Taken by the Border Rebel

by Blythe Gifford

  ‘You were at the bottom of a well alone?’

  She nodded.

  Bruised. Hungry. In deep water. So many tools that Death could choose. Even a warrior would shiver. ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Two? I’m not sure. I remember nothing of it but the story as my mother told it.’

  But he could tell her body remembered it. Her body remembered it all over again as she was locked up with a well overnight.

  And it had been his fault.

  Grown men died. That was to be expected. Children, even babies did, too. That, he had never got used to.

  But Stella Storwick was very much alive. ‘But they found you. You survived. You were lucky.’

  ‘More than luck. A miracle.’

  He raised his brows. ‘A miracle.’

  ‘That’s what my mother called it. She prayed to the Virgin Mary and the Virgin saved me.’

  He did not want to call the woman a liar, but miracles were scarce on the Borders. ‘Yes, but who pulled you from the well?’

  ‘An angel.’

  She said it in the same, straightforward tone that she would have announced that dinner was ready. ‘You saw an angel?’ The Angel of Death, perhaps. Maybe she had seen him just before—

  ‘I didn’t, but my mother did. She prayed for a miracle and the Virgin sent an angel who lifted me out of the well.’

  Bedtime stories for a child, he thought, yet parents create our world with their tales.

  He set that thought aside.

  ‘So you see,’ she continued, looking at him with troubled eyes, ‘she knew that God had saved me for a reason.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. No one knows.’

  Rob was not a churching man. The Archbishop of Glasgow had cursed all Border reivers to hell and Rob returned the favour. But if God truly had saved this woman …

  He let go of her hand. It wasn’t seemly to touch a saint. Or ask one to cook. ‘Is that why your life was made so easy?’

  Her eyes turned hard. ‘You think that being saved made it easy on me?’

  He paused. He had not thought of it at all. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘All my life, people looked at me, like you are now. Watching. Waiting. Expecting me to do something worth being saved for.’

  Just as everyone looked to the head man, waiting for him to produce a life for them out of stingy ground.

  She grabbed his hand again. ‘And last night, I wondered again whether I had been saved in error.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why would the Virgin save me? What am I supposed to do? I cannot part the seas or turn water to wine or multiply loaves and fishes. I can’t even catch a blasted fish!’

  ‘Well, you try living up to the whole line of Brunsons back to the First!’ He gripped her fingers now, his voice poised on the edge of a shout. Angry with himself. Or his father. ‘I’m supposed to know everything, to do everything, to save everyone. And when you came, I couldn’t even put a fish on the table!’

  She blinked. Then, slowly, she reached up to touch his cheek. ‘All that being looked up to. It’s hard on a body.’

  Then her expression dissolved, not into tears, but into a smile just short of laughter.

  He grabbed the hand against his cheek and turned his lips to it. She swayed closer and they nestled together. ‘Ah, Stella, we’re a pair, aren’t we?’

  She was the one who reached out to him. He reminded himself of that later.

  It didn’t matter. They melted together as if it had been destined to be, as if two so opposite people must ultimately join and explode.

  He explored her face first. Those sharp bones, the pointed chin, the wide eyes green as grass. But quickly, he wanted more. He wanted her skin. He wanted to hear her breath in his bones.

  He wanted this woman. Who she was inside, beyond that foolish name of Storwick.

  He stumbled on the thought. If she was more than Storwick, what was he beyond Brunson?

  The question, tied to words, floated away. He wanted no more words. Tricky, slippery things. He wanted grunts and pants and moans deeper than language. Nothing of words now. Nothing of thought. Only breath and skin and bones and the sound of desire.

  She knew nothing of lovemaking, not even enough to fear it. She had not kissed many, that he could tell, which made his fierce possession of her lips even sweeter.

  Aye, she was a special one, his Stella. He had never tasted her like. She gave herself proudly, but fully, as if she knew her worth and knew he, too, was worthy.

  I don’t know what I am supposed to do, she had cried.

  But with this, somehow, she did. Aye, she did.

  And he let the wordless madness take him.

  At his touch, the rest disappeared. There was no world but this bed, this man, this joining. All new, but perfect and complete.

  More perfect and complete than she had ever hoped to feel.

  All the ways she had failed, all the things she could not do, none of those joined them here. Gift or sacrifice, this, she was created for.

  To join with this man.

  To have a child.

  The thought floated away when she pressed her skin to his.

  But later, when he had spilled his seed, and he slept, she thought of it again.

  So this is it, something whispered, inside of her.

  She had heard other whispers before. Whispers about Willie Storwick. Based on those, she had little interest in the things men and women did.

  And few men were interested in her, either.

  She thought, in those days, that their tepid kisses were all there was. Perhaps she and Rob were alike in that way, too. The men she knew saw her as untouchable. The women Rob knew saw him only as the head man. Each separated from ordinary connections.

  But not from each other.

  Who pulled you from the well?

  She lay in his arms, trying to think back one more time. Trying to remember the day she became … different.

  What she remembered was fear.

  She knew what had happened only because she had heard the story so many times. It was painted in her mind like a Biblical tale of loaves and fishes or Lazarus, rising from the dead.

