by Paula Quinn
She quickly put Geoffrey out of her thoughts, replacing him with the memory of the mercenary’s voice, the way he smiled at Edmund while they clashed sticks in the yard. Was she mad? She was afraid to wonder what Geoffrey would do if she showed the slightest bit of interest in him. And she had no interest in him other than any new information he might have that she could give to William. What was the point of anything else? She was no longer a foolish twit looking for the magical, the astonishing, the soul-stirring. It didn’t exist. She shouldn’t have allowed Edmund to play with him. It wasn’t practical to waste time trying to find good in a man simply because he was kind to her child.
She smiled, as relieved as her clapping son was when Colin’s last two opponents threw down their wasters and gasped a halt for the day. He’d outlasted them all. The rest of the men agreed on a rest, each looking wearier than the one before him. He may have been struck in places that would have left him dead on the field, but without a true deathblow, Colin had endured them all. Not only that, but he appeared fit and ready, despite the damp shirt clinging to his chest and shoulders, to take them all on again.
As if feeling her gaze, he looked up at the window. His chiseled features softened as he raised his hand in greeting.
Gillian certainly wasn’t about to wave back at him like some needy damsel in search of her champion. But his greeting wasn’t aimed at her, she realized a moment later, catching Edmund’s hand swinging over his head.
“May we come down now?” her son called out, but Colin was too far below to hear.
She couldn’t tell if he was looking at her or Edmund before he turned to walk the other way.
Moving away from the window, Gillian set down her son and then returned to close and lock the shutters. “Captain Gates will come for us shortly.” She bent to Edmund, leveling their matching gazes. “What have we learned about patience?”
“It’s a virtue!” Edmund grinned at her, proud of himself for remembering. She was proud of him too.
“Very good.” She laughed and drew closer to kiss his downy soft curls. “Now why don’t we practice the lute together until the good captain comes to fetch us?”
Casting the obstructed window one last, longing look, he nodded and popped his finger into his mouth. “Will you teach me a new song, Mummy?” he asked between sucks.
She turned from reaching for her beloved instrument and feigned bewilderment. “Do you think you can learn another?”
“I can learn anything, can’t I?”
“Aye, my darling.” She smiled, handing a smaller lute to him. “You most certainly can. Never let anyone tell you differently.”
As she waited for Edmund to sit and then pluck the first note a knock came at the door. She knew who it was when the knocker didn’t enter until she bid him to do so.
“Captain,” she said, setting down her lute and rising to her feet. “Thank you for coming for us so quickly.”
He looked like she had just kicked him in the guts. “I deserve no gratitude for leaving you up here all day. Forgive me.”
She patted his arm and offered him a tender smile. “It’s perfectly understandable. The men finally show interest in something other than drink.”
“Aye.” His mouth crooked to one side as he looked toward the window. “A bloodlust to quiet an arrogant tongue.”
“What is arrogant about one admitting he needs practice?”
George cut her a measured side look before nodding a greeting to Edmund. “Where is the humility in what he is doing to my men? They gain their victories over him, but he will not yield.”
Aye, her captain was clever.
“They are weary and winded from striking him,” he continued, “but when they think he’s spent, he challenges more to fight him. I myself practiced with him last evening and today my body feels the effects of it, but he is out there taking on an army. It’s arrogant.”
Turning from him, Gillian laughed at his self-abasement and reached for the pair of nets resting against the wall. “He’s young.”
“Aye,” George agreed, turning with her. “He’s just a few years older than you, and handsome as well.”
She sighed and shook her head at him. She knew he was concerned about the consequences of her actions as they pertained to Edmund. If she did anything foolish, like try to escape Dartmouth with a hired mercenary, Geoffrey would find her and take Edmund away. She was not foolish. “My good captain,” she reassured him as she moved to take Edmund’s hand, “you’re older than me and handsome as well, and I have not asked you to take me away.”
“I have thought about it.”
Gillian stopped, as did her heart. The smile she offered her son faded. Never before had George said such a thing to her. Why would he say it now? She turned to him and found that his customarily rigid composure was well intact.
“If I—”
Gillian held up her palm, stopping him from uttering another word. He wanted to save her from this miserable, abusive existence, and for that, she loved him. But she cared for him too much to ask him to risk his life for her.
Even though he was their captain, the men here were not loyal to him. If he took her from Geoffrey he couldn’t keep her safe and hidden from the army that would surely come for her. She would save herself, and Edmund with her. George was her only friend, and for now that was all she needed.
“I would never allow you to sacrifice your life, or the life of your dear wife, for me. Do you understand that, Captain? I spoke in jest a moment ago. Never bring it up to me again.”
“As you wish, my lady.” He moved his gaze to Edmund, familiar enough with her to know the moist glimmer in her eyes would embarrass her.
“What have you planned for today?” he asked, straightening his shoulders and leading her and Edmund out the door.
“Fishing.” She smiled and held up her stick with a net hanging limp at the end of it.
Mimicking his mother, Edmund held up his much smaller replica. “Mummy?” He looked up as he lowered his arm. “Can Colin come with us?”
