Until he came close to the door and saw it barred from the outside.
Fury propelled his arms. He pulled off the board, near ripping the brackets away as well, and opened the door.
At first, Stella thought the noise part of her dream. Then, when a man loomed over her in the dark, fear gripped her for an instant.
Sadness replaced it when she recognised the curve of the muscles on his arms and the familiar scent of leather and the earth of his valley.
I have conjured him in my dreams.
And then she squeezed her eyes, not wanting to wake.
Belde’s cold nose and rough tongue brought her to full alert. Not dreaming. Awake.
And Rob, real.
He kneeled and reached for her face, reading it with his fingers. ‘Did they hurt you?’
She opened her mouth, but her throat, unused for speech in days, remained stubbornly silent. Instead, she shook her head, knowing his hand would feel the motion.
No, they had not hurt her. Not in the way he meant.
A sigh. Relieved. ‘I don’t want to leave you here,’ he said. ‘You’re not safe as long as they want something you have.’
She smiled and touched his hand. ‘And I’ll be safe with you?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ll guard you with my life.’
‘And safe from you?’
He sighed. ‘Aye. That, too.’
She smiled, as if she knew what he meant and did not say. The minute she signalled she wanted him, neither of them would be safe.
‘I won’t force you, lass, but I’ll take you away from them, if you want to come.’
‘What if they come for me?’ Hard to know what Humphrey and Oswyn would do. They had done nothing before, but the stakes were higher now. And if she put Rob in danger …
His fingers tangled in her hair, as if trying to read her. ‘We Brunsons are a tough lot. Besides, your kin won’t know where you are.’
She felt herself relax into a smile. ‘I’ll just disappear like the Lost Storwick, eh?’
‘Until you are ready to be found. For as long as you want.’
And if it is for ever? But she could not ask that. Not now. The babe, tomorrow, all an uncertain mystery. But she must decide, not knowing.
She cleared her throat. ‘I’ll go.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes.’ Louder this time.
She was scooped into his arms and the rosary slipped to the floor. And when he carried her out into the starlit night, it seemed like blazing noon compared to the darkness in which she had lived.
Chapter Eighteen
When they entered the gate of Brunson Tower, at dawn, Stella sat before him on the horse, much as she had the first day he had captured her on the hill.
No one moved at first. The stares, the distance, all the same, whether at home or here. Whether because she was honoured or the enemy, no one would come close.
Except this man, whose chest pressed against her back, strong and safe.
As he helped her down from the horse, a small, blond bundle hurtled towards her, squeezed her somewhere around the knees and pressed his head against her belly.
She wrapped her hands around the boy’s head and held him close, smiling.
‘You came back.’ Wat’s words were muffled in her skirt. ‘He told me. He told me you loved me.’
She looked up, lips parted, eyes wide. ‘You said that?’
Rob shrugged. ‘The lad was having fits.’
Did he know she had meant the words for him, as well?
Wat lifted his head, grabbed her hand, and tugged her towards the gate. ‘I put the sticks back. We can catch fish again. Come see.’
Something twisted in her chest. She had inflicted her pain on him. ‘That’s good, Wat. I’ve been hungry for fish.’
She looked to Rob for permission just as Cate and Bessie entered the courtyard. Belde loped over to Cate, sniffing her in greeting, while Cate looked to the gate and then to Rob.
‘They’ll be back soon,’ he said.
‘Johnnie?’ Stella asked, astonished. ‘And Thomas?’
‘Inspecting Storwick sheep to see if they are worth borrowing,’ he said.
She bit her lip and met Cate’s eyes and then Bessie’s. They had risked their husbands. For her.
And though she was sure that stubborn Rob would have acted alone, to think his family had supported him, supported her, made her blink back the tears. Had her own family ever done so much?
Bessie stepped forwards, briskly. ‘Come, Wat. Give her time to rest.’ She smiled at Stella, even though her words were for Wat. ‘She’s had a long journey.’
