there?”
“Nay.”
Amelia scurried to keep up. “Then how do you know what happened, exactly? Maybe Richard tried to stop it. Or perhaps he was not aware that it was happening until it was too late. Did Angus witness it?”
“Of course not. If he’d been there, your beloved would already be dead.” Duncan stuffed the empty wine jug into a saddlebag.
“Then how do you real y know?” she demanded again, because she could not bring herself to believe it. She did not want to believe it. Every instinct and need inside her was urging her to deny it, because if it was true, she would never again trust the capacities of her own judgment—and she would doubt her father’s as well , which would be heartbreaking, because she cherished his memory. He was her hero. He could not have been wrong about the gal ant officer he encouraged her to marry. Her father was a decent man, and she had always trusted him with her happiness. He would never have promised her to a monster. Would he?
“Because you seem very sure of yourself,” she said to Duncan shakily.
He paused and stared at her for a long, tension-filled moment until the impatience in his eyes slowly faded into something else—something reluctant and melancholy.
“I saw her head in a box,” he said. “And there was a note, describing what happened, and why.”
Feeling sick and dizzy, Amelia placed her hand on her stomach. “And what was the reason? I must know.”
He lowered his eyes and gripped the hilt of his sword. “I’m going to satisfy your curiosity, lass, only because I’m sure that once you hear the truth, you’ll learn to hold your tongue and keep quiet—especial y in front of Angus.”
She waited, breath held, for Duncan’s next words.
“Muira’s death was a punishment meant for Angus’s father, who is a powerful clan chief, a celebrated warlord, and a persistent, outspoken Jacobite. He was the one who raised the army that fought at Sherrifmuir, and he was also the one who shot your father down on the battlefield.”
Amelia flinched. She had nothing to do with any of this—
she hated war and killing—yet she was caught up in this tangled and dirty web of vengeance, as they all were. “You think Richard wanted revenge … because of me?”
Duncan removed a pistol from a saddle pouch and slipped it into his belt. “I don’t know the answer to that. all we know is that Angus’s father was standing over yours with his sword in the air, about to strike the deathblow, when your fiancé came riding out of the gunsmoke and clobbered him.
Weeks later, Angus’s sister was dead and evidently your father was approving your engagement.”
“So you think he saved my father’s life to secure his own rise.”
“Aye.”
“Do you believe also that my father was involved in this woman’s death?”
“Nay. Your father was a good man. I know he was fair. I do not suspect him of such treachery.”
She breathed a heavy sigh. “But you do not feel that way about Richard.”
Duncan shook his head.
Amelia tipped her head back and looked up at the gray sky—a perfect circle framed by the treetops.
“I don’t know what to say about all this.”
She could make no sense of her feelings. She was in shock and felt very lost. The one man she believed would come to her rescue like a knight in shining armor was in fact being accused of horrendous acts of villainy.
“I feel very naïve,” she continued. “I trusted my father to choose a husband for me, but now I must accept that his judgment may have been flawed. Who, then, do I trust? Who do I believe in?”
Duncan strode toward her. “You rely on your own judgment, lass. No one else’s.”
She pulled her gaze from the sky overhead and regarded his concerned expression. There was wisdom in his words, she knew it, but what seemed more relevant at the moment was the faint light of compassion she saw in his eyes, as well as the heavy beating of her own heart. She regarded him with curious wonder, let her eyes roam over the features of his face, and felt as if he understood what she was feeling.
He looked away, toward the trees. A muscle clenched in his jaw; his chest expanded with a deep intake of breath.
Amelia stood rapt, stricken by the need to know—what was he thinking?
He moved closer. “You have much to learn about the world, lass.”
More than ever, Amelia was shaken out of her comfortable, well -planned existence and had to accept that he was right, for none of this fit into her sheltered and clearly deficient realm of experience.
Then he reached out to her, and for some reason she was not afraid as he brushed his thumb across her lips. His eyes roamed over her face, a bird chirped in the treetops, then he leaned forward and gently touched his mouth to hers.
It was surprisingly comforting, which made no sense to her. No sense at all .
She immediately pulled away and backed up a few steps, but he followed. all her senses began to hum, and she felt as if she were dissolving. She couldn’t think.
He looked at her with fire in his eyes, as if he were just as surprised by the kiss as she. Then he backed away and turned his attention to the saddlebags, pulling the cinches tight and gathering up the reins.
She wiped the moisture from her lips. “Why did you do that?”
He did not give an answer. He simply led the horse to the edge of the glade.
“I wish you would let me go,” she softly said, following him.
“I am innocent in all this. Whatever Richard did is not my fault.
I know nothing of it. And I don’t understand why Angus hates me so much, when he was the one who shot my father on the battlefield. He has it backwards. He is the one who wronged me. ”
Stopping under the shade of a tree, Duncan faced her.
“There is no clear way to put into words the fury that consumes Angus. It’s a fury that consumes us all , and you’re just not capable of understanding.”
She recalled the passionate fury that had swept through her when he entered her bedchamber. “Maybe you underestimate me.”
“Nay, lass. You’re an innocent. You’d have to enter hell on your own two feet before you could ever truly know of what I speak.”
She saw something dark and disturbing in his eyes and frowned. “I am not sure I want to hear any more.”
“Then stop asking questions. You know too much as it is.”
He strode toward her, took hold of her arm, and led her impatiently to the horse. “Do you want me to toss you up again, or can you do it yourself?”
“I can do it myself,” she replied, no longer wishing to argue with him, at least not now, when he was so very cross and she was reeling with confusion over what had just occurred between them.
Nor could she purge from her mind what had happened to Angus’s sister. She could not bear to think of that young
woman’s suffering.
At least now Amelia understood why Duncan and Angus both hated Richard so much. Their motivations to wreak havoc on the English were deeply rooted.
She mounted the horse, and Duncan swung up behind her. Soon they were trotting out of the clearing, heading north.
“Don’t talk anymore,” he said. “Just keep your mouth shut, because my patience with your questions is running short, and if you bring any of it up again, I’ll be tempted to stuff another gag in your mouth.”
Amelia shuddered at the firmness of his command.
The others had already left the glade. They had vanished into the trees like swirls of phantom mist, and Amelia was beginning to feel like a ghost herself. She felt as if she were disappearing into a world and a life she did not truly understand.
* * *
They reached Glen Elchaig at dusk, just as the moon was beginning its rise. Stars twinkled overhead, and a wolf howled somewhere in the distance. The other Highlanders had reached the shelter of the glen before them and started a fire. Amelia inhaled the mouthwatering aroma of roasting meat and nearly leaped off the horse in anticipation of a hot meal.
“Is that rabbit I smell ?” she asked, famished almost to the point of distraction, but not quite—for nothing could distract her from what had occurred in the glade earlier. She had not yet recovered from it.
“Aye. Gawyn is a master chef when it comes to a quick dinner. He can sniff out anything, kill and skin it in less than a minute, and have it roasting on a spit before you can blink twice.”
Duncan urged the horse into a gal op, and she felt the animal lift beneath her, as if they were taking flight. They rode into the camp and dismounted, and the first thing Amelia noticed was the stiffness in her legs from so many hours in the saddle. She could barely walk.
Duncan tended to his horse while she approached the hot, roaring fire. Sparks snapped and flew upward toward the darkening sky while drops of grease from the roasting meat sizzled and hissed on the burning logs. She held her hands out to warm them.
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