  You were a headstrong child, her mother would say. Even then. Always going off without a thought.

  And her mother would go on about how she had suddenly discovered Stella missing, combed the sleeping chamber and then the hall and then the stairs and the stables and on and on, finally realising the worst must have happened and looked down the well.

  And every time her mother told the story, the length of time Stella was missing and the hours her mother had prayed became longer and longer until, finally, she had been missing forty days and forty nights before she was found.

  How long had it been? She didn’t know. And now she was not sure that her mother did, either. There was only the story, retold, more real than truth.

  Stella remembered nothing of being saved. Nothing of the angel. Had he been fair? Had his wings touched the ground?

  Once, she had told her mother he had brown eyes, but her mother had said that was impossible. She had seen him clearly and his eyes were blue.

  So, much as she had tried, Stella remembered nothing before her life began anew. A life for which she had been saved from danger she still feared in her bones. A life now under God’s watchful eye. A life that stretched out towards some predestined, but invisible, end.

  Rob’s warm weight nestled next to her, more solid and certain than anything she had ever had in her life. What would it be like, having this man beside her every night?

  And how could she even ask or imagine such a thing? A Brunson and a Storwick? It would take an act of God to bring peace between them.

  An act of God.

  Such as the one that had saved her.

  She looked down at the dark lashes fanning his strong face. Maybe she had been right. Maybe this was why she had been saved. She had run the last time, unable to reconcile
passion and duty. Now, the very thing she had fled welcomed her home.

  The thought brought a sigh of relief. If that were so, it would not be wrong to love him. Only that for which she had been saved. Her purpose, finally, in life.

  Or was she simply putting words in the mouth of God?

  But there was a rightness she felt here. Something she had never felt anywhere before. Not just in his arms, but in the tower, with Wat. It was somewhere she was not special. Somewhere she could be ordinary, accepted, close, without those awestruck distances people kept.

  Words rose up, those she had not been able to summon when the passion flamed hot.

  He controls you. Now that he knows, he might lock you with the well again until you are mad with fear. He is strong. He could hold you down, make you submit …

  There had been no force here but the force of their feelings. Only fierce hunger, his, hers. Only uncontrollable yearning across a chasm so deep that one false step would send them both tumbling to doom.

  Yet somehow, she felt as calm as she had ever felt. After all the days and years of feeling others’ eyes on her, wondering, waiting for her to do … something, here in the enemy’s tower she felt as if her skin belonged to her at last.

  Could God have saved her to lie with a Brunson? Her mother, when she discovered all this, which she must, inevitably, would mourn unto death.

  And yet, and yet, he was a strong and respected leader. One who would do anything to protect those in his care, as her father always did. And she had seen him be gentle with the child.

  She had even seen him lift a wounded young lamb with care.

  But more clearly than any of that, she had seen that he was alone.

  Just as she was.

  Except not now. Finally, she no longer felt alone.

  Rob held her in his arms, tightly, as if nothing could change as long as he never let her go, as if he could keep her tight and safe in this bed, in this room, until the end of time.

  As if he did not have to rise and face a world in which he had loved a Storwick.

  Her even breath said she slept.

  He opened his eyes without moving, afraid to wake her. She lay, peacefully, wrapped in his arms, arms he did not recognise. They could not belong to a Brunson. No man with Brunson blood could love a Storwick.

  Who you love is who you are. And if he loved a Storwick, that meant he was not the man he had thought himself.

  Not a Brunson at all.

  It must have been what his father had feared, all along. That he was weak. Unworthy of the name.

  He sat up, abruptly, waking her, and rose, stepping away, so she could not touch him.

  So he could not reach for her.

  He paced to the window, half-expecting to see Storwicks ready to breach the gates because he had been lured into bed and away from his duty to the land he loved, waiting outside, patient, for him to recover his wits.

  And yet, now, apart from Stella, he felt alone again. Felt the isolation that had been his life, always, never fully recognised until, for those few moments, it was gone.

  He turned his back on the valley and faced her. ‘We will not do this again.’

  She looked at him with a level gaze, calmer than he would have expected. ‘Why?’

  One word. And he was disarmed.

  ‘Don’t play words with me.’ He was not a man who fought with words. Silences and swords were his weapons. He did not know how to articulate all the reasons he should not have shared a bed with Stella Storwick …

  But a half-smile curved her lips and her eyes were halfway between dreamy and calculating. ‘Words? Words are too weak for this.’

  She threw off the covers and limped across the distance he had tried so desperately to hold. Then she wrapped herself to him as if he alone could keep her living and lifted her lips, trying to reach his again.

  He gritted his teeth. The body whose strength had always been his pride was suddenly a feeble vessel, unable to resist this woman. Even his brain was muddled now. To hold her had become a burden, but when she relieved him of it, he had chased the length of Liddesdale to bring her back.

  ‘Do you think,’ he began, struggling to speak, ‘that if I take you again I will let you go?’

  She leaned away so she could meet his eyes. No calculation in hers. No pride. ‘I think, that if you take me again, neither of us will ever let the other go.’