‘Did you …?’ She did not know how to ask. Why were Bessie and Thomas here? Fresh air and freedom had revived her brain and for the first time, she wondered how Rob had known she needed his help. ‘What …?’
‘Take her upstairs, Cate,’ Bessie said, with the brisk efficiency Stella remembered. ‘I’ll take care of the beast and the boy.’
Silent and uncertain, Stella followed Cate back up the now-familiar stairs, astounded to find herself back in her old room.
‘I can’t stay here.’ There were only two private rooms. The head man’s and this one.
‘Where did you think we would put you? Down with the well?’
‘But you and Johnnie, Bessie and Thomas …’ If she was here, the others would have no privacy.
‘Just for tonight,’ Cate said. ‘You’ve had a hard time of it.’
At that, Stella cried.
Oh, she had cried before. Tears had been too close a friend. But this was different. This time, she cried all the tears she had hoarded since before memory. Tears of fear for those dark, lost hours. Tears of joy at being rescued. Tears of frustration for having a life thrust upon her, owned by everyone except Stella Storwick. And tears because she had finally, if only briefly, found a man who swept away the loneliness.
And she cried because this Brunson woman, who had all the reasons in the world to hate her, had been kind.
Cate let her. She did not flutter, or cluck and hug, or pat her shoulder and take her hand. Cate simply stood, silent witness to her fears, honouring her grief.
The wave passed near as quick as it had come and Stella brushed her cheeks dry.
‘It never fully leaves you, the fear,’ Cate said, calmly as if she knew everything. ‘But when you take control of your own life, it ebbs.’
‘How … how can you know?’
‘Because I let a Storwick control my life for too long.’
Kind thoughts, but for Cate, ‘Storwick’ had been an enemy. Fear of a foe was to be expected. Overcoming it, a mark of honour.
But Stella feared her own family and that could blight her life as fully as her terror of a cold, damp well. Their blood ran through her veins, and yet, they had treated her as cruelly as a hated enemy.
Why?
A wish danced through her head. Stay away, wander the hills, never return to face them.
But that happened only in long-ago legends. Thanks to Rob, she had disappeared as completely and mysteriously as the Lost Storwick, but that was only a reprieve. Questions, mysteries, remained.
She must find the answers.
Thomas and Johnnie were home by midday, full of smiles that faded when they saw Rob’s face.
‘This came,’ he said, holding up a message.
It carried the royal seal.
Wordless, the three men gathered in the private chamber. Rob handed the letter to Thomas, a man more accustomed to reading. Thomas opened the parchment, holding it up to the window to catch the light.
Yet Rob knew what it meant, even before Carwell spoke.
‘The King rides the Borders to hunt for sport.’
‘To hunt for Brunsons, you mean,’ Rob said.
Thomas’s smile was rueful. ‘No doubt. He must prove to his uncle King Henry that he can keep order on the Scots side of the line. Otherwise, according to the cursed treaty, the English have the right to come in
to the valley and enforce it themselves.’
Johnnie frowned. ‘He’ll not be happy to find you’ve a Storwick captive.’
‘She’s nay captive. She’s here of her own free will.’ True it might be, but her people would never believe it. Nor would the King.
‘He’ll be here within the week,’ Thomas said, an edge of warning in his voice. ‘With eight thousand men.’
‘I’ll fight him.’ His hands, of their own volition, fisted in futile fury.
‘With how many men, Rob?’ Johnnie knew the answer.
Rob let his fists fall. Brunson and Carwell and Elliot together would not be half so many. Fighting was all he knew, but it might not be best for his people. Not this time.
And he was weary of warring.
‘There must be a way,’ Johnnie said, ‘to make peace with him. Some of the Border lords have promised to give good governance. The King agreed—’
‘The others didn’t have warrants with their names on them,’ Thomas said sharply.
Rob felt a moment’s regret. Thomas had flouted the King’s orders. Now, his fate would be that of the Brunsons. Because of love.