The captain eyed him with a frown, then raised the same disapproving look to her.
Oh, for goodness’ sake!
“Edmund has taken a liking to him, George, not I. Where is the harm in that?”
“Where would you prefer me to begin?” he asked, folding his hands behind his back. Gillian suspected by his frown growing into a full-blown scowl that he did it to stop himself from throttling her.
“Despite what you believe,” she told him briskly, “games are not dangerous, and little boys need to play them.” And I need something new to entice William of Orange to keep his vow to me. “Unless you are willing to teach him something fun now and again, I see no harm in letting him spend time with Mr. Campbell.”
“We know nothing about him,” George argued.
“We know he knows how to play Naughts and Crosses, and that he is willing to do so with Edmund. I’m not a fool and will not allow him or any other man to deceive me again. Let him make Edmund’s days here a bit more pleasant. You’ve nothing to fear from me.”
George’s jaw tightened around a dozen arguments fighting to be presented. “Very well,” he finally managed with a touch of grace. “But I will not leave your side.”
He barely ever did. He was her protector, and Gillian was thankful for it.
“Does you think he knows how to catch a fish, Mummy?”
She looked up at George and he growled something unintelligible before he muttered, “We shall find out soon enough.”
Soon enough came too quickly for Gillian. When they stepped out of the castle and George beckoned the mercenary forward, she did her best to look at everything around her but him.
She failed, stealing glances at him as he came toward them. His garments weren’t anywhere near as crisp as Captain Gates’s, but he looked infinitely more appealing in his snug breeches and damp shirt tucked haphazardly into his weapon-laden belt. She resisted the urge to clear her throat or look up and smil
e like some tender-aged fool, ready and willing to believe the best in a man.
She wasn’t that girl. She never would be again.
“Ah, finally a worthy opponent.”
His rich, resonant voice drew Gillian’s gaze back to him, and she found him to be addressing Edmund. She shifted in her place when he winked at her son.
“Campbell!” George barked, startling her back to stillness. “We’re going fishing.”
Edmund’s friend looked up the length of her stick to her net, then briefly at her. An instant was all it took to feel the charge in his gaze that set her nerve endings afire.
“You’re coming.”
Mr. Campbell blinked at his captain’s command, but that was the only sign that he had acknowledged it. He looked neither pleased nor irritated by the prospect of wasting his afternoon away with a net in his hands rather than a sword.
“You will need a net, Colin,” Edmund pointed out and reached for his hand.
“I will, won’t I?” the mercenary asked, covering Edmund’s small hand with his much larger one.
“You may use mine.”
All three pairs of eyes looked at her, but it was the Highlander’s that captured her and made her lips go dry. His gaze softened, deepening with a hint of a smokier shade of green. He offered her the barest hint of a smile, then accepted the net she offered up.
“What kind of fish do ye catch here?” he asked, returning his attention to the captain.
“I don’t know. They’ve never caught any.”
Campbell’s smile widened as unexpectedly as a spring rain that even he hadn’t anticipated, exposing a row of straight, clean teeth and a slight vulnerability that made him even more beautiful than before. He shook his head and picked up his steps.
It took only an instant for Gillian’s head to clear and for her to realize the sight the three of them must be making, walking together like a family heading off to enjoy the day. Silly, she chastised herself, ignoring the hollow pit that made her stomach ache for what she didn’t have, for what she could not give Edmund. A family. Straightening her shoulders, she tugged on her son’s hand, separating him from the mercenary, and hurried to catch up with George.
Chapter Seven
Colin didn’t lack patience; in fact, he possessed stores of it. After three years of slowly chipping away his enemy’s secrets, waiting day after day, month after month, for the battle his bones ached for, he’d learned the virtue well.
But he wasn’t cut out for sitting on a rock for over an hour, waiting for a hapless fish to swim into his net. Even Edmund appeared bored beyond his senses. Still, it said something for the lad to be able to sit for so long without protest or too much fidgeting. Colin suspected Edmund’s thumb, and the tender sucking of it, helped to yield such temperance. He tried not to look at the babe overly much, since every time he did, his heart went a little softer. Looking at the lad’s mother was no better. In truth, ’twas worse. He wasn’t one to give in to fear. His whole life, he’d been too busy working hard to become a better fighter to be afraid of anything. The coming war between King James and Prince William would need a warrior worthy of winning it. All that training and dedication left little time for courtship. He’d met countless women in England, Scotland, and France, and found them all to be quite alike. What was so different about this one that he would interest himself in her? In her child? He was a warrior for hell’s sake, not some feeble, sniveling pansy who lost his train of thought when he looked at a bonny woman. These two could end up costing him much if he wasn’t careful. He wanted to put Gillian Dearly out of his mind. He didn’t like her being at Dartmouth, distracting him. He should have objected to going fishing with them.