  He did take her then. Arms around her, lips on hers, she, kissing back, and he had little more than one coherent second to wonder whether he was as demented as the Gregor boy, to worry about what would happen if his seed took root in her—

  The knock on the door saved him.

  ‘It’s Cate’ came the voice from the corridor. ‘And Wat.’

  Stella’s eyes widened. ‘Just a minute.’ She limped back to the bed, straightening her chemise, reaching for skirt and bodice.

  He, too, reacted as if battle threatened, donning his clothes swiftly, pulling up the covers.

  ‘The boy,’ he said, when she was settled on the bed again, her ankle on a pillow. ‘He thought it was his fault that you left.’

  Pain, regret, flashed over her face. Then, she lifted her chin. ‘Come in, Wat.’

  The door opened and a short, blond bundle streaked to the edge of the bed and lifted his arms. Rob lifted the child up so he could sit by Stella and the two of them hugged, silent, for a long time.

  He left them, closing the door as he joined Cate outside.

  Finally, separated from Stella by stone and wood, he could think clearly again. Aye, he’d been as daft as poor Wat. Only his limitations were not so obvious.

  And more dangerous.

  Cate raised her eyebrows and studied him, waiting.

  Clear enough to his brother’s wife what had gone on in that room. Cate and Johnnie had shared the same bed once. Nothing he could say to excuse or explain what he had done.

  But Cate could wield the weapon of silence, too.

  ‘Go chatter to Johnnie if it pains you to hold your tongue,’ he said, finally, unable to stand her silent scrutiny.

  She shook her head, but glanced down the stairs, towards the well room. ‘I hope you told her you were sorry.’

  He turned to stone as she walked away. He had not. And of all the things he regretted about this morning, that was the worst.

  Stella smiled as Wat burrowed close, not lifting his head until she had sat and rocked him for a long, long time, wondering what to say.

  Finally, she said nothing at all.

  At long last, he raised his head, tear tracks dry on his face. ‘I’m sorry. I won’t be bad again. I promise.’

  Rob was right, Wat thought it was his fault.

  ‘It was nothing you did, Wat. I wanted to see my father and he …’ She must keep it simple. ‘He is far away.’

  ‘Did you see him?’

  Far was a mysterious distance, apparently. ‘No.’ She pointed to her ankle. ‘I hurt my foot and couldn’t walk the rest of the way.’

  ‘And that’s when the laird saved you!’ He bounced on the bed, as if he had discovered the story’s end and liked it.

  ‘In a way, yes.’ Not in a way for a child to know.

  Wat jumped off the bed and tugged on her hand. ‘So let’s go fish, then.’

  And that’s when she remembered. ‘Wat, something happened to the weir.’

  ‘What?’

  Innocent faith she did not deserve. ‘I …’ He needed truth. Just not the whole truth. ‘I broke it.’

  ‘On purpose?’ Puzzlement on his face.

  She nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was angry.’ Remembered fear and anger surged through her again. Aye, she had feared her feelings for Rob near as much as she had feared the well. And with as much reason. ‘It was wrong of me.’

  He sighed and shook his head, rolling his eyes in an expression of long suffering he must have copied from his mother. Then, he patted her hand. ‘I forgive you. Promise you
won’t do it again.’

  She stifled a smile. ‘I promise.’

  ‘Promise you be good?’

  Ah, what would that mean now? ‘I promise.’

  His smile returned. ‘Then we’ll build another.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t.’ She wiggled her ankle, then winced, wishing she had not.

  ‘Will you be better tomorrow?’

  Would she? Already, her body craved Rob again and she was impatient for the night. But nothing had been settled between them.

  ‘I don’t know, Wat,’ she said. ‘We’ll see.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Rob spent the day thinking he must send her away. Should have let her run and good riddance, just as he had once suspected. She had his brain and his body twisted and tangled and the only thing that seemed certain was the most dangerous of all.

  If you take me again, neither of us will ever let the other go.

  As long as she was here, as long as she was close enough for him to see her and touch her, as long as they slept under the same roof, he would take her again.

  Yet he’d not let the Storwicks have her. Miracle or no, they had not wanted her enough to offer for her. What kind of reception would she find at home? And he had been foolish enough to give her the run of the household. She knew enough about the tower and the men to hand her family the intelligence they needed to penetrate even his new defences.

  Yet where else could she go? He would trust Johnnie and Cate with her, but their tower was not yet finished. Jock Elliot’s tower was strong and the man trustworthy, but since he had refused to wed the daughter, well, now was not the time to ask more of the Elliots.

  No. There was only one place to take her. The very place she wanted to go.

  If Stella had felt fear in the dungeon and comfort in the bed, she felt something quite different as the day went on.

  Rob had disappeared. She could not walk well enough to leave the room. Suddenly all the rightness she had felt slid away. The day was endless, but whether it was because she was confined to the room or because she did not see Rob it was hard to say.

  Wat stayed with her for a while, but he was young and full of energy and there was little there to entertain him. When he became crabby and bored, she let him go, with stern warnings to be careful.