And who was he to say it had not been worth the trade?
He rose. ‘He also writes that he comes in peace. I’ll nay call the King a liar. Let him come and promise him our hospitality on the word of a Brunson. Then we’ll see.’
Rob walked out into the sunshine, the weight of all the generations since the First on his shoulders, wondering what Geordie Brunson would have done.
Confront the King’s force? Disappear into the hills where the King would never find him? Or harry the monarch’s men, just to prove he could?
This time, it would not be Geordie Brunson’s decision. It would be his son’s.
Since his father had died, every step had been nothing but doubts. His father had been taciturn. Even more so than he. Geordie had never said, ‘Yes, you are doing it right.’ Rob didn’t get constant praise. He didn’t know whether he was pleasing his father or not.
Occasionally, maybe once a year, the old man would look at him and smile. And nod. That was all.
He had always hoped that some day, his father would clap a hand on his shoulder and say, Yes. Now. Now you are ready.
And every time they had gone on a raid, he had braced himself. Would it be this time? Would he be the one left alive to lead the men home?
But his father had died in his sleep in his own bed. One morning, Rob woke up and it was all on his shoulders. No equals. No peers.
And then Johnnie had come home, challenging everything his father had stood for. What was a man to do then? Who was right? His father? His brother? Rob wanted his brother by his side. Instead, they had spent months in a private war until Johnnie realised that he, too, was a Brunson.
Next, his sister had defied him to marry Carwell, a man he was ready to kill for treachery. Family was supposed to trust you. Obey the head man. Did they not because he was doing it wrong?
Who saved him? Stella’s question niggled at him. He brushed it aside. A man like the First Brunson didn’t need someone else to save him.
But Rob Brunson? He was beginning to think he did.
Johnnie joined him, silent. Together, they climbed the steps up to the wall walk and faced east, knowing the valley would be shaking with the King’s horses within days.
‘After all this time, I thought I was ready,’ Rob said, glad of his brother’s ear. ‘I thought he had taught me everything I needed to know.’
‘He couldn’t,’ Johnnie said. ‘No one could.’
No, no one could have taught him what to do about a certain Storwick woman. Or, if they had, the lesson would have been this: Cut her out of your life.
He could as easily cut out his heart.
Instead, he had told her he loved her. And never, in all the time since, had she said the same.
What was he to do now?
Arguments, opinions, he must listen to them all, but in the end, the decision would be his. No one else to blame if he made the wrong one.
He looked towards the hills that sheltered them. ‘At least you know something beyond this valley. You were the one he chose for the privilege of seeing the world.’ All those years his brother had spent at the King’s side. All those years Rob had missed him.
Johnnie looked at him, wide-eyed, then laughed. ‘I was the one who was banished. You were his true son. The one he wanted with him.’
‘The one he didn’t trust to be out of his sight.’
Johnnie stifled a grin. ‘You know what Bessie told me, once? She said he sent me to court because I needed to be away from here in order to become my own man. He must have thought you were strong enough to become yourself despite him.’
‘What if he was wrong, Johnnie?’
What if I am wrong now?
‘Well, if he was, he wouldn’t be the first.’
No. Even a head man was not perfect. Hobbes Storwick hadn’t been.
Johnnie’s hand gripped his shoulder. ‘But since you ask, no, he wasn’t right about everything.
He wasn’t right to create you in his own image, but he was right to choose you.’
He grasped for the comfort. ‘And yet you’ve fought me every step of the way.’
‘What’s a brother for?’ Said with Johnnie’s familiar, easy smile.
Something Rob had never mastered. ‘Support.’
His brother’s blue eyes turned serious. ‘Hear me. Whatever you decide, about the King, or about Stella, I’ll be beside you.’
Strong enough to become yourself. Not just Brunson, but his own man, too. That was a different kind of fight.
It would take a new kind of courage.
Courage to face Stella Storwick.
For one decision at least could not be solely his.
Late in the afternoon, Stella was surprised to hear Rob’s knock.