Colin scowled at Captain Gates, standing far enough away so that the splash of the waves couldn’t reach him. The wee lad wasn’t unpleasant to be around but Colin wasn’t a nursemaid and he’d make sure to tell Gates that later. Right now though, a wistful sigh to his left caught his attention. He slipped his gaze to Lady Gillian and allowed himself a moment to examine her unnoticed. He had never known a lass who could sit so quietly, seemingly content to study the steady surf rolling into the estuary. He found himself beguiled by her silence, her presence, perched close to her son with her arms wrapped around her knees and her long hair whipping about her shoulders. He wasn’t certain if the earthy fragrance of spring wafting across his nostrils every so often, before drowning in the briny scent of the estuary, came from the primroses she’d worn in her hair the night before, but ’twas driving him a bit mad.
When she turned to him, sensing his eyes on her, he almost dropped the end of his pole into the water and bit out a muttered oath at his suddenly poor reflexes.
“So, Mr. Campbell, you are acquainted with the king?”
A thread of panic coursed through him for one dreaded instant before he slowed his breathing. Why would she put such a question to him? She couldn’t know anything about his purpose here. ’Twas impossible.
When he remained silent, she offered him a patient smile—much like one she might give her son if he didn’t understand her question—and clarified. “You told my cousin that you fought in the Life Guards.”
“Aye.” He had told Devon. He cursed himself for letting her confound him so quickly. ’Twas the curious arch of her brow that was to blame. The spark of intelligence in her eyes when she looked at him. He didn’t like anyone looking too closely, as if they were trying to figure him out. Figuring him out could get him killed. And lastly, damn him, ’twas the quirk of her full lips that made him wonder how they would taste against his. “I know him,” he admitted. “At least, I did, once.” When he spoke the words, the truth in them struck him like a physical blow.
“What was he like? Do his men love him?”
Colin didn’t want to think on him or how many of his men were still loyal to him. “He’s the king. All kings are the same. Arrogant and hungry for power.”
She grew quiet, almost contemplative, and then continued. “Do all the Campbells feel the same way you do?”
He looked at her, this time taking in the subtle catch of her breath, the quick flicker of her eyes under his scrutiny. “What is yer interest in the king?”
She smiled and smoothed a lock of hair away from her jaw, distracting him yet again from his train of thought. “A woman cannot be curious about the king her family would rather see dead than rule another day?”
He supposed a woman could. “Yer father is a supporter of William deposing the throne then?”
“We’ll be getting back soon,” Gates called out, saving her from answering.
What would her reply have been? King James suspected Essex of treason, but had no proof… yet.
“The hour grows late,” Gates urged.
“But I didn’t catch a fish.”
Colin glanced down at Edmund, noting the soft droop of the boy’s shoulders. He’d caught nothing yet again, and the short time he had outside was coming to an end.
Hell. The child and his happiness were not Colin’s concern. But that didn’t mean he should stand by and do nothing while the only innocent thing left in the world looked about to cry.
“Does it just have to be fish that ye’re hoping to catch then, lad?”
Edmund looked up at him and shook his head.
“Well, then,” Colin said, springing to his feet. “Come with me.” He turned to watch Edmund follow his footsteps over the rocks without the aid of his mother, though she was close behind, with Captain Gates close behind her.
When the boy reached him, Colin brought him to the shallow edge and bent to toss a loose rock aside. Nothing. It took him and Edmund, and the lad’s mother, as well, at least six stones each before he found what he was looking for.
“Edmund!” he called, and both came running. He scooped up the small crab in his hand, along with some of the sand beneath it, and held it out to the child.
“Keep yer hand open, lest his claw catch yer skin.” He’d learned as a child along the
bank of Camas Fhionnairigh how to catch and hold crabs such as these.
Edmund took care to follow his instructions and looked so delighted by what was crawling along his palm that Colin forgot why he should not let himself care, and smiled at him, and then at his mother, bending beside him.
“Look at how it walks sideways, Edmund,” she said, as delighted by the sight as her son was.
Damn, but she was bonny, Colin thought, looking at her. Her fair skin was wind burned with just enough pink to make her almost too beguiling to look at.
“May I bring it home, Colin?” Edmund asked him hopefully.
Colin shook his head, grateful for the distraction lest she turn that smile on him again and scatter his thoughts like he was some green whelp, mute and witless in her presence. “ ’Twill only die,” he told Edmund. “And ’tis too small to eat. But I’ll make ye a proper rod to help ye catch fish.”
“Will you make one for you too?”
Edmund blinked at him and Colin looked down to see the crab falling off the edge of his hand.
“And one for Mummy?”
What the hell was wrong with him? He hadn’t come here to find friends—even wee ones who spoke around their thumbs. He had information to discover for the king, a war to prepare for. A war to win. How could he do any of it if he spent his afternoons fishing? He raised his gaze to the man standing over him, looking mildly ill. Captain Gates hadn’t left their sides all day—or yesterday for that matter, save when he had left for Kingswear. Mayhap this could work in his favor. If Colin fished with Edmund, Gates would be there. He was certain that after a few days, he could compel the captain to give him a few answers.
“Fer that, lad, ye must ask my captain.”
Gates glared at him, then glanced at Lady Gillian. “Very well,” he conceded tightly. “Now come along. It’s time to go.”