‘Come,’ he said, when she opened the door. ‘I must show you something.’
They rode into the hills in silence, in a direction she had not travelled before. And all the way she argued with herself, summoning her courage.
You will be alone together, finally. You must tell him about the babe. You must tell him you love him, tell him you want to stay.
And never go home again.
Then, as they came over a rise, she saw the stones, laid in a circle on the slope, and slowed the horse. ‘What is this place?’
‘This is where I come from. Hogback Hill.’
She shivered. She had heard of the place, but never seen it. Or wanted to. Spirits lived there. Spirits of Brunsons past. Spirits, she was sure, ready to kill a Storwick.
He helped her off the horse and she stood a safe distance, not wanting to cross some imaginary line between her and the stones. The summer day stretched as long as the shadows cast by the stones. They were not tall. No higher than her waist, with strange symbols on sides that curved to a peak.
Refusing to cross into the circle, she stroked the patterned stone, then pulled back her fingers, quickly. ‘This one looks like a fish, all the scales even.’
‘Some say they are houses for the dead,’ Rob said. ‘I like to think this is where the First Brunson lies.’
No Christian, then, she thought, squinting at the symbols. A bloodthirsty pagan Viking like the ones who had crushed her ancestors.
‘Under which stone?’
He shrugged. ‘No one knows.’
‘And the woman?’ The one he loved.
‘Aye. I think she’s here, too.’ He looked away. ‘But someone else lies here, too. And you should know.’
He held out a hand and she took it. He led her around the edge of the circle, to a ravine that yawned a few feet beyond. There, the hill dropped sharply to a stream, too far away to hear. The slope, interrupted by outcropped stones, slanted at an unstoppable angle. All she could hear was the wind, as if it filled the hole.
She gripped Rob’s hand more tightly. One step over the edge and a body would keep going
until, bruised and bleeding, it landed at the bottom.
‘He’s down there,’ Rob said. ‘Scarred Willie.’
Where’s his body? she had asked Cate. At the bottom of a ravine, where it belongs.
And she felt a strange mixture of relief and regret. ‘Did Cate kill him?’
‘Cate and Johnnie and the dog and Scarred Willie were all up here. Willie didn’t come down. They’ve never said more than that.’ He smiled and she saw the pride in it. ‘Though the ballads tell their own tales.’
Tales of spirits, no doubt. She looked around, wondering whether they watched her, a Storwick, waiting. ‘I’d like to hear them some time.’ One evening, sitting by their own fire.
His smile faded and he was Black Rob again. ‘Stella, the King is coming.’
‘Which king?’ They had not even a king in common.
‘The Scottish one. And he’s none too pleased with me.’
She slipped a hand in his. ‘Then he doesn’t know you as I do.’ The heat in her breasts and between her legs reminded her how well she knew him.
And how long it had been.
‘Stella, I told them, the others, that you were here of your own free will.’
She nodded, thinking there was something more.
‘Is it true?’
She smiled, the ease in her body a testament to the truth of it. ‘Yes, Rob Brunson, it’s true.’ Now, the time to tell him is now—
‘And when you are ready to leave, you must say so.’
You can stay as long as you want, he had said.
He had not said for ever.
Now, her nod was numb. She had thought to tell him for ever when he expected, even wanted her to leave.
The King will be here soon.
And when he found Stella Storwick, things would not go easy for Rob Brunson. Was that why he had wanted to know?
‘Do you want me to leave now, Rob?’
He looked away, hiding his eyes from her while his tongue, as reluctant as hers, gave a silent answer.
I shall love you all my days.
But never had he asked her to share them. He had said the words after a night of passion, just before returning her to her family. Said them when he was sure he would never see her again.
She looked back down into the gash in the earth, deep and wide as that separating her family and his. She felt closer to Rob than to anyone with her own name, but she knew that it was only in bed that they could pretend there was no Storwick, no Brunson.
Taken by the Border Rebel Page 18
